And you thought Raidess fans were hard

They’ve got nothing on Egyptian soccer fans.  And by nothing, I mean NOTHING:

Twenty-one men were sentenced to hang over the riot after a game in the city of Port Said between the local club, Al-Masry, and Al-Ahly of Cairo, in which 74 died last February. Visiting supporters were stabbed, crushed and in some cases thrown from the terraces in what seemed from live television pictures to be a premeditated assault.

Al-Ahly supporters and relatives of the dead celebrated the verdict when it was read out in the Cairo court to which the case had been moved.

But in Port Said relatives of the defendants tried to storm the prison where they were being held. Two policemen were shot dead in the melee before the authorities fought back. By late afternoon, local health authorities said a total of 27 people had died, including two football players, more than had been sentenced in the first place.

A real tragedy.  I can only conclude Egypt does not have sufficient gun control.

Efficiently incommunicado

This is some commendable cogitation on the part of the Canadian Cincinnatus:

[W]hy was the British Empire so efficient? For there
is no doubt about it, it was. A mere thousand bureaucrats in the Colonial
Office managed an empire so large that the sun never set on it, an empire that
included a subcontinent. How was this possible?

One
reason, I think, is that the colonies weren’t informatically connected. No
phones, no text messages, no Skype, no e-mail, no conference calls, no
webinars, no meetings. Therefore, no micromanagement. For reasons of necessity,
all decisions had to be pushed down to the lowest possible levels. This not
only had the effect of minimizing bureaucracy but it also meant that the
character of the Empire’s decision makers was more solid.

Contrast with this Richard Nixon speaking to platoon leaders in the field in Vietnam.  Bureaucracy can be a killer even in very small organizations and also relates to the r/K metaphor; once the job becomes sufficiently easy and risk-free, the change almost dictates the mass entry of the Rabbit People.

One of the things that strikes the reader of Imperial British history was the youth and astounding arrogance of the men who ruled its colonies.  Their belief in their own superiority was, to a certain extent, a self-fulfilling prophecy.  My favorite example from the era was the officer who steamed something like a hundred miles upriver from his army, showed up at the gates of a garrisoned, walled city with about twenty men, and demanded its surrender.

Since it never occurred to the enemy commander whose army had previously been defeated that anyone could possibly be so insanely arrogant as to make such a demand without having his victorious army in the near vicinity, the city was surrendered at once.  And yet, it wasn’t actually crazy, it was a straightforward calculated risk based on the idea of the enemy’s interest in his own self-preservation. 

A better class of fake review

One has to respect that at least Zoidy went to the trouble of buying the Kindle version before writing his fake review.

Boring! Very much a Warhammer novel (with the license), January 25, 2013

By Zoidy, Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a terrible book. Slow, tiresome, boring!

It’s pointlessly
wasteful with pages upon pages of characters writing letters that say
nothing! Of characters that spend ungodly amounts of time internalising
about simple issues like whether to put their cloak on to go outside!
What’s the weather like?! Who might see them outside?! Will they catch a
chill…and on and on! This is horrible writing.

Also, thanks to the Warhammer fantasy and Warhammer 40k worlds for providing pretty much most of what this author has written.

Note to the next fake reviewer: it’s more convincing if you actually read the book.  And noticing the absence of any brand logos or laser guns would also help.  Of course, actually reading the book sort of defeats the purpose of the fake review, doesn’t it?  If Zoidy thinks A Throne of Bones has pages of pages of letters – about 12 out of 854 – I’d hate to imagine what he’d conclude of Pat Wrede’s Sorcery and Cecilia, which I am given to understand is a Vampire Diaries-licensed novel.

I should be absolutely fascinated to learn what elements of the Warhammer 40k universe are present in the novel.  I don’t know whether to be flattered or appalled that people are actually willing to pay money in order to publicly trash my work.  But it occurs to me that this may open up whole new horizons in the honorable profession of getting paid to not write….

Rabbits gonna rabbit

This is absolutely and utterly beautiful.  I wish I’d started running for SFWA office years ago.  I’m just sorry that what passes for discussion there is not open to the public.  On the SFWA Forum, in a thread entitled Questions for Candidates, some of the sadder little rabbits are lamenting the fact that they can’t disqualify me from running for office due to my doubleplusungood crimethink and discussing whether either the old bylaws or the new ones will permit revoking membership in the association.

A very important question was addressed to all the candidates about our belief that men and women are equal and equally deserving of respect, to which I answered thusly:  “No. I don’t believe equality exists in any material, legal, or
spiritual sense. And I am deeply amused by anyone who claims to be
pro-science and asserts that it does.”

Rabbits gonna rabbit.

Because I am a sensitive and responsive leader, and in light of my newfound appreciation for the importance of equality to the membership, I have added a plank to my platform: “All Active and Associate members will be required to provide a signed and notarized statement that they believe men and women are equal and equally deserving of respect.  Members who fail to provide a signed and notarized statement to that effect prior to December 31, 2013, will have their memberships in the association immediately and irrevocably terminated.”

When rabbits rage

I don’t know about you, but one of the things I found most illuminating about the inevitable reaction of various angry rabbits to the featuring of the fraudulent reviewer was the strength of their expressed emotions.  I mean, even if I was absolutely everything they claimed me to be: insecure, childish, a baby, bratty, thin-skinned, small, unprofessional, pathetic, out-of-line, and so forth, why would that be so observably upsetting to them?

Why would they go out of their way to declare, with considerable umbrage, that they would never read a book of which they had never heard before and which they never had any intention of reading anyhow? Why would they find it to be “utterly reprehensible” to do what literally dozens of other sites were already doing?  Why did they find me to be “scary” when they presumably don’t feel that way about MyAddress or Google Street View?  Why would they feel the urgent need to follow the fraudulent reviewer’s example and “warning other to stay away” from my terrifying books? 

Part of the answer can be found inadvertently provided in the comment of Farida Y.  “He deliberately posted the address of a woman as a clear target of contempt.”  Remember, we usually give away our values in the process of attacking others.  Because I most typically deride others as weaklings, fools and idiots, I betray the fact that I value strength, wisdom, and intelligence, and aspire to those things.

From their insults, we can see that Rabbit People place particular value on being viewed as sane, grown-up, mature, professional, and in-line.  For example, if you see a blog that describes itself as “thoughtful”, you can be sure that it belongs to a rabbit.  This doesn’t mean, of course, that they actually are any of those things, it merely means that those things are what they aspire to, and what they erroneously believe everyone else aspires to as well.

Now, the main reason the Rabbit People were offended was that they correctly interpreted my action to be one of contempt.  They know that I do not see them as equals, but as inferiors whose opinions are not to be taken seriously and are useful only for the purpose of amusing me and my readers.  This tends to infuriate those who consider themselves to be thoughtful, grown-up, and responsible because one of their primary objectives is to be taken seriously by the herd, thereby elevating their status within it.

But if the correctly perceived contempt explains the offense, and therefore the nature of the responses, it does not explain their vehemence or the level of emotions that fueled them.  To understand this, you must first understand that the Rabbit mind is fundamentally feminine, and the feminine mind is ruled, first, foremost, and forever, by fear.

This is why, in addition to the previously listed descriptions, I was also described as: angry, scary, frightening, psychopathic, creepy, unstable, and obsessed.  These labels are not meant literally, they are simply code words meant to warn fellow rabbits ELIL AHEAD: BEWARE THE PREDATOR.  In addition to being offended, the rabbits are also afraid on two counts.  First, I have demonstrated that I am immune to their weapons of excoriation and exclusion, which, being herd animals, is something they find inexplicable and frightening.  Second, I have shown that I am willing to step “out-of-line”, which means that I am capable of taking actions that they cannot imagine, anticipate, or control.  The combination of these two things is enough to strike absolute terror in the rabbity heart; it quite literally panics them even when, as in the case of the fraudulent reviewer, no one was threatened in any way, shape, or form.

Their antics weren’t inspired by the fact that my actions were intrinsically dangerous, as they obviously were not, but rather, from the fact that those actions were outside the boundaries defined by the rabbits as being safe.  Rabbits bolt from big scary noises; they don’t stop to reflect upon whether it is a hungry bear with a particular hankering for rabbit or a truck that isn’t anywhere near them and isn’t even capable of being aware of their existence.  The simple act of stepping outside the lines is, from the rabbity perspective, an inherently dangerous act, because their way of life revolves around the dynamic construction of rules designed to circumscribe the behavior of others.

Jack Amok explained it correctly: “Rabbit/Lefty people count on this, that their opponents will hold
themselves to civilized rules of conduct the lefties will themselves
aggressively ignore. Like a woman who screams, spits and throws things
at a man, confident he wouldn’t dare backhand her across the room in
response.  The shock when he doesn’t conform to expectations is usually dramatic.” 

Stickwick added: “For the rabbit people, any behavior that isn’t sufficiently supplicating
in response to their attempts to shame and cow probably does have the
appearance of psychopathy.”

And Allyn asked an apt question:

“A question for those that have a better understanding of rabbit behavior.  Do rabbit folk go blind during their rage and lose the ability for reading cognitive recognition?  This question is a direct result of observing today’s acts.

Vox claims “For my next trick I will make the rabbits appear and then dance and hop on one foot”.

On
command the rabbits appear, raging at Vox for being a Nazi, homophobic,
poopy head that is not smarter than them. What they seem to miss is
they are doing this while dancing and hopping on one foot.”

 Yes, that’s exactly what they do.  They go blind with rage and fear.  A sufficiently angry rabbit, (which is essentially synonymous with a sufficiently frightened rabbit), is hopelessly irrational and possesses mere fragments of the cognitive abilities it usually has.  They are rendered intellectually tharn.

Let me give you an example from an exchange that followed yesterday’s chorus line of hopping, dancing rabbits between an SFWA member and me.  Unfortunately, I can’t quote the other individual due to where the exchange took place, but the summary should suffice to illustrate the point.  Being a candidate for the office of president, I was asked to explain my actions related to the fraudulent reviewer, which I did as follows:

“[I]t was part of a larger point I was making about Rabbit People and one of their common tactics. I knew several Whatever readers would attack my books by using the reviews because that’s the sort of readership Mr. Scalzi has. I had a similar experience with Richard Dawkins’s fans after publishing TIA. There were a number of other fake reviews posted yesterday that I reported in the conventional manner and were immediately removed by Amazon, such as this one: “Vox Day” is not only a bad writer; he’s also an angry, racist psychopath. Stay far away from this mediocre book.””

This led to a response from one gentleman who rejoices in sprinkling his missives with lawyerly idioms.  He claimed that because he happened to provide a few of Whatever’s 7.8 MILLION PAGEVIEWS in 2012, I had personally insulted him by accusing him of engaging in unprofessional tactics, and furthermore, had attacked the SFWA membership as well.

Now, it shouldn’t be terribly difficult for anyone who has graduated from elementary school, much less law school, to realize that an insignificant number of readers are not synonymous with the entire readership.  Still less does the subset necessarily have anything to do with a separate organization, even if that organization happens to have some degree of overlap with the set.  But the rabbit, esq. was so angry and tharn that he manufactured a nonsensical ex post facto justification for his wounded feelings, which of course required me, as a known healer and teacher, to gently explain the errors in his reasoning to him.

Which explanation I provided with such care and compassion that one giant of science fiction was moved to exclaim in open amazement and wonder.

I have to admit, I wasn’t particularly sanguine about my electoral prospects before yesterday, but I’m feeling pretty optimistic about them now.  After all, even rabbits like seeing a lawyer get bitch-slapped.

The UK and the “triple-dip”

Forget the “double-dip”.  Now we’re expected to believe that a “triple-dip” recession is nigh:

Economists believe the chances of such a scenario are high, given
that there has been no let up in the pressure on consumers and
businesses and snow disruption threatens to cost the economy an
estimated £500 million a day.

There is no official definition of a
triple dip, but it is widely accepted to mean that the economy has
fallen into recession three times without returning to a period of
robust growth in between. The UK plunged into a double dip
recession last year, contracting for three quarters in a row before
bouncing back with growth of 0.9% in the three months to September.

According
to the Office for National Statistics, there has not been a triple dip
recession since its records began in 1955, with Britain last suffering
such economic gloom in the Great Depression. 

There is no triple-dip recession.  There was no double-dip recession.  This is, as I have been saying since 2008, the Great Depression 2.0.  It is larger in scope than its predecessor and it is gradually revealing the concrete shortcomings of the reported economics statistics.

It is also interesting how we don’t hear much about the ongoing “economic recovery” in the USA anymore even though the GDP numbers are still nominally positive.

Politicians are lying bastards

And in other news, water is still wet:

[B]efore Senator Joe Manchin III invited a group of 15 businessmen and community leaders to lunch last week to discuss the topic, he had only a vague idea of how anxious many of his supporters were.

“How many of you all believe that there is a movement to take away the Second Amendment?” he asked.

About half the hands in the room went up.

Despite his best attempts to reassure them — “I see no movement, no talk, no bills, no nothing” — they remained skeptical….

On Thursday a group of Democratic senators led by Dianne Feinstein of
California plans to introduce a bill that would outlaw more than 100
different assault weapons, setting up what promises to be a fraught and
divisive debate over gun control in Congress in the coming weeks. 

I imagine the other half are just as skeptical now.  How out of it, or how dishonest, does a senator have to be to fail to see a bill as obvious as Feinstein’s coming only a week before it is announced?  Public Enemy had it right when Chuck D rapped about the fact that is corrupt like a senator.  But I think Nate may have had it right when he concluded that the pile of executive orders that Obama dropped on the nation last week represented him backing down on guns after Sandy Hook failed to be the game changer the media billed it as.

Can you even imagine how much trouble the guy in charge of orchestrating false flags is right now?  No doubt he’s desperately defending himself.  What’s he supposed to do for an encore, find some patsy, drug him up, and turn him loose in an animal shelter to shoot up puppies and kittens?

The American people have made it eminently clear that even if 100 kindergartens are machine-gunned tomorrow, they’ll pull their kids out of school and take them shopping at the gun store rather than disarm.

Rush and the bifactional ruling party

It’s a little late, but Rush Limbaugh has finally begun to realize that he’s been played for decades by the Republican branch:

You know what this was? This was perhaps, folks, one of the best
illustrations of the whole concept that we’ve spoken here about on
numerous occasions of the ruling class, the political class. It doesn’t
matter what party, they’re all part of the ruling class, the political
class in DC, and when the rubber hits the road, they all circle the
wagons around each other. Well, the Republicans join in circling the
wagons. The Democrats never do when it’s a Republican involved, but for
the most part they do. They close ranks, and they protect one another
because what they’re protecting is themselves.

They’re protecting the ruling class, the political elites, and they’re maintaining the status quo….  So what we had here, folks, was the ruling class circling the wagons
and protecting each other. Party affiliation did not matter. We’re
always hoping at hearings like this that somebody on our side is gonna
stand up and give the Democrats what-for, somebody is gonna stand up and
nail ’em to the cross or whatever, ask the tough questions, get to the
bottom of it just as the Democrats do with our judicial nominees or
anybody in our party who falls in the crosshairs.
We keep waiting for it, and it never happens. They never do it. 

Now, I have no idea if he is right about setting the stage for Hilary in 2016.  I don’t care.  After the last election showed that I have been too long gone to have any ability to correctly read the US electorate, I am officially out of the business of political predictions.  But it is interesting to see the man who was once Mr. Republican finally beginning to understand that there is not a real two-party system in the USA, there is merely one ruling party with two cooperative factions.