How to raise a gamer

This guy went about it much more systematically than I did, but to somewhat similar effect:

My son Eliot was born in 2004 — the year of Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and the launch of the Nintendo DS. By the time he was born, video games were a $26B industry.

I love games, and I genuinely wanted Eliot to love and appreciate them too. So, here was my experiment: Start with the arcade classics and Atari 2600, from Asteroids to Zaxxon. After a year, move on to the 8-bit era with the NES and Sega classics. The next year, the SNES, Game Boy, and classic PC adventure games. Then the PlayStation and N64, Xbox and GBA, and so on until we’re caught up with the modern era of gaming.

Would that child better appreciate modern independent games that don’t have the budgets of AAA monstrosities like Destiny and Call of Duty? Would they appreciate the retro aesthetic, or just think it looks crappy?

And this, for me, is the most interesting impact of the experiment.

Eliot’s early exposure to games with limited graphics inoculated him from the flashy, hyper-realistic graphics found in today’s AAA games. He can appreciate retro graphics on its own terms, and focus on the gameplay.

The lo-fi graphics in games like VVVVVV, FTL, or Cave Story might turn off other kids his age, but like me, he’s drawn to them.

Ender didn’t play enough video and computer games to have turned into a super-gamer like Eliot, but I’ve noticed that he does enjoy playing older games like Warlords and Fantasy General rather than clickfests and twitch games. He’s also a good ASL player and a decent, though not superlative wargamer, as well as being deep into the mod scene.

The skill that Eliot has developed from his early exposure, to such an extent that he’s much better than his father is fascinating though, especially when I consider how Ender was similarly exposed to more military theory and strategy than the average West Pointer.

Another Republican cave-in

At this point, can anyone even pretend to be surprised?

IMMIGRATION:
The bill only funds the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees most immigration policy, until February. But negotiators gave new money for immigration programs at other federal agencies. There’s $948 million for the Department of Health and Human Service’s unaccompanied children program — an $80 million increase. The program provides health and education services to the young migrants. The department also gets $14 million to help school districts absorbing new immigrant students. And the State Department would get $260 million to assist Central American countries from where of the immigrant children are coming.

AFFORDABLE CARE ACT:

The law is still
funded, but there’s no new money for it. There’s also no new ACA-related
funding for the Internal Revenue Service and the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services, the two agencies most responsible for
implementing the law. The bill also would cut the budget of the
Independent Payment Advisory Board — what Republicans have called “the
death panel” — by $10 million.

OVERSEAS MILITARY OPERATIONS:

There’s $1.3
billion for a new Counterterrorism Partnership Fund; $5 billion for
military operations to combat the Islamic State, including $1.6 billion
to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces; $500 million for a Pentagon-led
program to train and equip vetted Syrian opposition fighters; $810
million for ongoing military operations in Europe, including
requirements that at least $175 million is spent in support of Ukraine
and Baltic nation

SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE MILITARY:

There’s
$257 million for the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response
programs, including $25 million more to expand the Sexual Assault
Victims’ Counsel program. But Democrats, led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
(D-N.Y.), are expected to make a final push to expand the program this
week.

As Drudge puts it: “REPUBLICAN BETRAYAL: OBAMACARE FULLY FUNDED AMNESTY TOO!”

But no doubt Republican lawmakers will hasten to point out that there is no ADDITIONAL money for Obamacare. By Washington standards, that counts as a severe budget cut.

They’re not the good guys

The Senate report on the useless brutality and deception involved in the CIA’s interrogation program tends to support what those of us who opposed torture from the start have been saying all along:

In January 2003, 10 months into the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret prison program, the agency’s chief of interrogations sent an email to colleagues saying that the relentlessly brutal treatment of prisoners was a train wreck “waiting to happen and I intend to get the hell off the train before it happens.” He said he had told his bosses he had “serious reservations” about the program and no longer wanted to be associated with it “in any way.”

The bitter infighting in the C.I.A. interrogation program was only one symptom of the dysfunction, disorganization, incompetence, greed and deception described in a summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report. In more than 500 pages, the summary, released on Tuesday, paints a devastating picture of an agency that was ill equipped to take on the task of questioning Al Qaeda suspects, bungled the job and then misrepresented the results….

The report said the agency had evidently forgotten its own conclusion, sent to Congress in 1989, that “inhumane physical or psychological techniques are counterproductive because they do not produce intelligence and will probably result in false answers.” The Democratic Senate staff members who studied the post-Sept. 11 program came up with an identical assessment: that waterboarding, wall-slamming, nudity, cold and other ill treatment produced little information of value in preventing terrorism.

The report spends little time condemning torture on moral or legal grounds. Instead, it addresses mainly a practical question: Did torture accomplish anything of value? Looking at case after case, the report answers with an unqualified no.

I’m not exactly surprised. You may recall I wrote the following on WND back in 2006:

Consider the words of Winston Churchill, a man not well-known for shirking confrontation or combat, written after World War I while he was secretary of state for war:

All the horrors of all the ages were brought together, and not only armies but whole populations were thrust into the midst of them. The mighty educated States involved conceived – not without reason – that their very existence was at stake. Neither peoples nor rulers drew the line at any deed which they thought could help them to win. Germany, having let hell loose, kept well in the van of terror; but she was followed step by step by the desperate and ultimately avenging nations she had assailed. … When it was all over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.

It is those last words that most completely damn the Bush administration as barbarians unfit for leadership of the free world. Few would find appeals to national security very compelling if the president insisted that victory in the War That Dare Not Speak Its Name required feeding the armed forces on the flesh of fallen Iraqis, and yet there is very little evidence, historic or current, that indicates torture will be of any use in turning back the forces of expansionist Islam.

Enthusiastic use of the most brutal torture did not help the French hold Algeria against Islamic rebels, nor did it bring victory to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Debates about whether “water boarding” is more acceptable than the rack or thumbscrews are meaningless; the point is that civilized societies do not indulge in such activities since they are evil and effectively useless.

Hunt the trolls

Or the trolls will hunt you:

“I wanted to work towards a tech industry that exhibited true tolerance of everyone and allowed free expression, but Shanley and people like her have made it impossible,” Dickinson says. “The people in the tech industry who actually contribute to innovation need to realize that if they don’t fight back against the Shanleys of the industry, they’ll be allowing people like her to kill the goose who lays the golden eggs.

“[Former Mozilla CEO, forced out of his job for his objection to gay marriage] Brendan Eich is the canonical example. If they can force him out they can force anyone out, no matter their technological contributions.”

There are problems not only with Shanley Kane’s brand of feminism, which is sociopathic and divisive in the extreme, but with her approach to argument, too. It’s not just that she doesn’t like men discussing women’s issues. She doesn’t even like other women discussing them, complaining when she is not treated as the de facto authority on women in the technology industry, despite her loathsome treatment of everyone around her.

Another good article from Nero. Of course, it is pretty easy to deal with SJWs. You simply have to refuse to give them any ground. Don’t accept their assumptions, don’t allow them their assertions for the sake of argument, don’t accept their appeals to fairness or equality, and above all, don’t give them the inch that permits them to take the mile.

No matter how much they hate you, they will soon go in search of easier, weaker prey. Look at how every single SJW who used to attack me regularly has fallen almost entirely silent where I am concerned, despite there being considerably more people who read me now.

Vibrant romance

One guess why you haven’t seen much about this young white woman being burned alive in Mississippi:

Police are hoping that the final words said by a 19-year-old woman who was burned alive may lead them to her killer. Jessica Chambers was covered in flames when she was found on a road near to her home in the tiny community of Courtland, Mississippi on Saturday after leaving to get a bite to eat.

A passerby called 911 after seeing her car alight and when first responders arrived at the scene and found her covered in flames, she whispered a few words that detectives believe could lead them to her killer, WTOC reported.

Police have not disclosed what Chambers said or tried to say, but her father, Ben Chambers, told the channel she told them who was responsible for the horrifying crime. ‘She told them, she told them, told him who done it,’ he said.

She was walking along Herron Road, near Highway 51, and covered in flames when she was found, and was flown to Region One Health in Memphis but later died. Authorities said initial autopsy results reveal the girl died from severe burns that covered 98 per cent of her body.

Panola County Sheriff Dennis Darby said she had been doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire. Her father also said she had ‘a big gash on her head’.

‘They squirted lighter fluid down her throat and in her nose, and apparently they knocked her out,’ added Mr Chambers, a maintenance worker for the sheriff’s department.

Perhaps it was the KKK who were just so ANGRY that this white girl was involved with black men. Or a secret elite white fraternity at the University of Mississippi enacting a horrific pledging ritual. That’s probably why the mainstream media isn’t touching it. Probably. Regardless of who did it, I suspect there won’t be many who will fault that father if he slaughters every single member of the extended family of every single individual involved.

Banker #36, the Belgian

Zerohedge reports that the body of yet another banker has been found:

52-year-old Belgian Geert Tack – a private banker for ING who managed portfolios for wealthy individuals – was described as ‘impeccable’, ‘sporty’, ‘cared-for’, and ‘successful’ and so as Vermist reports, after disappearing a month ago, the appearance of his body off the coast of Ostend is surrounded by riddles. and was found dead this weekend off the coast of Ostend.

No report of nailgun, but there is some strangeness concerning his use of automobiles in the time leading up to his disappearance. And there is a possible # 37 in London:

A banker has died after becoming impaled on railings after falling 60ft from the window of a luxury penthouse in central London, which is next door to John Lennon’s former home. Police were called to the exclusive block of flats in Montagu Square in Marylebone at about 5.20pm yesterday, but were unable to save the man who was in his early fifties.

Firefighters had to help police cut through the five foot high metal railings with an angle grinder, as part of attempts to free the man. Metropolitan Police said the man’s death was not being treated as suspicious but confirmed enquiries were being carried out into the circumstances surrounding his death.

The media turns on the Dunham Horror

All right, granted, it’s Volokh and not some scion of the Post’s left-wing elite, but it’s still remarkable to see an institution of the liberal Left finally turn on the self-admitted child molester, Lena Dunham, due to her publisher belatedly admitting that her parts of her “memoir” are fictitious:

Appalling. The book wasn’t a novel; it was a memoir, offered to readers as such. The copyright page, which I suspect few people read, does say that “Some names and identifying details have been changed,” but it certainly doesn’t tell people which ones.

Indeed, early in the book, when she mentions a boyfriend of hers and labels him Jonah, she adds a footnote: “Name changed to protect the truly innocent.” Reasonable readers, it seems to me, reading the rest of the memoir, would assume that “Barry” — whose name wasn’t accompanied with any such footnote — was actually named Barry. Even if not all readers would so conclude, many would, and quite understandably so.

How could Dunham and Random House do this? How could an author and a publisher — again, of a self-described memoir, not a work of fiction — describe a supposed rape by a person, give a (relatively rare) first name and enough identifying details that readers could easily track the person down, and not even mention that “Barry” wasn’t this person’s real name?

Say even that Dunham had forgotten that there really was a prominent Oberlin conservative named Barry back then. Surely it was obviously possible that, if one makes up a first name, someone real, who matches the other easily Google-findable characteristics, might have that name. Given the gravity of the charge, how can one possibly rely on a statement on the copyright page as the only hint that this particular item in the memoir is inaccurate?

The most amusing part is the addendum: “Folks, I think Lena Dunham acted badly here — but some commenters’ view
that she’s ugly or too fat or what have you seems to me to have little
to do with the merits of the matter.”

Actually, it has almost everything to do with them. Let’s face it, if the Dunham Horror wasn’t a creature being aggressively pushed on America by the media because she is fat, ugly, Jewish, and of the ideological Left, no one would have paid any attention to her rape fantasies in the first place. She is what a small, but influential group within the media wanted Americans to take for “the voice of her generation”.

And America collectively said: “yeah, not so much.”

Sie sind das Volk

I’m fairly certain the Germans want to preserve Germany’s Western Christian culture, not any nonexistent “Judeo-Christian Culture”. But in this timely piece, notice the interesting use of the term “migrant” rather than “immigrant”.

A new type of anti-immigration protest is sweeping across Germany, as
thousands take to the streets against what they say is the growing
“Islamisation” of the country.

The new protests, which began in the city of Dresden in the former East
Germany, feature no neo-Nazi slogans and have nothing to do with the
traditional far right. Instead the demonstrators have adopted the old rallying call of the protests
against the East German communist regime that brought down the Berlin Wall
25 years ago, “Wir sind das Volk”, or “We are the people”. They say they
want to preserve Germany’s Judeo-Christian Western culture.

The protests come as Bavaria’s ruling Christian Social Union (CSU) is seeking
to distance itself from a draft proposal for its party conference which said
that immigrants should speak German not only in public, but at home as well. Germany is now the second most popular destination in the world for migrants,
after the US, and the country is struggling to cope with an unprecedented
influx of asylum-seekers.

You know, it strikes me that if you don’t want to see a revival of National Socialism around the world in general, and in Germany in particular, encouraging the invasion of various European and European-descended countries by non-Europeans is probably an astonishingly bad idea.

As always, diversity first breeds discomfort, then anger, then hatred, and finally, bloodshed. Most Germans had no opinion at all about Islam 30 years ago. In another 30 years, they’ll be dispassionately and efficiently slaughtering large quantities of Turks and Arabs, and the world will be wringing its hands and wondering how this could ever happen again.

I’ve asked it before and I’m sure I’ll have to ask it again: Where the HELL do you think all those ethnically homogenous nations came from in the first place?

Israel for the Jews. Germany for the Germans. France for the French. England for the English. Nationalism and respect for national borders is the world’s only hope for a reasonable facsimile of peace. If segregation is not accomplished peacefully, it will be accomplished violently. If the entire written record of human history is any guide, it will be accomplished one way or another.

The perils of philosophy

John Wright challenges the concept of IQ:

Since I am apparently one of those self deceived idiots, allow me to say that the predictive ability of people who do well on one kind of intellectual test to do well on another kind of intellectual test is not science. It is not the empirical measurement of an observable reality.

I could with even greater accuracy predict that the winners of beauty pageants will be shapely women who are in favor of world peace.

I can also predict she will wear a crown and carry a bouquet.

No matter how accurate such a prediction, it is not science. Beauty is not a thing that can be measured and neither is the degree of craving for world peace.

It is (at best) confirming a correlation. This is not the same as Newton determining the laws of gravity from which accurate descriptions of falling apples and orbiting planets can be deduced mathematically. 

Such are the perils of a philosopher wading out into the perilous waters of science. What is not observable about an intellectual test? What is less empirical about a percentage of correct answers than a quantity of inches or a measure of weight? And, of course, the science of intelligence goes far beyond people taking two or more intellectual tests. It is no less scientific than any other branch of genetic science, in which the birth of a baby with blue eyes can be predicted or the disease of a child yet unconceived can be anticipated on the basis of his parents’ genetics.

Science does not require precisely defined measurements to be science. It need only be observable, testable, and repeatable. The fact that it is harder to agree upon a measure for intelligence than one for height does not mean that intelligence is not observable or that the predictive model is unreliable. John appears to be erroneously targeting the fuzzy metric presently used to quantify intelligence and thinking this is sufficient to call the entire science into question.

Would he also claim that weight does not exist or is unscientific? After all, it is even harder to predict the adult weight of a baby than his IQ on the basis of his parents. As other commenters have pointed out, we have a pretty good idea of the heritability of g, so how can it be reasonably asserted that there is no use of the scientific process being utilized? We have seen and observed a considerable number of relevant hypotheses being tested, both formally and informally, after all.

And beauty, at least in some of its forms, can be measured, as the picture below demonstrates.

The banality of US evil

ESR rightly identifies a problem much worse than racism:

Eric Garner was black. The policeman who choked him to death was white.

Some people want to make this horror about race. I find myself wishing they were right – that just once, the racial grievance peddlers weren’t basically making up inflammatory crap that canonizes thug trash like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Because as bad as violent racism is, I’m afraid that what actually killed Eric Garner was something far worse.

The truly terrifying thing about Eric Garner’s death is that I don’t think the cops in that video hated anybody. They were just doing their job. And their job included strangling a man to death for having sold “loosies” – untaxed cigarettes. Something he wasn’t doing when he was killed; he had just broken up a fight that the police came to investigate.

Garner had just broken up a fight. The police hassled him, based on his record as a (gasp!) vendor of untaxed cigarettes, and when he protested the force of law came down on him and snuffed him.

In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a book called Democracy In America that has been justly celebrated for its perception about the young American republic ever since. In it, he warned of the dangers of what he called “soft despotism” – that “covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules”, all justified in soothing ways to achieve worthy objectives. Such as discouraging people from smoking by heavily taxing cigarettes.

Eric Garner died in a New York minute because “soft despotism” turned hard enough to kill him in cold blood. There was no anger there, no hate; the police simply failed to grasp the moral disproportion between the “crimes” he wasn’t even committing at the time and their use of force. And an investigating grand jury did no better.

Violent racists, as evil as they are, generally understand on some level that they’re doing wrong. That understanding is written all over the excuses they make. These cops didn’t need an excuse. They were doing their job. They were enforcing the law. The casual, dispassionate, machinelike brutality with which Garner was strangled reveals a moral vacuum more frightening than mere racism could ever be.

Americans find themselves living in a country where people can be freely killed, without hesitation or consequences, by the police for the “crime” of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. To call it “the Land of the Free” is darkly morbid sarcasm indeed.

The anger expressed in the Ferguson riots was misplaced, but not entirely illegitimate. There is a serious cancer in the United States and it has fully metastasized in the police forces across the country. It is yet another sign that all is not right on Main Street USA these days.