Shutting them down

The US government takes down Megaupload at the behest of the RIAA, so Anonymous is striking back:

Update: Anonymous says they’ve also knocked off the RIAA’s site—looks down for us at the moment as well.

Update 2: Universal Music Group has also fallen off an e-cliff.

Update 3: Goodbye for now, MPAA.org.

Update 4: Affected sites are bouncing in and out of life, and are at the very least super slow to load. Anon agents are currently trying to coordinate their DDoS attacks in the same direction via IRC.

Update 5: The US Copyright Office joins the list.

It should make for some interesting reading when all the personal information concerning the various RIAA lobbyists ends up being released.

Vibrancy in the USA

Immigrants are helpfully supplying the beheadings Americans won’t do:

Three beheadings in two different states and they happened here in the United States, not Mexico. Former DEA supervisor Phil Jordan says all three beheadings have cartel written all over them. They happened in Arizona and Oklahoma in the past year. A murder mystery is now unraveling on a stretch of North Reservation Road in Tucson, Ariz. County workers found a headless man lying on the side of the road Jan. 6. The man’s hands and feet were reportedly missing, too.

Of course, there are some fantastic Mexican restaurants now in downtown Iowa, so one has to keep that in mind when considering the cost-benefit balance of immigration. You can’t expect great burritos without a few beheadings. Besides, they’re mostly beheading each other anyhow, right? No harm, no foul.

It really doesn’t get better

Another young gay propagandist kills himself:

After nineteen years on this planet, throughout which he endured shocking levels of ostracism, abuse and rejection, this week gay filmmaker Eric James Borges decided shit actually wasn’t getting better and took his own life. In the It Gets Better video he shot one month ago, Borges describes his lifelong odyssey through various rings of hell-on-earth: he’d been teased since kindergarten, his parents tried to perform an exorcism on him when they learned he was gay, he was bullied throughout high school.

Borges was the second young gay propagandist to kill himself in recent months.

14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer didn’t have many male friends. He hung out with girls, and he hung out on the internet, where he proclaimed and celebrated his love for Lady Gaga on his tumblr, wrote a personal blog, used twitter, opened a formspring account (like many people who open a formspring account, Jamey realized quickly that doing so was “a mistake”), and made videos for YouTube. In May 2011, Jamey Rodemeyer even made an “It Gets Better” video, in which he tells us that despite the bullying, his real friends were very supportive of his coming out. He thanked Lady Gaga for helping him learn to love himself…. This past Sunday, Jamey Rodemeyer was found dead outside his home in an apparent suicide.

It is said that the mark of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Given that it is now 43 years since Stonewall and the present generation of children is the second in succession to have been subjected to nonstop, preschool-to-graduation pro-homosexual, anti-bully brainwashing, I think it is safe to conclude that no amount of repeatedly insisting that “gay is okay” and “homophobia is a mortal sin” is going to have even the slightest impact on reducing the amount of gay suicide.

In fact, it is entirely possible that the endless propaganda is actually more to blame for what Ellen Degeneres has described as a “gay teen suicide epidemic” than the anti-gay bullying itself. If the propaganda is encouraging more borderline young men to experiment with a deviant lifestyle that has long been known to correspond with various health-related disorders, including mental health, then it is contributing to an increasing suicide rate rather than decreasing it.

The core problem is that by focusing on the bullying of these gay teenagers, those wishing to reduce the suicide rate may be entirely missing the causal factor. While it is a reasonable assumption that the bullying is the cause, the failure of the propaganda tends to suggest that it may not be. There are other groups that are similarly bullied, for example, the small, the unattractive, and the retarded, and yet they do not appear to commit suicide at the same rate.

If people genuinely wish to discourage gay teen suicide, they very much need to rethink their basic assumptions concerning the subject and look at whether gay suicide has increased or decreased with its increased societal visibility and if there is even any direct relationship between the amount of bullying an individual receives and the likelihood that he will kill himself. While I’m sure it must feel very satisfying to blame everything on “homophobes” and insufficient societal admiration, the weight of observable evidence doesn’t presently tend to indicate that they have much, if anything, to do with the actual problem.

In the meantime, whoever is behind the “It Gets Better” program should do a much more careful job vetting its spokesmen, since at the moment, it looks an awful lot like an inadvertant homosexual suicide campaign straight out of the movie Heathers. All they need is a video featuring a cheesy 80s band singing “Gay teen suicide, don’t do it!” Recruiting unstable young men to lie to teenage boys simply isn’t a long-term prescription for success.

The return of the epic

After reading some of my past posts related to the degraded state of epic fantasy, it is a pleasure to be able to say that there are still writers who harbor sufficient regard for the genre to write it more or less straight rather than attempting to subvert it in some tediously predictable manner. While there is always a place in any genre for an interesting subversion – and few have ever done it better than Tanith Lee’s supremely dark take on various classic children’s tales – once the subversion becomes the norm, the novelty aspect is gone and the new sub-genre must stand or fall on its own merits rather than upon the borrowed merits of the genre it is subverting. And at this point, the antihero in epic fantasy, or to put it more accurately, the villainous protagonist, is about as novel and intrinsically interesting as the creaking Hollywood chestnut featuring the grand climactic mano-a-mano confrontation between the hero and antagonist in which the hero is all but vanquished when a last taunt enrages him and inspires him to battle back to ultimate victory. Yee-hee-hee-awwwwwn.

Read the rest at Black Gate.

Look, they’re just not funny

When evidence cited proves the precise opposite of the claim it purports to support:

Look – in the era of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Kristen Schaal, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Lisa Lampanelli, Amy Schumer, Samantha Bee, Whitney Cummings, Melissa McCarthy, Anna Faris, Kathy Griffin, Chelsea Handler – are we really still having this stupid discussion? As this list shows – and this is, of course, just a random and minor sampling – not only are there lots of funny women around, but they’re being funny in many different ways.

That’s it. That’s what is supposed to prove that female comedians are as funny as male ones?

Tina Fey – not funny
Amy Poehler – not funny
Sara Silverman – so not funny
Kristen Schaal – who?
Kristen Wiig – all right, she’s moderately funny
Maya Rudolph – not even a little bit funny
Lisa Lampenelli – who?
Amy Schumer – who?
Samantha Bee – who?
Whitney Cummings – She’s attractive. She’s not funny.
Melissa McCarthy – She’s fat, which is admittedly funny. Otherwise, no.
Anna Faris – She’s cute and amusing in certain roles.
Kathy Griffin – Actually anti-funny.
Chelsea Handler – Not funny.

The easily confirmable fact is that all of them in their entire careers combined haven’t produced half the amount of humor as Frankie Boyle does in any given five minutes on Mock The Week or in ten minutes of standup:

Mock the Week is great and you can always tell the best comedians, because they are the ones who regularly crack up the other comedians. What I found particularly amusing about the various collections of his most offensive jokes is that they don’t even include his ruthlessly offensive explanation for why Katie Price dates cage fighters. Number eight was edited out at some point, but it was this joke:

“I’ve been studying Israeli Army Martial Arts. I now know 16 ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back.”

Another thing to like about Boyle is that he can take it as well as dish it out.

Climate change is the new evolution

I couldn’t agree more, considering that they’re both most likely little more than pseudo-scientific fiction.

Is climate change education the new evolution, threatened in U.S. school districts and state education standards by well-organized interest groups? A growing number of education advocates believe so, and yesterday, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, California, which fights the teaching of creationism, announced that it’s going to take on climate change denial as well.

NCSE expects this task to be much harder than fighting creationism. “The forces arrayed against climate science are more numerous and much better funded,” Scott says, and are better able to get their message across in the mainstream media than creationism supporters.

The reason the task will not only be much harder, but impossible, isn’t because of the more formidable nature of “the forces arrayed against climate science”, but because it is significantly harder to lie to people about something that they can readily observe, at least in part, for themselves. That is why I am merely deeply skeptical about evolution by natural selection whereas I completely reject the observably false assertion of anthropogenic global warming.

That is why AGW/CC will go the way of phrenology, the global Ice Age, the food pyramid, and other past scientific consensuses sooner than TE(p)NS. I’m confident that genetic science will eventually shoot down the latter, but it’s going to take a considerable weight of incontrovertible evidence to finally root out the die-hard Neo-Darwinian dogmatists, considering how they are still clinging so desperately to their evolutionary epicycles.

Dealing with decline

In which approaching the peak is contemplated:

Memory and other brain skills begin to decline at the age of 45 – much earlier than previously thought, say researchers. A major study shows the brain’s capacity for memory, reasoning and comprehension starts waning in middle age rather than in the 60s. Experts say the finding is important because younger people should be encouraged to boost their brain power with healthier living, while some may benefit from medicines to stave off further decline.

This report doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. One of the things I have learned about playing soccer and 3D shooters after the age of 40 is how comprehensive the physical decline is. Since most people don’t compete directly with younger athletes after the age of 35 or so, it can be difficult to believe how much speed and quickness one loses. I can’t imagine that there isn’t a similar deterioration taking place elsewhere as well.

It is not only the top gear that is gone, but there is a also the complete absence of a first step; it’s almost as if the first thing the middle-aged mind does is instead of react is to perform a quick calculation of whether or not it’s likely going to be worth it to go through with the physical exertion required. One feels as if one is always going at about three-quarters speed, trying to harbor a reserve for when a complete effort will be required in order to make a difference.

It’s been interesting to see how the athletic decline translates to video game performance. While my Battlefield 3 performance is generally respectable, as I usually finish around the middle point of points scored, both my kills and deaths usually tend to be low because I simply don’t do well in the sort of run around and spray SMG fire game that the younger guys with their faster reflexes play. I’ve had to learn to avoid taking quick potshots at enemies running past when I have the drop on them; taking the time to aim a careful headshot that drops them at once is much better than a fast shot that misses and permits them to turn around and fire back in a more accurate and lethal manner. And while I’ve racked up the occasional 2-1 K/D ratio and even a few top scores, my average is barely above 1/2. But it’s been steadily improving as my rank and unlocks improve, so I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to get it above 1 by the time I level out.

I do think that the mental exercise involved in maintaining this blog and playing wargames helps sharpen my mental focus; how much that will stave off the approaching decline will be interesting to see. Thinking about it also makes me wonder if the abrupt decline in the quality of novels by certain authors later in life might be attributable to degraded mental powers rather than them simply losing interest; I’ve never understood how Colleen McCullough’s Rome series could drop so precipitously off a cliff the way it did after Fortune’s Favorites.

While I have at least a few more years at the height of my powers, it really makes me wish I had worked more diligently at my books. Such is the inevitable regret of the dilettante.

“Get back on board right now!”

This is a fascinating glimpse into a news story. It is the recording of the conversation between the commander of the port of Livorno and the captain of the cruise ship that sank. Even if you don’t speak Italian, you can hear the total disbelief, then anger in the voice of the commander as he realizes that the captain has not only abandoned his ship with the passengers still on it, but has no idea how many passengers are still on board. The captain seems to want to try to BS his way out of his responsibility to get back on the ship, but the commander is having none of it.

At one point, the commander even threatens the captain, telling him that he needs to know how many people are on board. This isn’t a perfectly literal translation, but it better captures the spirit of the conversation:

Commander: “Look, Schettino, you may have gotten out of the sea but if you don’t get back on board, I will make it seriously bad for you. Go get back on board, dammit!”

Captain: “Commander, for pity’s sake.”

Commander: No, for pity’s sake, you go get back on board now!”

Here is a complete translation.

Voltaire had it wrong

This is absolutely the best of all possible worlds. You can’t possibly tell me otherwise:

Harp seal activist William Walkman has long been admired for his devotion to the cause of saving baby harp seals from their annual slaughter. For years, Walkman has lived among the seals, befriending them, and caring for the babies while the parents went off in search of food. Walkman’s story is made even more compelling through the video he has shot of himself interacting with the seals. On one day he is seen beating off a killer whale with a pole as it attempts to catch seals, a staple of the killer whale diet. The next day he is seen trying to feed fish to the baby seals, as adult seals nervously circle him, barking and pounding their tails on the ice in their attempts to protect their babies….

The recent discovery of Walkman’s body by some fishermen, beaten to death in his sleep, was met with widespread suspicion that seal hunters had taken matters into their own hands. But an investigation by Labrador provincial police has now revealed that blood samples taken from the tails of several adult seals match Walkman’s blood.

The tragic death of Walkman is now believed to be the result of an attack by the adult seals, probably in the middle of the night while Walkman was trapped in his sleeping bag.

Whether it is true or not, if this heart-warming story of a self-righteous activist being beaten to death in his sleep by seals doesn’t put a little spring in your step this morning, you simply cannot be considered to have evolved sufficiently claim membership in homo sapiens sapiens. It’s at moments like this that I am certain Dr. Pangloss was right, for on what other worlds are men beaten to death by angry seals?

Now, I’m not particularly a fan of slaughtering baby seals, mostly because I think they are extremely cute, but I have to admit, the fact that all that bloody seal-beating appears to have laid the foundation for the death of William Walkman does prove rather conclusively that it is all for the best.