Owning the room

Simon Evans is awesome. “My accent may be rather unfamiliar, possibly even rather exotic to some of you. If you are struggling to place it, it is, in fact, educated.”


The corruption that encompasses

What you should understand is that everything that has happened since 2008 related in any way to the financial crisis is a lie.  Absolutely everything. It begins with the banks, but it doesn’t end there, the mainstream media and the government are in collusion with them to hide how bad the global situation is and how criminally corrupt the behavior of the banks and their enablers was that created this ongoing debacle:

Back in 2010 I wrote an article about the way German banks used Ireland as a dark pit for doing deals they could not do elsewhere. It was called Ireland was Germany’s Off-shore Tart. It seems she was Belgium’s tart too.

What Sugarman’s story reveals above all is how no one in power, whether that be financial, political or media power, wants any questions asked or truths exposed.  Sugarman has been ignored by everyone in the Irish establishment: his bank, the banks regulator, all the Irish political parties, all the newspapers and I was there when he told his story to one of Ireland’s top TV journalists only to never hear from him again.

Sugarman was the risk manager who resigned from Unicredit when his warnings to senior management, that the bank was routinely failing to hold enough capital to protect depositors from a bank run, were being ignored.

Irish law says clearly a breach of the minimum holdings of even 1% must be notified to the regulator immediately. He was finding UniCredit being routinely 19% short. When he asked an independent company to check his figures they told him the breaches were as high as 40%. This means the bank was short billions. Such a shortfall means if there was run on the bank it would not have a hope of surviving.

Sugarman was ignored and told to stop complaining. He resigned.

A month later Northern Rock collapsed when a run on the bank exhausted its cash reserves. A year later the Irish banks collapsed.

You might have thought the Irish Bank regulator would want to know what Sugarman had to say. You’d be wrong. The Irish regulator has gone out of his way to ignore him. I have been privy to all the emails and correspondence and it is a shameful and tawdry story of obfuscation, lying and threats. Meetings where he was told he could come and tell the regulator what he knew, but that if he revealed any wrong doing by the bank that occurred during the time he was there, the regulator would have to report him to the police.

It’s all a sham.  All of it.  The only thing of which you can be sure is that the various statistics are being portrayed in the best possible light.  Which, in and of itself, is rather grim considering what the reported statistics indicate.


On the book/game front

1. The Wardog’s Coin is finished.  Marcher Lord is presently giving it the editorial polishing and then the novelette will be published in accompaniment with its B-side, Qalabi Dawn.  With nearly 30k words between the two of them; it should be on Amazon for $1.99 before the end of the month.  As with AMB, I’ll be sending out the ebook to those who have promised to review it; if you’re interested, send me an email with TWC in the subject and specify if you prefer epub or mobi format. The title novelette is about a Savondese mercenary who finds himself, and his mercenary company, drawn into the service of the elven king of Merithaim courtesy of an insufficiently researched contract. It is set in Selenoth and introduces a new perspective character who will be appearing in TAODAL: Book Two.

2. A Selenoth-based game will be coming out for mobile platforms towards the end of this year, such as Android and iOS. I won’t say anything more about it now, except that it’s going to be a very different sort of game than anyone is likely to anticipate, and it is going to contain one or two innovations that I expect to be of interest to various people outside of the game industry proper.

3. While Summa Elvetica was a failure in a way that the much less ambitious A Throne of Bones was not, I’m still pleased to learn that SE has its fans who are not put off by its unconventional approach to story-telling.  Seeking the New Earth has posted a nice review of it:

The moment I knew that I did not merely like the novel, but loved it, comes here. I don’t want to spoil it, but I will say this: Marcus discovers evidence that leads him to write the Summa Elvetica, an official treatise on elves, for the church. And what he discovers actually made me cheer. Beale shows his mastery in showing, not telling, in that particular scene, and it lifts the rest of the novel from “pretty good” to “great.”

The conclusion of the novel nearly disappointed me. I thought Beale would go the hackneyed route of, “The church is shown the truth but chooses to ignore it.” Ah, but he has another trick up his sleeve to bring this story to a satisfying conclusion.

Oh! The story ended, but there’s almost a hundred pages left?

Beale actually wrote the Summa Elvetica. He wrote a treatise in the style of the medieval church. It’s included as an appendix. OK, that’s neat and all, but how many of us read medieval religious treatises?

Oh. It’s only a few pages. What else?

Beale includes two short stories set within the world of Summa Elvetica that shine more brightly than the novel. Honestly, the book’s worth the price of admission for either of these two stories. I’m delighted they’re included.

4.  Koanic Soul has posted a review of A Throne of Bones, (warning: considerable spoilers) that is much more accessible and much less insane than one would ever have imagined. Frankly, I was disappointed, as I was expecting long treatises on the conjectured skull shapes and eye sockets of the various major characters.  Or something like that.  Based on the title of his post, it appears Koanic may have reversed the analogy below, but regardless, it’s nice to hear that TAODAR compares favorably with ASOIAF in one way or another.

My preferred form of stimulation is intellectual. Vox’s latest book, A Throne of Bones, is like a 2-day morphine high. Just buy it. If you need convincing, here my review. Vox Day is to RR Martin as a box of pastries is to a pot roast
dinner. One may taste better at the beginning, but the other you
wouldn’t mind eating for the rest of your life.

 5. Speaking of ASOIAF, I was more than a little amused by this discussion on the Martin fan site Westeros.org, which is nominally about A Throne of Bones, but is more devoted to my various ideological and personal shortcomings by Martin fans who haven’t bothered to read the book before opining on the author.  This comment about my discourse with R. Scott Bakker, in particular, made me laugh out loud:

“When you’re the condescending douche in an argument with Bakker you’re in trouble.”

Such is the burden of life as a superintelligence. One ignores at the price of being considered arrogant. One explains at the price of being deemed condescending.


White smoke spotted

“The Catholic church has chosen a new pope. White
smoke is billowing from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, meaning 115
cardinals in a papal conclave have elected a new leader for the world’s
1.2 billion Catholics. The new pope is
expected to appear on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica within an
hour, after a church official announces “Habemus Papum” – “We have a
pope” – and gives the name of the new pontiff in Latin.”
And a million conspiracy theorists held their breath… and were disappointed.

“Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio from Argentina has been elected the new leader of the Catholic Church. The 76-year-old – now known as Pope Francis I — was the archbishop of Buenos Aries and was appointed by Pope John Paul II. Bergoglio became the first pope from the Americas elected and the first from outside Europe in more than a millenium.”


Land of the Not-so-much-Free

The USA is not the least free country in the world.  But it is becoming increasingly obvious to everyone that it isn’t even close to being the most free country in the world that many Americans have always assumed it be:

So, in just a week’s time, the political elite in the Land of the Free gave us bills which:

1) ensure the government cannot assassinate its own citizens with drones
2) impose price controls with insurance premiums
3) award the government with more power to initiate biosurveillance operations
4) create a quota system in the labor market

It really makes me wonder… how much more will it take for people to notice how rapidly they’re losing freedom, or how destructive the political leadership is? 

The problem is that too few natives genuinely want freedom anymore, and virtually none of the immigrants from Asia, Africa, or South and Central America place any value upon it at all.  The USA may only be a quasi-democracy, but in the end, the people will get the government they are willing to tolerate, and one of the prices of modifying the population is that the government one group of people are willing to tolerate is usually at least moderately different than the government another group of people, with different history, cultures, and tradition, are willing to tolerate.

The important distinction is that the determining factor isn’t what sort of government people actually want, but rather, what sort of government they are willing to tolerate.


Trading Percy Harvin

Although I understand why AD doesn’t like it, I think the trade was a very smart move by the Vikings, and may prove to be an excellent one depending upon how they draft.  Harvin is a fantastic complementary player, but he can never be a player around whom one builds the offense and he needs a deep threat to create space for him to be most effective.

Given his lack of durability, and the fact that the Vikings actually had a better record (5-2) against more difficult opponents when he was out of the lineup than when he was playing, it was obvious that he wasn’t necessarily a vital part of the team. And since his attitude was negative and he wanted to leave anyhow, better to replace him now and get something for him than have one more year of him and watch him walk in free agency.

So, I like this trade much better than I liked the Randy Moss trade with Oakland. It’s probably a good trade for both clubs, although I doubt it will be enough to put Seattle over the top as some seem to think.  I have a lot less confidence in the Kaepernicks and Wilsons of the NFL than most; we’ve seen far too many “reinventing the quarterback” stories end with the backup QB taking the snaps.


Eschatonic rumblings

I don’t think Hamas is the real problem here.  Evangelicals of the Left Behind variety are the ones most likely to go berserk if Obama visits the Temple Mount:

Hamas is warning that if President Obama visits the Temple Mount it would be a “declaration of war” against the Islamic world. Israel National News reports the terror group made the threat during a protest march at the religious site following riots on Friday.

Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas spokesman, called for a third intifada if Obama visits the contested religious site in Jerusalem’s Old City between Israelis and Muslims.

Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharonovich believes the warning will lead to violence flaring up in the region ahead of the president’s visit.

Is it just me or has the world been getting distinctly crazier and crazier over the last nine months or so?


Who needs tokens?

Instapundit notes that Barack Obama’s cabinet is unexpectedly short on African descent:

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY WE’D HAVE A LILY-WHITE CABINET. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! CBC leader concerned Obama has named no blacks to new Cabinet. “Attorney General Eric Holder, appointed in Obama’s first term, remains the Obama administration’s only black Cabinet-level appointee. According to a Politics365 analysis released last week, that’s the fewest by any president over the last 38 years.”

Hey, if you’re the token, what need have you for other tokens?


Pirates, preferences, and the post-timorous

Adam Carolla has a pirate ship.  It is not a coincidence that he is one of the few men who harbor no fear of being called “raciss” by the cowards in the media and on the Internet. But he’s far from the only one and the numbers of the racially post-timorous are rapidly growing as more and more individuals of European descent become increasingly tribal by virtue of their increased exposure to Africans, Hispanics, Asians, and others from non-European tribes.

“The Huffington Post has come out with a story that says ‘Adam Carolla to Gavin Newsom: ‘What’s wrong with blacks and Latinos?’’” Carolla said. “That’s not what I said to Gavin Newsom. I didn’t bring up blacks and Latinos. He brought up blacks and Latinos. But let me take this moment to now talk to all the pussies that are out there trying to stir things up and turn me into a racist. I got news for you: Me saying parents should stick around and raise the children – me saying families and cultures should focus on education — is not radical or revolutionary. It’s the fucking truth.”

Carolla, author of “Not Taco Bell Material,” said that while Newsom is quick to blame “the system,” Newsom happens to be a part of what’s wrong that system.

“You are the system, Gavin Newsom,” Carolla said. “Fix the system, but you won’t fix the system, because you know what it takes to fix the system and you’re a fucking coward. And guys like Huffington Post — you guys fucking line up behind these people and let me tell you something, you guys all have blood on your hands, because the problem could be fixed. It’s a problem, and it’s a problem that involves bodies. People die every year.”

“There’s people getting shot,” Carolla added. “There’s brown people shooting other brown people on the streets of Chicago every fucking day of the week. And you guys sit there silently. If it was a Sandy Hook situation or anything else, you’d be all up in arms. But you can’t say a word, so you sit there with your fucking coward hands over your fucking little cowardly soup coolers. And then when somebody has the guts to say something — to speak the truth for fucking one hot second, you jump up his ass and call him a racist. Thus, you silence the media. Now you perpetuate the problem….

“So let me tell you something — I got something called a pirate ship,
Huffington Post,” Carolla said. “I don’t give a fuck about you and your
fucking opinions…. Keep going, Huffington Post,” he said. “Keep pointing fingers at
people who speak out. Good job, media. Silence everyone who says there’s
a problem. Silence everyone who attempts to take a problem and really
earnestly get them out of poverty, to really earnestly try to look at
the problem realistically, to look at the problem of violence, to look
at the problem of education, to look at the socio-economic problem —
someone who really honestly tries to take a look at this problem. You
silence them by calling them a racist. 

The reality from which the conservative, mainstream, and progressive medias are all averting their eyes is that a substantial percentage of the minority population of America are, in the words of Ta-Nehisi Coates about his wife, at war with white people. No amount of unscientific racial goodthink, no bien-pensant justifications for inordinately criminal behavior by people of a certain color, no ritual confessions of anti-racism by people living in pure lily-white communities is going to change that fact.

Jews understand tribe.  Africans understand tribe.  Hispanics understand tribe.  Asians understand tribe.  But because they collectively and intentionally rejected their tribal identity in favor of an amorphous Anglo-Saxon creed to which virtually none of them understand or subscribe anymore, white Americans will continue to be bewildered and victimized as a result of failing to understand the games being played until they rediscover the concept of tribal loyalty to one’s own kind.

And rediscover it they will, whether they want to or not. As the Washington Post article about the growing “racial consciousness” of liberal white Democrats forced to confront an unexpected Hispanic intrusion into their middle class lives illustrates, it is only a matter of time and sufficient inter-tribal contact.

It’s assumed that, as the United States becomes increasingly non-white,
white Democrats will continue to support the party. But a substantial
amount of social-science evidence suggests a different conclusion: As
the United States becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, liberal
whites might start leaning Republican….

The results were clear. After coming into contact, for just minutes
each day, with two more Latinos than they would otherwise see or
interact with, the riders, who were mostly white and liberal, were
sharply more opposed to allowing more immigrants into the country and
favored returning the children of illegal immigrants to their parents’
home country. It was a stark shift from their pre-experiment interviews,
during which they expressed more neutral attitudes.

Political
scientists, economists, sociologists and psychologists have long noted
that, under most circumstances, when people from different ethnic,
racial and religious groups come into new contact, conflict ensues.

The process of white tribal rediscovery likely to be more than a little ugly, as are the some of the potential consequences.  Just as the legacy of importing Africans continues to resonate in a negative manner hundreds of years after the initial importation, the problems related to the legacy of importing Hispanics, Asians, Jews, and other tribal peoples will likely be an order of magnitude or two higher. A peaceful geographic breakup of the Union is probably the best for which we can hope.

Ultimately, it isn’t about race per se, as race is a clumsy and outdated term that doesn’t fit well with the genetic science that is rapidly eroding the great myth of human equality.  It is about tribe, a fractal concept that encompasses race but goes considerably beyond it.  And tribal differences are so profound, that as Steve Sailer notes, they are more easily distinguished on the basis of preferences than religion, ideology, sexual orientation or even sex.

A new study out of Cambridge University
uses a database of Facebook “likes” to predict demographic and
personality information about individuals. Race (black v. white,
ignoring other races) turns out to be the easiest to predict based on
what stuff people like. The Cambridge model gets race right 95% of the
time, compared to only 93% of the time for sex.


Inflation vs deflation VII

Nate responds with post entitled “Half-Truism”: 

“There are those who say that he cure for inflation is deflation.
 And… there are those, though they are few, who say that the cure for
the man who has been run over by a motorcar, is to have the same
motorcar run over him in the opposite direction.”

– Ludwig Von Mises, “Lecture on Inflation”, 1968

Broad definition…  narrow
definition…  it is readily apparent the
broader definition is what I am referring to here. But one must remember that I
am actually no longer using Mises’ definitions at all. I am defining money as
it relates to the commodity competition… not its nature.  I call it fiat money not because it has
government force behind it, but because it is that government force that makes
the commodity win the commodity competition and therefore become the
money.  Credit money doesn’t exist at all
in physical form and thus doesn’t compete in the competition and is not
actually money. 

As you have noticed by now these responses are coming slower
and slower.  That’s because, by the very
nature of the problem, as we drill down, more and more remedial teaching is
required.   There is a knowledge base
that is required to understand these points… and we must first make sure the
reader has it.

I shall respond to this within the next day or three, as before.