Category: Uncategorized

Let me explain how this works

The Pharyngulan Reynold managed to post six (6) eleven (11) comments without actually answering any of the four questions I posed him:

It’s only been a few hours Vox..I do have to do other things than just post comments on your blog. You can’t start badgering me because I’ve not answered all of your questions after just a few bloody hours! I’ll get to them eventually.

I’m sure you have many other things to do. Just as I’m sure everyone will be interested in reading those answers when you find the time to answer them. But if one has time to post six comments, one surely has time to answer four questions. Just to make things perfectly clear, priority should be given to the four specific questions I have posed. I’m not badgering him, that’s simply how things work around here; see The Rules on the left sidebar for details if necessary. Now, it must be recognized that Reynold did make unsuccessful attempts to evade two of the questions by calling them into question, but since the points he made were respectively incorrect and irrelevant, all four questions still remain to be answered. They are as follows:

1. Would you seriously consider it meaningful, or even remotely relevant, if JD were to debate me on Paul Zachary’s behalf, so long as he felt he has a good understanding of Paul Zachary’s words?

2. If science produces technology, and not the other way around, why was technological advancement almost completely frozen in the Soviet Union for fifty years when they devoted a larger percentage of their GDP to science research than the United States did? (His attempt to argue that Soviet technology was essentially equal to US technology on the basis of the stolen atomic bomb and the space program is verifiably false. I am also willing to accept an answer which substitutes why the technological level of the Soviet Union “fell significantly behind that of the United States” in lieu of its technological advancement being “almost completely frozen”.)

3. Is science unnecessary for technological development or am I, in fact, a master of science? (This is in response to his contradictory assertions that science drives technological advancement and my supposed ignorance of science. As he questioned my technological credentials, which are well-known in the game industry, I referred him to Engadget, which described one of my various technology designs as “the most advanced they had ever seen.”)

4. Now that I have answered all his questions and proved that “marital rape” can be reasonably defended under the principle of Common Law, is he willing to admit that by his own metric, the adjectives “inane” and “unworthy” no longer apply to me as a potential debate opponent for Paul Zachary Myers?

Now, for all that Pharyngulans tend to believe that Vox Popoli is the polar opposite of the echo chamber that is Pharyngula, that really is not the case. Here, one is expected to respond directly to the questions posed; any rationalizations or justifications are to be offered AFTER providing an answer to the question, not in lieu of it. As I have answered all of his questions, as well as those of his fellow Pharyngulan Mhich, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that they will show me the same courtesy.

UPDATE – Reynold writes this and then proceeds to spend the rest of the comment, and four subsequent comments, still failing to answer ANY of the four questions. He points his toes nicely as he dances, though. Dance, little Pharyngulan, dance!

So, less than one full day and you go and make a post about how I have not answered any of your questions? Not only is that impatient as hell, but that’s dishonest. I have answered several of your questions. You just find some excuse to disregard them (see your post above) and then claim that I’ve never answered them. I was warned that you were a dishonest pr1ck, looks like they were right.

That makes eleven (11) comments and still not a single answer. First, one cannot be considered to have answered a yes/no question without providing a yes or no. Nor can one be considered to have answered an either/or question without selecting one of the two options. Neither can one legitimately answer a question by arguing about the basis for the question. I haven’t needed any excuse to disregard his answers because he hasn’t actually answered any of the four questions. Unlike his fellow Pharyngulan, Mhich, who appears to grasp the basic concept of first answering the question and only then proceeding to justify his answer, Reynold has produced nothing but incorrect, unsubstantiated, and invalid excuses for why he shouldn’t have to answer the questions. Is he being evasive because he fears being pinned down or is he simply that stupid? At this point, it’s a tough call. In any event, he will not be commenting here anymore unless and until he provides unequivocal, straightforward answers to the four questions, as per the publicly posted Rules of the Blog.

UPDATE II – Where is Renee anyway? This sort of rape talk would normally have her all hot and bothered.

Recovery and income

It’s interesting how so few of the objective measures tally well with the GDP statistics:

U.S. incomes plummeted again in 2009, with total income down 15.2% in real terms since 2007, new tax data showed on Wednesday. The data showed an alarming drop in the number of taxpayers reporting any earnings from a job — down by nearly 4.2 million from 2007 — meaning every 33rd household that had work in 2007 had no work in 2009.

Average income in 2009 fell to $54,283, down $3,516, or 6.1% in real terms compared with 2008. … Compared with 2007, average income was down $8,588 or 13.7%.

So, income is down 15.2% and I previously calculated that current U3 unemployment comparable to the Depression-era estimates are around 15.5%. I’m just not seeing a lot of economic growth there, seven straight quarters of reported GDP growth notwithstanding.

WND column

Breaking Windows in New York City

I was deeply disturbed to read that the erstwhile hurricane which has inspired such panic on the East Coast has apparently been degraded to the status of a tropical storm, and a minor one at that. The winds that had been reported at 85 mph by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were being reported in the 25-35 mph range by various land stations. As we have seen repeatedly in the case of anthropogenic global warming/climate change, the disasters predicted by the scientific experts reliably turn out to be significantly less disastrous when they finally arrive.

Real life is not like the movies. In the world of Hollywood, the dire warnings of scientists are ignored by the authorities. In the real world, the dire warnings of scientists cause the authorities to overreact and throw billions of dollars at the experts in an attempt to find a solution to a nonexistent problem. Given this perverse incentive system, it should be no surprise that scientists across many disciplines spend so much more time prophesying doom than they do actually performing any science.

The boring Borgias

I have to admit, I am a little disappointed with the mini-series about the Borgias. It is strange, at a time when Batman has grown darker, The Sopranos and The Wire were popular and critically acclaimed cable television series, and epic fantasy has increasingly devolved into nihilist torture porn, that a producer should feel the need to present the most notorious crime family in European history as weak, sensitive, and misunderstood people.

Read the rest at the Black Gate

Seculars are seriously insane

Datechguy simultaneously sums up the inherent lunacy of the “evolution in the schools” debate and illustrates the insanity of the secular science fetishists:

My friend is an educated man in his 40′s. Both he and his father owned small business and are longtime republicans. We were going through the potential GOP nominees when he declared he was afraid of Rick Perry because of his fundamentalist belief in the Bible (specifically on evolution). He argued that if he doesn’t believe in Evolution what OTHER science does he not believe in?

I’ve already said something in my gut doesn’t care for Rick Perry but this caused me to do a double take; I answered:

“Unemployment is 9.1%, the economy is in the tank and you’re worried about a candidate’s position on how old the planet is?”

It is instructional to see how secularist Americans are attempting to construct the very walls they once condemned. Whereas they still complain that there was a time when belief in God was an essential societal requirement, now they are simply substituting a different religious dogma to serve as a litmus test. Their concerns can’t possibly be about science, as there probably aren’t more than one or two Senators who could pass a college level physics test or more than ten who could pass an economics one. I’d be surprised if any of the candidates other than Ron Paul or Mitt Romney could even tell you what something as simple as marginal utility or a reserve requirement is.

I don’t like Rick Perry either, nor would I vote for him, but his opinion on the age of the planet and the origin of the species is probably somewhere around number 345,732 on my list of concerns about the man.

The irony is that the same people who believe that fiscal stimulus ends economic contractions and FDR’s New Deal ended the Great Depression will tell you, with a straight face, that you are ignorant and should not be permitted to hold office if you don’t believe that all cats and dogs are the descendants of a single catdog 42 million years ago. Because, you know, that’s so much more relevant to the main political issues of the day than economic and geopolitical rationality.

The truth is that all cats and dogs are descended from a male calico catdog named Fluffy Leghumper who was born on May 17th, 41,997,010 BC. His two kitten-pups, fathered on different female catdogs, were Patches and Happy Sniffbottom. And thus cats and dogs evolved. True science fact. And if you don’t believe in Fluffy Leghumper, you’re just ignorant and you know nothing about science.

Can one dodge a dodger?

One wonders how anyone could conclude JD is running and hiding from PZ Myers, when the Fowl Atheist is already fully occupied with running and hiding from me? I attempt to explain the situation to a pair of rather dim-witted Pharyngulans who are having a hard time understanding why those who are not Ann Coulter feel no responsibility to debate PZ concerning what Ann Coulter wrote in one of her books.

Mhich: “I’ve been looking into Vox Day’s blog and he indeed knows nothing about science. Even a fifth grader knows more about science than Vox Day’s. And another thing: the only person I see that is dodging the challenge is you. If you know so much about evolution and consider Coulter’s book to be accurate, accept the Myer’s challenge. What do you have to lose?”

Reynold: “Myers mopped the floor with one of you people who supposedly knew something about science, and I posted a link to where Myers shows that Vox is ignorant as hell about science. Now, how about taking Myers up on his challenge? this is my THIRD ATTEMPT to get you to do that. Or are you still going to dodge?”

Messrs. Reynold and Mhich, why should JD, or anyone else for that matter, answer Myers’s challenge for someone other than Ann Coulter to defend Ann Coulter’s opinion, especially considering that the individual he is accused of “dodging” is known for doing some dodging of his own? Only Ann Coulter has the responsibility to answer for her own words, the same responsibility that PZ Myers has to answer for his. JD can no more argue with PZ on her behalf than he can argue with me on PZ’s. Would you seriously consider it meaningful, or even remotely relevant, if JD were to debate me on PZ’s behalf, even if he relied entirely upon PZ’s written words?

The claim that JD is “dodging” this nonsensical “challenge” is more than a little ironic considering that PZ Myers is a confirmed coward who has twice dodged public challenges to debate me. The first time, he ran from the Northern Alliance’s invitation to debate me after complaining that he had never been presented any intelligent arguments for the existence of gods. Perhaps if he stopped running away to avoid them, he might find one. He followed that up by running and hiding from an invitation to engage in a written debate concerning the scientific evidence for evolution which specifically addressed his justifications for evading the previous challenge.

As for your claim that Myers showed I am “ignorant as hell about science”, my response to the error-filled post you cited suffices to demonstrate that he did nothing of the kind.

What you clearly do not understand is that, by his own admission, PZ relies heavily upon emotional arguments rather than logical ones when he cannot simply appeal to an established scientific consensus. “I’ll also cop to the obvious fact that, knowing that reason will not get through their skills, I’m happy to use emotional arguments as well. Passion is persuasive.” His tendency to rely upon emotional rhetoric and passion rather than reason is precisely why he is afraid to debate people who rely primarily upon logic, because his ability to present reason-based arguments is relatively low. His ability to utilize reason is simply not equal to the skill of others who make use of it more effectively. PZ is without question an effective preacher to the godless choir of science fetishists, but he is remarkably unskilled at presenting convincing arguments, let alone conclusive ones, to those who do not already agree with him. Unlike you, he knows he is not an effective evangelist.

With regards to the applicability of economics, as Michael Shermer has pointed out in The Mind of the Market, there are far more similarities between economics and evolution than most people realize, dating back to the singular influence of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand on Darwin’s subsequent articulation of his theory of natural selection. Moreover, erroneous theories tend to have much in common, especially when they have become mainstream dogma. As one who has played a small role in demonstrating the critical flaws in Neo-Keynesian/Neo-Classical economic models, I am actually rather well-equipped to identify similar flaws in the Neo-Darwinian conceptual model. For example, I correctly identified that the natural selection component of the mechanism was a philosophical one, not a scientific one, and therefore potentially scientifically flawed, long before most believers in the Cult of Darwin became aware of the lack of genuine scientific evidence for it and the need to present various epicyclesalternative mechanisms.

I don’t pretend to know anywhere nearly as much about biology as PZ, but it is always a mistake to assume that an individual with a smaller set of facts at his disposal must therefore be less correct regarding the subject. Aristotelian dialectic may not always be a reliable substitute for science, but it is reliably more effective, more accurate, and more convincing to rational and unbiased observers than science-flavored, emotion-based rhetorical arguments.

It is more than a little embarrassing to the Pharyngulan community that the object of their regard doesn’t believe he can successfully win a debate with what they believe to be the equivalent of a fourth-grade elementary school student, especially when he continues to take the occasional potshot in my direction from the safety of his blog. They can manufacture all the excuses and rationalizations for him they like, but the dodging, it is observed.

VPFL Draft Day

The VPFL Draft begins in about 5 hours and fifteen minutes. Everyone has their keepers in, which are as follows:

Reverends – none, none, none
Meerkats – Arian Foster, Aaron Rodgers, Michael Turner
Banksters – Jamaal Charles, Larry Fitzgerald, Roddy White
Marauders – Philip Rivers, none, none
Redbeards – Chris Johnson, Tom Brady, none
Quixotes – Rashard Mendenhall, Vincent Jackson, none
Rhyneaux – Ray Rice, Drew Brees, Peyton Hillis
Grizzlies – LeSean McCoy, Greg Jennings, Dwayne Bowe
Sidhe – Adrian Peterson, Calvin Johnson
Swamp Spartans – Andre Johnson, MJD, Tony Romo

This is the draft order for the first round and all subsequent odd rounds. The order is reversed for even rounds, in which the Swamp Spartans pick first and the Reverends last.

UPDATE – That’s right, I went there. I drafted THE TARVARIS JACKSON EXPERIMENT to back up Aaron Rodgers. Because THIS IS HIS YEAR!

I wish I’d done a little more research before picking Crabtree over Edwards, though.

Mailvox: concerning the questions

MD has a few follow-up questions:

Enjoyed reading your answers to NYT ‘questioning’ If nothing else, I think you exhibit the (admirable) virtue of honesty. As you can probably imagine, a couple of points I need to raise:

1a) firstly, and most importantly, there is absolutely no way that evolution is ‘a minor aspect of biological science’! I wonder which professor of biological sciences you are quoting? Evolution is the central and unifying concept of modern biology & medicine. When you say you are skeptical of evolution, I’m not sure you are clear about on what level you disagree. I too (as a holder of 2 1st class BSc. s. & an MSc. in the biological sciences, you could say I am skeptical about some aspects of some hypotheses of evolutionary theory. However, Do you :

1b) believe that the Judeo-Christian literal creationist hypotheses are equally likely to be objectively true as the theories of modern evolutionary science?

1c) On what level do you NOT believe in evolution? I’ve never met anyone that says that the gene pool of one generation is IDENTICAL to the next. The basic premiss of evolutionary theory is that there is a difference (ie a CHANGE in the gene pool).

1d) From what basis do you say that mainstream scientific theory shouldn’t be taught in public schools?!

2) I agree that America could be described as a ‘Christian Nation’ as the majority of it’s citizen’s consistently describe themselves as such in all respectable polls that I have seen. [of course we shouldn’t forget that the reason that America is a Christian nation is because the Christians got rid of all the pagans! ]

However, I feel it is a bit disingenuous of an educated American to say that it was founded by Christians; the founding fathers were clearly a mixture of Christians and deists and agnostics. In the official words of John Adams : ‘As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion . . . ‘

3) on the issue of teachers leading students in prayers, I myself have no problem with this. I did have an issue with my daughter being forced to pray at school – which has now been resolved. She has decided not to, but sits amongst her peers as a time of reflection during prayer. (actually, she switches between praying and not praying – which is, from my perspective, is how it should be.) For me, the most important thing is for my children to be free to form their own beliefs.

Lastly, I think it’s important for Christians to realise that the reason that I don’t describe myself as a Christian is because the overwhelming majority of THEM have excluded ME (not the other way around), because I happen to believe that Jesus didn’t have magical powers like Harry potter, despite thinking that he was highly likely to have been an admirable and remarkable man in his times.

1a. Evolution is not the central and unifying concept of modern biology and medicine. It is almost completely irrelevant to both. No doctor, and few biologists, need know anything about evolution at all in order to perform their various medical and scientific duties. Even if you subscribe fully to whatever the Cult of Darwin’s latest dogma happens to be, this is akin to saying that the Greek Classics are the central and unifying concept of economics and plumbing. The fact that there may be some intellectual relationship, even a direct causal one, doesn’t necessarily make it the least bit relevant today. Men – religious men, ironically enough – managed to figure out both artificial selection and genetics without any help from evolutionary theory; even if true, it’s almost completely useless. True or not, evolution’s only significance is philosophical, which is why its advocates invariably sound more like cultists than scientists.

1b. There are too many hypotheses on both sides for me to possibly say. I can only say that I believe some form of Creator is far more likely to be objectively true than either abiogenesis or any form of Darwinian evolution. It may be my technological bias, but I see genes as being more akin to the primitives of a programming language than to pieces of a jigsaw puzzle gradually assembled over time by the processes of natural selection, biased mutation, genetic drift, gene flow, or any other epicyclical mechanism the Darwinian cultists can conceive. This implies both the creator of the language as well as a programmer or two.

1c. The level on which I am skeptical of evolution – I do not entirely rule out the possibility – is that any of the various evolutionary mechanisms proposed are sufficient to modify the gene pool to such an extent as to create new and entirely different species regardless of the amount of time involved.

1d. There is zero utility in attempting to teach science to schoolchildren who can’t read, can’t do math, and will never be scientists. They can’t understand it, aren’t interested in it, and have no use for it. It makes no difference if you’re trying to teach them mainstream scientific theory, iambic tetrameter, or running the 100m dash in five seconds. It isn’t ever going to happen. My return question: how can you justify teaching public schoolchildren mainstream scientific theory and not teaching them basic personal economics like how to balance a checkbook or calculate compound interest or basic physical fitness?

2. The “mixture of Christians and deists and agnostics” among the Founding Fathers was on the order of 99% to 1%. It would not merely be disingenuous, it is flat out wrong to state that America was NOT founded by Christians. There were more Founding Fathers with theological degrees than deists and atheists combined; there were more Founding Fathers who personally translated the Bible than there were deists and atheists combined. This is why even intelligent, educated atheists often find themselves inadvertently looking very historically illiterate, as they tend to be maleducated in certain areas. Unfortunately, the reason many are maleducated on this particular issue is due to an all too typical atheist dishonesty with regards to standard word definitions; in this case, whoever constructed the atheist talking point attempted to revise the term “Founding Fathers” to mean a very small number of men, as few as seven “key” Founding Fathers. This is blatantly incorrect, as there have always been two groups of Founding Fathers, the Signers and the Framers. In both cases, nearly all of the men involved were Christians.

In fact, the maleducated atheist opinion doesn’t even rise to the level of Wikipedia: “Of the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, 49 were Protestants, and three were Roman Catholics.” And more detailed information is readily available.

3. Admiration, even belief, is not worship. Even belief in Jesus Christ’s “magical powers” would not be sufficient to make a Christian. Even the demons believe, but they do not worship. No man can exclude a man from the body of Christ except that man himself.

An optimistic metaphor

Joseph Lozito, husband, father, and American badass:

It turns out that Maksim Gelman wasn’t just any nutjob riding pantless on the Subway – he was a bona-fide spree killer in the middle of a 28 hour stabbing rampage that had left four people dead and five more wounded across the boroughs of New York City. Earlier in the weekend, Gelman had done a shitload of crack and murdered his stepfather and his girlfriend’s mom with a knife, stabbed his girlfriend 11 times, ran over a dude with a car, slashed another motorist, and carjacked an unsuspecting couple, stabbing both of them in the process. He was a career criminal who had completely lost his fucking shit, and now he was swinging a goddamned machete around a crowded Subway train filled with women, children, and more innocent bystanders than a superhero comic. And now he’s coming straight for Joseph Lozito, and there isn’t a hell of a lot this Pennsylvania native can do to avoid the confrontation. It’s like a bad 80s movie about gang violence on the Subway, only this was rush hour traffic, real life, and Gelman is definitely not wearing an awesome headband or listening to rad jams blasting from the tape deck on his boombox.

But Joseph Lozito isn’t just any chump on his way to work, and he sure as shit isn’t about to sit there and let some psychotic madman knife him to death without putting up a fight. This guy is a life-long MMA fan who took his love of the sport to super-fan levels – he’d been to UFC 1 in 1993, never missed a pay-per-view, and celebrated his friggin’ wedding anniversary by taking his wife to see the Ultimate Fighting Championship live.

He’s also fucking gigantic – standing 6’2″ and weighing in at 260 pounds. Gelman wasn’t going to know what the fuck hit him…. As Gelman approaches, Lozito does the last thing the knife-wielding maniac expected – he attacks.

That’s the best line in the article: “he attacks”. As my sensei always taught us, “when you go, you go!” In other words, once the moment for action arrives, commit 100 percent. Lozito appears to have had little idea what he was doing – a simple arm bar and break would have been significantly safer than a takedown – but that only emphasizes his courage and heroism.

It’s easy to be pessimistic about Americans. They tolerate one of the smartest, most predatory political classes in the history of the world. They pretty much don’t want to do anything except go to work, eat, drink beer, and watch television as their country is overrun by Mexican gangs, Somali jihadists, and people with names like Maksim.

The country is broke and heading for collapse, but there is still hope for what comes after. Because despite all its many flaws, America is still the place where MMA was invented, where paintball was invented, and men like Joseph Lozito not only fight when they’re forced to fight, but fight to win. New York City and Washington DC and Hollywood and San Francisco and Maksim Gelman aren’t America, they’re all tumors indicative of the imported cancer will eventually kill the United States. The real America is where a man isn’t trying to rule the world or live as a parasite, but merely wants to do his job, do his own thing, and kick your ass if you won’t leave him alone.

And where were the cops that Gelman confronted first? New York’s Finest where you’d expect them to be, hiding like little girls and waiting for it to be over: “Two transit cops locked themselves in the train’s front room with the conductor and didn’t immediately open the door when straphangers called for help, because they thought the madman had a gun.”

Krugman laments a lack of inflation

He also doesn’t anticipate QE3 from Jackson Hole:

in 2000 an economist named Ben Bernanke offered a number of proposals for policy at the “zero lower bound.” True, the paper was focused on policy in Japan, not the United States. But America is now very much in a Japan-type economic trap, only more acute. So we learn a lot by asking why Ben Bernanke 2011 isn’t taking the advice of Ben Bernanke 2000.

Back then, Mr. Bernanke suggested that the Bank of Japan could get Japan’s economy moving with a variety of unconventional policies. These could include: purchases of long-term government debt (to push interest rates, and hence private borrowing costs, down); an announcement that short-term interest rates would stay near zero for an extended period, to further reduce long-term rates; an announcement that the bank was seeking moderate inflation, “setting a target in the 3-4% range for inflation, to be maintained for a number of years,” which would encourage borrowing and discourage people from hoarding cash; and “an attempt to achieve substantial depreciation of the yen,” that is, to reduce the yen’s value in terms of other currencies.

Was Mr. Bernanke on the right track? I think so — as well I should, since his paper was partly based on my own earlier work. So why isn’t the Fed pursuing the agenda its own chairman once recommended for Japan?

We’ll see what Ben Shalom has to say soon enough. But I note that gold buyers would have to be salivating at the idea that the Fed would target a 4% inflation rate. I just wonder why Krugman doesn’t go all the way and call for electronic currency that actually degrades in face value over time.

And give Rick Perry some credit, if firing that public shot across Bernanke’s bow was sufficient to intimidate him. And we would be remiss to fail to note another downward revision to GDP.

Gross domestic product growth rose at annual rate of 1.0 percent the Commerce Department said, a downward revision of its prior estimate of 1.3 percent.

Don’t worry, they’ll revise it into negative territory long after the fact, just like they did for 2008.

UPDATE – “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank still has tools to stimulate the economy without providing details or signaling when or whether policy makers might deploy them.”

Translation: No QE3 until after the autumn round of market crashes.