SFWA Forum: the “moderated” posts

Since the freethinkers at the SFWA Forum are presently debating whether my comments can be permitted in the very place where I am attacked with the most badthink words the rabbits can produce, I hereby give myself permission, as per the SFWA Forum guidelines, to quote my posts here before they are disappeared again:

1. Posted Today, 03:41 AM
 

Her speech is ridiculous, her call for reconciliation is impossible, and, it should be noted, MS Jemisin is lying about me:

“For the past few days I’ve also been observing a “kerfuffle”, as
some call it, in reaction to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’
of America’s latest professional journal, the Bulletin. Some of you may
also have been following the discussion; hopefully not all of you. To
summarize: two of the genre’s most venerable white male writers made
some comments in a series of recent articles which have been decried as
sexist and racist by most of the organization’s membership. Now, to put
this in context: the membership of SFWA also recently voted in a new
president. There were two candidates — one of whom was a self-described
misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole. In
this election he lost by a landslide… but he still earned ten percent of
the vote. SFWA is small; only about 500 people voted in total, so we’re
talking less than 50 people.”

I am not “a self-described misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few
other flavors of asshole”.  It is John Scalzi, Patrick Nielsen Hayden,
and Theresa Nielsen Hayden who have described me that way.  I merely
posited that even if their false claims were true, I would still be the
right choice for SFWA president given my industry connections and
executive experience. Nor have I ever made any active efforts to take
away the woman’s “most basic rights”; I am in fact a libertarian. NK
Jemisin’s speech is not only ignorant, it is blatantly and provably
dishonest with regards to me, with regards to the history of science
fiction, and with regards to Florida and Texas state law.

I hereby demand a public apology from Ms Jemisin.

Moreover, based on the particular nature of her false claim, Ms Jemisin has clearly violated the Forum rules, which state “The
SFWA discussion forums are for SFWA members only, and all posts made
here are confidential. Material may not be re-posted outside these
forums without the explicit permission of their authors.”  Her false statement was clearly based on my announcement which was posted here in the forums by Lawrence Schoen.

I therefore also request that she be given a warning point by a Forum moderator.

2. Posted Today, 07:52 AM

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

She did nothing of the kind.  I have never described myself anywhere
as misogynist, racist, or anti-Semite and a search of my blog will prove
that.  The only time I’ve even bothered to address such stupid
accusations together is here, in the Forum, which is why it is obvious
that she violated SFWA confidentiality.  I have zero interest in
debating with you, Mr. Sanford. I enjoy challenges and you’re not half
as intelligent as people I’ve crushed in three exchanges.

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

I should certainly hope so.  I was warned for violating SFWA
confidentiality once because I was unaware even partial quotes were not
permitted.  I expect Ms Jemisin to be similarly disciplined.  If not,
well, then we’ll know just how impartial the moderators are.  Anyhow,
20x more people will read this on my blog than will read it here.

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

Reality isn’t racist, Mr. Sanford.  Neither is history.  They simply
are.  And you can’t escape the fact that Ms Jemisin lied about me and
about the state laws of Texas and Florida.  As some of my Australian
readers have already pointed out, Ms Jemisin has no idea what she’s
talking about concerning Australian race relations either.

3. Posted Today, 08:15 AM

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

So, if I’d simply written: “That post on her blog is one of the most
racist attacks I’ve seen in a long time.”, that would not require
moderation?  Who are you trying to kid?

Meanwhile, the President-elect, Steven Gould, notes: “Lots
of people calling for the expulsion of this guy. With reason.”

Well, my lawyer and I would certainly enjoy seeing them try to expel a paid-up Lifetime member for the thoughtcrime of expressing his opinion.  You see, I’ve already got the entire SF Forum on record, so it would be fascinating to see them attempt to defend various statements by certain authors while claiming that mine were worthy of expulsion.

The miracle of Abenomics

If the credit-pumped Dow Jones hitting new highs is a sign of
economic recovery, then what does it mean when the credit-pumped Nikkei collapses by one-fifth in three weeks?

  • JAPAN’S NIKKEI 225 FALLS 20% FROM MAY 22 HIGH
  • JAPAN’S TOPIX INDEX FALLS AS MUCH AS 5.1%
  • NIKKEI 225 FALLS 6%, EXTENDING LOSSES 

I’m sure Paul Krugman already has his usual explanation ready to hand.  Abe printed a lot of money, sure.  But he simply didn’t print enough….

Meanwhile, my inflation/deflation debate opponent sends me the following admission by an international banker:  

“If you look at it historically, there has never been a period when the Fed has started to take back stimulus that has left the markets untouched.  And this time it is a bigger exercise. We have moved markets from 2009 to 2013 on stimulus and now we are trying to take a step into a world which is more driven by natural growth. That transition will not be easy.” – Hans Peterson, global head of investment strategy at Swedish bank SEB.

Everything between 2009 and 2013 was “stimulus”.  They flat out admit it… and you know people STILL won’t listen to us.

 C’est la vie.  They were warned.

A black female fantasist calls for Reconciliation

NK Jemisin is publicly lying about me and a few other things in Australia as she blithely advocates the continued self-destruction of science fiction:

Right now American politicians are doing their best to roll back
voting rights won during our own Civil Rights movement. They are
putting in place educational “reforms” which disproportionately have a
negative impact on black and brown and poor white kids, and will
essentially help to solidify a permanent underclass. Right now there
are laws in places like Florida and Texas which are intended to make it
essentially legal for white people to just shoot people like me, without
consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence. So:
admitting that the land we live on was stolen from hundreds of other
nations and peoples? Acknowledging that the prosperity the United
States enjoys was bought with blood? That’s a pipe dream.

I want you to understand that what you’ve done makes me want to weep with envy, and bitterness, and hope.

So: segue time. Let’s scale down. Let’s talk about the community — the microcosmic nation — of science fiction and fantasy.

For the past few days I’ve also been observing a “kerfuffle”, as some
call it, in reaction to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ of
America’s latest professional journal, the Bulletin. Some of you may
also have been following the discussion; hopefully not all of you. To
summarize: two of the genre’s most venerable white male writers made
some comments in a series of recent articles which have been decried as
sexist and racist by most of the organization’s membership. Now, to put
this in context: the membership of SFWA also recently voted in a new
president. There were two candidates — one of whom was a self-described
misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole.
In this election he lost by a landslide… but he still earned ten percent
of the vote. SFWA is small; only about 500 people voted in total, so
we’re talking less than 50 people. But scale up again. Imagine if ten
percent of this country’s population was busy making active efforts to
take away not mere privileges, not even dignity, but your most basic
rights. Imagine if ten percent of the people you interacted with, on a
daily basis, did not regard you as human.

Just ten percent. But such a ten percent.

And beyond that ten percent are the silent majority — the great
unmeasured mass of enablers. These are the folks who don’t object to
the treatment of women as human beings, and who may even have the odd
black or gay friend that they genuinely like. However, when the ten
percent starts up in their frothing rage, these are the people who say
nothing in response. When women and other marginalized groups respond
with anger to the hatred of the ten percent, these are the people who do
not support them, and in fact suggest that maybe they’re overreacting.
When they read a novel set in a human society which contains only one
or two female characters, these are the people who don’t decry this as
implausible. Or worse, they simply don’t notice. These are the people
who successfully campaigned for Star Trek to return to television after
25 years, but have no intention of campaigning for Roddenberry’s vision
to be complete, with gay characters joining the rainbow brigade on the
bridge. These are the people who gleefully nitpick the scientific
plausibility of stopping a volcano with “cold fusion”, yet who fail to
notice that an author has written a future earth in which somehow
seventeen percent of the human race dominates ninety percent of the
characterization.

Let me be perfectly clear.  I do not describe myself as a “misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole”.  John Scalzi, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and Theresa Nielsen Hayden, among others, have described me that way.  Of course, John Scalzi also describes himself as a rapist, Patrick Nielsen Hayden took his wife’s name when he got married, and Theresa Nielsen Hayden is dumb enough to have claimed a prominent Game blogger with three Billboard-charting club hits “is not acquainted with actual women.”

Granted, Spacebunny and the fat frog that is Nielsen Hayden don’t look as if they belong to the same phylum, let alone the same species, so perhaps the key word is not “women, but “actual” in the sense of “grotesquely malformed”.

I therefore suggest that their assertions should be taken with at least a small grain of salt rather than credited to me. And it should be obvious that, being a libertarian, I am not actively attempting to take away anyone’s “most basic rights”.  Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do not view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we simply do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious historical reason that she is not.

She is lying about the laws in Texas and Florida too.  The laws are not there to let whites ” just shoot people like me, without
consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence”, those self-defense laws have been put in place to let whites defend their lives and their property from people, like her, who are half-savages engaged in attacking them.

Jemisin’s disregard for the truth is no different than the average Chicago gangbanger’s disregard for the traditional Western code of civilized conduct. She could, if she wished, claim that privileged white males are responsible for the decline of Detroit, for the declining sales of science fiction, even for the economic and cultural decline of the United States, but that would not make it true.  It would not even make it credible.  Anyone who is paying sufficient attention will understand who is genuinely responsible for these problems.

Unlike the white males she excoriates, there is no evidence to be found anywhere on the planet that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization, or even successfully maintaining one without significant external support from those white males.  If one considers that it took my English and German ancestors more than one thousand years to become fully civilized after their first contact with advanced Greco-Roman civilization, it should be patently obvious that it is illogical to imagine, let alone insist, that Africans have somehow managed to do the same in less than half the time at a greater geographic distance.  These things take time.

Being an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature by “a bunch of beardy old middle-class middle-American guys” than an illiterate Igbotu tribesman has of how to build a jet engine, Jemisin clearly does not understand that her dishonest call for “reconciliation” and even more diversity within SF/F is tantamount to a call for its decline into irrelevance. Nor do the back-patting Samuel Johnsons wiping their eyes and congratulating her for her ever-so-touching speech understand that.

There can be no reconciliation between the observant and the delusional.

UPDATE: It may amuse some of you to know that in making her false claim, NK Jemisin appears to have violated the SFWA Forum rules, which state: “[A]ll posts made here are confidential. Material may not be re-posted
outside these forums without the explicit permission of their authors.”   I am confident the moderators of the SFWA will be swift to deal with this violation of the organization’s rules.

UPDATE 2: The Spitefully Fascist Writers of America are on the job!  This post was resulted in the following email:  “Your blog feed has been removed from the @SFWAauthors aggregator due to violating of the policies of this service, specifically:  “Marking blog posts for inclusion that include threats or personal attacks or obvious trolling will also be grounds for removal.”” 

UPDATE 3: Now the SFWA moderators have, at least temporarily, wiped my comments off the SFWA Forum thread while leaving the attacks on me untouched.  What a pity that 20x more people will read everything here instead.  Keep this in mind when you’re trying to argue that there are no ideological gatekeepers in the SF/F publishing world.  They desperately want to silence all disssent, and they’re tremendously frustrated that they don’t have the wherewithal.


UPDATE 4: As always, I am quite willing to publicly debate Ms Jemisin, Mr. Sanford, or any other member of the SFWA concerning the issues raised here, be it on the SFWA Forum, this blog, or any other written venue.  And if all these passionate champions of human equality are afraid to defend their views in public, as were Messrs Myers and McRapey in the past, well, everyone knows perfectly well what that signifies, their protestations notwithstanding.


UPDATE 5: McRapey has the perfect solution to the Problem that Must Not Be Named.  He’s going to give money to ANOTHER charity. That will show me!  When did “donation” replace “education” as the left-liberal solution to all evils?

Un Braccio di Ferro

Italy is rapidly losing patience with the EU:

Something snapped in the Italian psyche last week after the European Central
Bank offered nothing to combat the credit crunch asphyxiating small
business, and more broadly washed its hands of Euroland’s incipient
deflation crisis and catastrophic wastage of its youth.
The next day ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi called for a showdown, or “Braccio
di Ferro”, with northern powers before it loses it chemical, car and steel
industries altogether.
Mr Berlusconi told Il Foglio that Italy’s government – which his
Liberty Party keeps in office – is complicitly serving forces that are
destroying Italy. It must instead confront the north, “and particularly
Angela Merkel’s Germany”, with a stark choice: either they call a halt to
fiscal and monetary contraction, and opt instead for full-blown reflation;
or they must expect the victims to snatch back their own destinies.

And keep in mind, Berlusconi and the Liberty Party are the moderates. Beppo Grillo and Movimento 5 Stelle are even more openly anti-EU.  Italy has to leave the Euro and I’ve always suspected they would be the first to do so.  Evans-Pritchard knows it too:

A game theory study by Bank of America found that Italy would benefit most
among big EMU states from a euro exit. It has a primary surplus, so it would
not face an instant funding crisis. It has fat gold reserves, providing bond
collateral that could be used to raise €400bn in a crisis. Italian household
wealth is €275,200, compared with €195,200 for Germany. A basket case it is not, and Italy’s industrial barons know it. The country
has one great structural problem: it is in the wrong currency with an
intra-EMU exchange rate overvalued by 20pc to 25pc.

Forza Lira!

Better there than the US “justice” system

Edward Snowdon makes it clear that he doesn’t trust the U.S. courts.  Nor should he.  Nor, for that matter, should you:

Edward Snowden says he wants to ask the people of Hong Kong to decide his fate after choosing the city because of his faith in its rule of law. The 29-year-old former CIA employee behind what might be the biggest intelligence leak in US history revealed his identity to the world in Hong Kong on Sunday. His decision to use a city under Chinese sovereignty as his haven has been widely questioned – including by some rights activists in Hong Kong.

Snowden said last night that he had no doubts about his choice of Hong Kong.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality,” Snowden said in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post.

“I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law,” he added.

His decision makes a tremendous amount of sense in light of the various travesties committed on a regular basis by the US courts.  Moreover, China is one of the very few countries that are not inclined to be cowed by US threats.

Bishop vs Boomers

Even the myopic Church of England is able to recognize the great generational black hole, if a little belatedly:

Baby boomers are a “fortunate generation” who have enjoyed dramatic
improvements in living standards but are now “absorbing” more than their
fair share of taxpayers’ money, one of the Church of England’s most senior
clerics has suggested.

The Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, who is 65, said there were
“severe questions” about the share of government spending that goes on his
own generation. He said the world was in the midst of a transformation that had left many
believing that our best days could be “behind us”. He likened the early years of the 21st century, which he said have seen a
dramatic shift in the global balance of power, to the unstable period in the
run-up to the First World War.

Figures published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
last year showed that while elderly people make up about 15 per cent of the
population in the leading economies, they account for 40 per cent of all
public social spending.

It’s long past time to cut the Boomers off.  They changed the world, now let them live with the consequences.  Why should we put our children and our grandchildren in debt simply to allow Boomers to continue living well beyond their collective means?

The responsible minority among the Boomers will be fine.  Those who weren’t possessed by the zeitgeist of the Grasshopper Generation have sufficient resources upon which to retire and live comfortably.  I have no problem with them. But I also see no reason to sacrifice the well-being of future generations to the always-gaping, never-satisfied maw of the great majority of Boomers.

Book Review: Hailstone Mountain

HAILSTONE MOUNTAIN
Lars Walker
Rating: 7 of 10

Hailstone Mountain is three-quarters historical fiction, one-quarter fantasy. It is the tale of Father Ailill, an Irish priest who is the good friend of the heroic figure in Walker’s ongoing saga, Erling Skjalgsson. Although it is not the first book in the series, it stands alone very well; as it happens, it is the first book of Walker’s that I have read.

Walker’s genre is an unusual one and could almost be described as historical magical realism, as it reflects the largely pagan worldview and beliefs of 12th century Scandinavia. Agricultural Fantasy, if you will.  It is a realistic, if slightly sanitized, portrayal of a brutal, uncompromising culture in which life is tenuous, unspeakable dangers lurk nearby, and the tenets of Christianity are just beginning to penetrate.  Walker clearly knows the world of the Viking very well and he introduces the reader to it with the ease of an expert.

The book is rather slow going at first.  A certain amount of discipline is required to get through the occasionally modern internal dialogue and a plot that is not immediately compelling.  The dialogue is at times stilted, the characters sometimes appear to be walking through the steps of a choreographed plot, and the some of the Christian elements feel a little forced.  One can see what Walker is seeking to do, but the execution is not always entirely adroit. There was even a moment at which I put the book aside in favor of Joe Abercrombie’s latest novel.

However, I was pleased to discover that the book picks up considerably following a brief and unconvincing descent into thralldom and despair, and I was downright surprised to learn that as it continued, Hailstone Mountain didn’t suffer much by the comparison with Red Country. Not only does the quest go into strange and unexpected directions that appear to be based on genuine Nordic legends, but Walker unexpectedly finds his literary stride, building up to a scene of genuine power and emotional resonance under the titular mountain. Many authors have mined various aspects of religion to imbue their tales with significance, but I have seldom, if ever, seen an author more effectively utilize the aspect of Christian hope, as opposed to faith, sacrifice, love, or redemption, than Walker does in Hailstone Mountain.

Having done that and apparently concluded the tale, Walker then throws the reader a serious curve ball with the denouement, which is every bit as violent, ruthless, and abrupt as the historical sagas by which the novel is palpably inspired.  It is an unexpected reminder that the savage world of the Viking is not a place for Hollywood-style happy endings, but rather, a world in which the struggle always continues and the wolf is always just outside the door.

Story: 3 of 5. Hailstone Mountain is a quest.  More to the point, it’s a saga, readily identifiable to anyone sufficiently familiar with historical Viking literature as a modernized version of the classic sagas such as Arrow-Odd, Njall, and Halfdan Eysteinsson.  And as such, it is abrupt and merciless in a manner similar to those sagas, in which a happy ending often means that the hero died well. The book also features some of the creepiest villains one will ever encounter in fiction, although upon reflection I suppose it should come as no surprise that the much-feared Vikings would have managed to produce such ghastly boogeymen.

Style: 3 of 5.  It does clunk a bit in places, mostly when the author is going for pathos and overdoes it a little.  But, for the most part, it is sufficient for the purpose, by which I mean it advances the story without getting in the way.  Moreover, the style is fitting for the saga storyline.

Characters: 3.5 of 5.  The characters were distinct and credible.  I did find the Irish priest’s internal monologue to be a bit overly dramatic and I think one bad guy would have been considerably more compelling if there had been more positive aspects to his character to balance the negative ones.  Walker also does a competent job of showing the reader some of the cultural constraints upon the characters through their interactions with each other.

Creativity: 4 of 5. Based on it is on a history with which most readers are much less familiar than they tend to think, Hailstone Mountain is considerably more creative than the average fantasy novel.  I liked how Walker mimicked the way in which saga plots tend to advance and turn abruptly, without much in the way of warning.  It’s a fascinating blend of old and new, and will be a pleasure for anyone tired of the formulaic plots and predictable characters that presently infest so much of modern fantasy.  Jonathan Moeller has remarked how epublishing has broadened the scope of fantasy fiction, and Hailstone Mountain is an excellent example of this phenomenon.

Text sample:  At breakfast Jarl Svein told us what he needed.
“My people are being raided,” he said. “Men clad in furs, barbered like thralls and armed with clubs, attack farms in the night and steal the folk away. We’ve captured some of these raiders, ones who were wounded and dying, and they told us they’d been sent by their masters, who need more thralls. We try to track them, but lose their trails in the mountains. The folk are afraid. They blame me for not protecting them. They say… they say that if Erik were here he’d stop it.” He spoke the last words with some bitterness.
“Why do you ask my help?” Erling replied. “You’re lord in the north. You’ve easily the strength of men and the wealth I have.”
“I want neither your strength of men nor your wealth,” said Svein. “I want you present with me-you and Father Ailill.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s no one in the north-perhaps in the world-with the practice in fighting the forces of the Other World Erling and his priest have. Everyone knows this. They sing of it in the halls, on winter nights.”
Oh jubilation, I thought. More of the Other World.
“I know not if I can help you,” said Erling. “In spite of all you’ve done for me, I remain Olaf’s kinsman. It would take a very great need to bring me to your side.”
“Listen then,” said the jarl. “There is evil in the north.”
He paused for the question that had to be asked.
“What sort of evil?” asked Sigrid, who had little Asbjorn at her breast.
“Have you heard,” he asked, “of the Children of the Mountain?”
We all traded looks, and said we had not.
“The Children of the Mountain are a clan of witches and warlocks who live under Hailstone Mountain, in Halogaland. They are said to live forever.”
“What?” I asked.
“It’s said they eat their children. All their children. Because you only need children if you look to die, so that your line will live on. If you mean never to die, you can use the children for other things.”
“They live forever by eating their children,” I said.
Jarl Svein stared at me. “You’ve heard of this?”
“When we came north we came with a man called Lemming, a freedman of Erling’s,” I said. “He came along to seek his niece who, it would seem, was of this witch-clan, on her mother’s side. The girl disappeared. Lemming knew straight away what had happened to her. Her kin had taken her. He seeks her now, in the north country, to find her and bring her out before the time of the ceremony.”
“When they eat the children,” said Svein.
“Yes. On Winter Night.”
“Winter Night. That is the time indeed.” He turned to look at Erling. “I set out to hunt the Mountain’s Children because they raid my folk. You came on this errand to fight the same enemy. The case is not that you would join my adventure. I would join yours. May I join you? May I walk by your side a little while, in this business that touches us both? Would that betray your wife’s brother’s blood?”
“When I throw into the scales the fact that you rescued us from so great a dishonor,” said Erling, “there can be but one answer. We shall sail together.”

A Robot doubles down

The remarkable thing about these leftist idiots is how shameless they are.  It doesn’t matter how badly they are caught out, or how completely they are shown to be wrong, they will double-down without hesitation, as A Robot does in defense of his “review” of Men on Strike:

In reviewing scientific literature, which Men On Strike purports to be,
one must review the source material which the author uses to support the
claims and assertions of the author. The source material is the basic
evidence that the author uses to show the person reading the book, “hey,
these things that I’m writing? They’re supported by facts, evidence,
and research. You can trust me and my work because a lot of time and
effort has gone into reviewing this material and making sure the most
accurate depiction of the facts of the matter at hand is presented.”

You
cannot separate reviewing the source material from reviewing the book
at hand, because the source material is the entire reason that one
should believe the assertions of the book. If you’re reading a book that
seriously studies any natural, social, or scientific phenomenon, you
have to check the source material. Theodore Beale is just one of many
sources not worth trusting that are liberally sourced in Helen Smith’s
book: Vox Day taken as a serious source of unbiased, well-researched
material is just the most egregious example and the one that could be
most easily demonstrated due to the great deal of material Beale puts
online.

That said, even without the contributions of Vox Day, Men
On Strike suffers greatly from a serious lack of actual research. The
vast majority of claims that it makes about men and women
(psychologically, socially, or otherwise) are not based on verifiable
data, instead relying on the anecdotes of whoever Smith could find that
supported the view she puts forth in Men On Strike. The book has not
gone through the peer review process that scientific literature goes
through to ensure accuracy. I’ve been totally unable to find any amount
of literature written by Helen Smith from any sort of peer-reviewed
journal or database. The only things I’ve been able to find written by
Helen Smith appear on her personal web site, and on the web sites of
people or organizations who share her political beliefs.

Real
scientists write and research for the purpose of scientific advancement,
and a big part of doing that is making sure that their research stands
up to peer review. The acknowledgements make no mention of any person
who reviewed Men On Strike to make sure it was scientifically accurate.
She mentions “friends and colleagues who have helped and encouraged”
her, but that is the only thing close to acknowledging scientific peer
review. Helen Smith intentionally decided not to bring her book to the
attention of the scientific community while presenting her book as
supported by scientific research and scrutiny. Her footnotes are filled
with references to her own research, and there are more citations of
blogs and of political organizations than of real scientific literature
on any subject even ostensibly related to the subject of sexual
inequality.

Men On Strike is, above all else, a compilation of
anecdote and political bias. It has no basis in research or verifiable
evidence beyond the quotations in her book having actually existed. 

The amusing thing is that this defense proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he didn’t read the book.  Dr. Helen directly addresses this line of criticism in the book, pointing out that she is being held to a standard to which no female writer attacking men is ever held.   Men on Strike isn’t “scientific literature”; it doesn’t pretend to be.

Ironically enough, in his attempt to keep people from reading Dr. Helen’s book, he’s only brought new people to the blog, such as KC:

I just stumbled upon your blog yesterday, ironically through the
1-star Men On Strike review that pointed me to your site.  (“Nobody can possibly be as
wacked-out as this person is saying,” I thought to myself, intent
on verification.) So far, I’ve found your site by turns
interesting, thought-provoking, and mildly infuriating.  (Thanks
for all the fantasy and SF links, by the way.) I just have one
question.  Since your views on Christianity are, well, not the
most mainstream, I’m wondering if you came by them on your own or
if there are any particular theologians or books you’ve drawn on
for inspiration.

KC, didn’t you know you’re always supposed to accept the claims of a leftist, no matter how absurd, without verifying them?  How are they supposed to be taken seriously if you’re actually going to look into what they are saying?  Anyhow, in answer to KC’s question, GK Chesterton and CS Lewis are the two Christian writers I have found most inspiring.

A token Republican defends Big Brother

David Brooks exposes himself as the old statist whore he’s always been in his ludicrous attack on the NSA whistleblower in the New York Times:

It’s logical, given this background and mind-set, that Snowden would sacrifice his career to expose data mining procedures of the National Security Agency. Even if he has not been able to point to any specific abuses, he was bound to be horrified by the confidentiality endemic to military and intelligence activities. And, of course, he’s right that the procedures he’s unveiled could lend themselves to abuse in the future.

But Big Brother is not the only danger facing the country. Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in their outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good.

This is not a danger Snowden is addressing. In fact, he is making everything worse.

For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things.

He betrayed honesty and integrity, the foundation of all cooperative activity. He made explicit and implicit oaths to respect the secrecy of the information with which he was entrusted. He betrayed his oaths.

He betrayed his friends. Anybody who worked with him will be suspect. Young people in positions like that will no longer be trusted with responsibility for fear that they will turn into another Snowden.

He betrayed his employers. Booz Allen and the C.I.A. took a high-school dropout and offered him positions with lavish salaries. He is violating the honor codes of all those who enabled him to rise.

He betrayed the cause of open government. Every time there is a leak like this, the powers that be close the circle of trust a little tighter. They limit debate a little more.

He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can’t do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods.

He betrayed the Constitution. The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed. Snowden self-indulgently short-circuited the democratic structures of accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else.

Edward Snowden isn’t the betrayer.  The betrayers are the Bush administration, the Obama administration, the NSA, and the Congress.  For Brooks to claim, with a straight faith, that it is Snowden who betrayed his oaths and the Constitution, that is is Edward Snowden who “betrayed the privacy of us all” when he exposed the NSA’s lawless domestic spying program, is to tell a far bigger lie than Joseph Goebbels ever told.

Of course, he’s only following the lead of the Republican’s Chief Executive Oompa-Loompa:

“Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday called Edward Snowden, the contractor who leaked details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, a “traitor.” “He’s a traitor,” Boehner said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “The disclosure of this information puts Americans at risk.  It shows our adversaries what our capabilities are, and it’s a giant violation of the law.””

And some of you used to wonder why I have such total contempt for the Republican Party, and why I have always been totally unmoved by the quadrennial “we gots to vote agin’ the Demoncrat” appeals.  Notice that the bi-factional ruling party is quick to drop their superficial differences when a real threat to their regime appears:

On Monday Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein
(D-Calif.) said Snowden’s leaking of NSA information was treasonous. “I don’t look at this as being a whistle-blower. I think it’s an act of treason,” Feinstein said.

Flat ugly

Steve Jobs must be rolling over in his grave:

The new iOS 7 software has what’s been dubbed ‘flat’ look with fewer
textures and a more monochrome look. The gradient textures on tabs have
also been removed in favour of block colours.
Users can now swipe from the left of the screen to go back and move
between messages. When you slide across in any app you now get an
options menu too….

Experts warned the radical makeover could confuse some users. Jan Dawson, chief telecoms analyst at Ovum, said it ‘represents a massive overhaul of the look and feel of the operating system, which has remained largely unchanged visually since the original version.’ However, he said the changes could be too much. ‘The new version is almost unrecognisable, which will make it polarizing.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this was enough to send even some of the fanboys to Android.  Even the previous generation of Samsung phones are better than the current iPhones, and uglifying the operating system isn’t going to help matters any.  It looks almost as if Apple thinks its competition is Windows 8, not Android.