Vox Popoli

Okay, that actually sounds rather creepy, doesn’t it. I don’t care, it describes what I have for this sexy little device, for which I have long been waiting and what I want built into my next Treo after the next one, complete with an improved Intellivision emulator.

Pint-size digital projectors are in the works. These devices, when plugged into cellphones and portable media players, will let consumers beam video content from their hand-held devices to the closest smooth surface — entertaining themselves, annoying their neighbors and possibly contributing to a new warning sign: No Projectors in This Area. The microprojectors, still in prototype, use light-emitting diodes, lasers or a combination of the two to cast a display of up to 50 or 60 inches, or perhaps even wider, in darkened spaces and 7 to 20 inches or so when there is ambient light.

I love projection technology and I hate flatscreens. Don’t ask me why, just know that it is so. And on a totally tangential note, isn’t it about time for a really good new spacefighting sim?

Two of my teammates played a pretty good prank on the rest of the team today. Last Friday, we were dominating the first half against the second-place team, but somehow found ourselves trailing 2-0 at halftime. We had a lot of injuries in the second half, which caused us to fall apart completely and we ended up losing 6-0.

Yesterday morning, one of the players sent out an email saying that he was personally acquainted with one of the players on the other team, which was how he knew the guy wasn’t registered with the league. Therefore we had not lost the game, but won it by forfeit according to the league rules. This led to numerous emails, including one from the president of the team, which assured us that he would take care of it but because he was in meetings it would have to wait until he was free. Then, this afternoon, he sent out an email explaining that while he had registered the complaint this morning, it was too late according to the league bylaws and therefore the results would stand. Unfortunately, had he only done it the day before, we would have claimed forfeit and the three points that went with it. He even quoted the relevant section of the rules to show that there was nothing we could do about it now.

Naturally, this inspired a storm of angry recriminations which got ever more heated, until finally the first player and the president sent out an email this afternoon with the subject line which translates literally as “April Fish”, but we would understand more accurately as “April Fool!”.

MNOnline finds it irritating, but interesting:

First, I’m a liberal agnostic, and am not a fan of V. Day’s politics (libertarian). And there are times in this book where he gets a bit tedious. He’s no creationist, thank goodness, and he’s no biblical literalist, but he comes close on occasion, which I find irritating. However, I thought that his research was done well, his arguments for the most part well-made, and his assertions supported. While there were times when I scribbled something in the margins like “Huh?”, or “Unfair”, or “Poorly argued”, generally I think he made his case – that many of the arguments made by Richard Dawkins, et al, against religion, are not as supportable as some like to believe.

As someone noted in the comments, it’s interesting how virtually no atheists who have read TIA even attempt to defend any of the arguments of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, while those who haven’t read it continue to insist that there is no way I could possibly have managed to refute any argument made by those staggeringly powerful atheist minds.

Anyone who still finds the central argument of The God Delusion to be compelling or unrebuttable, please raise your hand. And then, don’t hesitate to amuse us all by explaining why. (Hint – if you’re a Dawkins fan who hasn’t actually bothered to read your hero’s work for yourself, please at least glance at page 157 before even thinking about expressing your opinion on the matter.)

I should probably mention that I am a creationist, in the sense that I believe God created life, the universe and everything. But MNOnline is correct and I am not a Creationist in the sense of having any dogmatic attachment to how God created things, much less how long ago it was. Also, I do believe in taking the Bible literally to the greatest extent possible, I simply don’t believe it is humanly possible to fully grasp the literal truth of any translated statement. Since it is nearly impossible to perfectly translate even simple concepts from one man to another, how much more must it be true of translating Divine concepts into Man’s terms.

The point of letting the woman win appears to have escaped Beth:

If it’s to be a woman, I say let it be Ann Coulter!!!!

While I would certainly be more enthusiastic about a Coulter presidency than most – although I have real qualms about her grasp of the militarily possible – that’s not exactly the idea I was putting forth in the column yesterday. The idea is to get this descent to the nadir over with as soon as possible, since rebuilding can’t begin until the self-destruction is complete.

I was astounded, however, to see that WND actually elected to print a positive letter to the editor about one of my columns:

Vox is right about women

I am glad to see that Vox Day has the courage to write what most others are afraid to say on equality. The main problem with equality is that American women have their priorities all wrong. Whenever we talk of equality, we talk about women having equal power, equal wealth and equal education. Those are not good measures of a person’s value in society.

Say there are two men, one of whom wields more power, has more wealth and is far more educated. Is he somehow better than the man who has less? We would say no because those things are not as important as stability, integrity and honesty.

So why is it that when women has less power, wealth and education than men, they suddenly becomes less valuable in society? It is because Americans became convinced that power, wealth and education were more important than faith and family.

Mr. Paris makes a good point, although I think a more salient one is that barring the immeasurable concept of equality before the eyes of God, it is an empirical fact that equality DOES NOT EXIST. There simply is no such thing, and attempting to base material human society upon an empirical fiction while simultaneously denying the existence of the immaterial is beyond irrational, it is downright crazy.

The ironic thing is that some people think it is crazy to order human society on the basis of a specific interaction of the supernatural with the natural, although this makes perfect sense if you believe in the supernatural. What does not make sense is to order human society on the basis of the immaterial with the material, when you believe the immaterial does not exist. I should very much like to hear an equalitarian rational materialist attempt to explain how his equalitarian ideology is not contradicted by his rational materialism. The garden variety atheist, one presumes, would simply retreat into irratheism.

Whether he runs against the Lizard Queen or the Magic Negro, McCain is a probable loser because his nominal supporters don’t support his policies:

A new survey I commissioned demonstrates how McCain’s malarkey about supporting enforcement has succeeded in duping a significant number of voters. The poll (complete results are here) found that only 34 percent of people who voted for McCain in the primaries and caucuses knew that he favored a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants (the word “amnesty” never appeared in the survey questions). Meanwhile, 35 percent of his voters thought he favored attrition of the illegal population through enforcement, 21 percent didn’t know his position, and (this is my favorite) 10 percent thought McCain’s position on illegal immigration was “a program of mass roundups and deportations.”

Most Republicans don’t know how bad McCain is, and they were voting for him in the primaries because they had come to understand how bad Giuliani and Romney were. Once his positions on free speech, guns and open borders become clear in the Republican vs Democrat part of the campaign, his support will quickly dissipate in favor of better third-party candidates and simply staying home. More than a few Republicans have learned their lesson from the Bush years; if you’re going to get Democratic governance anyhow, it’s much better to have its inevitable failures actually blamed on Democrats.

The usual arguments in support of the lesser evil will be made, of course, but there are fewer voters willing to accept that argument for the fifth straight election. At some point, consistently supporting the lesser evil will force one to confront the reality that one has been reduced to a servant of evil.

Kelly’s critique of TIA Chapter II is up on her blog:

Perhaps the most amusing aspect thus far is his total lack of comprehension regarding Euthyphro’s Dilemma, which dealt with the source of morality—not the existence of god(s). Beyond that, he practically asserts that some kind of resolution was reached in the dialogue and that, if applied to science, it could be extrapolated that science doesn’t exist. (This is the point at which I’m looking at my monitor with a look of amazement and confusion—what kind of thought process led him there?) No wonder he thinks that the execution of Socrates was a good thing, although he places it erroneously within the reign of the Council of Thirty, while Apologia clearly explains that it was a jury of 500 citizens who convicted him of impiety. That same document states an incident that Socrates had with the Council, and also that they had been ousted. It’s a common mistake given the proximity, so I guess we can cut him some slack there, likely never having read Socrates’ defense for himself. (see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/)

Alright, I was wrong earlier. The funniest part of this chapter is when Day makes this statement: “…[T]he very existence of the Intelligent Design movement is a testimony to a respect for scientific methodology…” (p. 33) Excuse me? Their attempt to redefine science to include supernatural explanations is “respect,” but Karl Popper’s falsifiability criterion was a useless distortion of science? Interesting.

His rhetorical question about the hazard posed to science by religion and the resulting “hostility” betrays his lack of awareness of just how detrimental religion has been to science.

I’ll have my detailed response later, but feel free to take out your own red pens in the meantime. For now, suffice it to say that she’s correct about who pronounced sentence upon Socrates – I noted the error in the errata a while ago – but her take on my supposed lack of comprehension regarding a famous “dilemma” again demonstrates the inherent danger of doing a chapter-by-chapter review without reading the entire book first. (See TIA Appendix B.)

With a low Cuss-o-Meter rating of only 6.2 percent, isn’t it good to know that your tender ears are safe here? Unlike that vulgar den of verbal filth known as Dr. Helen’s blog. I like to think of myself as the Emily Post of the Internet.

The NFL’s competition committee is considering an absolutely horrible idea:

“I think it’s a very bad idea,” Broncos owner Pat Bowlen said about the proposal, according to the Denver Post. “Especially when you’re in a competitive division,” Bowlen said. “It can be tough to have a good record when you have so many tough teams in your division. In my mind, the AFC West is a very competitive division. The fans are into the rivalries that exist in our division.”

Under the current proposal, teams No. 3 through No. 6 would be seeded in round one of the playoffs without regard to whether they won their division. The controlling factor would be the teams’ won-loss records.

First, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. There’s nothing wrong with the NFL playoffs, and eliminating the tradition and importance of the NFL divisions in order to have theoretically more competitive first-round games is simply stupid. There’s no guarantee that the games would be any more competitive anyhow, all this would do is eliminate the importance of winning your division and reduce the rivalry effect.

Does anyone doubt that the Seattle-St. Louis rivalry is more interesting now because they’re in the same division, even though there is no historical rivalry between the two teams? I certainly don’t pay any attention to Tampa Bay now since they’re no longer a threat to beat out the Vikings for the NFC Central, although I will readily admit that they never belonged in the old Black-and-Blue in the first place and I was glad to see them go to the NFC South.

The NFL’s four-division alignment was a great move, and it would be a shame to see them reduce the effect of establishing some good geographic rivalries for nothing. Teams that survive tough divisional battles should be rewarded, not penalized.

RWC informs us that John Hawkins got a little carried away by what one can only presume was a very positive response to his Unbearable Hardship of Blogging While Female series:

I follow your work and often agree. I’ve usually little to add to your commentary but I felt this story is of such import that you need to see it directly. It is good to see Right Wing News focused on the things that really matter to the Right in this country.

We’re utterly doomed.

Over the years, I have occasionally felt a few pangs of regret of abandoning the political party of my Reaganite youth. This is absolutely not one of them.

As with the universities, the influx of women into science is having the observable result of degrading its quality. This will only increase as political pressure from women causes Title IX to be applied to science as it has been applied to sports. By way of example, consider the recent study cited by Dr. Helen, wherein a scientific researcher named Coreen concludes that the inability of women to communicate properly is indicative of a male shortcoming. As one commenter, presumably male, rightly notes:

Let me make sure I have this right, it’s men fault for not reading subtle non-verbal clues by women who REFUSE TO BE CLEAR WITH VERBAL COMMUNICATION and it’s somehow a man’s fault? Anyone follow this logic? If you do, you’re a woman.

Regardless of your sex, if you fail to communicate your intentions accurately, then the fault lies solely with you. The whole study is a misconception, since even when a woman actually happens to know what her intentions are – and is willing to admit them to herself – it is often not in her interest to communicate them accurately to the other party. For example, a woman who wants a man to buy her a drink will send purposefully misleading sexual messages in order to obtain what she wants. Is it more accurate to say that the man mistaken her signal or has he been misled? In many circumstances, the whole point of non-verbal communication is to AVOID the accurate transmission of information and intent.

Spacebunny points out that signals are also culturally dependent and vary from individual to individual anyhow.

I’ve never had a problem with confusing friendly signals with sexual ones myself, mostly because I paid them no heed. If a man finds himself playing a reactive role with women, then he’s already behind the eight ball. And if she is really interested in a sexual or romantic context, there’s no need to worry about any entrail interpreting, as she will make the signal abundantly clear.