Tag: trainwreck

John Scalzi squicked me out too

Sometimes, the world is a vastly amusing place.  It’s at times like these that I think perhaps Dr. Pangloss was right and this is the best of all possible worlds.  John appears to be having some belated regrets about google-bombing himself, but you know, that’s the risk you take when you write “satire”.  If our revered SFWA President doesn’t like to see “John Scalzi is a rapist” floating around the Internet, then perhaps Mr. Scalzi should refrain from writing articles on the Internet in which he rhapsodizes about the pleasure he takes in raping women.  It’s a difficult concept, I know, but I’m confident that our fearless leader will one day figure it out.

I find it particularly funny that he claims I’m flailing about and providing unintentional comedy gold:

Blogger Joé McKen catches one of my regular detractors making a spectacularly dumb move, and then watches him flail about, trying to rationalize his unintentional comedy gold. No, I’m not going to link to the detractor’s site directly, because among other things the site is full of racism, sexism and general ick; McKen’s got the links if you want them, and all the relevant details if you don’t.

Over on McKen’s site, one of the commenters there, who is also a frequent commenter here, wonders about whether my detractor could be on the hook for libel. Certainly the detractor’s headline for the particular blog entry in question (“John Scalzi is a rapist”) is factually inaccurate; the detractor is (now, at least) aware it’s so; presuming McKen’s account of event is accurate, which I have no reason to doubt, it wasn’t published with the intent to be satire or hyperbole nor has much chance of being considered so now; and obviously, being branded a rapist, and having it believed, would be detrimental to my public and private life. So if I had a mind to sue my detractor for libel, he might have to hope I am enough of a public figure that it would obviate all those other factors and he wouldn’t be squashed like a bug.

But why sue? I’m happy to have him leave it up as a testament to his both his credulity while he thought it was true, and his mendacity now that he knows that it’s not. It’s a cogent reminder of what both his opinion and credibility is worth.

Credulous, mendacious, and libelous.  There’s a combination one doesn’t often see.  I’m pleased to know that he’s happy I’m leaving it up, though, because the thought of taking it down had never even occurred to me.  The fact of the matter is that John Scalzi announced to the world that he is a rapist.  He is on record at his site declaring as much.  He can claim that his admission is “satire” until he turns blue if he likes, but the fact of the matter is that you cannot come out and say the sorts of things that he does and subsequently complain that your statements have been quoted at length and taken at face value.  It would certainly be interesting to see him attempt to see me “squashed like a bug”:

“He libeled me, your honor!”

“How so?”

“Well, um, he kind of quoted me….”

“He QUOTED you?”

“Yeah, but he KNEW what I was saying wasn’t true!”

“And how do you know he knew that?”

I most certainly do not know that John Scalzi is not a rapist.  I didn’t know it then and I don’t know it now.  He said he is, now he says his previous statement was factually inaccurate… for all I know, John spends his evenings raping his cats in between making calls on behalf of the Obama campaign in Ohio.

His argument becomes even more confusing since he’s also claiming a) I didn’t understand his satire, and, b) there is no reason to doubt my own post was not published with the intent to be satire or hyperbole.  So, apparently we’re to believe that I knowingly libeled him by quoting him about something I believed to be true.  At this point, I’m left to conclude that John’s best defense against having it generally believed that he is a rapist is that anyone reading his increasingly convoluted thoughts on the matter will assume he is a teenage girl.

Now here is the punchline.  John is amazed how deeply he got into the head of a rapist in writing the piece:

“I wrote it from the point of view of a rapist, I think obviously in
retrospect, because it would have a stronger impact if I did. A couple
of people have asked me (not entirely unwarily) how I could get into the
head of someone like that. The short answer is, folks, fiction is what I
do. I try to put myself in the heads of a lot of different people. I will note that in this case, I was very happy to get out of that particular head as quickly as possible. I don’t often squick myself out writing a piece, but this is one time I definitely did.”

He definitely squicked me out too!  I mean, John is such a good and talented writer that I truly believed he was an actual rapist when I read his piece.  It was a shockingly powerful piece.  It was one of the most hauntingly powerful pieces of writing on the subject I have ever seen.  It touched me in places I have never been touched before, without my consent.  He raped us all with his words and I feel hurt, violated, and confused.  I am still convinced that John Scalzi is a rapist, despite his unconvincing ex post facto denials, because obviously no fiction writer, even a best-selling, talented writer like John, could possibly have made up anything THAT convincing. 

Headline of the day

If it weren’t so wordy, giving away the punchline right there in the headline, it might be my favorite headline ever.  I laughed, I cried, much better than CATS:

Screaming children flee cinema in terror after bungling staff show Paranormal Activity instead of Madagascar 3

And let’s face it, considering the drek that the cinema has been serving up for the last twenty years, this sort of aversion therapy could really be seen as a positive thing.

La responsabilità della scientista

Avanti azzurri!  Much to the shock and horror of the world’s scientists, Italy holds seven “experts” accountable for their criminal negligence:

An Italian court convicted seven scientists and experts of manslaughter
on Monday for failing to adequately warn citizens before an earthquake
struck central Italy in 2009, killing more than 300 people.  The
court in L’Aquila also sentenced the defendants to six years in prison.
Each one is a member of the national Great Risks Commission.

Scientists worldwide had decried the trial as
ridiculous, contending that science has no reliable way of predicting
earthquakes.  Among those convicted were some of Italy’s most
prominent and internationally respected seismologists and geological
experts, including Enzo Boschi, former head of the national Institute of
Geophysics and Volcanology. 

It’s both fascinating and informative, isn’t it.  Scientists are absolutely certain that the science is settled and they are more than willing to declare what laws should be passed, what classes should be taught, and what massive economic interventions and intrusions on individual freedom should be suffered due to the absolute reliability of their scientific knowledge.

But hold them personally responsible for their predictions and declarations?  Well, that’s an outrage!  Science isn’t actually expected to be reliable, after all!  I look forward to seeing climate scientists being similarly prosecuted one day for the complete failure of their predictive models.  The evolutionary biologists should be safe, unfortunately, since they don’t even have any predictive models.

IQ and the Ivy League

One of the interesting things about the self-identified intelligent individuals of the cognitive elite is how they commonly demonstrate that the failure to think results in much the same consequences as the inability to think correctly.

Now, most graduates of Ivy League universities genuinely believe that most highly intelligent people attend Ivy League schools.  But in much the same way that atheists confuse a higher average intelligence with a larger quantity of intelligent individuals, they are confusing a concentration of intelligent individuals with the overall quantity.

Let’s assume that every single individual at an Ivy League school is
Mensa-qualified. That’s absurdly generous, of course, as anyone who has
ever been to an Ivy or conversed with more than a few Ivy League
graduates will know, but just to be conservative, we’ll assume that every single student enrolled at an Ivy posssses an IQ of 132+ and is therefore in the top 2 percent of intelligence. Now, note that the total Ivy
undergraduate enrollment is 59,561.

That is 0.32 percent of the 18,078,672
total U.S. undergraduate enrollment in 2010. That means, by even the most
generous and conservative estimate, (since not all Ivy undergrads are genuinely
Mensa-qualified and because the college-attending group has an average IQ a little above the 100 norm), there are at
least 5.25x MORE equally smart people, about 302,012, who are attending
state universities, community colleges, and other private colleges instead of Ivy League
universities.

I’d have to do a bit more research to come up with a more accurate number, but I would estimate that there are probably between 10x to 15x more smart people who did not attend an Ivy than did attend one.

Europe is SERIOUSLY bankrupt

This award by the Nobel committee strikes me as the equivalent of desperately rooting through the couch, searching for change to pay the repo man:

The European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, providing a feel-good moment for the economically distressed bloc at a time when its post-national vision is losing traction at home and abroad.  The accolade comes as the financial crisis threatens the EU’s signal achievement, the euro, and the rise of powers such as China, India and Brazil challenges the European model of rules-based cooperation with nation-states handing sovereign rights to a central authority.

“This is in a way a message to Europe that we should do everything we can to secure what has been achieved and move forward,” Thorbjoern Jagland, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told reporters in Oslo after awarding the 8 million- krona ($1.2 million) prize. “We have to keep in mind what has been achieved on this continent and not let the continent go into disintegration again. We know what it means: the emergence of extremism and nationalism once again.”

The Peace Prize has always been about mindless optimism.  But it used to concern itself with actual deeds and accomplishments.  Now, with the recent awards to President Barack “Seven Wars” Obama and the Euzis of the European Union, it looks more like the triumph of deranged wishful thinking than anything else.  And it does tend to confirm the opinion of long-time EU skeptics who always believed the purpose of the Union was to leash the German military rather than build a common market.

I found this to be the most cogent take on the absurdity: 

“Giving the EU a peace prize is at best premature, like knighting Sir
Fred Goodwin in the middle of the mad boom. We have no idea how the
experiment to create an anti-democratic federation will end. Hopefully
the answer is very peacefully, but when Greek protesters are wearing
Nazi uniforms, and Spanish youth unemployment is running at 50 per cent,
a look at history suggests there is always the possibility of a bumpy
landing.

Daftest of all is the notion that the EU itself has kept the peace.
It was the Allies led by the Americans, the Russians and the British who
defeated and disarmed the Germans in 1945. The German people then
underwent the most extraordinary reckoning, transforming their country
into an essentially pacifist society. The EU had very little to do with
it. Throughout that period it was Nato, led by the Americans and
British, which kept the peace in Western Europe.”

Kick back, have a beer

And let her get on with the housework.  You’ll not only both be happier, but you’re less likely to end up divorced:

In what appears to be a slap in the face for gender equality, the report found
the divorce rate among couples who shared housework equally was around 50
per cent higher than among those where the woman did most of the work.
“What we’ve seen is that sharing equal responsibility for work in the home
doesn’t necessarily contribute to contentment,” said Thomas Hansen,
co-author of the study entitled “Equality in the Home”.
The lack of correlation between equality at home and quality of life was
surprising, the researcher said.  “One would think that break-ups would occur more often in families with less
equality at home, but our statistics show the opposite,” he said. The figures clearly show that “the more a man does in the home, the higher the
divorce rate,” he went on.

The idea that the values held by members of equalitarian households are to blame sounds reasonable, but I think the real cause is a natural consequence of men and women having fundamentally different standards.  If you’re going to end up doing it one way or the other, it’s a lot more annoying to have to do it when you thought – however unreasonable the expectation – that someone was going to do it to your liking for you.  A woman who has no expectation of household equality is naturally going to be much happier than one who thought she was going to get it, but didn’t.

The equalitarian households are simply more likely to discover this than the more traditional ones.  If the homemaking isn’t left to the homemaker, it shouldn’t be a tremendous surprise that things don’t go well.  The household is hardly the only place where it is a terrible idea to assign the job to the individual who cares least about it.  The lesson, as always, is that if you care a lot about how well something is done, you should always do it yourself.

On the other hand, I suppose it is possible that men doing too much housework is simply a grotesque DLV and they’re actively repelling their wives by turning themselves into disgusting socio-sexual gamma males.

I found the following to be an interesting conclusion of another study, which does not actually contradict the one cited above, as it is completely in line with the conclusions of a month-long experiment conducted by one of my friends.

The researchers expected to find that where men shouldered more of the burden,
women’s happiness levels were higher. In fact they found that it was the men
who were happier while their wives and girlfriends appeared to be largely
unmoved. 

If it makes you happier, then do more housework.  If not, then don’t.  Either way, don’t think that it’s going to score you any points or make her any happier, because you’re probably not going to do it to her satisfaction and it’s even possible that your well-intentioned efforts are making you sexually repulsive to her.

Juxtaposition

I happened to read two articles describing the same thing from very different perspectives earlier this week.

Item One:

Though few may doubt that Jewish life in America could be threatened, Gordis effectively explains why this luxury is precisely because of
the modern state of Israel. In the most powerful passages of the
lengthy piece, he describes the Israeli contribution to the strength of
the American Jewish psyche and standing. There was an era not long ago in which American Jews
tiptoed around America, nervously striving to stay beneath the radar.
They evoked that image of the spies who reported back to Moses after
surveying the Promised Land: “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves,
and so we appeared to them.” The American Jews who believe they could
survive the loss of Israel do not remember that era. They take it as
entirely natural that thousands of American citizens confidently ascend
the steps of the Capitol Hill on the lobbying day at AIPAC’s annual
Policy Conference….

Jews today no longer think of themselves as a tiptoeing people. When
Soviet Jews awakened and wanted out of their national prison, American
Jews supported them, and the State of Israel made their rescue a
national project. When an Air France flight filled with Jews was
hijacked to Entebbe, the State of Israel rescued them, and American Jews
were filled with unprecedented pride. When Ethiopian Jews were caught
in the crosshairs of a deadly civil war, the State of Israel whisked
them out, and American philanthropists continue to make them a key
priority. Much of what fuels American Jewish pride is the existence and
the behavior of the State of Israel.  In ways we do not sufficiently recognize, Israel has changed the
existential condition of Jews everywhere, even in America. Without the
State of Israel, the self-confidence and sense of belonging that
American Jews now take for granted would quickly disappear.

 Item Two:

So what is all the fuss about? It’s a paper entitled “Preparing For A
Post Israel Middle East”, an 82-page analysis that concludes that the
American national interest in fundamentally at odds with that of Zionist
Israel. The authors conclude that Israel is currently the greatest
threat to US national interests because its nature and actions prevent
normal US relations  with  Arab and  Muslim countries and, to a growing
degree, the wider international community….
Among the many findings:
  • Gross Israeli interference in the internal affairs of the United
    States through spying and illegal US arms transfers. This includes
    supporting more than 60 ‘front organizations’ and  approximately 7,500
    US officials who do Israel’s bidding and seek to dominate and intimidate
    the media and agencies of  the US government which should no longer be
    condoned;
  • That the United States government no longer has the financial
    resources, or public support to continue funding Israel. The billions of
    dollars in direct and indirect aid from US taxpayers to Israel since
    1967 is not affordable and is increasingly being objected to by US
    taxpayers who oppose continuing American military involvement in the
    Middle East. US public opinion no longer supports funding and executing
    widely perceived illegal US wars on Israel’s behalf. This view is
    increasingly being shared by Europe, Asia and the International public;
Taken in tandem,
it rather looks as if history may be threatening to repeat itself yet
again.  If the existence of Israel has made American Jews confident
enough to stop tiptoeing around America and openly dominate Washington,
Hollywood, and Wall Street to an extent the various American
intelligence agencies believe should no longer be condoned, this would
appear to be setting the stage for a power struggle of the sort that
always seems to wind up with the Jews being expelled through no fault of their own.  It raises two questions in my mind:

  1. Have the Jews ever come out on top in such a conflict?
  2. If not, what is the benefit of swaggering proudly rather than tiptoeing politely when one is a tiny minority of the population.

Not so fast, Mr. Krugman

Paul Krugman tries to slip one past his readers:

Some readers have asked whether there isn’t an inconsistency between my view that the Fed can promote economic recovery by changing expectations about future policy, and my ridicule of austerity proponents who invoke “confidence” as a reason to believe that austerity will actually be expansionary. But there isn’t really any inconsistency; it’s an orders of magnitude thing.

I don’t find this a convincing explanation without any attempt to demonstrate the precise difference between those orders of magnitude, but we’ll let it slide for now.  The reason we can do so is that there is a much more profound and glaring inconsistency between his  “ridicule of austerity proponents who invoke “confidence” as a reason to believe that austerity will actually be expansionary” and the “animal spirits” upon which macroeconomic growth depends according to the General Theory of John Maynard Keynes to which Mr. Krugman neo-subscribes.

A chimpanzee on Mozart

INTJ keeps digging herself deeper in her attempt to argue that Western culture is not superior by the high standards of her snowflake morality:

Hahaha. You attempted to strawman me by bringing up Hitchens. I pointed out that my type precludes me from caring what happened to Hitchens’ argument, so instead you cry “appeal to authority” where there is none.

Untrue. You didn’t point out that your type precludes you from caring what happened to Hitchen’s argument, you pointed out that your type allows you to make sure your conclusions are internally sound. You claimed that your conclusions are internally sound because you are an INTJ, but you have provided absolutely no evidence whatsoever that they are, in fact, internally sound. That was the logical fallacy identified. Furthermore, you cannot reasonably claim I attempted to strawman you until you show your argument about the horrific nature of Christianity and Islam is any different than Hitchens’s argument. He makes very similar claims to yours, although he is honest enough to include Judaism. It would certainly be interesting to hear your argument that Christianity requires genocide when the only examples are Judaic.

Actually, I can appeal to the highest authority there is (and the only valid authority at that): human reason. I can convince the average person that slavery, rape, and genocide are wrong under any circumstances. All you’ve got is a book written by a bunch of uncivilized tribal barbarians.

You are a very ignorant person. So, you consider reason more authoritative than science? How very medieval of you. More authoritative than history? How very stupid of you. And to claim that science and history are totally invalid authorities only shows that you are in well over your thick little head. Reason is not an authority at all, it is simply another tool. I can use it to convince the average person that slavery, rape, and genocide are moral imperatives… nor would I be the first to do so.

If the rules condone such things, fuck the rules.

Profound, very profound. As I said, your whole snowflake morality boils down to “me no likee”.

Whatever helps you sleep better at night. Personally, I bow to no one that is morally reprehensible. Not Rob Pardo, not you, and certainly not your genocidal friend.

Non serviam. That’s hardly new. To whom do you bow?

Could there possibly have been more straw in this man?

Whoosh! No wonder you don’t appreciate Western culture. It would be like asking a chimpanzee for his view on Mozart.

Snowflake morality

Some of you may find this exchange at Susan Walsh’s place to be as familiar as it is amusing. INTJ attempts to call JutR and me to account on the basis of our bigoted belief in the superiority of Western culture:

The level of arrogance and superiority you seem to have for Western culture is frankly shocking to me. I have better things to do then to have a lengthy argument about your bigoted views, but I’ll throw in a couple of points:

First, if the Bible and the Quran are interpreted literally, both Islam and Christianity are absolutely horrific religions. Christianity has no right to hold the moral high ground here. The only difference between the two religions is that radical Islam is far more prevalent and powerful than radical Christianity. But this has nothing to do with religion. The only reason for this is Cold War politics. It was the American government that propped up reactionary governments like the Saudis, and it’s the America and Israel that funded jihadist groups in the Middle East to destabilize pro-Soviet governments.

Second, it is clear cut that the West as a whole is far more promiscuous than the East, reflecting a cultural legacy of individualism. This culture had its pros (such as work ethic, meritocracy) and cons (promiscuity, narcissism). But there’s no question that the West is more individualist, and in America in particular, more materialist due to the consumer society.

I’ve spent time in enough third-world shitholes to vastly prefer Western culture to all of the alternatives, yes. I’m not excusing the USA’s insane meddling in empire and the West is now indubitably in decline, but if you’re going to defend cannibal cultures and pagan ones that couldn’t figure out the wheel, running water, or the rule of law, well, I’m simply going to laugh at you. Perhaps when the West collapses economically and you end up in a part of it dominated by non-Western cultures, you’ll learn to appreciate what was once Christendom.

Oh, this should be amusing. By what universal moral standard are Islam and Christianity “absolutely horrific”? Your personal and subjective one? Some pagan Indian one? If you are clueless enough to try to claim they are self-condemning by their own standards, this is going to get very embarrassing for you very fast. You would appear to be unaware that Doug Wilson absolutely handed Christopher Hitchens his head on a platter when Hitchens tried to make this very argument.

Cannibal cultures? Seriously? You should at least reread what you type before you post such shit.

You conveniently overlooked the conditionality of my statement: “if the Bible and the Quran are interpreted literally”. Yes, slavery, rape, and genocide are horrific according to my own moral standard. Do you disagree with this aspect of my own moral standard? If so, feel free to fuck off.

What, you didn’t hear about the German who got eaten earlier this year in Papua New Guinea? It’s not “shit”, it’s historical fact and it is still happening today. Do you really not know that albinos are being slaughtered across Africa and even in Europe now for “muti”? Or that the UN confirmed that pygmies were being eaten in the Congo in 2003?

I didn’t overlook it at all. In fact, the literal interpretation of both the Bible and the Koran is obviously assumed if one is going to judge their respective moralities by the standards imposed by the respective scriptures. And you call yourself an INTJ….

Who cares about your stupid little personal moral standard? It is no more valid to the other seven billion people on the planet than Hitler’s, Stalin’s, or anyone else’s who doesn’t subscribe to an objective one with a universal warrant. “Fuck off if you don’t agree with me” is a borderline retarded argument, but by all means, feel free to run away crying like a little girl who can’t make a rational case for her own position if you like. And you should care what that fool Hitchens did, because he was trying to defend exactly the same position you appear to be holding.

As an INTJ, I come to my own conclusions and make sure they’re internally sound. Hitchens may or may not share my conclusions, and may or may not have sound reasons for those conclusions. Either way, I don’t care, as I do not attribute much value to Hitchens’ political/philosophical activity.

And I’m not arguing with you when I tell you to fuck off. I’m simply following my own “not very valid” moral standard, which requires me to take react aggressively to those who aren’t against slavery, rape, or genocide.

You may subscribe to the moral standard as literally expounded in the scripture of the Bible, which includes Exodus 21, Numbers 31, and Deuteronomy 20 & 21. If so, I repeat what I said earlier: feel free to fuck off.

An appeal to the authority of your personality type. That’s certainly a creative logical fallacy. Since you are the author of those conclusions, no doubt you are the ideal person to be certain your conclusions are internally sound.

How very admirable [. I suppose I must be doing the same thing, although my unique and subjective moral standard requires me to point and laugh at philosophically ignorant individuals who genuinely believe they have constructed a sound and logically consistent moral standard when they are doing little more than attempting to rationalize their feelings. Seriously, speaking as a fellow INTJ, you’re really letting the side down here. In fact, we appear to have a real conundrum here, as I can appeal to the same authority to which you are appealing in defense of a very different conclusion.

I most certainly do. God’s Games, God’s Rules. Even Socrates couldn’t quibble philosophically with that; it solves the second horn of his false dilemma. To paraphrase the voice in the whirlwind, who do you think you are, creature, to judge your Maker? You are like an NPC on a World of Warcraft server shaking its fist at Rob Pardo, demanding to know why it has to watch orc after orc after orc die at the hands of invading parties, seeing them rise again from the dead only to die in agony once more. Slaver! Murderer! Genocidal Maniac! And then Pardo flicks a switch and that entire universe vanishes in an instant.