FYI: the online store is now open, but since we’re starting to ship the first preorders on Monday, we’re replacing the promised pre-order discount with a 20% early adopter discount that is valid until July 4th. We have already sold nearly half our initial production run, so don’t hesitate to order if you’re interested getting your hands on “The King of All Computer Mice” and its 3,072 simultaneous commands.
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Hypergamy trumps ideology
Even stark raving feminists go on the hunt for gamma providers… once they begin to feel their looks starting to fade. The perceptive observer will note the Game-predicted pattern at work in Jessica Wakeman’s unexpected feminist defense of gold-digging:
Take me, for instance. I’m afraid I’m going to get tarred and feathered as a “bad feminist” for admitting this, but yeah, I do want to marry someone who can financially support both me and our kids…. Right now, I rent an apartment with my boyfriend and a roommate, but personally, I’m still living at the edge of my own means as it is. I don’t make a lot of money as a journalist, I owe lots of money to student loans and unless my future husband or I had a great job prospect someplace else, I don’t want to live very far outside New York City, because that’s where the media capital of the world is right now.
Maybe this isn’t “feminist,” but logically, I need to marry a guy who makes more money than I do—preferably a lot more money than I do—for us to be able to afford what I want and I hope he will want, too. An apartment big enough for kids, prenatal care, doctors appointments, birthday presents, vacations, summer camp, college, their own car, all that stuff. I know parents can raise children well on much less. But personally, that’s not the lifestyle I grew up with. I want to be able to give my children everything I had—maybe a little less, maybe a little more—because I think my parents did a great job.
I also would immediately disqualify entering into a sharing-bank-accounts relationship with a man who proved to be irresponsible with his cash. College loan debt is fine (I’ve got it) and a reasonable balance on the credit card debt is understandable (I’ve got that, too). But I couldn’t wrap up my life or my children’s lives around someone who spent or managed money irresponsibly.
So, the woman is living with her current boyfriend while simultaneously seeking some unwitting gamma who will completely fail to see that his only attraction for her is to pay her bills… and of course, her debts. This fits the classic pattern wherein a woman devotes her prime years to “having fun”, which translates as having as much sex as possible with alphas and unemployed artists while ignoring the nice deltas and gammas who helplessly offer her the promise of a stable relationship.
Then, once the daunting specter of THIRTY looms on the horizion, she begins to lower her sights and transform her attentions to the provider class of men further down the socio-sexual hierarchy. And this is why most married sex lives will tend to dry up after a year or two; the woman is no longer required to fake her level of sexual interest in the benefit of the hapless provider and there is nothing he can do about it since she has the full force of the feminized law at her disposal.
This is why it is a very risky and probably foolish endeavor for men to marry women over the age of 25. Even an extended “try before you buy” approach is unlikely to improve your odds, as observation suggests that desperation and/or determination to entrap a provider causes women to present a false sexual front for an extended period of time. And worse, over time her hypergamous nature is going to rise to the forefront and cause her to return to her “happiness-seeking” (read: alpha-seeking) habits.
There are two ways to address the situation. One is to marry a genuinely religious or submissive woman, as she will have a strong inherent resistance to her hypergamous instincts. Remember, instinct is merely an influence, it is not a controlling factor. The second, of course, is to not marry at all. But whatever you do, do not even speculate about the possibility of considering the thought of marrying an aging, debt-laden feminist who is scouting about for a long-term delta provider following an extended ride on the thugacious carousel.
Kagan not kosher
I’m not sure, but I think the rabbis just called her a pig:
Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is “not kosher” — meaning she is not fit to serve on the court — according to more than 850 Orthodox members of the Rabbinical Alliance of America. That’s the term the rabbis used about Kagan in a press release issued Thursday, saying “Elena Kagan is not kosher. She is not fit to sit on this Court — or any court.”
Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the alliance, told CNSNews.com on Thursday that “a great deal has been made about the fact that she would be the second Jewish woman on the court, and we want to signal to people across the country that we take no pride in this.”
I can’t muster much concern about Kagan one way or the other. I mean, the only surprise was that she wasn’t black. I was expecting Obama to appoint a black Marxist lesbian, so the fact that he went with a Jewish one instead doesn’t fill me with alarm. It’s not like the Supreme Court matters anymore, it’s about as relevant as the Imperial Roman Senate.
More extend and pretend
These so-called financial reforms will do absolutely nothing to bring the nation out of the financial crisis and economic contraction. It doesn’t address outstanding debt, it doesn’t address mark-to-fantasy, it doesn’t address bank insolvency, and it doesn’t even slow down the increasing amount of bank fraud. It’s merely yet another attempt to protect the banks while deceiving the public into thinking that the government reining them in:
President Barack Obama declared victory Friday after congressional negotiators reached a dawn agreement on a sweeping overhaul of rules overseeing Wall Street….
One financial analyst, Richard Bove of Rochdale Research, said he believed the measure would have little impact because banks would find ways to hit consumers with more fees. “The good things coming out of this bill is virtually zero,” he said. “Did it help the U.S. economy? Did it solve any problems? The answer is no and no.”
Financial stocks rose in early trading Friday, as traders were relieved that banks would be allowed to continue most kinds of transactions. JPMorgan Chase & Co. rose 2 percent, while Citigroup Inc. climbed 2.1 percent.
Translation: the casino remains open.
Lessons from Greek history
This is neither the first nor fourth time that Greece has faced a serious default situation. But, as Michael Pettis of China Financial Markets explains, because so many different things have happened before, the question is less whether history will prove a guide to the future, but rather which historical example will prove to be the relevant one:
The economic recovery in the countries hit by crisis will not begin until they are recognized as insolvent and receive debt forgiveness from their creditors. Preceding every sovereign default is the fiction that the creditor country is simply facing a short-term financing problem, and that with a lot of discipline and a little bit of good will it will be able to work its way out of the crisis. During this period a number of restructuring “solutions” are proposed – all of which involve increasing debt, and often in the most financially destabilising way – which inevitably make the final resolution of the crisis much more difficult and which sharply raise financial distress costs. The most notorious recent example of these terrible “solutions” was Argentina’s disastrous debt swap in 2001, in which it dramatically increased the country’s total obligations while it desperately tried to maintain the fiction that it could somehow grow its way out of its impossible debt burden.
Greece, and probably two or three other countries, simply cannot repay their outstanding debt amounts. Ultimately they are going to default, and then in the restructuring process they will receive enough debt forgiveness that allows them to return to a sound footing and with a reasonable repayment prospect. But as long as they maintain the pretence that they can and will repay the full outstanding amount, and struggle with the burden, the resulting distortions in the economy will mean that businesses will disinvest and the country will not grow.
Historical precedence makes it clear that as long as the sovereign borrower is forced to struggle with an unrepayable debt burden, it will not grow. Eventually, as has happened in nearly every previous case, creditors and borrowers will acknowledge reality and will work out a debt forgiveness plan that will allow the economy to return to growth. Until then, expect weak growth, high unemployment, and constant battles over debt.
Although most US-based economists are convinced that the special status of the dollar somehow renders the USA impervious to economic laws, the danger of US debt default is nearly as great as it is in Europe. The fact that the defaults are likely to begin in the next two years with the state and local governments does not mean that they are going to end there. However, a partial default would be much more likely than a general one, with the USA defaulting on the third of its debt that is presently held by China coming as a prelude to war between the waning superpower and its self-appointed would-be successor.
Major economic and historical transition points are almost always accompanied by large-scale war. I see no reason to believe that this will not be the case again in this repetition of the cycle.
When the punchline writes itself
“Yawning is a sign of sexual attraction, scientists claim.”
Right, guys. And when a woman doesn’t laugh at a scientist’s bon mot, it’s a sign she thinks he’s really charming. Given that the average scientist couldn’t score at a convention of nymphomaniacs with daddy issues, I should think they would be among the least credible people on the subject.
Still the master
Ender has been playing a lot of Maddens and started thinking he was pretty good. And, to be fair, he is getting pretty good; at one point in the second quarter I was down by 10 and he had the ball on my four-yard line. But a very timely interception in the end zone followed by a quick 95-yard touchdown pass got me back in the game and I had a one point lead at halftime.
As in real football, the key to success in two-player Maddens is making adjustments. Ender had been chewing up my defense with deep passes to the right side of the field and my front four wasn’t getting any pressure on him, so I switched to a dime formation and began blitzing from the left. On offense, began calling more audibles to take advantage of his tendency to cheat the free safety. That rapidly changed the game, to such an extent that he began muttering about how I could possibly know when he was going to try to stop the run versus the pass.
The final score was 56-40. We both threw for over 400 yards; the difference was that I had another 200 on the ground. He put up a much better fight than the previous New School challengers I’ve beaten down over the years, but I don’t like my chances once he figures out how to better mix up his playcalling. As I explained to him afterwards, he already knows how to think about his actions, so now he has to take the next step and begin to anticipate his opponent’s actions.
The ultimate sports record
Isner has won the longest match in tennis history, taking the fifth set against Nicolas Mahut 70-68. The first-round match at Wimbledon took 11 hours, 5 minutes over three days. Isner closed out the victory Thursday with a backhand winner, then collapsed to his back as he tossed his racket in jubilation and relief.
Isner won 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (3), 70-68.
Forget Joe Dimaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. And Barry Bond’s home run rec*rd. Isner-Mahut’s epic 70-68 fifth set is going to outlast them both. I don’t really have anything to say about it, except that it’s deeply awesome.
The problem with American science
As I have repeatedly pointed out, none of the various problems facing science have anything to do with religion, the baseless assertions of the New Atheists notwithstanding:
America’s schools, it turns out, consistently produce large numbers of world-class science and math students, according to studies by Harold Salzman of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University and his co-author, B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. But the incentives that once reliably delivered many of those high scorers into scientific and technical careers have gone seriously awry.
If the nation truly wants its ablest students to become scientists, Salzman says, it must undertake reforms — but not of the schools. Instead, it must reconstruct a career structure that will once again provide young Americans the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career. “It’s not an education story, it’s a labor market story,” Salzman says….
Today, only a handful of young scientists — the few lucky or gifted enough to win famous fellowships or score outstanding publications that identify them early on as “stars” — can look forward to such a future. For the great majority, becoming a scientist now entails a penurious decade or more of graduate school and postdoc positions before joining the multitude vainly vying for the few available faculty-level openings. Earning a doctorate now consumes an average of about seven years. In many fields, up to five more years as a postdoc now constitute, in the words of Trevor Penning, who formerly headed postdoctoral programs at the University of Pennsylvania, the “terminal de facto credential” required for faculty-level posts.
One of the interesting things about the problem with American science is that those reviewing the situation are entirely forthright about the way the best and brightest have avoided pursuing scientific careers for decades now. To put it simply, the smartest students are not dumb enough to fail to notice the way in which the supply of science degrees considerably outstrips the number of jobs available in the various scientific fields or that there are far more remunerative and intellectually satisfying fields in which to pursue employment.
And yet, those who weren’t smart enough or aware enough to consider their future employment possibilities are the very individuals who tend to claim that those who were are less intelligent and their opinions about scientific and non-scientific matters alike are less valid because they do not have science degrees. (Never mind that I do, in fact, have a Bachelor of Science, that’s beside the point.)
So, this tends to suggest that in addition to whatever structural changes are being proposed by the various parties that are interested in solving the problem, a course or two in logic would not be amiss. And for a group of people who claim to be better educated and more highly intelligent than the norm, they do tend to expose a shocking ignorance of some very basic economic concepts that were solidly established more than 200 years ago. The reality is that the problem is simply a variant of the conventional one of malinvestment caused by credit expansion; the huge and unsustainable government allocation of financial resources to the scientific sector in the thirty years from 1940 to 1970 clearly sent a false signal about the market’s demand for scientists to students pursuing science degrees over the subsequent three decades.
A travesty averted
USA 1, Algeria 0. The refereeing was really shocking, with the disallowal of a SECOND valid US goal. And Altidore was frankly horrendous, losing balls unnecessarily and shooting 10 yards over an empty net from five yards out. But Landon Donovan came through in injury time to permit the USA to claim the group. England will go through as well with a 1-0 win over Slovenia, but they don’t look to be long for the tournament.
We have a German friend coming over tonight and we’ll definitely be cheering for Germany, as the USA should be able to get past Serbia without too much trouble – assuming the referees will swallow their ridiculous whistles – if the Germans can claim their group.