Unreasonable Expectations

Taylor Knock Out Index

2012-03-17T09:13:00.002-07:00

The Taylor Knock-Out Index may be the single worst metric available for determining the effectiveness of small arms ammunition. Despite this, it sees relatively widespread use, usually to compare two calibers that are obviously in different potency classes.

Why does the TKOI suck so bad?

Well, let's do an experiment: What is the Taylor Knock Out Factor of the Lambert Glacier?

Of course, if you stand in front of the glacier, you'll hardly get vaporized. Glaciers, unless you're on poorly navigated, fast-moving ships, are largely harmless.

And yet...

The TKOF equation goes something like this:

TKOF = (Mass x Velocity x Caliber)/7000

Units in the normal Imperial grains, feet/sec, and inches, of course.

So what's the TKO of the Lambert Glacier?

Well, the Lambert Glacier is about 100km wide, 400km long, and 2.5km deep.

To get volume, simply multiply:

100,000 x 400,000 x 2,500

= 100,000,000,000,000, or 100 trillion cubic meters volume.

The density of ice is 916,700 g/m^3

The mass of the Lambert Glacier is estimated to be approximately:

91,670,000,000,000,000,000, or 91.67 sextillion grams mass.

To find mass in grains, we simply multiply that by 15.43:

91.67 x 15.43 x 1 sextillion

=1,414,468,100,000,000,000,000, or 1.41 septillion grains mass.

What is the caliber of the Lambert Glacier? We'll go ahead and take its width and height, and average them:

(100,000m + 2,500m)/2

= 51,250m

Multiply by 3.28 and 12 to convert to inches:

=2,017,200, or 2.02 million inches.

What is the velocity of the Lambert Glacier?

It varies, but one source quotes 400 to 800m/year Let's do some quick math:

(400 + 800)/2

= 600 m/yr

600 m/yr x (1/(60x60x24x365)) yr/s

= .000019 m/s

.000019 m/s x 3.28 ft/m

= .0000624, or 62.4 microfeet per second

Now we can plug it all in!

TKOF = (Mass x Velocity x Caliber)/7000

TKOF = (1,414,468,100,000,000,000,000 x .0000624 x 2,017,200)/7000

Before we solve this equation, we need some reference. For comparison, a 7.62x51mm rifle round has a TKOF of 17.787, and a .45 ACP pistol round has a TKOF of 12.568.

Now, the Taylor Knock Out Factor of the Lambert Glacier is...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

25,434,829,886,052,571,429 TKOF! That's over twenty five sextillion on the TKOI! The Lambert Glacier should have destroyed the Earth by now!

Quake in fear at the might of the Lambert Glacier, Destroyer of Worlds!

Soul Vomit

2012-03-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

Bleeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggcccchhhhhhh...

With Some Irony On Top

2012-03-13T18:39:00.000-07:00

It fills me with great, great joy that the Left's new pet treehugging movie, The Lorax has been shamelessly hawked out for corporate tie-ins.

I seriously can't stop laughing.

Green With Envy

2012-03-09T20:49:00.000-08:00

I'm very jealous.

Hey, I will corrupt your children, too! Lookit me, lookit me!

Though, OK, IMF, I don't think that because the SPLC puts you on a shit list once means your "having an impact." Give up on your dreams of changing things democratically.

I'm still really jealous, though.

The Heinlein Corner

2012-03-09T19:57:00.004-08:00

Inspired by Brian Caplan jumping the shark and musing about how contorted one's worldview would have to be that they would write such a piece, I realized that I'd never introduced the term "the Heinlein Corner" to the Intertubes.

I've used the term for some time when talking to my real-life Sith friends, but I've never mentioned it on my blog. Well, shit, let's go coin some terminology!

the Heinlein Corner, Reaction
a. having a worldview of a libertarian bent, such that one's opinions have become a tangled knot of abstraction, severely divorced of reality. In his later years, he sat solidly in the Heinlein Corner, mostly writing about how wonderful it would be if everyone just had sex with each other all the time.
b. a hypothetical space where cranky old libertarians talk constantly about group bisex and how great having no government would be. Go back to the Heinlein Corner, hippie.

Obviously named after Robert Anson Heinlein, and especially in reference to his later works, the Heinlein Corner is the place one reaches if they have enough sense to embrace libertarianism, and enough sense to think at length about libertarianism, but who haven't been bitten by the malicious demon-spider of reaction yet. Whether or not someone is in the Heinlein Corner does not depend on how long they have been a libertarian. They may have been one for decades, and not qualify, or they may be relatively young in the fold, having been to a couple Ron Paul rallies, and qualify. What determines their being in the Corner or not is how much they have thought about libertarianism, and followed it to its logical conclusion. Cornerites will often be found talking about how great free love is, how they might be bisexual, but haven't found any guys that they're attracted to yet, or how their anarcho-capitalist utopia will have a vote-shares system whereby your voting power is determined by how much you increased the Collective's GDP that year.

Brian Caplan jumping the shark is brought to you by...

FOSETI: Let's exploit the system... Together.

March of the Progressive Strawmen

2012-03-09T18:41:00.002-08:00

Oh, xkcd, I love you to death, but...

If you tried that shit on Roissy, you'd wake up in the morning with the hotel bill, wondering what happened.

I like the sassy, totally unrealistic characters of xkcd, especially Black Hat Man and Havoc Girl, who are completely unrestrained by law or physical consequence in their epic quest to stay amused, which is why it chafes a bit to see them used so poorly as a sociopolitical mouthpiece for Randall.

I mean, yeah, they're your characters, sheesh, but does it seriously make any sense for Black Hat Man's girlfriend to be sticking up for the NORPs?

Thought of the day

2012-03-07T21:20:00.003-08:00

The Progressive utopia is full of horrible, shallow, vicious people.

Perhaps the most common example of just how horrible they are is the recent phenomenon called, euphemistically, "raising awareness."

Tell me, what is raising awareness, but attention whoring? The awareness raisers will claim that all of the wristbands and t-shirts and general schwag that they sell (curious that they don't just give it away for free, considering their stated motives) are merely a tool in the service of a higher goal, that being some damned cause or another. They will say things like "well, if it saves only one child's life, it will all have been worth it."

Will it, now?

No, they're actually in the business of selling street cred, the streets being the acoustic guitar parties of SWPLs everywhere. After all, at certain times of the month, the ladies just can't help but fall for a guy who's sensitive enough to give $25 to save some poor African slave-child. The fact that this cred relies on ostensibly charitable actions to work is entirely incidental.

This gives me a very evil idea. Clearly, what I have to do is create one of these charities that relies on "raising awareness" and ostensibly saves little African children or whatever, but actually uses the money (in such a way that it looks entirely clean on the books) to kill/enslave as many helpless little African children as possible.

Invisible Children may have beaten me to the punch, though.

Reblag II: Revenge of The Reblag

2012-02-29T18:51:00.006-08:00

At some undisclosed point in the future, this blog will have all content removed and replace with a 72 font banner that says simply:

GO READ FOSETI

You know, it's common for Americans to think that Soviet citizens lived in perpetual fear of their government, constantly worried about whether their briefest word, their subtlest misstep, could cost them their freedom or even their lives.

I'm beginning to become convinced that this was not in fact the case, except for a few, who subsequently defected to the US and told us all about it. After all, I don't live in constant fear that I'll say something to a gay student and face ten years imprisonment for it.

Soviet citizens were probably just as, or nearly as content as Americans, they probably had similar levels of pride and pessimism in their country, and they probably, by and large, saw their government as maybe a bit clumsy or incompetent, but overall doing the best job that could be reasonably expected of it. Because, frankly, the US government does the same shit.

Right, and what's worse is that they're not even using the free labor to do anything meaningful!

The reason monogamy is socially and legally enforced in the modern world is Christianity, because that religion is stupid.

In the paper the authors note that laws against polygamy came to Japan in 1880,

Oh, gee, what happened around about that same time? Afterward, the Japanese did so desperately want to emulate the Puritan Americans, with their fancy uniforms and brass cannons.

One might as well say:

"In the paper the authors note that laws against fascism came to Germany in 1945"

I always find it somewhat puzzling that reactionary bloggers lament the sociomarital system of the 1960s and past, but then seek to reinstate the system from the '50s? Why not, say, copy the system of the Mongol Empire, or something?

If a woman proposes to you, refuse.

There's a lot wrong with this. I like deconstructing things by line-item. Let's go:

-If you think, as an acolyte of the Dark Side, that you're a conservative, ur doin it wrong. Conservatives are a joke for a reason. Just because you reject the current system, does not mean you should associate yourself with those clowns politically.

-Why do we care what conservatives think of us? We care what liberals think because they hold power. Conservatives do not. If you're not going to go about reaction pragmatically, then what are you doing here?

-Yes, liberals hate you, that's the point (well, besides being right). But just because they hate you doesn't mean you can't make them secretly want to bed you. All hominids are attracted to power. Become a local source of power, and they may resent you, but they will secretly want you to plow their asshole.

-Be humble? You ain't gonna get any ass that way, buddy. Listen, just because you know you don't know everything doesn't mean you have to cut your dick off.

-Pretty sure I can tell that bonald is a Christian just by the way he talks. Why would you be a Christian these days? If you want to ally yourself with a powerful tribe, just become a liberal. This "I know nothing" claptrap was horseshit when it was popular, and it sure as hell hasn't aged gracefully. Buddy, your God ain't gonna judge you for using the faculties you're given. You can know some things. It's OK, go ahead.

-Honestly, since becoming a reactionary, I haven't ever had the problem of feeling insulted or shamed for my beliefs. I have nothing at stake in the Great Sham. I care not how politics shakes out, who gets elected, what horseshit law gets passed. My faction, if I can be said to have a faction, is apolitical, so that means that we care insofar as it affects us directly, and nothing more. Let the temple burn to the ground, I don't live there! If you can't read the prole rags without getting emotionally hurt, I would suggest to you a different line of work than being a Sith.

-Hahahah. "The atheist Left". You know, the Protestants loved to claim that the Catholics were heathens, too.

Was going to eventually do a post on this, but Detox beat me to it.

Saves me some work.

Reblag: The Technological Nadir

2012-02-28T11:37:00.000-08:00

The most viscerally compelling argument for this that I know of in recent memory is the SR-71. You can go see one in the flesh here or there.

As the core applied sciences weaken and evaporate, everything else will stagnate. Modern CNC machines are indeed very impressive, but have you ever wondered why, to make things, we're still fundamentally shaving away metal?

If any given area of technology has advanced in the past 50 years, it's because it's become highly computerized, not because of breakthroughs in hardly any other area. Soon the reservoir of solid-state electronics will dry up, and we'll stagnate completely.

Once progress is halted entirely, things will start going backwards. Young people will look fondly upon the ruins of the once great civilization, and imagine the exciting hubbub of a society still breathing. Priuses will rust in great boneyards, stripped of ever simpler components. For a fanciful look at how society will appear then, try this or that. At least it will be more entertaining than the reality of what's to come.

Ah! The great march forward!

A Pulsar of Wrong

2012-02-26T21:05:00.002-08:00

A new heavenly body is discovered.

Hey look! I can do it, too:

"Popular economics is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Protestant) Keynesians who broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Boston in the 1770s, forming little autocratic circles of twenty to forty billion people with their preachers in each other’s Ivy League colleges."

Soyuuuuuuuuz nyerushimyyyyyyyy...

2012-02-20T20:10:00.000-08:00

...Respublik svobodnykh, blah, blah, blah.

Also, Putin's keeping it real... Soviet.

Phffffffbbbbbtttt! Here comes the airplane!

2012-02-20T20:04:00.000-08:00

Open wide!

Why are you subscribed to me and not Foseti? Silly person.

"Neoreactionary" is a dumb term. This must sound insulting, AUK, but my goal isn't to antagonize you, just to shoot down your term before it spreads like smallpox.

Are we all reactionaries, even? What does that term mean for us?

Why do we care to associate ourselves with such silliness as "neoliberals", "neoconservatives", etc? I get that you might find playing off those terms funny, but do you want to describe yourself with a joke?

Are we even "us?"*

I describe myself as an "autocratist." This kind of mechanical-sounding term works for me for several reasons:

-It has a useful sound and feel to it. It's not quite sing-songy, but I don't find it clunky-sounding, either.

-It very accurately and concisely describes my belief system. Government should be by an autocrat. I think that disclosure is one of the most desirable aspects of reaction/monarchist/royalism/autocratism. Does "neoreactionary" tell you anything?

-It's broad. Emperor? King? Czar? Dictator? All fall into the purview of "autocrat".

I'll still describe myself as a "monarchist" or a "reactionary" if the situation calls for it. But why invent a new term that fails to accomplish anything more than the old, familiar ones? Bah!

*Perhaps there will be more on this later.

HalfSigma, no they don't.

Part of what Foseti and co are trying to impress upon their readership is that the doublethink related to HBD denial is exceptionally strong. Progressives will never, ever admit that they don't actually believe HBD is false. But that doesn't change the fact that they act as if it is true. Why do they do this? Because their tribe demands allegiance, in the form of submission of will. Humans have evolved to be fiercely loyal to their tribe, as long as it holds power. And oh, does it hold power!

Thus, you can shove bamboo under their fingernails, you can pierce their skin with hooks, you can stretch them on the rack, and never, ever, ever, will they admit that they don't believe HBD is false. To do so is to commit social suicide, which, to a human, might be worse than the standard kind.

In support of his argument, HS has this to say:

This is like saying that religious people are secret atheists.

HS, that's exactly what we're saying.

What we need to do is start changing the system so it becomes less rather than more democratic.

No! You're doing it wrong! Look, when you say "what we need to do is..." you're speaking democratically. This is why reactionary bloggers won't ever change the world. As a whole, our internal language is so hopelessly mutilated that we can't even begin to think correctly.

I remember watching Pat Buchanan with my father on Sundays as a kid fondly. The modus operandi of the modern state is to use its peripheral agents to murder the careers and reputations of its enemies. The USSR was much less secure, so its methods were much less subdued. Does that make the organisms fundamentally different, though?

This immediately brought to mind images of a young Brezhnev-era Soviet lying stomach-down on his bed with his hands clasped under his chin looking fondly at the image of Alexey Stakhanov.

I am utterly convinced that East Asians are the master race, at least until the Persians get their act together.

Movies for Reactionaries, Part II

2012-02-15T23:40:00.000-08:00

Rather, anime for reactionaries.

While most anime that possess the theme of tsuyoku naritai are campy adventures for young boys, often involving giant robots, this gives us a realistic, compelling example for an adult audience.

Tsuyoku naritai is the keystone concept behind my brand of reaction (possibly more properly described as autocratism), and Planetes does a great job giving us that Japanese concept of self-improvement and victory in a serious, adult package.

Gee, Brain, Whaddya Wanna Do Tonight?

2012-02-11T20:47:00.000-08:00

The same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the world.

I sometimes read through Foseti's archives, in my never-ending search for younglings with high midichlorian counts and general proclivities towards the Dark Side. In doing so, I found this entry, which I'd read previously.

From the post:

I think lack of cohesion is the problem, as I said above. There isn’t too much consensus since no one really knows how to slow or stop Progressivism. Progressivism has been winning and brutally destroying all its enemies for so long, that’s hard to imagine what non-progressive ideas even sound like. As I’ve said before, it’s hard for us to even discuss ideas without using Progressive language.

Stop Progressivism, you say? Why, that just so happens to be my speciality.

How does one do this? Brain knows. You must take over the world. If you think that sounds hard, well, I never promised it would be easy.

Taking over the world is an excellent starting point, because it's something that's been done before. We already know how to take over the world.

Step one is to find someone worth owning the world. This must be one person, someone strong and young and prone to wisdom. That's a tall order, but so was inconel.

Step two is to build his religion. He must be the center of the religion: If his followers don't wear his emblem around their necks, you're doing it wrong. Progressivism has historically been good at crushing its opposition, but it hasn't had a serious opponent since 1918. I do not think it will be ready, especially not if the religion spends its most vulnerable period as far away from the center of Progressive power as possible.

Step three is to grow until the final conflict between Progressivism and the religion comes to a head. This will look a lot like the 2003 invasion of Iraq, except if Saddam were Alexander of Macedon. The 30-year old air superiority fighters fly in to drop their precision munitions on strategic targets... And are annihilated by the very secret, very advanced air defense network that Alexander had spent the past 15 years building. We know this can be done, because China is currently doing it, though China is not a reactionary party.

With Progressivism's heart cut out, the ceiling on your growth is shattered. Proceed with the takeover.

If this sounds impossible, it's because you're not serious about it. No reactionary bloggers are, certainly not me. None of us really want to take over the world, because the organ that impels us to ambition was surgically removed years ago.

However, there are those who never went under the knife. They're rarer now, but they still exist. If you truly want to defeat Progressivism, you must find one of them who is suitable for the task and reveal to them their destiny. Once they have accepted the mantle, I promise that humans will be more inclined to follow them than we've been lead to believe. After all, if people weren't generally inclined toward an authoritarian society, Progressivism would work as advertised.

UE is a Terminology Mint

2012-02-11T19:22:00.000-08:00

When someone espouses the virtues of a perfectly free society, and then tells you to take your different opinion elsewhere, we call that person a Roflibertarian.

It's pronounced rah-FLIB-er-TARE-ee-UHN.

Facepalm

2012-02-11T17:38:00.001-08:00

What a world it's become, when good parenting is 'sociopathy'?

Wrong

2012-02-10T18:33:00.000-08:00

Sorry, Roissy, but you're wrong.

Correlation does not imply causation. Just because all prosperous societies have collapsed, does not mean that prosperity induces collapse. Do impoverished societies collapse? Uh, yeah. Thank you, Mario, but our princess is in another castle.

Unless, of course, he is using prosperity to mean something else. In which case he needs to get his head out of his ass, because that's not what that word means.

Mind-Controlling Brain Slugs FROM SPACE

2012-02-10T17:50:00.000-08:00

Who wants to be president?

Tsk, tsk

2012-02-09T19:08:00.000-08:00

sigh

Those foolish monarchs, always spending their people's wealth on frivolous things like robes, and jewels, and castles.

Thank Wilson we've come to our senses and adopted a democratic form of government, which never spends but for the most dire necessity, allowing the people to prosper independently.

Oh, shit.

El-Oh-El

2012-02-09T18:41:00.000-08:00

I find it highly amusing that this entry is not, in fact, anti-democracy, but rather pro-democracy and "anti-system", whatever that means.

So comprehensive is the doublethink that when one complains about how poor a system democracy is, they don't actually mean democracy.

Kittehs

2012-02-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

I wonder if this explains that.

(Mold)Buggered

2012-02-07T23:04:00.000-08:00

If your attention span is especially short, or if you just like having that little authoritarian organ in the back of your brain tickled, then this is the reactionary website for you.

I feel like there should be a low-budget action movie made with these quotes incorporated as wise aphorisms.

U mad, State Department?

2012-02-07T22:08:00.001-08:00

U mad?

The Evil That (Wo)men Do

2012-02-06T22:56:00.000-08:00

I am rarely taken aback.

Kids, I'm afraid the fantasies you were told as a child are all lies. I am so sorry.

More on Self-Defense

2012-02-05T17:18:00.001-08:00

This very solidly squares with my thinking and experience.

Get Down!

2012-02-05T16:12:00.000-08:00

It's Vaisya Day, everybody!

Prolific Math

2012-02-04T14:35:00.000-08:00

Can you prove without direct empirical data that men are polygynous? Let's take a look, shall we?

Let's assume that a hypothetical monogamous couple procreates as often as is physically possible. How many children can they produce?

A human female hits puberty at about age 10-14. They hit menopause in their 50s, in modernity, but a high-stress lifestyle, like the ancestral environment, drives this age much earlier. For convenience, we'll use age fifty. That gives the woman a solid forty years as a baby factory.
The average human woman produces about 400 fertile eggs during her lifetime. However, a human baby takes 9 months to gestate, limiting the actual number of children which she can have. Doing the math, this works out to 50 children a woman can potentially have in her lifetime, plus some change.

Men produce over 500 billion sperm in their lifetime.

One ejaculation contains roughly 40 million sperm, though this varies wildly.

That's approx 12,500 full ejaculations that a man can do in his lifetime.

For a promiscuous man, we'll call each ejaculation a potential child.

So a man can sire perhaps 10,000 children in his lifetime, if he takes maximum advantage of his output.

(The actual number here would be much higher, since if you're active enough, each ejaculate would contain less sperm, but your incidence of pregnancy would be relatively unaffected. Ghengis Khan, for instance, kept a harem of several thousand women and probably exceeded this quota of offspring.)

Further, this type of reproduction is a weakly zero-sum game.

A man who sleeps with multiple females has the opportunity to sleep with the mates of the hypothetical monogamous males. These nighttime fornications can and will produce children. Often, the children will be assumed to be the offspring of the monogamous male partner, even though this is not the case. For every child that is raised in this way, the monogamous male is denied an offspring.

Not only do promiscuous males have the potential to produce multiple orders of magnitude more children than monogamous males, but a significant portion of those children are actually denying the monogamous males a chance to reproduce. This effect is so strong, that, genetic anomalies notwithstanding, the last human ancestor that was genetically predisposed to monogamy probably died out millions of years ago.

Of course, this advantage is not so strong that men will risk their lives or status for it. If polygyny comes with a high enough social penalty, as it does today, many men may indeed chose to live mostly monogamous lives, purely to save their own skins. Left to their own devices, however, men fool around. All of them.

Cheating on the Test of Time

2012-02-04T00:26:00.000-08:00

Not everything old is wonderful. Smallpox, high infant mortality, and non-air-conditioned homes are but a few examples.

I just finished watching this, or, rather, most of it. I think it's another good example that one cannot count on something being good simply because it's old or has remained popular for a while. The film simply was not very good.

That is not to say it had no redeeming qualities. The stop-motion animation was some of the smoothest I've seen, and there is some extremely clever editing used to incorporate it into the rest of the film seamlessly. However, the propsmaster of the film should have been fired, as everything looks cheap and toylike. Even the stop-motion models are flaw-ridden and poorly crafted.

That's without even looking at the plot. While I understand that the film is essentially tropic: it tells a story we've already heard many times, it uses this as an excuse to basically deus ex machina away any potential tension or thrills. Perhaps they could get away with this in 1963, when the film simply being in color was novel enough to wow audiences for over 100 minutes, but today it's a bore.

Even the score is mediocre, ranging from simply boring to annoying and bizarre.

I may pick it up again and finish it properly later. Who knows? Maybe I'm just grouchy tonight.

Of course, there are old films which; I would classify as very good, and in many cases world-class. Jason and the Argonauts simply isn't one of them. I chalk its continuing popularity down to the Baby-Boomer Phenomenon.

Fear Not

2012-02-03T19:32:00.000-08:00

The veil of race will protect you.

But don't you get uppity, darkies.

Just Remember, Kids

2012-02-03T12:40:00.001-08:00

McCarthy was a crazy Nazi who hated your freedoms.

Perfection

2012-02-02T18:41:00.000-08:00

It is rarely achieved in such a way as this.

Conspicuous Absence

2012-01-29T12:42:00.000-08:00

Notice anything missing?

Interpretation

2012-01-26T22:37:00.000-08:00

Esotericism in general is the refuge of nincompoops.

Parody

2012-01-26T16:17:00.001-08:00

They say the best is indistinguishable from reality.

Faith Part II

2012-01-26T01:53:00.000-08:00

"Every city in the world has the death penalty for stepping in front of a bus. How do we live with this draconian rule? By not violating it."

-Mencius Moldbug

With the addition of the above quote, this video, which I posted earlier, becomes approximately an order of magnitude funnier.

Quotes from a German friend

2012-01-25T20:39:00.000-08:00

"The problem with [people from the Rottweil district] is that they are lazy... and greedy."

"The college-age girls in Berlin, they are so hungry!"

"We Germans do not go out of our way to speak to other Germans when we are outside of Germany. We just don't want to deal with them. It is our way."

"Ah, yes, the Berlin Wall. Except when I was young it was called the Anti-Fascist Protection Wall."

"No, I will not get my picture taken with you there. It seems like, what is that word? Ah, yes, blackmail."

"Why on earth didn't you learn Spanish?"

"I try to avoid doing business with [any company in the entire Rottweil district zip code]. They are always slow and lazy."

"Back home they keep asking me to bring back some American beer as a souvenir like Coors or something... I don't know why? Do they want to drink that stuff or something?"

"Oh! Cheapy guns!"

Hat tip to neutrino_cannon for compiling the list of quotes by our German friend, though I was there in person for all of them.

Soviet Humor

2012-01-20T00:47:00.000-08:00

An old woman asks her granddaughter: "Granddaughter, please explain Communism to me. How will people live under it?" "They probably teach you all about it in school." "Of course they do, Granny. When Communism comes, the shops will be full — there'll be butter, and meat, and sausage . . . you'll be able to go and buy anything you want. . ." "Ah!" exclaimed the old woman joyously. "Just like under the Tsar!"

A to B

2012-01-05T00:59:00.001-08:00

At least they're cutting out the middleman.

Amused

2012-01-02T16:04:00.001-08:00

You might as well have called this piece "Don't Date English Majors".

Ethics

2012-01-01T20:44:00.000-08:00

"You know, I'm a big loudmouth; it's what I'm known for. One thing this indictment has done though, is it's made me question somewhat the value of speech. Quite frankly, if you can spend 3-5 years in prison for talking, you might as well be out smashing windows, you might as well be out comitting acts of sabotage."

-Josh Harper, animal rights activist, SHAC 7

This is a tacit admission that Josh, and others like him, don't in fact have any principles or morals, but instead choose tactics solely based on the punishments they'll face.

Segregation

2011-12-29T22:01:00.001-08:00

Bahahahahah!

I can't wait to see some African American Studies professor squirm in his chair as he tries to explain away racist data.

Marriage

2011-12-29T21:51:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about this subject off and on recently.

After all, your parents have a lifetime of relationship experience to provide, is there anything wrong with having them set you up for success?

I am not convinced one way or another yet. However, today, the argument is met with basically "but, Freedoms" as a counterpoint, or, at best, arguments that are essentially contingent on society being as degenerate and dysfunctional as it is today.

Bah!

Left

2011-12-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

Jim has their number.

Faith

2011-12-16T17:14:00.001-08:00

"I have faith in humanity."

Then why do you seem so determined to piss humanity off?

Decline

2011-12-07T16:18:00.000-08:00

We've long since passed the hump of real progress, and now we can only hope to decline fast enough that the remains might be salvaged expeditiously, and within our lifetimes.

Bureauarchy

2011-12-06T16:28:00.000-08:00

An excellent post illustrating the truth of modern American-style bureauarchy.

Do you think that if all American elected officials evaporated right now, that the American government would cease to exist?

Martyrs

2011-12-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

They just wish they were using guns, instead.

Seriously, who ever heard of a martyr being made via pepper spray?

Origins

2011-12-02T16:09:00.000-08:00

I highly recommend this book, which examines the now long-forgotten origins of the America Rebellion. If you do not laugh aloud at least once while reading it, you're a dirty whig and should be strung up.

The books reads smoothly, as he continuously paints the picture of how the Founders saw the world. Inside, you will learn that the Founders read the ancient classics in the same way that hipsters read The Great Gatsby. You will learn that the First Amendment was developed to thwart the evils of papistry, and that the ideas of the revolution were in place a sevendecade prior to the first shots.

If, by reading Origins, your opinion of the Founders does not go from amused contempt to outright rage, then you probably didn't hold them in contempt in the first place.

The Dark Side

2011-11-20T19:54:00.001-08:00

That's pretty much what it feels like.

OWS III, The Occupying

2011-11-19T18:24:00.000-08:00

Hey look, a categorized list of the ways OWS is making a nuisance of itself.

The Tea Party foolishly believes in the system and thus tries to participate in the noble way that they’ve been taught works (but totally doesn’t). I used to be a part of the Tea Party, but am no longer affiliated, and I know a bit of what it’s like to be on the ground floor.

OWS understands the system as it actually works, if only on an unconscious level: Shit on the sidewalk, piss off police officers, and then whine and cry as they drag you away. These images get sent off to the media, embarrass law enforcement and the military (if the NG gets involved), and you get your way. It’s how every single Progressive movement previous has worked, and it’s how OWS will work.

On a relatively unrelated note, these three posts prove that Canada and Great Britain are provinces of the United States, though unofficially. Otherwise, why would they care?

The Cure For The Disease

2011-11-15T16:08:00.000-08:00

This is the founding principle of all neo-autocratism. It is not that we reject the new, for fear of it. It is not that we worship the old, for lack of an understanding of it.

We want to become stronger.
I have no time for anyone who wishes otherwise.

But then, you don't go to junk movies for your philosophy or religion...

2011-11-13T22:52:00.001-08:00

Do you?

My Choice for King

2011-11-12T20:01:00.000-08:00

What good is theorizing about a monarchy without having someone in mind for the top spot? Not very good at all. Naturally, one of the first things I did when I turned to the Dark Side is begin looking for the next King.

Probably my prime choice is this fellow.

Meet EG IdrA, StarCraft player extraordinaire.

What?

I do not jest, a professional StarCraft player is my top choice for King. Why?

EG IdrA is known through the StarCraft circuit as "the one good foreigner (non-Korean)". He was offered a scholarship to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, but refused, instead opting to continue his professional gaming career. To me, this is a demonstration of good decision making, college being basically a trap for intellectuals. Having watched a few of his matches, IdrA consistently plays for the long term, very rarely doing all-in strategies that sacrifice the long term game in hopes for a quick win.

In addition, IdrA has virtually no tolerance for idiots, a common affliction among the modern class of competent intellectuals. I am quite sure that with little persuasion, IdrA would accept the mantle of power with few qualms, and with little risk of "ruler's remorse". Unlike most other candidates for the position, EG IdrA would be unlikely to cave under leveling pressure to return the country to a more democratic system.

IdrA has good knowledge of strategy, and would need little retraining to be a competent military commander. Were those commands at all desirable today, I have little doubt that IdrA would be a rising star. It is indeed a piercing critique of today's society that such a fit individual spends his time playing a video game instead of conquering the barbarians.

As you can clearly see in the first link, IdrA is an alpha, though by my estimate, likely was once very beta. Control is the name of his game, though, and he has long since shed the trappings of the basement beta for the cool, silent swagger of the confident master. Perhaps he does have more work to do, but his progress has been impressive.

Lastly, IdrA is young, and thus, were he crowned today, would have many years with which to work on fixing the extensive damage that democracy and equality have wrought. On the con side, IdrA's prime proficiency is with a game of no consequence, and he, to my knowledge, has not yet donned the black cloak of the Sith. However, I feel that his advantages, especially his potential resistance to leveling influence, greatly outweigh those disadvantages.

IdrA for Emperor-God 2012.

Popular Luddism

2011-11-11T11:06:00.000-08:00

There is a fad amongst Brahmin women I know that makeup and cosmetics are evil, and that women should cut their hair short, and stride into public naked of any appearance enhancements.

This is not, as they claim, an effort to reveal a woman's "inner beauty", but rather simple Luddism.

Cosmetic enhancements augment the appearance, just as eye lenses sharpen the sight, books sharpen the mind, and levers augment the natural strength. These things are not products of baseless vanity, but the result of technology and true progress. To advocate their destruction is akin to advocating a return to the caves, a return to being a basal animal.

OWS II, Electric Boogaloo.

2011-11-07T23:20:00.000-08:00

Hahahahah.

Every time I get mad at the OWS mob, I just imagine them being rounded up and ~~put into labor camps~~ forcibly given jobs.

Yep

2011-10-31T16:57:00.000-07:00

Looks like comedy, at least, is finally getting the picture.

This changes nothing, of course.

Rape

2011-10-29T00:01:00.001-07:00

I wouldn't normally repost to the same author in such quick succession, but hot damn.

Sex

2011-10-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

Roissy is always worth reading, but this entry is especially worth reposting.

For the rationalist, all of Roissy's hard work can be replicated if one knows only this fact about human sexuabiology:

Women are hypergamous, that is, they seek to mate with males of high status.

Men are polygamous, that is, they seek to mate with as many women as possible.

It's all in the gametes, duh. Male sperm are more than 4.5 orders of magnitude more common than female eggs. Of course hominids would evolve to be picky about where the vastly rarer gametes get applied, and to apply the hyper-common gametes as widely as possible.

Some Photos...

2011-10-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

Of the end of the War in the Pacific.

It is interesting to note that the vast majority of death that the US caused to Japanese civilians is left largely unmentioned. Not to suggest that the acts are comparable, I imagine this blindness is similar to the sort of attitude the Chinese hold of Mao.

There's blood on the hands of all authority. The question then becomes, was it worth it?

A Tangent on Self-Defense

2011-10-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

This is an extremely compelling account of an armed altercation. With the exception of the wounds the author received, I am very pleased with the outcome. Life and property defended? Check. Scumbag got his just desserts? Check.

I do hope the author has recovered.

I also think this is a great example of something that's not often said, because in most self-defense company, it's a social death sentence. While training and repetition are key to a solid self-defense system that stays five steps ahead of the bad guys, the basic human animal is capable of some incredibly quick responsiveness when threatened. The author maintains that his training had lapsed, and he does not know what to attribute his admiral responsiveness to. In one of several Red situations I've been in, I was asleep late at night (circa 2 AM), when several drunken black men fumbled up to my door, without knocking, or making any signs that they'd mistaken my house for someone else's. Upon them making a loud noise, I found myself upright, in a kneeling stance, holding the AR-15 that lives by my bed pointed at them, with the safety off and the sling around my arm in a hasty wrap. This is something I'd never before practiced, I'd never done one repetition, and still my brain went from asleep to automatic to awake and cogent, with everything that needed to happen going on automatically in between. Would I trust that level of training? No. But, sometimes, a simple, constant mindset will be enough to save your life.

The only technical comment I have is that I've always wondered about the potential downsides to the 1911's grip safety. It seems here, my concerns were vindicated. In an era before good drop safeties, I can see the use for such a device, but it seems to do more harm than good these days.

H/T to Tam

The Free Press, Ladies and Gentlemen!

2011-10-24T19:33:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen spin like this in quite a while.

I particularly love how the man explicitly says he wants to cut down on government waste, especially funding for patently useless degrees, and the author manages to convert that into "Rick Scott wants to turn your children into mindless slaves!"

Bravo, indeed.

A Post About Zombies

2011-10-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

Yes, zombies. No, I'm not using that as a cute term for any political group. This post is about actual (or rather, fictional) living dead.

Firstly, zombies aren't real. And no matter how much we may brainstorm about how they might be real, they will never be real. A person assimilated by the nanobot horde is not a zombie, end of story.

But this post isn't about how zombies are fiction, it's about why everyone is so continually obsessed with them.

Well, I think I know the answer. That should be obvious; if I didn't, would I write a post about it?

Many people have their own pet theories for the popularity of the less-intelligent, flesh-eating undead, but I feel that nearly all of them are wrong. I do not think this is a coincidence: I think it's directly related to something Progressives are not supposed to admit about themselves.

Namely, Progressives seek to achieve power via the destruction of all other powers. That's their modus operandi. Reactionaries build towers by stacking one block on top of the other. Progressives build towers by eroding the very earth around them.

This is why apocalypse fiction is so popular with Progressives. If all the world powers are gone, power is within their grasp! They don't even have to be all that resourceful, cunning, or strong. It's just there, for the taking. Hooray!

But zombies in particular? That's a whole new level. Not only are zombies apocalyptic, but the playing field is especially ripe. Zombies range from are you fucking kidding me? easy to vaguely threatening. At their most powerful, they are less threatening than indigenous Africans with sharp sticks. In addition, they've removed any possible human post-apocalyptic competition, since most zombie fiction involves being the last one, or near to the last one alive. The playing field is especially ripe, indeed.

However, in addition to that, zombies are completely morally unambiguous. They're dead, so you can neutralize them, but you're not killing them. They're cannibals, they're decidedly nonsentient, and they're actively falling apart, anyway. In every possible respect, they're an abomination against nature, and it is no less than this that will allow the Universalist Progressive to get a good night's sleep after annihilating scores of them.

So zombies promise a Progressive what he craves: Easily grasped power, at the expense of everyone else, and complete moral unambiguity. Their popularity is entirely predictable.

Postscript: I'm sure somewhere along the line I will get a comment to the effect of but then why are they especially popular with conservatives and libertarians? The answer to this is simple: Because conservatives and libertarians are just another Progressive sect, and more to the point, one that isn't in power. Ergo, their leveling lust is especially great, leading to a strong affinity for this type of fiction.

More, on Power

2011-10-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

When Stalin's power was threatened, he killed several million of his own citizens.

When Charles I's power was threatened, he fought until he knew the outcome, then accepted reality with grace and poise.

This, kiddies, is why we let adults run countries.

Briefly, About Power

2011-10-19T20:26:00.000-07:00

I had a brief, cogent thought about power, and I thought I'd share.

Power is most often described these days with the axiom "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."

They cite the many failures of the modern age, whom we assume had nearly unfettered power. Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and, of course, Hitler are the most common examples. See! That power is too much for any one man! Democracy has its downsides, they say, but surely it is safer than that!

Well, in reality, there have been many good leaders who have wielded power with precision and tact, for the overall good of their country. A better axiom would be "power is a lot like heavy machinery. If you let an untrained fool use it, something will get destroyed, but in the right hands, it's a magnificent tool."

Power is not for children, or those adults who have the maturity of children. In responsible, adult hands, however, power is something that can create cities of gold, send men to the stars, and even transcend death itself.

Beaten to the punch...

2011-10-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

Which is just as well.

I was going to write a piece on Occupy Wall Street, but then Foseti posted this, and I have no desire to do so anymore.

He just so perfectly nails it to the wall.

Short Tangent on Relationships

2011-10-18T22:54:00.000-07:00

These two videos have encouraged me to write a (hopefully) short, well-organized treatise on the "Douche Phenomenon". In this article, I will not cover the state of women, except insofar as it describes the state of men. I am not a woman; I cannot tell you much about being a woman.

Firstly, I think Susan's description of the state of young adult relationships is essentially correct: There is a top 20% or so of young men (boys, really) who are douches and douche-mimics who get nearly all the sex. The bottom 80% are the Good Guys. I will note that term "Good Guys" does not refer to whether they are actually good people, but rather to the master they serve. More on that in a bit. This ratio softens as the individuals in question age, but it's quite true within nearly all of high school and most of college. However, Susan makes no mention of how this state came into being, except for some vague mention of "the '60s". In addition, her suggestion of how to improve this, by just magically waving a wand and getting most women to choose the shy guys, is absurd.

Even though Susan's picture of the current state of the young adult sex scene is correct, I will paint my own, similar picture for the purposes of clarity and posterity.

Firstly, let me describe the 80%er. He may not be shy. He may not be particularly smart. He may not read much. He might even smell. He could wear glasses, or not, probably has disheveled hair, and he might be fat. He might even be athletic. None of these are his defining features. His defining features are that he is deferential, submissive, and caring. He might be caring in a genuinely nice way, or he could be a borderline stalker, it depends on the person. When you are upset, he'll comfort you. He will almost never give you an example to follow. He is a Beta.

What good would a description of the Beta be without a description of his counterpart? The 20%er is decisive, headstrong, competitive, boisterous, and outgoing. He might be an asshole, or he might be kind. He might be athletic, or he might be highly intelligent. None of those characteristics define him, however. He's a leader, competent or not. He is an Alpha.

Are these states that are set in stone, a part of human biology? No, not as such. Alphas and Betas are a part of human sociology, but as they're incarnated today they're extremely dysfunctional. Why?

It has to do with how boys are raised today. It used to be that boys were raised to be men. They played boy games, like soldier, or adventurer. They were trained to be aggressive, confident, competitive, reserved, and decisive, regardless of whether they were Alphas or Betas. A good boy was one who would make his father proud.

Today, boys are primarily raised via a maternal policy. This may not be carried out by their mothers, but it is definitely maternal. I am not confident that I know the origin of this policy, only that it currently exists, and is prevalent in progressive communities. The policy is that aggressive, decisive behavior is bad. Instead, boys should be caring, sensitive, emotional, and non-violent. Mothers want these things in their boys, and they tell them that they are a "good" boy if they exhibit them. Unfortunately, this is the complete opposite of what their potential mates want out of them.

This "nice guys are good guys" meme is trained into boys from an early age in progressive communities. Some boys respond to this. They would be the 80%, the betas. Others, do not. However, why does the 20% turn out to be a bunch of total douchebags? It's because they have no incentive not to. They will act like Alphas regardless, and thus have no potential reward for good behavior, since the rewarded behavior is acting like a girl (not a Beta). The 80%, however, are able to do a passable mimicry of young girls, and thus respond to the positive reinforcement. Thus, they grow up exactly how they were raised. These boys may be of varying quality, but they are always what their mothers wanted them to be. In this group, you'll find the shy nerd with a heart of gold. You'll also find the creepy stalker, with no social skills and no sense of personal space. It's a mixed bag.

But it's the Alphas that deserved the most sympathy. With no potential reward for being good strong men, they devolve into riff raff. This is where your asshats, douches, and players, as Susan refers to them, come from.

But why do women choose the decaying Alpha over the potentially more suitable Beta? The answer is simple: Because women value strength, confidence, decisiveness, and composure in men. Duh. They are not lesbians, they don't want to date women, even if those women happen to have dicks. They want men; hairy, strong, lumberjack-esque men. I'm speaking figuratively, of course.

These lumberjacks actually need not be physically strong. I'll use my friend, whom I'll call Tom, as an example. Tom is skinny, not very attractive, and has a high effeminate voice. Yet he acts confident, sure, suave, decisive, and strong. Not only are women receptive of this, men are, too. In fact, it took me a while to realize that he did have a high voice, so compelling were his signals of strength and confidence.

Betas, you probably should be taking notes.

So then, the assholes are not being rewarded for actually being good, they're not being trained to use their aggressiveness and confidence productively, and we're beset by a plague of douches. What can we do about it?

Susan identifies the solution as residing in women. They just need to choose better men. She couldn't be more wrong.

Women, if you choose a Beta thinking he's got a heart of gold, you'll be sorely disappointed. Think about it. The Alphas aren't being rewarded for good behavior, and neither are the Betas. The Betas are only rewarded for passive, submissive, effeminate behavior. For every nerd with a heart of gold, there are ten lazy, annoying bums, and two creepy stalkers. Gah, I know, it's a sad picture I paint. Well, women, that sucks. Looks like you'll be looking an awfully long time for Mr. Right. Hope you find him before your ovaries shrivel up.

No, the problem is most definitely in men, or, rather, how they're raised. For parents, I say the solution is to not raise your boys to be young girls. Raise them to be men. Build forts with them, play soldier with them. Teach them a competitive sport. I'd say get involved with Boy Scouts, but, unfortunately, the quality of that organization is dropping rapidly. 4H is right out; they started halfway down that slippery slope. Teach your boys to shoot (hell, you can teach your girls to shoot, too, it's a good life skill), how to use knives, and how to use power tools. Don't get upset when they're indulging in what you might view as violent games. If they come home from playing with their friends with bruises (and they aren't crying about some bully*), don't worry. Boys hit each other with sticks. It's what they do.

For the Betas themselves, I'd say the answer is this. Reverse your training. Act confident and sure, even when you're not. Be competitive, strong, and decisive. Do not pander, do not submit to a woman you are trying to court. That is the fastest track to hearing the dreaded "let's just be friends..." See how the douchebags act? Don't do that, but don't do the polar opposite of that, either. Act like Indiana Jones. Act like Zorro. Do not act like Batman, kidnapping children and forcing them into a life of crimefighting will get you arrested. Act like Han Solo. Any Harrison Ford character will work, in fact.

It's worth noting that rural, less-progressive communities suffer from this problem less. The reason is obvious; they're still largely being trained to be men. However, the problem is spreading rapidly, and it would not surprise me if rural communities began adopting this parenting method as well.

*By the way, while we're on the subject, the correct solution to bullying is to teach your kid to fight. Unfortunately, this can get your child expelled from public school. Fortunately, public school isn't really worth attending, anyway. If you find your child must attend public school, walk this line extremely carefully.

Brain Aneurysm

2011-10-16T01:54:00.000-07:00

Neutrino_cannon and I were discussing what sort of things you might hear if a 17th century teacher were temporally displaced into the modern day. This is some of what we came up with:

"YOU LET THE PEOPLE VOTE?!"

"YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO WATCH EVERYTHING IMPORTANT REMOTELY AND YOU DON'T?"

"YOU CAN SCAN THOUSANDS OF SQUARE MILES OF OCEAN FOR BOATS IN LESS THAN A SECOND AND YOU STILL HAVE PIRATES?! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!"

"YOU CAN LITERALLY CALL DOWN THE THUNDER OF THE GODS AT WILL, AND YOUR NUMBER ONE PROBLEM IS A BUNCH OF ILLITERATE GOAT HERDERS???"

"YOU WANT TO PACIFY A VIOLENT REGION AND THE MOST COGENT PLAN YOUR HIGHLY TRAINED PROFESSIONAL MILITARY OFFICERS CAN COME UP WITH IS LET'S TRY TO BE FRIENDS WITH THEM?"

"THE SECOND MOST ECONOMICALLY POWERFUL NATION HAS AN 18% SUICIDE RATE?"

"THE MOST POWERFUL COUNTRY TO HAVE EVER EXISTED TOOK ON RICE FARMERS ON TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS AND FAILED BOTH TIMES?"

"THE MOST REVERED PIECE OF RECENTLY DEVELOPED TECHNOLOGY AMOUNTS TO AN AUTOMATED GOSSIP SERVICE?"

"AND SAID SERVICE USES, BY SEVERAL ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE, MORE COMPUTING POWER THAN WAS USED TO GO TO THE MOON?"

"YOU ACTUALLY SET FOOT ON THE MOON, AND YOU NEVER WENT BACK?"

"YOU CAN FLY THROUGH THE AIR A HUNDRED MILES FROM CITY TO CITY BUT IT WOULD BE FASTER TO DRIVE BECAUSE OF THE SECURITY MEASURES?!"

"YOU CAN CREATE MAGICAL ENERGY TO SUSTAIN THE HOMES OF A NATION FOR YEARS FROM A FEW HUNDRED STONE OF PITCHBLENDE AND YOU STILL BURN COAL???"

A Martian Visit

2011-10-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

Imagine, for a second, that you are someone else. This person you've become does not think like you, does not accept the things you've been trained to accept.

Imagine that all you care about is what is. Imagine, instead of proclaiming what ought to be, and defying reality, come whatever may, you only proclaimed what is, and you only cared for what is.

If there is a Power, you would acknowledge that power. If there were no such thing as a soul, you would not pretend there was. If the sky were blue, you would say so, unashamed. Your belief would be like water, forming around the nooks and crannies of reality. I understand if you have a hard time imagining this; it's not an easy thing for hominids to do.

Now, imagine you, as water to reality's cup, did not grow up in America. Imagine you didn't grow up anywhere in the world. Imagine you grew up on Mars. A Martian ape. Isn't that something? What would you, the Martian ape think of these things you hold dear to your heart? Things like equality. Why, the Martian ape would laugh. Equality? There is no equality. People are not equal. What does equal even mean? Must all people occupy the same space at the same time, possess the same physiology, same mind, same everything? Does equality only extend for people, or does it extend to other things, organisms, cells, minerals, atoms? If equality is something we must achieve, can anything exist any differently than anything else? If it can't, how can that produce anything but nothing? People, creatures, minerals, atoms, quarks, these are human concepts, each possessing a level lower than our understanding. If these are to all be truly equal, what is there to be? Everything has parts, has elements, if these parts, and parts of parts are to be Truly Equal, then there can be nothing. The only solution is obliteration. How absurd! You Earthlings have some funny notions.

What about freedom? What does freedom mean? Well, you, the Martian ape, sees this one simply. An object is said to be free if it has the capability to move, and it only has the capability to move if it actually is in motion. Consider, you say, an axle of a cart. This axle is said to be free if if can turn freely. But, say one were to apply friction brakes to the axle, it would not be free to turn, unless a force of sufficient magnitude were applied to it. Consider that all things, even things in a vacuum, will slow down. Friction is everywhere. Thus, something is "free" only if sufficient power is applied to it to make it move, whether this takes a modicum or an abundance of power to accomplish. Freedom is not a state of being, it's merely a lack of restraint, a lack of friction, combined with some motive for power. But it is not the strategic application of restraint, coupled with a similarly strategic application of power, you think, that the Earth apes desire. It's the complete, unfettered destruction of all restraints. You consider that a system of bodies, each perfectly unrestrained, will affect each other, until no motive power existed within any of them. How, with no restraint, entropy's reaping would be swift and complete. The only result of perfect freedom is perfect stillness.

Perhaps democracy will catch your attention. What is democracy? Well, it's the idea that an equilibrium can be achieve if everything is equal and free. Yes, you cry! An equilibrium of a perfectly still nothing! This is the only result, the only end! Perfect Equality can only result in nothing, and Perfect Freedom can only result in stillness, and that is what you will get! You can't believe what you're hearing. The Earthlings must be mad. Perhaps it is the air, perhaps the high nitrogen content keeps the Earth apes in a perpetual mild high. What else could explain this madness?

It suddenly occurs to you that the constant state of chaos on their planet, restrained only by the frail elements of concentrated power that still exist there, are a direct result of these ideas. You also realize why these ideas become popular: They promise power to the apes. It's well known on Mars that apes crave power; that is why power is kept from them, instead locked away, and used only by the strongest, smartest, most rational ape. If all apes played the game, seeking power, all the time, it might not look like Earth, you think, but it could not possibly look better than Earth.

The Earth apes cry for "freedom" and they really want an opportunity for power. They cry "equality" in the hopes that some other ape will be stripped of their power, allowing them to move in and occupy the vacuum. You realize that this means war. Eternal war. The Hell?

It takes you a while to realize that simple Martian expression of disbelief is actually a double entendre in context.

You begin to understand why any resistance on Mars is crushed ruthlessly and brutally. You used to think it was regrettable, such savagery. Martian apes hanging publicly in the streets for their crimes. Surely a civilized people would be more discreet! You comprehend now, that if that were not done, if the search for power were not met with vicious brutality, that soon, apes would disguise their lust with the favored axioms of Earth, and the result would only be war. You now realize why Martian conquest is brutal and relentless. Why those who resist are systematically slaughtered to the last ape. Were they not, they might come to believe that their resistance was not just possible, but justified. That peace and progress are not just acceptable losses, but suitable sacrifices, for the goal of their individual power, dressed in a suitable euphemism. (You briefly reflect on how, to an Earthling, "progress" means precisely the opposite of what it does to a Martian.) And if the Emperor left those lands unconquered? They might grow fat, with hidden tendrils of power, and it might be uncontrolled, untrained, vicious lust that rang victorious in that final war, as happened so many times in the great Earth wars that by the end, they were wars of Vice against Vice. No, truly it is better to pursue the swiftest, most final victory.

You're a Martian ape, alone on Earth. One of a handful of tourists that comes each year (Martians do not find Earth to be a particularly pleasant place). You realize that everyone around you, though they are apes, just like you, are completely, totally evil. You realize that even though they do not think of themselves as evil, and even though they think of you as evil, objectively, it is they that are evil, and you who is not. Because they do not wish to fill the cup. They do not bow to reality. They act only on vices disguised, through generations of practice, as virtues. You are one ape, of a handful, in a sea of apes on this blue planet, who is not evil.

The next day you book your return flight to Mars.

Mutually Assured Destruction: A False Phenomenon

2011-09-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

With this blog post, I would like to take some time to coalesce and present some thoughts and conclusions that have possessed me of late, concerning the phenomenon of Mutually Assured Destruction.

For those unfamiliar, Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD, is the idea that if I have nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and you have nuclear weapons and delivery systems, then we can create stability if we just promise each other that if the other tries to take advantage of us (the exact criteria here differs depending on who uses the theory) we will annihilate them.

In this post, I am not saying that standoffs are not possible, but only refuting the idea that an engineered standoff between real adversaries can be stable in the long term, which is essentially how MAD is supposed to work.

Before we discuss why MAD does not work, I need to lay some groundwork on how nations work. Nations, fundamentally, are enterprises with the goal of increasing their national worth. One of the most basic ways to do this, and one of the most lucrative, is to conquer other nations. In short, every nation wants to rule the world, even if they don't want to admit it, either because they're playing coy (The US) or are a client state of some larger power (everyone else, except maybe China). This model of the motives of nations will become important later.

To understand why MAD does not work, we must first understand the nature of threats. I do not know about other creatures, but I do know that hominids will not concede merely based on the word of a threat. This seems obvious: If you threaten me with nuclear annihilation, but you don't seem to possess any nuclear weapons, I may try my luck anyway. This is solved by simply doing regular demonstrations of power.

Except, it's also not that simple. Hominids evolved to compete primarily with other hominids, which is why we have huge, energy sucking brains but can't seem to do algebra to save our lives. This means that even if the other hominid has a big stick, and waves it around a lot, we may still try our luck if we believe they don't have the will to use it on us. Given a long enough timeline, the chances of this situation coming to pass approaches 1.

In addition, however, technology is not a constant. It moves, and old technologies get obsolesced. In 1945, the Soviets had virtually nothing that could deal with the threat of nuclear-armed B-29s. Today, swatting B-29s would be child's play for any two-bit nation. This means that as new technologies and capabilities are developed, old technologies are obsolesced. And what are the chances that every new game changing capability is developed by every nation on Earth simultaneously? Essentially zero. For hominids, that means that in a MAD scenario the time to strike is as soon as you have a game-changing advantage. Just developed an anti-ICBM, hydrogen-bomb-tipped, satellite-based, hypersonic missile? Attack now! Attack for God's sake, while you have the edge! This means that MAD actually encourages offense, if only in those areas where a significant technological gap exists.

Further, a policy of MAD is one that virtually no entirely rational, well-informed authority will enact. Why? Because it sacrifices large long term potential rewards for a relatively short-term one. Fundamentally, the nations of the world don't want to obliterate one another so that they alone remain atop a blasted hill overlooking a wasteland. They want to conquer one another, absorbing their population, materiel, and production capability (or, in other words, a nation is a predator, not an arsonist). A policy of MAD says that you will sacrifice that potential goal for the purposes of keeping your neighboring countries off your back. (You cannot enact MAD against only one nation, because then your MAD partner is greatly incentivized to equip your non-MAD-partners with nuclear weapons and get them to launch them at you). Not only is this tradeoff not very rewarding, it also, as I demonstrated earlier, doesn't work.

"But," you exclaim, "the US and Russia kept each other out of war for years using MAD! Clearly it works!" To which I'd respond: The US and USSR post-WWII were not true adversaries. They were sister states, and they knew it. In a true MAD policy, you would have to be very ready indeed to annihilate the enemy whenever they made a move. We don't see this with the US and Russia. The US doesn't, as soon as they get Pershing II missiles based in Turkey, strike at the Soviet Union, knowing the USSR can't do anything about it. They don't undergo crash anti-ballistic missile research programs, even though they knew full well that the Soviets very likely couldn't match them in research capability. With Saturn V launch systems, it would have been quite straightforward to lift a missile defense system into geosynchronous orbit. Yet, they didn't. In short, I do not think the US and USSR took MAD seriously. Neither really wanted to destroy the other* (which you must want for MAD to work), which is why they engaged in some petty proxy wars, and always tried to de-escalate** whenever the situation reached high tensions.

*Though it certainly does seem as though their generals did not know this.

**It does seem counter-intuitive that de-escalation would be bad for MAD, but it is. MAD is essentially the art of posturing with nuclear weapons, and seeking to de-escalate tells the other hominids in the room wearing red stars that you don't mean it, you won't destroy them, and they can attack you with impunity. Of course, they won't, as long as they're just as much a bunch of wet noodles as you are.

The Root of All Unhappiness

2011-09-20T15:45:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a common perception these days that unhappiness is born of difficulty; that if we just make everyone's lives easier, the world will be a happier, more productive place.

This is bullshit. Unhappiness is not born of difficulty, of effort, of exertion. Instead, discontent is wrought of confusion, uncertainty, and unpredictability. Humans receive endorphins from being able to correctly predict the future, even if those predictions are negative. When humans make an incorrect prediction, those endorphins are denied, thus breeding discontent. To illustrate this, simply observe that the black comedy genre exists, and that movies like Dr. Strangelove are widely beloved classics. If unhappiness were born of difficulty or misfortune, these movies would not at all be considered comedies, since the protagonists are presented with extremely difficult scenarios. Instead, they're hilarious, because in every case, the hardships and difficulties presented in them are readily predictable by the audience, such as the case where General Ripper, who is crazy, realizes that the contingency plan created for the event of the destruction of the upper echelons of the chain of command gives him the ability to make a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, goading them into war, or when the Russians' Doomsday Device plan is obviously flawed, since an accidental nuclear detonation would doom the world to destruction.

Consider also whenever you get frustrated with a task, is it because the task is merely hard, or because it is more difficult than your expectations or because you cannot figure out how to complete it?

I'm sure my astute readers can figure out where I'm going with this.

Movies for Reactionaries, Part I

2011-08-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

I find that as a reactionary, I have a hard time finding movies, music, or books that don't make my propaganda-dar ring loudly in my mind's ear. This isn't because everyone is out to smother the reactionary perspective, of course; it's because the reactionary perspective is so far from the norm that few artists will harbor perspectives compatible with that worldview. Thus, it is a rare treat when I stumble onto a work that does not break my suspension of disbelief through wildly impractical social, governmental, or even metaphysical mechanics.

I find that the 1970 film Cromwell is not only well acted, directed, and produced, but that it also only minimally set off my bullshit meter. This is not to say that it furthers a reactionary worldview; far from it. Our old adversary Lord Protector Cromwell is the protagonist of this fine film, which makes it decidedly not reactionary in nature.

However, Alec Guinness does such a sterling and identifiable job as King Charles I that he can't possibly be called a villain. Charles certainly provides the opposition to the film's protagonist, but he does so in a way that's readily identifiable, and free from any caricature. It's hard to overstate Guinness's portrayal of Charles; he makes Richard Harris's portrayal of Oliver Cromwell look like dogshit, and Harris is no poor actor indeed.

Finally, this film provides a stark, and meaningful rallying call to all reactionaries: Towards the end of the film, as Charles has been sentenced to death for treason, we have our antagonist's* Braveheart moment, except that it is best described as an anti-Braveheart moment, because while Wallace in the Gibson film expends his last tortured breath to bid the audience to defiance, Charles calmly, and without regret, declares his life to have been only in service to peace. William Wallace bids you violence. Charles Stuart bids you peace.

*The character of Charles I provides the viewer with a stark example that an antagonist is not the same as a villain.

In the wake of the England riots

2011-08-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

This list says a lot.

Typical Socio-Progressive Flagwaving

2011-08-06T17:29:00.000-07:00

Posted without comment.

So much for the myth of the noble savage

2011-07-31T14:06:00.000-07:00

Via la Wik:

"In Arnhem Land in northern Australia, a study of warfare among the Indigenous Australian Murngin people in the late 19th century found that over a 20-year period no less than 200 out of 800 men, or 25% of all adult males, had been killed in intertribal warfare."

An interesting test

2011-07-31T09:13:00.000-07:00

Read this article and mentally replace all instances of "Internet Explorer users, use Internet Explorer", etc with, say, "Australian Aborigine, be Australian Aborigine" and all instances of "Opera/Firefox/other browser users, use Opera/Firefox/other browsers" with, say, "Asian/Jewish, be Asian/Jewish".

And then tell me a logical, non-axiomatic reason why an observation about race is more inflammatory than an observation about browser usage.

EDIT: It has been revealed as a hoax, and I admit I didn't catch that the first go around. However, the point still stands: Why aren't people asking for Mr. Murphy's head? Let's say he'd created a hoax about one race being less intelligent than another, do you think he would have gotten off so easily?

Of course not.

Jack The Ripper's Got Nothing on Anders Behring Breivik

2011-07-25T01:08:00.000-07:00

I was tempted to do a write up of my thoughts on the recent attacks in Norway, but Moldbug beat me to it.

Which is fine, since he's liable to say it more eloquently than I could.

He did however, leave out the part where any society where any random asshole can pick up a shotgun and proceed to murder 85 bloody people in an hour and a half, has fundamentally failed at the task of law and order. To say nothing of the sort of colossal failure of public contentedness in Western democratized society that is implied for this sort of thing to happen in the first place, how does someone run around on an island for an hour and a half shooting people without being stopped? Hell, I'm reasonably confident that just a plurality of the campers on that island could have tackled him and brought the nightmare to an end. The hell, guys?

And for all of those out there who blame guns, it's clear to me that this guy could have caused just as much carnage with a kitchen knife. This is a fundamental failure of order, not a failure to keep sharp implements away from children.

Anyway, I'm sure MM figures it's so obvious that these attacks are indicative of a failure of order that he needn't mention it. But he has a loyal reactionary readership, and I don't, so I do feel the need to spell things out.

Being that this is the second time I've mentioned Mencius Moldbug on this blog, I figure I ought to mention that if you're reading UE and not UR, there is something wrong with you. Go back, read some of Mencius' introductory writings (which can be found in organized form here), build a red lightsaber, and come back. While I don't agree with MM on every single point, my philosophy essentially begins and ends with his ideas. He's the reason I'm a reactionary, and I typically take my cues from him. If I am a Sith Apprentice, he's my Palpatine.

A New Dark Lord Rises?

2011-07-23T04:05:00.000-07:00

Perhaps, in time. It would seem inevitable that one so intelligent, and dedicated, and given over to rationalism would eventually find his inner Voldemort, but then, everyone who thinks thinks their perspective is the most rational.

Those of us who've been so thoroughly disproven, however, tend to be a bit more certain of it than most.

At any rate, you should really read his fanfiction; it's top notch deconstruction, and you might even learn something.

And if our dear Mr. Wrong is reading this, should you decide the red lightsaber is for you, I wish to be the first to welcome you to the fold.

Let's get this (b)log rolling

2011-07-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

Today, a thought occurred to me. Among America's elite caste, which the powerful Sith Lord Darth Moldbug refers to as the Brahmins, there is a certain wistfulness for the simple, the rustic, and the primitive. Seminal Brahmin works, such as Walden extoll the virtues of simple living, and it is many a young Progressive's dream to attain status, and then eventually secure it by living in the woods in a log cabin not unlike Abraham Lincoln's (few Progressives I know would feel rebuked by this comparison). It is all the rage among that caste to tend a backyard garden, even if the tomatoes and strawberries they grow are more disease-prone, not as fresh, taste worse, and cost more than those bought from the store (I, too, was a Brahmin once).

I am sure that I don't need to go into detail; one can find in-depth descriptions of all manner of Brahmin proclivities over at SWPL, and even then, it would probably only serve to confirm what most likely readers of this blog already know. How does one live in a Kingdom without knowing its royalty?

But it seems counter-intuitive for the ruling class to want to move backwards, live in a log cabin, grow their own food, and expose themselves to all kinds of unnecessary trouble. Hmmm. Perhaps there is an explanation for this.

One might be tempted to assume this is all part of the Brahmins' collective courtship of the Dalits and Helots via a reinforcing of the idea that "we are like you, we have to deal with the problems you do, and we solve them as simply as you do", but that explanation doesn't hold water for a couple of reasons. Firstly, what Dalit or Helot lives primitively? Despite being underclasses, you will find few of examples of these castes who live in the woods in a log cabin and grow their own food. The second is that these displays are primarily targeted towards other Brahmins. Indeed, Brahmins have become so obsessed with showing off how "simply" they can live to other Brahmins that a simplicity arms race of sorts has developed, resulting in large sections of the "organic/natural/authentic" industry you see today (all sprung up like weeds to feed on the sweet, sweet vanity of our ruling class.).

So, then, what does explain this behavior? Surely, pissing matches are no new thing, but why have the Brahmins chosen to pursue this particular path of showing off, instead of, say, building taller and taller houses, and buying shinier and shinier cars? It's just a guess, but it's one that makes sense the more I think about it: Brahmins are cargo-cultists. There are other examples of this that I am more certain of, but this explanation is particularly elegant: The Brahmins do not understand how social order and personal contentedness are generated, only that they don't have enough of either, and that the people who did (who are all long gone; the war's over, and they lost) lived more primitively than they do now. In fact, Brahmins have taken this to such an extreme as to drive many of their living habits back a hundred years or more. This is seen to them as a validation that they, too, can raise children properly, live in a well-ordered household with many extended relatives who get along, and keep order in the wider world as a whole. Perversely, this has caused them to worship backward cultures that still exist, many of whom are suffering from the most acute ill affects of Progressive world rule. We can see many examples of this in modern media, where Brahmin films about beautiful indigenous African tribes who live off the land and are suddenly thrust into deadly conflicts between warlords and South African mercenaries who have more technology than they, their lives never to be the same, are a dime a dozen. The message here is that technology is the culprit, and that to escape this waking nightmare, the good Brahmin must live as the primitives do, and eschew all things modern and "fake", lest they, too, be corrupted. Of course, the modern Progressive elite never considers that Progressivism is actually the culprit, that the African tribe had a nasty habit of cannibalism before they ever came along, and that the fact that Progressives have technology is entirely incidental.

The Worth of Pomp and Circumstance

2011-07-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

See a trend here?

Looking for a Progressive Myth?

2011-07-13T23:56:00.000-07:00

This is a good one.

It hits all the points of a good myth; a supernatural realm which fscks with the real world unseen; clear sides of light and dark, and mortal characters caught between the two. It features spunky, Progressive protagonists (the purpose of which is unclear) a world that operates on bizarre causality, and even solidly defined Progressive morals at the end! If you are an avid student of the myths and legends of the Progressive religion, this is a pretty good start. You can even tell which side a character is on by whether they wear clothing made of natural materials or plastic!

To step out of jest for a moment, Ink does lay it on thick, but if you can ignore the fact that it's built around the Progressive pulpit (the good guys are literally the embodiments of Shame, fighting, of course, against the avatars of Pride) for the duration, it's actually quite entertaining. There's some good writing to be had, though some bad writing, as well, and the characters and acting are solid.

The Hows and Whys of Explaining Your Empire to The Drooling Masses

2011-07-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

Or: Religion and Its Applications in Government

In March I explained why religion behaves as it does, why people feel compelled to join religions, and what religions do to people.

In that entry, I did say that religions are inherently pretentious. This is not quite 100% true, though for all modern religions that have little or no connection to either the current power structure or to scientific fact yet profess to know the keys to metaphysical concepts are quite pretentious. However, in the past there have been what we'd recognize as religions that show us that it's possible to have a religion with little or no pretense. These religions drew clear lines to actual power and authority, whereby worship was given to a real entity with real power over the worshippers.

Now, we need to get a couple of concepts out of the way before this concept can really gel in our head. The first is what is meant by "God". In the Abrahamic religions, which most readers will be familiar with, "God" is this all powerful, birthless, deathless being who is the virtual embodiment of the universe. This concept of God contrasts with the classical idea of a god, which to our current mind just means any entity who has overwhelming power and unusually long life. You will not that this is not at all incompatible with a strong central government, that wields overwhelming power and exists for many decades. Hmm. We'll come back to this.

The second concept is to assume, for a moment, that God is real, and all the crazy Christians/Muslims/Jews in the world aren't just talking to themselves. What, then, do we make of all their prayers, rituals, etc? Well, it turns out that these activities make a lot of sense, if God is actually real. Prayer is a request to a superior, rituals show both your solidarity to the leader and your submission to his will. As a bonus, the feeling the people get from being a part of a large and powerful ~~monkey troop~~ religion acts as a buffer against public unrest.* Huzzah for God!

Of course, no God by the Abrahamic tradition exists, to the best of our knowledge, and worshiping the Universe itself seems pretty silly, since it can't address your concerns, accept your praise, or appreciate your loyalty to it.

Clearly, for an authoritarian, reactionary government, these mechanics are highly desirable. A well-defined communication method** with the sovereign, endorphin rewards for loyalty to the King, AND a buffer against public unrest? Where do I sign up?

But wait! There's more!

While most modern religions use their tribal influence as a conduit for falsehood, it's possible to use religion as a conduit for truth. Consider, for instance, that a God who is not expected to be entirely omniscient has no dogmatic qualms. If the science changes, his dogma changes, simple as that. In order to illustrate how smoothly this change can occur, we shall take a brief look at the Chinese Communist Party leader, Deng Xiaoping, who successfully reversed Maoist policy without significant backlash. As a second illustration of the merits of state religion, consider beginner science texts, such as A Briefer History of Time, which illustrates advanced scientific concepts in an easily digestible way. Its explanations may not be entirely perfect from a scientific perspective, but they're good enough for the average Joe. In a similar fashion, a state religion can be an explanation of advanced governance concepts, which would otherwise be inaccessible to the common person. It is probably this quality that makes a state religion most desirable to the reactionary, since one of the most prized aspects of reactionary government is honesty. With a state religion, the government can be open, using the pulpit to explain complex concepts in simple terms, in a way more elegant than just handing out copies of The Government For Dummies.

How does one establish this state religion on top of the mess of various religions who have all been shown "tolerance" for many decades? Well, it's reasonably simple. People tend to worship anything that seems like a good idea, from Jesus, to Elvis, to Naruto characters, which means that the first step is to get yourself power*** as the sovereign. The second is for you, the sovereign to revitalize the country, and cause the majority of people to love you. For this you must court the people, an activity distinct from being beholden to the people. Is Lady Gaga popular? Yes. Do her fans collectively determine her touring schedule? No. The final step, after the corners of your society begin to wear amulets to you around their necks, is to culture this budding religion, guide it, and ensure that it works to your aims. Voila, you are now a God-Emperor!

Whoopsie, did I just propose an Empire where the leader is literally worshipped by the people as a God? My bad.

*For an illustration of just how powerful this effect can be, observe the differences in attitudes of the Japanese soldiers towards the end of the Second World War and Russian soldiers toward the end of the First. Striking, isn't it?

**In this system, prayer would be via letter or email. We have not yet developed the technology to mentally communicate directly with your sovereign. Sorry.

***Or, you know, someone else, if you are too much of a pussy to do it yourself.

More on Rights

2011-05-22T04:30:00.000-07:00

Way back in September, I explained why we don't have the rights we think we do and why the concept of modern human rights is stupid. In this post, I'll explain what rights really are, and why that differs from public opinion of what they are.

I'm good at being blunt. The declaration of a right is a threat.

We've already established that the idea of "inalienable" rights is stupid. I can alienate you from your guns, from your tongue, and from your head. If I am strong enough, there's nothing you can possibly do about this. Even if you were Lord High Emperor of America, with all her assets, if I were stronger, I could still alienate any of the commonly so-called "inalienable" rights from you. So, then, what is a right? Surely these animals are not mythical, like unicorns or benevolent African dictators.

A right is an ability protected by law, and thus force of arms.

As a brief tangent before we dive into the meat of this article, I ask you: Are any of the things you would commonly ascribe as your "rights" actually rights? As in, will the government, with their force of arms defend your "right" to free speech, to keep and bear arms, or to not have troops quartered in your house consistently and predictably?

The answer, of course, is no, they won't.

A right, for example, the right of a King to choose his bride, or the right of a government to quell dissent, whether declared or not is something that you can expect violent reprisal for violating. If you try to deny the King his chosen bride, Jessica Alba (presumably because you're on of her many ~~stalkers~~ adoring fans), the King will respond in force. He may just arrest you (let's face, it, you're just not that big of a threat), or he may decide to kill you. That's his right, and yes, it's because he said so (he has all the tanks and nukes, after all).

So, then, what precisely is happening when a Tea Partier says "I have a right to free speech!" or a pro-abortion activist says "I have a right to my own body (and to do with my fetuses how I choose)!"?

They're threatening you with violence if you don't do as they say. This in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but when 300 million citizens, no matter how sociopathic or deluded they may be, believe they have more rights than you can even think of (ranging from a right to "the pursuit of happiness" to the right to assassinate public officials), you end up with situations like this (warning, disturbing and graphic).

By my definition, did that man have a right to do what he did? He successfully defended it with force... Until they caught him and executed him.

Now, a government may have good reason to use violence. It might need to defend itself from foreign invaders. It might need to keep civil order. Thus, the government declaring rights for itself isn't a bad thing, because that declaration is an honest threat, presuming the government actually retains dominion over its claimed territory. It is warning you: Don't fuck with me, I have tanks.

It's important for the populace to know where the line is. Thus, a right when applied to a government becomes a law, and laws are important.

The Nature of Religion

2011-03-09T18:49:00.001-08:00

Why does religion exist? Why do so many people with perfectly functioning logical facilities join religions that make no sense? Why is a large religion considered legitimate, and a small one, even one of similar quality, considered a cult?

I will attempt to answer these questions and more in the following blog post.

Firstly, why does religion exist? It's sort of easy to assume that religion is a flawed search for truth, but wouldn't that make science a religion (science clearly being imperfect)? Clearly this reasoning is invalid; as science doesn't resemble religion in the least. There are not wars fought over the definition of the speed of light, while several have been fought over whether Jesus was a prophet or a demigod. Thus, another explanation is desired. The best explanation I've come up with is that religion is in fact a particular manifestation of the monkey troop. Religions exist not as a search for truth, but as a search for belonging, for safety in numbers, and for the support of the monkey troop. Humans being the apex monkey, this is not altogether surprising. In fact, this explanation provides answers to many old questions: Why are small systems of spiritual belief considered cults, and derided as absurd, or even highly dangerous, while large systems of belief, which may be equally absurd, are considered religions, and respected as perfectly valid? Well, it's for the same reason that Somalia is laughed at, but the United States is respected and honored: size, and cohesion. Note that age alone does not typically correlate with how a spiritual belief system is treated: many ancient religions, like Zoroastrianism, are treated similarly to cults, while new, up-and-coming ones, like Wicca or Mormonism, are treated as legitimate religions. Now, these are typically exceptions, but only because age and number of members and cohesion typically correlate. Zoroastrianism is small, but old. Mormonism is large, but new. Scientology is small and new. Christianity is large and old. Judaism is old, and has never quite reached anything resembling a plurality, and thus it's the old standby religion if you need one to pick on.

If religions are fundamentally considered to be attractive because of their strength in numbers value, then the reasons people join them make much more sense. People join religions under the pretense of seeking truth, but in reality, and what they may not know is that they really joined to belong. This is not an intangible thing. I willingly was baptized Episcopalian when I was 13, and for two weeks I felt awesome. I, like nearly everyone, mistook this for "finding God", when, in reality, my brain was releasing endorphins because I'd just joined a really strong monkey troop.

It's this same quality that makes people who talk religion seriously sound like total assholes to those of us who find no need for it: It's pretentious. It's pretentious, by definition. Religion pretends to be a way to enlightenment, to the highest pursuit of man, but what it actually is is the indulgence of one of the most basal aspects of primatehood: Finding and joining the strongest monkey troop you can.

Having said all that, religion isn't bad. There are a few ways in this world to get those precious endorphins, and among them is belonging to a large powerful monkey troop. Some of us need this, some of us have sufficient alternative catalysts of endorphins. This might be why hippies, who do lots of drugs and have lots of sex, typically do not form big religions, but rather, drum circles.

Excuses

2011-02-28T18:25:00.000-08:00

This is little more than an excuse to quit teaching our children altogether.

I've experienced "21st Century learning", and I didn't learn anything.

It's good old fashioned 19th Century learning that's actually making me fit to be seen in public.

The Mexican Fisherman

2010-10-14T16:29:00.000-07:00

    An American businessman was standing at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.

    “How long did it take for you to catch them?” The American asked.

    “Only a little while.” The Mexican replied.

    “Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The American then asked.

    “I have enough to support my family’s immediate needs.” The Mexican said.

    “But,” The American then asked, “What do you do with the rest of your time?”

    The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor.”

    The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds you buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats.”

    “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own can factory. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

    The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?”

    To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

    “But what then, senor?”

    The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO (Initial Public Offering) and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

    “Millions, senor? Then what?”

    The American said slowly, “Then you would retire and move back to this small fishing village. With your hard-earned wealth, you could dig several sanitary pneumatic wells to cure this village's cholera and typhoid problems. In addition you could build modern medical facilities here, greatly improving the entire village's standard of living. Eventually, with enough investment, you could hire enough security personnel that you could keep the drug cartels out of your village forever. In time, your small fishing village could become a model city for Mexico, and perhaps, the world. As an example, it might even turn Mexico itself around entirely..."

The Mexican fisherman was silent for some time.

"Also, bitches. Lots of bitches."

"Oh."

VZ 58 Fire Control Group Complete Strip

2010-10-11T01:53:00.000-07:00

I'm going to deviate a little bit from the established nature of this blog, simply because I like to play Good Samaritan every so often and actually add useful content to the Internets.

You see, recently, I purchased a Vz. 58 steel trigger, to replace the plastic trigger my CZ-USA Vz. 58 came with. When I looked on the Internet for info on how to muck around inside the receiver, I found nothing, so I had to figure it out myself. Trying to remove the fire control group from this rifle without knowing how is really hard, and results in lots of unnecessary scrapes on your receiver, and a lot of fruitless banging and frustration. Removing the FCG after you know what to do, however, is really quite easy, if a bit tricky. I decided to write this to help people do it the easy way.

The parts can get a bit confusing. I use the same terminology Czechpoint does, and you can find a nearly complete parts list for the Vz. 58 at their website:
http://www.czechpoint-usa.com/products/spare-parts-and-accessories/vz-58-parts-and-accessories/
The title is not so much an accurate description of the content as it is all the search terms I used in trying to find info about how to perform surgery on my Vz.

Let's begin.

Firstly, and most importantly, you want to remove the magazine and clear the chamber.

Then, and this is why that last step was so important, you want to flick the safety off if it wasn't already, and pull the trigger.

If you followed step one, you should get a click. If you didn't, you should get temporary hearing loss and a hole in something.

Now, push out the receiver cover retaining pin. This pin likes to push out most of the way and leave about a fifth of itself still retaining the cover, so make sure it's all the way out. If you have difficulty removing the cover, this is almost certainly the problem.

Next, remove the receiver cover by pushing it forward from the rear, and lifting it up. It should come straight on out. Note the dual captive springs; it's important to line them up properly during reassembly.

Now, remove the bolt carrier assembly by retracting it all the way to the rear, and removing it from the top.

Finally, you can inspect the glory that is the Vz. 58 fire control group. When I first tried to remove the old trigger, I just banged on the trigger axis pin until I destroyed two pulled 7.62x54R bullets and gave up that approach. It turns out, the Czechs thought of their trigger axis and sear axis pins backing out and put in two little e-clips.

These e-clips hold the pins in despite the application of considerable hammering. These e-clips are simple to remove, but for God's sake do not lose them. Just take a screwdriver, or other fine implement, and flick them out. They come off readily.

Once both e-clips for the sear and trigger pins are off, tap the two pins out slightly from the left to the right. Tap the sear pin out first, then the trigger pin. Once they come out about a millimeter, there's enough space for you pull them out all the way with a screwdriver or your fingernails. They shouldn't fit tightly.

It'll take a little finagling, but it should be pretty easy to remove the sear.

Once you have, remove the trigger assembly. To do this, press the trigger up from the bottom, and compress the disconnector spring enough that the trigger and disconnector come free from the sear assembly.

Now you have the trigger assembly in your hands. To install your brand new trigger, simply tap out the disconnector pin holding the trigger and disconnector together, and remove the disconnector and disconnector spring.

Replace trigger, or work on the trigger, or make sweet love to it, or whatever you're going to do, and then prepare to go insane.

This next step is the only truly hard part in replacing the trigger on a Vz. 58. You must reassemble the trigger group, which means reinserting the disconnector spring, and then compressing the disconnector to just the right place that the holes line up, while holding the trigger assembly steady, and hammering the disconnector pin back into the assembly. I enlisted my girlfriend to supply the requisite third hand, but found that the assembly is actually too small for three hands to fit on the blasted thing without me hammering our thumbs into pulp.

Instead, I found a pair of pliers, and that worked well enough. It's still a matter of trial and error, though, so be patient, and eventually the pin will work its way a little into the disconnector, and then it's just a simple task of tapping the little devil in gently.

Now that you have your trigger assembly back in one piece, you simply have to put it back in the way it came, and then pushing the pin back in. Do not put the e-clip back on the pin until you are 100% sure your trigger group works. I even went so far as to reassemble the entire rifle without the e-clips, just to make sure. Once the trigger is in there satisfactorily, start on the sear assembly.

It looks weird, but it's not difficult to do once you figure out what goes where. The sear assembly likes to come apart, especially that plastic thing, which I'm pretty sure is a replacement for an automatic mechanism, since it does basically nothing. Czechpoint doesn't sell this part, so if it breaks, you're SOL, I guess. Anyway, that do-nothing plastic thing fits with the large end toward the right, if your assembly came apart (mine did), and the sear fits with the long end basically sitting in the middle of the receiver, to hold the striker back before firing.

The sear group fits in so that the little tab jutting out from the bottom of the sear is pulled on by the disconnector. A little trial and error will make it fit properly. Interestingly, the sear and trigger pins are interchangeable, so don't worry that you got them mixed up.

Once your rifle's trigger works, simply slide the e-clips back onto the pins. This is actually easier than it sounds, if you use a screwdriver. They might not click, exactly, but if they look like they're on, they are.

Now you're ready to reassemble the rifle. Simply tilt the muzzle of the rifle downward, let the bolt flop forward in the carrier, and mate the carrier and receiver together at the cutouts in the rifle rails. Slide the bolt forward. Now if the sear engages the striker, that's a good sign. If it doesn't, you have more work to do. Remove the carrier and find out where you screwed up. If it holds the striker, pull the trigger, both to make sure the trigger group will release it properly and to prepare the partially assembled rifle to receive the cover.

Now take the bigger, top spring in the receiver cover, and align it with the topmost hole in the bolt carrier. slide it in, making sure the lower striker spring falls into place inside the striker (they call it a "linear hammer", since the actual firing pin is a separate part). Now slide the cover in most of the way.

Make sure the little tabs jutting down from the inside edge of the cover mate with the receiver, or it won't go on right. Once it's properly inserted, push in the retaining pin, and you're all set.

Second Amendment Oversights

2010-10-06T18:51:00.000-07:00

In my first blog post, I talked about the absoluteness of the 2nd Amendment, and why it doesn't actually give us Americans rights.

Today, I'm going to explain what the 2nd Amendment doesn't even pretend to give us, and speculate on why.

Ladies and gentleman, I present to you...

The Second Amendment...

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Everyone likes to talk about what's in this little amendment, one of the shortest Amendments in the Constitution, but nobody talks about what's not in it. In other words, what rights does the Second Amendment curiously not guarantee?

Well, the largest hole I can think of is that it leaves everyone, even Congress and the President free to stomp all over arms commerce.

Nowhere in our Constitution is it written that Congress can't prevent the sale or manufacture of arms. So restrictions on who can buy firearms and who can make them are totally constitutional.

In fact, it's totally constitutional to completely trash the American legal arms industry entirely. Not even in the Federalist Papers, in the parts that pertain to militias and arms, is arms commerce ever mentioned as being a fundamental human right.

Why would the Founders allow something so big to pass right under their noses?

Probably the most obvious answer is that, at the time, the US didn't make any weapons. Springfield Armory and Harper's Ferry, the first two US armories, didn't open until 1794 and 1802, respectively. US weapons all came from Britain or other countries, mostly in the form of the Brown Bess, and from France, later during the rebellion.

What does this mean?

The Founders weren't all-knowing Gods, who's very words were tinged with gold, and who's writings are sacred, true documents that span the millenia. They were normal people, who wrote documents to fix the problems they saw. Often, the fixes weren't even competent, as the Articles of Confederation demonstrates. The AoC resembles nothing more than a silly, loose confederation between sovereign nations, no more able to govern a territory as a nation than it was able to raise an army. The Constitution built a more fit government, but still one based on compromise and pandering. There are two legislative bodies in the US specifically because some states didn't want a population-based Congress, and others did. This wasn't some sacred mechanic, essential for good governance; it was a compromise designed to satiate all the states enough so that they'd shut up and sign.

...And, this, I'm afraid, is typical of his current attitude!

2010-10-03T20:28:00.001-07:00

This is an example of the sort of wonderful sanity litmus tests the Green movement provides us with regularly. If you think this series of ads was tasteful, then, sir or madame, I am sorry, but I have some bad news for you...
It's not some isolated lapse of taste and rationality, either.

Something Profound Contained Herein

2010-09-30T20:07:00.000-07:00

Yeah, probably not.

So what gives? Why "Unreasonable Expectations"?

The answer lies with what I identify as the current most dire affliction of this nation, and even a large part of the world. Everyone has something they blame on the state of things; it's an unwritten, unspoken agreement that something is wrong. Some people think it's liberals, some thing it's conservatives. Some think it's gays, and some think it's Jews, and some think it's white people, and black people, and some think it's guns, and others the lack thereof. Some even believe it's our simple fate, because the stars aren't aligned to our benefit or because God is displeased with us. Finally, some think we, ourselves are the problem, and that things would be better without us.

It doesn't matter what it is, almost everyone has something they blame our ills on. Bleeding, in one form or another, is the most often-prescribed remedy. If we understand our own mechanical contraptions, we barely have a clue about our own bodies, and if that, then we are lost when it comes to the universe and physics and science, and if that, then we have not even begun to ask the question about governments. Because something is wrong, and we all know it. Injustice is being done, more injustice than just the random storms and natural cataclysms to which we all pay rent as residents of planet Earth. We all know something is fundamentally wrong with the way we treat ourselves.

So I've mentioned government. Oh goody, a political blog. Well... Maybe a little. However, let's get back to government a bit later.

What do I see as our disease? What plagues us?

I wouldn't name my blog something random, would I?

Especially in this country, the only one I'm familiar with, most people believe they are entitled to things. They believe that because they exist, they have a right to stuff. They have a right to live, or a right to privacy, or a right to free speech, or a right to keep stuffed appendages of any member of the family Ursidae. The reality is that we have none of these things. An entitlement, a right, is something enshrined by law and supported by the whole weight of the leviathan. A right is held as absolute fact, because if you defy a right, you're liable to get lawfully deader faster than you can say ~~down with the King!~~ let's kill the president! But, but, but, you may exclaim:

"But we have rights! They're enshrined in the Bill of Rights!"

Yes they are. However, ask yourself two things:

First, does the government care at all about the Bill of Rights? They seem to, when it suits them. But other times, they are perfectly content to ignore it. Even the Nine will ignore the BoR when it suits them. Congress has practically set the thing on fire, pissed on it to put it out, and then ground it into the floor to make sure it doesn't show any awkward signs of life. As an example, the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights, states:

"...The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Now I didn't pick this one because of any previous affectation to it (Protip: Yes, I did), but rather because it's so absolute. Unlike the First, which states that Congress shall make no law abridging free speech, assembly, etc, the Second is absolute. No one, anywhere, any time, anyhow, for any reason, shall infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. You may agree with that right, or you may not. The reality is, Congress positively does not care. You can't own a firearm if you're a convicted felon, you can't own pink-colored weapons or weapon accessories in New York (sad but true), you can't own automatic weapons that weren't registered prior to 1986 (if I recall correctly), the list goes on and on and on. Finally, never, under any circumstances, is a private individual to own or operate a nuclear weapon in this country, especially not if they are pregnant, nursing, or may become pregnant. Whether you agree with any of these infringements or not, they exist, and they violate the Bill of Rights.

Second, even if you assume that the fact that the government doesn't protect the Bill of Rights well; i.e., it's just incompetent to the point of broken, you must ask yourself another question: Can the government actually grant us these rights? With respect to the Second Amendment, it, in fact, can't. The right is so broad, so vague, it's impossible to enforce. If I take away a firearm from my offspring at the end of a range trip, to put it away behind lock and key, am I infringing on his 2nd Amendment rights?

So do we actually have those rights? Nope. We don't. When we expect our speech to be free, or our ownership and use of firearms, to be protected, or our house to be free of soldiers, and that expectation does not line up with reality, that expectation is unrealistic.