La dolce vita

So I was traveling through France on the train today and saw that the forty-something woman pushing the food-and-drinks trolley was tall, slender, and looked vaguely Italian. I didn’t think anything of it, but her appearance prompted the man sitting across the aisle to start asking her where she was from in French.

She must have noticed something in his accent that I didn’t, because she answered in Italian. I didn’t recognize the name of the town, but he obviously did. It turned out that he and the two women sitting near me were originally from the next town over in Piemonte. They discussed a few landmarks and families and so on while I sat there quietly minding my own business and editing John Wright’s latest masterpiece on my tablet. They got a little exuberant at one point, prompting the woman nearest me to lean over and apologize in French, explaining that they were all essentially neighbors. From Italia.

“Si, lo so, anch’io parlo italiano,” I said, which sparked considerable hilarity. The next thing I knew, I was getting quizzed about my last trip to Piemonte, the man bought a bottle of wine from the trolley lady, and was distributing plastic cups to everyone, including me. It’s rather amusing. Even when you take the Italians out of Italy, the party travels with them.

Two more bankers down

1.A mere two weeks since former JPMorgan banker, Kenneth Bellando jumped to his death, Bloomberg reports that
the former CEO of Dutch Bank ABN Amro (and his wife and daughter) were found dead at their home after a possible “family tragedy.”
This expands the dismal list of senior financial services executive
deaths to 12 in the last few months. The 57-year-old Jan Peter
Schmittmann, was reportedly discovered by his other daughter when she
arrived home that morning. Police declined to comment on the cirumstances of his (and his wife and daughter’s) death.

2.  Over the weekend the world was gripped by the drama surrounding the mysterious murder-homicide of
the former CEO of Dutch bank ABN Amro and members of his family, and
whether there is more foul play than meets the eye. However, that is
nothing compared to what just happened in the tiny, and all too quiet
Principality of Lichtenstein, where moments ago the CEO of local
financial institution Bank Frick & Co. AG, Juergen Frick, was shot dead in the underground garage of the bank located in the city of
Balzers. 

I don’t even have any theories at this point. It’s a moment of High Weirdness as the various deaths are more random and outlandish than one would expect to find in a thriller. But regardless of what is actually taking place, it does seem readily apparent that we are not dealing with a normal situation in the financial world here.

Even the most inventive fiction writer would struggle to fit the demise of European bankers, a CIA agent, and Peaches Geldof all into the same novel.

The seeds of bad science

Rupert Darwell traces them in a book entitled The Age of Global Warming:

The origins of warmism lie in a cocktail of ideas which includes anti-industrial nature worship, post-colonial guilt, a post-Enlightenment belief in scientists as a new priesthood of the truth, a hatred of population growth, a revulsion against the widespread increase in wealth and a belief in world government. It involves a fondness for predicting that energy supplies won’t last much longer (as early as 1909, the US National Conservation Commission reported to Congress that America’s natural gas would be gone in 25 years and its oil by the middle of the century), protest movements which involve dressing up and disappearing into woods (the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, the Mosleyite Blackshirts who believed in reafforestation) and a dislike of the human race (The Club of Rome’s work Mankind at the Turning-Point said: “The world has cancer and the cancer is man.”).

These beliefs began to take organised, international, political form in the 1970s. One of the greatest problems, however, was that the ecologists’ attacks on economic growth were unwelcome to the nations they most idolised – the poor ones. The eternal Green paradox is that the concept of the simple, natural life appeals only to countries with tons of money. By a brilliant stroke, the founding fathers developed the concept of “sustainable development”. This meant that poor countries would not have to restrain their own growth, but could force restraint upon the rich ones. This formula was propagated at the first global environmental conference in Stockholm in 1972….

Scientists, Rupert Darwall complains, have been too ready to embrace the
“subjectivity” of the future, and too often have a “cultural aversion to
learning from the past”. If they read this tremendous book they will see
those lessons set out with painful clarity.

If one wanted to understand the root of my contempt for scientists and scientistry, as opposed to my mere opposition to their pseudo-scientific policies, it can be summarized by Darwall’s statement about their “cultural aversion to
learning from the past”.

Scientody is a powerful tool. But history is an even more useful and reliable one with regards to humanity. Because, a few genetic alterations over time notwithstanding, Man remains Man and human nature remains human nature.

Don’t be that Gamma

Over at Alpha Game, I’ve posted a TV ad for the Ford Fiesta that is as perfect a portrayal of a Gamma male in a relationship as I have ever seen. It’s almost flawless, as it shows the passive-aggression, the conflict-avoidance, the subservience, the tendency to pair up with unpleasant women, and the insecurity, all in a thirty-second ad. It even has the supplicating body language.

In other words, it is an excellent guide in male behaviors to avoid at all costs.

Day by Day

I was a little surprised to see that. I already knew that a fair number of people whose names you might recognize have the blog in their regular rotation, as sometimes they send me email, but I had no idea that Chris Muir did.

And speaking of the new intolerant standard for American business, here is a way to let Mozilla know your opinion directly on their feedback page. As per Conservative Intelligence Briefing: “If Mozilla was hoping to avoid controversy by edging out former CEO Brendan Eich, the company has most certainly failed. The graph below comes from the feedback page on their site. This chart goes back to when the comment system was adopted, and the highest number of “sad” comments is today, by a factor of about two. The second highest number came yesterday.”

A sample of the comments posted:

  • Im still in disbelief at Mozilla inane and intolerant decision to have
    its CEO step down. Apparently they value the opinion of LGBT over the
    first amendment. Shame 
  •  Gay folks didn’t struggle to come out of the closet just so that
    christian folks could now be shoved into it. I’ve uninstalled Firefox
    after many years of using it and I will never recommend your product to
    anyone ever again.
  •  THOUGHT NAZIS will soon reap what they sew … Uninstalled on 23 work
    and home computers. This is just the beginning you FASCISTS!!! 
  •  Giving in to the thought police is unnaceptable. The guy didn’t TREAT
    any homosexual badly, just donated a modest sum (for an executive) to a
    campaign that even BARACK ‘GOD OF THE LIBERALS’ OBAMA supported. This
    isn’t “progress”, this is medieval persecution. Wolf in sheep’s
    clothing, you are. F*ck you. 
  • It has been great riding with you since 1994. Good luck in your future endeavours.
    I have uninstalled Mozilla Firefox, Nightly, and Thunderbird
    No longer willing to support or associate with your products.
    Thanks.  

It will be informative to see how long it takes before Mozilla shuts down their feedback page. Like many supporters of the gay rights agenda, they appear to have badly miscalculated the demographic math.

Mailvox: Mozilla’s Islamophobia

BC thinks Eich could have handled it better too:

I am a little surprised that you haven’t pursued the anti-Islam angle on the whole Eich thing — e.g.  “Mozilla Policy Denies Muslims Executive Positions.” Personally, I think Mozilla’s problems started well before they forced Eich to fall on his sword, and that they let the grounds of the debate be set for them.

While I don’t think firing those who complained (as you suggested) would have worked, they had other options that a seasoned PR staff could have found. Off the top of my head, they could have responded to the crisis early by pointing out that, while senior management absolutely is pro gay marriage (I assume that they are) that denying all who oppose gay marriage the CEO position is fundamentally incompatible with their open philosophy. Then turn it around and ask why it is OK for the boycotters (OK Cupid in particular) to be so openly anti-Muslim? Since when is extreme prejudice against Muslims not just tolerated, but encouraged? As a global company, one would think Mozilla would hold itself to a higher standard.

My concern about the firings is that they would be billed as proof that he was anti-gay and actually caused things to snowball.

Obviously, what he did failed. My main point is that if you can’t manage to present OK Cupid’s position as the close minded/thought police in this kerfuffle then your PR folks are not very good. Seriously, the CEO made a small contribution to an admittedly hot button issue where he was actually in the majority at the time, therefore we should boycott an entire company that, on the whole, is probably strongly left of center? It’s ridiculous. So, I am confident that it was poor PR even if I am not 100% on the correct solution.

My guess is that a better solution would show how open Mozilla is — something like showing muslims in turbans working closely with an extravagantly gay guy wearing ass-less chaps, two women in Subaru showing up at work with an orthodox jew, then show the caption “OK Cupid would have us fire half of these people. We don’t tolerate intolerance”. I would have laughed and OK Cupid would have looked like the fascists that they are.

The reality, I think, is that Mozilla’s board and top management didn’t want Eich there as CEO and was happy to see him forced out, even though they wanted to keep him around in a non-CEO capacity. (High function rabbits understand that they need some non-rabbits around to do the actual work out of the limelight.) So, even though they could have easily won the PR war and sent the gay fascists within and without the organization scurrying for the closet, they didn’t want to fight it, let alone win it.

Under a Pale Moon

I got rid of Mozilla Firefox yesterday and replaced it with Pale Moon. Verdict: I probably would have done this for technological reasons, not ideological reasons, if I had known about Pale Moon before. Basically, it feels about 10-15 percent faster than Firefox, which has become increasingly crufty over the last few years and was offering new beta updates literally every week.

The installation process was two-part, the first being the usual download and install, the second being the download of the bookmarks importation tool that also migrated my various preferences and passwords. A little clunky, but no bother, and everything works, including NoScript. After about 2 hours, I was confident enough in Pale Moon to go ahead and remove Firefox from the system. If you are considering #uninstallfirefox, Pale Moon is definitely a preferred alternative if you are on Windows.

Plus I am amused by the fact that there are no plans for a Mac version. The developers are open to Linux, but Macintosh. No. Just no. Also, Linux users should note that Pale Moon runs under WINE; due to its superior speed and efficiency emulated Pale Moon may well run better than native Firefox.

For Android, I’m using Opera Mini for now, but I’m not particularly fond of it, so further investigation is required. I’m also going to start looking for a Thunderbird replacement.

NB: The all-time percentage of Firefox is 34 percent here and 30 percent at Alpha Game. It’s already down to 28 percent here and 26 percent there.

Two for three

I have scabs on the outsides of both ankles, a nice scrape curving up one shin, a toenail that looks as if it’s painted purple, and the clearly discernable imprint of a ball on one thigh. And we’re all of three games into the spring season.

We’re in that enjoyable phase of a veteran’s season when everyone has played themselves into shape but their bodies haven’t started breaking down yet. My current team hasn’t seen anything like the Bataan Death March of a season that whittled 31 players down to 10 healthy enough to be on the field, but our longtime captain is done thanks to his knees and our best midfielder is out for three months courtesy of a nagging hamstring. In other words, we have no chance at the title.

I’ve been moved back up to striker after spending most of the fall season at right wing. I’m also starting, which is nice, especially since I spent the winter running twice a week in preparation for the need to get up and down the field on the wing. However, the first game against R was a disaster; we controlled the ball for the entire first half, blew about 10 chances to score, and I couldn’t complain when the new captain took me out at halftime. I only took one shot, and too often passed when I should have simply shot on goal, perhaps because I wasn’t expecting to play up front.

We finally scored right after the half started, but then the captain made a serious blunder. We only have three speed players, me, Sergio, and Sandro. I was on the bench, Sandro tweaked his leg and had to come out, and Sergio got tired and took himself out with 15 minutes left. That left us with precisely zero speed on the field, which shrunk the field and killed our attack. R scored two goals on headed corners in the last five minutes and we lost 2-1. I also learned that unlike the previous captain, the new captain was not keen on post-match analysis, as he reacted very badly to my pointing out why we had lost a game we controlled most of the way.

And by badly, I mean badly enough that my friend with whom I rode to the next game was telling me that I’d probably be sitting on the bench for the entire second game against A. But he was only joking, as the captain told me that I was starting again and told me to prove that we needed speed on the field. Fortunately, Sergio gave me the chance to do that as he slipped the ball past the defensive line, at midfield, I blew by my defender and took a shot from just inside the box to put us up 2-0. I came out 10 minutes into the second half after our third goal, but after A scored two goals to make it 3-2 and the field started to shrink again, the captain came out and put me back in for him at left wing. I started making runs, forced the goalie to mis-hit a hurried clearance that Sergio promptly buried, and we ended up winning 5-2. Score one for the Theory of Speed.

Last night’s game started off all right, but although we were controlling the game for the first 15 minutes, I realized I just couldn’t get past this Robert Carlos-lookalike at sweeper. Not having Giorgio, our injured midfielder, really hurt as our attack kept failing to make the last pass to the striker in shooting position, and then D scored a beautiful goal on their first chance. I had one decent opportunity that I created by blatantly shoving the ersatz Carlos off the ball as we ran for it, but I hit the side of the net. We also had one goal taken away for offside, but it was the right call, and for once, no one even complained.

We were down 3-0 at halftime, then 4-0. I did get one back, however, when I charged down a backpass and blocked the sweeper’s attempted clearance with my right thigh. The ball rebounded right into the net before the goalie even realized that it hadn’t been cleared. In 25 years of playing soccer, that’s only the second time I’ve managed to score off a blocked clearance; the last time was with Nike about 15 years ago. Then our right wing celebrated his birthday by turning a throw-in into a half-volley that hit the crossbar and went in, which gave us a faint hope of coming back before D scored again to put the game away. We lost, 5-2, but no one felt bad about being beaten by the better team, although I was very annoyed with myself for getting caught offside on what should have been a good chance at the end.

Ender’s team is off to a better start. They are 2-1, but they’ve also lost two of their three best players. Jet was finally poached by an elite regional team and Cesare broke his collarbone, but, ironically enough, Ender and the big kid that he beat up last fall have turned out to be an effective combination in defense. The big kid sweeps while Ender shuts down the side and brings the ball up the field as a sort of point defender. Most of their scoring attacks begin with a long pass from him, either up the side or a cross into the middle that drops behind the defense. He doesn’t have much speed, but he has good vision and anticipation, so he’s usually in the right spot before he needs to be there.

A tale of two trends

While the lavender lobby is celebrating their latest corporate scalp, the worldwide criminalization of their perversion proceeds apace:

A U.S.-funded health project in Uganda has suspended operations after police arrested a staff member on suspicion of promoting homosexuality, highlighting the mounting legal risks confronting the gay community in the east African state. Uganda enacted legislation in February that strengthened punishments for anyone caught having gay sex, imposing jail terms of up to life for “aggravated homosexuality” – including sex with a minor or while HIV-positive.

We hear a lot about Uganda’s and Russia’s new laws. We don’t hear quite as much about the fact that Uganda is the 38th African nation to criminalize what the Bible describes as “abomination”. While the actions of a single judge are supposed to be indicative of progress, the democratic actions of entire nations are being ignored.

In the end, it is pretty simple. Reversion to the historical mean is the logical bet. And the USA is far from the first empire in decline to give itself up to sexual chaos.

A San Francisco homosexual comments on the matter: “You’ll forgive me if I dont’ feel any heartbreak for your kind finally being run out of town.”

You have two choices, Americans. Either criminalize their behavior and force them back into the closet or be run out of town yourself. There is no middle ground. Other nations have reached this conclusion; I expect it is only a matter of time before Americans do too. We tried toleration. Despite our honest efforts, it has failed, and failed abysmally.

Mailvox: breaking the ceasefire

Gara demonstrates that he doesn’t understand the difference between legal right and common practice:

Gara: So many people bitching about the whole Mozilla thing. One would expect a self described libertarian like Vox would understand that this is eactly how the free marketplace of ideas is supposed to work. Firefox’s CEO approves of discrimination against same sey couples. And other individuals and companies such as OKCupid responded by exercising their right of free association, declining to support a CEO who holds a viewpoint they found abhorrent. This is how democratic persuasion always operates guys. If you are so angry about it, then try with all means to make your OkCupid boycott work. See if you can get even half the influence they have.

Toby: Free marketplace of ideas involve demanding another person to step down from a position/quit from work because of his/her ideas? Gara, are you crazy?

Gara: Yes it does. You have all the right to say “If Mr X does not quit his position, I won’t have anything to do with your company anymore”. And the company can they react as they see fit. Liberals have the right to do things like that as much as conservatives do.

What we have here is a left-winger and a right-winger talking past each other. Gara is absolutely right in one sense. OKCupid and the various Mozilla employees were perfectly within their LEGAL rights to behave as they did. No one, to the best of my knowledge, has accused them of criminal activity or called for them to be prosecuted.

However, Toby is equally correct to observe that it was absolutely crazy for OK Cupid and the various Mozilla employees to exercise their legal rights in that manner. Because while it is LEGAL for employers and businesses to discriminate on the basis of political beliefs and affiliations, it has most certainly not been the ACCEPTED PRACTICE for them to do so openly.

Indeed, one of the great complaints about the universities and the media is that they secretly impose political litmus tests concerning who is permitted employment in their institutions, and the danger of this practice becoming open knowledge was so great that to this day the universities and media corporations still deny what is statistically undeniable and readily obvious to even the most casual observer.

But now, thanks to the Eich affair, political employment discrimination is overt, and what was previously only legal is now PUBLIC AND ACCEPTED PRACTICE. It is purge or be purged time. So, if you are an employer in many states, you can now feel free to stop employing every non-critical employee who voted for Obama or is known to be a member of the Democratic Party. And you can impose a political litmus test on your new hires; contact DH for his new service if you don’t want to bother surfing Facebook for incrimination evidence of inappropriate politics.

What Gara has failed to realize is that there had been a de facto political ceasefire in the corporate world. The Mozilla debacle broke the ceasefire and now the political Right has the ability to return fire with impunity. I doubt it will do so openly yet, but I have no doubt that there will be more than a few unexpected dismissals quietly taking place over the next few months now that corporate executives understand what the new reality is.

Most conservatives in the corporate community have prided themselves on being “colorblind” with regards to the political spectrum. I suspect that many of them will, sooner or later, understand that they have to abandon that position as being no longer tenable or intellectually justifiable.

And in keeping with the end to the ceasefire, I have removed Mozilla Firefox from my various systems and devices. I have replaced it with Pale Moon, about which more anon. #uninstallfirefox.

UPDATE: the ceasefire is observably over:

The director of corporate giving for Google Inc. has resigned in protest from the board of a Christian aid organization after the charity reversed its decision to hire employees in same-sex marriages. As the Associated Press reported Thursday, Jacquelline Fuller said in an email Wednesday to AP that while she remains a “huge fan” of the group’s work on behalf of the poor, she resigned Friday “as I disagreed with the decision to exclude gay employees who marry.” 

If people are more concerned about homogamy or equality than with helping the poor or basic Christian principles, they should certainly resign from any Christian aid organization. Indeed, they should not be involved with the group in the first place.