Archive for May, 2014

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Technological decline

Saturday, May 31st, 2014

Konkvistador has drawn my attention to the Pu238 shortage. We stopped making Pu238 in 1988 You need Pu238 for nuclear batteries. The 2006 New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt was launched without enough Pu238 to keep all its equipment live during the Pluto flyby, and without enough Pu238 to do its Kuiper belt mission, from which I conclude that since 2011 we have been totally completely flat out of Pu238, just as the Fed is totally completely flat out of gold. For the last few decades, the government has been acting as if we are very very short of Pu238. For example, no allotment for pacemaker batteries, so people with pacemakers have to have surgery every so often. The Europeans are using (dangerous and expensive) americium based nuclear batteries for their space program.

Supposedly we can simply make more Pu238, just as supposedly when the two towers fell, we could supposedly build buildings just as tall or taller, just as we can supposedly still build warplanes that can cruise at supersonic speeds, we just supposedly do not want to. Today’s businessmen are supposedly so secure in their masculinity that they do not want a higher corner office with a bigger view than the next businessman.

Maybe.

But I rather think if we could do that, we would not have run out in the first place. we would not have launched New Horizons with a half flat battery. We have been mighty short for at least a couple of decades, and since 2011 the cupboard has been just flat empty.

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Posted in science | 38 Comments »

Words that are lies

Saturday, May 31st, 2014

A word should refer to an essence, a natural kind, and normal words do.

Suppose we had a word that referred to roast pork and fried chicken, but not to other foods. This would imply that roast pork and chicken were the same essence, the same natural kind, which of course they are not. So when you have a word that does not refer to a natural kind, that word is a lie – and the lie is usually a lot more hurtful than claiming that pigs are chickens.

For example, a “sweatshop” is entrepreneurship, capital, and low paid labor. Which is no more an essence than entrepreneurship, capital, and tuesdays.

If communists work people to death in the hot sun in twenty hour shifts, seven days a week, and no food, not a sweatshop by definition. If a capitalist builds an air conditioned factory in the third world, and has eight hour shifts, five days a week, but inadequate bathroom breaks, is a sweatshop. This is used to imply that capital, investment, and entrepreneurship makes people worse off, even though it is glaringly obvious that it makes people better off.

This is the lie that kept much of the third world poor for a long time. By definition, capital, investment, and entrepreneurship supposedly makes people poor.

Similarly, with “racism”. Supposedly this means injustice motivated by race, which not a natural kind, nor is it a definition, but rather a hateful smear against white people, accusing white people of being responsible for the underperformance of black people.

Unjust acts motivated by X are not a natural kind, any more than unjust acts on tuesdays are a natural kind. We don’t have a word for unjust acts motivated by sexual jealousy. When someone murders another person to steal his shoes, we do not call the killer “greedy”. An unjust act committed for reasons of race is not a natural kind any more than unjust act committed on a tuesday is a natural kind. We did not have a word that supposedly stands for unjust acts committed for reasons of race until the twentieth century, and we still do not have words for unjust acts committed for reasons of covetousness, or unjust acts committed on a tuesday.

So in practice, no one is ever going to use the words “racism” and “racist” in accordance with the supposed definition, at least not if he hopes to be understood. Rather, it is a hateful word for members of high functioning groups. The supposed definition is merely a hateful smear against members of those groups, in particular and especially against white people, and against certain political beliefs.

The supposed definition is not a definition, but rather a claim that Donald Sterling, by thinking bad thoughts about blacks, caused the bad behavior of which he was thinking, that his thoughts were hurtful and unjust acts. Similarly, the genocide of the Tutsi was supposedly caused by Tutsi racism, not Hutu racism.
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Posted in culture, politics | 11 Comments »

falling testosterone

Thursday, May 29th, 2014

For the past thirty years, testosterone has been falling at about one percent a year.

This is about the same rate of decline as that produced by aging after the age of forty. So a forty year old male today has about the same testosterone levels as a seventy year old male had in 1984. This is a change sufficient to produce a massive decline in interest in sex, and a massive increase in odd sexual deviations.

Environmentalists suggests it is estrogen like compounds in the water supply. I am inclined to believe it is metaphorical estrogen in the metaphorical water supply. Society and the education system has been treating masculinity as an evil pathology, with ever increasing severity. Maybe the problem is that we need to encourage boys to be men, to be manly, to be tough.

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Posted in culture, science | 39 Comments »

Elliot Roger murders

Tuesday, May 27th, 2014

The first time Elliot Rodger hit on a girl, she gave him a mighty harsh shit test, and he completely fell apart.

From the fact that that his first shit test was the only one he complained about, I deduce he never exposed himself to the danger of a second one, that he was scarred for life, and never again made any real attempt to hit on a girl, and was forever puzzled that he could go around driving a nice car and being creepy and upset from a safe distance, and yet girls would not hit on him.

When a girl gives you a shit test, it is often mighty harsh, because natural selection intends it to separate the men from the boys, so of course it is tough.  If she does not give you a shit test, not really interested.

It is horrible that girls give out shit tests, but they cannot help shit testing males, any more than males can help looking at girl’s boobs.

It seems that Rodger’s dad was too busy to do much fathering, but if he had done some fathering, here is what he should have told his son:

Petruchio:

Why came I hither but to that intent?
Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puff’d up with winds,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven’s artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in a pitched battle heard
Loud ‘larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets’ clang?
And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to hear
As will a chestnut in a farmer’s fire?
Tush! tush! fear boys with bugs.

Grumio:

For he fears none.

Posted in culture | 13 Comments »

Improbable caring as an indicator of evil

Sunday, May 18th, 2014

No one cares about far away strangers, still less about far away strangers very different from themselves. Claims to do so are lies or self deception.

People near one are always the big threat. So if one wants to destroy everyone near one, one justifies it by piously announcing love for those far away.

Of course there are other possible motives for such pious declarations. If the highest status people want to destroy all the people near them in status, which is to say, destroy me and everyone like me, they will announce deep caring for far away strangers, whereupon going through the motions of deep caring for far away strangers becomes high status.

However, just as the cautious thing to do is to assume every black man is a murderous thug, even though most of them are not, the cautious thing to do is to assume that everyone who piously proclaims deep love of far away strangers is planning the democide of those of his own class and race.

But how accurate is this cautious approximation?  Most blacks are not, in fact, planning to murder the nearest white man.  Are most do gooders planning democide?

Empirically, actions taken to benefit far away strangers very different from oneself are usually performed terrifyingly poorly, perhaps always performed terrifying poorly. For example African AIDS turns out not to be heterosexual AIDS, but do gooder AIDS. It is spread by clinics, which have financial incentive to use contaminated needles, in that the more of their clients they make sick, the more money they get.

Similarly, remember “We are the world, we are the children”. All the good and the great got together to raise money to help the victims of the Ethiopian famine.

But the primary cause of the Ethiopian famine was not drought, but forced collectivization, government confiscation of crops, government destruction of the crops of rebellious populations, and civil war, in other words socialism. Being good progressives, did not want to admit the role of socialism, so wound up paying for the cattle trucks to take the peasants to death camps.

And, very recently the Cathedral was funding and arming the Army of the Congo to vaginally impale Tutsi women with very large objects.

Thus near 100% intent to commit democide fits available data better than near 50% intent to commit democide.

Observe the total non reaction among do gooders to complicity in crimes against the Tutsi in the Congo, and the total non reaction among do gooders to the ongoing AIDS scandal in Africa. This behavior fits the assumption that all do gooders, as near all of them as makes no difference, are aiming at war against near, and contradicts the assumption that many of them or most of them intend to benefit far.

If status competition was driving the purported caring about far, we would expect to see more monitoring of each other’s performance “Hey, your caring for far is producing horribly bad outcomes, which I, your holier and more moral superior will now correct.” So, the data compelling fits the theory that concern for far away people of other races is a lie driven primarily by monstrous and horrifying goals, and fails to fit even the relatively innocent explanation of competition to be holier than thou.

Posted in culture, politics | 64 Comments »

Racism is an anti concept

Friday, May 16th, 2014

We do not have a word “deskism” for someone who thinks differences between kinds of desk matter, and who has strong preferences in favor of some kinds of desks and against other kinds of desk.

No one can be racist against white people, and all whites are racists. That is why it is not racism when a bunch of blacks beat up a white man who happens to be passing by. When they do that, they are being anti racist. When you try to give “racism” some meaning other than “Beat the daylights out of honkeys”, you are trying to push muck uphill.

“Racism” never had the meaning that some reactionaries and extreme right wingers are trying to give it. And it never will, because there is no need for a word with the meaning Zippy is trying to give “racist”. It is like gays trying to force us to pretend that the word gay still has the meanings cheerful and happy, rather than filthy, disgusting, weak and depraved.  It is not in the nature of words to work like that.  If there was a place in the language for a word that means what Zippy wants “racist” to mean, we would have had that word a thousand years ago.

The word “racist” was invented at the start of the twentieth century  invented by Trotsky for the purpose of destroying western civilization.  It has never meant what reactionaries and right wingers would like it to mean, and it never will mean that.  Words mean what they are used to mean, not what people claim they mean or say that they mean, and people just are not naturally inclined to use a word the way that Zippy would like them to use the word “racist”.  Language does not work like that.

If there was a place for a word with that meaning, we would have had such a word before Trotsky.

They are pushing muck uphill when they try to keep the pleasant associations of gay, but they have the power. Zippy is pushing muck uphill when he tries to call blacks who beat up whites racist, rather than the anti racists that they so obviously are, and he does not have the power.

“Racist” means what it means, and what it means is that blacks are entitled to beat the hell out of whites, and whites are not entitled to fight back.  We saw that in the Zimmerman incident.  The supporters of Trayvon implicitly admitted what they explicitly denied, that they assumed that Trayvon attacked Zimmerman.  They simply felt that Trayvon had the right to do so, and Zimmerman had no right to defend himself.  That is what racism means.  Zimmerman was a racist, because less black than Trayvon, therefore deserved his beating.

Trayvon was obviously motivated in part by hatred of those less black than himself, because, according to retard girl’s testimony, when he reached his father’s house, he turned around and said he was going to get that “creepy cracker”.  But scarcely anyone called him a racist for that, which shows that is not what “racist” means, shows that even the tiny handful of reactionaries and extreme right wingers that are trying to give it the meaning “someone who thinks differences between kinds of human matter, and who has strong preferences in favor of some kinds and against other kinds of humans”, cannot bring themselves to actually use it in that sense, because it would sound mighty strange to actually use it in accordance with that meaning.

“Racism” is an anti concept because actual usage and purported meaning completely contradict each other.  It purportedly means Hitler-nazi-genocide evil, and actually means white, as proven by actual usage, as for example in the Trayvon Zimmerman case.  Zimmerman was a racist and Travyon not a racist, just as an air conditioned capitalist tee shirt factory which has eight hour shifts but limited toilet breaks is a sweat shop, but a communist slave labor camp in the tropics where the slaves are worked to death in baking heat on nineteen hour shifts  is not a sweatshop.

Similarly “prejudice”.  What is prejudice?  Is it a belief one assumes true without adequate empirical evidence?  Obviously not.  “Prejudice” means “hate fact”, or “low status belief”.

Words mean what they are used to mean.  And scarcely anyone calls Martin Trayvon racist.  Not progressives, not me, and not Zippy.  Zippy is not going to spontaneously call Trayvon “racist” to describe the fact that Trayvon was in the habit of attacking people less black than himself, any more than Zippy is going to spontaneously call me “gay” because I am in a good mood.

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Posted in culture, politics | 85 Comments »

“the Snow Queen” and “Frozen”

Wednesday, May 14th, 2014

Don’t worry.  This is not going to turn into a My Little Pony blog.

A long time back I heard Disney people worrying aloud that they were having trouble making “the Snow Queen” acceptable to modern audiences.  So naturally I assumed they were making it revoltingly feminist and politically correct.  And in due course it came out, the feminists loved it, pronouncing it the first feminist Disney movie.  Also, people complained “Frozen” did not much resemble “the Snow Queen”.  So naturally I assumed Disney had murdered a perfectly good fairy tale to make it PC.

So I watched it so I could tell you how evil Disney was.

Nope.  It was the original fairy tale that was feminist in mythic proportion, and Disney had to murder it to avoid scandalizing their audience.

In  “the Snow Queen”, the original fairy tale, the heroine’s first love interest turns evil, and is abducted by the Snow Queen.  The heroine then goes forth to rescue the first love interest from the Snow Queen, and his own evil.

In “Frozen”, the Disney movie, the snow queen is the beloved sister of the heroine.  The Snow Queen flees her kingdom, her sister, and herself, turning evil, and casting a spell of eternal winter on her kingdom.   The heroine then goes forth to rescue her sister, the Snow Queen, from herself, to cure her, and thereby save her beloved sister, and save the kingdom from eternal winter.  Subsequently her first love interest turns evil.

 

In  “the Snow Queen”, the heroine, in the course of pursuing McGuffin boy, her first love interest, is abducted by the second love interest, little Robber Girl, who holds a knife to the heroine’s throat.  Second love interest then takes the heroine to bed, and they sleep wrapped around each other, beside Robber Girl’s talking reindeer.

Robber girl is incredibly alpha, narcissistic, psychopathic, violent, carries a sharp knife, her behavior is completely inappropriate at all times and is all round completely counter stereotypical for a female.  And did I mention she is a robber.

In the morning she and the talking reindeer assist the heroine to find the Snow Queen and love interest number one.

It seems that Disney found narcissistic knife wielding psychopathic Robber Girl a bit much, so made love interest number two male instead of female, beta instead of alpha, peaceable and wishy washy instead of violent.  And he does not court ladies by holding a sharp knife to their throats.

So, in “Frozen”, the Disney movie, the heroine, in the course of pursing McGuffin girl, her beloved sister, meets the the second love interest, Mr wishy washy beta nice guy.  He attempts to rob the shopkeeper, but is just too nice and insufficiently violent.  He and the heroine then wander in the snowstorm created by the Snow Queen.  They find shelter together, and sleep in the same place, the heroine an arms length from the second love interest, and the talking reindeer an arms length from him on the other side.

In the morning he and the talking reindeer assist the heroine to find the Snow Queen.

 

In  “the Snow Queen” she confronts the Snow Queen.  In addition to the fact that love interest number one has turned evil, his heart has been frozen by the snow queen.  The Heroine’s love, however, cures everything.  The Snow Queen yields.  The end.

In “Frozen” she and nice guy love interest confront the Snow Queen, who freezes the heroine’s heart.  Nice guy love interest number two sends her back to love interest number one, who turns evil.  The Snow Queen, horrified by what she has done to her sister, shows up.  Evil love interest number one attempts to kill the Snow Queen and the heroine to make himself king and end the eternal winter, but the heroine cures her sister of evil, and cures her own frozen heart, by her sisterly love.  The Snow Queen, cured of evil, now finds that she can unfreeze what she has frozen, so her powers no longer terrify her subjects.  Nice guy beta male love interest number two politely asks permission to kiss the heroine,  Heroine grants permission, then sucker punches first love interest turned evil, causing him to fall into the sea.  The people, relieved that their queen is no longer casting eternal winter, cheer their queen.  The end.

 

After having read the original fairy tale, the only revoltingly feminist part of the Disney movie was that sucker punch.  A girl cannot punch a man hard enough to make him fall into the sea like that.  Since love interest number one is Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic, realistically he would punch her back without worrying about hitting a girl.

So all up the major change that Disney made to the fairy tale is that it now teaches little princesses to choose the nice guy.  Not that they will.  And it no longer teaches them that they can cure bad boys of badness.  Not that they will stop trying.  The only bad things about the movie is that it teaches boys that nice boys can get the girl.  They can’t.  And it teaches girls that they can punch boys.  They can only punch nice boys.  Punching bad boys is seriously inadvisable.

Not sure what makes the movie feminist.  I suppose that the Snow Queen has really cool supervillain magic powers, that the heroine saves the day, rather than love interest one or love interest two, and that the kingdom has a queen, not a king.  Which is, as feminism, goes, fairly harmless.

The Snow Queen shows every fault stereotypical of women in power. She is fearful, emotional, irrational, unreasonable, changeable, unpredictable, flighty, and bitchy.  At the end the people love her, but this appears to be because she stops freezing them.  In the final scene, where people are cheering her return as queen, and she is entertaining them with her display of (quite dangerous) magic powers, she is still wearing her sexy super villain costume, rather than her crown and scepter.

Still, a queen in sexy supervillain costume with supervillain powers is a lot more appropriate than little robber girl with her sharp knife.

If you wanted to convey a fully realistic message, you could make a porn of the original fairy tale, in which the heroine successfully thaws love interest number one’s frozen heart, but totally fails to cure love interest number one of evil.  In the grand finale, evil love interest number one does the heroine and the snow queen, while knife wielding love interest number two and evil love interest number one do the heroine.  Evil love interest number one then ignores the heroine to (cautiously) hit on knife wielding love interest number two.

But, on the whole, congrats to Disney for fooling the feminists into cheering.

Posted in culture | 44 Comments »

Powerline speaks truth to power

Monday, May 12th, 2014

“MICHAEL MANN IS A LIAR AND A CHEAT. HERE’S WHY”

 

Posted in global warming | 2 Comments »

The real problem with Boko Haram

Monday, May 12th, 2014

The problem is not that they are abducting women and selling them as wives, but that they are abducting Christian girls and selling them to Muslim men.  This is not bad for Christian girls.  It is bad for Christian men.

The Cathedral, oddly, seems far more frightened of Christian Holy War than Muslim Jihad (observe their disturbing response to ethnic cleansing by Christians in the Central Africa Republic), so is reluctant to mention who is being abducted.

When group A abducts girls from group B, if it makes the girls available for general public use by group A members, this is extremely bad for the girls, since no one man has an incentive to take care of them.  But if it assigns them to particular individual men of group A, then not only does that individual have an incentive to take care of the girl and her children, but the apparatus of violence and coercion that made the transfer likely means that he has greater paternal security, and greater reason to expect the girl to stick around, and thus greater incentive to care for the girl and her children than occurs in the Cathedral approved free love/leking outcome.  Boko Haram believes that western education for girls is bad, because it indoctrinates them with immoral and self destructive ideas, and that girls should be married off at an early age.  Seems to me that they are obviously right about this.  The success in Christian societies of the Cathedral program of undermining marriage means that Christian men lack incentive to defend their women from Muslim men, as we see not only in Africa, but in Sweden and England.

Posted in war | 36 Comments »

Why women need to kept on leashes

Wednesday, May 7th, 2014

A software company just went bust.  Happens a lot.  That a woman happened to be running this company is not significant.  Lots of men have lost lots of other people’s money too.  What is significant is that she starts off her explanation of how she pissed away all her investor’s money by talking about her sex life.

She begins:

Something wasn’t right, and I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. On the surface, it seemed like I had the best life. A popular blog with millions of readers. The perfect relationship with Brian, the most adoring fiance in the universe.

“Adoring Fiance” is girl code for “The man I am about to cheat on and then dump.” If a woman says her fiancee adores her, she is cruising for a dicking.  If she is not cruising for a dicking, she tells us she adores her fiancee, not that he adores her.

Then, one day, a few weeks ago, an event happened (I’ll save the details of that for some other time.) Suddenly a torrent of emotions poured in. I was overwhelmed. I stayed home from work one day–my best friend Erica sent me some poetry, and I just cried. I wept. It felt like my soul was pouring out of me, one tear at a time.

I reeled from the onslaught of emotions for days, and soon thereafter, I broke off my relationship with Brian.

And, by the way, forgot about running the company she was supposed to be running, with the result that the paychecks bounced and the investors lost all their money, but that, not being very important to her does not get much mention, even though the people she is addressing, the investors, are likely to be more interested in that part.

Here is what I guess happened, interpolating between “My adoring fiancee”  “onslaught of emotions”, and “payroll”.

“My adoring fiancee”

She fucked some bad boy, Mr Very Wrong.  After Mr Very Wrong was done, he kicked her out of his room and soon thereafter called the next girl on his booty call list.

“onslaught of emotions”

She dumped her fiancee and forgot about her business so as to be fully available in case the next booty call came.   And the next booty call did not come.

“payroll”.

Payroll.

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Posted in culture, economics | 58 Comments »

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