Ender’s Game

I am increasingly beginning to feel like Leopold Mozart. After a spate of ASL games, Ender decided to design some game rules for his little football men. These are the NFL teams used the old electric vibrating football game; I used to break the flat bottoms off and play with them in the carpet when I was a kid. I didn’t do anything particularly fancy with them, I would just line them up and run little plays, then record the “results” in a notebook. Of course, I created a whole fantasy league with teams in places like Norfolk; both Minneapolis and St. Paul had their own teams.

Ender takes a much more systematic approach than I did. He doesn’t break off the stands nor invent his own franchises, but instead got his mother to make him a paperboard football field for which he makes paper logos that go in the middle of the field for the designated home team. Then he wrote up 10 double-sided pages of rules in which the offensive play call and the defensive call combine to create a modifier that is applied to dice roll on the play result table for the appropriate formation. It’s essentially Maddens meets ASL, or more to the point, a simplified version of Avalon Hills 1959 Football Strategy, but it’s surprisingly entertaining and produces pretty reasonable results despite the fact that absolutely no statistical analysis went into the formation result tables.

My one suggestion was to add a dynamic element via special rolls. “Heat of Battle”-style rolls triggered by net results below 2 or above 12 provide for fumbles and interceptions versus big gains and touchdowns, and blitzes against passes give either a -2 (1-2) for the defense or +3 (3-6) for the offense. Those elements backfired on me last night as I fumbled twice inside his 30-yard line.

It’s bad enough to have been surpassed on the literary side. But playing this last night, I suddenly had the alarming impression that it would make for a pretty good Facebook/Android game.

Ignoring the elephant

In which the New York Times is astounded to discover that poverty isn’t to blame for substandard intellectual achievement:

An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another. But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.

Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.

Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.

The data was distilled from highly respected national math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment for Educational Progress, which are given to students in fourth and eighth grades, most recently in 2009. The report, “A Call for Change,” is to be released Tuesday by the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for urban public schools.

Although the outlines of the problem and many specifics have been previously reported, the group hopes that including so much of what it calls “jaw-dropping data” in one place will spark a new sense of national urgency….

“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”

It is truly remarkable what lengths some people will go in order to avoid the conclusion that is not so much staring them in the face as smashing in their teeth. While there are sociological factors involved – that 72% illegitimacy rate probably doesn’t help foster the development of black mathematicians – it’s more than a little absurd to insist that every group across the human race has precisely the same intellectual capacity. They don’t. This is an observable fact and would be an accepted scientific fact as well if scientists would focus on science instead of politics.

The current state of science is such a joke that it borders on parody. All the charlatans who want to pontificate about the holy theoretical mechanism behind the origin of the species are deathly afraid to admit to the obvious conclusions dictated by that mechanism while sociologists search desperately for an alternative to the completely obvious. If you’ve got one kid who is reading Tolstoy at five and another one who can’t sound out the word CAT, there is a very high probability that the first kid is significantly more intelligent than the second one.

The ultimate s-test

If you fail this one, don’t be surprised if the operation turns out to be superfluous:

It’s almost always the woman who suggests a vasectomy, says Duncan Harriss, consultant urological ­surgeon at the Park Hospital, ­Nottingham, who performs vasectomies and vasectomy reversals….. Women are used to being in control of contraception and it’s often difficult to let go of that, even when it’s their husband’s fertility, not their own, in question.

‘The number of vasectomy reversals is increasing and that’s a sign of how relationships are breaking down in this country,’ says Duncan Harriss. He sees five to ten men a week who regret their vasectomy — or, to be more precise, whose wives regret it. ‘The most common situation is that a man has had ­children, had a vasectomy in his 40s and then the relationship has broken down.

Imagine that. Now, I’m not saying that men shouldn’t have vasectomies if they want although I have been told they are much more potentially problematic than most guys tend to assume. But if your wife is demanding that you literally demasculate yourself because she is feeling insecure about the possibility that you might be able to build another family without her, then it is probably safe to go ahead and schedule a few family court appearances, a wedding, and an eventual reversal to go along with the initial operation if you are foolish enough to accede.

Any man who has even the least awareness of Game will understand the disastrous consequences that are likely to result from failing this extreme form of marital s-test.

Mailvox: this is “equality”

MP sends along this fascinating job posting:

Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Loyola University Maryland
Posted: 11/10/2010
Tenure Track Faculty

Loyola University Maryland invites applications for the position of Clare Boothe Luce Professor in the Department of Computer Science, with an expected start date of fall 2011 at the level of Assistant Professor. We are seeking an enthusiastic individual committed to excellent teaching and a continuing, productive research program. A Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field is required. Candidates in all areas of specialization will be considered. The position is restricted by the Clare Boothe Luce bequest to the Henry Luce Foundation to women who are U.S. citizens.

Loyola is an EEO employer that seeks applications from women and members of minority groups.

Did you seriously expect women to stop with genuine equality before the law once they achieved it? As Orwell observed, when equalitarians rule, some are always more equal than others.

There is no equality. It does not exist and has never existed in any material, legal, or spiritual reality.

The Republican Iago strikes

The elders of the GOP show their de Gaullesque gratitude for the Tea Party putting them back in the driver’s seat:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is maneuvering behind the scenes to defeat a conservative plan aimed at restricting earmarks, setting up a high-stakes showdown that pits the GOP leader and his “Old Bull” allies against Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and a new breed of conservative senators…. By keeping a low profile so far, McConnell is seeking to avoid an all-out public battle among his GOP colleagues over earmarks before the new Congress starts. He also wants to avoid alienating the tea party movement and conservative activists who helped win six Senate seats for Republicans on Election Day, victories that dramatically strengthened McConnell’s hand as he plans to battle the White House over repealing health care reform, retaining Bush-era tax cuts and reining in federal spending.

Right, that’s why Americans turned against Obama and the Democrats. It wasn’t due to all the excessive taxing, borrowing, and spending, but because they wanted Republicans to do the excessive taxing, borrowing, and spending. I can’t say it’s unexpected, but it is impressively shameless.

Welcome to Washington, Tea Partiers. How do you like the feel of that dagger in your back? Kind of stings, doesn’t it.

In which a match is struck

From the Market Ticker:

“JUDGE CURLEY THE HEAD BK JUDGE IN AZ JUST RULED MINUTES AGO THAT THE BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON MUST PRODUCE THE CUSTODIAL RECORDS IN THEIR VAULT IN A CASE AGAINST AN AZ HOMEOWNER, THEREBY PRODUCING THE NOTE AND ALL OTHER DOCS. THIS IS A TRANSFORMATIONAL DECISION.”

Now we’re cooking. This decision changes literally everything – at least for Arizona. If it spreads, and it probably will, it will change everything period.

If BONY doesn’t have the documentation in their custody, with proper endorsements, then there’s gonna be trouble. You can bet the banks will try to bury notice of this way off the front page, but they’re not going to get away with it.

The key issue here has always been whether the people buying these securities were really buying what they thought they were – and maybe whether they were buying anything at all. If BONY can’t produce the documents because they don’t have them, and cannot prove up ownership of the note with proper endorsements, the lid is going to come off this thing.

Between the insolvency, the fraud, and the mark-to-fantasy, it’s always just been a matter of time before Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase go down in spectacular flames. TARP didn’t save them, Quantitative Easing I didn’t save them, Quantitative Easing II isn’t going to save them, and even if the new Republican House can be suckered into passing TARP II as their predecessors were, that wouldn’t save them either. I’ve calculated that at least $3 trillion of the $7 trillion they presently report as assets simply don’t exist. The damage has already been done and it’s time to start trying to staunch the bleeding rather than offering more pointless and costly transfusions.

One of the comments there sums up the entire problem with the US financial system in a nutshell: “Welcome to the failure of fiat wealth… where multiple exclusive claims to underlying real wealth will always become extinguished at some point in time.”

That is the key to understanding debt-deflation right there. Multiple competing claims to the underlying wealth.

Intellectual rigor mortis

Ann Althouse succinctly encapsulates why most women are so uninteresting:

Two divorced women went out walking, and what do you think they talked about? Philosophy?

I have to admit, that made me laugh. If there is anything less interesting than a divorcee, of either sex, going on and on about their former spouse more than 10 years post-divorce, it probably has something to do with organic chemistry. And yet I have no doubt that the new Divorce section of the Huffington Post and its aphoristic motto of “His happiness is a small price to pay for my freedom!” will find a large and appreciative female readership.

In reading Althouse’s post, another aphorism insensibly came to mind: “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt.

Unsurprisingly, Ms Ephron’s narcissistic motto is reflective of the fundamental female miscalculation that leads to so many divorces these days. First, “unhappily married adults who divorced were no more likely to report emotional and psychological improvements than those who stayed married” according to a study entitled “Does Divorce Make People Happy?” Second, even if men don’t become happier after divorce, they are materially better off, whereas the opposite is true for women according to the Institute for Social and Economic Research. “Divorce makes men – and particularly fathers – significantly richer. When a father separates from the mother of his children, according to new research, his available income increases by around one third. Women, in contrast, suffer severe financial penalties. Regardless of whether she has children, the average woman’s income falls by more than a fifth and remains low for many years.”

This is one reason why nearly three times more women are filing bankruptcy than men now. In times of investment booms and expanding wealth, everyone has an economic margin of error and can afford to do stupid things like get divorced for shallow, superficial, and ephemeral reasons. Contractionary times are considerably less forgiving and make it more important to not only have a partner upon whom you can rely, but be a reliable partner yourself as well.

On a tangential note, I suspect that many women would do well to learn from Spacebunny’s understanding that while the male mind is not wholly unconcerned with the lives of those around them, it does tend to be focused on other, more significant matters. By way of example, this morning I told her the extremely exciting news that one heroic lion of technology has ported WinApple to Android! You know what that means, that’s right, the entire Ultima series, starting with Akalabeth, on your phone. And Wizardry. And Swashbuckler. In fact, you might even be able to fit the entire Asimov achive on it! Strangely, she did not react with the celebratory glee and happy dance that one would naturally expect upon learning of such a grand leap forward in the human race’s mobile standard of living. Instead, she responded with little more than an amused smile and a complete non sequitor. “I am totally superfluous in your world.”

Now, what man could fail to love a woman who obviously knows that Call of Duty: Black Ops was released on Monday?

Debt downgrade, then mystery missiles

I don’t know about you, but I don’t find this combination of events to be particularly lifting of the animal spirits.

Acquaman notwithstanding, it seems unlikely that it was just a jet contrail… rising from the ocean. I have the impression that the Official Story tellers in Washington are having a rough time coming up with their usual fiction. I tend to think their best bet is to blame the private space consortium with which Richard Garriott is involved, give them a chewing-out for failing to properly alert the appropriate authorities, then quietly pay them to publicly support the story.

Stratfor concludes that “everything points to a missile launched by the United States”, but they find it inexplicable that no reason for launching the missile has been given yet.

A shot across the bow

And the much-expected monetary war begins… the Market Ticker reports that China has downgraded US debt:

Chinese rating agency Dagong Global Credit downgrades US credit rating due to QE program

– Cut long term US sovereign rating one notch to A+ from AA, with a negative outlook.

– “The serious defects in the U.S. economy will lead to long-term recession and fundamentally lower the national solvency. The credit crisis is far from over in the United States and the U.S. economy will be in a long-term recession. In essence, the U.S. government’s move to devalue the dollar indicates its solvency is on the brink of collapse”

The status of the U.S. dollar as the dominant international reserve currency determines that its depreciation gives an inevitable impact to the interests of all creditors. In addition to the shrinking of creditors’ assets, the utter chaos in the international currency system triggered by the depreciation of the U.S. dollar will definitely damage the interests of all the creditors in the world at various levels. Together with the possibility of inflation in the future, the wealth of creditors will be plundered once again by the malicious act of currency devaluation conducted by the U.S. government after it suffered the losses during the financial crisis since 2007.

The value fluctuation of the world’s major currencies caused by the continuous devaluation of the U.S. dollar will push the adjustment in world interest pattern through the value comparison of the monetary system. The essence is to transfer the interests of the creditors to the debtor free of charge, and that will fundamentally destroy the international credit system and global economic system comprised of the creditor system and debtor system, resulting in an overall crisis around the world.

Translation: you’re not going to rescue the big banks on our dime, Ben. By the way, notice that USD has been moving higher since the initial dive following the QE2 announcement. It’s not always as obvious as it looks. Anyhow, this could end up marking a historic moment in the struggle for 21st century supremacy. And if the pattern of history holds true, the real winner will be a third party that doesn’t get involved until throwing its weight in will close the deal.

In other words, bet on India.

Science commits suicide

This news strikes me as something that could lead to the exposure and eventual defunding of a great deal of the chicanery involved in the “climate science” scam. Only a group of intellectually isolated individuals who highly overrate their ability to influence the public would be so foolish as to transform themselves into political activists this way:

Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in Tuesday’s election.

The ineptness of their strategy is visible in their choice to not only abandon their home turf, but attack the very individuals who are presently providing them with most of their funding. I’m delighted to see it, of course, because it is obvous that their so-called science isn’t actually scientific and this attempt to is only going to lead to more scrutiny and less funding of the global warming gravy train.

Moreover, it will likely lead to a long-overdue diminishing of the public’s respect for science and scientists as the latter reveal their total ignorance of matters they consider to be insignificant such as economics, democracy, and human liberty. Scientists are technocratic totalitarians dependent upon government for the most part; note that both the National Socialists and the Soviet Communists historically enjoyed a good deal of support in the scientific community and few scientists had any qualms about working for such evil masters. [Science fetishists are encouraged to make their usual argument about Lysenko here.] Scientists have their uses, but only a madman or a fool would want to allow them any significant influence in government.

Speaking of climate change and economics, the market has spoken:

Global warming-inspired cap and trade has been one of the most stridently debated public policy controversies of the past 15 years. But it is dying a quiet death. In a little reported move, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced on Oct. 21 that it will be ending carbon trading — the only purpose for which it was founded — this year.

Good riddance indeed. As if the global economy isn’t already facing a dauntingly high degree of difficulty.