Category: Uncategorized

No psycho

Since Zoegirl seemed surprised at my comment that I tend towards narcissism rather than psychopathy, I thought it perhaps a modicum of evidence might be in order. So, I took an online version of the psychopathy test to see if the results on the Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised were in harmony with my admittedly biased observations. As with all tests of this sort, it is transparently easy to direct the results, but I gave honest answers that my friends and family would generally be able to confirm. The result was as follows:

Narcissus: You scored 12 on Emotional Detachment and 9 on Chaotic Lifestyle. You are not quite a psycho, but you have problems in one of the aspects of psychopathy: emotional detachment.

What I find amusing about the test is that I simply don’t see a reasonable amount of emotional detachment as any sort of problem at all, considering how many problems are observably caused by the way in which so many make use of emotion in the place of reason in their decision-making. It’s not as if I don’t have the same emotions everyone else does, I simply have the ability to take them into account or not most of the time rather than being ruled by them. What one calls emotional detachment another might as reasonably call self-control. Of course, one of my biggest challenges in relating to others over the years has been dealing with what I tend to see as a complete inability to grasp what is quite clearly in their own interest, which was why I had to construct a non-judgmental MPAI philosophical framework before I was able to find any success in convincing people of even the most obvious things.

What I’ve learned that until you can ensure that the clear-cut logical path is not in direct opposition to someone’s emotional inclinations, (or better yet, is at least somewhat in line with them), you will find it nearly impossible to convince them of what a less-biased party would consider irrefutable. This is hardly news, for as it has long been said, “one convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” But it is one thing to be familiar with the aphorism and another to actively account for it as a regular practice.

It’s almost a pity I’m not a psychopath, though, as it appears I am Incredibly Well-Read: “Your level of Well-Readliness is 100 %! *Applause* You. Are. Amazing.” If only I’d scored higher and could cook, I might have been a Hannibal Lector. On the other hand, I don’t think much of chianti. Also, note that notwithstanding the reported results, it is a 30+ score that indicates genuine psychopathy, not 20+.

In which we are amused

Our favorite mommybloggger goes full-media whore and joins CNN. This comment – from one of her readers, no less – cracked me up.

Ms Loesch needs to work on her game… Her scattered appearances on FOX were pretty embarrassing; she may be right on the issues but came across as in over her head- and out of her league. Her posts here at BH are ok; nothing cutting edge or particularly enlightening.

Dana Loesch is pretty, but not Fox News pretty. She’s conservative, but without any intellectual foundation. And she’s stupid. This spell as the token conservative fall girl should end well… at least for those of us with sadistic streaks.

The useless Tea Party

Most of you will recall that unlike those bloggers that leaped on the bandwagon with alacrity, I have been extremely skeptical of the Tea Party from the very beginning. And, as Karl Denninger points out, the skeptics were correct:

That’s thirty-one out of forty voting for the bill (77.5%), eight voting against, and one no-vote. Despite the eight nay votes, Tea Party-backed candidates overwhelmingly supported an extension of the PATRIOT Act.

As I expected, the Tea Party is an ineffectual and ideologically incoherent joke. They don’t see the intrinsic dichotomy of claiming to support small government while simultaneously playing totalitarian world police. Yes, the movement managed to get a few people elected to office, but that’s totally irrelevant because, as we have seen every time that Republicans get elected to office, they support extending and expanding central government power. This behavior is as predictable as the phases of the Moon; it is the nature of the sort of beast who runs for office.

And despite the brave “well, we’ll just throw them out again” rhetoric that we’ll likely hear from the more principled Tea Partiers, I am confident that most of the 31 Tea Party-backed sellouts will easily win re-election with the enthusiastic support of the very people they betrayed. Notice, by the way, that it is Republicans who are pushing the Patriot Act extensions.

“Republican leaders will bring the bill back to the floor under a rule, where it will almost certainly secure the 218-vote threshold.”

As for Michelle Bachmann, I was unsurprised to see that she was one of the frauds. I remember when she was first getting started in Minnesota politics. If I recall correctly, my father was one of her contributors, but I didn’t think much of her at the time and I have seen no reason to revise my opinion since.

Be careful what you wish for

You just might get it:

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak is to step down Thursday night, two sources told NBC News, as widespread protests against his 30-year rule continue to grip the country. Following an all-day meeting of the country’s supreme military council, the army said all of the protesters’ demands would be met and that a further statement was due to be made later Thursday that would clarify the situation.

NBC News reported that a high-ranking source inside the president’s office said Mubarak would step down and the newly appointed vice president, Omar Suleiman, would take over. This was then confirmed by a second source. The news came following repeated warnings by members of the regime of a military crackdown or coup.

I’m a little surprised by these reports, as it was my impression that things were dying down and Mubarak had weathered the storm. But then, he’s old, and no doubt the army realized that they were going to have to deal with the succession sooner or later. They might as well face the issue now while they can get some credit with the populace for it. It will be interesting to see if the democracy fetishists are consistent in their demands for Egyptian democracy of the sort that is denied to Americans and Europeans or if their fear of an aggressive new Islamic democracy wins out.

Back for more

In which the utter foolishness of appeasing banks seeking bailouts is again made clear:

The Republic of Ireland will have to go to the IMF/EU for another €15bn – on top of the €35bn already earmarked – to save the banking system, according to the government-appointed chairman of Anglo Irish Bank. In a bombshell revelation, Alan Dukes said we will need 40pc more, or €50bn, to properly clean up the banks. The former finance minister also sensationally suggested €75bn would be needed to fund the existing NAMA operation and a so-called ‘NAMA 2’ to take more bad loans from the banks.

All this to avoid forcing the people who own the banks from realizing their losses. Economists and governments have it precisely backwards. They aren’t saving the global economy by repeatedly bailing out the banks, they are actually killing it by foolishly feeding the debt monster right when it is on the brink of starvation.

The solution is simple. Don’t save the banking system. It’s like an oncologist trying to keep his patient alive by saving the cancer.

The disappeal of the slut

Women often have a hard time understanding why men have such a problem with “the number” even though few men put much of a premium on actual virginity these days. But it’s a mistake for women to assume that men think about sexual histories in the same way they do because whereas the pre-selection and DHV aspects tend to counteract any negative sense of jealousy and/or disgust that women might feel when considering a stud’s copious history, there simply aren’t any equivalent positive aspects working in favor of the slut.

So, if women wish to better understand the way most men react to hearing about their girlfriend’s sexual histories, it might help to contemplate how they would feel about a man’s hypothetical past homosexual activities. While it might be at least possible to overlook a youthful indiscretion or two at boarding school or band camp, very few women are attracted to a man who spent the last ten years running rampant in the gay clubs and having sex with 20 or 30 men before deciding that he’d had enough fun and was now ready to settle down with a woman.

This is obviously somewhat of an exaggeration, but I think it’s much closer to the way that most men feel about female sexual histories than the way women feel about male sexual histories.

Dread and the drama dilemma

Susan Walsh is skeptical about the depth of the female need for uncertainty and drama:

I understand that women like men who are strong, dominant, and refuse to put up with their shit. Indeed, if a man cannot do these things, he may strike out time and time again. But that’s a far cry, a whole other continent, away from wanting to feel dread in the pit of your stomach for the rest of your life.

Susan is highly unusual in that she is a female blogger who grasps the reality and the importance of Game without being offended by it. I suspect this is in part due to the fact that she is a) happily married, and b) has a reasonable grasp of economics. Therefore, she has the ability to consider Game-related matters rationally rather than in a defensive and emotionally reactive manner.

That being said, I think she has underestimated the dark complexity of the human psyche here, in this case, the female one. More importantly, I think she has failed to take into account the powerful consequences of state interference in male-female relationships. This is why it’s not a question of want, but rather, a question of need. Due to Marriage 2.0, there isn’t a married man who does not live with at least some sense of dread that he will find himself among the 43% of men who are legally and financially raped by the divorce industry. So, what Roissy describes as “dread” and what Haley describes as “providing a drama fix” is little more than an emotional leveling of the playing field.

Susan understands that women have a strong tendency to behave badly when they feel they have the upper hand in a relationship due to their hypergamous nature. If they can’t respect you, they despise you. As Churchill once said of the proverbial Hun, they are either at your throat or at your feet. This hypergamy presents a serious problem now, since the male dread of divorce has caused many men to quite reasonably become fearfully deferential of their wives and as a consequence rendered the marital relationship unstable.

Therefore something is required to remove the feeling of the upper hand from the state-sponsored wife. Enter “dread” or some other equally effective psychological substitute. Contra Susan’s title, it is failing to counter this state-imposed imbalance that will tend destroy marital relationships, and now that courts in the UK and USA are beginning to grant awards to women who are non-marital partners, increasingly threaten long-term non-marital relationships as well.

However, this does not mean all men are well-advised to behave according to Roissy’s most extreme position. It simply isn’t necessary or even productive in some cases. Take Russell Brand, for example. He can behave in the most omega manner possible, because his wife already knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that if she behaves badly or leaves him, he will immediately react by replacing her with two Victoria’s Secret angels, six topless lads mag models, a Hollywood actress, and three waitresses from a Thai restaurant, very possibly all at once. The Roissyan “dread” for lack of a better word, is implicit in the core concept of “being married to Russell Brand”.

(Side note. SB and I laughed out loud when watching a quiz show on which Brand apologized to the women of England for not having slept with all of them despite his best efforts to do so.)

As with most things related to Game, the actionable concepts are not dogma meant to be accepted without question, but are instead designed to provide for the conscious emulation of the unconscious actions of men who are naturally successful with women regardless of the specific form that “success with women” is deemed to take. This is the central concept that so many critics of Game fail to grasp. Whether success means “nailing skank #3” or “remaining happily married to one’s beloved wife”, there will always be those men who manage it without trying and those men who don’t. And the latter will always be well-served by learning from the example of the former.

It should be noted that just as some men don’t need to provide dread or drama, some women don’t require it. Having the legal power of the state at her command is not necessarily going to translate into a feeling of superiority in a woman, especially one who happens to be more psychologically or emotionally vulnerable. In the same way that Brand has no need to demonstrate his options, the vulnerable woman doesn’t need to be emotionally unsettled in order to prevent her from behaving badly.

Correction

The New York Times issues one:

Correction: February 6, 2011

An article on Jan. 16 about drilling for oil off the coast of Angola erroneously reported a story about cows falling from planes, as an example of risks in any engineering endeavor. No cows, smuggled or otherwise, ever fell from a plane into a Japanese fishing rig.

Well, glad they cleared THAT one up.

116 may be too generous

From Obama’s recent speech to the Chamber of Commerce:

“Auto executives predicted that having to install seatbelts would bring the downfall of their industry. It didn’t happen. The President of the American Bar Association denounced child labor laws as “a communistic effort to nationalize children.” That’s a quote. None of these things came to pass.”

Apparently the moron failed to recall that General Motors filed for bankruptcy on June 1, 2009. Chrysler filed for bankruptcy on April 30, 2009. American birth rates are well below replacement rates when immigrant births aren’t counted, and the federal government explicitly claims a right to children that supercedes the parental claim in many areas, including health and education. One can reasonably argue about whether or not these events can truly be said to have been caused by the specific government policy, but to base an argument on the events not having happened takes a special combination of ignorance and unfounded arrogance.

UPDATE – It takes a real rocket scientist to attempt lying about something one did in public more than 24 times in the last two years.

“President Obama’s assertion on Sunday that he “didn’t raise taxes once” is “blatantly false,” a taxpayer watchdog group says. Obama made the claim in his pre-Super Bowl interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. According to Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), President Obama has signed into law at least two dozen tax increases.”

The logic of collegiate cheating

I find it interesting that no one ever seems to address the main reason that so many students feel no shame about cheating, cyber or otherwise, is that they know that a college education isn’t about education, it’s merely purchasing an employment ticket:

In a study of 1222 undergraduates, Selwyn[1] examined differences in cybercheating levels between a variety of majors and student types. Overall results? 61.9% of students cybercheat.

And why shouldn’t they? If you’re not attending college to learn anything and if your professors are more interested in indoctrinating you than educating you, it stands to reason that you should act to ensure that you graduate with the best grades and the least amount of effort.

If anyone is going to be held accountable for cheating, it should be the university administrators and professoriats. They are the ones who are fraudulently selling promises of employability, after all. My only regret about college, besides a) not dropping out after my sophmore year to sell sound boards, and b)not playing soccer instead of concentrating on track, is that I didn’t cheat at all. I managed a decent GPA while combining an absolute minimum of effort – by which I mean not even showing up to campus until the third week in the semester – with never cheating on anything. But with a little selective cheating, I could have easily nailed down a 4.0 and graduated with honors. C’est la vie.