Vox Popoli

From Mogambo: I keep looking at a chart of the growth in federal debt, and it is now increasing at the rate of almost $80 billion per month. Per month! Just how valuable IS a currency that is being inflated at that rate?… Mr. van Eeden writes, “The dollar is likely to fall approximately 50% from its current level. That would free the dollar denominated gold price to find its way back towards its true value of $699 an ounce (as of 2002). Given the mounting pressure on the dollar, there is virtually no chance that it will not collapse.” Remember those currency crises of those foreign nations, and how Clinton and Robert Rubin and Greenspan and the IMF and all those guys, which is everybody, decided to establish the principle of moral hazard, and so they bailed everybody out by sticking the American taxpayers with the bill? You do? I knew it! I could tell by the way you grind your teeth that you remember perfectly!

Anyway, I know what you are dying to ask me: “Hey! Mogambo! Yo! What did gold do during those trying times?” I am glad you asked that question, because Mr. van Eeden, in a stroke of coincidence, provides the answer to that very question, and thus saves me trouble of getting up off of my lazy butt and actually trying to find out, and maybe end up doing actual work for a change, and then I remember how tiring that is, and I lose all interest. Anyway, he writes “The gold price in Japanese yen however, increased by 34% between 1995 and 1996. The next year the gold price jumped more than 40% in both Philippine pesos and Malaysian ringgit, and 67% in Korean won. Indonesia suffered the most during the South East Asian Crisis and the gold price, accordingly, increased more than 400%.”

Remember, I was recommending buying gold at $300. Now it’s at $404. Of course, I also thought the markets would go down this summer. There’s one scenario that explains both going up – inflation. Don’t believe the CPI. Like all government stats, it’s fiction.

J writes: Enough of this talk of the ten best books you recommend. How about your top ten video game recommendations? You seem to be something of an expert on this subject. So let’s have it, eh? This would be killer info to post on your blog, amigo. Video games are almost more important than books these days. Video game made more money than every movie studio in the world. It is video game insanity!

Most movies based on books suck. Even classics like The Fountainhead bit the proverbial big one. Lord of the Rings worked surprisingly. Your Rebel Moon book would be great high concept action movie fodder. So like I said before, don’t be surprised when Hollywood comes calling. And hey, Ilana Mercer, hot or not?

Ilana hot, in my book. As far as my top ten games go, this will reveal what an Old Skool gamer I am, but there you go. I’m rating them according to how much fun they were at the time they came out, not how they’d rate today. Interesting, to see how Origin and Richard Garriot crop up so often.

1. Wing Commander – I used to take my monster 386/25 to my friend’s cabin for the weekend just to play it.

2. Wizardry – still play the DOS conversion of this from time to time

3. Akallabeth – burned on my brain’s retina

4. Doom – we spent two days straight learning about Novell networking so we could deathmatch. It was worth it.

5. Maddens – after recovering an onside kick on the first try in 1992, I finally did it again in 2004. 12 frickin’ years!

6. Ultima III – the best of a good lot

7. Ms Pac-man – wocka wocka wocka

8. US Ski Team Racing (Intellivision)

9. Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin – best of the current generation

10. Castle Wolfenstein (Muse, not id) – Schweinhund! bang! Aeigh#(*$&kk#*!

Honorable Mention: Autoduel, Joust, Moon Patrol, Lunar Lander, Demon Attack, Roadblasters, Warcraft, Aztec, Warlords II, Descent, Drol, Asteroids, 1942, Pooyan, Tron: Deadly Discs, Star Raiders, Mario 64

Overrated: Mortal Kombat, all post-Warcraft RTS, most current 3D shooters, Galaga

Just didn’t get into it: Tetris, Falcon 3.0, Command & Conquer, Civilization

Best Performance: Big Chilly, 1942 on the Atari Lynx, December 1995. Flew the circuit, didn’t lose a plane. The man was simply on fire.

Best Performance by a Chick: Space Bunny’s Internet high score on Pooyan, 1997. A brief, but shining moment.

Back when we were in the game biz, about ten years ago, my friend and I actually designed a game concept that is eerily similar to Grand Theft Auto as a joke. At the time, the editors of Computer Gaming World thought it was far too outrageous for any publisher to even consider. Now, it’s clear that we were simply ahead of our time. I suppose I should give my friend Big Kahuna-san a call with regards to my latest far-too-outrageous game concept, which, at this point, shall remain unarticulated.

By the way, here’s why Space Bunny is the perfect woman: she’s not only a beautiful, NFL-tolerant blonde, she also gave me a full-size Ms Pac-man machine for my birthday. And, she’s the house high score holder, female division.

The problem with the rabbi’s theory – that husbands are to blame for their wives getting fat – is that it offers no explanation for why so many single women do the same. It also shows a level of ignorance with regards to gym culture and its mentality. Working out, for the most part, requires desire that comes from within. Most of the men and women that I know at the gym have a bit of an obsessive-compulsive element to their nature and don’t really care what anyone else thinks of it one way or another. It really bothers them to not work out, in a way that is not entirely rational. I’m informed that I approach full psychotic if I miss three days in a row.

This may have something to do with endorphin release, or the simple familiarity of habit, I don’t know. But to ignore it and say that it all stems from insufficient attention strikes me as misguided. Are women such children that they can’t even be held responsible for what goes in their mouth? Sure, I know that many women are allergic to responsibility, and I have no doubt that the rabbi’s theory will be most welcome to them. The whole thing reminds me of sitting in a stairwell with a friend in college one day and watching a little chunker waddle down the stairs past us, lamenting that she just couldn’t lose weight, while alternately taking bites from the doughnuts she was carrying in either hand. Gee, I wonder why?

I mentioned this to Space Bunny – who works out as if she might to be forced to pose for a centerfold at any moment – and she pointed out that women are a lot more concerned about what other women think of their appearance than what their husbands think anyway. Which must be true, because let’s face it, otherwise she’d never wear anything but a little black dress or a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders outfit every day of the year. It’s all about social expectations. All the women of our extended Bible study are married, with anywhere from one to five children apiece, and every single one of them is slender and attractive. They don’t all have the flawless genetics of the Gorgeous Couple Too Nice to Hate (as much as you might wish you could)TM, but they maintain themselves in such a way that more than one friend, invited to a party or a barbecue, has wondered if there was some sort of factory where these lovely Christian women were made. And, could they place an order, please?

If she’s correct and the problem is social, then I don’t know what the answer is, except to choose your friends carefully. But then, that doesn’t seem right either. In any case, no one but the individual herself can actually do anything about her weight, so to try placing the blame elsewhere is unlikely to solve the problem.

Go ahead, make fun of the fact that several City Council members introduced a bill Wednesday to have more restrooms set aside for women. Why? Because females take longer, explained Yvette Clarke, who dubbed the legislation the “Restroom Equity Bill.” “Every woman and little girl can recall a situation were they waited in a long line to use the bathroom,” said Clarke, an East Flatbush Democrat and one of the main sponsors of the bill.

The law would apply to arenas, auditoriums, drinking places, meeting halls, theaters, dance halls and stadiums. Other buildings would be required to adhere to the 2:1 ratio as best as possible, with details yet to be worked out in full. “I think the courts are recognizing that restroom facilities are an essential, important service,” he told the Associated Press in an interview. According to Clarke, similar bills have been adopted in at least 12 states and cities like Pittsburgh and St. Paul, Minn.

She said that the potty parity law could easily be accommodated at some facilities by the change of signs on the restroom doors. “We have fought for equal rights in employment, leadership and society,” said Brooklyn Councilwoman Leticia James. “The next logical step would be to have parity when it comes to using the restroom. That is such a basic right.”

A 2-1 ratio is parity? This is what left-liberal thinking has come to. They’re not even embarrased to publicly make moronic statements like this anymore. This is like saying that if the Vikings and Packers finish at 11-5 and 10-6 while the Bears and Lions finish at 6-10 and 5-11, there is parity in the NFC North. Of course, considering the childish thinking of the left, I’m only surprised that the insane and unjust courts haven’t proclaimed restroom facilities to be a Constitutional right instead of only an “essential, important service.”

I love this sort of thing. Because he can, that’s why!

I was already down on Dell, since both my Dell laptops are falling apart despite uncommonly gentle treatment – I have an Alphasmart Dana for my portability needs, so my Dells never go anywhere. But this indicates that Dell is likely to be a card-carrying member of the Totalitarian Control Group, about which you’ll read more on Monday.

As seen in the latest newsletter from SpyWareInfo, Dell sent an internal memo to its tech support minions which says in part: ‘NOTICE: Use of spyware removal software may conflict with user license agreements of other applications installed on your system. Please consult your user license agreements for further information. Dell does not endorse the use of spyware removal software and cannot provide support on these products.’

Dell isn’t putting the spyware on there, as far as we know, but it is actively resisting efforts to remove spyware. Why? Because Microsoft has some technology on the horizon which will make present-day spyware look downright friendly in comparison, and Dell wants to be one of the primary delivery vehicles.

One might be tempted to think that if owners were free to reject customers by race, segregation would be widespread. But that’s nonsense because there’s a difference between what people can do and what they’ll find in their interests to do. Think about it. During the United States’ Jim Crow era and South Africa’s apartheid era, there was an elaborate legal structure mandating and enforcing racial segregation. Whenever you see a law on the books, your best guess is that the law is on the books because not everyone left to their own devices would behave according to the specifications of the law. After all, why would there be a need for a law saying bars or theaters cannot admit blacks if no white bar or theater owner would admit blacks in the first place?

As usual, the GOVERNMENT is needed in order to enforce something negative. Let people be free to discriminate if they wish. If you don’t want to serve blacks, you should be free not to. If you don’t want to serve whites, you shouldn’t have to do that either. That is freedom of association, yet another Constitutional right that has been legislated away. As Walter Williams points out, most people won’t find it in their interest to do so – because if they had, there would have been no need for Jim Crow or apartheid in the first place!

No good comes out of government. None. The more you think about it, the deeper you consider it, the more this becomes obvious in every circumstance. The only thing a national government is really good for is protecting against other national governments – hardly a strong case for the positive good of the concept. Fine, let’s limit it to that and nothing else.

William F. Buckley writes: There are of course shoals out there. They are economic realities. They drain the value of the dollar and the vat of human enterprise. But there is something else to look out for, which is the credibility of democratic practice. If everybody preaches A while condoning B, you get not only inflated costs, but deflated confidence in democratic government.

Mine is pretty much at zero anyhow. I don’t believe in democracy. Neither, for that matter, do you. I will take a self-professed democrat’s claims of belief in democracy seriously when he advocates replacing Congress with e-voting. The technology is already here. Come on, democrats, it’s time to practice what you preach.

ADDENDA: NB writes “Replace Congress and Constitutional questions before the federal judiciary with e-voting. No sense circumventing the demagogues only to leave the oligarchs in charge.”

Right, good point. Let’s get rid of both branches while we’re at it. Since the Constitution is meaningless now, what is the point of checks and balances on the perfectly realized will of the people? We’ll probably need to keep a President, just for signing treaties and declaring whatever it is we call war now, but the Imperial Judiciary is, with Congress, officially relegated to the dustbin of history.

A few years ago, while trying to convince my coach that we needed to adopt a different attacking philosophy, I broke down the MLS statistics and determined that shots on goal, not total number of shots or ball control, had the highest degree of correlation with winning. This tended to contradict the classic idea that having a strong center midfielder holding onto the ball and directing traffic was the best way to build a successful attack. In my experience, midfielders always want to hold onto the ball far too long, sacrificing the brief window of opportunity to create the quick one-on-one opportunity that is often possible at the beginning of a counterattack.

Also, too many strikers have a tendency to go for the far corners of the goal, putting it wide or putting it over in an attempt to avoid the keeper. The problem is that any miss eliminates the chance for rebound goals, which are a significant percentage of all goals scored. I saw a great example of how to do it properly the other day while watching Paris St. Germain playing Marseilles – at the start of the counterattack, the PSG midfielder immediately passed the ball through to a striker breaking past the defense just past the center of the field. The striker drilled a low hard shot at the center of the net, which the keeper managed to block as he came out to attack the ball. The rebound, however, went right to a second PSG striker trailing the action, who easily passed the ball into an empty net. Two chances are always better than one.

The top strikers seem to understand this. Henry of Arsenal, Inzaghi of Milan and van Nistleroy of Manchester United seldom blast away at the net, but are instead content to take hard, low shots that look more like passes and are usually directly on target. Not only do they tend to score more goals than most, they also create more scoring opportunities for their teammates. Why more players and coaches don’t grasp this concept, I don’t know.

I couldn’t convince my coach, which was no surprise. He thought the best way to attack was to dump the ball in the corner and cross it. Considering that our two starting strikers were both about 5’7″, this worked about as well as you would expect, which is to say, not at all. I don’t understand system-addicted coaches in any sport. If you have Randy Moss, THROW THE BALL. If you have Jamal Lewis, RUN IT. How is this a difficult concept? And is there anything more hapless than the Chicago Bulls try to run the triangle offense without Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen or a decent three-point shooter? Well, maybe Rick Pitino trying to get a bunch of lazy NBA pros to play a Kentucky-style full-court press late in the season.

Apparently assuming that I have nothing better to do than to respond to every atheist who writes something about me somewhere, I heard from a gentleman who wondered why I hadn’t responded to a short critique that not only had not been sent to me, but concluded I was only claiming to be a libertarian and that my forthright Christian stance indicated I was truly an authoritarian. Which makes sense, as long as you assume that Christian = authoritarian and ignore all Western history as well as every political column I have ever written.

Of all the critiques I have read, I believe that one takes the cake for sheer asininity. It reminds me of those theologians who want to perform an exegesis on one particular verse in the Bible while ignoring the rest of the New Testament.

I have read every email I have received on the matter of godless morality. While I have found none of them to be in the least bit convincing, I have responded at length to the most detailed and thoughtful critiques I have received and in doing so have gone far beyond the norm for any syndicated columnist. If you still believe this equates to some sort of intellectual cowardice and that slinging petty insults suffices to demonstrate your highly and independently developed ethical system, then all I can say is please consider this an invitation to go read someone who won’t question your precious assumptions.

If there is an opposite of an Ideal Reader, you are mine. “There is not a God and you’re stupid if you think so” is unlikely to convince anyone over the age of ten. If I ever want to embarass atheists and their claims of inherent intellectual superiority, I’ll simply write a column quoting from many of the emails I received. Prior to my responses to the detailed critiques, someone complained that I was only responding to the ones that made atheists look bad; I assure you, those examples weren’t even in the bottom third.

This round is over. We’ll revisit it the next time I write on the subject.