The House of David

Monday, November 16, 2009

Card check, 2

The New Scientist is printing an idea by one David Rand of Harvard: mandate that your house and car display your wasteful ways.

Even better than voluntary displays would be laws enforcing disclosure. For example, governments could require energy companies to publish the amount of electricity used by each home and business in a searchable database. Likewise, gasoline use could be calculated if, at yearly inspections, mechanics were required to report the number of kilometres driven. Cars could be forced to display large stickers indicating average distance travelled, with inefficient cars labelled similarly to cigarettes: "Environmentalist's warning: this car is highly inefficient. Its emissions contribute to climate change and cause lung cancer and other diseases." Judging from our laboratory research, such policies would motivate people to reduce their carbon footprint.

Unlike my post on public signatures, Rand isn't running a thought experiment. Rand thinks that everything you do should be public. He disdains "possible privacy issues" where the "potential gains" are "great" enough.

The only reason to out someone else's personal data is to open them up for personal attack. David Rand is a supporter of terrorism; so, apparently, is New Scientist.

Labels: enemies, liberty, progressives

posted by Zimri on 20:39 | link |

On privilege, again

I read about the famous Columbia pimp slap last week. Camille Davis was the slappee, culminating a spirited debate over the topic of "white privilege".

Archi prof Lionel McIntyre was involved. Somehow. Or not. To hear him talk, Davis got her slapping from an transdimensional tentacle from Beyond. When "things explode" - rending the fabric of space, time, and the English language - squamous horrors just sort of find their way in. (h/t Scott Stein.)

There's nothing more I could say about the term privy-lege that I hadn't said five years ago. America has no "white privilege" any more than it has "Jewish privilege". There exist social networks and starting capital, if one happens to be born to that sort of family, but these don't apply to poor folks on a Tennessee hillside whatever their colour.

In fact if you're black and have an IQ of 125, you can do a lot better than a white person of that IQ. That's the whole point of federally-sponsored Diversity, to ensure that this happens. If anything this country sponsors privilege for blacks.

Meanwhile, I'm not impressed with the prevarications of (some of) the black blogosphere. University personnel like Lionel McIntyre, Cornel West, and Henry Gates know better than most how little they deserve their cushy jobs. That is why they are prone to tantrums. If academics like Boyce Watkins don't like being "thought of as second-class citizens", perhaps they shouldn't support policies which foist upon the academy men with second-class intellects and third-class temperaments. They can start with sincere apologies for the Hamilton Hall takeover in 1968.

Labels: enemies, race

posted by Zimri on 19:50 | link |

Monday, November 09, 2009

Armed resistance

Out on the Right-wing fringe, and maybe not so far out, there is a movement for armed resistance to the Obama/Pelosi regime.

I do not necessarily mean by that: mutiny or revolution. I am including the Oath Keepers and the Sipsey Street Irregulars. Armed resistance entails standing upon support for the Constitution - whatever the current elected officials have in mind. The term "resistance" is inherently defensive - reactionary, if you like; no aggression is implied.

This isn't a pro-democracy blog. I fully support the Constitution as the reactionary document it is. That includes support of armed resistance against Washington's "progress". If I had thought that Bush had the attitude toward the Constitution that Obama's advisor Sunstein has, I would have supported armed resistance during Bush's years too. Peaceful armed resistance. Don't Tread On Me, says the snake, and I won't bite.

Every armed citizen is a free man, and endowed with the inalienable right and duty to resist tyranny - even if the tyranny is popular. (Keeping in theme here - remember that in Greek thought, tyranny was the endstate of democracy. Today, c.f. Venezuela.)

Where I part with the furthest fringe of the Right - the birther fringe - is that I do not pretend that we are an anti-Constitutional democracy now.

And there I give you my difference with ACCDF / "Active" and Pat Dollard. Dollard is showcasing Taitz propaganda and not maintaining his comments, and thereby offering a forum for seditious lies. Where I read politically-motivated falsehoods in a civil strife, I see people trying to turn the strife into a civil war.

I get the impression that if the civil war came and the rebels arrested me: the Oath Keepers would protect me, and Pat Dollard would have me against the wall.

Labels: constitution, enemies, liberty

posted by Zimri on 20:08 | link |

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Cold heart

Christians like the Canadian who runs the Wintery Knight blog think that atheism is innately immoral and that atheists are atheists because they, too, are psychologically indisposed to decency. Wintery Knight doesn't say it outright; but when a blogger holds up Peter Atkins as a "spokesman" for atheism, and then turns around to his moral relativism, that is the conclusion he forces upon her readers.

(I started this in 18 October but couldn't post it until I'd laid out my explanation for why scientists don't like God... in their experiments.)

I don't have any brief for Atkins the moral relativist and I have no problem in saying that he is wrong. I am not even an atheist. But I used to be one; and I remain allied with atheists on every issue related to secularism and support for science. That's still the case even after reading this hit piece. We're about to find out why...

The thesis, "atheists are inherently amoral", is testable. I propose that crime is the physical implementation of a man's immorality. We'll restrict the subjects to adult males of sound mind, and compare the sets "Japan" and "Louisiana". Japan has a secular culture; Louisiana does not. Now, let's compare crime rates between Japan and Louisiana. Q., E., f'n D.

How did Wintery Knight fail? His argument associates two separate groups ("atheists" and "the immoral"). It is an ad hominem attack against all atheists through Atkins.

Wintery Knight moves on to another philosopher, Thomas Nagel, who said that "I don't want there to be a God". He didn't ask Nagel why. Scientists have answers; as explained below, if you let God into an experiment here, you have to do it everywhere else and that way lies Pakistan. Some atheists may be nothing more than nihilist punks; but Nagel is a philosopher of science, and has personal reasons for excluding God which have nothing to do with a wicked life of hedonism.

So, why does Wintery Knight pick on atheists? I don't think he's generally evil; I don't see him picking on, say, Jews or the "First Nations". As far as I'm aware he just sees atheists as enemies he wants to crush by any means fair and foul. Maybe he's insecure.

Maybe he should be insecure. There is a stronger case that Wintery Knight's brand of Christianity creates immorality. Wintery Knight arguments are endemic on the Internet. I don't think any of the Christians making such claims have ever lost a night's sleep over their own dishonest methods. Cheating is hunky dory if it's for Jesus. The right sort of cheat gets into Paradise. The wrong sort of honest man ... doesn't.

Those who point out their flaws (and not just atheists) annoy this sort of Christian. But here too, such Christians don't lose any sleep over the thought of a Richard Dawkins (say) getting shut out. They don't think "hey - this God character, he's pretty far along that ol' autistic spectrum". Oh no; they're quite looking forward to an afterlife without Dawkins. (Some of them also believe in eternal hellfire, so they've got masturbatory voyeuristic sadism working for them as well. I'm giving Wintery Knight the benefit of the doubt there though.)

Labels: enemies, science, secularism

posted by Zimri on 15:48 | link |

Bad dog!

Clearly I was wrong about Joseph Cão. He's not a vulnerable Republican trolling for RNC support; he's an unprincipled sellout.

UPDATE 11/12: If proof be needed, this cur has "said he voted for the legislation only after seeing that Democrats had the 218 votes needed for passage".

Labels: apology, enemies, republicans

posted by Zimri on 10:00 | link |

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Fort Hood

[started at 4 PM, bumped] ~~Several~~ people dressed as military have shot up troops at Fort Hood. Death toll is at 12 and rising.

This isn't a sniper up on a clock tower picking people off, or some grunt tossing a grenade into a tent (despicable as those actions are). This is a premeditated attack, ~~with several people involved,~~ and timed perfectly. In addition the perpetrators had to have had military training to get this close. MSNBC says it was a Major who was the ringleader. (h/t, Ace at first - then Drudge.)

This is designed to weaken trust between soldiers and their officers, and to discourage volunteers for the Armed Forces.

Is the date significant - the day of Guy Fawkes? Was it an anarchist? I don't know how much credence to put on the "Arabic sounding name". I think it bears waiting to see what happened. The story is "developing".

Whoever did it, and whyever, it was an act of war.

Pray for the victims.

Ensure it doesn't happen again.

UPDATE 4:13: Malik Hassan, a convert to Islam? Ugh. Jihad successful. I'm starting to get angry.

UPDATE 4:47: Yeah, there were a bunch of posts earlier which were more general and/or lighthearted. I'd written them earlier, before 4 PM. I'm bumping this one to the top of the queue.

UPDATE 5:02: No-one's walked back the name yet. It's distinctive. The name "Hassan" refers to 'Ali's son the Shi'a prince and in its natural habitat it is, still, Shi'ite. A name like "Malik", without the "Abdal" in front of it, implies kingship. Shi'ites until about 1979 or so didn't have a tradition of feeling powerful, and not really until very recently in Iraq; you wouldn't see these names Malik and Hassan together in the Near East. Add to that "Nidal" (Abu Nidal...?). I think we're dealing with a ~~Black Muslim~~ someone who has hated us for a long time, and ~~turned~~ Muslim ~~as a manifestation of that hate~~.

UPDATE 5:08: ~~If it sounds like I'm calling Charles Johnson a worthless pile of slime, that's because I am.~~

UPDATE 5:10: I see that the media is insulting Killeen and generally refusing to name the beast. Heckuva job, guys.

UPDATE 5:38: They released his picture... so the end of my 5:02 post was a jump-to-conclusions mat. Corrected. Sincere apologies. I'm leaving the thing up there as a monument to my carelessness.

UPDATE 6:57: My fallback idea was Baathist from Syria or Iraq. Turns out he was Syrian. Not a convert. Mind you THAT mistake wasn't my fault. I think whoever started the "convert" meme was thinking along the same lines I was - that pious Muslims don't prefer the name "Malik". Unless they become pious...

UPDATE 11/10: After this much time, no-one's found any other shooters, so I'm overdue for the correction.

I'm also trying to figure out if I owe Charles Johnson an apology for insulting him on account of his comment that the shooter's name might signify a non-Muslim black man. While totally bogus, and arguably racist; at the time I was thinking he might be a Muslim black man, which was about half as bogus but equally racist (c.f. my grovel at 5:38). Johnson has since corrected his stance to be more in line with the facts; although he's not come to full terms with those facts, that it was not just an Awlaki jihad but a victory for the Umma.

Labels: apology, enemies, islam, race

posted by Zimri on 17:10 | link |

Saturday, October 31, 2009

On flu shots

I don't distrust the idea of the State saying that influenza vaccines are a good idea. If the State wanted to control us with injections, they could sneak stuff in to the other vaccinations: polio, measles, etc.

As for the hucksters claiming that vaccines cause autism, I see them as enemies. Behind that claim is the assumption that people on the autistic spectrum are diseased. I am on that spectrum myself and I take that talk personally. Beyond that, the claim is bumcombe; autism is genetic. Extreme forms of autism are a problem, but they won't be solved by lies.

(Some disclosure here: I was a regular at LGF's Parachat lounge, whose regulars migrated to Table 9. When LGF went with a pro-vaccine stance - which, I must add, opposed conspiracy-theorists on the Left as well as Right, here - the people in both lounges mounted an insurgency against it. For that, Charles Johnson shut down the former lounge. I am, like Moldbug, a believer in sovereignty. I applauded Johnson's decision and I still support it. I have more mixed feelings about the attendant mass banning since dubbed "The Night Of The Vaccine Needles". But all that is over and done with now.)

I'm more concerned about the State mandating who can get the vaccines. And, yes, there is a concern that the State might force a shortage by its own policies; and to fight the emergency, demand control over the healthcare system. In the Left's history of the past decade, Bush used 9/11 as a pretext to curtail civil liberties. The Left has been casting about for its own emergencies to do the same. The economic crisis has already led to mass takeovers of our industries and banks. Global warming is another supposed crisis, but the people have been losing faith in that.

H1N1 could serve as the next "manbearpig" that we all have to Unite Against. But, so far and touch wood, it's not acted as our generation's 1918 pandemic or even as SARS. H1N1 has just acted like... the flu.

Labels: bullshit, enemies, lgf, progressives

posted by Zimri on 17:54 | link |

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Ends and means

Looking through the recent "tags", I see that a strong plurality of posts I've done here have been about "conservatives" and mostly hostile at that. This is an artifact of the time I've spent hanging around (and occasionally trolling in) Conservative and generally right-wing blogs. If I spent more time at the blogs of Progressives (or Liberals), people being the primates they are, I might find similar, or at least analogous, problems with them.

I have not been disappointed.

For instance, take the blog "Holocaust Controversies", which I linked at the end of "LGF Considered Harmful". A first draught of that post below was a comment to the HC blog. HC delivered a few retorts, which mostly boiled down to "lighten up", but some were substantive and bear reproducing:

So Charles pointed out that mere appearance of V[an]J[ones]'s name on a document on a truther site (which is known for putting other names there of people who did not give their consent) doesn't necessarily prove that he is a truther. He is right. Such a crime! He also noted that Van Jones is too far left to be in the admin. Somehow you omitted this.
Since when is ACORN a "criminal enterprise"? And please, don't bring up videos of a few individual ACORN employees being naughty. It doesn't prove that ACORN is a criminal enterprise. (Not that I give a damn about ACORN. But let's not be ridiculous.)
[Killgore Trout trolling Hot Air] was a clumsy act of anti-racist sabotage.

The first of these has two parts: whether Van Jones was in the Truther movement, and whether Charles Johnson supported Van Jones.

The first is an historical question which may be demonstrated via the documents of the relevant period, which would be late 2001 to Election Day 2008. By the principles of historical research, Van Jones's trutherism should have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Buttressing the point, Jones was at a truther rally in San Francisco in 9/11/2002 (from topsecretk9). Against the counterargument, two of the guys covering for the man, Lerner and Zinn, are hard Left themselves, and long known by responsible academics as ideologues; and these two were also signatories to Truther events (from Ace).

Time was when LGF itself would be a clearinghouse for commenters to run that level of fact-checking. Now, LGF bans people who find this stuff. So when Charles Johnson covered for Jones, while still saying he was "too far Left": what Johnson was doing was dismissing a genuine evil (trutherism) and forbidding talk about it; while allowing for a relatively harmless political disagreement ("far Left"). Jones shouldn't be allowed to get away from his Truther past; and here was Johnson letting him do it. HC may think the view of the Right is hypocritical; my view, histrionic and aspergerish. But Van Jones's trutherism ought to be an objective conclusion from the facts at hand.

Let's talk ACORN next. ACORN was always against the rule of law in a capitalist society; which laws it views as a tool of the ruling class. I mentioned in the link (which HC didn't follow) that ACORN wasn't technically an inherent criminal enterprise but that it should be. Reading more about ACORN, though, I find that it got into the Motor Voter campaign, which was designed to create voter registrations without allowing checks into actual voters. ACORN became an explicit mafia at that point, where before it was just a parasite.

Lastly, Killgore Trout. An "anti-racist" action might be to publish a paper, or even a comment at LGF, refuting Putnam or otherwise detailing how races might mix and diversity be celebrated thereby. KT instead elected to go to a Conservative forum in the middle of the night, knowing that the moderator was asleep, and to post racist comments. KT didn't prove anything about any HotAir moderators and he didn't inspire any HotAir commenters to cuddle up and sing kumbaya. What he did do was to reinforce the prejudice Black visitors to any Conservative site might have, which is that White Conservatives are racist. This played to a racial stereotype others have of White Conservatives and, therefore, was racist.

"Holocaust Controversies" concludes, "I will survive". He doesn't care about the harm LGF does to history (in the case of Jones), to the nation (ACORN), or to race relations (Killgore). HC is just glad the harm is done "to certain people" which means, all Conservatives; and not just to the people with holocaust on their minds, the pretended concern of his site.

"Holocaust Controversies" is not a principled blog. It is not willing to expose Leftist websites, organisations, or celebrities to the same level of scrutiny it exposes Rightists. What HC has to say about RS McCain, or other Conservatives, will have to be balanced against that knowledge.

Labels: enemies, lgf, progressives

posted by Zimri on 20:40 | link |

Little Green Footballs Considered Harmful

I am seeing an ongoing fight between Robert Stacy McCain of "The Other McCain" and Charles Johnson of "Little Green Footballs". McCain has the support of the general right wing. Johnson has received the support of Liberals.

McCain is, I believe, a Conservative who has accepted the logical conclusion of Conservative thought in the South. He is a racist, although since I am an evolutionist myself I must give that a guarded pass. Less forgivably he is a Confederate. That last is nothing to be proud of, and it appears he is un-proud enough that he has tried to hide many of his comments he had posted in FreeRepublic.

Johnson for his part has had "much to be modest about" himself, lately, and in this post I will lay out that case.

Johnson has banned close to two thousand people from his site over the past couple years. At first, given the rules Johnson had established, many of those deserved it. But the current flood of bannees have been banned not because they are racists, or creationists, or general thread disruptors. They were banned because, LGF having supported anti-American saboteurs close to the Obama administration, the commenters objected.

The saboteurs I have in mind are, firstly Van Jones the hard-left "ex" Truther, and shortly thereafter the Alinskyist criminal enterprise ACORN. Johnson's support of these scum was made public in the Right not by McCain (then considered a rather extreme figure). It was the centre-Right (if foul-mouthed) Ace of Spades who called Johnson out. Hundreds of LGF's commenters agreed with Ace of Spades that Johnson was in the wrong; and they took it personally, as a betrayal of all LGF had stood for. If they said so - wham, out the door.

(My own account at LGF, "Zimriel", had been banned already in 30 June; I deal with some of that here.)

Yes, Conservatives are an inherently non-intellectual movement with a pack mentality. Yes, Johnson has turned over a rock. But Johnson's swift move over to the hard Left, and the tyrannical way he runs his blog, have discredited him, and bolstered his enemies.

Since then, Johnson has only moved further. Johnson has been an accessory after the fact for the deliberate act of racist sabotage by his enforcer Killgore Trout. And he's deleted at least hundreds of thousands of comments I know of, maybe millions; in some cases in mere spite against, for instance, buzzsawmonkey who was a supporter of LGF too. He has turned a dozen or so formerly critically-thinking commenters into slavish sycophants and bullies; hundreds more are lurking in fear and sorrow wishing they could have their community back. It's like Ukraine shtetls in the 1800s over there.

To put it in computer terms, Little Green Footballs is to be Considered Harmful.

To the McCain skeptics like Barrett Brown and Holocaust Controversies who are citing Charles Johnson: He's just using McCain, and you, to get his credibility back and this time from the Left. He'll stab you in the back too once his site crawls back up in the Alexa ratings.

Labels: enemies, lgf

posted by Zimri on 16:31 | link |

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Layout changes

As you can see, I've reposted my blog under a new template.

I wasn't sure how much I still believed in any of the political stuff I once believed. I'll start slow. I remain as misanthropic, suspicious, and anti-democratic as I always was. So we'll put Mencius Moldbug on the blogroll. More links can join him "organically".
We'll keep the greenish-on-black theme I'd inherited from Carlene the "Misanthropic Bitch". (Remember her? No? Get off my lawn!)
This version should be a little easier on the eyes. The other colours should be less glaring.
Words are on the left now, links on the right. This is because of smartphones.
I finally figured out how to use Blogger for archives.

As to why I took down the blog: At first, I was trying to switch jobs and I didn't feel comfortable with people seeing what was here. While that was going on, my own political stance went through the wringer. I contributed to Little Green Footballs, mostly, and you might find some of my stuff there; although I expect my contributions are deleted by now.

As to why I'm restarting this thing: I've been steadily posting more and more substantive comments on other sites, concerning how I understand the world. People are taking offence to these comments. The comments are creating enemies: defined as, people willing to take the time to follow my screenname around the Internet, to dig up past comments, and to discredit me everywhere. Now, I don't have a problem with enemies. (I'm not in control over someone else's emotions; and I'm not important enough in the scale of things - I expect the enemies to find something better to do in the long term.) My problem is that I can't easily clarify a comment that I leave somewhere else. If you think I'm dangerous enough to warrant an expulsion off teh internets: at least make the case based on my comments here, and not on someone else's interpretation of some dashed-off troll-post I dropped weeks ago (or longer) elsewhere.

Labels: enemies, layout, lgf, misanthropy