The good ship Goldberg rights itself

From NRO's Corner:

My official position on Miers has been to criticize the selection, but give her the benefit of the doubt until the hearings. In other words, bad pick but she's the nominee so let's give her a shot.

No more.

After reading this story I'm officially against Miers. I'm with the Editors , Will, Frum, and Krauthammer.

It's not just that Miers was in favor of racial quotas -- we'd pretty much known that for a while. It's the fundamental confirmation that she's a go-along-with-the-crowd establishmentarian. The White House says that her enthusiastic support for goals, timetables and quotas at the Bar Association says nothing about her views on government race policies. Yeah, right. She simultaneously thought what she was doing was great and important while also believing it would be unconstitutional if the government did the same thing.

About time, matey. Now, if we can just get the National Review to come around on Bush himself.

By the way, I'm not saying that I'd vote for him - although I'd consider it - but the Republicans could and probably will do a lot worse than nominating Tom Coburn for President.

The Dichotomous Subversive - part I of II

The Dichotomous Subversive: Douglas Adams and the Rule of Unreason
by Vox Day
copyright (c) 2004

From THE ANTHOLOGY AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE, Ben Bella Books

It is not written in thirty-foot high letters of fire on top of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains, but there is a distinct message that can be found woven throughout Douglas Adams' (regrettably no longer) increasingly innacurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy. His is a seditious message, a wildly subversive one, in fact, considering the ironic circumstances of its germination and subsequent propagation.

The dark master of the black art of humor, Adams is a fearless thrower of flames; an equal-opportunity mocker, his targets are freely distributed across the spectrum. He ridicules rock bands, religious fundamentalists, quantum mechanists, environmentalists and the Oxford English dictionary. He mocks Hollywood screenwriters and philosophers with equal enthusiasm, ; he lampoons politicians and poets with effortlessly cruel flair. If an author can be discerned through the veil of his characters, he would appear to be more Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged than the long-suffering Arthur Dent, though Adams does not trouble to order his insults alphabetically.

To fully appreciate the overarching contempt that fuels Adams' humor, it is necessary to understand that the government that inspired it was not the post-Thatcher New Labour of Tony Blair's Cool Britannia, but the grim, ponderous Old Labour regime of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. Economically illiterate and dominated by socialist trade-unions, its policies had led to a severe devalution of the pound combined with harsh currency controls that limited the amount of cash British vacationers could take out of the country, forcing a nation with colonies in Bermuda and the Virgin Islands to spend its vacations at the cold Atlantic beaches of Blackpool.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy begins with the indelible image of a showdown between a bulldozer and a man futilely attempting to defend his property against the proclaimed interest of the governing authorities. The remorseless and inexorable logic of the Council — you've got to build bypasses – was recently echoed in the U.S.A. by the Connecticut Supreme Court, which ruled that the city of New London was operating within its rights when it used its power of eminent domain to condemn the middle-class Fort Trumbull neighborhood in order to permit developers to knock down ninety homes and replace them with upscale condominiums and an office park.

One hopes that unlike the case of Arthur Dent's house, these demolitions will not soon be followed by the total destruction of the Earth.

This classic critique of eminent domain is far from the only one that Adams makes in his clandestine litany of the mindless abuses of government. His feelings on the bureaucrats who run the show could hardly be made more clear when he writes that it is the ugly, unevolved Vogons who have migrated in mass to the political hub of the galaxy and now make up “the immensely powerful backbone of the Galactic Civil Service.” Anyone who has had the misfortune of encountering the corpulent troglodytes who dwell in department of transportation offices will readily recognize where Adams likely found his inspiration for both the Vogon's appearance and their unhelpful philosophy.

“They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy— - not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat and recycled as firelighters.”

This profoundly negative attitude towards government is not limited to observations of its low-level functionaries, but is instead a broad-based, highly conceptual worldview. The citizen of a world-spanning empire declining into global irrelevance, Douglas Adams paints a picture of a galaxy in similar decline, where the “wild, rich and largely tax-free” days of glory and greatness are lost in the mists of time and those who cater to the wealthy Galactic elite are forced to hibernate in time stasis to wait until the economic cycle of boom and bust plays itself out.

Remarkably, Adams manages to mine this unlikely field, economics, for some of his most scathing barbs. The dismal science does not often figure into fictional plot lines and still less is it played for laughs, but nevertheless, it has an integral role in both the overall story and Adams' underlying theme. Indeed, Adams betrays a remarkably sophisticated understanding of economics when he pokes fun at the Marxian concept of capitalist crisis in the Shoe Event Horizon that ruins the world of Frogstar World B.

Furthermore, his grasp of the dangers of inflation is not only markedly superior to the world's current central bankers, but he also lays the blame squarely where it lies, namely, with the government authorities responsible for adopting an inherently worthless paper currency subject to inevitable inflation.

"Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich."

Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.

"But we have also," continued the Management Consultant, "run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut."

Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The Management Consultant waved them down.

"So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revaluate the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and . . . er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."

It would seem that the British government's currency disaster of his youth left an indelible impression on Adams, for he mentions the collapse of the Altairan dollar on more than one occasion and expresses deep skepticism about the concept of compound interest outpacing inflation in describing how one pays for a meal at Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe, with a single penny. Indeed, Adams' environmentalist take on paper currency sounds very much like that of Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard, whose seminal history of money and banking chronicles how American monetary authorities have repeatedly caused social and economic calamity through an addiction to expansive monetary policy:

The issue of this fiat “Continental' paper rapidly escalated over the next few years.... The result was, as could be expected, a rapid price inflation in terms of the paper notes, and a corollary accelerating depreciation of the paper in terms of specie [gold or silver coin]. Thus, at the end of 1776, the Continentals were worth $1 to $1.25 in specie; by the fall of the following year, its value had fallen to 3-to-1; by December 1778 the value was 6.8-to-1; and by December 1779, to the negligible 42-to-1. By the spring of 1781, the Continentals were virtually worthless, exchanging on the market at 168 dollars to one dollar in specie. This collapse of the Continental currency gave rise to the phrase “not worth a Continental.”
- Murray Rothbard, A History of Money and Banking in the United States, p. 59

Money mismanagement is far from the only form of gross government incompetence targeted by Adams. When Marvin is stuck in the swamp on Squornshellous Zeta, the robot tells a mattress named Zem about a speech he once gave at the opening of a thousand-mile bridge constructed in the swamp. “It was going to revitalize the economy of the Squornshellous System,” he informs the flolloping Zem. “They spent the entire economy of the Squornshellous System building it.”

Friedrich Hayek's "Two Pages of Fiction: The Impossibility of Socialist Calculation,” is famous for demonstrating how the central planner's task is bound to be a hopeless one, but Adams takes the concept one step further by pointing out the inevitable absurdities as well. Squornshellous Zeta's economic revival project fails in a spectacular manner at what should have been its moment of glory by sinking into the swamp and killing everyone. In addition to being a critique of central planning, this vignette could also be seen as a sly reference to the lethal nature of socialist governments in the twentieth century, which so often began by promising Heaven on Earth and instead delivered Hell.

- END PART I -

From the Democrats are pussies department

Robert Novak notes Howard Dean's TV schedule:

Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Howard Dean routinely turns down requests from all television networks for traditional joint appearances with his Republican counterpart, Ken Mehlman.

Dean is a former governor of Vermont and was a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, while Mehlman is a former staffer with little past TV experience. Dean may wish to avoid what happened during the last election cycle to then DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe, who consistently came out second best against then RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie, who, like Mehlman, had previously been a staffer.

I find it interesting that despite the fact that Democrats still insist that they have the IQ advantage when their strongest support comes from those who didn't finish high school, they have less money and their party leader is afraid to even appear in the same room as a Republican with whom he might have to argue.

I suppose it's difficult to get substantial mileage out of the "ha ha, UR so LAM3, lol!" method of debate. "YEEEEAAAAAAH!"

In which Vox loses an argument

Pretty Blonde Girl: "That's called an Amaretto Sour, in case you ever want to order one when you're out."

Vox: "Why? Don't you make it with that sweet lemon stuff?"

Pretty Blonde Girl: "No, it's called Sour. That's where the name comes from. Amaretto Sour."

Vox: "Why would they call it that? It's sweet. That doesn't make any sense."

Pretty Blonde Girl: "Maybe because it says Bitter Lemon on the bottle."

Vox: "That is a convincing point."

Mailvox: suffrage and servitude

Halation is just a little bit skeptical:

given your attitudes towards the intelligence and competence of women in general, do you understand why some might be just a tad sceptical when you say that no, no, you pwomise we'll have all those lovely natural rights, and not to worry our pretty little heads about it, to just go ahead and leave all that hard votin' stuff to the menfolk, who'll protect us, bein' all big and strong and masculine?

It makes no difference what women might think of my opinion. As one television show has demonstrated, the vast majority of women think so little about the issue that they are perfectly willing to sign a petition to end women's suffrage. And yet, I not only don't blame Halation for her skepticism, indeed, I salute her for it. I only wish that all women were equally skeptical about pretty promises from people with grand ideas for improving society.

As for those women who do think about such things, the very few who actually value basic human rights and the protection of human liberty soon reach precisely the same conclusion I do when they think about it. I seem to recall Ann Coulter, for one, making reference to being willing to give up her vote if it means taking it away from the rest of her sex as well. Unfortunately, even among the women who do take the time to consider such matters, most don't value human rights as such, instead they substitute needs for rights and place a priority upon the equality of result instead of the equality of opportunity.

Halation's fear of losing the vote betrays a typically unsophisticated understanding of how the world works. Voters control nothing in any Western country, they simply provide safe cover for the multi-factional ruling party. Whereas the head beneath the crown lies ever uneasy, the members of the ruling oligarchy in a modern quasi-democracy know that whenever the peasantry becomes restless, a simple and showy passing of the torch from one member to another will suffice to convince them that genuine change is at hand. Rinse and repeat as needed.

Would Halation be as concerned about losing her vote were she a citizen of the former Soviet Union? It is important to remember that Civics 101 notwithstanding, voting is not synonymous with freedom. The ironic truth is that most who consider themselves champions of "democracy" are no genuine fans of it, as they support neither the severely limited democracy that fosters freedom nor the full-fledged direct democracy that would significantly reduce the opportunity for oligarchical manipulation at the cost of mob rule. Instead, they prefer to cling to their illusion of people power even as they mindlessly obey, in Pavlovian fashion, the bell-ringing of their masters.

Women will always be ruled by an elite because every human society has always been ruled by one. The only question is whether they prefer to be ruled by a overt freedom-loving elite that will protect them and value them, by a covert totalitarian elite that sees them as useful and unwitting instruments to obtain power, by a barbarian elite that hates them as a necessary evil or by a primitive elite that sees them as prizes and toys.

The first elite, in my opinion, is definitely the most preferable. But because of women's demonstrably greater susceptibility to the second type, anyone who values human freedom and honestly considers recent history should be able to recognize that women's suffrage has been a disaster for human liberty and understand why I oppose it.

I neither designed this world nor did I write its history. I am simply reflecting upon what I have observed, and I make no pretense to understand more than a fraction of it. I speak for no one but myself.

How to fail

When someone whose opinion you respect, someone that you consider to be an excellent leader, informs you that your work is crap, do you:

A. Ask him why and do what you can to improve it?

B. Tell him he's full of fecal matter himself and demonstrate why.

C. Run around shrieking and telling everyone you know that his assertion is "outrageous" and "painful", like "a shotgun blast to the face".

If you answered (C), you are probably an overpaid professional woman who relies on others to keep you afloat. Consider the words of Nancy Vonk, a presumably overpaid professional woman in the ad business.

It felt like I got a shotgun blast in the face. I've had the experience of him being an excellent leader and very inspiring person. My head is still spinning because it was so outrageous. The upshot of what he said is that you give [women] a shot and they run off and have babies. It wasn't in good humor. It was extremely painful the way he spoke."

Although Vonk described French as a longtime friend and mentor, she said she was shocked by the tone of his comments. "It was one of those experiences where you can hardly absorb what you are hearing," Vonk continued. "Nothing prepared us. Even knowing him to be a boy's boy. I never felt that he had such extreme views."

Yes, he's a boy's boy. That's probably why he thinks your work blows. The fact that he's an expert and presumably knows good work from bad work couldn't possibly be the truth, could it? And while the Sisterhood is celebrating the guy's resignation, I can just imagine what the executives at WPP are thinking. "Great, he's going to go off, start his own business and eat our lunch while we're stuck competing against him with Little Miss Fainting Couch and the rest of the underperforming lightweights."

Now, is it possible that the guy is an idiot and has no idea what he's talking about? Sure. But Vonk's response sure doesn't make that look very likely, nor does the fact that his departure from the company was considered significant news in the industry.

There are plenty of women who excel at their jobs. I am fortunate enough to have several such women working for me. But no one, regardless of their age, sex, educational background, sports allegiance or religious creed, should use it as an excuse for failure. And if someone says your work is crap, then it's up to you to show me how they're wrong.

Londonistan

In which it is devoutly hoped that the ladies who voted Labour into power enjoy wearing their burqahs:

Britain's population is projected to rise by more than seven million in the next 25 years - a far greater increase than official forecasts have previously predicted.... This year net migration is forecast to be even higher at 255,000, before reducing to an annual rate of about 145,000 from 2008. When Labour took office in 1997 net migration was about 50,000 a year....

The official figures indicate that 83 per cent of the expected population increase is due to immigration, both directly and as a result of children born to new arrivals. While four million of the population rise is directly due to net migrants, of the remaining 3.2 million more than half will be the children of immigrants.

And I wonder how they'll vote? Tory, Labour, or Lib Dem? They will, of course, gravitate towards a new party demanding Sharia. The UK is already under tremendous pressure to accomodate its non-Westernized immigrants, who show very little sign of giving up their religious and cultural traditions. Instead, it is the British who have been willing to abandon their cultural tradition in opening their island to mass immigration. And such is the fear of the new demographics that even the new Tory leader-to-be, David Cameron, is talking down the immigration issue in a futile attempt to appeal to the Britastani bloc.

The Norman invasion had a tremendous effect on Anglo-Saxon Britain. The Islamic influx can be expected to do no less.

So, enjoy your equalitarian society while you can, oh you roses of England. I imagine you'll probably be able to wear lipstick in public for another decade or two.

Yes, the Sisterhood really is that freaking crazy

The International Herald Tribune notes that feminism is put to the test... and fails:

As one of the world's most gender-equal countries - a land where 80 percent of the women have jobs, where about half of the members of Parliament are female - does Sweden need a feminist party?

Many people thought so this spring, when a number of high-profile Swedish women began Feministiskt Initiativ, or Feminist Initiative. Polls then showed that almost a quarter of the electorate would consider voting for the party in parliamentary elections next year.

Six months later, however, that backing has imploded as Sweden rethinks the politics of sex. Feminist Initiative is in disarray with the loss of several founding members who abruptly departed over the radical direction the party was taking. At its recent founding congress, for example, instead of tackling a mainstream platform as planned, the party presented proposals to abolish marriage and create "gender-neutral" names.

Support for feminism took another hit this summer with the airing of a Swedish television documentary called "The Gender War." A wrenching debate was set off by the film, which showed militant feminism to be widespread, reaching into official circles: Ireen von Wachenfeldt, the chairman of Roks, Sweden's largest women's shelter organization, for one, was shown asserting that "men are animals."

Suddenly the belief that politics, business, even private life should be reformed to allow a more equal society - a belief that has permeated Swedish politics for several decades - is being openly questioned.

As I have repeatedly written, calling a feminist a feminazi is an insult to the German National Socialist Worker's Party. The serious ones are every bit as insane as the hard core communist true believers. Fortunately, the feminists' ideal society is even less viable than that of the communists and begins to fall apart before it's close to being fully implemented, so we won't have to put up with them for much longer.

The one genuinely nice thing I can say about them is that for all their rhetoric, they don't have a taste for openly aggressive violence; even the most lunatic wing of the Sisterhood is unlikely to pull a Pol Pot in desperately attempting to bring about their societally suicidal vision.

It will probably take another three or so generations for the evolutionary dead-ends to completely kill themselves off. By then, the West will either have recovered from the unsuccessful equalitarian experiment or they'll all be in chador.

A crack in the wall

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post on Roe and abortion:

Conservatives -- and some liberals -- have long argued that the right to an abortion ought to be regulated by states. They have a point. My guess is that the more populous states would legalize it, the smaller ones would not, and most women would be protected. The prospect of some women traveling long distances to secure an abortion does not cheer me -- I'm pro-choice, I repeat -- but it would relieve us all from having to defend a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument.

For liberals, the trick is to untether abortion rights from Roe . The former can stand even if the latter falls. The difficulty of doing this is obvious. Roe has become so encrusted with precedent that not even the White House will say how Harriet Miers would vote on it, even though she is rigorously antiabortion and politically conservative. Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument -- but a bit of our soul as well.

I hope to one day see all abortion banned in every American state, but it is good to see that even pro-choice liberals are beginning to admit that Roe vs Wade is a Constitutional abomination. Richard Cohen is to be congratulated, not because he has suddenly transformed himself into a pro-life champion of unborn humanity - he has not - but because he has demonstrated unusual courage in taking on his party's most sacred cow.

A Supreme Court that rules by fiat is in no one's interest. The court that can create a fictitious right to privacy is one that can take away anyone's right to free speech, property and liberty. Judicial activism in pursuit of what are political goals is a sword that cuts both ways, and Republicans would be as foolish to take it up as some Democrats are beginning to realize they have been.

Mailvox: Equines and equalitarians II

Chris is slow to grasp that she doesn't get to make the rules:

Did you miss the point where I indicated that one single argument is not, and should not be, the whole of a debate? I'm perfectly happy staying right here, where people can see every argument on the subject I've made to you and vice versa, rather than on the front page where all the stuff I've said in the past gets swept aside with each new post and we go around in circles forever. Stand and deliver here, VD.

First, my blog, my rules. So, regardless of how happy you are, no. Second, your assumptions are as errant when it comes to Internet software technology as they are with regards to my intellectual character. It is the Haloscan comments which will get washed away with time, which are not searchable and which do not get backed up. This is why, when someone makes an insightful, funny or otherwise interesting comment, I post it, in order to preserve it. It may not be your fault that you didn't know this, but it is your fault that you didn't bother to ask.

If you could parse an argument, you'd be able to see that the thrust of that sentence wasn't that I know lots of smart women, yay me, but that the smart women I know are evidence that Spacebunny's not exemplary of her gender. But you're right, VD. The women I know aren't private university types: they're largely composed of engineering grad students at top rank state programs. Many of them have mastered discussing arcane technical concepts in a foreign language they learned as teenagers, but they're clearly not too bright. Really.

Yes, I did grasp your insult to her. You'd be banned already, were it not for Spacebunny's encouraging me to hold off. So, not only can I parse your argument, but I can also demonstrate that "the thrust of your argument" depends upon your claim to know "smart women", which is not acceptable evidence to anyone here. According to you - and why should we take your statements at face value when you have repeatedly accused me of dishonesty instead of doing the same - your friends are taking classes in public universities. Meanwhile, my female friends - there are people here who know them and can vouch for them - graduated from elite private institutions, so based on the entrance requirements, the chances that your little engineers are smarter are slim. And if your friends are anything like the women engineers I know, they'd sell their soul to be more like Spacebunny. She is an extraordinary example of her sex.

The ability to function in a foreign language proves nothing. All it means is that you're an immigrant. I know dim-witted people who do it every day, while the three smartest individuals I know don't.

"I've answered every point you've put before me on this thread; you can't say the same. Your current post on the front page demonstrates massive ignorance when you claim that "What prevented a literate upper-class Greek or Roman woman from writing a history or a philosophical treatise, or, like Galen, poking about corpses?" (Hint: in the Greek upper class, women simply weren't educated beyond what we know today as "home economics". Literacy was minimal or non-existent. The average age for an upper-class male was 30, the average [married] age for an upper-class female was 14, at which point they immediately started having kids. You're simply an idiot if you think that, as a group, they had any chance in hell to do anything else with their lives.)

Your claim of answering every point I've put before you is demonstrably false, as you ignore both the cited evidence of female Roman literacy and pretensions to intellectual achievement during the Imperial era, the admittedly oblique reference to Japanese women's literacy as well as the dichotomy of homosexual achievement in the face of even greater social repression. I note that as I've now finally addressed the historical issue, I am not aware of any point of yours have I missed. If I have, it is unintentional; please bring it to my attention and I will answer it. As to the Greeks, the mere existence of Sappho casts doubt on your assertion and I'd like to see your sources demonstrating this minimal literacy. In any case, since when do children render intellectual achievement impossible, especially in a slave-owning culture? Did upper-class Greek women even nurse their own children? I know that upper-class women in the Middle Ages certainly didn't.

And you outright contradict yourself. Back the Electrolite thread you said "I suppose I might as well point out now that if anyone had actually bothered to read the column instead of limiting themselves to the one quote, I clearly subscribe to the DON'T school, not the CAN'T." However, today you said "However, I'm not implying that women's science ability and inclination is much lower than men, I'm outright stating it."

Does the meaning of the word "and" escape you? If not, then please tell me if "inclination" falls under DON'T or CAN'T? Since the column to which you are referring stated that women were being intellectually cauterized by the current educational system, it's either crazy or intentionally dishonest to conclude that I believed women "couldn't" do better due to genetic limitations when the sole factor on which I was placing the blame is an environmental one. Is that true or not? And if not, please do walk us through the logic of how it isn't.

As I wrote in 2003 and repeated in February: "Instead of taking advantage of their intellectual freedom and unprecedented access to education, the feminist vanguard has embraced an anti-intellectual dogmatism that imprisons the current generation of young women in the academic convent of Women's Studies, robbing them of both foundational knowledge and the capacity for rational linear thought, thus ensuring that this generation, like its foremothers, will also fail to accomplish anything worthy of historical regard.

And from this you glean an attack on women's genetic shortcomings? You underline my case!

But it's other people that can't put together a coherent logical argument. Right.

I haven't seen you demonstrate the ability to do so yet. You've simply sniped away at various statements I've made, while making more than one ludicrously spurious and unsupported assertion in the process. Not even your fellow critics have indicated that they're impressed with your arguments; I'm certainly not.

Blogfodder: Bane on public discourse

Bane rants, quietly:

I note that some of his commenters bring the manners prevalent in Vox's sandbox to mine, and it scrapes my last nerve raw, some. For the most part, ya'll settle down, and I appreciate that. This is not a debating arena, parliamentary and shouting.
I prefer a library setting, with small groups off discussing a mutual project in low tones.

I suspect Vox not only tolerates it, but encourages, believing somehow that he is whetting his sharp mind against their dull stone. But let me tell you, fine steel is ruined by a cheap whetstone.

I scroll down his various discussions lately, and sometimes dip my toe in, and I am faced with such a babbling crowd of frantic-eyed, semi-literate, unmedicated ADD children, that I have to go off somewhere quiet and rub my temples and calm my twitching trigger finger.

I'm actually very much in agreement with Bane's opinion and I wouldn't blame anyone who gets tired of the write-response-rinse-repeat cycle that invariably follows every controversial column. And while I was a little disappointed at first that so few liberals, and to a lesser extent, Republican supporters of the current administration, are so uninterested in reasonable, substantive and civil debate, I got over it.

Those are the sort of conversations I have with my liberal and socialist friends over a bottle or two of wine, not as often as I'd like, but often enough to me to realize that it's primarily the medium that inspires these insult-focused critiques, although I suspect that the age of the critics also has something to do with it. I don't think its an accident that the only similarly uncivil discourse takes place at the college level; most of these knee-jerk reactions appear to come from college students who combine cluelessness with the certainty that comes from a lack of real-world experience.

So, while I would prefer if people could hold off on the wild insult-hurling for at least the first round or two, that's just not possible due to the reason many of the non-regulars come here in the first place. The people angrily blowing their stack this week are not the same people who were doing so three months ago, and neither group are the same as those doing it last year. It's only the identical way they behave when they show up that makes one feel that sense of deja vu.

But different blogs serve different purposes. This blog started out primarily as a means of interacting with my readers, friendly and unfriendly, and allows me to respond once to twenty very similar emails. And while I'm under no illusion that sparring with people who are foolish enough to inform me what I was thinking when I wrote something - interesting logic there - is going to sharpen my mind, I do enjoy clashing with people like Res, the OC, Scintan, Franger and even Cedarford.

For example, Cedarford will likely never convince me that security is more important than liberty, or vice-versa, but the mere fact that I know he will be on any mistake or logical error related to his areas of interest prevents me from getting lazy when I write about the subject. The same holds true of many of the regulars here with regards to their areas of particular interest.

The one thing I would encourage regulars to do, however, is to hold your fire with regards to the one-liners and throwaway insults when the critics come by, even if you rightly suspect they're drive-bys. Unless you're a Bane-class flamethrower - and very few people are - all it does is sidetrack more interesting discussions and allows the critic to evade being pinned down and dissected.

Remember, a good intellectual vivisection is far more amusing and educational than a pedestrian name-calling.

Mailvox: the rocker's dirty secret

Kiwi has her suspicions:

IMO, there are fewer women musicians, SF writers, programmers, and many other things for the same reason women aren't as good at video games: Women tend to spend less time immersing themselves in a pastime, so they're less likely to be experts. They're also less likely to care.

During my brief, but glorious time in the music industry, a lot of the girls I knew were bitterly disappointed to discover that the musicians they thought were these incredibly cool demigods were, once you got past the stage glamour, basically geeks.

And this is true of almost all of them, even the wild ones. About the only exception is the bassists, who tend to be the good musicians' cool friend that everyone wants in the band, so they figure they can teach him as it goes along.

The reason is pretty simple. The music business requires you to be good-looking and to have plenty of free time, so youth is a big advantage. In order to develop sufficient skill at an instrument or to master the programming of their electronic counterparts, an individual has to have spent a lot of time messing around in his basement during his teens.

So, in most cases, the wildly hedonistic behavior of the rock star is simply a geek making up for lost time.

In the tradition of the Pendulum

Turandot seeks a word:

Ah, I'm looking for a word meaning "someone who changes his explanation as needed to cover his precarious dignity, if not his ass"... Pathological liar? Obfuscator? Pompous blowhard? No, doesn't quite convey it...I know! Care to make one up for me?

I'm thinking gravindicovaricator might suit. Although perhaps mutapostobvolvator does a better job of indicating the posterior-covering aspect, with, naturally, mutapostobvulvatrix representing the Sisterhood specimens pushing their dogma.

Although I still fail to see how either would possibly apply to this:

P1: "It's vox populi, stupid! Ha ha, you're so dumb!"
Vox: "Popoli is Italian." Kind of like Day is English.

P2: "Popoli is bad Italian grammar! Ha ha, you're so dumb!"
Vox: "Yes, so? I chose Popoli over Populi because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of things called Vox Populi." In addition to the fact that mixing Latin and Italian throws the whole grammar thing out the window, grammar plays no role in a nominal title.

P3: "You're changing your explanation! I'm angry because I can't say 'ha ha, you're so dumb!'"
Vox: "I gave two different answers to two different questions. They do not contradict each other."

And I have now spent 10x more time typing this up than I did in thinking about the blog name.

Can't argue there

Derb on science fiction:

If a great novel is written in the sci-fi idiom, it is at once de-categorized as "sci fi" and re-categorized as "mainstream." What is "Brave New World," if not sci-fi? You don't see it in sci-fi catalogs, though. Even Vonnegut's sci-fi isn't sci-fi (mostly) -- it's too well thought of (though not by me).

Sci fi is by definition a low category of literature. A really good novel is by definition mainstream... even if it's sci-fi.

And in a way, this is right and just. After all, sci-fi readers aren't looking for high literary merit, and don't want it, or at any rate don't much care whether it's present or not. (Though it is NOT the case that they wouldn't know it if they saw it. Lots of them -- of us -- would. It's just that we don't always want it.) What a sci-fi reader, in sci-fi-reading mode, wants, is, to quote Isaac Asimov, "those crazy ideas." At the heart of every sci-fi story is a really cool idea. "Wow! Just imagine! What if..." If it comes attached to literary excellence, as it occasionally does, that's really neither here not there.

Greatest sci-fi writer of the 20C: Robert A. Heinlein, by a mile.

I have a few theories of my own with regards to why science fiction and fantasy are, deservedly, literary ghettos. Here's a selection from my essay entitled C.S. LEWIS AND THE PROBLEM OF RELIGION IN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY which will appear in Ben Bella's forthcoming Narnia anthology.

While character development in science fiction has improved dramatically of late, it is still only the exceptional work that manages to transcend the genre and break out of the ghetto. The disdain for character left a mark on the genre which lasts to this day. Almost to a man, the writers of the Golden Age were secular humanists, and they felt as strongly about the deleterious effects of religion on collective human development as did Sigmund Freud with regards to the individual. Their antipathy towards all forms of traditional religion in favor of a dogmatic faith in the scientific method cast science fiction into an artistic ghetto from which it has not yet even begun to escape....

While sufficient evidence exists to reject the idea that only a true believer is capable of writing accurately about his faith, it is true that presenting a reasonable and believable image of a religious individual presents a greater challenge to one who has no experience of such strange beings and therefore lacks even the most basic information about them. One would not expect one who knows nothing of math beyond addition and subtraction to write a convincing portrayal of calculus, after all. And while one may no more believe in aliens than in Jesus Christ, a survey of the current literature suggests that far more thought typically goes into depictions of the former than into those who profess to believe in the latter.

Compare, for example, the vast difference between the guilt-racked seducer of Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” and the foam-flecked fundamentalists that haunt mediocre short stories in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine like clockwork cartoon bogeymen. Is it any wonder that the science fiction and fantasy writer's pretense to literary status is scoffed at by those familiar with Dostoevsky, Goethe, and Tolstoy?

I write this, of course, as one quite content to be playing on the dirt floor of one of the ghetto's less palatial residences. And speaking of which, this is apparently going to be that upon which the book should not be judged.

On flaming swords

I had a pretty good time during this photo shoot. The Star Tribune was doing a story on my fantasy fiction and a day after a three-hour interview with the Arts and Entertainment writer at the downtown Dunn Bros, I got a phone call from one of the paper's photographers.

After an exchange of pleasantries, he asked me if my characters, you know, do anything interesting. I said, I don't know, I would hope so... anyhow there's angels and demons and some whacking each other with flaming swords, that sort of thing.

"Flaming swords? Awesome!" Then a brief pause. "I don't know how to say this, but, um, what do you look like?"

I told him that if he was worried that I was a chubby guy with glasses and a goatee, that wasn't a problem. He was delighted and told me to come on down to the paper, bring a sword if I had one, and we'd set some stuff on fire. Now, if you want to freak out the front desk reception, I can assure you that walking into the lobby of a major metropolitan newspaper with a shaved head, wearing a black suit, black overcoat, black gloves, black shades and carrying a four-foot sword will do the trick.

Fortunately, the photographer arrived before the security guards called the police and we headed to the studio, which was filled with all sorts of flammable material. He'd acquired a few swords from a place affiliated with the SCA, and after some debate we selected a completely impractical monster. After covering it with flamepaste, he was about to light it when I asked what I was supposed to do if something caught on fire, if we had a fire extinguisher or anything.

"Oh, one of those guys who plans ahead, I see." There wasn't an extinguisher, but we did find a giant barrel of sand in the room so we figured that would do. I can't say that I didn't think it would be a tremendous accomplishment to burn down the Star and Sickle's HQ, but I manfully resisted the temptation and we did the pictures... if I look like I'm concentrating on something, it's because I was occupied with dodging the flamepaste that's dripping off the sword the whole time.

Unfortunately, the writer moved to a New York newspaper before completing the story so it never ran. The photographer was so pleased with the pictures that he sent me a few of them, of which this is one. As for me, I'm just happy he didn't want to strap me into a pair of Victoria's Secret wings wearing nothing but a white thong.

Mailvox: equines and equalitarians

As Chris writes, one detects the faint drumming of undead hooves in the distance:

Actually, you mentioned it [the Electrolyte deal] again with regard to a "mailvox" before bringing up anything regarding the Pandagon thread. And you'd do far better to argue that you mentioned it with far less frequency prior to last week... except now you're apparently running for SFWA president, which doesn't strike me as the action of a guy who's over it. (Or perhaps that was a rather poor attempt at humor, in which case you might want to work on that aspect of your writing a bit more.)

In either case, it was a response to someone else bringing it up, Chris. And if you think my running for the SFWA presidency isn't funny, well, you wouldn't seem to know much about that organization's voting crowd or how they have to scrounge around in order to find people to run for office. What's really funny is that there is a remote possibility that the non-voting majority just might be amused enough to pay attention and throw out the busy-bodies who run the show with such elan and incompetence.

First, I don't think they have to be much, much lower. To spend the time required to write a book about a particular subject, one usually has to have an unusually high level of interest in it.

True, but, while "hard" sf novels contain physics (or other types of "hard" science) they are not in and of themselves science. The amount of scientific understanding needed to write hard SF is at the college level, if not lower - Niven was a dropout, for instance. If you're saying women can't write hard SF because they can't "hack" the science, then you're basically implying that their science ability is much, much lower than that of men.

Although we've been using it as a reasonable approximate, a college degree is not the only indicator of inclination or ability. I would say that Niven is an extraordinary exception, except there is no shortage of college dropouts among the true innovators of science - an subject for another time. However, I'm not implying that women's science ability and inclination is much lower than men, I'm outright stating it. It is becoming increasingly clear that education (or the lack of it) does not account for the differences between the sexes that the equalitarians believed it would; women now receive more college degrees than men and yet do not apply for patents, start technology companies or make scientific discoveries in anywhere near the numbers that one would expect based on the number of women holding relevant degrees.

Is the inclination societal or genetic? Well, historically, women have not been in the forefront of technological or scientific exploration in any human society of which I am aware. Given the many vast differences between these societies, this would appear to suggest that the difference is not societal.

Except that virtually all of those societies put women in a position where they didn't have the opportunity to do hardly anything outside the home. Add in the fact that "technological and scientific exploration" as we know it didn't actually begin until a few hundred years ago (as a current reader of the Baroque Cycle should be well aware) then virtually the only data point we have to work is Western society. And, as I pointed out numerous times (but, golly, you pretty much completely ignored), the evidence is that when women are allowed to do work beyond the home, they're able to do work at least on par with men in the vast majority of cases.

What a load of PC tripe! Women were in a position to do many, many things that they nevertheless didn't do. What prevented a literate upper-class Greek or Roman woman from writing a history or a philosophical treatise, or, like Galen, poking about corpses? The existence of exceptional women like Murasaki Shikibu and Sappho indicates that there were no shortage of women who had the opportunity to contribute to the advancement of human knowledge, but simply didn't. The dearth of female achievement in the scientific and artistic worlds today is simply an echo of this historical reality. As Camille Paglia points out, where are the great female rock guitarists? Why can't any major pop singer but Beyonce write her own songs, much less produce her own music, while every two-bit garage band manages to come up with their own stuff, however awful?

For that matter what percentage of men went to college between the Enlightenment and whatever point you'd like to use as the establishment of the "generally egalitarian" society? And did those scions of the Eastern establishment actually provide the bulk of scientific advance in America during that time? Were gays historically repressed, and if so, how were they still able to offer more noteworthy contributions to the advancement of human knowledge despite there being so few of them, relatively speaking?

Also, stating that men and women work on par in the "vast majority of cases" is an assertion that is not only naked, it is actually less supported by the evidence than my original statement with which you're taking exception.

A peer-reviewed environment is a necessity for all quantifiable, scientific questions. And given that you're constantly throwing around anecdotal evidence with regard to this question, I certainly think a more rigorous environment would be welcome. And I think an examination of all possible facts and arguments is a necessity for any rational proposition, including the idea of equal rights. That kind of environment was in place in society as a whole during the past two centuries of the women's rights movement - society considered the question, and overwhelmingly came to the conclusion that women are equal to men, and should be treated accordingly. But, again, that kind of environment is far from in evidence on your blog.

Now you're losing it altogether. WHile I would certainly welcome a more rigorous examination of the question, arguing that equal rights was the result of a rational, peer-reviewed process or even societal consensus is ridiculous. Society certainly does not believe women are equal to men and our laws and organizational procedures overwhelmingly reflect this.

In that case, your ignorance of Sterling is unfortunate. Sterling's at least as "hard" as anybody else on your list, in terms of intellectual rigor... but considering that he tends to undermine your assertion as to what "hard sf" is, and the ability of non-scientists to write it, I can see why you'd tend to want to ignore him.

I don't "want to ignore" him, I'm simply admitting that he doesn't belong on the hard SF list as defined by the book from which I took the definition.

Here's the deal, VD: in the "rational debates" you seem so found of, the burden of proof tends to be on the party challenging the conventional wisdom. For example, if I claimed that an alien civilization was hiding from us on the far side of Pluto, and that to save the world we had to commit every resource available to go out there and kill them all, the burden of proof would be on me. Likewise, since you're arguing something that's generally abhorrent to most people, and would have vast implications for our generally egalitarian society, an argument that you can't prove you're right to any degree of certainty is really all I need.

The idea that women are not completely the same as men in every physical and mental way and that every difference is merely cultural is neither new nor generally abhorrent to most people. Given the vast amount of evidence that men have genetic advantages with regards to some things and women have genetic advantages with regards to others, the burden of proof still rests with the egalitarians. The reason that "Math is hard" Barbie upsets your crowd is that most men and women accept my point of view even though it contradicts the official media-anointed worldview.

As for the generally egalitarian society, enjoy it while you can. As I've previously written, its structural weaknesses are such that it will have a shorter shelf life than communism. I find it more than a little ironic that the forward-thinkers of the SF-writing community have given so little thought to the probable demographic effects of the equalitarian policies they champion.

Mailvox: and they wonder

It is hoped that Jefe did better on the math section:

It's interesting that you blockquoted a phrase about the Wonkette that doesn't actually appear in either link that's provided. Of course, some of those words show up, but not in the way you presented them. Surely a smart guy like you would know better.

What's actually interesting is how willing some people are to make fools of themselves in a desperate attempt to somehow catch me out. The reason that I often tell my critics that they have reading comprehension problems is pretty simple. They often do.

Here's the aforementioned phrase: "Anytime somebody builds a media empire, especially one that includes pornography, you assume the money is good, but in the Wonkette's case, it isn't. Her starting salary was $18,000 a year. (She's getting bonuses now for increased traffic, but not much.)"

Here's the link that was provided to the New York Times Magazine Copy everything between the quotes from the above phrase, then click on the link. Select Edit/Find and paste the whole thing in there. Click Find, and it will take you to the 16th paragraph. Why? Because it's a direct quote from the piece.

Here's a hint, kiddies. If you're feeling the urge to sneer about something you think I should surely know, check again before you spout off. And if you still don't see it, you may wish to try asking instead of accusing unless you're really determined to look like an idiot.

Okay, this guy's pretty funny

He's no Dark Window, but The Poor Man does write quite the personal ad:

Name: Kung-Fu Cybertronic Jesus

Height: 9′ 5″, but deceptively far away

Weight: 225lbs. of sinewy muscle

Turn-ons: Jean-Claude van Damme movies; thinking about how awesome it’s going to be when I’m in heaven and everyone I hate is in Hell; ST:TNG season 4; women bruised, crying and humiliated at my deadly feet.

Turn-offs: Liberals, jews, liberal jews, fat chicks, heretics

About me: Sci-fi author, blogger, fighter, dreamer, do-er, lover. A true Rennaissance man, minus all that Gallileo nonsense. Very interested in women’s education, particularly such lessons as can be taught with a five punch combo or a reverse roundhouse kick.

About you: Christian, modest, traditional values. Must not be taller, smarter, funnier, more attractive, or rival me in any way whatsoever. It’s really best if you just stand behind me and say nothing. Best for us, and safer for you. Also, don’t try to get between me and Jesus, or it’s on. Seriously, my personal relationship with Jesus has turned my fists into lethal weapons, with a +12 bonus against uppity bitches. You know what? The hell with this. It would never work out between us. I need someone who respects me. Whore.

The thing I found interesting, other than the ad itself, is how the presumably liberal commenters are quick to assert how guns are more dangerous than unarmed combat. Which is true, but how many gun control freaks carry? And perhaps someone should explain to them that the mere act of studying the martial arts doesn't render one completely incapable of using a firearm.

I also don't understand why people get so strange about what they appear to consider macho posturing. Beating the hell out of each other is what happens in every fighting dojo in every city in America. It's no big deal. When I meet a boxer, I expect to hear some stories about him punching people in the head and getting punched in the head. There's not a whole lot else to talk about on the subject, is there?

Anyhow, one commenter did do me the service of pointing out that nobody gave the mother who asked any advice on martial arts schools. My fault. Here's a few belated pointers:

1. Style isn't that important for a beginner. You can always switch later.
2. Watch out for the belt factories. Ask how long it takes to get a black belt. If they give you a time - and especially if it's two years or less - go somewhere else. A black belt indicates mastery, not time served.
3. The grappling styles are more useful. Both Aikido and jujitsu are good. Judo schools tend to get too sport focused, like their Tae Kwon Do counterparts in karate.
4. If you can find a school that mixes hard and soft, that's often a good sign.
5. Make sure they spar with fairly heavy contact at least once a week.
6. When you visit, the students should be very respectful of their sensei but have genuine affection for him.

For the family of faith

Perhaps there are those who are eager to face a test of their faith, who are certain they will stand unshaken by the winds of tragedy. I am not one of them and it is my sincere desire to never be so tested.

I write this because Farmer Tom tells us that there is a Christian sister and four children who are undergoing a bitter one right now as the result of her husband's death in a farm accident. So, Christians, when you next pray, I encourage you to ask your God to give them strength, to give them comfort and to bless them with all that they will need in the months and years to come.

I wish I had something meaningful to say, but I don't. I was, however, reading a prayer yesterday written by a man named Charles de Foucauld that seems somehow appropriate in the circumstances, because even when an earthly father is gone, a Heavenly Father remains.

Padre mio
mi abbandano a te,
fa di me quello che ti piace.
Qualunque cosa tu faccia di me,
io ti ringrazio.
Sono pronto a tutto, accetto tutto,
purche' la tua volonta' sia fatta in me
e in tutte le tue creature.
Non desidero altro, mio Dio.
Depongo la mia anima tra le tue mani:
te la dono, Dio mio,
con tutto l'amore del mio cuore,
perche' ti amo
ed e' per me una necessita' donarmi
affidarmi alle tue mani senza misura
con fiducia infinita,
perche' tu sei mio Padre.

Father mine
I abandon myself to you,
do with me that which you like.
Whatever you make of me,
I thank you.
I am ready for everything, I accept everything,
provided that your will is done in me
and in all of your creatures.
I do not desire aught else, my God.
I place my spirit in your hands:
I give it to you, my God,
with all the passion that is in my heart,
because I love you
and it is for me a need to give myself,
to entrust myself to your hands without measure
with infinite trust,
because you are my Father.

Speaking of writing

I am editing a new anthology in BenBella's SmartPop series. If there are any SFWA or CBA writers interested in writing 3k to 5k words on anything Apocalypse / End Times / Book of Revelations related, please let me know. The word rate is good by SFWA standards, and I am looking for both Christian and non-Christian contributors.

BenBella will be publishing THE EARTH'S LAST DAYS: Airplanes, Antichrists and the Apocalypse in LEFT BEHIND, sometime next year. We already have not one, but two NYT best-selling authors contributing, so it should be an interesting book.

And if you're an aspiring member of either organization and think you have something significant to say about Left Behind, let me know. This anthology is not a critique of the fiction series - visit BenBella's web site if you want to get a feel for what they do.

OC, I'm still waiting for your topic, mate. That goes for you too, Joe.