Warning: spoilers ahead

Since there has been so much discussion of reviewing A THRONE OF BONES of late, I’ve decided that enough time has passed to permit a Q&A about the book with those who have read it.  If you have not yet read the novel, but intend to do so, I strongly recommend that you not read the comments.  And if you have, this is your place to ask me questions concerning the events and characters of the existing book and the novellas, NOT the one that I am currently writing.

On a related note, A Wardog’s Coin won’t be out until next month because I have been occupied with working on Book Two as well as a Selenoth-related social game that is going to be a fantasy epic in its own right.

Women to the front lines

Tell me again about how the People will never be able to resist the assembled might of the US military?

Women in all branches of the military soon will have unprecedented opportunities to serve on the front lines of the nation’s wars.

Leon Panetta, in one of his last acts as President Obama’s defense secretary, is preparing to announce the policy change, which would open hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war, the Pentagon confirmed Wednesday.

The groundbreaking move recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff overturns a 1994 rule banning women from being assigned to smaller ground combat unit

Between the reduced female capacity for fighting and the inevitable dissension and lack of unit cohesion that will result from putting women into front-line companies and commando units, I can only conclude that this is ultimately a positive development for long-term American freedom.  Give it enough time and the military will go the way of the Fortune 500 companies, HR commissars will be assigned to each unit, and the combat rifle will be replaced with a lighter .22 caliber carbine that comes in fashionable teal, mauve, and eggshell.

To be honest, I’d like to see the Obama take it even farther and make it an all-female military.  Somewhere, there is a Chinese general reading his tablet and laughing.

Jared Diamond and the Grass Hut Imperative

At least there is one left-liberal who is honest about his heartfelt desire to return to the Great Grass Hut Matriarchy:

….The World Until Yesterday, a vanity project marketed as anthropology. In this book, Diamond draws from his extensive field research in New Guinea to share his views on the shortcomings of contemporary American society. Primitive approaches to social problems, he thinks, would better serve our society. For example, he argues for: dedicating more resources to mediation as an alternative to civil lawsuits, establishing “conventional monopolies” to smooth out trade fluctuations, deemphasizing competition and the desire for excellence among children, on-demand nursing for infants, spending more time talking to our children, devising new living conditions for the elderly, accepting that the gulf between rich and poor in the United States provides an explanation of the popularity of religion in our country, preserving language diversity, and ending obesity.

At its core, the book is based on a fundamental contradiction. Diamond explains that the customs of primitive societies are not applicable to the characteristics of our society; then he proceeds to use those customs as the basis for recommendations for improving everything in our society from parenting to diet.

Apparently it’s not enough that we’re basing our trade policy upon early 19th century illogic, our monetary system upon early 20th century fraud, our economic system upon Depression-era nonsense, and our immigration policy upon a play written by a Jewish immigrant to Britain in 1908, Diamond wants us to go all the way back to cannibalism, huts, and throwing rocks at one another.

What I don’t understand is why?  I mean, they don’t actually ever go and live in Papua New Guinea or Deepest, Darkest Africa themselves, so why do they think that the primitive lifestyles that they favor should be imported and imposed upon the West?

A Day of Resistance

If the Rabbit People are frightened over the exposure of a single fake book reviewer, this announcement of a large scale public protest by gun owners should have them seriously popping pellets:

While Barack Obama is calling for Americans to give up their freedom, their rights, and their guns, we’re calling for Americans to resist. We’re calling on Tea Partiers, moderate Republicans, Libertarians and even moderate Democrats to stand up one month from today, on the 23rd of February and say, “No more!” Right Wing News is joining Dustin Stockton, Western Representation PAC and The Tea Party.net in calling for rallies all across the nation next month on the 23rd. It’ll be a Day of Resistance where gun owners and patriots can peacefully gather and show Barack Obama, the media, and the knockkneed Republicans in Congress that we may have lost a battle last November, but we haven’t lost the war. Don’t meekly give up your 2nd Amendment rights when you can stand with us and RESIST!

Tea Party II, this time with guns.  What is not to like?  You can almost hear the theme from Muse playing already.

The bright lights of the hrududu

You may recall that I’ve mentioned how the Rabbit People have three basic weapons to which they resort.  One of their most important ones is exclusion; to a herd animal exclusion is the worst of all possible fates because they are incapable of even imagining survival on their own.

Now consider in this light an intriguing one-star review of A THRONE OF BONES that appeared yesterday courtesy of one Virginia Conterato of EdinaMinneapolis.

It’s very difficult to review a book so badly written. The wordiness
attempts to disguise the utter lack of decent storytelling and world
building. There is a whole lot of NOTHING happening along with badly
written dialogue and poorly developed characters. It is not often that I
write negative reviews, but I felt I needed to warn others away from
this terrible book. THis book is truly terrible. Don’t waste your time,
much less your money. 

It’s even harder to convincingly review a book one hasn’t read.  Or, as appears to be the case, even bought.  Isn’t it amazing how strongly some of these one-star reviewers feel they need to “warn others” and save them from exposure to the terrible, horrible, doubleplusungood novel?  As if otherwise, they might inadvertently read such a miniscule tome?  It tends to remind one of McRapey warning his readers not to read this blog or even mention Lord VoldemortRSHD.  This is classic Rabbit People behavior, especially in light of how Mrs. Conterato clearly hasn’t read the book.  You’ll note that attack reviews are usually phrased in the most general of terms; if they do provide details, they usually just happen to come from things that take place in the text selection available on Amazon.  Seriously, is there anyone who genuinely believes that Kay is one of the very few people who bought the hardcover?

Although I have to admit, the idea of an angry little rabbit flipping furiously through all 854 pages just to write a credible-sounding fake review does amuse me.  It’s worse than TIA’s unclimbable Mount Chapter Four.

Now, why would a married woman in her late forties be so upset that she would go to the trouble of posting a fake review at this particular time?  The answer, I suspect, is to be found at Change.org, where last year Kay signed the petition “Senator Amy Klobuchar: Publicly Come Out in Support of Same-Sex Marriage”.  Logic suggests the following scenario: McRapey repeatedly pounds the homophobic drum, Kay’s little rabbit ears perk up, and she bravely hops forth to do battle on behalf of the Whatever warren and her lesbian writer friends at The Loft.

And then the bright lights appeared….

Now, you’d have to have lived in the Twin Cities to fully appreciate what I find funniest about the good doctor’s wife.  You see, when Kay signed the petition, she claimed to live in Edina.  But she doesn’t.  As it happens, in high school I dated a few girls from Edina, including one who lived just down the road from Southdale. Which, you see, is why I happen to know that Kay, like many others in certain parts of Richfield and southwest Minneapolis, only affects to live in the more prestigious city….

I now await, with no little amusement, the declarations of how scary the Rabbit People find it to discover that Lord Voldemort now has the dark and dangerous powers of Google-fu at his disposal.  I have to confess, I’m more than a little tempted to knock on her door and offer to sign her nonexistent hardcover the next time I’m in EdinaMinneapolis.

The other interesting thing, in addition to the fake reviews, is that there are at least two rabbits who are giving helpful ratings to all the negative reviews and rating all of the positive reviews unhelpful.  Given the timing, one of them is likely our little friend Kay.  It’s not so much the review as the rating of the review that is of interest here:

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

1 out of 5 stars: hard to follow yet very predictable January 21, 2013
By  Tracy

This a long book, very slow read. Not a lot of action or suspense. You can tell whats going to happen almost every step of the way. It is layed out like it is 7 or 8 books stuck together. The chapter titles are just the name of the character that will be prominent for that chapter. Then the next chapter is for the storyline of the next character and so on. After forcing myself to finish the book, it is only a lead up to a second book! It does’t even stand on it’s own! Horrible!  

Helpful indeed.  This is how the Rabbit People fight; it’s all nonsensical, passive-aggressive attacks intended to be plausibly deniable, sniping from behind corners, and appealing to the herd; the correct way to respond is not through reactive passive-aggression, but rather to shine a light on the little critters’s activities.

We are not like them, we are better than them.  They know it.  And they know we know it.  That is why they hate us.

UPDATE: Some are incredulous that I would post information that is freely available to the public about a suspected fraud here on this blog.  Very well, let me be clear.  I am demanding an admission from Mrs. Conterato that she neither purchased the hardcover nor the Kindle version, nor did she read the book in its entirety prior to posting her review.  On a related note, I am requesting the order records from my publisher today; since the book is not available in retail bookstores, I should be able to confirm within days that she did not, in fact, ever purchase the hardcover that she claimed to have reviewed.  I will remove the public information from this post if a) Mrs. Conterato admits she did not buy the book and her review is a fake one, or b) if she proves that she did purchase the book and read it in its entirety.

UPDATE II: I just got an email from the publisher containing a list of the books sent to Minnesota.  None was sent to anyone named Conterato or to the address shown above.  Or to Edina…. This is not yet conclusive proof as one more possibility exists that I am presently having tracked down, but it is a significant step in that direction.

Digging out the Rabbit People

A few people have asked me what I mean by “Rabbit People”.  It is a term that derives from an outmoded, but still relevant concept from biology, r/K selection theory, which was coined by the famous biologist E.O. Wilson and refers to evolutionary pressures causing population groups to evolve in one of two different directions.  There are a lot of problems with this, both empirically and logically, but that’s beside the point.  A useful metaphor doesn’t depend on its literal truth, much less the current scientific popularity of the theory from which it derives.

The fact that it does not actually “rain cats and dogs” in either the scientific or the colloquial sense does not render the expression either inexplicable or useless, although one does tend to wonder how it was originally coined.

Anyhow, Wikipedia explains r-selection as follows: “In unstable or unpredictable environments, r-selection predominates as the ability to reproduce quickly is crucial. There is little advantage in adaptations that permit successful competition with other organisms, because the environment is likely to change again. Traits that are thought to be characteristic of r-selection include: high fecundity, small body size, early maturity onset, short generation time, and the ability to disperse offspring widely.  Organisms whose life history is subject to r-selection are often referred to as r-strategists or r-selected. Organisms who exhibit r-selected traits can range from bacteria and diatoms, to insects and weeds, to various semelparous cephalopods and mammals, particularly small rodents.”

Rabbits are one of the more commonly cited examples of an r-selected species and a number of people have taken r/K selection theory, traced out the logical consequences of it in modern societal terms and applied it to politics.

“Obviously, from avoiding conflict and competition, to single
parenting, to low-loyalty to in-group, this r-selected Reproductive
Strategy is the psychomotive origin of the Political Left, or as it is
known in America, Political Liberalism. It produces a model of human
which is cowardly, competition averse, promiscuous, supportive of single
parenting, supportive of earlier sexualization of young, and which has
no real embrace of loyalty, honor, decency, or any other pro-social
trait designed to foster group cohesion and functionality, or success in
group competition. Females will become manly, to provision and protect
their young, which they raise alone, while men become effete castrati,
designed for fleeing and fornication, and capable of little else of
meaning.  As we see in any society which begins to produce resources freely and
copiously, it will gradually begin to trend “r” as time goes on,
further highlighting this relationship of resource availability to
political psychology, and reproductive strategy.”

It doesn’t hold up perfectly and its scope is excessively broad as one would expect from any binary heuristic, and yet it is much more strongly supported by the empirical evidence than many familiar political tropes such as the idea of a causal relationship between poverty and crime or the fear that carry laws will result in increased firearms homicides, road rage-inspired gun fights, and blood running in the streets.

Now, my minor contribution to the concept came about when I was reading Aristotle’s Rhetoric last summer.  One part in particular caught my attention, namely, this paragraph towards the beginning:  “Rhetoric is useful because things that are true and things that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over
their opposites, so that if the decisions of judges are not what they ought to be, the defeat must be due to the
speakers themselves, and they must be blamed accordingly. Moreover, before some audiences not even the possession
of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge
implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.”

I realized that there is a very strong correlation between the people identified r-selected and the individuals that Aristotle described as being incapable of dialectic.  In other words, rhetoric is the language of the Rabbit People, just as their preferred form discourse is alternatively described as postmodern and sensitivity-driven.

Now, it is important to note that theory notwithstanding, the communication-based division is observably not a direct function of politics, ideology, sex, religion, or even intelligence, although there are clear patterns and relationships that can be observed in those regards.  Most people have at least a bit of rabbit in them, and although insufficient intelligence restricts many people to the rhetorical level, there are many highly intelligent people of both sexes who are capable of the dialectic who nevertheless shun it, or worse, utilize a perverted, rhetorical form of it.

In my next post on the subject, I’ll explain how the Rabbit People communicate, how one must communicate with them, and provide some examples of rabbitry both high and low.

Helen’s Page

Dr. Helen has introduced a new page that is intended to be a right-wing online Craig’s List.  It’s called Helen’s Page.  If you’ve got something to sell, a service to offer, or even just a worthy blog post to pitch, you can sign in and post it there.  People can add comments; for example, here is a post about A THRONE OF BONES I put up there last week.

It’s still in live beta, but it’s an interesting concept.  Check it out.

Defying King Cuomo

Will the shooting start in New York?  New York gun owners have no intention of complying with King Cuomo’s attempt to disarm them:

Assault-rifle owners statewide are organizing a mass boycott of Gov.
Cuomo’s new law mandating they register their weapons, daring officials
to “come and take it away,” The Post has learned.

Gun-range owners
and gun-rights advocates are encouraging hundreds of thousands of
owners to defy the law, saying it’d be the largest act of civil
disobedience in state history.

“I’ve heard from hundreds of people
that they’re prepared to defy the law, and that number will be
magnified by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, when the
registration deadline comes,’’ said Brian Olesen, president of the
American Shooters Supply, one of the largest gun dealers in the state.

King Cuomo is violating the Second Amendment and his new law is void on its face, being a clear infringement upon the right to bear arms.  No New Yorker should obey King Cuomo’s mandate, no New Yorker should register his weapons, and no New Yorker should permit himself to be disarmed by New York State.

“State officials will be nervously watching the registration figures to see how many gun owners comply, sources said.”

I’ll bet they’re nervous.  Molon labe.

McRapey’s next book

It seems that in light of our friend at Whatever’s newfound interest in book covers, Vidad felt that he should contribute his own offering.  And it’s NOT an imitation, a ripoff, or a parody, it’s an homage!

I’ll admit it.  We have now gone from “modestly amused” to “okay, that’s actually kind of funny”.  And it leads me to ponder this question: what author or series will be the subject of McRapey’s next homage?  Jerry Pournelle?  No, he’s alive.  Ursula LeGuin?  No, too risky.  Ray Bradbury?  Too difficult.  Frank Herbert?  Too long.  It’s kind of a fun game though; perhaps we should start a pool and whoever wins has to read the book and write a review that I’ll post here.  I’ve got Poul Anderson.

Genetics vs Geographics

Mexifornia arrives as the grand experiment in replacing Anglos with Aztecs continues apace:

California’s Hispanic population is slated to become the state’s majority ethnicity by the end of this year according to a new report by the governor’s office. New ethnicity trends outlined in Gov Jerry Brown’s 2013-14 budget proposal revealed the state’s expected new majority while reasoning the state’s declining birth rates and increasing migration as causes.As early as July Hispanics are expected to be equal in size to non-Hispanic whites before outpacing them, according to the report, with both demographics in that month reaching 39 per cent of the population.

Now, if the Left’s Geographic theory that human behavior is predominantly determined by the physical location of the human being is correct, California should prosper and its economy should boom with all of these hardworking immigrants seeking the prosperity and opportunity afforded them by the environment and infrastructure there.  If, on the other hand, the Genetic theory is correct and the Aztecs are qualitatively inferior to the declining Anglos in some capacity, we should expect to see California continue to rapidly decline by a broad panoply of metrics and the infrastructure break down as the political preferences of the majority Hispanic population, which has no connection whatsoever to the historic Constitution, traditional American ideology, and the Rights of Englishmen upon which the United States was originally founded.

I’m just curious what it will take for advocates of the Geographic theory to give it up.  California declaring bankruptcy?  The complete elimination of the white race from the state?  California seceding and joining Mexico?  The construction of pyramids and resumption of human sacrifice?  Or is your faith in it simply unshakeable by evidence?