Horizontality and the keeper’s friend

Last weekend, I had a great game and Ender’s was merely passable. This weekend, things were reversed as I had a frustrating game and he did very well. After last week’s two-goal performance, I had high expectations when I saw that the other team’s goalie was older and not very good. I knew they had a decent defense anchored by a fast Portuguese sweeper, but I also knew I could score on them since I had a goal and an assist in both previous games against them.

But various factors conspired to deny me. The first chance blown was when a rebound bounced wide rather than to me waiting for it in the center, the second when a beautiful pass from the other striker was ruined by a stealthy two-handed push in the back from the sweeper that knocked me off balance just as the ball arrived. The third was a phantom offsides call, the fourth when instead of simply passing the ball forward, our attacking midfielder decided to shoot the ball wide, and the fifth when I had a clear run on the left side of goal, but badly scuffed the shot under pressure from the sweeper. We’d dominated the run of play, but nevertheless the score was tied at 3-3 when our captain replaced me 15 minutes into the second half. As I feared, that promptly shut down our attack, as we no longer had anyone on the field to stretch it horizontally or vertically. We spent the last half hour under constant pressure and wound up losing 5-3.

I know it probably confuses the guys to repeatedly observe that taking off a lesser player for a better one reliably provides negative results, but it all comes down to geometry. It’s not just that I have more speed, but also that if I am the attacker further away from the ball, I move out wide when we attack, which usually draws two defenders after me. The outside defender has to stay with me, and since they know I can beat him, the inside defender also has to cheat 10-15 meters in that direction as well. Not only do we get whatever opportunities are created when the ball is passed my way, but more importantly, taking 1.5 defenders out of the equation creates the space our midfielders need to bring up the ball and attack.

For example, there is a very good reason that an important aspect of the Barcelona tika-taka approach often involved one wing standing literally on the left chalk and the other on the extreme right side of the field. When you’ve got Lionel Messi in the middle, the single most useful thing you can do if you are not Messi is to pull a defender wide with you and leave the man room to operate. Fortunately, one of our new attackers has good speed, so I think I can teach him to do what I’m doing and we can stop playing a half-court game when I’m not on the field.

Ender and his defense started their game in a very shaky manner. They very nearly gave up a goal in the first minute, and the opponents had a pair of attackers with enough speed to make the defenders visibly nervous. One nominal backpass from the right defender (who subsequently had a very good game) was more akin to a shot than a pass; Ender had to volley it clear as it bounced. However, I was coaching from behind the goal and pointed out to Ender that they were attacking pretty much the same way every time up their left, so he blunted its effect by aggressively coming out of goal to intercept passes into the box, or, on one occasion, stuffing an attacker one-on-one at the top of the box. He also made a fantastic diving save on a low ground shot towards the right post after a corner, then pushed another shot onto the near post when the left defender was beaten. He did a nice job of intercepting a corner kick by leaping up and slapping it away before an attacker could get a head on it, and then was fortuitously bailed out by the crossbar on a free kick that was too high for him.

After ten minutes of Ender and the defense withstanding moderately heavy pressure, the star player finally did his patented “run through four defenders and pass off to an open man” for the first goal against the run of play. That shook the other team, and a second goal on the first corner kick they gave up – which, to Ender’s amusement, I correctly called in advance – broke them entirely. It was 3-0 at halftime and Ender didn’t have much to do in the second half as his team put in five more goals. Then, as is usual in such situations, the defenders got greedy to score and lazy about getting back, thereby leading to two goals that he had no serious chance of stopping, both from inside the 6-meter box. They ruined his chance at a clean sheet, but his team put in one more goal to close out the game at 9-2. It looked like an easy win after the fact, but as I pointed out after the game, if they had scored one or two of those early chances, the game might well have gone the other way.

One amusing note. The one girl on the team, who has played with these boys for years, is hopelessly overmatched but hard-working and uncomplaining, scored two goals as a result of her perfect positioning at the far post. It’s funny to watch her play, because she knows exactly what to do whenever she gets the ball: immediately pass it to the star player. The moment the ball is heading her way, he accelerates towards her and she will find him and pass it to him even if he’s got three opponents around him. After she scored the first time, all the guys mobbed her and the star, who had cross the ball to her, nearly knocked her down by enthusiastically pounding her on the back. The truth is that the boys don’t mind girls playing with them at all so long as they play hard and play on the boys’ terms without any expectations of special treatment.

Two wins in two games as the starter, with three goals allowed per game, isn’t bad at this level. The regular goalie will be back in two weeks, but Ender appears to have secured his place as next year’s starter in the interim. I think he’ll be entirely content to return to his role as backup goalie and substitute defender for the rest of the season. The new coach clearly appreciates his multi-positional utility, and it’s nice to see that someone who knows what he is doing is finally in charge.

No need to be a whiny bitch

I was contacted about contributing to a forthcoming anthology this week. When I informed the anthologist that while I was willing to contribute to it, I was not of the particular persuasion being featured, the anthologist explained that she had been misinformed about me and politely disinvited me.

I did not write her an angry email explaining why the anthology needed more diversity. I am not going to launch an organization or a YouTube channel dedicated to increasing the diversity of her anthology. I am not going to angrily denounce the absence of people like me from the collection or complain about her insufficient inclusivity or her failure to implement a program of outreach to Native American authors.

This is how civilized adults who respect the basic human right of free association behave. Blacks, women, and homosexuals would do well to take note. If an editor doesn’t want your work for one reason or another, it’s not something that justifies taking offense, let alone an angry political campaign aimed at destroying the editor’s ability to perform his core function, which is selecting the authors he wishes to publish. This is true even if you are being rejected simply because of who, or what, you are.

VPFL Week 3

75 Mounds View Meerkats (2-1)
47 FavreDollar Footlongs (1-2)

64 Greenfield Grizzlies (3-0)
36 KING (0-3)

82 Bane Cornshuckers (2-1)
74 Boot Hill Bogs (0-3)

67 Texas Chili Eaters (3-0)
58 RR Redbeards (2-1)

78 Gilbert Gamma Rays (2-1)
60 Clerical Errs (0-3)

Also, do NOT talk to Steve Smith. Do not make eye contact with him. If he happens to approach, hold very still, remain very quiet, and hope he goes away.

“Those who hate you will rule over you”

I fail to see how encouraging African aliens to rule over white Americans is going to reduce racial strife. Or work any better than it has in Zimbabwe.

Kulane, a 32-year-old graduate of St. John’s University, is one of two Somali council candidates this year, marking the first time that Somali-American citizens have filed for city election here. A third is running for school board. By all accounts, it’s a significant step in this central Minnesota town of about 65,000, which has had a history of cultural tension with the immigrant group.

“It’s a sign of the times,” said Stephen Philion, professor of sociology at St. Cloud State University and chair of the nonprofit Greater Minnesota Worker Center. “They’ve organized the way that other [immigrant] groups previously have organized. Now they’re looking for a seat at the table … They’re a group that should no longer be taken as outsiders. They are St. Cloud.”

Philion said the racial hostility they faced may have had unintended consequences of giving the Somali community “a greater sense of commitment to fighting for political power.”

Kulane, who has lived in the city’s Ward 1 since 2006, is careful not to campaign on issues of diversity…. The racial strife dates to as early as 2002, a few years after Somalis began moving to the area in greater numbers.

A significant step to be sure. But not for the better. I wonder how it is that people from a notoriously failed state are suddenly deemed worthy of political leadership in the United States due to nothing more than the miracle of geographic translocation. And keep in mind that for the most part, alien refugees are the losers of the wars in their homelands; the USA is actually the recipient of the least capable parties. They were outsmarted by barbarian warlords running a Third World failed state, they’ve done nothing but live off welfare ever since, and now they’re going to run things in the West?

Then again, if the people of Saint Cloud are dumb enough to a) permit themselves to be invaded by Somalis and b) actually elect them to positions of leadership, they will deserve to dwell in the New Mogadishu that will result.

It’s increasingly looking like we may not make it until 2033 before the violence starts. If one can’t escape the alien invasion in St. Cloud, Minnesota, then it can no longer be escaped and five decades of retreat from the inner cities has ceased to be an option. Considering that Americans were willing to kill hundreds of thousands of people to keep French children from growing up in German-occupied France, I cannot imagine what they will be willing to do in order to prevent their children and grandchildren from growing up in African-occupied America.

The Baby Boomers won’t do anything, of course, because they collectively don’t give a damn about succeeding generations. But GenX does and will.

The cults of faux science

Jenkins, Thiele, and Douthat need not worry. There is no deficit of cults these days, they simply tend to sell themselves in the “science” market rather than the “religion” market. As Steve Sailer observes correctly, this is hardly new:

Today, for example, it seems obvious that Freudianism was a cult, but it was treated with immense respect in post-WWII America. Vladimir Nabokov had the aristocratic self-assurance to scoff publicly and repeatedly at Freud, but how many other men of reputation dared?

For example, few called Stephen Jay Gould a cult leader, but the man who told his followers — “Say it five times before breakfast tomorrow; more important, understand it as the center of a network of implication: ‘Human equality is a contingent fact of history’” — can perhaps be understood as the type of soothsayer who tries to hijack the prestige of science for his own anti-scientific purposes in the tradition of Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Ayn Rand, and L. Ron Hubbard.

Indeed, how can one possibly look at either the global climate change cult or the “marriage equality” cult or the magic geography cult or the politically correct pinkshirts and conclude that people are any less disinclined to believe in bizarre and obvious nonsense than 100 or 200 years ago? To say nothing of Keynesianism, which is quite literally nothing more than Freudian concepts applied to economics.

It’s a little surprising that no one ever notices the link between Freud and Keynes, but this is most likely because it seems almost no one besides me ever seems to bother actually going back to read the original source, The General Theory of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money rather than a) an Austrian critique or b) a Neo-Keynesian extrapolation.

Even those few who get it, such as the author of “Keynes on the Relation of the Capitalist “Vulgar Passions” to Financial Crises” (PDF), don’t seem to trace the Freud-Keynes link back to its source. Consider:

“It is shown that, generally speaking, the actual level of output and employment depends, not on the capacity to produce or on the pre-existing level of incomes,
but on the current decisions to produce which depend in turn on current decisions to invest and on present expectations of current and prospective consumption. Moreover, as soon as we know the propensity to consume and to save (as I call it), that is to say the result for the community as a whole of the individual psychological inclinations as to how to dispose of given incomes, we can calculate what level of incomes, and therefore what level of output and employment, is in profit-equilibrium with a given level of new investment; out of which develops the doctrine of the Multiplier….

The fundamental psychological law, upon which we are entitled to depend with great confidence both a priori from our knowledge of human nature and from the detailed facts of experience, is that men are disposed, as a rule and on the average, to increase their consumption as their income increases, but not by as much as the increase in their income.”

Keynesianism is nothing more than applied Freudianism. And considering the spread of its current influence, combined with the tens of millions of adherents to other, equally ridiculous false sciences, it should be clear that there is no deficit of cults these days, they just don’t have the common decency to give themselves ridiculous appellations and keep a safe distance away from sane people anymore.

The lie of democracy

Spain opposes democratic self-determination:

The president of Spain’s powerful northeastern region of Catalonia on Saturday formally called an independence referendum, the latest secession push in Europe and one of the most serious challenges to the Spanish state in recent years. Catalan leader Artur Mas signed the decree to call the referendum in a solemn ceremony in the regional government headquarters in Barcelona, flanked by most of the region’s political leaders who support the vote….

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was flying back
from a state visit to China when Mas made his declaration. He has
repeatedly said Spain’s constitution doesn’t allow referendums on
sovereignty that don’t include all Spaniards, and experts say the
Constitutional Court is almost certain to declare the vote illegal.

This is why it is impossible to take people who claim to support democracy seriously. Whether it is the proper definition of marriage or independence that is on the table, when push actually comes to shove, they usually find a way to invalidate the very Will of the People upon which their very legitimacy rests.

Ethnic cleansing in Europe

The Muslims are already actively engaging in it.

In the Bury Park area of Luton, Muslims have been accused of “ethnic cleansing” by harassing non-Muslims to the point that many of them move out of Muslim neighborhoods. In the West Midlands, two Christian preachers have been accused of “hate crimes” for handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham. In Leytonstone in east London, the Muslim extremist Abu Izzadeen heckled the former Home Secretary John Reid by saying: “How dare you come to a Muslim area.”

In France, large swaths of Muslim neighborhoods are now considered “no-go” zones by French police. At last count, there are 751 Sensitive Urban Zones (Zones Urbaines Sensibles, ZUS), as they are euphemistically called. A complete list of the ZUS can be found on a French government website, complete with satellite maps and precise street demarcations. An estimated 5 million Muslims live in the ZUS, parts of France over which the French state has lost control.

Muslim immigrants are taking control of other parts of France too. In Paris and other French cities with high Muslim populations, such as Lyons, Marseilles and Toulouse, thousands of Muslims are closing off streets and sidewalks (and by extension, are closing down local businesses and trapping non-Muslim residents in their homes and offices) to accommodate overflowing crowds for Friday prayers. Some mosques have also begun broadcasting sermons and chants of “Allahu Akbar” via loudspeakers into the streets.

The weekly spectacles, which have been documented by dozens of videos posted on Youtube.com (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), and which have been denounced as an “occupation without tanks or soldiers,” have provoked anger and disbelief. But despite many public complaints, local authorities have declined to intervene because they are afraid of sparking riots.

In the Belgian capital of Brussels (which is 20% Muslim), several immigrant neighborhoods have become “no-go” zones for police officers, who frequently are pelted with rocks by Muslim youth. In the Kuregem district of Brussels, which often resembles an urban war zone, police are forced to patrol the area with two police cars: one car to carry out the patrols and another car to prevent the first car from being attacked. In the Molenbeek district of Brussels, police have been ordered not to drink coffee or eat a sandwich in public during the Islamic month of Ramadan.

In Germany, Chief Police Commissioner Bernhard Witthaut, in an August 1 interview with the newspaper Der Westen, revealed that Muslim immigrants are imposing “no-go” zones in cities across Germany at an alarming rate.

The interviewer asked Witthaut: “Are there urban areas – for example in the Ruhr – districts and housing blocks that are “no-go areas,” meaning that they can no longer be secured by the police?” Witthaut replied: “Every police commissioner and interior minister will deny it. But of course we know where we can go with the police car and where, even initially, only with the personnel carrier. The reason is that our colleagues can no longer feel safe there in twos, and have to fear becoming the victim of a crime themselves. We know that these areas exist. Even worse: in these areas crimes no longer result in charges. They are left ‘to themselves.’ Only in the worst cases do we in the police learn anything about it. The power of the state is completely out of the picture.”

If you think it will not happen in the USA, think again. There are already 7 million Muslims in America, more than the 6 million in German, the 4 million in France, or the 3 million in the UK.

The sixth-most evil author

John C. Wright was not only voted the sixth-greatest living SF author, he was also named #6 on a list of evil authors, led by the evilly evil Orson Scott Card:

Though not as well known as Orson Scott Card, sci-fi author John C. Wright has been even more vocal about his distaste for homosexuality. After the SyFy Channel promised to be diverse in its portrayal of gay people, Wright took to LiveJournal with a shockingly homophobic post: “Why are you willing to tolerate sexual perversion but not racism? In a world with no standards, what makes a malfunction of love higher on your standard than a malfunction of hate? Is an irrational lust and longing to mimic the mating act with a sex with which one cannot mate, at its root, any more or less disconnected to reality than an irrational fear and hatred of a Negro?” He also compared being gay to bestiality, necrophilia, and the sexual abuse of children.

As the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil League of Evil, I can only approve, of course. I am also amused by all the great writers of the past that were omitted; if “distaste for homosexuality” is sufficient to land one on the list of evil bigots, then the greater part of the contributors to the Western literary canon will necessarily need to be included as well.

Of course, the Bible speaks on this in the Book of Isaiah: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

To put it bluntly, if you are not being labeled evil by the world these days, you should probably reflect upon what it is you are doing wrong. And with regards to homosexuality, it’s hardly new. To assert that its increasing public acceptance is an indication of human progress is to demonstrate one’s historical ignorance. As with an overabundance of credit, open and culturally permissible homosexuality is an indicator of late stage societal decadance. It’s not a cause of rapid civilizational decline, but it is a warning sign that such a decline is in the works.

Systemic corruption at the Fed

The fact that the Federal Reserve is the primary culprit in the credit disaster that is the U.S. economy – the current credit demand gap is $30.2 trillion – is no secret to any regular reader of this blog. But the egregious way in which the Fed employees have blithely gone about breaking the law is a little startling:

That (ed: the public’s glazed-eye look when you speak of financial reform) may very well change today, for today — Friday, Sept. 26 — the radio program “This American Life” will air a jaw-dropping story about Wall Street regulation, and the public will have no trouble at all understanding it.

The Fed encourages its employees to keep their heads down, to obey their managers and to appease the banks. That is, bank regulators failed to do their jobs properly not because they lacked the tools but because they were discouraged from using them. For instance, in one meeting a Goldman employee expressed the view that “once clients are wealthy enough certain consumer laws don’t apply to them.” After that meeting, Segarra turned to a fellow Fed regulator and said how surprised she was by that statement — to which the regulator replied, “You didn’t hear that.”

The US economy is entirely corrupt and is run solely for the benefit of the bankers. This has always been the case, but it should have been entirely obvious to everyone after Ben Bernanke “rescued” the housing market by giving money to the banks rather than to the homeowners.

And Karl Denninger corrects the report, pointing out that bank regulators were not discouraged from using their regulatory tools, but were fired if they did their jobs and used them.

Diversity in action

Multiculturalism and religious pluralism in Oklahoma works out about as well as one would expect:

Sgt. Jeremy Lewis says the alleged suspect, 30-year-old Alton Nolen had just been fired when he drove to the front of the business, hit a vehicle and walked inside. He walked into the front office area where he met 54-year-old Colleen Hufford and began attacking her with a knife.

Sgt. Lewis confirms the type of knife used in the attack is the same kind used at the plant. Lewis confirms that Hufford was stabbed several times and that Nolen “severed her head.”

At that point, Lewis claims Nolen met 43-year-old Traci Johnson and began attacking her with the same knife. Officials say at that point, Mark Vaughan, an Oklahoma County reserve deputy and a former CEO of the business, shot him as he was actively stabbing Johnson.

The FBI is now looking into Nolen’s background after his former
co-workers said he tried to convert them to Islam after recently
converting himself.

A convert too. It would appear that diversity is a virus one can catch. Now that we’ve got Islamic beheadings from London to Oklahoma, it may be time to rethink the rejection of America as a Christian nation. Human nature observably abhors a religious vaccuum.