Category: Uncategorized

Women ruin everything

Even, ironically enough, TITLE IX.  I’m skeptical that even the most confirmed cynic could have seen this one coming.  This isn’t fourth- or fifth-wave feminism, we have clearly progressed all the way into the fantastic realm of metafeminism.

In fall 2011, faced with the prospect of another season watching
their daughter, Rose, play field hockey against boys, the Grenens had
finally had enough. They wrote to the PIAA, which invited them to come
to its offices in Mechanicsburg and give a PowerPoint presentation. At
the meeting, in January 2012, Mrs. Grenen figured that she would have to
persuade the PIAA to be on her side. But in the middle of the meeting,
someone interrupted her.

“You’re preaching to the choir,” a man said.

The
PIAA had been discussing the issue for years, but it felt that its
hands were tied because of a Commonwealth Court order that was nearly
four decades old.  In 1973, the PIAA had a bylaw which stated,
“Girls shall not compete or practice against boys in any athletic
contest.” The attorney general asserted that this provision violated the
new Pennsylvania Equal Rights Amendment, which stated, “Equality of
rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged in the Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania because of the sex of the individual.”

In 1975,
Commonwealth Court entered an order that declared the PIAA bylaw
unconstitutional, saying, “The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic
Association is hereby ordered to permit girls to practice and compete
with boys in interscholastic athletics … .”

At the time of the
order, few girls-only sports were offered. The order was meant to give
girls who wanted to play sports offered only for boys the opportunity to
do so. As the years passed, and more girls teams were created, the
order began to be interpreted so that boys could also play on girls
teams if the sport was offered only for girls — which had the opposite
effect of the order’s original intent.  The only way for the PIAA
to change the interpretation of the order was to have the case reopened
— a task that would take legal man-hours and resources that the PIAA
didn’t feel it had. Basically, the PIAA needed people like the Grenens
to fight the battle, and the organization would be glad to offer its
support.

“It could be a large expense, and we still don’t know the
outcome,” said Bob Lombardi, the PIAA executive director. “The Grenens
have provided a great opportunity because they are attorneys to work on
this.”

Key to the Grenens’ hope for reopening the case was a 1985
interpretation of the Pennsylvania ERA that said the ERA “does not
prohibit differential treatment among the sexes when that treatment is
reasonable and genuinely based on physical characteristics unique to one
sex.”

In fall 2012, the Grenens filed a petition with
Commonwealth Court to reopen the 1975 case. The court granted the
request — a huge victory and likely the only hope to change the status
quo.

On Feb. 26, the Grenens, the PIAA and representatives from
the attorney general’s office will meet in Harrisburg for a status
conference. The Grenens and the PIAA’s hope is that they will agree on a
common-sense bylaw that will outlaw boys playing on girls’ teams while
staying in accordance with the ERA.

In other words, we are expected to believe that legal equality means girls being able to play on boys teams, whether there are girls teams or not, but boys cannot play on girls teams, even if there are no boys teams upon which they can play.

Even if you think, well, what does it matter, it’s just sports, keep this in mind: Title IX is now being applied to science.  Orwell put it beautifully.  All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.  And the Sports Guy put it even better: women ruin everything.

Do you really think it was an accident that women were never permitted any voice in the governance of the Roman Republic or the great historical democracies such as Athens, Thebes, Imperial Britain, and Revolutionary America?  Do you really believe it to be a mere coincidence that many modern democracies, including Germany, Italy, and the member states of the European Union, were not able to survive even 100 years of female suffrage?

Winning is not the point

Keoni Galt points out the obvious: winning is not the objective of the various wars being waged around the world:

Not only is War Big Business, it is THE BIGGEST Big Business in the world.

We are not stationed and fighting all over the globe to “WIN” any war, let alone a War on an Adjective.

We are not fighting to win. We are fighting to keep the gravy train rolling…and it’s one hell of a giant gravy train. To WIN brings this lucrative gravy train to a halt.

That is the last thing those giving the orders to the guy in the conductor’s booth of the Gravy Train want.

This is why so many things are done to stifle, hamper and hinder the supposedly stated mission of our “global force for good!” While Dalrock is certainly correct in his assessment of feminist and elite motives for emasculating the military to socially engineer the culture and society at large, most people fail to ask the right questions as they rage at the supposed madness and insanity of a war machine hampering itself with such social engineering lunacy.

That is because most are still operating under the mistaken assumption that the military is fighting to win the war and “defend the nation.”

The good news, to the extent that there is any to be found of late, is that the recent move to make combat troops out of women tends to indicate that either a) the government has no intention of making war on the people, or, b) the government is, ala Stalin, totally uninterested in the professional opinion of its military leadership.

I think Keoni is actually understating things here, however.  I suspect they’re not so much trying to keep the giant gravy train going, I think they’re desperately trying to keep the entire system from collapsing upon itself.

Mailvox: the metaphysical straddle

This discussion with Asher concerning the utility and legitimacy of utilizing both practical and metaphysical arguments was too long for Blogger’s comment system, so I’m giving it its own post.

I’m not sure what you mean by “that”. Are you saying you never do the metaphysical/practical straddle or that the way you do it isn’t a problem? IF you are offering both metaphysical and practical arguments THEN you are doing the straddle, and the straddle is the problem, in itself.

Earlier you noted that you effortlessly switched back and forth between metaphysical and practical considerations, which looks, to me, like an admission of a straddle. If so, then that is a problem and, if not, could you clarify that statement.

High IQ does not mean one is able to avoid the straddle problem by being smart, as the straddle IS the problem. Either one makes metaphysical arguments or one does not, and if one does than the entire argument is metaphysical.

No.  Your core assumption is wrong.  A metaphysical argument does not magically subsume a practical one.  They are two different arguments that happen to concern the same subject.  You are conflating “straddle” and “switch”; you’ve used the term “straddle” in two different ways.  What I do not do is what you correctly claimed many libertarians (and many others) do, switching back and forth between the practical and the metaphysical in order to avoid having their weakest arguments exposed and defeated.  I do not “switch” between the two for that reason.  I utilize both, following my opponent where he goes.

Where you are correct is that once one RETREATS to the metaphysical, one cannot legitimately return to the defeated practical argument.  But following another’s retreat to the metaphysical in no way invalidates what has already been shown to be a successful practical argument.

The average ability of the ilk is considerably better than that of the average Joe, but most of the ilk do not capable of following you, at least in the way you lead the conversation. It’s not that your reasoning is bad but that it’s too demanding for most of your blog readers, both those that agree and those that disagree.  The ilk are considerably more advanced than the average guy but less advanced than they fancy themselves.

On average?  Of course.  That’s precisely why I repeat myself over and over again.  That’s why I provide illustrative examples.  Those who can, learn, and eventually demonstrate that they can utilize the tactics themselves, often in long debates here in which I don’t involve myself.  Those who can’t follow are at least usually able to appreciate the tactical aspects in both the aesthetic and entertainment senses.  And given that I have repeatedly stepped in and informed people when they were using various tactics improperly, why would you think you are informing me of anything I don’t already know in this regard?

It’s not difficult to see when someone is attempting to utilize a dialectical device in a rhetorical manner or asserting a nonexistent logical fallacy.  Sometimes people have to experiment and try things out before they get the hang of it.  Sometimes, it is eminently clear they will never be able to do more than bluster and posture.  So be it.  I don’t always get things right myself, as readers like you are always, to your credit, pleased to point out.  However, the other day, I said this blog is not The Following, but it could be reasonably considered to be like that show in that I have helped develop a widespread collection of lethal serial killers in the intellectual sense.  When a member of the Dread Ilk eviscerates the arguments of a friend, or family member, or co-worker using the tactics he has learned here, I am with him in spirit.

I can use this metaphor. A trap is like a claymore mine. You are a parent and the ilk are your young children. You leave the mine lying around your house in the event of a home invasion and, instead, one of the ilk sets it off and it ruins his day. From where I’m sitting that is what we’d call an “own goal”.

It’s not an applicable metaphor.  The traps are, in almost all situations, triggered by the interlocutor.  It’s more like planting a minefield on a battlefield and I am the only soldier on the one side, outnumbered though not outgunned.  The civilians are safe.  The other side, well, one of them will probably step on a mine.  And even if a civilian decides to come onto the field and inadvertently sets one off, well, hopefully it will be a learning experience for him and everyone who witnessed it.  The traps are only set to catch those who are determined to be blindly critical at all costs.

The only way that setting traps is always a good thing is when there is no audience or where you know the audience is on your level of intellect. Most of the ilk are likely to misuse most of your traps most of the time.

Totally disagree and would go so far to assert that your perspective is solely tactical and fails to even begin to take the strategic aspects into account.  The traps are set, in part, for the benefit of the audience, who tend to find them more than a little entertaining in operation.  For example, I suspect Allyn was at least mildly amused when she commented: Vox claims “For my next trick I will make the rabbits appear and then dance and hop on one foot”.  On
command the rabbits appear, raging at Vox for being a Nazi, homophobic,
poopy head that is not smarter than them. What they seem to miss is
they are doing this while dancing and hopping on one foot.”

Now I agree that most people, including the many of the Dread Ilk, don’t have the ability to effectively lay traps for critics.  The capacity for constructing them requires a psychological inclination as well as the ability to utilize a dialectical device with rhetorical ramifications.  That’s all right, it is only one of many techniques and is primarily useful for someone like me, who has hundreds, if not thousands, of critics eager to attack him at every sign of weakness or error.  By displaying false signs, I can take out most of them and demonstrate that their criticism is both superficial and baseless with very little effort.  Your average person who is not a critical target has considerably less need of any such device.  As Allyn observes, I can come right out and announce that I am doing this, just as I am doing here, and it won’t even slow down the speed with which the average rabbit will plunge his head into the shining wire.

Some may consider this to be sadistic, but my view is that if you are aware someone harbors a negative attitude towards you and is inclined to attack you at the earliest opportunity, they entirely merit whatever consequences result from their predictable behavior.

If they are harmonious then you only need to use one and the other is redundant. If anyone uses two the odds of them being harmonious is, to put it charitably, very thin. The entire reason that people do the straddle is that they use one set of arguments to cover for weaknesses in the other set and vice versa.

You’re incorrect; you’re again conflating straddle and switch.  I utilize both levels in order to expose that both levels of the critic’s arguments are wrong and thereby render the switch useless.  You’re completely failing to understand how the game is actually played in favor of some imaginary, metaphysical version of it.

Another metaphor I can use. If day after day an army takes the field, gets defeated and then retreats to higher ground then there is something wrong with the field officers. The obvious strategy would be to stick to where one can win and not continue sallying forth onto ground where one keeps being defeated.

Another bad metaphor.  First I defeat them on the lower ground.  They retreat.  Then I defeat them on the higher ground.  At which point they usually abandon the battlefield altogether.  You know perfectly well that is the usual pattern observed here.  With, of course, the exception of the anklebiters of the world, who sally forth to defeat again, and again, and again, much to the amusement of many.  I don’t mind them most of the time.  It take absolutely no effort to keep swatting down their arguments.

That just doesn’t make any sense. If one has already won on the field of battle then one doesn’t *need* to retreat.

You’re missing the point.  I’m not retreating.  I’m following up the successful defense with a counterattack.  Here is how it almost always works.  I post something.  My statements are attacked on factual grounds.  I defeat the factual argument.  The interlocutor retreats and attempts to justify his now-defeated practical argument with a metaphysical one.  I then launch an attack on his metaphysical argument.  That defeated, he runs away.  We’ve seen this process again, and again, and again, have we not?

I’m not switching anything.  I haven’t given up one iota of my practical argument or the ground I am defending.  I’m simply moving onto the other side’s ground and taking that away from him too.

If you find yourself doing the straddle that indicates that you are faced with an intractable foe, and many in the audience are also likely to be intractable foes.

Of course.  This is hardly news.  I’ve been getting death threats, having book contracts paid off, and seeing my job, my music, and my books attacked for 12 years now.  And yet, my audience keeps growing, the Dread Ilk continue to become more capable, and my abilities continue to develop.

There are two ways to take this observation. Either you already convinced a bunch of Bush Republicans to join Team Vox or you just admitted to an own goal. Chasing people away is likely to decrease the chances of their joining your team.

If you’ve been around here for as long as you said, you already know the answer to this question.  The people who are chased away tend to be the apparently intractable ones, and even some of them don’t stay chased away.  Will they ever join the team of truth, reason, and freedom?  I have known a few who have.  But it is not for me to say if my actions have changed anyone’s minds.  And it’s not Team Vox, it is Team Truth.  I don’t dictate anything, I simply follow the truth, and The Truth, as best I understand it and as well as my limitations will permit.

And you thought Raidess fans were hard

They’ve got nothing on Egyptian soccer fans.  And by nothing, I mean NOTHING:

Twenty-one men were sentenced to hang over the riot after a game in the city of Port Said between the local club, Al-Masry, and Al-Ahly of Cairo, in which 74 died last February. Visiting supporters were stabbed, crushed and in some cases thrown from the terraces in what seemed from live television pictures to be a premeditated assault.

Al-Ahly supporters and relatives of the dead celebrated the verdict when it was read out in the Cairo court to which the case had been moved.

But in Port Said relatives of the defendants tried to storm the prison where they were being held. Two policemen were shot dead in the melee before the authorities fought back. By late afternoon, local health authorities said a total of 27 people had died, including two football players, more than had been sentenced in the first place.

A real tragedy.  I can only conclude Egypt does not have sufficient gun control.

Efficiently incommunicado

This is some commendable cogitation on the part of the Canadian Cincinnatus:

[W]hy was the British Empire so efficient? For there
is no doubt about it, it was. A mere thousand bureaucrats in the Colonial
Office managed an empire so large that the sun never set on it, an empire that
included a subcontinent. How was this possible?

One
reason, I think, is that the colonies weren’t informatically connected. No
phones, no text messages, no Skype, no e-mail, no conference calls, no
webinars, no meetings. Therefore, no micromanagement. For reasons of necessity,
all decisions had to be pushed down to the lowest possible levels. This not
only had the effect of minimizing bureaucracy but it also meant that the
character of the Empire’s decision makers was more solid.

Contrast with this Richard Nixon speaking to platoon leaders in the field in Vietnam.  Bureaucracy can be a killer even in very small organizations and also relates to the r/K metaphor; once the job becomes sufficiently easy and risk-free, the change almost dictates the mass entry of the Rabbit People.

One of the things that strikes the reader of Imperial British history was the youth and astounding arrogance of the men who ruled its colonies.  Their belief in their own superiority was, to a certain extent, a self-fulfilling prophecy.  My favorite example from the era was the officer who steamed something like a hundred miles upriver from his army, showed up at the gates of a garrisoned, walled city with about twenty men, and demanded its surrender.

Since it never occurred to the enemy commander whose army had previously been defeated that anyone could possibly be so insanely arrogant as to make such a demand without having his victorious army in the near vicinity, the city was surrendered at once.  And yet, it wasn’t actually crazy, it was a straightforward calculated risk based on the idea of the enemy’s interest in his own self-preservation. 

A better class of fake review

One has to respect that at least Zoidy went to the trouble of buying the Kindle version before writing his fake review.

Boring! Very much a Warhammer novel (with the license), January 25, 2013

By Zoidy, Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a terrible book. Slow, tiresome, boring!

It’s pointlessly
wasteful with pages upon pages of characters writing letters that say
nothing! Of characters that spend ungodly amounts of time internalising
about simple issues like whether to put their cloak on to go outside!
What’s the weather like?! Who might see them outside?! Will they catch a
chill…and on and on! This is horrible writing.

Also, thanks to the Warhammer fantasy and Warhammer 40k worlds for providing pretty much most of what this author has written.

Note to the next fake reviewer: it’s more convincing if you actually read the book.  And noticing the absence of any brand logos or laser guns would also help.  Of course, actually reading the book sort of defeats the purpose of the fake review, doesn’t it?  If Zoidy thinks A Throne of Bones has pages of pages of letters – about 12 out of 854 – I’d hate to imagine what he’d conclude of Pat Wrede’s Sorcery and Cecilia, which I am given to understand is a Vampire Diaries-licensed novel.

I should be absolutely fascinated to learn what elements of the Warhammer 40k universe are present in the novel.  I don’t know whether to be flattered or appalled that people are actually willing to pay money in order to publicly trash my work.  But it occurs to me that this may open up whole new horizons in the honorable profession of getting paid to not write….

Rabbits gonna rabbit

This is absolutely and utterly beautiful.  I wish I’d started running for SFWA office years ago.  I’m just sorry that what passes for discussion there is not open to the public.  On the SFWA Forum, in a thread entitled Questions for Candidates, some of the sadder little rabbits are lamenting the fact that they can’t disqualify me from running for office due to my doubleplusungood crimethink and discussing whether either the old bylaws or the new ones will permit revoking membership in the association.

A very important question was addressed to all the candidates about our belief that men and women are equal and equally deserving of respect, to which I answered thusly:  “No. I don’t believe equality exists in any material, legal, or
spiritual sense. And I am deeply amused by anyone who claims to be
pro-science and asserts that it does.”

Rabbits gonna rabbit.

Because I am a sensitive and responsive leader, and in light of my newfound appreciation for the importance of equality to the membership, I have added a plank to my platform: “All Active and Associate members will be required to provide a signed and notarized statement that they believe men and women are equal and equally deserving of respect.  Members who fail to provide a signed and notarized statement to that effect prior to December 31, 2013, will have their memberships in the association immediately and irrevocably terminated.”

When rabbits rage

I don’t know about you, but one of the things I found most illuminating about the inevitable reaction of various angry rabbits to the featuring of the fraudulent reviewer was the strength of their expressed emotions.  I mean, even if I was absolutely everything they claimed me to be: insecure, childish, a baby, bratty, thin-skinned, small, unprofessional, pathetic, out-of-line, and so forth, why would that be so observably upsetting to them?

Why would they go out of their way to declare, with considerable umbrage, that they would never read a book of which they had never heard before and which they never had any intention of reading anyhow? Why would they find it to be “utterly reprehensible” to do what literally dozens of other sites were already doing?  Why did they find me to be “scary” when they presumably don’t feel that way about MyAddress or Google Street View?  Why would they feel the urgent need to follow the fraudulent reviewer’s example and “warning other to stay away” from my terrifying books? 

Part of the answer can be found inadvertently provided in the comment of Farida Y.  “He deliberately posted the address of a woman as a clear target of contempt.”  Remember, we usually give away our values in the process of attacking others.  Because I most typically deride others as weaklings, fools and idiots, I betray the fact that I value strength, wisdom, and intelligence, and aspire to those things.

From their insults, we can see that Rabbit People place particular value on being viewed as sane, grown-up, mature, professional, and in-line.  For example, if you see a blog that describes itself as “thoughtful”, you can be sure that it belongs to a rabbit.  This doesn’t mean, of course, that they actually are any of those things, it merely means that those things are what they aspire to, and what they erroneously believe everyone else aspires to as well.

Now, the main reason the Rabbit People were offended was that they correctly interpreted my action to be one of contempt.  They know that I do not see them as equals, but as inferiors whose opinions are not to be taken seriously and are useful only for the purpose of amusing me and my readers.  This tends to infuriate those who consider themselves to be thoughtful, grown-up, and responsible because one of their primary objectives is to be taken seriously by the herd, thereby elevating their status within it.

But if the correctly perceived contempt explains the offense, and therefore the nature of the responses, it does not explain their vehemence or the level of emotions that fueled them.  To understand this, you must first understand that the Rabbit mind is fundamentally feminine, and the feminine mind is ruled, first, foremost, and forever, by fear.

This is why, in addition to the previously listed descriptions, I was also described as: angry, scary, frightening, psychopathic, creepy, unstable, and obsessed.  These labels are not meant literally, they are simply code words meant to warn fellow rabbits ELIL AHEAD: BEWARE THE PREDATOR.  In addition to being offended, the rabbits are also afraid on two counts.  First, I have demonstrated that I am immune to their weapons of excoriation and exclusion, which, being herd animals, is something they find inexplicable and frightening.  Second, I have shown that I am willing to step “out-of-line”, which means that I am capable of taking actions that they cannot imagine, anticipate, or control.  The combination of these two things is enough to strike absolute terror in the rabbity heart; it quite literally panics them even when, as in the case of the fraudulent reviewer, no one was threatened in any way, shape, or form.

Their antics weren’t inspired by the fact that my actions were intrinsically dangerous, as they obviously were not, but rather, from the fact that those actions were outside the boundaries defined by the rabbits as being safe.  Rabbits bolt from big scary noises; they don’t stop to reflect upon whether it is a hungry bear with a particular hankering for rabbit or a truck that isn’t anywhere near them and isn’t even capable of being aware of their existence.  The simple act of stepping outside the lines is, from the rabbity perspective, an inherently dangerous act, because their way of life revolves around the dynamic construction of rules designed to circumscribe the behavior of others.

Jack Amok explained it correctly: “Rabbit/Lefty people count on this, that their opponents will hold
themselves to civilized rules of conduct the lefties will themselves
aggressively ignore. Like a woman who screams, spits and throws things
at a man, confident he wouldn’t dare backhand her across the room in
response.  The shock when he doesn’t conform to expectations is usually dramatic.” 

Stickwick added: “For the rabbit people, any behavior that isn’t sufficiently supplicating
in response to their attempts to shame and cow probably does have the
appearance of psychopathy.”

And Allyn asked an apt question:

“A question for those that have a better understanding of rabbit behavior.  Do rabbit folk go blind during their rage and lose the ability for reading cognitive recognition?  This question is a direct result of observing today’s acts.

Vox claims “For my next trick I will make the rabbits appear and then dance and hop on one foot”.

On
command the rabbits appear, raging at Vox for being a Nazi, homophobic,
poopy head that is not smarter than them. What they seem to miss is
they are doing this while dancing and hopping on one foot.”

 Yes, that’s exactly what they do.  They go blind with rage and fear.  A sufficiently angry rabbit, (which is essentially synonymous with a sufficiently frightened rabbit), is hopelessly irrational and possesses mere fragments of the cognitive abilities it usually has.  They are rendered intellectually tharn.

Let me give you an example from an exchange that followed yesterday’s chorus line of hopping, dancing rabbits between an SFWA member and me.  Unfortunately, I can’t quote the other individual due to where the exchange took place, but the summary should suffice to illustrate the point.  Being a candidate for the office of president, I was asked to explain my actions related to the fraudulent reviewer, which I did as follows:

“[I]t was part of a larger point I was making about Rabbit People and one of their common tactics. I knew several Whatever readers would attack my books by using the reviews because that’s the sort of readership Mr. Scalzi has. I had a similar experience with Richard Dawkins’s fans after publishing TIA. There were a number of other fake reviews posted yesterday that I reported in the conventional manner and were immediately removed by Amazon, such as this one: “Vox Day” is not only a bad writer; he’s also an angry, racist psychopath. Stay far away from this mediocre book.””

This led to a response from one gentleman who rejoices in sprinkling his missives with lawyerly idioms.  He claimed that because he happened to provide a few of Whatever’s 7.8 MILLION PAGEVIEWS in 2012, I had personally insulted him by accusing him of engaging in unprofessional tactics, and furthermore, had attacked the SFWA membership as well.

Now, it shouldn’t be terribly difficult for anyone who has graduated from elementary school, much less law school, to realize that an insignificant number of readers are not synonymous with the entire readership.  Still less does the subset necessarily have anything to do with a separate organization, even if that organization happens to have some degree of overlap with the set.  But the rabbit, esq. was so angry and tharn that he manufactured a nonsensical ex post facto justification for his wounded feelings, which of course required me, as a known healer and teacher, to gently explain the errors in his reasoning to him.

Which explanation I provided with such care and compassion that one giant of science fiction was moved to exclaim in open amazement and wonder.

I have to admit, I wasn’t particularly sanguine about my electoral prospects before yesterday, but I’m feeling pretty optimistic about them now.  After all, even rabbits like seeing a lawyer get bitch-slapped.