Category: Uncategorized

Mailvox: Poetry and the game player

JB writes, floridly:

All hail your economic eminence. Your mastery of the abstruse and arcane is appreciable to me only by the accuracy of your predictions. Inspired by you and others to take both videogames and poetry seriously, I have written a poem on Dragon Age: Origins. I doubt it will be of interest to someone who hasn’t played the game.

The question that occasions this email is, by what method do you write your poetry? This is the first time I have managed to create passable meter. Here was my method:

1. Brainstorm the emotional units of meaning
2. Structure rhyming couplets and quatrains
3. Reorder the couplets and quatrains
4. Fix meter problems
5. Fix diction problems

However I don’t think the above method could create poetry with an ABAB rhyming structure, which I’ve seen you use. Do you have any tips? Also, what are you playing lately?

Fascinating. If I were the Sports Guy, JB’s email would definitely close the mailbag. I don’t have a poetic method per se, I simply write it with the rhymes in the right place and hope the syllables and meter are correct. I guess my only tip would be to buy a good rhyming dictionary; the online ones tend to be limited in scope. In answer to his other question, I’m finally on the verge of finishing Fantasy General, I’m playing CoD:MW2 on both the PC and PS/3, I’ve got Mario Kart hooked up on the exercise bike, and I find myself unexpectedly on the verge of being defeated in ASL scenario S2 War of the Rats.

Explaining the situation

In which I explain some political realities to Mr. Scalzi:

From a purely strategic point of view, I’m not sure why they don’t just ram the thing through the House as is, fiddle with it a bit during reconciliation and get to Obama to sign it. To put it bluntly, the Democrats will look better by flipping the GOP the bird and then using the ten months until the 2010 election to get voters back on their side than showing to the voters that despite a large majority in both houses, they collapse like a flan in the cupboard at the first setback.

They don’t because they know they’ll get utterly slaughtered in the 2010 elections if they do that. Contrary to what many progressives believe, what passes for health care reform is just not massively popular in America. As it stands, Democrats should hang onto the House in the fall. If they are so foolish as to flip the GOP and the Tea Party movement the bird, they will lose it.

Of course, all either party has to do to become dominant in the near-term is run against the banks on a platform of financial and economic reform, but both are too in Wall Street’s pocket to do so.

Abortion may cause breast cancer after all

This is an interesting, if unsurprising, backpedal by the medical community:

In April 2009, seven researchers from organizations highly respected in scientific academia published a study, “Risk factors for triple-negative breast cancer in women under the age of 45 years,” in the prestigious journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

The focus of the report was the revelatory finding that “a distinct etiology” exists between oral contraceptive use and triple-negative breast cancer, a particularly virulent form of the disease that typically strikes women under 45, many African-American.

TNBC was only first described in scientific literature in 2007. So for this study the seven researchers re-examined 897 saved cancerous breast tissue specimens from two previous studies to see if they tested positive for TNBC.

This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The seven researchers concluded the risk for TNBC rose an appalling 250 to 420 percent, depending on the length of oral contraceptive use.

This was news enough, but buried in the study was acknowledgement and additional corroboration of the link between abortion and breast cancer…. The seven researchers concluded women with histories of abortion increased their risk of getting TNBC by 40 percent.

As is so often the case, never trust a “scientific consensus” that is claimed by scientists with an obvious axe to grind. I was always skeptical of the irrational vehemence with which feminist doctors and scientists insisted that abortion couldn’t possibly ever cause any sort of cancer and that it would be criminally irresponsible to even suggest that such a link might even be theoretically possible. But the truth usually comes out sooner or later.

Nate Wright, you are avenged

TMQ just doesn’t get it:

Why was Favre even still on the field with Minnesota ahead 27-3 with five minutes remaining? It seems pretty obvious Brad Childress wanted to pad Favre’s stats. Why was Favre not only still throwing but play-faking at the two-minute warning, with Minnesota leading by 24 points? Bad sportsmanship, which always comes back to bite you. It’s not just that Minnesota’s bad sportsmanship makes the Vikings hard to root for.

1975, TMQ. Drew Pearson. Roger Staubach. First, an illegal reception on fourth-and-20; the receiver had run out of bounds and was ineligible. Second, the referee swallowing his whistle when Doug Sutherland was tackled – not held, tackled – right in front of him on the Hail Mary play. Third, Drew Pearson committed the most obvious case of pass interference in NFL history.

I’ve calmed down a little now. But this was my immediate reaction to the “bad sportsmanship” when the Vikings kept playing after the Cowboys refused to stop calling time out.

Favre… Shiancoe… 34-3! TAKE THAT DALLAS! TAKE THAT DREW PEARSON! TAKE THAT YOU OFFENSIVE PASS INTERFERING BASTARD!

That’s for Nate Wright.

I don’t actually dislike the Cowboys. They’ve been my second-favorite team since I was a little boy. But when it comes to the playoffs, I am one of thousands of stone cold Minnesota fans who have never forgotten that the Cowboys not only stole a Super Bowl from the Vikings, they murdered Fran Tarkenton’s father!

I totally agree with the Eagles fan at ProFootballTalk who said the only thing he was upset about was that the Vikings didn’t go for two.

There is no global warming: glacier edition

To put it bluntly, if you still believe that “scientific consensus” means anything, or that that man-made global warming is actually occurring, you’re an idiot:

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it. Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report. It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru. Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research….

Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as “voodoo science”.

So, telephone interviews are now science? That’s cool. I have been doing a crazy amount of science since RGD came out.

Now they care about the Constitution?

Wall Street is considering a legal challenge to Obama’s proposed bank tax:

Wall Street’s main lobbying arm has hired a top Supreme Court litigator to study a possible legal battle against a bank tax proposed by the Obama administration, on the theory that it would be unconstitutional, according to three industry officials briefed on the matter.

In an e-mail message sent last week to the heads of Wall Street legal departments, executives of the lobbying group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, wrote that a bank tax might be unconstitutional because it would unfairly single out and penalize big banks, according to these officials, who did not want to be identified to preserve relationships with the group’s members.

How very strange! I don’t recall them being overly concerned about the massive violations of the Constitution that were involved in bailing them out of bankruptcy in 2008. These men aren’t merely criminals and fraudsters, their foolishness and hypocrisy simply knows no bounds. And their greed makes even the most staunchly right-wing Republican dream of tumbrils and guillotines.

As Karl Denninger says: “Stop the looting, start prosecuting.”

For the Ilk

As some of you may recall, the little technology project on which I’ve been working with Markku is approaching the initial stages of completion. Some of you have asked if the Ilk can be of any asistance or score a discount, so here’s what’s up.

Next week we will be announcing a new program giving an additional 15% discount – stackable with the pre-order discount – to those who produce application modes. This doesn’t require anything more than filling out 30 cells on a spreadsheet and it shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes. But we’ll give the Ilk first crack at participating in the program plus an additional 5% off. Combined with the pre-order discount, the modemaker discount will cut 40% from the retail price for what is easily the best mouse in the business.

We want modes for everything. Old DOS games, strange audio applications, popular mainstream applications, you name it. If it’s got hotkeys or pull-down menus with keyboard shortcuts, we can do it. So, if you’re interested, send me an email telling me the name of an application or game for which you’d like to make a mode. I’ll confirm that we don’t have one yet, you make the mode and send it to me. I’ll pop it into the software to test it out, then I’ll send you the code and you can place your pre-order. However, I’d recommend that you only make a mode for software that you know reasonably well.

Mailvox: don’t give up on Haiti

RK writes in response to my column today:

I agree and disagree with you at the same time. Sending only money to Haiti is useless and a complete waste because of the corrupt and inept government. However, sending people into Haiti who can help them help themselves is extremely effective. Our church has been working in rural areas for many years. We’ve set up vocational schools and have trained Haitian mothers how to sew items to sell while staying at home to raise their family. Along the way, we’ve set up several small orphanages for children who had no hope. With training they can become very productive citizens in their area.

This is just a very small area, so most of Haiti is not touched by this work. However, to them, it is a tremendous help. As followers of Christ we must be good stewards of our resources, so we should not blindly send them money. However, we must give them a way out of poverty by teaching them how to use whatever talents and resources the Lord has given them. This is much more difficult that just “sending money”, but it is what our Lord would have us do. Please don’t give up on the Haitians. Each one is a soul that Christ died for.

Give up on the Haitians? I can honestly say that I have never, ever given a moment’s thought to the Haitians one way or another. I don’t believe that 99.99 percent of the people now professing great concern about Haiti have either, and I’m confident that 99.98 percent of them won’t have a single thought about Haiti flicker past their consciousness six months from now. But I’m glad that there are those, like RK, who think otherwise.

I also think it’s great that the five men of Rubicon Rescue have taken it upon themselves to bring medical assistance to Haiti. That’s the only sort of help that means anything; it should be totally obvious that monetary contributions are nothing but self-congratulation considering that the various governments of the world are now making noises about injecting $1 billion into keeping the people of Haiti dependentsaving the people of Haiti from themselves.

To me, the Help Haiti business is little more than another example of food rotting on the docks so third-world gangsters can enrich themselves as celebrities preen, musicians write ridiculous songs, and the mindless masses salve their momentarily guilty consciences. And if you are convinced that money is the answer, then you should note that my suggested solution would provide the people of Haiti with far more money than anything proposed by even the most bleeding-heart aid activist and it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a dime.

I’m a little amazed that people who want to help Haiti would see fit to criticize me when I’ve come up with a solution that would provide the people of Haiti with 10x more money than all the aid provided by the international community combined. If Haiti needs money, why would you oppose my Haitian Taxation scheme? Aren’t all the 10 million Haitians more important than a few thousand Goldman Sachs employees? Why do you hate the people of Haiti, why?

WND column

The Black Hole of Haiti

In 2009, the United States gave $290 million to Haiti. That was $28.90 for every single one of the 10 million-plus inhabitants of the island nation. It was also $290 million that the U.S. government neither had nor was constitutionally permitted to give. But then, that $290 million only represented about one-five-thousandths of the $1.42 trillion deficit created by the federal government over the course of 2009. It was also, obviously, financial aid that was provided prior to the earthquake that struck Jan. 12.

In the aftermath of the terrible earthquake and the reported large-scale loss of life, charities, celebrities, aid organizations and governments have geared up to pour even more money into Haiti. And while a portion of it will no doubt ameliorate the hellish lives of a small percentage of Haiti’s inhabitants for a short while, it should be recognized that the more significant and lasting result will be to provide funding for an international aid infrastructure that justifies its continued existence by keeping those it supposedly helps in a constant state of poverty and dependency.