Category: Uncategorized

If you order a copy of Rebel Moon as part of the Great Amazon Experiment of 2007, the OC will include a copy of the almost completely forgettable 2.5D action game, Rebel Moon Rising. While the included IBM voice recognition software is about 10 generations out of date, the Kranium music soundtrack is not.

Mediocre sci-fi, outdated game software, some decent techno and the satisfaction that you are advancing the state of human knowledge. It’s cheap at the price of $0.01 plus 3.99 shipping and handling.

FYI: thus far, the Amazon rank has gone from an estimated 4 quazillion down to 7,530. Can the New York Times bestseller list be far behind?

UPDATE: Holy cow, up to #425 as of 12:45 CST. If you all are up for it next spring, we totally have to do this when TIA comes out. Now I’m extremely curious about the OC’s forthcoming volume data.

UPDATE II: Make that #217 at 13:05.

UPDATE III: It looks like a peak of #160 at 14:15. Not bad at all.

UPDATE IV: Or not. #138

UDATE V: #136. Battling against resistance but still gamely struggling upwards. I wonder what we could do with a book that people actually want to read. Of course, TIA will cost 4x more.

UPDATE VI: #151 at 17:00. CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIRE! The peak is in, so please don’t order any more unless you actually want a copy of the book. Thank you all very, very much for your selfless dedication to the cause, and the results will be posted on the OC’s blog when he has tabulated them. I will, of course, provide a link. Thanks again.

The Hoodoogurus had no idea:

A state appeals court has tossed out sexual assault charges against three men who allegedly tried to dig up a woman’s corpse in Grant County.

The Fourth District court said a judge was correct in dismissing the charges against twin brothers, Nicholas and Alexander Grunke, and Dustin Radke, all 21. The appeals court said the Legislature never criminalized sex with a corpse.

My girlfriend lives under the ground
My friends all ask why she’s not around

I’d be interested in knowing why the Legislature would criminalize it anyhow. If nothing is sacred and there’s no consent issue at stake, why shouldn’t there be a free market in dead women?

The OC revives the Rebel Moon experiment:

Ergo, if you’d like to participate in this little experiment (and you’re willing to spend 4 bucks* to get a new copy of REBEL MOON) we’d appreciate it if you’d place your order on Saturday, July 28, 2007, preferably between the hours of midnight and noon U.S. Central time.

You want ’em signed? I can sign ’em. You want ’em personalized? You got that, too. As I said at the start: if anyone has any suggestions for making this offer more appealing, I am listening.

If you’re willing to dedicate $4 to science and the Amazon shareholders, do give it a whirl tomorrow.

Dr. PZ Myers can’t quite bring himself to embrace the claim:

I’m an atheist who thinks IQ tests are over-rated and over-interpreted, and here’s a Danish study that claims that atheists have IQs that average 5.8 points higher than theists’.

I expect that he is correct, actually given the obvious caveat of atheist self-identification. Atheists are a tiny fraction of the population, and the sort of individuals who were classified as atheists were almost surely High Church atheists who have enough of a predilection for abstract thought to identify themselves on the basis of their belief in the non-existence of God.

It’s interesting to note that atheism is such a destructive philosophy that these more intelligent, very law-abiding people are also less healthy, have fewer children, less satisfying sex, more divorces, are more likely to commit suicide, more likely to be depressed or addicted and live shorter lives.

Of course, 5.8 points is pretty close to the IQ difference between men and women:

A study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology says that men are on average five points ahead on IQ tests.

I find it interesting that so many atheists – including female atheists – spend so much time running around declaring that they are smarter than those stupid theists. But the male ones have got nearly as much scientific reason to declare that they are smarter than those stupid women, and even more to declare that they are smarter than those stupid blacks.

And yet they don’t. I wonder why?

Okay, so perhaps I’m not quite as done as I’d thought. I was in London and spotted Michel Onfray’s book, In Defence of Atheism. I’d considered addressing it in TIA, but at the time, the Italian version was the only one available that I could read and I didn’t think I had the time nor was it worth the energy of the translation.

After reading it, though, it absolutely demands a chapter. In the classic Continental style, Onfray rushes in and proudly declares atheists to be guilty of practically everything that Dawkins and company attempt to duck, dance around and othewise sweep under the carpet. It’s very French: “hatred of women is like a variation on the theme of hatred of intelligence”. And only an anti-semitic French communist who admires Foucault could manage to argue that Jews are anti-intelligence AND anti-science.

Atheists look stupid enough when they try to argue Christians are intrinsicly anti-science, asserting that Jews are too requires the myopic combination of ignorance and arrogance that only a French philosopher with a PhD can hope to manage.

American atheists will find Onfray to be tremendously embarrassing and even alarming, as he shrieks in defense of unabashed hedonism and attacks “christian atheists” (those who think that traditional Christian morals such as charity and honesty are moral imperatives) in almost exactly the same way that Sam Harris attacks religious moderates. Like Hitchens, he’s very worked up about circumcision, literally 2.5 percent of the book is dedicated to decrying what he believes to be the negative impact of circumcision on sexual pleasure.

He’s even more overblown than Harris, claiming that the list of atheists murdered by the Christian churches is “endless” in concluding a section on Spinoza, who was persecuted, although not murdered, by Jews. Better yet, he does so after DENYING that Spinoza was an atheist.

It’s impressive, in much the same way that watching cars pile up one after another on an icy highway is impressive.

Fat people aren’t jolly, they’re contagious:

If your friends and family get fat, chances are you will too, researchers report in a startling new study that suggests obesity is “socially contagious” and can spread easily from person to person. The large, federally funded study found that to be true even if your loved ones lived far away. Social ties seemed to play a surprisingly strong role, even more than genes are known to do.

“We were stunned to find that friends who are hundreds of miles away have just as much impact on a person’s weight status as friends who are right next door,” said co-author James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego.

The study found a person’s chances of becoming obese went up 57 percent if a friend did, 40 percent if a sibling did and 37 percent if a spouse did. In the closest friendships, the risk almost tripled.

Clearly the only reasonable answer is to ban fat people from all public places. If the dangers of secondhand smoke justifies kicking all the smokers outside, can we really afford to let virulent fatties from spreading their contagion to the general populace?

Temperatures have risen 9/10ths of one percent in Las Vegas since the 1960s! However, they have fallen 1.8 percent since the 1940s, 2.7 percent at their nadir.

Always check the numbers….

I haven’t finished the ultimate Harry Potter novel yet, so I can’t write a full review. However, I’m not sure I will manage to slog my way through it, as thus far, it’s even worse than the previous book in the series, which hitherto marked the low point. Sure, it the trek through Mordor got a bit tedious, but here, even the action is a yawn. Point-yell-miss… point-yell-stun! Red shirt dies, oh the horror!

Harry is becoming more and more like Rand’al Thor of the execrable Wheel of Time series; apparently fantasy authors believe that constantly agonizing over every sliver suffered by an individual dedicated to the cause is the height of character development. Rowlings’s plotting is even less competent than usual and if the Death Eaters weren’t the unmitigated bastard, occultic love children of the National Socialists and Chang Hsien-chung, I’d be rooting for Lord Voldemort.

There’s no reason for Christians to be upset about Harry Potter. There’s no more magic in the “magic” than there is a literal god in the deus ex machina. I finally had to put the book down in disgust when Hermione wracked her brain to think of what spell could possible free a woman from her chains, then pointed her wand and shouted “release”. I mean, given that schooling in magic is the background for the book series, it’s remarkable that the magic system is so utterly retarded.

Perhaps it gets better in the second half. I’m not sure I will last it out long enough to find out. It’s a very bad sign for a book when you find yourself unconsciously picking up a formulaic libro giallo in preference to finishing what you’ve started. Needless to say, I’m not feeling terribly inclined to revisit my prediction that it will not be long before Harry Potter will no longer be regarded in the same league as Narnia, The Dark is Rising, A Wrinkle in Time and Watership Down, assuming that it is now.

The AKP wins despite the West’s warnings:

Three months ago, up to a million protesters poured onto the streets of the Turkish capital, Ankara, shouting that the secular system was in danger. They claimed the ruling AK Party (AKP) had a hidden Islamist agenda. Turkey’s powerful military warned it would intervene to protect the republic, if required.

This Sunday, 46.4% of the electorate cast their votes for the AKP across the country, proving they did not believe in any such danger.

I suggest it proved that they prefer the Islamic party to the secular system. The founding fathers thought democracy was a terrible idea, so much so that they made sure most people couldn’t vote. I have no doubt that Turkey will sooner or later demonstrate why “victory” in Iraq was always impossible.

I’m not sure that’s the wisest word for Newt Gingrich to use about other men given his own rotundness and short stature. And he’s no Degaulle. But I think he is correct about the current GOP crop being no-hopers, except for Ron Paul, whose iconoclastic positions give him a chance against Hillary:

“If, in mid-October, it’s quite clear that one or more of the current candidates is strong enough to be a serious alternative to a Clinton-Obama ticket, you don’t need me to run,” the former House Speaker said at a breakfast sponsored by the American Spectator. “If it becomes patently obvious, as the morning paper points out, that the Democrats have raised a hundred million more than the Republicans, and at some point people decide we are going to get Hillary unless there’s a radical change, then there’s space for a candidate,” he added. “So you’ll know by mid-October one of those two futures is real.”