It would appear that I still read rather quickly:
“You read 1,194 words per minute. That makes you 378% faster than the national average.”
For the record, I answered all three questions correctly. If only I could write that fast.
A failure in condescension
In which SFWA President-for-Life John Scalzi’s misguided attempt to curry favor with the non-white, non-male portion of the population is shown to be conclusively wrong by his very own selected metrics:
I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.
So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?
Being a white guy who likes women, here’s how I would do it:
Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.
Now, let me first point out that John is not a bad guy. He’s actually remarkably low on the obnoxious left-liberal scale for a science fiction writer, much less a successful one, and there is no question that he means well. That being said, he’s about as socio-sexually Gamma as it is possible to be and still be straight, and for someone whose communication skills are quite high, he’s uncharacteristically oblivious to what a condescending little fuck this post makes him appear to be. But it’s only an illusion, as the reality is that Scalzi is actually engaging in a brilliant subversion.
This will, of course, escape most readers. I suspect the average straight white man who actually works for a living rather than sitting around making up stories primarily for the benefit of obese middle-aged women aren’t terribly inclined to be lectured by an overweight, educated, soft-handed little man about how easy they have it. Let’s look at his metaphor of the difficulty setting, which as a gamer, game producer, and game designer I am rather well suited to examine.
First, I note that he is clearly referring to a snapshot in time. Straight white men didn’t have it any easier than, for example, straight brown men back in the age of the Pharoahs, nor will they have it easier should China defeat the USA in 2050. So, the metrics have to refer to today, now, not what life was like in 500 BC, 1850, or 2050. Having established that, let’s look at the measures he specifically notes and see how many of them are true:
1. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower.
2. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly.
3. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for.
4. The game is easier to play, automatically
5. When you need help, by default it’s easier to get.
1. This is clearly false. There is copious evidence showing that Scalzi has it completely wrong here. Who is permitted to graduate from high school or college while doing sub-standard work, a black individual or a white one? Who is permitted to skate in the workplace more often, men or women? For whom are the standards reduced more often, white men or non-white men?
2. This is also generally false; Scalzi’s perspective here is likely skewed from his professional involvement in the literary and Hollywood worlds, where connections matter far more than experience or achievement. But unless your father owns the cleaning company, the average white male janitor or white male sales guy is not going to level up any more quickly than anyone else, in fact, there is considerable statistical evidence that proves women are promoted much more quickly than men in corporate America. One need only look at news broadcasts to see an example of this; one never sees a twenty-two year old man reading the news. Note that the median age of female newscasters is 26, six years younger than male newscasters.
3. This is true, but irrelevant and misleading. Scalzi simply ignores that white men created the desirable parts of the map where everyone wants to go. There is no straight white male privilege in Zimbabwe because their existence is strongly frowned upon… and what was once the wealthy colony of Rhodesia is now a third-world hellhole. Scalzi has his causation backwards here, it would be more relevant and historically correct to say that white men create more desirable parts of the map than others. If he seriously wishes to dispute this, I suggest he move away from his lily-white Midwestern exurbia into a more vibrant community such as South-Central Los Angeles, downtown Detroit, or post-Apartheid Yeoville. It should come as no surprise that straight white men happen to be better at playing the game of Western Civilization than anyone else. They’re probably less naturally accomplished at the Grass Hut Game, the Aesthetic Stasis Game, or the Naked Savage Orgy Game.
4. Is the game easier to play or are the players intrinsically more skilled? Scalzi simply makes a naked assertion without offering any support for it. Since the game is the same and the rules are the same, logic favors the idea that any quantitative advantage to the straight white male in this regard stems from the way in which the characters points are distributed more efficiently rather than the game setting.
5. This is obviously untrue. The research on the male inclination to ask for, and accept, help clearly demonstrates that it is women who find help much easier to get. The ease with which women and minorities are permitted to exercise free association while white men are not proves that help is much harder for them to get than for others.
So, ironically enough, subversively enough, Scalzi not only fails to make his case, but by his own chosen metrics, winds up demonstrating that it is women who are playing on the lowest difficulty setting, not men. One would think that was obvious, given how they live longer, work less, and have far more options open to them. As for the straight question, that’s not even relevant, since homosexuality is not the equivalent of a difficulty setting, but rather, being left-handed and choosing to play with your left hand on a right-handed controller. It’s understandable why someone might make that decision, but the controller is what it is and it works a lot better if you simply use your non-dominant hand.
WND column
Facebook represents the ultimate test of two ideas. The first is that traffic once attracted, can successfully be monetized. Facebook is presently earning only $4 per user per year. Its investors are gambling that it can increase annual revenue per user before its users get bored and begin to fade away. The second is that there is real value created in passing personal information back and forth between people. It is the second idea that is the more troubling one. While I personally doubt that Facebook, which in my opinion has a dreadful interface, poor performance and a reprehensible privacy policy, can increase its user revenue faster than it loses users, the ultimate fate of Facebook doesn’t really matter to anyone but its investors and those who were hoping its IPO would somehow magically reinvigorate the stock markets. The second issue is the much larger one, because it calls into serious question the direction in which the U.S. economy has been heading for the last 30 years.
Progress report
It’s too soon to declare it a noble failure yet, but my ambitious goal of starting and finishing the 750-page first volume in The Arts of Dark and Light series within one calendar year is in serious jeopardy. I had to write 808 more or less keepable words per day, every single day, to hit that target, and as of today I’ve only averaged 625. Unless I can tack a thousand per day onto that for the two-month home stretch, I’m not going to make it. That means, of course, that the book is already around 190,000 words now, so it’s safe to say that if you liked Summa Elvetica, well, there is considerably more of that sort of thing in store for you. The book hasn’t been formally announced yet, but the contract has been signed, so everything is moving forward and it’s possible that my first foray into epic/fat fantasy may even be released before the end of the year. That’s up to the publisher, of course, but in the meantime, I intend to put the three Eternal Warriors ebooks up on Amazon within the next two weeks.
One thing that I’ve discussed with him is the possibility of permitting VP readers to preorder the trade paperback in return for a decent discount, so if that’s of interest, let me know. If you’ve converted wholly over to eReaders, however, that’s fine too as there will be an ebook version from the start.
Israeli-occupied territory
I refer, of course, to the U.S. Congress. It’s fascinating to see that while ethnic discrimination is banned in the USA, even to the point of openly violating the Constitutional right of free association, and Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, it apparently passes Constitutional muster to pass a law which enshrines ethnic and religious discrimination in foreign states:
On May 9, 2012, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed House Resolution (H.R.) 4133 reaffirming United States policy commitments to Israel and calling for enhanced security cooperation between the two allies. Sponsored by House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the “US-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012” was cosponsored by a bipartisan group of 294 representatives and passed by a vote of 411 to 2. The only dissenting votes were cast by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) while another nine House members voted “present.”
The law certainly sounds reasonable enough. Who wants to see Israel conquered by the Arabs and the resultant bloodbath that would likely follow? I certainly don’t. Except there is one strange thing about this description… Israel is not actually an ally of the United States. I am not aware of any treaty between the two countries establishing a military alliance,and in fact, Turkey’s membership in NATO means that any large-scale Jewish-Muslim war would actually require the USA to go to war against Israel. One can observe, for example, that Israel is not, unlike the USA’s genuine military allies, participating in any of its current military activities. So, just to be sure I’m reading this correctly, let’s take a look at the executive summary of the recenty passed House Resolution 4133, as summarized at GOP.gov.
H.R. 4133 would state that it is U.S. policy to: reaffirm the commitment to Israel’s security as a Jewish state; provide Israel with the military capabilities to defend itself by itself against any threats; veto any one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations Security Council; support Israel’s inherent right to self-defense; expand military and civilian cooperation; assist in a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that results in two states living side by side in peace and security and to encourage Israel’s neighbors to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
Hold on a moment now. This means that thanks to the passage of HR 4133, the same government that is barred from defending America’s right to exist as a white Christian state is nevertheless committing itself to defending Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state? It’s an interesting juxtaposition, n’est-ce pas? I shall certainly be fascinated to learn if there are any philo-semites who can manage to articulate a defense of this recent Congressional action beyond the conventional and ever-so-convincing appeals to “anti-semitism”.
One wonders if the U.S. Congress would be similarly willing to pass a law defending England’s right to exist as an Anglo-Saxon Anglican state or Italy’s right to exist as an Italian Catholic state.
Mailvox: why flaunt IQ?
NorthernHamlet doesn’t understand why I flaunt – not flout – my intelligence:
How would one describe that you trot out “superior IQ” during conversations, even while you acknowledge that neither you nor many of your readers think the criteria for it is legitimate?
First, I wouldn’t say that IQ is totally meaningless or even illegitimate. It clearly measures something real and objective; you will try in vain to discuss anything even remotely intellectual with an individual possessed of a 50 IQ, and I have yet to see someone with an IQ of 100 that I consider, upon the basis of non-IQ related factors, to be more intelligent than someone with an IQ of 150. That being said, it is clearly an imperfect measurement, and it can even be misleading as two people with the same IQ, one stronger on the verbal side and one stronger on the mathematical side, can look either much smarter or much more stupid than the other depending upon the subject.
Ironically enough, I’m a very good example of someone whose measured IQ score tends to significantly underestimate my relevant intelligence in my primary areas of interest because I am so handicapable when it comes to spatial relations. Anyone who has seen me packing a car or even a suitcase would be justified in thinking that I should qualify for special parking privileges, and probably three spaces at that. On the other hand, my ability to recognize patterns and generate useful predictive models from them has been considered to be rather remarkable by many. Am I a retard or a genius? The IQ score is an ineffective metric because it alternatively answers both and neither, depending upon the perspective.
(My answer, of course, is neither. I don’t believe genius is denoted by IQ or any other quantitative measure, but rather unique and significant intellectual accomplishments.)
Long before I wrote my first WND column 11 years ago, I recognized that the arguments presented by the Left, especially those that were blithely accepted by the Right, seldom amounted to more than crude appeals to intelligence. We’ve seen it on this blog time and time again, most recently in the recent series that focused on the dissection of the skeptics. Their main argument, indeed, their only real argument, is “don’t argue with me because I’m smarter than you.” It’s often couched in terms of academic credentials, but since universities no longer provide educations, but primarily serve as intellectual brand markers, credentialist-based arguments are simply slightly modified version of the same position. The reason a Harvard PhD trumps one from Auburn University isn’t because there is any legitimate reason to believe the Harvard PhD has received a better education, indeed, in at least some fields it can be easily demonstrated that the reverse is the case, but because Harvard places more stringent IQ requirements on its applicants. An appeal to academic status is mostly an appeal to intelligence, once-removed.
This is, of course, why the Left repeatedly cites study after study, many of them fake, showing that Blue state residents possess higher average IQs, why Democratic presidents are smarter than Republican presidents, and so forth. It’s all they’ve got. And so, when I flaunt my official, Mensa-approved, readily observable high intelligence in their faces, it removes from them their only rhetorically effective argument by virtue of their own metric. In other words, I’m simply playing by the rules of their game that they have established. Notice how few on the Right, even if they are highly intelligent academics with hard science PhDs, take any exception to my assertions of superintelligence, especially compared with the way the Left instinctively reacts to it rather like vampires to holy water. Of course, since they can’t convincingly claim that I am not every bit as intelligent as they are, they have no choice but to resort to the customary claim of craziness. The path that Delavagus recently trod was not only predictable, it was inevitable, as we’ve been witnessing exactly the same responses to exactly the same stimuli for more than a decade now. One could quite credibly write a paper on it with a larger sample set than one often sees in the social sciences.
Is the appeal to intelligence game nonsense? Of course it is! This is where and why I part company with the modern philosophers. Since true belief is true regardless of whether it is justified or not, whether it is known to be true or not, whether it is even believed or not, it is entirely possible for the 50-IQ retard to be correct and the 175-IQ statistical genius to be completely wrong, regardless of whether the former can even begin to reasonably articulate his beliefs or not, let alone justify them. Indeed, the history of the 20th century is riddled with example after example of the false beliefs to which the intelligentsia subscribed that were rightly rejected by hoi polloi. The reason is that tradition is more than the democracy of the dead, it is also the cumulative intelligence of the centuries. It takes considerable intelligence, intellectual humility, and usually, significant temporal and technological advantages to correctly supersede that cumulative intelligence. No doubt that is why even the most brilliant of the ancient skeptics demanded that custom and traditions be given their due.
No-Limit, No-Case Nigga
Upon perusing the evidence, Alan Dershowitz concludes Trayvon Martin already received his due justice:
A medical report by George Zimmerman’s doctor has disclosed that Zimmerman had a fractured nose, two black eyes, two lacerations on the back of his head and a back injury on the day after the fatal shooting. Moreover, the New York Times has reported that traces of marijuana were found in Trayvon Martin’s body and that Martin’s father initially said that the voice crying for help was not that of his son. It is also been reported that a bruise was found on Martin’s ring finger that would be consistent with Martin having punched Zimmerman. No other wounds, aside of course from the fatal bullet hole in the front of Martin’s body, were found.
If this evidence turns out to be valid, the prosecutor will have no choice but to drop the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman — if she wants to act ethically, lawfully and professionally.
This is hardly a surprise. I haven’t written much about this since I didn’t see any reason to doubt, from the beginning, that given a choice between a white guy who wasn’t a white guy doing Neighborhood Watch in a relatively high crime neighborhood and an innocent Skittles-bearing African child who referred to himself as “NO_LIMIT_NIGGA”, the core situation was anything more than a simple matter of a predatory African attacking someone. The only genuinely unusual thing about it is that in the interests of self-preservation, most predatory Africans have the good sense to limit their attacks to Europeans, Hispanics, and other Africans who are incapable of self-defense. Like all predators who wish to survive, they focus on the sick and the weak. The No-Limit Nigga didn’t abide by those sensible limits of predation and that is why his case, such as it is, has been presented post-mortem.
The African community in America, abetted by the mainstream media, has completely missed a potentially important teachable moment. Instead of attempting to media-lynch a decent Hispanic man who was merely attempting to protect his neighborhood, they would have done much better to teach their young men that in a nation with millions of concealed-carry permit holders, and millions more who carry without bothering with permits, it is not merely criminal, but criminally stupid, to attack even the most apparently indefensible individual. Instead, the well-publicized violence of the idiotic “Justice for Trayvon” attacks has only ensured that even more people will be carrying weapons and they will show even less hesitation about using them when attacked in the future.
In fact, the one thing I did find surprising about Zimmerman is that he only shot Martin once. That alone should have sufficed to prove that he had no intention of killing Martin. I was always taught to fire an automatic three times, starting low and progressing upwards with the muzzle rise, which technique I will confess did not render me popular on the few occasions I played paintball.
A triumph of effort
Ender has had a tough couple of weeks. Missing two weeks due to a poorly timed illness at the beginning of the spring season caused him to lose the starting position he’d worked so hard to merit in the fall. Even when he came back, he was looking a little lost on the field, and his coach was quite right in deciding to demote him to a second-half substitute. He was a little frustrated, naturally, but I told him to be patient, keep working, and everything would sort itself out in time. So, he kept practicing, playing respectably when he went into the game, and generally maintaining his equanimity.
He finally got his chance four weeks ago when the team was having a very tough time stopping a small, but very fast attacker who was blowing past the starting right defender at will. The team was only losing 1-0, but the first twenty minutes of the game had been played in their end, the keeper was getting shellacked, and the next goal was clearly only a matter of time. One of Ender’s friends had come to watch the game, and at one point, I heard him muttering “Mama mia, che disastro” and I couldn’t help but agree. Finally, the coach, who is really quite good, decided he had to change things up in order to keep the team from collapsing. He put in Ender at right back, who like the defender for whom he was substituting was badly overmatched in terms of speed, but I’d been watching the attackers closely and pointed out to him how the speedy attacker always wanted to go down the line. Every time, it was fake inside, go outside. So, by going aggressively to the ball, utilizing smart offside trapping, anticipating that inside-out move, and committing outright fouls when the attacker was getting around him, Ender managed to shut the kid down and help his team to a 3-2 victory. (Having once been a speed player myself, I have a pretty good idea how to disrupt them.) The other team’s second goal initially looked like his fault, as he failed to clear a ball that was coming across the area, but as it turned out, the goalie had called for it and he’d properly let it go. After the game, his coach was delighted, as the one thing the defense has tended to lack is toughness, and he promptly restored Ender to his position at starting right back.
This, however, led to another problem. The boy whose starting position he’d taken has a friend who is a bit of a troublemaker, and after practice, the troublemaker egged the other boy, who is a full head taller, into attacking Ender. He wasn’t much of a fighter, though, and Ender sent him away crying. I have to give the kid credit though, as at the next practice, when the coach asked about what had happened and the troublemaker lied, claiming Ender started it, the boy stepped forward of his own volition and set matters striaght. Things were just a bit uncomfortable before the next game, as there was a miscommunication about the meeting place, and when Ender and I showed up, the troublemaker was the only one there. But we gave him a ride anyhow, for as I explained to Ender, who was half-inclined to leave the kid there, you don’t have to like your teammates, but you still have to have their back.
It was a big game for everyone, since it was against their archrivals from the bigger neighboring town and there is a noticeable inferiority complex that affects kids and adults alike. They got off to a bad start, going down 1-0, but struck back quickly with goals from their two best players. It was 2-1 when his team won a corner kick; Ender went up in support, as always, but this time the other team failed to send anyone out to guard him in his position just outside the 18-yard box. He noticed this, called for the ball, and to my surprise, the girl taking the corner kick quickly passed it to him. He stepped in and hit it on the first touch, and sent the ball in a beautiful rainbow right into the far upper corner. Goal, 3-1, and the game was essentially over. It was his first goal at this level and the look on his face was a marvel to see, half exultation, half incredulity, as his teammates all ran over to mob him. After the game, I was talking with one of the other parents when I noticed that the kid walking along next to Ender and discussing the game with him on the way to the locker room was the troublemaker.
The team is actually coming together rather nicely. Two days ago, they played an evening game against an undefeated team from the big city. I was just hoping they’d lose respectably, as in the warm-ups it was quite clear that the other team was much more skilled. Before the game, the coach snorted angrily to me that they were acting like stars and looking down at the little peasants from the countryside. But despite going down 1-0 to an absolutely ridiculous penalty call after, the team stayed calm and struck back with a beautiful goal from one attacker in the first half, then the team’s other attacker scored a second goal to take the lead with about ten minutes left in the game. Ender was worn out by keeping an even faster attacker under control and had to come out for a while, but the coach switched to a catenaccio strategy at the end and despite his exhaustion put him back in as a fourth defender. The other team was attacking with all the desperation of big city boys who didn’t want to lose to the little peasant team, especially with the potential winning goal scored by a girl. But despite a few close calls, the catenaccio held firm, and they very nearly added a third goal on the counterattack. You would have thought it was the World Cup, as when the final whistle blew, Ender’s team was celebrating wildly while half the players on the big city team were in tears.
They’re not going to win the league this year, in fact,they’re not even going to win their conference. They’ve only got one, possibly two, players who could start on either of the two best teams. But it’s really a lot of fun to watch them play, and I’m very proud of how Ender never gives up, no matter how bleak the prospects appear.
Fear of lack of failure
Daniel Hannan points out what the Eurocrats really fear:
Eurocrats are especially concerned that Greece might leave the euro – but not for the reason you might think. Their worry is not that Greece will sink into a state of Levantine poverty: that has already happened. No, their true fear is that, after a few wretched months, Greece would bounce back, using its newly competitive currency to price its way into the markets and export its way to growth. If that were to happen, other countries on the periphery of the eurozone, also struggling with an over-valued exchange rate, might try something similar. The whole euro project would unravel faster than you could say ‘Jacques Delors’.
Eurocrats often liken the EU to a bicycle that has to keep moving forward or topple over. A ravenous shark that has to keep swimming or die might be a better simile, but never mind: the point holds. Any rolling back of the single most important integrationist project would call the whole enterprise into question.
This is why it is unlikely that Greece will actually leave the Euro or the ECB and IMF will follow through on their threats to cut off their loans to the Greek banks in the short term. Tsipras has already publicly stated that Greece has enough money to keep its workers and retirees afloat if it stops paying its creditors, so if the loans don’t come through, they’ll simply default. Since the entire purpose of the various bailouts and rescue plans was to save Greece’s European creditors, not Greece, the EU doesn’t actually have any real leverage despite all of its posturing. While this has been obvious from the start, none of the Greek politicians were willing to say anything about it in public because the two major parties are both bank-owned. Tsipras and Syriza are not, or at least, not yet, so the game of chicken continues.
The EU was always an illusion of power and progress, so the fiction will have to be maintained until the very end of the Euro and the EU alike. The Greeks have seen through it, the question is when the rest of Europe will do so. So, as Hannan points out, the one thing the EU absolutely cannot afford to happen is for Greece to default on its sovereign debt, leave both the Euro and the EU, and begin an economic recovery. And that is why Jean-Claude Trichet, the former head of the ECB, is proposing the forcible takeover of the Greek government. He suggests giving the EU the power to declare a sovereign state bankrupt and take over its fiscal policy, further illustrating how the EU is little more than the Third Reich with banks instead of tanks.
R stands for Rape
Does Undead Press publish Wängsty?
There’s recently been a flurry of posts about Undead Press, a small publishing house that a) doesn’t pay, b) allegedly humiliates its authors by inserting gratuitous rape scenes into their stories, without asking those authors if they want those rape scenes to be there, and c) has apparently published and continues to advertise a sequel to George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD, showing an absolute lack of respect for copyright or concern for the legal consequences.
Trick question. As anyone who has ever read R. Scott Bakker knows, there is no such thing as a gratuitous rape scene. Or rather, as anyone who has ever read R. Scott Bakker possesses justified true belief, there is no such thing as a gratuitous rape scene.
One of these days, I’ll have to go through Bakker’s books in order to create a poll on Black Gate where the legions of Bakker readers can vote on their favorite rape scene written by Rapey McRaperson. After all, it’s so hard to choose between the one in Neuropath where the woman rapes the man accompanied by some of the worst sexual dialogue outside of 1970s era pornography or the one in The Warrior Prophet where the Sranc – a demonic winged creature with an Alien-style double skull – not only rapes a man, his wife, and their child to death, but also manages to make the woman climax while raping her. (Contra Umberto Eco, I have long regarded the orgasmic rape as the definitive indicator of pornography.) But make no mistake, these rape scenes are not gratuitous! They are philosophy.
I have to admit, however, that Mr. Giangregorio’s publishing style appears to be more than a little awesome. Some might see it as a strange little man humiliating female authors, but I tend to interpret it as a sardonic commentary on the sex scenes in seventies and eighties science fiction, which always seemed to feature that one completely pointless scene in which the hot primary female character – usually red-headed – seduces the unsuspecting male protagonist without ever having given any signs of being attracted to him. I always viewed it as the fat, clueless SF author’s perspective on the Stygian mysteries of inter-sexual relations.