A lost opportunity

I think Michael Medved could have gotten a lot further with his Nazi Boy theme if he’d known that I not only believe Laibach to be the world’s finest Slovenian Nazi-Industrial band, but for a brief while had the distinct and immeasurable honor of being label mates with them at Wax Trax!.

So, in honor of a brief conversation with Spacebunny this morning – I have what must be considered the endearing habit of quoting entire verses of Laibach when certain trigger words are mentioned – I present a true magnum opus. You can keep your Taylor Swift and your Beyonce; this is without question the greatest video of all time.

Actually, I really liked a lot of Wax Trax! music that was being released around that time, particularly Sister Machine Gun. It very much amused me that their main remix of Wired was named the Silicon Satan mix.

Proving the opposite

A professor of mathematics complains that unlike the fortunate Chinese, America does not enjoy the benefit of being ruled by scientists:

For complex historical reasons, Americans have long privately dismissed scientists and mathematicians as impractical and elitist, even while publicly paying lip service to them. One reason is that an abstract, scientific approach to problems and issues often leads to conclusions that are at odds with religious and cultural beliefs and scientists are sometimes tone-deaf to the social environment in which they state their conclusions. A more politically sensitive approach to problems and issues, on the other hand, often leads to positions that simply don’t jibe with the facts, no matter how delicately phrased….

Dinosaurs cavorting with humans, climate scientists cooking up the global warming “hoax,” the health establishment using vaccines to bring about socialism – it’s hard to imagine mainstream leaders in other advanced economies not laughing at such claims.

I always enjoy the left-liberal arguments which revolve around the idea that because someone, somewhere, might be laughing at an idea, it must not be true. And, of course, given that there is no global warming and climate scientists did cook up one of the most colossal scams in human history, the professor manages to explain more cogently than he imagined why Americans, for all their flaws, still aren’t dumb enough to vote for scientists.

The problem isn’t so much that “an abstract, scientific approach to problems and issues often leads to conclusions that are at odds with religious and cultural beliefs”, it is that ideology hidden under a veneer of an abstract, scientific approach to problems and issues often leads to conclusions that are at odds with readily observable reality.

Americans don’t refuse to vote for scientists because they think scientists threaten their beliefs, Americans refuse to vote for them because they conclude, on the basis of considerable evidence, scientists are foolish and stupid.

A wee bit late

I’m not saying National Review’s call for Gingrich to get out of the race is misguided. I’m merely saying it is much later than would have been justified:

At the moment Rick Santorum appears to be overtaking Newt Gingrich as the principal challenger to Mitt Romney. Santorum has won more contests than Gingrich (who has won only one), has more delegates, and leads him in the polls. In at least one poll, he also leads Romney. It isn’t yet a Romney–Santorum contest, but it could be headed that way.

We hope so. Gingrich’s verbal and intellectual talents should make him a resource for any future Republican president. But it would be a grave mistake for the party to make someone with such poor judgment and persistent unpopularity its presidential nominee. It is not clear whether Gingrich remains in the race because he still believes he could become president next year or because he wants to avenge his wounded pride: an ambiguity that suggests the problem with him as a leader. When he led Santorum in the polls, he urged the Pennsylvanian to leave the race. On his own arguments the proper course for him now is to endorse Santorum and exit.

The correct moment to tell Gingrich to leave the race, of course, was the moment he decided to enter it. No one was ever going to vote for the corrupt and thin-skinned little troll. The only purpose he served was to make Santorum and Romney look half-electable by comparison, and they both possess the electability of a Republican candidate in the classic Dole/McCain vein. They’ll lose, but they’ll lose respectably and make it look as if the Republican Establishment actually wanted to win the election.

Which, as is readily apparent, it doesn’t. Obama is obediently bombing who he’s told to bomb and defending the interests of the banks he’s told to defend. So long as his handlers can sufficiently head off his self-destructive political instincts – seriously, he’s picking a fight on healthcare now? – and keep him from quitting the race in a morose tantrum, the Republican Establishment will be perfectly satisfied with a loss to Obama it can blame on the Tea Party.

We have a very strange situation in 2012 where it is the Democratic Establishment that wants Obama out whereas the Republican Establishment is perfectly content with the idea of him serving a second term.

It was only a matter of time

Napolitano’s show is done at Fox:

Judge Andrew Napolitano’s “Freedom Watch” on Fox Business Channel, arguably the most hard-hitting conservative show on TV, is being dropped by the network later this month in a major shakeup of the lineup.

Given the way in which the strong leftward tilt of the mainstream media distorts one’s perceptions, it’s always important to keep in mind that Fox is a centrist, status quo institution. They’re not good per se, but only in relation to the ABCNNBCBS cabal.

WND column

Greedo shot first

“The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.”
– George Lucas, The Hollywood Reporter, Feb. 9, 2012

Like most American men of my generation, “Star Wars” was one of the formative events of my childhood. It might have been a long time ago in a galaxy far away, but in some ways, it was much more vivid and real and glorious than the cold cruelty of a real world where it was 20 degrees below zero and the good guys were always defeated by the black-clad bad guys in the Super Bowl.

Umberto Eco on the ever-ending world

Where will we go in the end?

First little thought. We will not speak of the curse of the Mayans, but of certain newspapers, that are always citing Cassandra and day after day announce an ever-darker tomorrow, where the oceans overflow, the seasons end, and, of more immediate concern, the Default. For example, after listening to his parents inform him about the destiny of the world, a ten year-old son of my friends began to cry and asked: “But is there really nothing good in my future?”

To console him, I could cite many extremely dolorous predictions concerning the years to come, as were customarily made throughout the past centuries. Here is an excerpt from Vincenzo di Beauvais in the 13th century: “After the death of the Antichrist… the final judgment will be preceded by many signs that were indicated by the Evangelist…. In the first day the sea will rise forty cubits over the mountains and its surface will rise like a wall. On the second day, it will submerge many who will go unseen. On the third day, the marine monsters appearing on the surface of the sea will roar at the heavens. On the fourth day, the sea and all the waters will catch fire. On the fifth day the grass and the trees will emit a dew of blood. On the sxith day, buildings will collapse. On the seventh day, the stones will crash against each other. On the eighth day, the entire earth will shake. On the ninth day, the earth will be levelled. On the tenth day, the men will come out of their caves and will wander like madmen unable to speak. On the eleventh day, the bones of the dead will rise. On the twelfth day, the stars will fall. On the thirteenth day, the survivors still living will die to rise again with the dead. On the fourteenth day, the heavens and the earth will burn. On the fifteenth day, there will be a new heaven and a new earth and all will rise again.” As you can see, we already have no lack of climactic alterations and tsunamis to threaten us.

Leaping over six centuries of more fatal prophesies, here is Balzac in 1836: “The modern industry, that produces for the masses, is destroying the creations of the antique arts, those works that possessed an individual hallmark for the consumer and the artisan alike. Today we have “products”, we no longer have “works””. Among these “products” that Balzac warned would be deprived of every artistic value, Leopardi was writing The Flower of the Desert in that same year, Manzoni had in hand the second draft of The Betrothed, three years later Chopin composed Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, twenty years later Flaubert published Madame Bovary, and there was still about thirty years before the appearance of the Impressionists and more than forty prior to the publication of The Brothers Karamazov. As you see, in the past they were also overly afraid of the future.

A second thought. Perhaps, if we reconsider, “evil times today” really are here, for as tradition has it, one of the typical signs the end of times is at hand is the fact that the world has gone to ruin. Consider that at one time the rich lived in the center of Rome in luxurious palaces and the poor on the desolate peripheries; today it seems the palaces that face the Colosseum are like prostitutes, with toilets on the balcony that you can enter for four bucks. I imagine the corrupt politicians go to live outside the imperial walls.

Yesterday the poor travelled in trains and only the rich were permitted airplanes; today the airlines cost forty cash, (those with the best price resemble cattle carriers in a time of war), while the trains become ever more expensive and luxurious, with bars reserved only for the hegemonic classes. At one time, the rich went to Riccione, and in the worst case, to Rimini, while in the islands of the Indian Ocean there lived a miserable population as well as those deported there for life imprisonment. Today, it is only politicians of rank who go to the Maldives, and in Rimini, on the other hand, you will find mostly lower-class Russians barely removed from the slavery of the soil.

Where will we go in the end?

I’m more than a bit dubious about the bit concerning the modern palaces, but otherwise it was an unusually easy column to translate. I’m also not sure about the reference to the slavery at the end, as the most literal translation would be “the slavery of the the fleshy spore-bearing inner mass of fungi.”

The long slog

Some of you have wondered why I haven’t gotten around to X yet, for varying values of X. The answer is that I’ve simply been very busy with a number of projects, including writing manuals, assembling legal documents, writing game designs, and working on the first novel in the Arts of Dark and Light series. In other words, in the last 200 days, I have cranked out more than 200,000 words that no one has seen in addition to all of the various blog posts and columns during that time.

I’m about 20 days behind on my original schedule for the novel, so I’ve got to increase my average daily production from 725 to 945 words the rest of the way. That won’t have any impact on the blog, but it does mean that I’m not likely to do much else until I get the first draft done within the one year I allotted for it. This isn’t an apology, I’m simply letting you know that if it’s not related to the novel or the game designs, it probably isn’t getting done in the near future. And if I don’t devote much time to a comment or an email, well, you can probably figure out why.

Another pattern observed

One doesn’t have to be a nasty, anti-intellectual piece of work to be a Calvinist, but one can certainly observe a pattern common to the champions of the self-appointed Elect. In light of this, I have to praise the behavior of the Calvinists at Vox Popoli, as it has been absolutely exemplary in comparison with that of their historical antecedents. Consider the track record of these leading lights:

John Calvin: Responsible for the murder under color of law of Michael Servetus. Calvin was particularly outraged when Servetus sent him a copy of the Institutes of the Christian Religion heavily annotated with arguments pointing to errors in the book. When Servetus mentioned that he would come to Geneva if Calvin agreed, Calvin wrote a letter to Farel on 13 February 1547 noting that if Servetus were to come, he would not assure him safe conduct: “for if he came, as far as my authority goes, I would not let him leave alive.”

Franciscus Gomarus: A Fleming who had been in Leyden since 1594, has been described as “a rather mediocre scholar” but “a forceful defender of the Calvinistic doctrine…a man of deep-rooted faith…. He engaged twice in personal disputation with Arminius in the assembly of the States of Holland in 1608, and was one of five Gomarists who met five Arminians or Remonstrants in the same assembly of 1609. On the death of Arminius shortly after this time, Konrad Vorstius, who sympathized with his views, was appointed to succeed him, in spite of the opposition of Gomarus and his friends. Gomarus took his defeat badly, resigned his post, and went to Middelburg in 1611, where he became preacher at the Reformed church….

John Piper: Intemperate attacker of other Christian leaders and serial backtracker. “I am sitting here trying to figure out why I say things like that every now and then. I think it is a mixture of (sinful) audience titillation and (holy) scorn against my own flesh and against the devil, along with the desire to make the battle with Satan and my flesh feel gutsy and real and not middle-class pious.”

Yes, that’s probably it. You’re just too damn holy for your own good. Perhaps, I suggest merely as a possibility, he behaves thusly because he is not Elect, but rather a vessel ordained for destruction. As amusing as I find The Most Holy and Appointed Rev. Piper, what struck me most about the larger pattern was this statement by Gomarus: In response to the Court’s opinion Gomarus declared that “he would not dare die holding Arminius’ opinion, nor to appear with it before God’s judgement seat.”

La, such drama! It’s not as if anyone was asking Gomarus to die holding Arminius’s opinion, and as events would subsequently prove, Arminius didn’t have any problem doing just that. But it is fascinating that Gomarus presented exactly the same sort of histrionic appeal to the emotions that one often sees in Piper’s writings and which a few of the lesser members of Team Calvin have also exhibited here.

But for me, the anti-intellectual aspects of Calvinism are best exemplified by John Calvin himself. A man who has genuine confidence in his intellect and his faith doesn’t respond with outrage when his errors are pointed out, much less do his best to ensure that his critics are killed. Now, one cannot dismiss a case for the poor character of its champions, but it does cause one to entertain the notion that Total Depravity may be less theology than psychological projection.

There is now scientific evidence supporting my original hypothesis that social disorders produce much atheism. So, I find myself wondering if there may be a similar causal link between this observed behavioral pattern and a belief in Total Depravity combined with the idea that one belongs to a predestined elect. None of this means that the Calvinists could not be correct, just as no amount of social autism could prove that gods exist. But it’s interesting to note how the patterns have persisted in both cases for literal centuries.

Police 607, People 71

The police appear to be winning, but the American public is actually ahead on a per capita basis:

In 2011, according to data I have collected, police officers in the United States shot 1,146 people, killing 607. Since January 1, 2011, I have been using the internet to compile a national database of police involved shootings. The term “police involved shooting” pertains to law enforcement officers who, in the line of duty, discharge their guns. When journalists and police administrators use the term, they include the shooting of animals and shots that miss their targets. My case files only include instances in which a person is either killed or wounded by police gunfire. My data also includes off-duty officers who discharged their weapons in law enforcement situations. They don’t include, for example, officers using their firearms to resolve personal disputes….

In 2010, 59 officers were shot to death among 122 killed while on the job. This marked a 20 percent jump from 2009 when 49 officers were killed by gunfire. In 2011, 173 officers died, from all causes, in the line of duty. The fact police officers feel they are increasingly under attack from the public may help explain why they are shooting so many citizens.

The 2011 figure is 71 officers shot to death. Of course, since there are 310 million Americans and only 800,000 police, this would tend to indicate that the public is winning even though the police are killing 8.55 citizens for every police officer killed.

The interesting thing is that we seldom hear anywhere nearly as much opposition to police killings as we do to the death penalty, even though 18 times more people are killed by police than are executed on an annual basis. Since only 33 people were executed throughout the USA in 2011, compared to the 607 who were shot and killed without trial, it would appear that death penalty opponents would do much better to protest lethally armed police than lethal judicial judgments.

More women in the military

It’s a great idea:

The Pentagon will maintain bans on women serving in most ground combat units, defense officials said Thursday, despite pressure from lawmakers and female veterans who called the restrictions outdated after a decade of war.

After taking more than a year to review its policies on orders from Congress, the Defense Department announced that it would open about 14,000 combat-related positions to female troops, including tank mechanics and intelligence officers on the front lines.

But the Pentagon said it would keep 238,000 other positions — about one-fifth of the regular active-duty military — off-limits to women, pending further reviews. Virtually all of those jobs are in the Army and Marine Corps.

Contra what you may assume, I am all for more women in the U.S. military. I not only want to see all 238,000 combat-related positions opened to women, I want to see the Pentagon create an entire combat battalion of female-only Marines. In fact, I demand it in the name of diversity and equality!

Then, after half the battalion gets wiped out in its first action by 25 Taliban fighters armed with an RPG and four AK-47s between them, and the other half surrenders, America can kick back and enjoy the many gang-rape videos that will be on the Internet about 24 hours later.

That’s the only way this nonsense is going to be ended once and for all. It doesn’t matter how often one walks an equalitarian through the inexorable logic of combat, they will never accept or understand it until they see a woman sitting on her ass, bloody and crying. Enough theorizing. The equalitarians say women can do it, fine, let’s put their theory to the test.