Mailvox: Hollywood Game

Mr BAD had nothing better to do: I've decided to discuss movie characters according to the Vox Day Game chart.

Star Wars series
Luke Skywalker: Delta-Gamma. At no point in the films is he ever a leader personality. Even when he is giving orders he does so in more of a whine rather as a command. In Empire and Return of the Jedi, Han sounds surprised that Vader is after Luke, and that Luke is the one who is rescuing him.

Han Solo: Sigma. Han has everything it takes to be a great leader but would rather not have to deal with the problems that come with it. He does as he pleases, doesnt take crap, and no one can forget how Harrison Ford became an instant sex symbol when he returned Leia"s "I love you" with "I know". He even has a Betta in Chewie following him around.

Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker: Gamma- Alpha. In the films Vader/anakin is a total Gamma. As a young Anakin he is whinny, and self important. I think this is mostly from the actor Hayden, but nevertheless Anakin is a Gamma. He wins over Padme by puppydog eyes and begging. I think if it hadnt been for her witnessing his badboy streak in killing the Sanpeople village, she never would have agreed to mary him. As a Jedi Knight he is still whiny and sefl important, although he has gained confidence, he is still no leader. As Vader he rules with fear rather than respect that comes from real leadership. As a Sith he is still bellow Mof Tarkin in Imperial rank. Only in the Clone Wars cartoon is Anakin portrayed as the dashing war hero described by ObiWon in A New Hope. In the Cartoon Anakin is a confident charismatic Alpha with a dark hidden wrath streak.

Obi Won Kenobi: Beta. Obi Won is confident, strong and capable but takes all his cues from his superiors. I dont know why ObiWon doesnt get more credit as being a powerful Jedi. He killed Darth Mual quickly, and the Jedi Killing Machine Grevious, battles a dark side powered Vader to victory, and held Vader to a stand still in his late 60's.

Yoda: Alpha. yeah, he never had to convince anybody who was incharge. they just knew when he enetered the room.

Darth Sidious/Palpatine: Alpha. . He was able to lead boh sides against eachother until everything was weak enough for him to sieze total power. As a ruler/leader he does so because people are confident in his ability to lead and his choices.

The Matrix trilogy

Neo. Sigma. Through the whole series he coulnt seem more interested in making other people happy, he just does what he does. He always seems to want to be doing somthing else besides being the Messiah figure.

Mopheous. Alpha. Morpheous is the guy who leads by the power of his prescence and personality.

Agent Smith. Gamma. self important, goes psycho because he cant accept not having his way.

Conan the Barbarian. Alpha.

Rocky. Delta-Gamma. from the beginning to the end of the series Rocky is a loser who refuses to give up.

Fill in the blank Clint Eastwood role. Sigma

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Lunch and the female vote

Dr. Helen linked to one of Amy Alkon's readers asking her about the observed phenomenon of the different approaches to paying for a group bill utilized by the opposite sexes:

I am writing to see if you have insight or an educated guess on one of these oh-so-true stereotypes. If a group of men comes in to have lunch and maybe a beer, odds are pretty good that one of those men will pick up the tab. But, (ask any ten servers and this will be confirmed) if a group of women comes in, they will almost always ask for separate checks. It's always cause for comment among the waitstaff if a group of women doesn't ask for separate checks.

This is a phenomenon I have often observed myself. I haven't read the long string of comments yet, but based on past experience of this sort of discussion, I guarantee you will find the following. 1) Several commenters of both sexes challenging whether the observation is correct due to the way in which they personally claim to behave and their failure to understand that there are always exceptions to the norm. 2) Several female commenters accepting the observation but claiming that the male behavior, which is obviously perceived as preferable by the waiters, is only exhibited due to some negative male quality such as the desire to score the waitress. 3) Several nonsensical defenses of the female behavior by female commenters. 4) Several comments by male commenters expressing excessive disdain, bordering on hostility, for the female practice. 5) And finally, it wouldn't be proper discussion of sex/race differences without at least one cretin arguing that the observation must be untrue because everyone is the same and always behaves in the same manner everywhere.

Now, I tend to think the practice of calculating shares of a group bill is cheap and petty myself, but it's of zero concern to me how or why other people prefer to pay as they do. If it happens to take six women 30 minutes on a Cray supercomputer to work out who pays how much, that's perfectly fine with me. What's of much more interest to me is to consider if this approach to group payment might be indicative of a similar mentality at work on a political level and if that mentality can reasonably be connected to a shift in the political economy since women were granted the right to vote. We know that the female vote has shifted the politics of the USA and other countries leftward, but is it possible that the shift is as much based on non-ideological, instinctive factors as open ideological differences?

If one considers the group check division mentality writ large, it tends to look not terribly unlike the taxing and spending approach of a modern democratic government. There is virtually no attention paid to the national budget as a whole, but attention is focused instead upon each individual interest group area as if it has no connection to the others. Note that I'm not saying that there is anything there, and democratic lobbying groups precede women's suffrage, (although not by as long as you might think), it's just an interesting thought to contemplate.

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"A landmark project for the new decade"

It may not have hit #1 like Aaron Klein's new book, but recent events appear to be on the verge of proving the case made in RGD to be correct. You've probably noticed that no one is insisting that debt isn't a big deal anymore.* Anyhhow, I somehow managed to miss this review of RGD, which appeared back in February courtesy of Jim Fletcher:

Vox Day, the Mensa-soaked columnist for WorldNetDaily, is one of those rare individuals who tells it like it is even when we don't want to hear it. And once the pain subsides, we realize he might just have saved our lives.

His new book, "The Return of the Great Depression," is that important.

Look, you can listen to MSNBC or read the dream weavers at the New York Times, who still worship the first non-American American president, but going to a place of fantasy in our minds is not going to help us fight our way to whatever economic recovery is possible.

For those who want to pretend that the Chinese don't hold our debt in their hands … don't read this book. If you still believe that entitlement programs – even those now for banks – is the way to go, read Oprah's latest spiritual guru. Maybe that will make you feel better....

If I were an economics professor anywhere, I would make "The Return of the Great Depression" the capstone of my semester's reading list. Vox Day has managed to make a real-life horror movie an absorbing page-turner. If you have been urged to read this book – and that's exactly what I'm urging – and you don't do it, you have only yourself to blame.

I fully expect this book to be a landmark project for the new decade.

And, of course, it's like $2 on Kindle at Amazon.... By the way, the Dow just dropped nearly 900 points on word that European lending had frozen up.

*It may amuse some of you to note that I wrote this post about 90 minutes before the markets tanked.

UPDATE - I should have a better idea what's going on tomorrow morning. As I wrote in RGD, the real problems are in Spain, Ireland, and the UK. Greece is small enough that it doesn't matter except as the first domino.

UPDATE II - Our favorite Doommonger sees unmistakable signs of the Eschaton in all of this: "I doubt anyone's enjoying the sound of ice cracking beneath our feet, but some of us are less surprised than others. We fans of Peter Schiff, Marc Faber, and Vox Day are just sitting at our desks nodding glumly and saying: Yep. Yep. … From Vox's wonderful suicide-inducing new book, chapter title "What Can Be Done," just the headlines:"

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Capital controls

The EU has abandoned Europe's Christian tradition and appears likely to drop its capitalist tradition as well:

This document is sitting in a drawer at the Directorate of Economic and Monetary Affairs in Brussels. It was written by a small cellule of EU officials in 2003 or 2004 (If I remember correctly) under prodding from Paris. It explores the legal basis for measures to stabilise the euro and EMU. After combing through the EU treaties and court judgments, it concluded that Brussels may impose “quantitative restrictions” on capital inflows. Free movement of capital in the EU is not an “absolute freedom” and could be limited in an emergency. “Should extremely disturbing capital movements endanger the operation of economic and monetary union, Article 59 EC (Maastricht) provides for the possibility to adopt restrictive measures for a period not exceeding six months,” it says.

It would be renewable every six months. Any decision would be taken by EU finance ministers under qualified majority voting, so no country could veto it.

So much for the oft-heard Europhile defense of the EU as a free market entity. This is why no government or bureaucracy should ever be permitted to have "emergency" powers. It's rather like telling a rapist that as long as he cries "emergency" first, it isn't rape, it's just emergency sex.

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Post-american public schools

American symbols are now out of bounds in what is still, for the time being, technically America. Did you really think that importing tens millions of Mexicans was going to change the Mexicans? The Melting Pot is a myth popularized by a Jewish immigrant to England who never lived in the United States, supported pacifism, feminism, and was a fervent Zionist. If the pro-immigration politicians and their supporters want to live in a third-world socialist hellhole so badly, why don't we simply send them all there rather than permitting them to import millions of their precious immigrants here?

And, I wonder, how long will it be before the North Mexico Yankee Corps follows suit and bans the American flag?

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A familiar pattern

It didn't surprise me in the slightest to learn Marion Jones was on steroids when she was regularly breaking 11 with such ease in the 100. It was about as surprising as learning that Ben Johnson didn't add what looked like about 50 pounds of muscle in three years naturally. Having trained with NCAA D1 female sprinters myself, I can say that it is usually obvious what is and is not possible without chemical enhancement. There is no special "intense weightlifting regimen" that provides magical results. And technique doesn't shave off seconds; speed is something you either have or you don't.

The New York Times article about her is a good one and one can't help but wish her well in her quest to play in the WNBA. [Insert Sports Guy joke here.] But what I found most interesting about her cautionary tale was how she followed what has increasingly become the American woman's path to delta.

As delicate as the past is, Jones reveals little outward bitterness. The pain seems to be largely walled off, at least from the public. But also, she is content with her family life, including her marriage to Thompson. Jones’s first husband, Hunter, was gruff, possessive and like a “bodyguard,” says Tiffany Weatherford-Jackson, one of Jones’s closest friends from U.N.C. Then there was Tim Montgomery, the biological father of Monty and a “party boy,” Weatherford-Jackson said. A former Olympic sprinter and an admitted doper, Montgomery is in prison for heading up a multimillion-dollar check-fraud scheme and for dealing heroin. Thompson, by contrast, is settled and devoted to his family. (“Marion says I’m predictable,” he told me one evening, referring to Jones’s teasing him about his taste in food and movies. “I tell her I’m stable.”) Thompson, a former sprinter who won a bronze medal for Barbados in the 2000 Olympics, is now finishing an advice book for student athletes. “We only wish we had met earlier in our lives,” Jones said one afternoon wistfully.

It's not that women actively dislike the "beta providers", or as I prefer to identify them, the deltas. It's merely that they are not sexually drawn to them in the way they are attracted to the brooding control freaks and the unpredictable bad boys. It is the Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights and the mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know Lord Byron who are the archetypes of innumerable women's fantasies, not the stable and upstanding Ward Cleaver.

What many men fail to understand, however, is that women know perfectly well that a stable and predictable man is much better for them and their children than sexually-charged submission or abandoned chaos, but to use the Freudian terms, their ids are at odds with their egos. Or, if you prefer the Roissyesque verbiage, it is thought versus tingle. This is why the gamma strategy of patiently waiting around for the woman of his dreams to "come to her senses" or as XKCD put it, "give in", is actually a perfectly viable long-term strategy, so long as it is understood that it may come at the cost of raising another man's children with a sadder, older version of the woman who first drew his attention.

Fortunately for the children, that's a price some men are perfectly willing to pay. I think they should be commended - for the children's sake - rather than scorned, even if the enabling aspect of their behavior is unfortunate. But that's a tangential issue, the main thing to take away from this is that deltas should understand that sending out "beta provider" signals is almost as much as a turn-off to young excitement-seeking women as it is a turn-on to older resource-seeking women. Of course, depending upon your personal circumstances, the former may be far less of a problem than the latter.

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The United States Yankee Corps

I was raised to revere the Marine Corps my entire life. I have always harbored the greatest respect for the many Marines I have met through the years. But I have absolutely no doubt that my grandfather, who fought in WWII and Korea and was declared a Marine's Marine by the Commandant of the Corps himself, would be bewildered by the rejection of the American South by what should apparently be renamed the United States Yankee Corps:

Straight out of high school, one 18-year-old Tennessee man was determined to serve his country as a Marine. His friend said he passed the pre-enlistment tests and physical exams and looked forward with excitement to the day he would ship out to boot camp. But there would be no shouting drill instructors, no rigorous physical training and no action-packed stories for the aspiring Marine to share with his family. Shortly before he was scheduled to leave Nashville for boot camp, the Marine Corps rejected him.... When the young recruit didn't go to boot camp, Andrews learned of his rejection based on his tattoo of the Confederate battle flag on his shoulder.

It would be educational to see what would happen if Southerners refused to enlist and re-enlist until ludicrous ban on Southern heritage and Southron pride is rescinded. Without the South, the Marine Corps would find itself transformed into a mercenary force largely populated by gangsters looking to acquire combat training and Mexicans seeking citizenship. Of course, if that's the ultimate objective of the policy, then we can expect that the ban on the Confederate Battle flag will only be the first step and it won't be long before other patriotic symbols such as the Gadsden Flag and the Betsy Ross Flag are banned as well. Does anyone believe a UN or Mexican flag would be cause for similar rejection?

Speaking of Mexico, it is already on the verge of civil war violent revolt in the north. This makes me wonder, how long will it be until Round Two?

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Burning the banks

There are flames in Athens now. How long will they take to reach Wall Street and the City?

Three people died when an Athens bank went up in flames Wednesday as tens of thousands of Greeks took to the streets to protest harsh spending cuts aimed at saving the country from bankruptcy. Tear gas drifted across the city's center as hundreds of rioters hurled paving stones and Molotov cocktails at police, who responded with heavy use of tear gas. At least two buildings were on fire. The fire brigade said the bodies were found in the wreckage of a Marfin Bank branch, on the route of the march in the city center.

Demonstrators chanting "thieves, thieves" attempted to break through a riot police cordon guarding Parliament and chased the ceremonial guards away from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front of the building.

Now, what is the point of "saving the country" from bankruptcy? Will Greece simply cease to exist if it goes bankrupt? Does a junkie die when he is no longer permitted to keep purchasing narcotics from his pusher? The molotov-throwing rioters chanting "thieves" appear to have a more accurate perspective on the global financial system than the hand-wringing editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal. Not a correct one, mind you, but one that is nevertheless more accurate. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking forward to the chaos since it isn't going to be fun for anyone who isn't young, male, unprincipled, and heavily armed. But it certainly isn't going to be averted or ameliorated by stealing more money from the public and handing it over to bankers.

I just want to know one thing. Where is the techno remix? And as for Max Keiser, well, you can't help but think of Chuck D listening to him lay down that heavy rap.



An interesting note relating to the connection of today's Greek riots to the historical Cinco de Mayo from Wikipedia: "In late 1861 Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, under the Treaty of London (1861) sent troops to Mexico, alongside Spanish and English forces, to collect debts owed by a previous Mexican government. President Benito Juárez had announced the annulment of these debts, and vowed to pay nothing to European powers. Napoleon’s troops occupied the port city of Veracruz on December 8, 1861.... The Battle of Puebla, May 5, 1862, was a single, important victory for the Mexican people over the occupying French Army."

Given the general European disarmament, I can only conclude that bin Laden will soon be spotted in Athens, thereby requiring an immediate invasion and occupation.

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Attacking the metric

School choice advocate Charles Murray attacks standardized testing:

The evaluation by the School Choice Demonstration Project, a national research group that matched more than 3,000 students from the choice program and from regular public schools, found that pupils in the choice program generally had “achievement growth rates that are comparable” to similar Milwaukee public-school students. This is just one of several evaluations of school choice programs that have failed to show major improvements in test scores, but the size and age of the Milwaukee program, combined with the rigor of the study, make these results hard to explain away.

So let’s not try to explain them away. Why not instead finally acknowledge that standardized test scores are a terrible way to decide whether one school is better than another?

This is tremendously amusing to me, as a longtime opponent of school vouchers and the various permutations of the conservative goal to fix the public schools. But you cannot fix that which is working precisely as designed! Murray simply doesn't understand that group schooling doesn't work any better than group reading or group training does.

Imagine if the only way you could read was to get together in a group of 30 and have a professional reader read out loud to you. How often would you read? How fast would you read? How much would you read? The excellence of the reader, the mellifluousness of his voice, would be largely irrelevant. The primary problem with education is the group fetish that has pervaded it ever since the Prussians pioneered the one-size-fits-all approach.

The failure of school choice to provide results was bound to end up in an attack on the standard, just as the many failures of various teacher-based programs always have. As Rothbard explained, empiricists always abandon their empiricism in favor of ex post facto rationalizations whenever they don't get the results they expected.

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Tragedy and irony

Darwin Dynasty Cursed By Inbreeding:

Charles Darwin's family suffered from the deleterious effects of inbreeding, suggests a new study that serves as ironic punctuation to the evolutionary theorist's life work. Pioneer of the theory that genetic traits affect survival of both individual organisms and species, Darwin wondered in his own lifetime if his marriage to first cousin Emma Wedgwood was having "the evil effects of close interbreeding" that he had observed in plants and animals.

Three of their children died before age 10, two from infectious diseases. The survivors were often ill, and out of the six long-term marriages that resulted, only half produced any children. According to researchers at Ohio State University and Spain's Universidad de Santiago de Compestela, that alone is a "suspicious" sign that the Darwins suffered from reproductive problems.

Setting aside the fact that Darwin was by no means a pioneer of genetics, as that would be Mendel some years later, it is more than a little ironic that the evolutionist's loss of his Christian faith after the tragic loss of his children may have been at least partially the result of his family's habitual inbreeding. How often we blame God for the inevitable consequences of our own actions.

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There goes the "angry white man" angle

Ah well. If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again:

Police have arrested Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen from Pakistan, in connection with the attempted Times Square bombing. Shahzad is believed to be the purchaser of the SUV used in the plot, and was apprehended at about 11:00 P.M. Monday while already on-board a flight to Dubai from JFK International Airport:

I know I'm astonished. How about you? Let's face it, about the only way a bomb would ever be planted in Times Square by a white guy is if he's a Federal agent acting on orders.

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Hate no more

Engadget still doesn't quite grok the fullness of the mouse, but they don't actually hate it any longer. In fact, they even went so far to describe it as "the most advanced mouse we've ever seen." Despite the caveats and minor misconceptions, I'm quite pleased with the review. And the review unit is a prototype, btw, so the plastic on the production units is completely different.

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Dealing with the police

A cop with the intriguingly titled group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition sent me this video clip today. It's targeted at blacks, but these days it is relevant for everyone. There's not necessarily a whole lot new there, but it is still a helpful reminder of the way to deal with those carrying guns and badges in order to reduce the risk of suboptimal outcomes.



I don't know what the rest of the rules are, but certainly staying calm, cool, and civil is excellent advice.

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Republican Party liars

At least with Obama, you know perfectly well that he wants to turn USA into a quasi-socialist third-world hellhole for the benefit of Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street:

Dobson pulls Grayson endorsement, backs Paul

Just a week after backing Trey Grayson in the Kentucky Senate race, evangelical leader Dr. James Dobson pulled the endorsement, backed Rand Paul and blamed GOP leaders for providing him misleading information about Paul’s record.

"Senior members of the GOP told me Dr. Paul is pro-choice and that he opposes many conservative perspectives, so I endorsed his opponent,” Dobson said. “But now I've received further information from OB/GYNs in Kentucky whom I trust, and from interviewing the candidate himself.”

Now, history demonstrates that the Republican Party leadership will happily choose a Democrat over a principled Republican every single time. And often, when a Party "moderate" like Crist or Specter is beaten in a primary, he will run as an independent in order to keep the conservative out. Intelligent observers of these practices may wish to ask themselves if this behavior is keeping with the idea that the party officials always want the party to win.

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Never listen to female advice about women

This would be why. Dr. Helen linked to a woman who maintains a site called "How to Train Your Man". Here's her perspective on what women want:

You can’t blame guys for feeling exasperated. We expect them to be psychic and to know what we’re thinking. As in the Dodge commercial, many men think that if they “behave,” their woman will be happy. If they disappoint us, we are unreasonable, intolerant, unpredictable, moody, PMS-ing or nagging. Sometimes it seems that it’s never enough. It’s really not men’s fault for not knowing what women really want. So here it is, simply. Women want three things from men: someone who cares about them, someone who will listen and respond honestly, and someone they can share a laugh with. In other words, a good friend. Everything else falls under one of these categories.

Interesting. And hypothetically useful information, although it sounds an awful lot like what the patient deltas and whiteknighting gammas believe. For an alternative perspective, here's what the Dark Lord of Intersexual Relations says women want:

The strongest woman and the most strident feminist wants to be led by, and to submit to, a more powerful man. Polarity is the core of a healthy loving relationship. She does not want the prerogative to walk all over you with her capricious demands and mercurial moods. Her emotions are a hurricane, her soul a saboteur. Think of yourself as a bulwark against her tempest. When she grasps for a pillar to steady herself against the whipping winds or yearns for an authority figure to foil her worst instincts, it is you who has to be there… strong, solid, unshakable and immovable.

Now, based on everything you know about women, based on everything that has been discussed here about women, which perspective do you think is more reflective of observable reality? And don't you find it just a little bit suspicious that the three things the self-appointed Man Trainer declares women want happen to be three things that can be just as easily provided by other women?

If you're undecided, consider why Dr. Helen was linking to the Man Trainer in the first place. It was because of this statement to her husband:

Thank you for going shopping. However, you didn’t get the sausage in the casing because you resent having to go to the grocery store. It’s passive aggressive and uncool. And now, you will have to pay the price.

In just three sentences, the Man Trainer reveals four of the worst common female attributes. Ingratitude, logical incoherence, motive imputation, and assuming the simultaneous roles of plaintiff, prosecutor, judge, and executioner. Needless to say, if one was going to lay odds, they would heavily favor the probability that this woman will be bitter, angry and divorced while Roissy is still feeding on the attractive 20-something she-lawyers that pass through Washington DC.

In summary, the correct way for a man to respond to a Man Trainer is in much the same fashion that Montecore responded to Roy Horn.

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WND column

Bigging up failure

The president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, told Forbes that global governance is extremely necessary if we want to prevent another financial crisis. … It is his belief that through global governance, the resiliency of the global financial system can be assured, noting that ultimately it was governments' use of taxpayer's money, equivalent to around 25 percent of GDP on both sides of the Atlantic, that prevented another catastrophic great depression from occurring.
– "ECB president favors global governance," Forbes, April 29, 2010

It should come as no surprise to the informed observer that the central bankers of the world are now beginning to openly push for global governance. The current plight of the euro has amply demonstrated the untenability of monetary union without political union. Without the power to enforce government policy on Greece, the most the Franco-Germanic mandarins of the European Union can do is threaten to withhold bailout money from the International Monetary Fund and the EU member states. This impresses the Greek political and financial elite, but no one else in Greece, and violent protests are already erupting across the country at the mere mention of IMF-imposed financial austerity measures.

For, as one young Greek man correctly asked, why should the youth of Greece be forced to pay for the financial misdeeds of their parents and grandparents?

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At the Black Gate

The second part of the interview with Marc Miller, the designer of Traveller, is now up at Black Gate.  If you're interested in creating your own Traveller-style little black books, there's a neat little online tool with which you can do so.

If you missed it last week, the first part of the interview is also available.

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UKIP in the UK

Peter Hitchens, a longtime Tory, explains why a victory for David Cameron's Conservative Party would actually mean a terrible defeat for England:

I beg and plead with you not to fall for the shimmering, greasy, cynical fraud which is the Cameron project. You will hate yourself for it in time if you do.... He is truly what he once said he was – the Heir to Blair.

If he wins, he will – as the first Tory leader to win an Election in 18 years – have the power to crush all his critics in the Tory Party.

He will be able to say that political correctness, green zealotry, a pro-EU position and a willingness to spend as much as Labour on the NHS have won the day.

He will claim (falsely) that ‘Right-wing’ policies lost the last three Elections.

Those Tory MPs who agree with you and me will be cowed and silenced for good. The power will lie with the A-list smart set, modish, rich metropolitan liberals hungry for office at all costs who would have been (and who in the case of one of the older ones actually was) in New Labour 13 years ago.

And then where will you have to turn for help as the PC, pro-EU bulldozer trundles across our landscape destroying what is good and familiar and replacing it with a country whose inhabi­tants increasingly cannot recognise it as their own?

The Liberal Democrats? They agree with David. The Labour Party under exciting, new, Blairite Mr Miliband, heir to a Marxist dynasty?

He agrees with David, too. You will look from bench to bench in the House of Commons and see nothing but the people whose ideas have wrecked a great country in half a century, and who still won’t admit they’re wrong.

Britain is going to end up having to turn to UKIP anyhow, unless the EU collapses under the weight of its economic malfeasance before Cameron imports another 15 million Polistanis and forces Britain into the Euro. So, you might as well vote for them now.

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Game of games

I know we have a reasonable amount of gamers here, so I'm wondering if anyone might be interested in a multi-genre gaming tournament inspired by the Apprentice Adept series. Obviously, it would all be online, but the Sprint competition between Jamie, Markku and I made me think that it might be fun to have different categories such as Arcade, Console, Wargame, and Classic (Chess, Go, etc). Thanks to RK, VASSAL will make it possible to throw down in everything from ASL to Wooden Ships and Iron Men. You could challenge someone and they'd have one month to get the game started, another month to finish it, and this would allow us to determine precisely whom is the Ultimate Gamer here. Forfeits would not only be permitted, but encouraged, so if you blow the game selection game and wind-up facing Spacebunny at Pooyan, Markku at Sprint, or me at Cod:MW2, there is no point in wasting anyone's time.

Obviously, this could become an ongoing ladder, but I think it would work best initially as a tournament. We can do something like give away a mouse to the winner, a personally inscribed copy of RGD to the second-place finisher, and TIA for third place. (I was going to suggest SE, but I only have two copies of that.) Anyhow, if you're interested, speak up, and if you have any ideas for what the categories should be, the selection process, or what games should go in what categories, fire away.

I'm just brainstorming at this point, so everything is on the table.

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Dante's Inferno cantos XXII and XXIII

Next week's reading is cantos XXIV and XXV. And congratulations to the 42 hardcore Hellmarchers who have persisted to this point. We're two-thirds of the way through the Nether Regions and there are only six weeks until the final!

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Edwards, Woods, Obama

If the breaking National Enquirer story about Obama's purported 2004 affair with Vera Baker, a story now being echoed by the Globe, turns out to be true, it may render the whole state candidate qualification issue irrelevant:

In a story that the National Enquirer has been working on since 2008, the tabloid announced on its website that President Barack Obama spent the night with former aide/fundraiser, Vera Baker in a DC hotel. The Enquirer has been trying to obtain confirmation of the details of the story it started looking into since 2008. Those details have apparently been confirmed.

Coming as it does on the heels of the non-coverage of the John Edwards scandal and the multitudinous affairs of Tiger Woods, it will be very difficult for the mainstream media to keep this one under their hat no matter how desperately they want to protect the Magic Negro. Especially since the international press is already paying attention. Obama's approval ratings have been on a long death march downward, so in combination with the November Congressional elections, this would likely put his administration into a death spiral. After all, it's a little difficult to play the sex addiction card and go into rehab for six months when you're supposed to be in the White House.

Regardless, it is interesting to think about how the Republicans would go about attempting to blow what should be a conclusive electoral advantage. I think nominating Michael Steele, defending Goldman Sachs, launching another pointless invasion, and running hard against Arizona-style immigration restrictions might be effective.

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