The future of SF

“Science Fiction for the Fourth Generation”: Ann Sterzinger reviews Riding the Red Horse in Taki’s Magazine:

Here’s a brilliant idea for an anthology: collect essays about the changing face of war and war technology, then alternate them with short stories and novel excerpts from the cutting edge of military-focused sci-fi and fantasy.

Riding the Red Horse, edited by fantasy star Vox Day and Army Ranger vet Tom Kratman for Castalia House, is a tailor-made compromise for those time-pressed souls who find the consumption of unalloyed fiction to be too useless a practice in which to indulge. It’s also a treat for sci-fi readers who retain an interest in the world around them—and the two groups’ overlap is large enough to make it a very good idea indeed.

Every tale or essay is fronted by an editor’s introduction, placed conveniently before each piece rather than in some tedious index or intro; they perk up the reader’s ears for the key factual and speculative themes of the collection.

Essays are fully half the mix, with the fiction serving as not only pleasure reading but as exercises in imagining how the technological and population changes the essayists describe might play out in the future. The tone is set early on by William S. Lind’s discussion of the four generations of modern war strategy, in “Understanding 4th Generation War.”

Lind’s unsettling conclusion is that the U.S. military is stuck in the second-generation mindset used by the French in World War I, while our adversaries—particularly those who aren’t based in a state, i.e. the jihad—have moved on to an updated version of pre-nation-state warfare, where neither the battlefield nor the combatants are clearly defined. Lind writes: 

We have no magic solutions to offer, only some thoughts. We recognized from the outset that the whole task might be hopeless; state militaries might not be able to come to grips with Fourth Generation enemies no matter what they do. …

“Wherever people go, conflict seems to follow, and one always prefers to be on the winning side—so we might as well be ready for the physics problems we’ll encounter if the conflicts move into outer space.”

His essay is preceded by a dramatic fictional illustration of the unpredictability of the near future of war, albeit a state-based one: Eric S. Raymond’s “Sucker Punch,” a near-future military tale in which an American attempt to stop a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is rendered both impossible and unnecessary by the gruesome new weapons both sides have in store for each other.

The American pilots’ disorientation is so stark as to be almost darkly humorous: 

“Hey. What are those flashes from the tin cans?”

Blazer: “Cool off. We’re stealthed, and radar’s clear. They’ve got nothing in the air that can hit us at angels twenty.”

Blazer’s plane disintegrated less than three seconds later.

 This is what future sci-fi is going to look like, this collection predicts: as nervous as its past, with future-tech tactical guesses mixed into the drama. (Although if you prefer your sci-fi laced with humor, the winner in the anthology is longtime Navy fleet veteran Thomas Mays’ “Within This Horizon”—with Rzasa’s solo contribution, “Turncoat,” as an oddly touching runner-up.)

This focus on military realism doesn’t surprise me in a Vox Day-branded anthology. What makes A Throne of Bones, the fantasy series that gave Day his name, outstanding is the weakness of his magician characters—which makes his military generals work harder, which is more interesting to read than the standard Robert Jordan-type fantasy plot wherein Rand Al-Thor points at your army and it disappears. The authors in this anthology are reclaiming the same logic for sci-fi; instead of seeing the limitations of physics as an inconvenience to be juked around, they turn them into the driving power of their story lines.

The stories and essays talk back to each other in this manner
constantly; regardless of whether their predictions will be accurate—my
own military and technological knowledge is too poor to place any
bets—they result in a conversation so entertaining and stimulating that
the reader feels most privileged to listen in, especially for an entry
fee of five dollars.

Riding the Red Horse hasn’t been what one would call extensively reviewed in the SF press, but you know, I think we can live with that. This is just an excerpt from a fairly long and detailed review, so you’ll want to read the whole thing.

UPDATE: We were just informed that one of our authors has been nominated for the 2015 Prometheus Award. Go to the Castalia House blog to find out who it is!

The Iron Law in the USAF

Jerry Pournelle posts an informative and timely explanation of the US Air Force’s self-assisted decline into military irrelevance:

The heart of the USAF’s institutional culture was Strategic Air Command (SAC). It was where the pilots that learned how to do teamwork, logistics and (nuclear) strategy. That was where officers were groomed for senior flag rank command slots.

When SAC was stood down, Tactical Air Command (TAC) took over in the form of the renamed Air Combat Command (ACC). We are talking fighter jocks, the prima donna’s, the cowboys. The anti-intellectuals who are scared to death of people smarter than they are. Look what happened after the Gulf War when ACC was in charge.

Col. John A. Warden, the architect of the Gulf War air campaign was black balled by Gen. Horner. He retired a thrice passed over Col. at the Air Command and Staff School.

Gen. Corder — the man who put together the 1980’s USAF SEAD doctrine used so well in the Gulf War — was effectively sacked by the USAF chief of Staff (CoS) for disobeying a “strong suggestion” to lie to Congress about the need to retain the F-4G Wild Weasels. (The then CoS was trying to retain more F-15C’s in the force structure.) His efforts to deploy a missile warning system** to protect USAF planes was cancelled partially in retaliation.

When Corder’s allies in Congress started making noise in 1993 about the draw down of F-4G Wild Weasel and EF-111’s, the USAF put the recently retired Corder on a special six month SEAD study to satisfy them. Then the Air Staff sat on the results for close to three years. Corder, under the legal restrictions of the Reagan era secrecy laws, was thus effectively silenced while the deed was done. The downing of Capt. O’ Grady in Bosnia was a direct result of the purging of F-4G Wild Weasel and EF-111 Spark ‘Vark’s from the USAF force structure and senior ACC staff’s willing EW incompetence.

USAF CoS Fogleman, for all his faults, recognized the lack of institutional professionalism. His support of the Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Alb. and attempts to create a USAF doctrine codifying entity like the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) were what was needed.
Unfortunately, Fogleman could not delegate and his reforms died with his military career. The inability to delegate is a defining fault of USAF fighter pilot culture. Fogleman’s successors haven’t tried to address these core institutional issues since then. The F-22 budget wars and the real wars since 1997 have left the USAF CoS no time for anything else, assuming they were interested.

Jerry adds: The Iron Law even in the military, dammit. The purpose of warriors is to
win wars.  It takes one force to gain and keep air supremacy, another
to support the ground army.  The army can win without ground support if
the other guy also has none, and we used to plan Cold War battles in
which neither side had supremacy.  That was tough and the obvious
conclusion is that air supremacy is vital; but that does not mean that
support of the ground forces is not important. If the Air Force won’t
give it, take the mission away; and if USAF blocks that, abolish USAF
and bring back USAAF.

There is real evidence surfacing that the Iron Law has taken over to such a degree that the bureaucrats in the USAF are literally more loyal to their bureaucracy than to the country they are sworn to serve:

The Air Force is investigating allegations that the No. 2 commander
at its prestigious Air Combat Command told lower-ranking officers that
talking to members of Congress about the capabilities of the A-10 attack
aircraft is tantamount to treason.

The alleged comment by Maj.
Gen. James Post has stirred concern in Congress about the Air Force
muzzling officers in violation of their legal rights. “This is
very serious, to accuse people of treason for communicating with
Congress,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire, told Gen. Mark Welsh, the
Air Force chief of staff, who testified Wednesday before the Senate
Armed Services Committee.

Post is reported to have told Air Force
officers attending a recent weapons and tactics conference in Nevada
that it is their duty to support the service’s budget priorities by
refraining from offering opinions inconsistent with those priorities.
Air Force leaders have proposed retiring the A-10 fleet but Congress has
refused, and some inside the Air Force have sided with Congress.

I see no point in a separate air force anymore. It has an insulated and myopic perspective on war that is entirely backwards, it is on the verge of being technologically irrelevant, and it simply cannot deliver the results it promises. Give ground support to the Army and Marines, give air and space supremacy to the Navy, and be done with it.

Probability and belief

A few days ago, in Probability and the Problem of Life, I pointed out that there is no need to precisely calculate probabilities that we cannot possibly know in order to reach logical conclusions about them. Contra the opinions of the misguided math fetishists, logic is the foundation of math, not the other way around, and we can reach perfectly sound logical conclusions even if we are not able to make precise mathematical determinations or quantifiy all of the various factors involved.

Throughout the course of the discussion, it soon became abundantly clear that those who defend the theory of TENS on probability grounds do not actually believe their own position. Furthermore, it is relatively easy to demonstrate that although the very low probability events to which they appeal are mathematically possible, they are so highly improbable that no sane human being can credibly feign to take seriously, as evidenced by their own daily behavior with regards to other, much more likely events.

WRF3 asked me to identify the precise point at which mathematical possibility and belief part company; I said that for me it was somewhere between 1 in 4,165 and 1 in 17,347,225. The latter are the odds of being dealt four aces twice in succession from two properly shuffled card decks; I would not view that as credibly possible and continue to play poker with a machine that dealt out such hands. The absolute outer limit for even the most credible individual is probably 1 in 72,251,192,125, which would be three such unlikely hands.

But the reality is that for the average individual, the credibility ratio is much lower. Consider the recent statistical evidence of the New England Patriots having systematically cheated by deflating the football since the 2007 season:

While speculation exists that “Deflate Gate” was a one time occurrence, data I introduced last week indicated that the phenomena MAY have been an ongoing, long standing issue for the New England Patriots. Today, that possibility looks as clear as day.

Initially, looking at weather data, I noticed the Patriots performed extremely well in the rain, much more so than they were projected.  I followed that up by looking at the fumble data, which showed regardless of weather or site, the Patriots prevention of fumbles was nearly impossible.  Ironically, both studies saw the same exact starting point:  2007 was the first season where things really changed for the Patriots.  Something started in 2007 which is still on-going today.

I wanted to compare the New England Patriots fumble rate from 2000, when Bill Belichick first arrived in New England, to the rest of the NFL.  Clearly, one thing I found in my prior research was that dome teams fumble substantially less frequently, given they play at least 8+ games out of the elements each year.  To keep every team on a more level playing field, I eliminated dome teams from the analysis, grabbed only regular season games, and defined plays as pass attempts+rushes+times sacked.  The below results also look only at total fumbles, not just fumbles which are lost.  This brought us to the ability to capture touches per fumble.

To really confirm something was dramatically different in New England, starting in 2007 thru present, I compared the 2000-06 time period (when Bill Belichick was their head coach and they won all of their Super Bowls) to the 2007-2014 time period.  The beauty of data is the results speak for themselves:

The data is jaw dropping, and this visual perfectly depicts what happened.  From a more technical perspective, John Candido, a Data Scientist at ZestFinance who is a colleague of mine over at the NFLproject.com website and was also involved in the development of this research, comments:

Based on the assumption that plays per fumble follow a normal distribution, you’d expect to see, according to random fluctuation, the results that the Patriots have gotten since 2007 once in 5842 instances.

Which in layman’s terms means that this result only being a coincidence, is like winning a raffle where you have a 0.0001711874 probability to win. In other words, it’s very unlikely that results this abnormal are only due to the endogenous nature of the game.

Many of the arguments giving the Patriots the benefit of the doubt are evaporating.  While this data does not prove they deflated footballs starting in 2007, we know they were interested in obtaining that ability in 2006. (This is something I found out AFTER I performed the first two analyses, both of which independently found that something changed starting in 2007.)

I was skeptical when I first read the analyst’s theory, because he initially used fumbles lost rather than all fumbles; it is generally believed by football statisticians who have considered the question that fumble recoveries are random. And when fumbles rather than fumbles lost are utilized, the Patriots are considerably less of a radical outlier, although they are the only team that plays outdoors that fumbles as little as a dome team.

My first thought was that the anomaly was more a result of New England’s pass-happy offense than statistical evidence of ball deflation. However, a look at the passing statistics showed that New England was pass-happy as early as 2002, when they threw 601 passes, compared to 582 in 2014, and the fact that their plays per fumble from 07-14 increased so dramatically from 00-06 after the rule change that they requested does tend to confirm the analyst’s original suspicions.

 But my point is not to take a side in the latest New England scandal, only to observe that for the professional statistician, observation of a successful event against 1 in 5,842 odds is sufficient to indicate the results observed are probably not obtained naturally. And while this statistical evidence is not absolute proof (although it is interesting to see that the statistician’s odds are in the range I suggested should preclude belief), it is enough to indicate that the greater part of one’s efforts should be directed at discovering the precise nature and mechanism of the unnatural tampering indicated rather than on the unlikely natural explanation.

“The bottom line is, something happened in New England.  It happened just
before the 2007 season, and it completely changed this team.”

Which brings us back rather to my long-held position contra Mr. Sherlock Holmes: Once you have calculated the sufficiently improbable, you must reconsider your assumptions of the impossible.

The devil called Driscoll

I know nothing about this “Pastor Driscoll” except for what I’ve read at Dalrock’s. And I would bet considerable money that he’s a Swaggart/Bakker debacle just waiting to be uncovered and exposed:

I’ve referenced Pastor Driscoll’s sermon Men and Marriage in several recent posts.  This is the sermon to watch, or better yet, read, if you wan’t to understand what I was describing in The only real man in the room.  In this sermon Driscoll opens with the prayer I quoted from in Fragging Christian Headship:

Father God, I pray that our time would be pleasing to
you, that it would be profitable to us, Lord God, as well. I pray for
those men who are here that are cowards, they’re silent, passive,
impish, worthless men, they’re making a mess of everything in their life
and they’re such sweet little boys that no one ever confronts them on
that. I pray for the women who enable them, who permit them to continue
in falling, those who are mothers and sisters and girlfriends and wives.
I pray, Lord God, for those men who are chauvinists, those who are
mean, who are brash, who are rude, who are harsh, who, Lord God, think
they are tough when in fact they are Satanic. God, I pray for those men
that they would have the courage today to not fight with a woman, but to
fight with you, to actually find their rightful place in creation, that
they might receive a good rebuke so that they can become honorable
rather than dishonorable sons. God, I pray for my tone, I pray for our
men, and I pray for the women who are listening in. I pray, Lord God,
that they would know this comes from a heart of passion, deep concern,
and love. I pray, Lord God, that we would think biblically, critically,
humbly, and repentantly, and that, Lord God, there would be dramatic
life change by the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, Amen.

If you read the sermon, you will see that Driscoll repeatedly makes it clear that when he uses terms like dishonorable, Satanic, cowards, passive, impish, worthless, jokes, losers, imbeciles, fools, etc.
he isn’t just referring to a few “peter pan” men who don’t have jobs
and/or aren’t married.  He is talking about the husbands and fathers
who sought out the church lead by Driscoll, the men who brought their
wives and children to the sermon.

…most of you men don’t know what masculinity truly is

Driscoll defines the six types of worthless men he regularly comes
across.   They are all either cowards or chauvinists and bullies.  And
again, Driscoll is addressing this not to men outside the congregation,
or even a smallish subset of the men in the congregation.  He means
nearly all of the men in the congregation:

Were this a women’s conference, I would not call you all
idiots and imbeciles and fools, that you’re a joke, okay? But you men,
this is where it needs to go. You’ve been glad-handed and buddied up and
positive thinking and you’re a winner and Jesus loves you and you can
do better. And I’m telling you, you’re a joke. And the real men in the
room know it and they see it. And maybe there’s one woman that you
fooled and she doesn’t see it because like Eve, she’s deceived.

The hallmark of a real man, a real Christian man, according to
Driscoll, is looking around at the other men in the room and knowing
that they are pathetic compared to you.  This is of course exactly what
Driscoll is doing throughout the sermon. Again, this is a sermon about men and marriage, and married men are
Driscoll’s primary target.  While he makes a short stop in Genesis for
background, the inspiration for the sermon is one single verse, 1 Pet.
3:7

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an
understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel,
since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers
may not be hindered.

The disparaging of the men in the room goes on to the very end of the
hour and seven minute sermon.  I’ll repeat that I highly encourage you
to read the transcript.  There is simply too much to quote, as the stream of invective against the men in the room is non stop.

This guy is the epitome of the wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s a wannabe cult leader, not a man of God. Reading his words, I can scent the stink of feminist-appeasing, neighbor’s-wife-seducing sulfur. The joke, the evil joke, is him.

No man who runs around posturing as “the only man in the room” in this manner is a Christian leader. He’s an Alpha male, a pathological seducer who can’t stand the fact that there are women in the room who prefer another man to him. I can just about guarantee you that he would react very, very badly to me if I merely walked into his church with Spacebunny and stared at him. His sort of Alpha absolutely hates Sigmas because a) we tend to marry attractive women and b) we see their bullshit for what it is.

Dalrock’s close was beautiful: “Miss Flowahs got Driscoll’s message, and no doubt so did the women in attendance.” His real message, not the fake sermon given as cover.

I never trust a man who pretends to be talking to God when he is actually talking to the people listening.

The banning of an SJW

One of Wikipedia’s worst SJWs, the anti-GamerGate Ryulong, has been banned indefinitely for his all-too-typical thought-policing:

Ryulong banned

5.3) (Was 4.5) Ryulong (talk · contribs · logs · edit filter log · block log)
is indefinitely banned from the English Language Wikipedia. They may
request reconsideration of the ban twelve months after the enactment of
this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter.
Support:

  1. (first choice) As always, banning someone is not something we should want
    to do, but sometimes it is the best thing for the project. Ryulong has
    acted very poorly in this topic area, and it is clear that previous
    sanctions and blocks have failed to have the desired effect of ending
    disruptive behavior. A revolving door of speedy topic bans, chasing the
    problem from area to another, is not the answer. This is. I sincerely
    hope that at some point in the future he will be able to return and be a
    productive member of this community again, but for now he needs to go. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:15, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
  2. Will prioritise later if need be,  Roger Davies talk 23:38, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
    Equal first choice,  Roger Davies talk 11:31, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
  3. First choice. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 23:56, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
  4. Last Choice I would love to not do this but I don’t think anything else has a snowball’s chance of passing —In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 01:15, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
  5. First choice. Salvio Let’s talk about it! 10:46, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
  6. Last choice of presented options (Right now). I think if we’re
    dealing with this on a purely pragmatic level this might be best for the
    project, but I do think that it would only be fair to attempt to apply
    some of the alternatives first, although I’m a bit concerned as to their
    potential efficacy, given the history. NativeForeigner Talk 07:26, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
    Nonetheless, support. NativeForeigner Talk 19:48, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
  7. T. Canens (talk) 17:12, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
  8. If the 1RR does not pass, then first choice of what’s left. Still
    oppose if the 1RR somehow moves back to passing. The more I look at the
    history here, the more I am sure the problems are far wider than just
    this single topic, as I see it, Ryulong doesn’t seem able to “hold his
    fire”, and not get into edit wars. This also, per his block log, is
    independent of topic areas. Without very, very strong measures to stop
    them from continuing to edit war throughout the encyclopedia, I don’t
    think we have any other choice. Also, even to this morning, I still see
    evidence of ongoing battleground mentality. I really, really don’t like
    this, but I can’t support their staying on the project without a strict
    1RR and a topic ban at this point. And only one of those is going to
    pass. Courcelles 22:02, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Oppose:

  1. My mind is open on the other proposed remedies, but I will certainly not be supporting this. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:41, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Neither will I. Need to contemplate the rest of it, but this is not the solution. Courcelles 03:48, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Excessive in the circumstances. I’m open to some alternative. DGG ( talk ) 05:33, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
    • I would like to try something else. —Guerillero | My Talk 07:53, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
  2. I’ve decided to oppose this, albeit weakly. I’m hoping that the
    other remedies regarding Ryulong will end this situation, but I don’t
    quite think a siteban is the best course forward here. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:32, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
  3. — Euryalus (talk) 05:13, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
  4. Given the circumstances here, I don’t think this is called for. For
    clarity’s sake, though, this is very likely the absolute last chance. Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:14, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
  5. LFaraone 18:45, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Abstain:

  1. I find my view on this changing from day to day, so it would be fairer if I abstained. DGG ( talk ) 20:47, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Comments:

Noting that I skipped this intentionally—still thinking on it and will come back soon. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:23, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

  • @NativeForeigner: I tried to fix the numbering, but clarification of your exact meaning would be useful here. Courcelles 20:01, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Of course, a perusal of the process tends to illustrate why Wikipedia is so hapless when it comes to policing outrageous behavior by its editors. Because it was started by an SJW-sympathetic individual and was rapidly taken over by SJWs of varying rabidity, the site remains hopelessly biased and largely worthless on anything of even moderate political contention.

 That being said, it is good to see that Wikipedia is trying to clean up its act, even if it is going about it in a manner that makes Sisyphus look productive. But they simply refuse to see that the way they cherry-pick which sources are deemed reliable and which are not is what produces the intrinsic left-wing bias. The SJW editor who sits on the Wikipedia page about me and tries to publicize as much negative information as possible while minimizing any positive information shows how he evades the point on the Talk page there:

Many of the recent additions to this article seem to be the direct result of Mr. Beale’s recent blog post
in which he commented that Wikipedia is unfairly and dishonestly
excluding material on his views: “Does [the ‘Views section in the
Wikipedia article] describe my views at all? Are the totality of my
views really limited to little more than a feud with John Scalzi and my
expulsion from SFWA? Do I have no opinions on economics, politics,
philosophy, literature, and religion despite having written books on the
former and the latter? It’s telling, too, to observe that if the
so-called feud and the expulsion are the only significant aspects of my
views, there is no mention of the connection between the former and the
latter.”

Mr. Beale then gave a brief description of his views on economics — he feels that the Austrian School
is currently the best explanation available, but is ultimately flawed
for various reasons — and stated that “(t)hose are my actual views on
the subject. That is the absolute truth. Post them on Wikipedia and
they’ll be suppressed within 24 hours.”

This, I believe, is indicative of a general misunderstanding. Of
course Mr. Beale has a great many more views than are provided in this
article; for instance, he has expressed an appreciation for the writing
of Frank Herbert and a dislike for that of Patrick Rothfuss.
I’m certain he also has food preferences, and opinions on the best way
to teach mathematics to children. He may even have discussed these views
in posts to his blog. But the mere fact that Mr. Beale has a view on a
subject does not indisputably lead to the conclusion that the view
should be included in Wikipedia’s biography of him, not even if he has
made a blog post in which he explicitly states that view. Rather, the
views which are (or should be) included are those which have drawn significant independent external attention. I hope that this explanation will satisfy the readers of Mr. Beale’s blog, and possibly even Mr. Beale himself. DS (talk) 14:42, 8 August 2014

This is the height of absurdity. I misunderstand nothing. Nor do you, my readers. There is FAR MORE significant independent external attention that has been paid to my views on economics, religion, and the history of war than have ever been paid to my views on immigration or race, much less my “Feud with John Scalzi”. I have NEVER done an interview about the latter; Scalzi himself did only one. I did over thirty interviews, some on national radio, about economics subsequent to the release of THE RETURN OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION and more than twenty related to THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST.

Transcripts and links to some of those interviews are available on my blog. My views are clearly expressed in them – again, on national radio shows, and even in one case, television – and yet every last trace of those views have been methodically scrubbed from Wikipedia by the likes of DragonFlySixtyseven.

Here is just one of many possible examples pulled from my email. There are over 75 similar emails from different media outlets ranging from Fox News to the Saturday Evening Post. But in the impartial eyes of the Wikipedia editors, the cumulative total of that independent external attention is less significant and notable than John Scalzi talking about himself on his blog that gets less than half the traffic of this one.

INTERVIEW CONFIRMATION
NAME:  Vox Day                     
TOPIC:  The Irrational Atheist
DATE:  Tuesday, October 21, 2008
INTERVIEW TIME:  11:15 – 11:55 am ET
LENGTH OF INTERVIEW:  40 minutes
MEDIA:  Christian Radio Network – over 200 stations in 34 states, 19 affiliates and in Canada

I can’t speak to the accuracy of the rest of Wikipedia, but my page is mostly nonsense from start to finish. I mean, it actually says that I was born in Minnesota.

Cumberblunder

As always, a public apology only compounds the error by displaying weakness to those who are always hunting for it:

Devastated’, ‘a complete fool’ and ‘an idiot’; ‘thoughtless’, ‘inappropriate’ and ‘shaming’: that is how the actor Benedict Cumberbatch described himself and his actions this week in an elegantly worded but nonetheless grovelling apology.

It was fully 150 words of heartfelt self-flagellation, in which the actor all but stripped naked and covered himself in ashes before lashing himself to the mast of public opinion.

And all for what? A well-meaning slip of the tongue.

He used the term ‘coloured’ during an interview on an American chat show. Perhaps not the most politically correct racial terminology, but certainly not the most derogatory either.

At worst, perhaps, rather old-fashioned. The kind of thing your granny might say, and which might compel you to lean over and gently whisper in her ear: ‘No one says “coloured” any more, gran, it’s not the done thing.’ To which she might reply: ‘Really, dear? I had no idea.’

A term, moreover, contained in the very name of one of America’s leading African-American civil rights organisation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People….

Of course, in today’s world the poor fellow had no choice but to apologise.

Not only does he inhabit the oh-so-progressive world of entertainment, where to deviate even slightly from the accepted nostrums of liberalism can mean instant alienation, he also has as an ancestor an 18th-century sugar plantation owner in Barbados which, in the eyes of some, practically makes him a slave-trader himself.

As a Person of Color myself, I should like to absolve Mr. Cumberbatch of any lingering guilt over his PR faux pas. And to advise him, as I have myself been reliably informed, that time is rapidly running out on the term “People of Color” and that the next politically approved appellation for individuals of African descent residing on the North American continent is still being discussed by the Grand Council of Racial Relations and will be announced to white people sometime in the next 18 months.

I understand “Basketball American” is the present frontleader, but the situation is fluid as “Shaded Americans” or “Shades” also has its advocates. As for we Native Americans, the correct form of address will be the individual’s tribe, with all of the onus being placed on the individual addressing the erstwhile Native American to correctly identify his tribe prior to addressing him. An incorrect tribal identification will, of course, be considered greatly offensive and will require a placatory offering of money, alcohol, or sexual favors to set straight.

Don’t call me Cherokee.

Cuckoo for peer review

Scientistry at its finest:

Shrime decided to see how easy it would be to publish an article. So he made one up. Like, he literally made one up. He did it using www.randomtextgenerator.com. The article is entitled “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?” and its authors are the venerable Pinkerton A. LeBrain and Orson Welles. The subtitle reads: “The surgical and neoplastic role of cacao extract in breakfast cereals.” Shrime submitted it to 37 journals over two weeks and, so far, 17 of them have accepted it. (They have not “published” it, but say they will as soon as Shrime pays the $500. This is often referred to as a “processing fee.” Shrime has no plans to pay them.) Several have already typeset it and given him reviews, as you can see at the end of this article. One publication says his methods are “novel and innovative”!. But when Shrime looked up the physical locations of these publications, he discovered that many had very suspicious addresses; one was actually inside a strip club.

Many of these publications sound legitimate. To someone who is not well-versed in a particular subfield of medicine—a journalist, for instance—it would be easy to mistake them for valid sources. “As scientists, we’re aware of the top-tier journals in our specific sub-field, but even we cannot always pinpoint if a journal in another field is real or not,” Shrime says. “For instance, the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology is the very first journal I was ever published in and it’s legitimate. But the Global Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology is fake. Only someone in my field would know that.”

You can trust scientists. Because global warming. And they have proven that birds are, indeed, cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

Pinkshirts killing SF/F 2

It was rather amusing to see some people attempting to shake off yesterday’s post on the decline in science fiction by pointing to the fact that overall print fiction had declined 8 percent, so the 7 percent decline in science fiction meant that the genre was actually outperforming. Never mind the fact that it had declined 21 percent the year before…. and after a little more research, I discovered that it had declined 21 percent the year before that as well.

In fact, SF print sales are now about half what they were in 2008. I don’t place TOO much confidence in this chart, because it shows around 4 million in 2012, whereas the PW numbers indicate they should be around 5.6 million. But it does suffice to indicate that what we are witnessing is a pretty serious trend and one that involves more than the mere shift to ebooks.

A decline from a combined 26 million in print sales to 12.7 million in only five years is bordering on the cataclysmic; remember, ebooks eliminate any need for the expensive structure of the mainstream genre publishers, a fact that has probably not escaped the owners of Tor and other imprints. I’ll put together some charts once I get some better numbers, but the point is that the anecdotal evidence of people increasingly avoiding the Pink SF produced by the self-appointed gatekeepers is supported by the data trend.

Abolishing the Air Force

Jerry Pournelle wants to get rid of the Air Force:

I also intend to do an essay on why we should abolish the Air Force
and return to an Army Air Force which is not a separate service. The
purpose of military forces is to win wars. The purpose of the Air Force
is—well, they no longer know. When we had SAC we knew – “Our profession
is peace” was not just a slogan – but that too is neglected in the
Modern Air Force. Deterrence and maintenance of nuclear weapons, being
ready to use weapons when your fondest wish is that they will never be
used – that does require a different kind of military. We once had that
in SAC but the end of the Cold War was the end of SAC, and the nuclear
deterrence force is, well not what it once was. It is subject to the
Iron Law now.

As to the rest of the Air Force, it is more interested in the Air
Force than winning wars, and considers supporting the field army as
beneath contempt. A slow old Warthog does a much better job, but there
is no glory in that. Best to use fast jets… which of course are
imprecise and cause a lot of collateral damage. Everyone knows that a
force of propeller driven P-47 fighters of WWII would be more effective
for supporting the field army than what we use. And the Army must be
crippled, not allowed to have effective air power in taking territory.
You must use modern jets at high speed.

Now the Air Force has a mission that the Army at present does not
have: Air Supremacy. And that is a different mission from supporting the
field army. It involves engagements with Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs)
as well as strikes against the enemy base of operations. The glory is
in air to air combat, but that is not the effective way to air
supremacy.

That is the main argument for an “Independent Air Force” and the
bitter fights that ended with creation of USAF. It is true, ground army
commanders tend to select the wrong targets to sortie against, and
endanger air supremacy; thus the argument for independence, which USAAF
eventually won (before SAC existed or any but a few knew would be
needed.) Hiroshima ended the debate. But now the Cold War ended and USAF
killed SAC as not glamorous – not career building any longer. As to the
Warthogs, give them to the National Guard! Real pilots don’t need them!

Sure, I exaggerate but not much: the Air Force keeps trying to get
rid of the Warthogs, but never by giving them (and the ground support
mission) to the War Department. Better that GI’s die than USAF give up a
mission even though it does not want it.

Drones will change all this, but why wait?

Actually, as Eric S. Raymond demonstrated in both “Sucker Punch” and “Battlefield Lasers”, the Air Force is very close to obsolete anyhow. My expectation is that they’ll try to survive by moving their mission upward, to space, in order to compensate for the vanishing ability of their planes to survive in the atmosphere.

A proper Hobbit

TolkienEditor has cut Peter Jackson’s abusive monstrosity in half and thereby, in large part, restored Tolkien’s much-beloved tale:

I decided to condense all three installments (An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies) into a single 4-hour feature that more closely resembled Tolkien’s original novel. Well, okay, it’s closer to 4.5 hours, but those are some long-ass credits! This new version was achieved through a series of major and minor cuts, detailed below:

The investigation of Dol Guldor has been completely excised, including the appearances of Radagast, Saruman and Galadriel. This was the most obvious cut, and the easiest to carry out (a testament to its irrelevance to the main narrative). Like the novel, Gandalf abruptly disappears on the borders of Mirkwood, and then reappears at the siege of the Lonely Mountain with tidings of an orc army.

The Tauriel-Legolas-Kili love triangle has also been removed. Indeed, Tauriel is no longer a character in the film, and Legolas only gets a brief cameo during the Mirkwood arrest. This was the next clear candidate for elimination, given how little plot value and personality these two woodland sprites added to the story. Dwarves are way more fun to hang out with anyway. 😛

The Pale Orc subplot is vastly trimmed down. Azog is obviously still leading the attack on the Lonely Mountain at the end, but he does not appear in the film until after the company escapes the goblin tunnels (suggesting that the slaying of the Great Goblin is a factor in their vendetta, as it was in the novel).

I was pleased to learn that in addition to getting rid of “Tauriel”, the ridiculous barrel-fight is also gone. The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit is a 6GB MP4 file, available by either torrent or direct download. Not all of Jackson’s egregious stupidities have been excised, but most of them have been surgically removed.

UPDATE: Another, even more reduced option:

After about 312 new edits and cuts and almost 5 hours removed
from the trilogy, this single film combines the three Peter Jackson
movies into one immense epic that accurately tells the story of Bilbo,
while maintaining what new ideas and battles have been implanted in
Jackson’s retelling (such as the Battle of the Five Armies containing
orcs instead of goblins). 

The following is a list of all the major
edits/alterations to the films for this single edit. Scenes aren’t
always simply removed, sometimes they are repositioned or sometimes
specific elements are taken out or added in for coherency or pacing:  
  • Removed all of Elf-Dwarf Love Triangle Plot
  • Removed all of Gandalf’s necromancer adventures
  • Removed most of orc scenes/battles/mentions in first 2/3’s of
    the film (including removing frames with orcs from the post-goblin
    escape scene at the end of “Unexpected Journey”)
  • Removed Bilbo killing a wolf – the first thing he kills is the spider in Mirkwood forest, giving the sword the name “Sting”
  • Removed all of (elder) Bilbo’s introduction to the lore
  • Removed all of the heavy foreshadowing for LOTR and the evil of the ring – kept to the spirit of the book, it was a playful invisibility ring!
  • Added a deleted scene of the Shire villagers as an intro to the film
  • Reduced much of the Dwarves’ dinner at Bilbo’s
  • Created faster transition to Bilbo getting out of the house
  • Reduced Rivendell
  • Reduced Stone Giant scene
  • Reduced goblin scene, re-ordered dialogue to mirror book interactions between Thorin & Goblin King
  • Kept Gollum scene entirely intact – no cutting between that
    and the goblin lair, although shortened as well as removed Gollum
    beating the corpse in the beginning
  • Created voice-over transition into Beorn scene at the beginning of “Desolation of Smaug”
  • Reduced Mirkwood forest & Woodland Realm capture scenes
  • Heavily reduced Laketown capture (all of Laketown is about 10 minutes total now)
  • Removed Smaug battle scene with dwarves in the mines (kept
    Bilbo’s conversation with Smaug, the battle was outrageously cartoonish
    and long)
  • Removed Bard using his son as a bow, the shots dance around it and the scene is intact 
  • Rearranged much of Battle of Five Armies for coherency of
    Bilbo concealing and giving away the Arkenstone without the need for so
    many silly slow-motion Thorin bits
  • Removed many elements of the Battle of Five Armies that
    contained too much CGI monsters or silly battle actions (like repeated
    head-butting) 
  • Reduced and rearranged the battle to get to Thorin quicker
  • Removed elves from the final fight scene (Kili fights the orc in order to protect Bilbo instead of his elf love interest)
  • Removed final flash-forward scene, the film ends with Bilbo finally coming home