Female Supremacy: The Endless Quest

It seems Martin van Creveld may need to reconsider the title of his forthcoming work for Castalia House in light of how feminists are not even pretending feminism is about equality anymore:

Girls write more complex programs and learn more about coding than boys when it comes to making computer games, a study has found.

A group of 12 – 13-year old pupils spent eight weeks developing their own 3D role playing games as part of the University of Sussex study. Dr Kate Howland and Dr Judith Good developed Flip, a programming language which uses a simple interface to help the pupils string together scripts, basic programs which trigger a change within the game, such as a message popping up once a treasure chest is opened.

The girls used seven triggers within the games, almost twice as many as the boys of the group, and were much more successful at creating complex scripts with two or more parts and conditional clauses. Boys had a tendency to build their triggers around when a character said something, the most first and most simple trigger the class learned. 

The games were created using software made available with fantasy game
Neverwinter Nights 2, while Flip also translated the programs into English
to help the students understand the scripts they’d created.

In other words, if adults dumb down a male activity and require girls to do it, the female interest in doing well scholastically and obediently pleasing their authority figures will cause them to outperform boys who just want to shoot people and blow things up.

Naturally, this not-at-all cherry-planted-watered-and-carefully-harvested discovery completely supersedes forty years and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of economic activity created by young men who never had to be taught or encouraged to do anything. Many of us old school developers were actively discouraged from doing what we did; some of us don’t even have college degrees of any kind.

Did you even need to see the names to know that the “scientists” were women? This is precisely why the big push to get more women in STEM is certain to fail. Even when they manage to shepherd women through the educational process, most of them turn out to be more interested in fashion and thought-policing than they are in, you know, anything that resembles actual science.

Star Wars 2015

I haven’t paid any attention whatsoever to the Star Wars universe since seeing what was called Episode I. Not the games, not the movies, not the animated LEGO cartoons, nothing. So, I’ll have to wait and see what the verdict is on this Episode VII before I even think about bothering to see it. It would be nice to think that Disney isn’t going to make an even bigger fiasco of the franchise than George Lucas did, but I’m not particularly optimistic. Let’s face it, Disney movies all have one basic theme these days: the supreme importance of being yourself.

Bubblicious

They’re partying like it’s 1999:

Many of the “users” on social media sites aren’t real people at all – they’re celebrity staff tweeting on behalf of their employer, or PRs promoting a company, or even fake accounts for people that don’t exist at all. In fact, half of all Twitter accounts created in 2013 have already been deleted.

These fake accounts are often created by unscrupulous firms that will beef up your follower count in return for cold hard cash. “Twitter is in the centre of public interest and politicians or companies are often ranked by number of followers or re-tweets or the like – so, there is a whole “web optimisation” industry offering services to make you look better on Twitter – everybody can buy 10,000 followers for $5,” Pfeffer said.

Emphasis added. I’ve been using Twitter more over the last few weeks thanks to GamerGate, and while it’s a useful tool, its utility is strictly limited. I’m a little surprised Google hasn’t launched a competitor yet, but the problem with Twitter is the same as it is with all self-expression platforms: most people simply don’t have all that much to say.

We all know why the stock market bubble exists; all that Fed money has to go somewhere. But an economy based on the value of companies making it possible to pass very short virtual texts around strikes me as one of the few things dumber than simply making leaves legal tender.

Thieves with badges

The U.S. police are not longer entitled to absolutely any respect or presumption of innocence anymore. They are, quite literally, trained highwaymen:

The stop of the gamblers in Iowa on April 15, 2013, illustrates some of the highway interdiction methods in use nationwide. Earlier
that morning, an officer in Illinois alerted an Iowa trooper to a
suspicious red car with Nevada license plates driving west, court
records show. When the Altima appeared in Iowa, Trooper Simmons followed
it for several miles before pulling it over. He told the motorists that
they had been stopped for failing to signal when they passed a black
SUV.

Simmons said he was issuing a warning for the failure to
signal. After handing over the paperwork, he said the stop was over.
Then he asked the driver, Newmerzhycky, if he had “time for just a
couple quick questions.”

Police who specialize in highway
interdiction use casual conversations to avoid triggering legal
questions about the length of stops. If the conversations are
consensual, courts consider the added delay to be legal.

Highway
police are trained to use the chats as an opportunity to take stock of
alleged “indicators” of criminal activity, including nervous speech
patterns, a pulsing carotid artery and inconsistencies in stories. They
are also trained to seek permission for warrantless searches.

Notice that the video proved that Trooper Simmons was lying when he told them why he pulled the two gamblers over. They were correct to doubt his veracity and lie to him in return. Never answer a policeman’s questions. Always ask him if you are arrested, and if not, if you are free to go. If you can, video every interaction with them. They are not the good guys. They are, at best, thieves who prey upon the public.

Is this a satire too?

I invite the reader to compare the difference in the amount of effort McRapey has put in over the years in repeatedly denouncing me for what he imagines to be my White Supremacy, Dudebroism, Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, and general Dipshittery with his observed reluctance to similarly denounce his friend Jian Gomeshi, upon whose Canadian radio show he appeared to discuss my imaginary crimes:

The Toronto Police Sex Crimes Unit was rather less reticent:

On Friday, October 31, 2014, Toronto Police Service Sex Crimes started an investigation into several allegations of sexual assault. On Wednesday, November 26, 2014, Jian Ghomeshi, 47, of Toronto, surrendered to police. He was charged with:

1) four counts of Sexual Assault

2) Overcome Resistance – Choking

He is scheduled to appear in court early this afternoon. We will notify the media of the court location well in advance of the appearance. 

Now, John Scalzi is a self-admitted rapist (“I’m a rapist. I’m one of those men who likes to force myself on women
without their consent or desire and then batter them sexually.”) so perhaps that might explain his reluctance to repeatedly and vociferously denounce an actual sex assailant. Again. One can observe that the list of sex criminals with whom he is known to be associated has grown rapidly in the last year:

  • Samuel Delany, SFWA Grand Master
  • Marion Zimmer Bradley, SFWA
  • Ed Kramer, SFWA
  • Jian Gomeshi

There will almost surely be more in the months and years to come. My money would be on a Jim Hines-related scandal, as he not only looks creepy, but has a passion for rape-counseling that strikes me as suspiciously akin to the single, forty-something Assistant Scoutmaster who loves nothing more than to take young boys camping. Perhaps it is merely a case of infelicitous physiognomy, but you have to admit, Hines looks like Central Casting’s idea of a sexual offender. (Seriously, McCreepy, you absolutely need a new PR shot. About the only thing that would make it more damning would be books by Nabokov, Breen, and MZB on the bookshelf behind you.)  Nor can one excuse McRapey on the grounds of “guilt by association” because guilt by association with me is something to which he has repeatedly appealed in attempting to tar Larry Correia and others.

So, is this “satire” again or simply sweet irony?

A misguided manifesto

Nearly 20 years ago, the national media was abuzz with the publication of the Unabomber’s manifesto. The editors at the St. Paul Pioneer Press wanted someone to read and analyze it, but the task proved to be beyond the ability of its columnists and journalists. Then the Technology Editor had the bright idea of having their twenty-something games columnist have a look at it, thereby resulting in the only time my name appeared on the Pioneer Press Op/Ed page.

I found this when I was digging through some of my old game review columns that I’ve been gradually scanning and putting up at Recommend. I thought perhaps it might be of interest to the sort of hardcore readers who will swing by today as well as those who used to read my WND column to see how my thought processes have been fairly consistent over the years.

Unabomber misses how technology aids freedom
St. Paul Pioneer Press
October 4, 1995

While the Washington Post’s publication of the Unabomber’s treatise, “Industrial Society and its Future,” has attracted much attention and commentary, it is unfortunate that most of the discussion has revolved around the question of publication rather than the manifesto itself.

The publication issue is not only of little interest to anyone outside the newsrooms, but also will resolve itself soon, as Unabomber imitators will either begin to crawl out from under their rocks, or they will not.

But the treatise is not worthy of attention so much for the macabre means through which it reached the mainstream media as for the concepts it contains. The Unabomber’s discussion of modern leftist psychology is not only thought-provoking but insightful, while his indictment of the evils brought about by industrial society carry more weight than the critiques put forth by latter-day Marxists. Nevertheless, when it comes to the issue of technology and human freedom, the Unabomber goes astray.

The manifesto traces many of the psycho-social problems of modern society to the Industrial Revolution. Since technology has made it unnecessary or impossible for humans to support themselves independently, it prevents them from exercising the natural Power Process of goal setting and attainment. (The “Power Process” is a concept that psychologists say is necessary for human mental health. The “Power Process” is the natural need of humans to exert some degree of control over their own destiny.) This inability to exercise the Power Process leads inevitably to the loss of dignity and human autonomy. The central point of the treatise thus revolves around the inherent conflict between technological development and individual freedom.

The Unabomber sees the seductive nature of technology as a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom. While each new technology appears desirable by itself, the totality of societal-technological advance slowly envelops us, whether we actively choose to accept it or not. As we become dependent on the new technologies, government steps in and regulates access to them, removing even limited opportunity to exercise the Power Process and eventually resulting in the reduction of human beings to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.

What this theory ignores is that technology is a double-edged sword. Far from being the inevitable tool of government repression, technology has historically shown itself to be a primary force in providing freedom and power to the people. The monopolistic power of the medieval Catholic Church could not have been broken without the printing press, just as the omnipresent television cameras recently helped Boris Yeltsin and the infant Russian democracy movement survive the last reaction of the Soviet hardliners.

Governments and other would-be oppressors may use technology, but they are also afraid of it in the people’s hands. Witness our own government’s fear of high-level encryption software and its tawdry attempts to force the Clipper encryption chip on us. The Clipper chip would have allowed the FBI and other government agencies to read any data supposedly encrypted by the public. God forbid that we should send e-mail without the FBI being able to read it!

And the Chinese government has a tiger by the tail as it learns how difficult it is to allow free technological development and still keep the masses under control. The point is that technology can be a force for freedom as well as a weapon against it.

To prevent us from being turned into cogs in the techno-industrial machine, the Unabomber’s manifesto prescribes a return to a more natural state where our time would be spent exercising the Power Process by surviving via primitive methods, so we would no longer need to find surrogate means of exercising the Process. By “surrogate means,” he meant art, science, sports and anything not immediately related to survival. One wonders where the dignity and autonomy are to be found in the primitive life that Hobbes once characterized as nasty, brutish and short.

This regressive longing for a return to the natural state is nothing new. At the very least it echoes back 200 years to Rousseau. But human nature is very much a part of nature too, and like the Left he disdains, the Unabomber argues his way into the totalitarian corner of making choices for people in order to preserve their freedom to choose. George Orwell would have been proud.

But truly autonomous freedom, the freedom to choose and to exercise the Power Process also means the freedom to choose poorly. If Americans are working harder and longer than before, it is not because technology forces them to do so, but because many of us have decided to work more in order to pursue the larger TV, the BMW or the second home. These decisions to pursue things we do not need may well be foolish, but they are not the Unabomber’s to make. They are ours.

Day writes a Sunday technology column for the Pioneer Press.

Happy Thanksgiving

Unlike the Left, we of the Right don’t despise our families and prefer the company of drunken strangers to them. But that doesn’t meant there is never an amount of tension involved in a day of unusually close proximity with a group of people to whom we are related, but with whom we don’t necessarily have all that much otherwise in common. So, it may be helpful to review last year’s Holiday Survival guide:

If you are a man:

  • Remember that the women are putting in a lot of work and are feeling a lot of stress. This is not the time to remember things at the last minute or lament how things were done differently when you were a child. Avoid throwing curve balls.
  •  Don’t tell her to relax. She’s not going to do so anymore than you are during a hard-fought basketball game. Holiday-hosting can perhaps be best understood as a competitive sport for women, even if the only competitors are in her mind.
  •  Ask her if there is anything you can do twice per day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Simply having someone willing to run out to the store once or twice, if necessary, can save her considerable time and reduce tensions.
  •  Pour yourself a glass of wine as soon as it gets dark. Offer her one. She’ll probably need it.
  •  Don’t let her get away with snapping at you or anyone else. The objective is to be helpful and considerate, not a doormat.

If you are a woman:

  • Try to remember that it’s a celebration, not a competition, and the world will not end if a particular dish is not served or something doesn’t go exactly the way you planned it.
  • The only person who can ruin the holiday for yourself is you. In fact, the only person who is likely to ruin the holiday for everyone else is you. Don’t be that woman.
  • If someone is taking pictures or video, just smile. Drawing additional attention to yourself by complaining and protesting looks far more ridiculous than any bedhead or lack of makeup does.

And don’t miss the opportunity to be the hero. During the holiday season, I always reflect upon the wisdom of my grandfather, arguably the most awesome man who ever strode the planet. I once told him, as he was washing the dishes in the kitchen while everyone else was in the dining room listening to the women attempt to maximize their rare opportunity to talk in front of a captive male audience, that as the senior male member of the family, it wasn’t his responsibility to clean up.

He looked at me, scotch in hand, then raised an eyebrow and indicated the football game that was on the television in the corner of the kitchen. “Responsibility?” the Lacedaemonian said.

Have a very happy and grateful Thanksgiving, everyone. We all have much for which to give thanks to the Almighty God, if only for giving us the strength to endure and surmount the challenges life presents us. And speaking of challenges, Spacebunny has followed up the main course with pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and chocolate fudge. Where to start? And more importantly, when to stop?

The pursuit of safety

Is often counterproductive, as was seen in the accidental death of the young EnglishAustralian cricketer, Phil Hughes:

Most of my career I batted on uncovered pitches without a helmet. This taught me how important it was to have a good technique and courage against fast bowling. Why? Because you required judgment of what to leave, when to duck and when to play the ball. But you had to be even more careful about attempting to hook because at the back of your mind you knew that if you made a mistake you could get seriously hurt.

I once asked Len Hutton, a great iconic player, whether he hooked Ray Lindwall or Keith Miller. He said he once tried it at the Oval and he got halfway through the shot then cut it out because out of the corner of his eye he could see the hospital. That tells you everything.

Before the advent of helmets in Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in the late 1970s, if a team had a genuine fast bowler, tail-enders did not hang around. You did not see tail-enders propping and copping. They played shots or got out because at the back of their mind they were terrified of being hurt.

Helmets have unfortunately now taken away a lot of that fear and have given every batsman a false sense of security. They feel safe and people will now attempt to either pull or hook almost every short ball that is bowled at them.

Even tail-enders come in and bat like millionaires, flailing away and having a go at short balls with poor technique and a lack of footwork. Helmets have made batsmen feel safe in the belief that they cannot be hurt and made batsmen more carefree and careless. As a consequence more players get hit on the helmet nowadays than ever got hit on the head, before we batted without this protection.

This is true in the broader historical culture as well as the world of sport. We attempt to protect our women and children, to ensconce them in a rubber-and-plastic safety bubble that will keep them from all harm, forgetting that in protecting them from the petty dangers, they tend to forget about the existence of the more serious ones.

It is when we feel invulnerable that we are most susceptible to being taught otherwise.

There is no welcoming committee

On his personal blog, Castalia House blogger Jeffro observes that the younger generation is learning, often to its dismay, that life isn’t quite as simple or welcoming as they were taught it would be by their SJW indoctrinators:

I found out about this sort of thing the hard way talking to a younger dude that was like this. He was edgy and cool, but his brain was somewhat colonized. He somehow got to talking about this thing that happened at his high school… some kid had worn a shirt that was deemed to be across the line by his type and they’d rallied and made it clear that nobody could do that there. I was surprised that he could be so positive about doing something like that. I said, “that’s the difference between my generation and your generation. People like you at least had the sense not to attack free speech back when I was in school….” This assertion that he was basically a product of his times rather than some stripe of free thinker put him into a rage. He started screaming and cursing at me for several minutes. (Yes, he thought himself the voice of tolerance and reason, of course.) It was then that I realized that this “flaming” stuff you see online… it’s not just a product of anonymity and technology. No, some people really are like that….! They actually can’t respond to a difference of opinion with anything but rage.

—

On being “welcomed” into the hobby — No no no no no! You have no idea how clueless you are. Honestly. It just isn’t like that at all. If you think anyone is going to roll out the red carpet for you then you don’t know anything about gaming. Do you have any idea how merciless competitive chess is? How hard it is to find an opponent for a wargame? Have you ever interviewed people to see if they’d be a good fit for a wacky roleplaying campaign concept you want to try out? Have you ever run a demo at a con and felt the pressure of having to be at least as interesting as the people running a dozen other tables…? Have you played games that other people want to play and then been disappointed that they never reciprocate and play the stuff that you are into…? There is no welcoming committee.

I have to laugh at the idea of being “welcomed” into Advanced Squad Leader. To put it into perspective, the vastly simplified Starter Kit rules are still 12 pages, which doesn’t even count the various charts and tables. A lawyer friend once perused the ASLRB and declared that a law degree should be automatically conferred on anyone who demonstrates competence at the game. There is simply no amount of warm fuzzies that is ever going to compensate for having that volume of information thrown at you, and that doesn’t begin to take into account that you’ll find yourself facing some of the most viciously competitive hardcore gamers once you do command a basic grasp of the rules.

In any activity where the difficulty is part of the enjoyment derived, the very concept of a “welcoming committee” is not so much irrelevant as completely backwards.

Why the Left hates Thanksgiving

Mr. John C. Wright explains:

There is an old Chinese legend of a golden scroll on which the secret of human happiness was written; and sages and warlords, merchant-princes and emperors sought the scroll with fervor. When found, they saw the secret of the scroll consisted of one ideogram printed over and over, an ideogram they could not read. However, there was a beggar girl who could read the mysterious word.

If you know that word, then you know the secret of human happiness.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays for three reasons: first, it drives the Leftists crazy because it is a clearly and openly Christian holiday in the midst of a society they are fervidly attempting to dechristianize; second, it drives Leftists crazy because it is a holiday based on a historical fact, namely, Indian and Pilgrim cooperation, which flips the middle finger at the Leftist preferred narrative about non-civilized White men committing malign genocide on the non-savage Red men; and finally and most of all, it drives the Leftists crazy because the concept of being thankful, of feeling gratitude, of thanks for benefits never to be repaid, is utterly alien to their way of thinking and their way of life.

One benefit that accrues to the Christian, even if all of history, logic, and revelation should turn out to be false, and God a myth no more real than Global Warming, nonetheless, is that we Christian men feel gratitude toward our Creator for the infinite gift of creation. A noble pagan can indeed receive a gift in his stockings at Christmas, and be grateful to the giver, but a Christian can feel grateful for the legs he puts into his stockings each morning, and the world on which he walks.

The Left does not give thanks, not to anyone, human or divine, past or present, not for any reason.

Why not?

This would explain, among other things, why they prefer to call it Turkey Day.