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Barack Obama cruised past a fading Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Wisconsin primary and Hawaii caucuses Tuesday night, gaining the upper hand in a Democratic presidential race for the ages. The twin triumphs made 10 straight for Obama, and left the former first lady in desperate need of a comeback in a race she long commanded as front-runner.

What an incredible story it would be if Hillary Rodham-Clinton, summoning hitherto unknown strength from that vast pool of goddessness deep within the core of her menopausal feminine essence, should fight back from the face of certain defeat and claim the Democratic nomination. Why, it would be a historic victory for women everywhere! And it would be all the proof she would ever need to show that she was tough enough for the job.

In case that doesn’t answer your question, yes, I am as confident that the the Lizard Queen will be Bush’s successor as I have been since I first declared that in 2003. It doesn’t look very likely at the moment, to be sure, but then it didn’t look very likely five years ago either. Since I merely observe the horse race and the Narrative rather instead of placing much significance upon them, I am untroubled by its various vicissitudes.

The Original Cyberpunk riffs on writing, the publishing industry, and the significance of being the the third angelfish from the left in the chorus line in “Disney’s Finding Nemo On Ice”:

Writing Rebel Moon was fun. Working with Vox was… fascinating. It was far more work than I’d bargained for, and I was deeply disappointed when the publisher saw the final manuscript, said, “It’s too long!,” and made us cut it down to 90,000 words. But on the whole, I enjoyed doing it.

What I hadn’t reckoned on is that everyone else in the publishing industry would look at that book, see the words, “Based on the Computer Game from Fenris Wolf” on the cover, and say, “Whoops. The Sophomore Curse has struck again. Bethke is reduced to doing books based on computer games.” And thereafter, the assumption was that I’d do anything, because I must have been out of ideas and desperate for money. So I got offers for book projects galore, and all of them for properties that I wouldn’t have touched with a ten-meter electric cattle prod.

Thank God the deal for Duke Nukem: Balls of Steel, fell through. They really wanted me to sign up to do that one.

There are two important literary differences between the OC and I. Three, actually. 1. He is a highly talented writer, whereas I am merely an intelligent individual who uses that intelligence to emulate genuine talent. The former produces much better results, but it can’t be turned on and off as easily. 2. The OC is a real writer with a writing career. I am a dilettante who occasionally scribbles and doesn’t give that much of a damn beyond what happens to be of interest to me at the moment. Hence my willingness to engage in hostilities with petty publishing principalities like the Tor Witch and her Thin Gay Consort; if I ever want to get published by Tor, I’ll just have to buy it off Holtzbrinck. 3. The OC would never write the lyrics for a low-budget graphics novel trilogy, while I had a great time doing Archangels: The Fall.

One of the burdens of genuine talent is the feeling that you must do something important with that talent. Lacking any such talent and knowing that I’m just not cut out to be the next Lewis or Eco, I’m free to write whatever I want, whether that ends up being The Leadership Secrets of Satanas Rex, Principia Posthumanica or a black horror-comedy about a certain educational facility. Although, since I have a contract for Summa Elvetica on offer, I should probably wrap that up first.

So while I envy the OC his talent, I’m quite happy with my lot. It’s rather like being Corin to his Cor… although we are nevertheless in complete accord in thinking that we really should have left the aliens for Rising. And, of course, blown up the doggone Death Star!

Scientistry is demonstrably far more dangerous to science than religion:

The conventional narrative holds that, as the advantages of pooling knowledge became obvious, all scientists adopted the Royal Society’s conventions: now, scientific papers are published freely. But that’s not quite true. Actually, scientific journals are as closed as the Royal Society once was. The gatekeeper is “peer review”: that is, papers are screened by experts, who judge if the experiments the manuscripts describe are credible.

But how, without having actually witnessed the experiments, can experts determine that? Reviewers have to trust the authors to have told the truth. Consequently, the most important part of a paper is the name at the top. If a well-known scientist submits a paper, it will probably be accepted; if an unknown submits one, it will probably be rejected. Science is still a closed club – partly to ensure that only accurate papers are published, but largely to prevent fraud.

But peer review carries dangers. First, it allows dunderheads to block unexpected ideas. Everybody within the scientific community knows of researchers such as Barbara McClintock, who won the Nobel Prize in 1983 for discovering gene jumping, a process by which scraps of DNA move about the genome. She was forced to publish her findings informally, in the annual reports of the Carnegie Institution, because she could not persuade peer reviewers to accept them…. Peer review was always an illusion, providing a deceptive imprimatur of objective truth.

Peer review is a total joke. It’s little more than the scientific version of union thuggery.

Yes, Washington really is run primarily for the benefit of bankers:

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has sponsored an unusual provision at the urging of the nation’s banks granting them immunity against an active patent lawsuit, potentially saving them billions of dollars. Adopted with little fanfare, the amendment would prevent a small Texas company called DataTreasury from collecting damages from banks for infringing on its patented method for digitally scanning, sending and archiving checks. The patents were upheld last summer by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after they were challenged.

The provision, passed without dissent by the Senate Judiciary Committee in July and inserted into legislation scheduled for a vote by the full Senate this month, is a rare attempt by Congress to intervene in ongoing litigation, congressional experts say.

Hey, if eminent domain works for real property, as the Republican-appointed Supreme Court decided in Kelo, then there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for imaginary property that is created by Washington in the first place. I note that this little piece of Congressionally-abetted theft is sponsored by Republicans as well, just one more reason why I’ll be celebrating their inevitable defeat to the other forces of darkness this November.

There is no lesser evil. As with pregnancy, political evil is merely a matter of progressive stages.

Cronolink is surprised:

Vox, you’re angry. Why? I mean, didn’t you expect something much as this? I believe you received equally stupid and vacuous responses when you publicized your TIA op/ed column back then. Weren’t you expecting the same or even worse with your book?

I’m not angry, just irritated. I am, you may recall, an ex-martial artist from a rather hard core dojo. In all my years there, there was only one iron-clad rule. To win respect, YOU MUST GET UP! You didn’t have to be a flashy kicker, an overpowering wrestler or an intimidating hand fighter to earn your place there, you just had to prove that when hurt, when knocked down, you’d get up and show that you were good to go. Even if you really weren’t.

I saw young men knocked unconscious come to, push themselves to their feet and bring their guard up despite not being quite sure who or where they were. I loved them for it. I saw pretty girls with their noses gushing blood and tears pouring down their faces get up and nod to their opponent, telling them to go ahead and bring it again. I loved them for it. I saw a beaten and exhausted fighter walk into a wicked spinning sidekick that jackknifed him, broke a rib and made his eyes water, then watched in awe as he slowly straightened and waved off the referee’s offer of a pause to catch his breath despite knowing that he had to survive 30 more seconds in the final round. It was terrible, but oh, how I loved him for it!

I also saw a 265-pound linebacker quit in the middle of his very first round after getting popped in the face for the first time. I saw a brown belt from a Tae Kwon Do school surreptitiously limit his sparring to pounding on our overmatched green belts and gold belts… he never came back after our most vicious black belt noticed what was happening and gave him a beating that bordered on criminal. I saw one loud-mouthed muscle boy after another talk a huge game about how tough they were, then disappear after watching Wednesday sparring, never to return. I cannot express how much I loathed them all, or the depth of my contempt for them.

Now, I knew Dawkins wouldn’t respond until the book became successful enough that he couldn’t avoid it, he’s directly stated that he has no interest in any intellectual engagement that won’t somehow further his career. I also knew that Sam Harris would probably be unable to respond because the mere fact of acknowledging this level of criticism will be tantamount to conceding his entire thesis. Christopher Hitchens has nothing to say and doesn’t even attempt to make a coherent case for or against anything and I tend to agree with Daniel Dennett on the practical issues, so I don’t know what would be the point of debating either of them. But I did not expect that the entire atheist community would prove to be such a collection of frightened little bitches, barring a very few courageous exceptions to the contrary.

For years, atheists have been rightly demanding that Christians and other religious individuals stop hiding behind evasive theology and avoiding the pointed issues that atheists have been raising, a criticism that I have always felt to be an entirely reasonable one. But now that atheists have been offered precisely what they have been demanding, a fair fight on their chosen ground of science and reason, they’re desperately trying to pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s not going to work, of course, because while they can certainly avoid me and my book, they aren’t going to be able to avoid the ideas contained therein as they are picked up and improved upon by hundreds of other Christian thinkers. Would Madeleine Bunting have been so befuddled by Richard Dawkins a few days ago if she had been armed with TIA, for example? Of course, it is amusing that the great public intellectual Dawkins is already reduced to sparring with journalists in order to avoid being unmasked for the charlatan he is.

Ironically, it’s the atheist and former RD.net commenter Dominic who probably best expresses my feelings at the moment: “I stand by my proclamation that the people over at RD.net are a bunch of “little bitches”. And that most certainly includes the leading member of the Godless Circle of Jerkdom.

UPDATE – I have no idea if this guy is an atheist or not, but he is an amusing writer. He made me laugh, anyhow, and he also takes the time helpfully explains why no published writer is particularly excited about the opportunity to “help” some poor innocent soul dive into the abyss that is the world of the writer.

He must be a libertarian, because I’ve never met a libertarian who didn’t enjoy argument ad nauseum, and Day seems to have picked online fights with numerous individual science fiction writers, a few editors, the SFWA, several individual atheists, numerous atheist message boards, several individual feminists, numerous feminist blogs a couple of scientists, and, I don’t know, he probably invaded Russia in winter just for the thrill of it. (I get the impression that if he’d lived 150 years earlier, he’d have been helping William Walker conquer Nicaragua.) So when I saw that he had a book coming out, naturally I had to read it.

In my own defense, all I can say is that I seldom pick fights with anyone. I merely write what I think and then the fights find me.

Will Pattison pretends to have read TIA, but makes it painfully obvious that he didn’t:

I have been reading the Vox day blog for a while.

The book starts with many generic arguments that evolve down to the old question of “without god, how can there be morals?”. Anyone who has spent 5 minutes reading the ‘Argument from morality’ page on wikipedia will find these sections silly or at least inefficient.

The attacks use short quotes from Dawkins/Harris books, and as a reader I feel like I am not getting the context of the quotes. In the case of the Harris state vs county crime/religion statistic, I wish Vox would quote the reason Harris was using it… for all I know Harris was making a point that the corelation is meaningless.

Vox spends too many words personally attacking people instead of attacking the viewpoints. It feels insulting as a reader.

Even though this is a intelectually dishonest book, I am glad to see someone attempting to defend Christianity in a non-soundbyte manner. Vox Day may be the last person trying (Al Sharpten, James Dobson, Christian Science Center, etc have stopped as far as I can tell).

From TIA:

The Incompetent Atheist

One of the most oft-cited passages in Letter to a Christian Nation
is Harris’s Red State-Blue State argument, in which he purports to
prove that there is no correlation between Christian conservativism
and social health. Richard Dawkins found the data to be “striking,”
so much so that he quotes the following paragraph from Harris’s
book in its entirety.

After quoting the entire paragraph myself, I then spend no less then five pages demonstrating first that the argument is meaningless, then showing how the incompetent means utilized to go about proving the argument actually prove the opposite based on the more accurate data that was readily available to Sam Harris. This is the lamest and most bizarre Fighting Withdrawal we’ve seen yet! It’s quite clear that Will has not read The Irrational Atheist, Letter to a Christian Nation or The God Delusion. I never once make an argument that without God there can be no morals, instead, I specifically point out that Richard Dawkins and company are utilizing a faux-scientific bait-and-switch in order to argue for a rival moral system based on Enlightenment ideals. God is one theoretical source of an objective moral standard, the challenge of the New Atheists is not to suggest new morals, which is easy enough, but rather to find a rational basis for an objective moral standard by which one individual has a justification for holding another individual accountable. This is, as Daniel Dennett admits, much more difficult than it initially looks.

And I have no need to create straw man arguments, the New Atheist arguments are sufficiently flawed as they are, which, for example, is why I was quite happy to quote the central argument of The God Delusion in its entirety.

What is it with atheists and their insane eagerness to blatantly lie? Are they so determined to demonstrate the truth of the stereotype of the immoral atheist? This is the second atheist pulling this kind of nonsense today, as over on the Atheism Sucks blog, another atheist was claiming that I had been making offensive posts over at richarddawkins.net. I have never once posted or commented there.

I’m officially taking a sabbatical from tolerating empty idiocy. I realize that one is supposed to be polite and respectful of one’s readers and all, but you know, I just don’t care any more. The entirety of BD’s email is as follows:

Re: “Lessons of the Crusades” – Ridiculous: you clearly demonstrate that you have no clue.

Wow, that rebuttal is deeply convincing. Of course, you forgot to add: “and you have sex with goats”. Perhaps that would have clinched your case. But “You have no clue… ” what are you, a seventh-grade girl? If you’ve got a case, then bring it.

I am getting so tired of the same sort of nonsense perpetrated by these little minds that are completely incapable of defending their own strongly held opinions, whether they are dishonest atheists shamelessly lying about every little thing, idiot Republicans shrieking “we are at war” like frightened little girls whenever George Bush wants to attack another American liberty, foolish Democrats fainting over empty suits, or the financial media painting a picture that has next to nothing to do with the verifiable reality… it’s a madhouse.

I had drinks with two friends this evening, both top executives at massive international corporations with revenues in the billions. Plural, not singular. One of them just got back this morning from a week of board meetings in New York and another U.S. city and he was shaking his head over the total disconnect between American perception of the current politico-economic situation and the reality. “They’re just totally f—– and they have no idea whatsoever.”

So, Washington might as well keep cutting interest rates and printing dollars and invading foreign nations. Sooner or later, it’s not going to matter much what it does, like every overstretched empire, it will collapse of the weight of its foolish ambitions.

UPDATE: BD writes back:

Besides having no clue, you’re a jerk.

Oh dear, I hope I can sleep through all the tears tonight. You apparently have me confused with someone who cares even a little bit about what you happen to think, assuming that we stretch the concept enough to encompass what passes for your mental processes. Either make a case or shut up, I really don’t care which.

Having written to Mr. Harris and later receiving a clarification of one of his controversial positions, I wrote him another email with a few more questions this time. It’s probably unlikely that he will elect to address them, but unlike Richard Dawkins, there is at least a non-zero possibility that he will choose to do so:

1. When you wrote the Red State/Blue State argument quoted by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, were you aware that the electoral data for the various counties in which the various cities mentioned are located was available? If you were not, are you willing to concede that the more accurate county data supports a conclusion that is the precise opposite of the one you reached in Letter to a Christian Nation?

2. Are you willing to admit that religion is not the explicit cause of more than 90 percent of the war throughout recorded human history? Are you also willing to admit that religious faith is not a significant aspect of military strategy, tactics, recruitment or discipline?

3. Were you aware that the professional historians’ estimated bodycount of the most deadly Inquisition, the Spanish, was less than 3,000 deaths over 345 years when you described the inquisition as one of the two “darkest episodes in the history of faith”?

4. How does your long-term vision of world government differ from Bertrand Russell’s? Why are you opposed to American national sovereignty?

5. Are there other forms of “unjustified belief” or “an absence of rationality” than religious faith?

6. Did you forget that you had defined Buddhism as not being a religion of faith when you compared the societal health of the U.S.A. to that of “the least religious states”?

7. If the world is genuinely imperiled by nuclear weaponry in the hands of religious individuals, isn’t it true that science is as much to blame as religion? And if the peril is both imminent and genuine, wouldn’t it be more practical and far less costly in terms of human life to end science rather than religion?

I have many more questions, of course, but too many of them are the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t variety better reserved for debate and I think it’s always best to offer an opponent the chance to clarify or concede a point rather than always trying to pin them to the wall.

I don’t know if the NIU killer was an atheist or not, but let’s face it, despite the statistical unlikelihood, it wouldn’t be any more surprising than the fact that he wore black or just happened to be on anti-depressants:

Since Thursday, Baty said authorities have intercepted several packages Kazmierczak sent her, including several items such as: the book “The Antichrist” by Friedrich Nietszche; a textbook for her class about serial killers; a package with a gun holster and bullets; a new cell phone that she had told him she wanted and about $100 in cash.

Godless secular culture is not only suicide for the society, it’s all too often literal suicide for the individual. It’s interesting how so many of these would-be Uebermensch can’t figure out anything more intelligent or creative than simply attacking the lesser beings that surround them.

VD’s new column is up and interesting to say the least. I have one Question VD: “but rather a Christian reconquista of what was once Christendom.”

Are you suggesting we invade Germany, Holland, Perhaps France?

Well, we did it twice alread, didn’t we? It’s hardly unthinkable, in fact, the concept may be redundant since we’re already occupying large chunks of it. The Fourth Reich isn’t all that different than the previous three, its merely more patient. But actually, I had in mind an invasion of missionaries rather than military forces. The reconquest will have to be in the same cultural mode as the conquest, as the jihadist invaders have also recognized.

bin Laden is dead? What? Where have I been? Under a rock? Or is this just the only logical conclusion?

Operating on the assumption that bin Laden isn’t a CIA creation – in which case he’s living in comfortable retirement under the name Olivier Benladier in the south of France – the most logical conclusion is that bin Laden has been dead since the invasion of Pakistan. The entire scenario is simply reminds me too much of a science fiction short story wherein a man intentionally immolates himself in order to ensure that he remains an elusive figure capable of inspiring action from beyond the grave.

And since it’s too the neocons’ advantage to push him as the leader of a dire “threat” to America despite the fact that illegal immigrants have been proven to be far more dangerous to Americans, bin Laden is an important bogeyman for both sides attempting to make use of the American military for their own purposes. I’d be shocked if any definite proof that he is alive ever surfaces.