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Is there anyone out there who happens to be a wargamer and/or enjoys mindless, repetitive work in Photoshop? I want to create a Fifth Frontier War module for VASSAL, and while I’ve already completed the digital map, I have neither the time nor the apititude for doing the counters. If you do, let me know and I can provide the scans for the source art.

There’s no way this game gets played without rk’s technological meisterwerk, so it’s got to be done sooner or later. Alternatively, if anyone knows how to pull jpgs out of a Cyberboard gamebox, that might serve as a halfway measure.

By the way, since there appear to be a few wargamers who are unacquainted with VASL/VASSAL, you simply must check it out. It’s the true 21st century boardgaming medium.

Outside is not a mythical place.

Unfortunately, this is all too true. Uploaded superintelligences don’t like the Big Room, with its green shag carpet and incandescent lights. And the dirt. Not to mention things that generate odors.

If I could figure out a way to play soccer in my basement, I’d never have to leave the house again. When I build my mansion, it will leave even veteran Cribs watchers astonished. A house just isn’t a home without a minefield, a fully equipped weight room and an underground indoor soccer field.

“WARNING: Trespassers will absorb kinetic energy in excess of their ability to maintain corporeal integrity.”

Bane notes an observable phenomenon:

what is it with these effiminate menstrual-male pilot fishes that swim with these angry femisharks, anyway?

We’ve all seen them. Wild haired, wide-eyed behind Harry Potter glasses, mouthing feminist propaganda and doggerel alongside their larger, more threatening sistern, with their man-purse over their shoulder and ready to shake their skinny fist at you the moment their Alpha Bitch gives them permission. She usually makes them hold the sign, while she works the bullhorn.

There were more than a few of these on my campus, although being a heavily Greek campus, the serious feminists were mostly in the professariat. Our student feministas were so backward and half-hearted that they still dated men, those few that were attractive enough to do so, anyhow.

Aside from the Sexist Pornographer incident, wherein the White Buffalo and I achieved Campus Hero status at the Pyhrric price of one defaced Stephanie Seymour poster, they were inobtrusive, holding Take Back The Night rallies while trying to stay out of the way of drunken couples heading homeward for a little date rape.

I remember there were two guys who always hung out with the grotesquoisie, one of whom had lived with Big Chilly and the White Buffalo before me. Unsurprisingly, both pilot fish eventually came out of the closet… in retrospect, the Greg Louganis poster he left behind was probably the first clue.

From NRO’s Corner:

On October 26, a state civil jury sitting in Manhattan found the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey liable for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (a Port Authority complex). Yes, you read that correctly. In its wisdom, the jury found that the Port Authority was SIXTY-EIGHT PERCENT RESPONSIBLE for the bombing, which killed six (including a pregnant woman), injured over a thousand, and caused damages possibly into the billions.

The jury found that the terrorists who constructed the urea nitrate bomb, cased the WTC repeatedly, planted the bomb in a rented van parked in the underground garage, detonated it, sent letters claiming responsibility for their handiwork, and warned (correctly as it turns out) that the attack was just the beginning, were THIRTY-TWO PERCENT RESPONSIBLE for their bombing.

I have already explained how within the non zero-sum framework of morality, a victim can be responsible without lessening the guilt of the attacker one iota. But here, the American legal system demonstrates – in what I consider to be an impressively ludicrous manner – that even in a zero-sum situation, it is perfectly legal and correct to consider the extent to which the victim is responsible for his victimization.

The Port Authority should have known better than to dress in such a slinky manner… clearly, she had it coming.

Not Doh-San himself, of course, merely the idea expressed here:

#3. There is context and there is context. Before flaming someone, be sure you’ve read enough of that person’s writings to have a feel for what that person is really all about.

No, no, a THOUSAND times NO! For all that I have inadvertantly allowed the various ideas presented here from time to time to be polluted by my personality – and perhaps this is inevitable – their verity or lack thereof has nothing to do with me or what I’m about.

The truth is what it is. If I am so fortunate as to occasionally get within shouting distance, so much the better. But it does not depend on me. I have no doubt that the individual mentioned in Doh-San’s is a decent human being, but that is totally irrelevant. So, too, is my decency or lack of it.

The beauty of the Internet is the way in which the dross can be stripped away. I find myself regretting my inability to remove the personality from my postings, because the conversations are so much more interesting to me when they are devoid of the petty meanderings of the personal that are so inescapable in person. This is why I am as indifferent to personal praise as I am to personal criticism, to even mention something in that context is to miss the point!

For example, it is well-known that I loathe Me So Michelle, the media whore. But I think no more about the natural person behind it than I do about… Romanian curling. (I honestly don’t think I’ve ever given curling a moment’s thought, and definitely not the Romanian variety.) I find the train wreck that passes for Amandagon’s thinking to be irresistibly fascinating, but I have more interest in the personal life of my nameless ASL 9-1 – who isn’t even a real cardboard counter, but a digital one – than I do in hers.

Fox News is reporting that a female federal agent shot and killed a man on an airplane. It’s possible the shooting might have been justified, but color me, as always, skeptical. Pay close attention to the reports now; it always takes the spinners a while to get the official story together.

UPDATE: Okay, if it’s true that the guy was running around the plane screaming that he had a bomb, well, crazy or not, that’s a justification for the use of lethal force. I’m only surprised that the other passengers didn’t react before the marshal.

But do keep in mind that the murder of the Brazilian by UK police a few months ago sounded pretty reasonable, until it turned out that the police were lying about almost everything in the public reports.

“The democratic part and the republican party might as well be the same party.”

In practical terms, they are the same party. This is why I refer to them as the bi-factional ruling party. It’s much the same in some European nations, for example, when Jean-Marie Le Pen unexpectedly knocked the Socialist Jospin out of second place during the 2002 presidential elections, the Socialists joined forces with the Conservatives in supporting Chirac.

“What I advocate is an attempt in gathering facts before you make conclusions and entering situations with the knowledge that before you can decide if something is good bad or whatever, you might want to have some of the facts first.”

My rejection of socialism and neosocialist Keynesian economics does not stem from ignorance of them, indeed, they made up the entirety of my studies in economics at university. In the same way, I am not the product of lifelong elite private schooling, it was my exposure to the feminist indoctrination imposed in the public schools beginning at the elementary level that has made me such a fierce opponent of it.

I’ve sat through my share of classes on Marx, Veblen and Weber, and more than a few lectures on “date rape”, “no means no”, “celebrating diversity” and other similar foolishness. Just as proximity and continued exposure has tended to lead to more racial strife, not less, in every country in the world, it is not ignorance of these concepts that causes one to view them as contemptible, but rather experience.

Further investigating the legalities of rape in the pagan ancient world, the Laws of Manu, circa 1500 BC India, are illuminating. Unlike Roman law, there is unmistakable evidence that the rape of an unwilling woman was a crime, with a conconmitant punishment.

364. He who violates an unwilling maiden shall instantly suffer corporal punishment; but a man who enjoys a willing maiden shall not suffer corporal punishment, if (his caste be) the same (as hers)….

367. But if any man through insolence forcibly contaminates a maiden, two of his fingers shall be instantly cut off, and he shall pay a fine of six hundred (panas).

368. A man (of) equal (caste) who defiles a willing maiden shall not suffer the amputation of his fingers, but shall pay a fine of two hundred (panas) in order to deter him from a repetition (of the offence).

Of course, the seriousness with which this criminal offense was regarded is leavened somewhat when one realizes that the same punishment is applied to gambling, whereas thieves found in possession of stolen goods are to be executed, as are those who feed them or give them shelter, and burglars are to have their hands cut off prior to being impaled.

The Cretan law code of Gortyn may shed some light on the Greek outlook, here it is interesting to note that rape is considered to be an offense on the same level as adultery; consent of the woman being all but irrelevant here:

If one commit rape on a free man or woman, he shall pay 100 staters, and if on the son or daughter of an apetairos ten, and if a slave on a free man or woman, he shall pay double, and if a free man on a male or female serf five drachmas, and if a serf on a male or female serf, five staters. If one debauch a female house-slave by force he shall pay two staters, but if one already debauched, in the daytime, an obol, but if at night, two obols. If one tries to seduce a free woman, he shall pay ten staters, if a witness testify. . .

III. If one be taken in adultery with a free woman in her fathers, brothers, or husbands house, he shall pay 100 staters, but if in anothers house, fifty; and with the wife of an apetairos, ten. But if a slave with a free woman, he shall pay double, but if a slave with a slave=s wife, five. . .

In any event, this should illustrate that Wildhunt’s assertion, like Paglia’s, about there being little difference between pagan and Christian morality with regards to rape is almost entirely spurious. And it should further underline my point about the way in which the abandonment of the Christian moral tradition is likely to prove disastrous, even in the eyes of those who reject the source of that tradition.

Courtesy of the Good Fraters:

Local blogger Ana Voog, reminds us why we’re thankful our stockings aren’t hung over her hearth this holiday season:

any recommendations of what book i should buy a man who doesn’t know very much about feminism and the oppression of women, etc… but i want to help him become more familiar with these facts in a nonthreatening way – kind of a “here are the ways in which women are oppressed throughout the world” and “here are some things you can do about it, as a man”

Here’s a hint: if you receive a book on feminism for your birthday, for Christmas, or, come to think of it, for any reason at all, this is THE BIG RED FLASHING WARNING SIGN. Do not pass zero, do not collect $200, do not even stop to collect your CDs and college t-shirts that she stoleborrowed, get out of the relationship immediately.

There are so many things wrong here that it would take too long to list them, suffice it to say that if you receive a book like this for Christmas and you’re still dating her by New Year’s Eve, you might as well make like the Welsh fan and snip your testicles off with a pair of pliers.

Kim gang a bit agley:

Top Ten Signs You’re a Fundamentalist Christian

10 – You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours….

I mentioned this a few days ago, prior to Kim gracing this blog with her attention. To repeat in brief: Christianity is NOT a monotheistic religion. Even a cursory review of the Bible will demonstrate that Christians believe in a multitude of gods, but worship only the Triune God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Were this not the case, one would have a very difficult time explaining Paul’s “rulers and authorities”, Jesus Christ’s “prince of this world” and David’s mighty congregation of “the gods”, of whom God stands in judgment.

Thus, the common atheist dig about “believing in one less god than you” is not only a petty critique, but demonstrably ignorant one.