Ether Mind

Attack of the Nazi-Bots

2015-06-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

Up on a rocky crag, upon the craggy rocks, a broken castle squatted like a Titanic gargoyle, peering inscrutably at the desolate field below. A hundred shattered walls folded around the keep like stone wings, and a hundred dark eye sockets gazed unblinking. Each night, when the Sun passed beyond the horizon and night fell, perhaps for the last time, dark clouds would gather and hurl lightning like angry spirits. This night, the poltergeist was fierce.

Festering in the distended bowels of the dungeon, a strange society met.

“Brenda! It’s so good to see you!” gushed Mary Sue Lawrence. “How’s Michael doing?”

“He’s doing fine,” said Brenda, pushing back the hood of her crimson ceremonial robe. “He loves to complain about not being able to mow the lawn, because he can complain all weekend and not actually have to mow the lawn. Before he could only complain about mowing it for an hour on Saturday.”

Mary Sue giggled. “Men. You know I can mow the lawn as well as any man, but they want to feel that pride of battling nature and doing the tough work the ladies supposedly can’t. You know I used to do hedge sculptures-”

Mary Sue was suddenly cut off by a blood curdling shriek, just as the lights went out. The guests were left in terrified pitch blackness for a heartbeat, and then the lights came back on. There was scattered laughter as everyone looked at each other. The Space Mask cosplayers stopped their awkward dancing.

“All right, was someone ‘murdered?’ asked Jim slurriedly. That’s quickly, yet unclearly. Clearly. “How about you ladies? See any ‘stiffs’ around here?”

Brenda cringed away from Jim’s creepiness, while Mary Sue quickly pulled a yellow card from her designer purse and held it up to protect them. It consisted on the word “OK” with a red circle around it and a red diagonal slash through it. Jim sighed and slouched away.

“It’s ok, Jim.” said a large, lardy lad in a tabard. “They won’t report you to Penny.”

“Where is she anyway?” asked a frizzy, yet lively woman. Her toga was white and dappled with paint, as if she wanted to give the impression of being an artist. “She was supposed to bring the Karaoke.”

“And she’s our only normal friend,” said Jim sadly.

"Let's forget our troubles with a ten hour round of Space Mask role-playing," suggested the large man cheerfully. "I'll be Space Master."

"No one wants to play the role playing game you made up, Steve," said the frizzy woman patiently.

"I might," said Jim.

Meanwhile, at the Altar of Refreshments, Sister Autumn was enjoying a nibble of fine fondue from the extravagantly shimmering, lighted fountain of cheese. She basked in the attentions of her suitors. They each plied her with sweetmeats and delicacies, which she sampled with the finicking of a cat, only after the most impassioned supplications. She did not notice the blackout, as her eyes were closed in the rapture of Steppermint Essence. Once she opened them, she was the first to see the fingers slowly sinking.

“There’s a hand in the fondue,” she said dumbly, and then crashed to the floor. Her retinue fled out of the way in the nick of time, then turned to look. One of the men moaned loudly in horror. Another looked up in time to see a uniformed figure drop from the ceiling. It landed lightly, but the limp form in its inhumanly strong grip flopped and cracked sickeningly.

“Oh my god,” wailed a filipino with a lisp, “You killed Penny.”

It stepped forward awkwardly into the light of the fondue fountain. The cascade of lights, so festive when it shined on innocent cheeses, was cold and malevolent as it revealed the details of the uniform. A red armband, a white circle, and a black ideogram, the symbols of a recurring nightmare ideology that had plagued the Last Planet for aeons.

“You Nazi bastard!” the gentleman lisped in fury, before being gunned down. The Nazi swung its gaze upon the rest of the Society. Red eyes blinked mechanically, not open and closed, but on and off. Suddenly, more Nazis appeared from the entrances, dozens of them, then hundreds. They herded the society toward the center of the room, killing at a leisurely pace with found objects.

“Bull! Fire your cannon!” yelled Brenda.

An older fellow made his way as quickly as he could across the battlefield. His face showed the strain as he climbed over a fallen friend to reach his trusty cannon. Finally, he fell across it, wild-eyed in terror. “Absolutely not!” he exclaimed. “It’s in mint condition!”

“It’s up to us, Brenda!” Mary Sue shouted, eyes blazing. She pulled a yellow card from her purse and flung it, ninja-like, across the room. It hit one of the Nazis in a nigh-invisible seam and shorted it out. The thing fell, lifeless, onto the stone floor. Hydraulic oil mingled with the blood of humans.

“We can stop them!” exclaimed Brenda. “Go get’em, Mary Sue!”

“I only had one card,” said Mary Sue with a frown, before being crushed by a falling chandelier.

“The Nazis are killing everyone!” shrieked Jim.

“Don’t worry, they’re just robots,” said Bob, a chronon before he was struck down by a feloniously foraged fire-axe.

“I should have fired her when I had the chance,” said Bull sadly, resting his hand on the old cannon. A gurgling gentlemen fell to the ground, dropping his tiki torch. The mosquito-repellant flames revealed the name engraved on the gun’s chassis…. Rosebud.

* * *

“OK,” said the director. “That’s a wrap.”

The bodies of the slain began to rise from their places and shamble toward the living.

Floodlights throughout the old castle’s basement activated, as the victims began to remove their wounds and drop them into a large trash can labeled “death props.” Bull straightened up and strode energetically toward the Director.

“Deuce, can we do that last line one more time? I-”

“No.” said Deuce firmly, scratching under his traditional fedora. Drops of sweat gathered in his neckbeard. “We are screening this tomorrow night, which is actually tonight, because it’s really late, and I still need to to post-production. Your performance was great.”

The actor pulled off the Bull mask, revealing a younger, haughtier face. “Why can’t we just wait and release it at the Kansas Film Festival?”

“This is a classic morality tale. It’s all about the message, which is that authoritarian violence is wrong, and navel-gazing self indulgence is doomed. There is a third way. We need our performance to go viral before the Winter Election if we want to have an impact. Also…. tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. The day after is the New Year.”

The other actors gathered around. They looked at each other and shrugged.

“We don’t want to compete in the same awards year as the new Space Mask movie.”

Here's an Idea

2015-06-11T20:45:00.002-07:00

Just quit writing banal articles stereotyping "Millenials." Stop saying the word. Just... find something else to talk about. Next time you are tempted to make some kind of pithy generalization, just picture a stocky Mexican teenager learning to operate a welder. There's your Millenial. Or how about a gang member knocking out old people. In Seattle.

Bless Your Mechanical Heart

2015-06-11T20:40:00.002-07:00

This was a decent compilation. However, the editor definitely doesn't deserve the Hugo win. Why? Well, the stories were fine individually, but collectively, a theme emerged: Robot flavored fiction. Science Fiction? Some of it did indeed explore scientific ideas, maybe. I can't remember an example off the top of my head. I'm going to say that what it really explored was FEELZ.

Yes, that is an annoying word. But aside from the Progressive / liberal / pop-culture PC talking points used as minor plot devices, flavor commentary and social commentary, there were ample FEELZ included.

***SPOILERS***
Robot gets bullied. Robot falls in love, writes romantic poetry, and then dies for no reason. Robot is programmed with religion and begins judgmentally killing sinners. Robot kitty social worker helps addict, and sticks it to her greedy corporate employers. Robot rescued from dumpster obeys original programming. Robot... sleeps for a long time, and then I don't remember what happens. Not that memorable. There were a couple of Robot Soldiers, but no fighting. And let's not forget the robot who tried to find her mistress a boyfriend. That one was one of the weaker stories, especially since 1) the woman was married to a husband, and they never overcame their trauma or repaired their relationship, and 2) the science-flavored aaspects of the story were by far the worst in the collection. It literally used her husbands Hollywood-level hacking abilities as a Deus ex Machina... twice. Someone that ignorant about computers should not be allowed to write science fiction publicly.

So, read it if it sounds appealing to you, because it's a decent anthology. Maybe the editor(s) did a good job, but I couldn't really tell. All I could discern from the collection as a whole was that they picked a bunch of Pink SF stories with Robot FEELZ. There was none of the clever logic or real scientific speculation one might associate with robot stories in the vein of Asimov, Clarke, or even those mediocre 90s post-cyberpunk things.

Rat Queens, Vol. 1

2015-05-25T20:53:00.002-07:00

Bad: The plot was detailed and consistent, but not that engaging. Also a little too much "feminism," ie, nihilistic sex and drugs, impiety, and a token lesbian. I didn't mind the grrl power as such, since it makes sense in the satirical fantasy world.

The story works well with the female protagonists.

Good: The art was good and the characters in particular were detailed. The dialogue and style were good. It was somewhat funny, although the humor was of the Gen X snark variety. The jokes were a little worn. The paneling was above average. The story moved quickly, yet with plenty of detail and no confusing bits. The art definitely contributed to the flow of the story.

I'm ranking this above Ms. Marvel. Although I can't say Rat Queens is definitely "Hugo-worthy," it has artistic merit in art and storytelling and good production values. Ms. Marvel is regurgitated dreck with liberal messages and good production values.

Ms. Marvel Vol I, 2014

2015-05-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

I'm going to briefly summarize my thoughts on some of the Hugo nominees for 2014. (Voting takes place in 2015). No one reads this blog, so I won't go into too much detail.

I just finished reading the new Ms. Marvel Volume 1. It was all right. The art was good, the story was cliche'd but well executed. So were the characters. The paneling was mediocre, but compared to the other American comics I've read, it was fine. It was essentially transparent and didn't get in the way of the story, but didn't contribute anything either.

It's very rare that you see elaborate comic paneling that actually adds to the art, so maybe the simplicity is a good thing.

The only real issue with the story is that the "filler," the non-super-heroine elements, were 100% PC message fiction. Be yourself. Being someone you're not is hard work. Muslims are good people, unless they're too devout. A Muslim girl sniffing bacon in a deli is A-OK. Young people need to struggle to find their own way in life. Kids drinking vodka at a party is fine, but pranking each other is not. Don't try to control your children, or keep them from harm, because you'll suffocate them and possibly cause their supervillain nemesis to gain the upper hand. Skinny blondes are popular and bitchy, but stereotyping brown people is wrong.

Overall it wasn't bad, but I have no desire to read the next issue because, at the end of the day, the story is pointless and boring. The characters are boring. I read at least 50 different manga and manhua last year that were better, and could have qualified for the Hugo.

Unification Through Deregulation

2013-05-02T07:36:00.003-07:00

It occurs to me that as countries deregulate, their economic and political systems become more similar to each other. Thus, the goal of unified world government could be achieved more effectively by libertarianism than by the brutal authoritarianism that the UN hopes to impose one day.

In the real world, a society is more than the sum of its government regulations. It is composed of history, culture, shared values, countercurrents of these, civil institutions, fashion trends, accidents, and sunk costs. So even two identical governments could rule completely different countries. Whereas Iceland was a functioning anarchy for centuries, and the USA was once populated by free people who governed themselves, other cultures with a less evolved zeitgeist plunge into barbarism when you take the boots off their necks.

Power structures form in a vacuum, and expand until they can expand no further; gradually, they can become less centralized. This is the typical progression from chaos, to tribalism, to Monarchy, to aristocracy, to democracy, and thence to anarchy.

Sadly, the evolution of society is not an inevitable progression of the historical dialectic, as some idiots would like to believe.

Anti-Drone Missiles for all Americans

2013-03-07T10:12:00.002-08:00

Item 1) The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Item 2) There are at least 5 million AR-15 rifles in private hands in the US.

Item 3) We are on the cusp of being technologically and economically capable of producing military grade firearms in the home via 3-D printing, not to mention mail order micro-industry and local machine shops.

Item 4) The Obama Administration today released a 16 page legal document stating that they can blow up American citizens, in the United States, without so much as a trial, a warrant, or probable cause. This violates the 5th, 10th amendments as well as Habeus Corpus and Posse Comitatus.

Therefore, we must immediately move to design and produce an open-source anti-aircraft system for home use in the United States.

Atheism

2012-10-24T16:29:00.001-07:00

I don't understand why some Atheists are so angry. Well, I do- their anger at the world and their rejection of the existence of God stem from the same emotional issues. But let's pretend that all Atheists are, in fact, basing their position on a rational analysis of fact. Some are. A flawed logic, perhaps, but logic nonetheless.

Essentially, I cannot accept any Atheist believing in free will. Even if the universe turns out to be nondeterministic at the quantum level, I hardly think that a nondeterministic entangled system having a vague and nebulous effect on the electrical impulses in a bowl of grey tissue can count as free will.

For practical purposes, sure, it makes sense to posit free will. In a philosophical sense, I would also argue that the absence of free will would mean that I have no choice but to believe in it.

But on some kind of absolute, existential, or moral plane? Free will has no basis in scientific fact. I am hard pressed to make any philosophical argument for it other than the above, and without either a scientific or philosophical basis, any of the historical evidence for free will is meaningless. History can only be interpreted in light of our knowledge of how the world works.

So why are some Atheists so vituperatively, vociferously angry? Theists literally have no choice but to worship their gods and perform meaningless rituals. The small minority of violence that is performed in the name of religion is inevitable. You can't be angry at an asteroid for obliterating all life on Earth. In fact, you can't be angry at an asteroid for its failure to believe in the historical theory of evolution.

Well, anger is merely a biochemical indication that you perceive unfairness. So if you believe, deep down, that 'fairness' can be applied to physical reality, other than the specific actions of humans, then you can be angry all the time.

Boggles my mind

2012-02-25T07:41:00.002-08:00

The mainstream Republicans won't support Ron Paul because, while he is the most intelligent and principled of the candidates, he's kind of old and funny looking and his defense policy would kill us all.

Yet even CNN recognizes that the Ron Paul budget would not cut defense.

Our current global network of forward basis was our strategy to contain Soviet aggression in the fase of their possession of long range bombers and later, short-range nuclear missiles. Later it allowed us to project force to their periphery, where we countered their attempts to turn countries like Viet Nam into satellite states.

Now, although there are certainly tactical benefits, the majority of our bases only serve to stage peacekeepers in various 3rd world hellholes or defend Western Europe. In total, they reduce our national security for two reasons.

First, the greatest existential threat to the United States is its overspending. Our foreign bases, and particularly the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, cost us incredible sums of money. Of course, the media is pretending we left Iraq so they can get Obama another turn, and in fact our presence there is reduced, but the money continues to bleed out.

Second, a few of our bases antagonize the natives to no end. Saudi Arabia neither needs nor deserves our protection, so why do we have troops there? To support Kuwait? Which Supports Iraq? Where we have no national interest anyway?

I was somewhat ambivalent on the invasion of Iraq, but it had some tactical advantages. Now it does not. The current withdrawal timetable, which was negotiated by bush, is fine with me, although I would like to see all of our soldiers withdrawn except for the embassy.

Afghanistan? We owe them nothing. If they want to live in peace and freedom they're perfectly capable of doing it. They simply choose not to. It's not Afghanistan vs the Taliban - the Taliban is made up of Afghans.

The last vestiges of American culture also face a threat from the continued immigration from less civilized nations. Our troops would be better used defending the Mexican border than the Iranian border.

Can it be called Dialogue?

2011-03-15T20:20:00.001-07:00

Socrates: that's how I got my job
Socrates: I had to charm them for a couple hours
Socrates: they said I was a great presenter
Marie Antoinette: Oh. You mean.. like when I smile too much, act polite and sweet?
Socrates: sort of
Marie Antoinette: What do you do?
Socrates: well, first of all I have to carry on a normal conversation
Socrates: which I don't usually do
Socrates: make eye contact, smile, mirror the other person's body language and react approvingly to what they say
Socrates: pretend to be interested
Socrates: figure out what they want to hear and say it
Marie Antoinette: Like a dating sim.
Socrates: pretend to be whatever they think I should be
Socrates: yeah
Socrates: I mean, I'm a genius and they should let me run the company
Socrates: but the fact is humans perceive things through the filter of their own preconceptions
Marie Antoinette: mm.
Socrates: so I can't be honest or they will take reality and twist it around
Socrates: I have to give them something they can comprehend, and make it positive

The Belly of the Beast

2011-03-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

As government bureaucracy expands, more drones are hired. They inevitably vote for increased government bureaucracy.

Can you blame the peasants for blindly following their own self interest? It's apparent that most people are simply too stupid to know right from wrong in abstract contexts. The slight nagging they may feel is overwhelmed by the high pay, benefits, job security, and propaganda.

Those who knowingly feed the beast are the root of the problem.

Thought for the Day

2011-01-26T11:20:00.001-08:00

The purpose of Public Education is to create a populace that is incapable of reading the Constitution.

Facebook reports to the FBI

2010-10-09T18:44:00.000-07:00

I have it on good authority that if someone makes a terrorist threat on Facebook, even if it's not publicly available, the FBI will literally show up at their door within 24 hours with a bomb squad.

Other crimes might set the system off as well. You've been warned!

There's also this case where a blog post possibly led to someone have a GPS tracking device mounted on their car without a warrant. The 9th circuit denies that the 5-0 need a warrant for such things, but that should be overturned.

If Pot was legal, Heath Ledger would be alive

2010-10-06T15:59:00.000-07:00

Not much to say about this. I support the legalization of crack and highly purified opium products as well, but it's really inexcusable that marijuana is illegal. There are lots of sick people and dumbass stoners who could benefit from legalization; the legal system would shrivel a bit and be a bit less corrupt; secondary crime would decrease; border control would be slightly improved; an important industry would come back to our dying economy. Pobresita.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Southern Baptists were responsible for the ban on narcotics, which makes me wonder if I should switch over to Deism. The whole pro-slavery thing was embarrassing too. Maybe back East the churches are more about prudery and laws and such.

Inflexibility of Government Spending as a Recession Enhancer

2010-10-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

Well, we all know that recessions are caused by imperfect information in the market (though not all GDP decline is necessarily a recession as we usually use the term. For example, WWII France).

The economy misallocates its resources, often as the result of a speculative bubble, wherein resources are invested with the knowledge that the investment's fundamentals may be sound. When the bubble ends and some group of investors is standing around confusedly like the loser in a game of musical chairs, the economy must correct itself and liquidate a good chunk of the unsound industry. Layoffs and bankruptcies ensue, which ripple through the economy and other industries lose jobs temporarily as a secondary effect.

Better information and credit would eliminate these side effects, but they don't exist. Credit is actually worse during a recession.

The exception is government spending like teachers, Medicare, and military. While the rest of the economy is shrinking and wriggling to readjust, government programs continue blithely along. This may seem helpful at first glance, since they don't suffer the unnecessary adjustments that some other industries do.

However, the result is that the percentage of spending on government services actually increases. While businesses are cutting employees, inventory, hours, profits, and investment, their taxes + monetary inflation stay the same. Reducing (taxes + inflation) proportionately over the course of the recession would help. That's actually similar to what the Keynesians recommend.

The problem is that any decrease in taxes without an equal decrease in spending increases the deficit. Bonds are issued, the monetary supply inflates, and the result is that inflation costs the public as much as the taxes did.

Unfortunately, it will be decades before economists bother to prove this idea one way or another: that government spending and taxation should be cut proportionate to GDP declines in recessions.

Right Wing Critique of the Week - Taylor Swift

2010-09-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

A young singer/songwriter/guitar player

Though I doubt she plays guitar any more.

Genre: Pop vocals, pop rock rythms, superficial Nashville country style

Lyrics: Coherent within each song, as deep as American pop culture gets, nice rhymes and clever wordplay. Though not all lyrics are written by Swift.

Music: Produced by a professional band that was probably assembled by coldblooded studio machinery. Tracks have the clean, empty sound that make Good Charlotte and AC/DC great. Though AC/DC was before the digital era and you can practically hear the needle scratching on your CD. I'd like to see someone autotune Bon Scott. However, the tunes are good, catchy, and contain a moderate amount of creativity in their execution.

Taylor Swift (album): debut, produced before she sold out to major labels, possibly one of the best albums of the decade, which is pretty sad. The album was initially released in 2006 but didn't become a mainstream success immediately. It eventually went quadruple platinum and has extra bonus tracks on the Walmart edition.

Fearless (album): Attempt to quickly cash in on the mainstream popularity of 2008. Not that bad, but it doesn't transcend its idiot pop singer roots.

Mine (single, 2010): Better than anything on Fearless.

I'm not quite sure why I'm reviewing something this popular, but I always think that Taylor Swift's genuine talents will be overlooked when she's compared to similar music that is, in fact, total garbage. I hope she will actually improve and attain some musical greatness, on the level of Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney. Of course, where would Axl Rose be without Slash? He'd be making Chinese Democracy, that's where. And maybe Paul McCartney is just lucky to have been friends with John Lennon. I don't know.

The whole environment is... nonconducive to developing musical talent in pop stars. Metal guitarists, sure, but not pop stars. Oh well.

Right Wing Critique of the Week - My Little Bride

2010-09-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

My Little Bride is a highly rated Korean movie which is available to pirate with English subtitles.

It's a romantic comedy about a 24ish guy who marries a 16 year old because of their grandparents' wishes. The key thing to remember is that Korean romantic comedies, unlike American romantic comedies, are funny and romantic. They don't make you want to kill Julia Roberts and then yourself.

Obviously the first theme is the dissonance between modern society and the older culture, which included arranged marriages for adolescents. But that's really just used to set up the situation. There's less comedy and more romanticism than I would have expected based on the premise, but it's all good. I enjoyed the whole thing. Actually, it had better characterization than most movies I've seen, and the plot was good. It wasn't particularly complex. Episodic, almost. But the running time was 115 minutes and none of it was wasted.

Toward the end there are more school scenes and after the Assembly scene at the end, I wondered: This movie has elements of wish fulfillment, but are they directed at 16 year old girls who want to marry 20-something guys as well as the more-obvious vice-versa? What does it say about our culture that those desires are both acknowledged but not accepted?

I'm not sure how a Korean sees it. The age difference is frowned upon somewhat, but there were no angry posses of villagers like I've had to face in the US.

I recommend the movie. 8/10 stars. The main drawback is it's not very exciting.

Net Neutrality is a Stupid Idea

2010-09-01T21:42:00.000-07:00

We are faced with the specter of all sorts of slightly annoying hijinks on the part of broadband providers. "Oh noes! Comcast might slow down my access to Hughesnet.com!" Despite the Web being 17 years old, no one has violated the de facto net neutrality we have today. There are disincentives to do so. Even if someone did give preferred access to Google and the MPAA, it wouldn't matter at all. Even in China, which is a COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP, people can access prohibited materials; they simply run the risk of disappearing into a gulag should they do so.

(I'm sure this post puts me on the list of prohibited sites, not that anyone reads it to begin with.)

So, in the face of theoretical inconvenience, all the liberal geeks on the internets want to institute a byzantine regulatory regime. Because, you know, regulations make you free. Black is white. The chocolate ration has been increased.

Or is it simply an effort to begin the inevitable destruction of the frontier of free thought and untaxable, anonymous trade?

Right Wing Critique of the Week - Jack Ketchum

2010-08-17T20:31:00.000-07:00

Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door is the most horrifying movie ever made. At least, outside of Japan, and yet legal to watch in America. I mean, I like little girls in movies, like Hitgirl and... hmmm, Dakota Fanning is uncute and annoying... The one with Elle Fanning where she had OCD was pretty good. And my bff is into BDSM.

But combining little girls and BDSM, while it sounds good in principle, is cringe-inducing. Ever seen Tetsuo the Iron Man? That was popcorn material. Ever read The Hate Factory, a based on true events account of a prison riot? Yawn. At least the prison snitch died within a few hours. That's nothing.

Maybe I'm stretching here, because I've never seen Hostel, but usually when adults are gruesomely mutilated in a film, you think, "He probably voted for Obama so he deserves whatever he gets."

We almost turned the movie off before the climax, but it was in Blu-ray.

Now, there is a certain artistic argument for creating works that stimulate unpleasant emotion, and generally the more extreme the emotion generated, the more successful the art is. I prefer Monet and sword-fighting strippers myself, but those are sadly lacking in Hollywood. Note to studio execs- I have a scifi series to replace whatever Fox aborts this season. Hint- pressurized bubbles on the moon don't allow guns and don't require much clothing. If Summer Glau knows how to act yet, we can hire her.

Anyway, The Girl Next Door had plenty of "OOHHH!" but not enough enjoyment. I also felt that the last half was too heavy on the dungeon scenes and the plot wasn't as tightly woven as in the beginning. The foreshadowing was less stupid than in most movies, but the bluffs- where you expect something scary to happen but it doesn't- were pretty well done.

Other reviewers said that watching the movie made you a sex offender, but that it wasn't that graphic. Well, you don't see certain things, but I hardly think that horrified bystanders, flailing limbs and screaming are "not graphic."

So I don't really recommend the movie on the basis of its low entertainment value. At least the ending is ok.

Right Wing Critique of the Week

2010-07-31T09:20:00.000-07:00

Honor Harrington series, by David Weber

The saga of a space warship officer in the year 4000.

Pros: Exciting, page turners, good escapism, better than action pulps like Clive Cussler, orbital mechanics are somewhat realistic and integral to combat tactics

Cons? Well, first of all, the situations have all the ethical gray areas of a yin yang. The characters are pure good or pure evil. The good guys, of course, are not only brave, courteous, and thrifty, but they can fight, sail, fly, shoot, and navigate delicate interstellar political intrigues with ease. The Bad Guys are incompetent commies and/or religious nuts who rape, murder, betray each other and do everything in their power to hand victory to the Good Guys. There is a satisfying amount of injury and death from all the action, though. The Good Guys don't escape totally unscathed.

The books verge on fantasy-fulfillment of fanfic levels. Money, fame, glory, medals, knighthoods, titles, promotions and prestigious jobs are showered on Honor after every major event. It's a little excessive, even considering the theme is supposed to be the rise of a legendary admiral and her absurdly awesome exploits. In the third book she just does her job, nothing particularly spectacular, and once again hosannas fall from the sky and a single shaft of sunlight illumines her. In the fourth book, she learns to shoot in about two weeks and becomes apparently the greatest duelist in known space. Oh, and everybody is young and beautiful and lives for 200 years.

The technology makes sense, sort of, but it's all clearly designed to make large 17th century-esque naval engagements necessary. I sincerely hope that 2000 years from now, battleships sailing at 3000 times the speed of light through hyperspace will not need thousands of midshipmen to trim the sails. Yes, sails.

And why are the majority of the officers women? I haven't kept count, but it seems to me that the numbers should be equal, or male-skewed, particularly since astrogators are required to do math by hand.

Elizabeth Moon is better. Just flat-out better.

After writing that, I read books 4 through 8. I have to say, #1, 2, 7 and 8 are the best, but as the series goes on the books become needlessly drawn out and sometimes redundant. Chapter 19 of In Enemy Hands is nothing but introspection, and it recapitulates introspection that was carried out in chapter 5 or so. Is Weber padding his page counts and turning out the series for the money? Well, of course, and so would I. The padding is generally high quality material, but it's not space battle action. Over the course of the series Honor Harrington doesn't actually fight that many battles. She spends a year on medical leave, 2 years on vacation, a year or two guarding convoys. I was a bit disappointed with the lack of exploding spaceships. Particularly Field of Dishonor, which was an interesting excursion but probably could have been done better.

Books 5 through 8 are great plot-wise, but they digress into unnecessary scenes and description quite a bit. Every time an enemy ship is introduced, Weber spends 2 to 3 pages introducing the officers and telling us what color hair they have. Then the ship explodes and they all die.

Politically, the series is written from the point of view of a neo-con. The author's opinion is that government-run education is great, as long as it's not too socialist. I should be unsubtle here and say I find that a contradiction. There's almost no moralizing, but his mainstream redstate outlook does make me roll my eyes from time to time.

Wry: an all-purpose adjective that Weber thinks makes a paragraph funny. The characters have yet to say anything funny, but they grin wryly, speak wryly, and supposedly have wicked/devilish senses of humor. There was an in joke between Harrington and McKeon that the other characters didn't get.. and I didn't either. I suspect that there was no hidden meaning and that it was meant to be witty as a statement in and of itself. I'm not really sure.

Verdict: The plot could be tightened up a lot, but it's good when you finally get there.

"13-year-old girl dominates Little League"

2010-07-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

That's a yahoo headline. Tautologies never cease.

Laid Off

2010-07-05T18:32:00.000-07:00

After being an unemployed engineer for nearly 2 years, it was somewhat of a relief to be an employed manual laborer for 8 dollars an hour. But all good things must end, particularly when Democrats control the senate, and so I was laid off. Over half of the company's monthly expenses are taxes, or so I guesstimate.

So I got 3.5 months of work in, and, by wearing Goodwill jeans and eating peanut butter sandwiches every day, I was able to save up some money. Unfortunately this money doesn't really exist; my roommate owes it to me and he hasn't been paid since April. He's in the military; he just hasn't been paid. They may never pay him. In fact they're trying to find an excuse to kick him out so they don't have to pay the medical bills for the health problems he's developed in the military.

I wouldn't mind, although if I'm eligible for unemployment I still won't be able to pay the rent; it's just that I haven't seen my fiancee in 15 months and I'd rather marry her than not.

The sub-moral of the story is that the world is evil. If not for specific malicious actions on the parts of others, I would be in my 3-bedroom home with my wife right now, not slowly starving to death so I can use an absent relative's computer to apply for job # 400.

The moral is to avoid lashing out at other people, even if it seems like a good idea for a moment. At some point violent revolution, vendetta or war becomes necessary, but how to be sure that your personal desire for revenge isn't clouding your judgment?

Right Wing Critique of the Week - Cory Doctorow

2010-06-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present

I picked it up because Cory Doctorow is a cool name.

Doctorow is a Canadian and an idiot liberal, but it's not glaringly obvious in the stories. In this collected work there are prefaces where he says that GM workers are being screwed by the greedy corporation, which is trying to redirect their ire toward illegal immigrant scapegoats.

What? Maybe other greedy corporations are doing that, but the UAWs are overpaid and the union has destroyed the US car industry with the slight help of regulators. I don't think it's possible for the car makers to have agreed to the current pay and benefits without the implicit threat of government-imposed arbitration, violence against picket breakers, etc. It's possible, and in Iacocca's autobiography he has nothing bad to say about the unions, but... the UAWs are not being screwed.

Anyway, I found Overclocked to be mediocre. The writing was fine but the ideas (central to any sci fi short story) were eehhhhhhh. A row-boat with AI. Non-three-laws robots from China competing with three laws robots in the North American police state. I can't even remember the other ones.

Contrast to Robert Sawyer, whose writing is poorly executed but the ideas are original and somewhat genre-bending. I prefer his work.

Too much wasted space as well. It didn't drag, but it was not as concise as short stories should be.

Government as bacterial cultures

2010-06-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

A model for historical progression of government... kinda like the historical dialectic tautology... came to me recently.

Picture a grey field of nutrients, or people. Entropy is high and a state of chaos, a Hobbesian state of nature, rules.

But since germs are everywhere, little black patterns of lines form and spread. Bacterial cultures don't really look like that, but we're talking about governments. These are radial patterns with very little organization, but they have an obvious center. Eventually the networks cover 99.9% of the dish. They fight wars and sometimes split, reform, die and are replaced.

There are two opposing trends:
Over time, each network/government grows older, more complex, and centralizes its power until it dies from bureaucratic inertia.
But the next generation is less centralized- there are more networks, in less space, and within the networks are subgraphs with their identifiable centers of gravity.

Information technology, as well as other factors, determine the level of decentralization/self-organization of a government at birth. It ossifies and dies. But over time, the total organization of the petri dish increases.

A dictatorship based on one warrior and his loyal henchmen, no matter how absolute, has fewer rules and less complexity of regulation than an aristocracy.

Ideally I'd like to see this progression lead to a highly regulated anarchy where the individual has sovereignty but relative peace prevails... sort of like the New World Order we have today.

Will it? ehhhhhh the trend toward decentralization will end before people take responsibility for their actions.

Nonetheless, our descendants may live in a free country one day.

Substituting your own judgement for God's

2010-05-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

It's not smart in principle, but the reality is that we don't have access to God's wisdom. The Bible was targeted toward the illiterate peasants that have always composed 95% of humanity. Even the intelligent and/or educated are not so far beyond them that the message is irrelevant. Even a supergenius eats, sleeps, and reproduces- shares the same environment as all other humans.

Incidentally, I think that the "asthetic sense" is the only "higher pleasure," the only human drive that is not straightforwardly derived from evolutionary psychology or some equivalent biological theory; this sense, combined with high intelligence, produces the individuals that L. von Mises calls "creative geniuses." I do think it can be described mechanistically, so I share the view of Neal Stephenson's fictionalized Dr. Leibniz on that. In fact, that sort of dualism- simultaneous naturalistic and spiritual explanations that are completely self-reliant but coincide in all observable results- is the underpinning of my philosophical investigations. But I digress.

Are there layers and layers of meaning in the Bible that can be peeled away by successive human civilizations and ever-greater intellects to yield new insights that are irrelevant to the peasants who cannot even conceive of their existence? Maybe. In fact, I guarantee that there are, but those avenues I've explored aren't that helpful.

Extramarital sex- is it immoral? Puritans say yes. Reading Noadic law and the Torah and even, questionable though they seem, the writings of John, seem to indicate that it's all good so long as the social structures provide for the offspring's health and development. That leaves us three or more categories of readers.
1) The peasants- marry, mate, and raise the offspring in accordance with their understanding. History says this model works. Adultery and unwed mothers are frowned upon, but the "real" reason for this is that the children are either uncared for or charged to the wrong man's accounts.
2) Heretics- Like peasants, but they live like animals. If not for the welfare state, they would be repeatedly wiped out by plagues and wars like in all previous epochs.
3) Cosmopolitans- the 5%. They have the capacity for abstract thought and as a result they do what they want. Their lives illustrate the aphorism "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
4) Creative geniuses - generally focused on their work, so they behave like peasants, ie, socially conventional with occasional drastic departures from the norm.

Plenty more, and anyway, I don't like arbitrary categorization because it's only the first step toward developing an axiomatic theory.

But the point is we all draw different things from the same immutable Word of God.

So is there more room for discretion for a supergenius? A judge is allowed to sentence someone to death due to his experience and the ideological might of the government. An individual is not. Yet both are equally constrained not to murder.

I'm out of time for today.