Perhaps I was wrong

A few days ago, I mentioned that I am working on a “maxi-sequel” to Summa Elvetica entitled Arts of Dark and Light. Because it is going to be sizable, I was under the impression that Marcher Lord would have little interest in it and that I would have to publish it as an ebook. Which, of course, is completely fine with me.

However, it turns out that SE’s publisher, Marcher Lord, has recently published an 1,100-page omnibus edition of a trilogy written by Kathy Tyers. And it also turns out the main man at MLP is actually more than a little interested in AoDaL, so there is a reasonable possibility that it will be conventionally published when it is finished after all. We haven’t worked out any of the details yet, and nothing is set in stone, but I thought some of you would be interested to know that there is a decent chance the next book set in Selenoth will be available on dead tree as well as digital.

By the banksters, for the banksters

Karl Denninger puts his finger on why the bankers and their public servants are desperately pushing for inflation:

These policies are not born out of ignorance, they’re intentional frauds.

We keep hearing that we can’t have “deflation” as that’s “terrible”, but exactly who is it terrible for? It certainly isn’t terrible for the prudent saver – the Senior Citizen who has been systemically and serially financially raped by those very same “captains of finance!” Yes, it’s terrible if you took on debt you can’t afford but exactly why should you be protected from your own stupidity whether you’re that borrower or lender – and using debt to pull future earnings capacity from the future or speculate is factually stupid!

Further, is it really “deflation” when you simply reverse the inflation of the last ten years, say much the last 30? Why is it perfectly ok to steal half or more of someone’s saved money, but when they might get that stored value back it’s suddenly a national calamity to be avoided at all costs?

The answer is perfectly clear. Because those responsible for the theft are in charge and they don’t want to give up their ill-gotten gains.

On surviving gossip

And it doesn’t require Hercule Poirot to determine why men might be disinclined to pay attention:

The typical woman spends five hours a day – more than a third of her waking hours – chatting and gossiping, a study has revealed. Whether at home or work women natter for about 298 minutes every day, it found. Discussing other people’s problems, who is dating who and other people’s children form the basis of most of the chat.

One of the things I find fascinating about social etiquette is the way that what is frowned upon in the Bible, considered a mortal sin by the Catholic Church, and considered to be a deathly bore by nearly half the population is nevertheless considered nearly de rigueur in casual social situations. Many women don’t seem to understand that gossip is actually less interesting and more painful to most men than listening to an engineer with Asperger’s drone on about thermodynamics or tax law is to most women.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I still laugh every time I think of my father’s summary of a dinner in which he was seated between two well-known social butterflies. “Now I know what Hell is like.”

Now, I don’t personally have a problem with the aforementioned female nattering so long as I am not expected to listen to it. I am fortunate in that Spacebunny has a relatively low tolerance for it herself. And sometimes, if it’s occurring in the background while I am reading a book or something, it can even be amusing to track the circular pattern as two women run out of gas on a subject, cast about for a new one, and then find their stride again by simply revisiting a topic that has been discussed already, in some cases repeating the previous discussion almost verbatim. It’s hilarious.

This repetition makes no sense to men because they don’t derive the same chemically-derived sense of pleasure from a communication process that has been discovered to release oxytocin and serotonin to the brain. But once you realize that women who are repeating themselves in this manner are simply doing the equivalent of a lab rat repeatedly hitting the bar that provides it a nice hit of coke, the whole thing makes a lot more sense. This may help explain why women have a tendency to keep repeating an ineffective punchline when they’re telling a joke or story as if it’s going to be funnier the second or third time. It appears to be a technique that works effectively in gossip mode that doesn’t translate well to storytelling mode.

On the other hand, if a woman wishes to be taken seriously by men, she has to avoid doing this sort of thing in front of them at all costs. There are few things that will relegate a woman to the “pay no attention ever” zone faster than being the sort of woman who is unable to discuss anything except people that she knew in high school or college. Sometimes, when listening to a female acquaintance babble and burble on about complete strangers, it takes every bit of my conscious focus to refrain from politely asking “on what planet do you believe that I give even the most infinitesimally airborne, electroniscopically small flying fornication about these people, who, based on the distressingly fulsome stream of data you have so thoughtfully provided, are not only terminally uninteresting but quite clearly retarded as well?”

Or, alternatively, pretending to be plastered to a rock like the woman in Aliens.

Anyhow, in the same way it behooves the intellectual to learn something about sports, television, or current events in order to be able to function in society, it is wise for the gossip to do the same in order to not be a crashing, soul-killing bore that no one with an IQ over 100 takes seriously.

The basic social principle by which I operate is one I believe to be both effective and fair. If you don’t subject me to a monologue or dialogue about the personal affairs of people I don’t know or don’t care about, I will not subject you to a monologue on the rules of Advanced Squad Leader, the argumentative structure featured in the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, or the way in which a Japanese naval invasion of the American West Coast in 1942 was an extremely remote improbability bordering on the impossible, being militarily useless, logistically problematic, and historically unplanned. That seems fair, doesn’t it?

And thanks to technology, there is an even better solution now readily available to all and sundry. If people insist on being rude enough to engage in conversations that are intrinsically exclusive by nature, just whip out your phone or ebook reader and happily ignore them. This is particularly effective if one is being subjected to the most extreme form of gossiper, the “performance conversationalist”. I’m not saying that men can’t be crashing bores too. Of course they can be; I probably have exceptional potential in that line myself. But there is no reason why female bores should be suffered with any less reluctance and resistance than male bores.

A good start

I have to admit, Rick Perry’s “mistake” is the first thing he’s done that makes me want to think he might not be a complete disaster as president. (Of course, this posturing is merely for the Tea Party, in private he’s kowtowing before the Fed like all the other candidates not named Ron Paul.) But the neocons and neoclassicals were quick to leap to the defense of Ben Shalom:

On Monday, 24 hours before the Rasmussen poll would show him up 13 points on Mitt Romney after only three days in the GOP presidential race, Rick Perry made a mistake. He answered a question in an Iowa field about the Federal Reserve with a waspish threat to Ben Bernanke — something about how in Texas the Fed chairman would be “treated ugly” if he printed more money.

“Horrifying,” shrieked Binyamin Appelbaum, The New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent. The economist Nouriel Roubini raged that Perry belonged in a mental institution — after he compared the Texas governor to the Norwegian mass murderer…. Yesterday, in refusing to apologize for what he said, Perry didn’t even suggest he’d been speaking lightly. He said instead that this — Fed policy, presumably — was something about which he’s passionate.

Actually, Perry’s comment about Bernanke’s near-treason is a little careless. The man’s policies aren’t “almost” treasonous as they have without question been to the severe material detriment of the USA and given his expert PhD credentials, there can be little question that his decision to enact those policies was intentional. He has done far more harm to America and Americans than 100 bin Ladens could have ever done, and worse, he telegraphed his intention to do so before he was appointed to his present office.

I am not arrogant

John Scalzi argues the case:

As there already exists a “McKean’s Law” with respect to words (“Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error”), allow me instead to suggest what I will henceforth label “McKean’s Inversion,” to wit:

The adjective a person says they are is frequently the thing they are not.

To put it in writing terms, it’s a fine example of “show, don’t tell.” Classy people don’t need to assert they’re classy, they do classy things. Funny people don’t have to assure you they’re funny, they simply make you laugh. Kind people don’t need to verbally advertise their kindness, because it’s evident in their lives. All of which is to say the way to be seen as funny, or kind, or humble, or classy, is to be that thing. And if you are, chances are pretty good other people will note it.

My take? McKean’s Inversion applies to idiots, the deceitful, and the insecure. The idea that every cocky chick magnet is a loser with a hard drive full of Japanese schoolgirl porn, that every strutting All-Star is a bench-warming fraud, and every salty ex-Ranger is really a blustering coward is a bizarre mix of Churchianity and middle class fear of failure. The flaw in the logic is that while X people don’t need to assert X, this does not in any way justify the conclusion that they cannot assert it or that asserting it – a few highly specific cases aside – necessarily implies its negation.

Who were three of the most infamous trash talkers in the history of the NBA? Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Gary Payton. Shall we therefore conclude that they were inferior basketball players? What was the most famous of Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs? The one he hit in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, otherwise known as his “called shot”. Any high-performance competitor knows there is nothing more demoralizing to an opponent than telling him exactly what you’re going to do to him and then doing precisely that, because it drives home the fact that he hasn’t been tricked or outmaneuvered somehow, he has been beaten by someone who is completely out of his league.

The fact that the mediocre often overrate themselves doesn’t mean that the superlative are unaware of their own superiority or are unwilling to admit it. I have never seen false modesty among the genuinely superior; it is, however, quite commonly seen among the merely competent who utilize it in an attempt to be perceived as better than they genuinely are.

The nonsensical aspect of McKean’s Inversion can be seen in the way that my assertion of my own superior intelligence and breathtaking arrogance is a) sometimes interpreted as evidence that I am really not all that intelligent while b) never being taken as evidence that I am not arrogant. In other words, it is applied in precisely the same uneven manner as the references to my family by critics who like to stress my relationship to one nationally-known individual, (usually apropos of nothing), while never, ever, mentioning my equally close relationship to another, internationally-known, individual.

The proof is always and only in the pudding. “The adjective a person says they are” carries no intrinsic meaning in and of itself, but merely offers a useful means of ascertaining that person’s integrity and capacity for self-judgment when the adjective is compared with independent observation. I happen to consider people who overrate themselves to be self-deluded and a little pathetic, but I believe people who habitually underrate themselves to be dishonest, manipulative, and intrinsically untrustworthy. And I am much more wary of the latter than the former.

There is nothing humble about telling lies to make yourself look better in others’ eyes.

In defense of the differently attracted

The American Psychological Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1975. Now, as many sane observers warned at the time, it appears to be looking to do the same for pedophilia:

Researchers from several prominent U.S. universities will participate tomorrow in a Baltimore conference reportedly aiming to normalize pedophilia. According to the sponsoring organization’s website, the event will examine ways in which “minor-attracted persons” can be involved in a revision of the American Psychological Association (APA) classification of pedophilia.

B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile activists and mental health professionals, is behind the August 17 conference, which will include panelists from Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Illinois.

B4U-ACT science director Howard Kline has criticized the definition of pedophilia by the American Psychological Association, describing its treatment of “minor-attracted persons” as “inaccurate” and “misleading”…. On their website B4U-ACT classifies pedophilia as simply another sexual orientation and decries the “stigma” attached to pedophilia, observing: “No one chooses to be emotionally and sexually attracted to children or adolescents. The cause is unknown; in fact, the development of attraction to adults is not understood.” The group says that it does not advocate treatment to change feelings of attraction to children or adolescents.

The chickenhawks have a valid point. If society accepts the redefinition of homosexuality as “normal” on the basis of its practitioners being “born that way”, then it has absolutely no reason to condemn pedophiles who are also “born that way”.

For a society to accept open homosexual identification as a normal is a strong indication that it has entered its death spiral. This doesn’t mean it is necessary to drop brick walls on people as soon as they evince interest getting a Pete Rose haircut or watching the Oscars. Just as a society can survive a small percentage of immigrants, it can thrive and prosper so long as homosexuality remains aberrant and circumspect behavior.

This ceases to be the case once what was decentralized and aberrant behavior is transformed into an open and celebrated interest group with a monomaniacal interest in continually expanding its “rights” to the detriment of the traditional societal norms. If this isn’t apparent to you yet, perhaps it will once the law, in its infinite wisdom, determines that a middle-aged pedophile has a constitutional right to marry a collection of boys under the age of ten.

The Slippery Slope is not a logical fallacy. It is, rather, a correct use of logic to provide a reasonable guide to choose between possible future events. Advocates of normalizing homosexuality and homogamy argued that their reasoning would not be used to attempt to normalize pedophilia and polygamy. It is worth noting that subsequent events have proven them to be totally incorrect.

PPPS – A virus scan, two reboots, and everything is accessible again.

VPFL 2011

If you want to join the White Buffalo, Nate, defending champion Clay, and me in the upcoming VPFL season, let me know now….

Lest you think we jest

I’ve noticed that there is considerably more public discussion of how WWII, and not the New Deal, brought the USA out of the Great Depression. However, there is still some confusion as it wasn’t the war spending itself that did the trick, but rather the breaking of the windows of the rest of the planet’s industrial infrastructure. See RGD and Vox’s Broken Window Theory, Revised, which states that Bastiat’s Broken Window is no fallacy, so long as you break all the windows in the next town over as well as the legs of its glaziers.

So, barring any flattening of an alien planet and the subsequent development of interstellar trade, Paul Krugman’s fantasy of preparing for an alien space war is unlikely to lead to economic recovery:

PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: Think about World War II, right? That was actually negative social product spending, and yet it brought us out.

I mean, probably because you want to put these things together, if we say, “Look, we could use some inflation.” Ken and I are both saying that, which is, of course, anathema to a lot of people in Washington but is, in fact, what fhe basic logic says.

It’s very hard to get inflation in a depressed economy. But if you had a program of government spending plus an expansionary policy by the Fed, you could get that. So, if you think about using all of these things together, you could accomplish, you know, a great deal.

If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren’t any aliens, we’d be better –

ROGOFF: And we need Orson Welles, is what you’re saying.

KRUGMAN: No, there was a “Twilight Zone” episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time, we don’t need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus.

The amazing thing isn’t the fluid way Paul Krugman moves from one fantasy to the next – remember, his inspiration for becoming an economist was Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels – but that he does so while remaining convinced that he is the only serious economic realist in the debate. The guy is seriously strange, and at this point, I’m not entirely sure he’s even sane.

Unless, of course, that stealthy Death Star is coming our way!

But I thought they were people!

The mortgage banks are doing their best to escape liability for their large-scale mortgage fraud:

They’ve trotted out Kathryn Wylde, the President of the Partnership for New York City, to attack Eric Schneiderman for his intervention in the Bank of America settlement with investors over mortgage backed securities. Wylde is going to bat for BofA as well as the Bank of New York Mellon, the trustee for the MBS in the settlement. And she is actually arguing that Schneiderman, by defending the rights of investors and seeking the truth on out and out securitization fraud, is threatening the existence of the financial sector in New York City. No, really.

Tanks in the streets and cats living with dogs if the state governments don’t look the other way when the banks commit fraud. That’s certainly a new one. Interesting to see that they’re having to pull it out on a regular basis, isn’t it?