Category: Uncategorized

They can’t leave anyone alone

Well, they’re not about to say anything about Islam, you understand. But they are sufficiently intrepid to take on the adherents of a fictional religion:

The government uses census data to determine government policy and funding in various areas, including that of faith-based schools and organizations. The group running the “You’re Not a Jedi” campaign claims that “Jedi” is not an acceptable religion and hopes that people will check “No Religion” in the census instead of saying that they follow the ways of the Force.

“If your religion is of low enough importance to you to that you are willing to put in a religion from 3 good sci-fi films from years ago, and 3 more recent rubbish ones,please consider ticking ‘No Religion’ instead,” the campaign writes. “By ticking ‘No Religion’, you will ensure that the Government receives an unambiguous message about the number of non-religious people in the UK.”

Sweet Darwin, but they’re just intrinsically obnoxious, aren’t they! “God doesn’t exist!” “You’re not a Jedi!” “I am intelligent than you are based on the fact of my historical ignorance and illogical conclusions!” And then they get offended when a Christian believes – doesn’t say anything, just believes – that the God atheists hate, fear, and deny does not look upon them with approval. They really are bossy little assholes right down to the core, and it’s the authoritarian assholery, not the absence of God belief, that ultimately defines the atheist.

The amusing thing about atheists, of course, is the way in which they will claim someone whose religion is “Jedi” or has no religion is an atheist, while simultaneously denying that overt and militant self-identified atheists who also happen to be Communists are atheists. Unless, that is, the Communist atheist happens to be alive today, in which case he can’t be responsible for historically killing anyone and therefore can safely be considered an atheist… so long as he is sufficiently obnoxious. The punchline is that these are the people who consider themselves to be the most rational people on the planet. Forget the Jedi religion, it is more logically respectable to describe yourself as a worshipper of Jar-Jar Binks than as an atheist.

Which leads us to the correct response to the announcement, (and it usually is an announcement, isn’t it), that someone is an atheist: “Ah, so you’re an asshole. Good for you. How’s that working out for you, then?”

WND column

The Totalitarian State of America

“Keep your laws off my body” is a popular abortionette slogan, but like so many feminist ideas, it is an observably nonsensical assertion. It is not at all difficult to find a whole host of laws that directly concern our bodies. There are laws dictating how we must clothe them, what we are permitted to ingest in them, how we are allowed to transport them from place to place and whom they are permitted to sexually penetrate. It is a rhetorical device, nothing more, and a remarkably silly one at that.

Unfortunately, the panoply of laws concerning one’s body are merely the tip of the legal iceberg. Americans are now living in a literally totalitarian society.

Tsunami stimulus

Jeffrey Tucker points out that it didn’t take long for the Neo-Keynesians to resort to the Broken Window Fallacy:

“It may lead to some temporary increments, ironically, to GDP, as a process of rebuilding takes place. In the wake of the earlier Kobe earthquake, Japan actually gained some economic strength” – Lawrence Summers, president emeritus of Harvard University and former director of the White House National Economic Council.

Based on this logic, the U.S. military should set off a series of nuclear explosions in the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and off the California coast to trigger a series of tidal waves that will trigger instant economic growth all along the coasts. I’m not sure what we could do to help the Upper Midwest, but perhaps our intrepid biologists could do something about breeding a horde of giant rampaging beavers to destroy all the dams and bridges from Michigan to Idaho.

Now, as I explained in RGD, there are certain specific situations where broken windows will lead to economic growth, but earthquakes and tsunamis aren’t among them.

Book review: The Heroes

The Heroes, by Joe Abercrombie
Orbit (560 pages, $24.99, February 2011)

After the lively discussion of two weeks ago regarding the decline and fall of modern fantasy fiction begun by Leo Grin, I find a certain ironic pleasure in being able to unequivocally declare that Joe Abercrombie is, without question, the best writer of fantasy military fiction being published today. Were it not for the fictitious medievalesque setting, The Heroes would barely qualify as fantasy at all, but even so, as pure military fiction, Abercrombie compares favorably with David Drake, Ralph Peters, David Weber, and even Tom Clancy post-Red Storm Rising. I quite enjoyed the book and very much look forward to reading more of Abercrombie’s dark and bloody work in the future.

The Heroes is a stand-alone novel that utilizes many characters from Abercrombie’s popular epic nihilism series, The First Law. It is a small-scale tale of a three-day battle between the Union and the newly crowned King of the North, and is somewhat reminiscent of historical tales of Gettysburg and other epic battles in the way the action tends to revolve around the physical environment, such as the prehistoric monuments on the large hill that provide the novel with its title. The title is more than a little tongue-in-cheek, as it happens, given that the theme of the book, smashed home as ferociously as one of Abercrombie’s anti-hero’s heavy swords hammers into the skull of a defeated enemy, is that there are no heroes and victorious battles and heroic deeds alike go ultimately for naught.

Read the rest of the review of The Heroes at the Black Gate

Developing sigma

Although it would not be unreasonable to suspect me of snowflaking in developing the concept of the sigma, this was not the case. Its development came about as a direct result of the observation that there was a significant distinction between the attributes and behavior of Roissy’s sexual alpha and the socially dominant alpha male, and it was the contemplation of the various distinctions and similarities involved that inspired me to come up with the concept of a socio-sexual hierarchy.

The orange and the blue

Bucknell is back to the Big Dance:

The ultimate bracket buster is back in the NCAA tournament: Bucknell. Yes, Bucknell – the team that stunned Kansas six years ago in the first round of the NCAAs. Mike Muscala scored 18 points and the Bison shut down Lafayette in the second half of a 72-57 victory Friday to win the Patriot League championship and the conference’s automatic bid.

Bring on the #1 seeds! The funny thing is that I ran into a Georgetown player who played in the 1987 NCAA tournament a few years ago in Italy. He described the Bucknell team they had beaten in the first round as “little white guys, but tough little white guys” who hung with them longer than the Hoyas had expected. So, here is to hoping for a third first-round upset this spring.

Debt outstanding 2005 – 2010

The Z1 report released earlier this week looks superficially positive from a mainstream perspective.  Total credit increased from $52.3 trillion to $52.6 trillion, which is nearly back to the pre-bust level of $52.9 trillion in Q1 2009.  This is in keeping with the theme of a fragile, but real economic recovery.  However, a closer look at the debt by sector reveals that it is merely more of the same pretend-and-extend at work, with public debt filling in the gap created by deflating private debt.  Whereas the financial sector debt has contracted $2.9 trillion (16.7%) and the household sector has contracted $500 billion (3.7%), the federal government sector debt has nearly doubled with an increase of $4.1 trillion (78%).   This means that the government debt (federal, state, and local), has now increased from 16% of the total debt market in 2005 to 22.5% now.

Notice that state and local government debt has been increasing even as their ability to service their debt has dramatically declined.  This increase cannot continue, which is why more political conflicts like the one in Wisconsin can be expected and why more state and local governments will be expected to default on their debts.  Moreover, we can expect the decline in household debt to pick up speed in the near future, since many defaults are not being registered yet and the only area of growth has been student loans.  As more home defaults enter into the system and more prospective students begin to understand the declining value of university credentials, we can be confident that the household sector will begin to contract at a rate approximately 5x faster than before.

This will put more pressure on the federal government to increase its rate of debt expansion beyond the 5.5 percent per quarter growth that it has been averaging since the crisis began in Q3 2008.  I estimate that in 2011, the federal government will have to continue expanding its debt at a rate of at least 6% per quarter in order to prevent total credit from contracting.

Decertified!

The NFLPA turns down the proffered deal:

Unfortunately, the players’ union has notified our office that at 4pm ET it had “decertified” and is walking away from mediation and collective bargaining, presumably to initiate the antitrust litigation it has been threatening to file. In an effort to get a fair agreement now, the clubs offered a deal that would have had no adverse financial impact upon veteran players in the early years and would meet the players’ financial demands in the latter years.

The union left a very good deal on the table. It included an offer to narrow the player compensation gap that existed in the negotiations by splitting the difference; guarantee reallocation of savings from first-round rookies to veterans and retirees without negatively affecting compensation for rounds 2-7; ensure no compensation reduction for veterans; implement new year-round health and safety rules; retain the current 16-4 season format for at least two years with any subsequent changes subject to the approval of the league and union; and establish a new legacy fund for retired players ($82 million contributed by the owners over the next two years).

I’m mostly with the owners on this one, for all that I hate their greedy, parasitical dependence on public stadiums. About the only shareholders with a worse deal than NFL owners are the banks, who pay out more in salaries and bonuses than they make in profits. While I don’t think that going to an 18-game season makes any sense at all, I am completely against the NFLPA’s attempt to turn the NFL into Premier League Football where Manchester United, Chelsea, and Arsenal are able to spend 3x more on players than their opponents.

UPDATE: As expected, the NFL has responded by locking out the players.

Japan tsunami

I learned that the Japanese people are quite familiar with earthquakes when I studied there. My host family assured me that the kerosene heaters – which were used to warm the rice paper-walled rooms – had an automatic off-switch so that when they fell over in an earthquake during the middle of the night, they wouldn’t burn down the house and everyone in it. And there are a surprising amount of earthquakes there, judging by the number of times I woke up in an ice-cold room. So, the Japanese people are very accustomed to earthquakes and prepare accordingly. But there isn’t any amount of preparation short of moving away from the coast that can do much to mitigate the damage from a natural catastrophe of this magnitude.