Back on the field

Soccer has started up again at the higher levels. Last night Ender’s team scrimmaged the first team on the main field while we veterans held a normal practice on the practice field. We ended early enough for me to catch the last quarter of the game; Ender played the second half and did pretty well. He only let in two goals, one of which should have been called for offsides, and while he was a bit shaky with the offseason rust, he did better than the starting goalie, who let in three, one of which was a disaster. Needs some work on his goal kicks and distributions, but the punting was good.

I’m rusty myself. Six shots, and all but one wide by inches. Everything is going a little to the right, so I need to adjust for that. The ball control is better than I’d expected, and while all my offseason running and stretching has helped – I can actually walk today, contra SB’s expectations – there is no substitute for the actual sprint-and-stop of gameplay.

It’s clear that Ender isn’t going to take over for the starter this season, he’s a good guy who is three years older and has earned his place. At this point, Ender is better off playing spot duty and second halves when the game is under control than dealing with all the pressure from still-immature players who blame the goalie for permitting scores after complete defensive breakdowns.

The first team won 5-1, and they did so without breaking a sweat. It was clearly humiliating to the cocky younger guys, who are of American high school varsity age and all seemed to be three inches taller than they were when the fall season started. Ender did not take it at all well when I mildly observed that when we veterans played the first team last fall, we beat them by three goals.

It’s rather amusing. The juniors tend to instinctively treat the veterans as if we’re old and past it until they notice that the first team players, who are all in their 20s, tend to regard us as older comrades. The kids don’t know that most of of the first-teamers have played with us from time to time because when we’re short; we’re allowed to field up to two younger players when we have less than 14 men.

The one thing the young guys never seem to figure out is that if you’re still playing soccer 25 years after you started playing at the first team level, you were probably pretty damn good at it back in the day. Our entire team is probably as talented as the average of the best four junior players, we’re just older, fatter, balder, and slower than they are. Technically, I’m one of the worst players on my team and there isn’t a defender on the juniors team that could shut me down. Combine that with the fact that we’re more experienced, more muscular, and some of our players have been playing together for 30 years, and they don’t have a chance. But they never put two and two together until they go up against the old men on the field.

It was the same at my old club, which competed at a higher level. When the club held a tournament of champions for its 75th Anniversary, and invited back all the teams that had ever won promotion for a 7-on-7 tournament, the team that won was not either of the two most recently promoted first teams, but my veteran’s team that had won two successive promotions the previous two years. For me, though, the most memorable thing was seeing a first team from 40 years before, and the frail, white-haired, white-bearded goalie who at 65 was still better than Ender or the starting junior’s goalie. I wasn’t surprised to hear that after playing for our first team, he’d gone on to play a few years for a championship team at the professional level.

It’s all part of the process, the circle of soccer. The juniors are growing up, some of them at different rates than others. The exposure to the first team at the end of last year was important, because it made it clear to them that all their idiotic pecking order games are over. At the first team level, nobody gives a damn about much except how well you play and what you have to contribute to the team. The kid who attacked and exchanged bloody noses with Ender in the first practice last fall is now polite and respectful, and as Ender noted, almost salutes when I address him. He and Ender aren’t friends, but they play well together, the kid is a solid defender who takes his job of protecting his goalie seriously. Conflict isn’t always a bad thing.

There are still some problem children. The tall and arrogant sweeper took the ball last night despite Ender calling for it as he came out, then told Ender that he didn’t give a fuck when Ender chewed him out for it. Their coach, who is a first team player and the first good coach most of these kids have had in their entire careers, shrugged and told Ender to simply go for the ball and take the sweeper out the next time he doesn’t listen. He’s one of those big, athletic kids who needs to be taken down a few times before he’s able to pay attention; I’m going to suggest to our captain that we scrimmage the juniors for just that purpose. The kid has three inches on me, but I’ve got 30 pounds of muscle on him; I figure that after I blow by him a few times, score a couple of goals, and put him down on the ground once or twice, he’ll be in more of a mood to listen.

How to reduce crime

Norway cuts crime by 30 percent:

Norway recently made the controversial decision to deport a large amount of Muslims with ties to radical groups. Despite all the liberals in Norway deeming this “racist”, the logical party went ahead with it and the result almost shut down every opposing voice in the government instantly. This is one of the best stories we have eve seen come from such a liberal area of the world.

Violent Crime Dropped By 30%! That’s right, whopping 30%, and it’s all because a couple of
politicians decided to enforce the laws that they already had. What a
world we live in where that is a shocking thing to do in a government.

Imagine how much crime in Norway will be reduced when the Europe Belongs To Us generation takes over. Sure, the Baby Boomers won’t approve, but by then, they’ll all be dead.

The best of all possible worlds

I stand corrected. Dr. Pangloss was right. Because we live in a world where THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED! We live in a world where A WEASEL TOOK A RIDE ON A FLYING WOODPECKER’S BACK. I don’t even want to know the real story. I’m just happy to know that it happened on my planet.

A lesson in Gamma

This revelatory explanation by a Gamma male was so unexpected, and yet so illuminating, that I felt it worth bringing to the attention of the VP readership as well:

Gammas think they are Alphas.

It sounds insane, but it’s true. A man who knows his place and sticks to that place is usually left to his own devices. Pay tribute to those above, demand tribute from those below, and if a man should disagree with either his own or your relative position in the hierarchy, then conflict will ensue to determine who is correct. It’s a simple enough formula and it occurs frequently, if not daily, during the course of a man’s life. Men tend to be very diligent about ensuring the proper order of things, but once that order is established, there is an element of stability. The victor may be magnanimous to the defeated. In turn, the loser is expected to acclimate himself to his new position.

Gammas introduce instability to this hierarchy. They refuse to accept their station, nor do they propose to increase it through deeds and experience. Like women, they come to expect a certain station in life and feel wronged when it is not provided for them. A common Gamma thought would be “why should he be the leader and get all the glory for himself?”

The part that I thought was particularly insightful was this statement: “Doubtless, thinks the Gamma, the leadership position was earned through
subterfuge and oppression since that is how he would obtain it.”

A leadership position earned through subterfuge and oppression? Strange, for some reason that sounds strangely… familiar?

Asking for trouble

This epically lunatic deployment looks likely to put more than a few American soldiers in danger this summer:

US 173rd Airborne Brigade Commander Michael Foster said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC said the US would deploy personnel by the end of this week to train the Ukrainian national guard.

“Before this week is up, we’ll be deploying a battalion minus… to the Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces for the fight that’s taking place,” Foster stated. “What we’ve got laid out is six United States companies that will be training six Ukrainian companies throughout the summer.”

The training will take place at the level of US and Ukrainian national guard companies, Foster explained, adding that “we have nothing above battalion staff level” engaged in the military training. The current plan is for US forces to stay six months, he said, and noted there have been discussions about how to increase the duration and the scope of the training mission.

The current channels for military training set up between Ukraine and the United States would not be used for transferring defensive lethal aid if the United States decided to provide arms to Ukraine, Foster told Sputnik on Monday.

I imagine Putin is already conferring with his generals about the best way to encircle and capture this battalion, which would be a bigger military humiliation for the United States than the Vietnam War combined with the failure of Operation Eagle Claw.

Feminists don’t care about rape

They talk about it endlessly. They fantasize about it happening to them on their college campuses so long as it is white frat boys and athletes. But when it really happens and arrests are made? Crickets.

Last month, retired porn star Cytherea was the victim of a brutal gang rape at her home in Las Vegas. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, three teenage suspects, two of them minors, broke into the house, robbed Cytherea and her family at gunpoint, and raped her while her children were present. The rape and home invasion was so violent that not only are the minors being tried as adults, all three suspects could be sentenced to life in prison if found guilty….

If ever there was a story for feminists to get enraged about, this would be it. According to SJWs, America fosters a “rape culture,” where sexual assault is trivialized and men are encouraged to feel “entitled” to womens’ bodies. You can’t get more entitled than a gang of ghetto thugs invading a woman’s home and raping her at gunpoint.

Yet feminists have been eerily silent on Cytherea. A casual Google search for “cytherea rape” shows that the only articles about the story are from news outlets, porn industry sites such as TRPWL, and the conservative site The Daily Caller. Searching Jezebel, one of the most popular feminist blogs in the world, for “cytherea” returns a grand total of zero results.

 Why? There is a simple answer. “Feminists don’t care about rape victims, and they never have.”

Vaccines are “safe” and “effective”

Because they are totally “tested”. By scientists doing science:

Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, is facing a slew of controversies over its Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine following numerous allegations of wrongdoing from different parties in the medical field, including two former Merck scientists-turned-whistleblowers. A third whistleblower, this one a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control, also promises to bring Merck grief following his confession of misconduct involving the same MMR vaccine.

The controversies will find Merck defending itself and its vaccine in at least two federal court cases after a U.S. District judge earlier this month threw out Merck’s attempts at dismissal. Merck now faces federal charges of fraud from the whistleblowers, a vaccine competitor and doctors in New Jersey and New York. Merck could also need to defend itself in Congress: The staff of representative Bill Posey (R-Fla) — a longstanding critic of the CDC interested in an alleged link between vaccines and autism — is now reviewing some 1,000 documents that the CDC whistleblower turned over to them.

The first court case, United States v. Merck & Co., stems from claims by two former Merck scientists that Merck “fraudulently misled the government and omitted, concealed, and adulterated material information regarding the efficacy of its mumps vaccine in violation of the FCA [False Claims Act].”

According to the whistleblowers’ court documents, Merck’s misconduct was far-ranging: It “failed to disclose that its mumps vaccine was not as effective as Merck represented, (ii) used improper testing techniques, (iii) manipulated testing methodology, (iv) abandoned undesirable test results, (v) falsified test data, (vi) failed to adequately investigate and report the diminished efficacy of its mumps vaccine, (vii) falsely verified that each manufacturing lot of mumps vaccine would be as effective as identified in the labeling, (viii) falsely certified the accuracy of applications filed with the FDA, (ix) falsely certified compliance with the terms of the CDC purchase contract, (x) engaged in the fraud and concealment describe herein for the purpose of illegally monopolizing the U.S. market for mumps vaccine, (xi) mislabeled, misbranded, and falsely certified its mumps vaccine, and (xii) engaged in the other acts described herein to conceal the diminished efficacy of the vaccine the government was purchasing.”

These fraudulent activities, say the whistleblowers, were designed to produce test results that would meet the FDA’s requirement that the mumps vaccine was 95 per cent effective. To the whistleblowers’ delight, the judge dismissed Merck’s objections to the case proceeding, finding the whistleblowers had plausible grounds on all of the claims lodged against Merck.

Vaccine advocates, are you starting to find even a glimmering of understanding why some intelligent and well-informed people just might harbor the occasional doubt about the safety and efficacity of vaccines? If not yet, what more will it take? And do you not understand that once this level of fraud is established, it casts at least a modicum of doubt on EVERY SINGLE CLAIM that has been made about vaccine safety in the past?

Perhaps you’ll even be able to understand why doctors have been hesitant to come forward with their doubts about vaccines if you consider the sort of response they can be expected to encounter from the vaccine manufacturers, who are legally protected against being held liable for the deficiencies of their products:

Merck made a “hit list” of doctors who criticized Vioxx, according to testimony in a Vioxx class action case in Australia. The list, emailed between Merck employees, contained doctors’ names with the labels “neutralise,” “neutralised” or “discredit” next to them. 

Do you find that confidence-inspiring?

Texture bleg

Is there anyone who specializes in texturing very high poly count STL files who might be interested in tackling our pair of orcs? If this is solidly within your bag of tricks, please contact me. At this point, we’re looking for volunteers.

If you want to see Orc Gladiator #2 soon, sign up for Castalia House’s Game Development newsletter. We’ll be sending out the first one within the next two weeks, we’re just trying to nail something down before we can announce it to the subscribers.

Obama vs Israel

No wonder America’s Jews are suddenly so conflicted and flirting with some of the Republican presidential contenders:

President Obama is alleged to have stopped an Israeli military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets, according to reports to emerge from the Middle East at the weekend

The threat from the U.S. forced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to abort a planned attack on Iraq, reported Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida…. The report claimed that an unnamed Israeli minister who has good ties with the US administration revealed the attack plan to Secretary of State John Kerry, and that Obama then threatened to shoot down the Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

According to the report, ‘Netanyahu and his commanders agreed after four nights of deliberations to task the Israeli army’s chief of staff, Benny Gantz, to prepare a qualitative operation against Iran’s nuclear program.

‘In addition, Netanyahu and his ministers decided to do whatever they could do to thwart a possible agreement between Iran and the White House because such an agreement is, allegedly, a threat to Israel’s security.’

The sources added that Gantz and his commanders prepared the requested plan and that Israeli fighter jets trained for several weeks in order to make sure the plans would work successfully. Israeli fighter jets reportedly even carried out experimental flights in Iran’s airspace after they managed to break through radars.

At some point, even the dimmest American Jews are going to wake up to the fact that the gelding of Christian civilization in the West and the racial diversification of the white nations is very unlikely to turn out “good for the Jews”, regardless of how it ends. Some Jews have clearly begun to realize that, as 69 percent of Jews voted for Obama in 2012, nine percent less than the 78 percent who did in 2008. But too many Jews outside Israel still appear to be caught up in the 1970’s notion that they can easily defeat an aggressive Islamic Caliphate that outnumbers them about 70 to 1.

The problem is that while speed, cleverness, and finesse are a force multiplier, they do have limits. And I suspect that far too many American Jews, unlike Israelis, don’t know how close they were to being defeated at times in the Arab-Israeli wars. A mistake here or there, a failure of nerve on the part of a political leader or a general at the wrong time, and it could have been all over. The American Jews only know that the IDF repeatedly won those wars and assume they can easily do so again.

But history is littered with the examples of defeated nations who attacked other nations in the assumption that their victory was certain. Regardless of what happens in the Middle East, it is certain that American politics is going to become less predictable as the Coalition of Diversity that was created, in part, by elite politically active Jews begins to turn against both Jews and Israel. This would imply that they will increasingly seek influence in the Republican Party, thus increasing the growing gulf there between the moderate Republican elite-for-hire and the various conservative and libertarian grass roots.

The original SJW invasion

How the comics were entered and taken over by the original SJW freakshow:

Olive Byrne met Marston in 1925, when she was a senior at Tufts; he was her psychology professor. Marston was already married, to a lawyer named Elizabeth Holloway. When Marston and Byrne fell in love, he gave Holloway a choice: either Byrne could live with them, or he would leave her. Byrne moved in. Between 1928 and 1933, each woman bore two children; they lived together as a family. Holloway went to work; Byrne stayed home and raised the children. They told census-takers and anyone else who asked that Byrne was Marston’s widowed sister-in-law. “Tolerant people are the happiest,” Marston wrote in a magazine essay in 1939, so “why not get rid of costly prejudices that hold you back?” He listed the “Six Most Common Types of Prejudice.” Eliminating prejudice number six—“Prejudice against unconventional people and non-conformists”—meant the most to him. Byrne’s sons didn’t find out that Marston was their father until 1963—when Holloway finally admitted it—and only after she extracted a promise that no one would raise the subject ever again.

Gaines didn’t know any of this when he met Marston in 1940 or else he would never have hired him: He was looking to avoid controversy, not to court it. Marston and Wonder Woman were pivotal to the creation of what became DC Comics. (DC was short for Detective Comics, the comic book in which Batman debuted.) In 1940, Gaines decided to counter his critics by forming an editorial advisory board and appointing Marston to serve on it, and DC decided to stamp comic books in which Superman and Batman appeared with a logo, an assurance of quality, reading, “A DC Publication.” And, since “the comics’ worst offense was their blood-curdling masculinity,” Marston said, the best way to fend off critics would be to create a female superhero.

“Well, Doc,” Gaines said, “I picked Superman after every syndicate in America turned it down. I’ll take a chance on your Wonder Woman! But you’ll have to write the strip yourself.”

In February 1941, Marston submitted a draft of his first script, explaining the “under-meaning” of Wonder Woman’s Amazonian origins in ancient Greece, where men had kept women in chains, until they broke free and escaped. “The NEW WOMEN thus freed and strengthened by supporting themselves (on Paradise Island) developed enormous physical and mental power.” His comic, he said, was meant to chronicle “a great movement now under way—the growth in the power of women.”

Wonder Woman made her debut in All-Star Comics at the end of 1941 and on the cover of a new comic book, Sensation Comics, at the beginning of 1942, drawn by an artist named Harry G. Peter. She wore a golden tiara, a red bustier, blue underpants and knee-high, red leather boots. She was a little slinky; she was very kinky. She’d left Paradise to fight fascism with feminism, in “America, the last citadel of democracy, and of equal rights for women!”

Narcissistic left-leaning sexual freakshows pushing feminist propaganda onto an unsuspecting market as the original content creators and publishers, in their naive ignorance, blithely fail to see what is happening right under their noses. Sound familiar, everyone in the science fiction and game industries? The only substantive difference between the current states of comics, SF, and games is the date at which the SJWs began to invade those industries.

Don’t let it happen again.

From the Wikipedia page about Marston, the first SJW: “He purposely aimed to condition readers to becoming more readily
accepting to submission to loving authorities rather than being so
assertive to their own destructive egos.”