March 2007 Archives

Well, I expected my ex-country's government to have a totally spineless response to the casus belli and flaunted flouting of the Geneva Convention by Iran, and at least they have shown marginally more spine than I was expecting.

This, however, should do a whole lot for our reputation in the world, now we've moved on from merely disregarding the wishes of our erstwhile "allies" to stabbing our actual allies in the back.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/017191.php

Goddamned worthless, treacherous, feckless, hypocritical, useless Pecksniffian pinko.

An quick informal poll, ladies and gentlemen. When one considers the doors between spacecraft compartments, analogous to the watertight doors of ships and submarines against the possibility of hull breach, what should they be called:

• Spacetight doors
• Airtight doors
• Pressure doors
• Something else?

Answers in a comment, please.

I must be mellowing in my approaching middle age.  I seem to have reached the point of not wanting to offend people, specifically to such an extent that I suppress my urge to comment something particularly egregious with “Your ignorance of <big-list-of-counterexamples> is truly spectacular.”

Well, either that, or I've lost my taste for arguing fruitlessly against people's bizarre emotional requirements.

From Spiegel Online:

He beat her and threatened her with murder. But because husband and wife were both from Morocco, a German divorce court judge saw no cause for alarm. It's a religion thing, she argued.

[...]

The case seems simply too strange to be true. A 26-year-old mother of two wanted to free herself from what had become a miserable and abusive marriage. The police had even been called to their apartment to separate the two -- both of Moroccan origin -- after her husband got violent in May 2006. The husband was forced to move out, but the terror continued: Even after they separated, the spurned husband threatened to kill his wife.

A quick divorce seemed to be the only solution -- the 26-year-old was unwilling to wait the year between separation and divorce mandated by German law. She hoped that as soon as they were no longer married, her husband would leave her alone. Her lawyer, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk agreed and she filed for immediate divorce with a Frankfurt court last October. They both felt that the domestic violence and death threats easily fulfilled the "hardship" criteria necessary for such an accelerated split.

In January, though, a letter arrived from the judge adjudicating the case. The judge rejected the application for a speedy divorce by referring to a passage in the Koran that some have controversially interpreted to mean that a husband can beat his wife. It's a supposed right which is the subject of intense debate among Muslim scholars and clerics alike."The exercise of the right to castigate does not fulfill the hardship criteria as defined by Paragraph 1565 (of German federal law)," the daily Frankfurter Rundschau quoted the judge's letter as saying. It must be taken into account, the judge argued, that both man and wife have Moroccan backgrounds.

See, this is where multiculturalism and moral relativism get you; to the point where a supposedly Western-descended legal system is incapable of recognising that wife-beating is an expression of barbarism and depravity and has no place whatsoever in any culture with any pretensions to civilisation. (As for cultures that don't at least have pretensions of civilisation, they don't have any place on the clean Earth.)

The moral nihility that produced this verdict, along with the half-dozen moral nihilities I expect to e-mail or comment explaining how this is perfectly reasonable, ought to be lined up and shot in the name of common decency. Unfortunately, the commonly decent are too much so to do it.  Funny, that, in an entirely non-humorous way.

There are ants all over the place here.

I hate ants.

Ants must all die.

This would be an example of just how randomly things get accreted in the worldbuilding process.

As I go through the day, absorbing my usual big ol' heap of infoglut, I happen upon a minor article suggesting that the pleasure derived from sexual bondage resulted from, in neurological terms, a low-level activation of the same pathways responsible for capture-bonding: Stockholm Syndrome, battered person syndrome, slave mentality, etc. (It wasn't originally this article, but some related source, no doubt.)

Now, assuming that is the case, then given that capture-bonding pathways are already on the canonical list of "atavistic responses" that the Imperial eugenicists edited out of feral old H. sapiens rudis on the way to H. sapiens superior, it seems that bondage is off the sexual menu as a side effect of that.

Scribble, scribble. Note that for the files, even though it seems extraordinarily unlikely that it would ever come up. Also, per this, consider knock-on effects on military basic training and other group initiation issues in post-transsophont age history.

From little references are cultural features built.

(Hat tip: Devil's Kitchen. Warning: generally not for the faint of heart, at least where strong language is concerned. Probably also NSFW for those of you with ein filterfuehrer at the office.)

Quoth Lord Pearson of Rannoch many telling things on reform of the House of Lords and the EU, summarising with:

I say this system is the antithesis of our democracy because, as I have reminded your Lordships more than once, the central principle of our democracy is that the British people should elect and dismiss those who make their laws. They no longer do, not by miles. Twenty-four per cent of them elect a Government who boast 8 per cent of the votes in the Council of Ministers that imposes most of their law. No wonder so many of them cannot see the point of voting in general elections, or that they hold politicians and our political system in such low esteem. How right they are.

How grateful am I for that strain in American politics that's generally opposed to transnationalism in all its forms? Well, that would be 'very'.

Let's examine some results from the three most-vaunted socialized medical systems in the world, shall we?

From the UK, I present NHS Blog Doctor, ("Dr. Crippen"). Read it all and weep, then hope like hell you never get sick anywhere on Airstrip One.

From Canada, back in 2005: "Access to a waiting list is not access to health care," [...] "The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance might be constitutional in circumstances where health-care services are reasonable as to both quality and timeliness," the ruling reads, but it "is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services." Canada seems to have some funny ideas about constitutionality as a concept, but this and other articles in plenitude seems to suggest that our northern neighbor isn't exactly peachy health-wise either.

And last, of course, dear old Cuba, the darling of the left, courtesy of Captain's Quarters.

Yes, our health-care system isn't perfect, and needs reform, and yes, it's particularly hard the less money you have to cover the cost of your healthcare. I'm not a particularly rich man myself, and as it happens, I am one of the uninsured.

However, as someone who's taken the time to read up on, and who's had the misfortune to have to contend with a single-payer socialized system in the past in the shape of Britain's NHS, I can safely say that it is stunningly obvious that such systems don't do any better at allocating scarce medical resources than our private-insurance system. (Oh, yes, and we might consider the Walter Reed scandal another confirming instance, perhaps?) In fact, it should also be stunningly obvious that they usually do worse, when all's said and done.

What those reforms are that we need, I don't know, but I do certainly know that conversion to a socialized system isn't it.  We should be thinking about that more.  In the meantime, do the research yourself. Until then, you're propagating idiocy¹, and that doesn't help anybody.

1. Or, if you're pushing socialized medicine less out of the belief that it functions better and more out of the belief that it's fair and "equal" to share the downside equally across the population no matter how much it worsens the total downside for everyone, so we can all languish in egalitarian misery together - well, then you're propagating evil in the form of sophomoric Marxist class-envy, and should go shoot yourself forthwith and stop bothering decent people.  Thank you kindly.

(Hat tip: Tim Blair) Quoth the TaliyaNews:

The inaccurate and derogatory depiction of ancient Persians that according to all historical data conducted warfare with mastery and dignity, and looked nothing like science-fictional monsters, is a depiction of how movie studios and authors sacrifice historical accuracy for would-be profits.

It is a proven scholarly fact that the Persian Empire in 480 B.C was the most magnificent and civilized empire. [...] Based on the Zoroastrian doctrine, it was the strong emphasis on honesty and integrity that gave the ancient Persians credibility to rule the world,

Now, while "most civilised" is perhaps disputable, I have nothing against the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire per se - in fact, I have quite a bit of time for it. (Amy theorises that the depiction of the Persians in 300 was a stylistic choice to reflect how alien Persian culture was to the Greeks, which seems plausible to me.)  And I can quite see that any real heirs of the classical Persians might have something of an axe to grind, here.

But hearing this from the people who swept away the last vestiges of classical Persia in the form of the Sassanids (who, for those playing the game at home, succeeded the Arsacids (Parthians), who succeeded the Seleucids, who succeeded the Achaemenids when Alexander did his world-conquering thing), and weren't exactly benevolence itself to the "pagan" Zoroastrians is pretty damn laughable.

Now, I've studied my classical history quite thoroughly, and somehow I missed the bit about the Persians having rhinosceroses, grenades, and ninja-lookalikes, and for that matter I don't recall Xerxes confusing himself with a god or being quite so... pierced.

(And the Spartans would probably have spitted someone stupid enough to go into battle without a full set of hoplite armor as an example to the others.)

But still: good movie, captured the spirit of things quite nicely. Go see it.

...in the universe of 8,267th Contact, looks like this (not so much in terms of countries, but in terms of power blocs):

(click for full-size image)

Key

• Gold: Grand Empire of the Star - i.e., Siberia, which they bought from the Russian government in 2034, in exchange for lots of foreign investment plus mucho technological transfers. Also, not being China helped.
• Pale gold: The Pro-Imperial (Non-)Bloc - just ask any of its members (USA, Russia, Israel, China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Ecuador), who are very firm about that.  In no way are they any kind of a bloc.  They just happen to have a lot of treaties, common interests and co-interests, which is a different thing altogether. Also reasonably identifiable as The List Of Those Countries The Impies Like.
• Dark blue: The Eurocanadian Union - the former EU, the former Canada, and the former New Zealand who are kind of upset they didn't get name-level billing. Self-defined as the world's alternative to the Pro-Imperial (Non-)Bloc, on account of not being nearly so fond of capitalism, unlimited technological progress, personal liberty, ecological engineering, etc., etc.  Different social models and all that - but principally, Not Those Guys.
• Pink: South American Alliance - a free trade bloc and defense alliance; not doing as well as its northern neighbors, but through a 20th century Western standard of living average in most places and catching up fast.
• Green: Islamic Caliphate - the century's gainers in territorial expansion, thanks to meme-pressure and general ruthlessness, particularly in North Africa. Relations with the rest of the world haven't improved much, since they're still them, the West is even more the West, and technological advance has dropped the petro-economy in the toilet for the sellers.
• Pale blue: South African Union - principally a defensive alliance against their northern neighbor, but with other aspects included; an African EU in the making.
• Brown: Indian Bloc - another defensive alliance, this time against its western neighbor. Hard-pressed. Will be seeking rapprochement with someone soon, probably.

More details... well, in the book, I should think.

When the New York Times starts questioning the conveniently-timed arrival of Peak Oil, it's time to admit that dog won't hunt.

Again.

Anyone remember Limits to Growth from the '70s, and their marvellous computer models of imminent resource depletion that totally ignored the possibility of innovation, thus proving incredibly inaccurate?

(Actually, incredible inaccuracy seems to be quite the theme in computer models.)

The new version doesn't seem any more impressive, that way:

From the BBC: Action plan for killer asteroids

Money quote:

"The UN draft treaty would establish who should be in charge in the event of an asteroid heading towards Earth, who would pay for relief efforts and the policies that should be adopted."

My inner cynic says that no matter who the UN puts in charge, in reality NASA deflects it, the American taxpayer covers the costs, and the rest of the world sits on the sidelines and bitches about the water-vapor emissions in the upper atmosphere and nukes, by god, Nukes In Space!

In other news, Iran announces that it plans to develop space-nuke technology too.  The General Secretary suggests a polite chat over a cup of tea and some tofu sandwiches.

On my old blog, where there wasn't a facility to add pages out-of-band, the disclosure policy was posted in this entry.

Now it's here: http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/disclosure-policy.html

...when the Democrats won the House, if you recall, I said that I'd give them due credit for the things they did right.

They're doing something right.

(Hat tip: Classical Values.)

An interesting experiment and its results, comparing number of instances of George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words across blogs from left and right. Whatever result you expect, whatever you might think it means, and whatever you think of the words themselves (and goodness knows I've been no angel in that respect myself, although I am trying to clean up my act), the results themselves are interesting per se, methinks.

(For gratuitous missing of the point, see also the in-results-link quoted post by Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte. Sigh.)

March CTP out here, now including all the visual designers and other shininess that wasn't in the January CTP.

Time to download.

Found on BBC Have Your Say, talking about the stock market slump:

Why do people keep saying "everyone is affected" ? only people with a private pension, endowment mortage, or stock related investement vehicle are directly afected. Less than 25% of the workforce have a private pension, no one in their right mind has an endowment mortage any more, and only the upper middle class have stock market investments. In other words the the vast majority of stock market profit go into the pockets of city traders and the already rich, and who cares about them ?

Matt Munro, Bristol, Uk

(And this is but one example of the kind of profound ignorance going around out there.)

Because, you jackass, even if we admit your flawed demographics as is, damn near everyone in the entire country has a checking/current account, and the majority have a savings account of some sort. And as banks have to produce the interest they pay you on those savings (and in the UK, even on your checking/current account) from somewhere, they lend it out again. Or invest it. And given the sheer volume of money in banks, you might want to think about exactly how much investment that represents. Your "directly affected" is nothing but weasel-wording, on the assumption that if you don't own it personally, it doesn't count as a direct effect, which, 'hem, is not reasonably the case.

Also, it seems to me that you're ignorantly - I hope - failing to recognise that stock prices represent the market capitalization of large companies, and if you don't think that swings in their market caps have a significant effect on prices, wages and employment, then I have a large clue to hit you with, labelled "Crash of '29".

Children, if you can't be bothered with reading a one-minute introduction to modern economics before shooting your fool mouths off, kindly shut up and let the adults talk, 'kay?

I saw a sign, driving my wife home from work last night, which read "War Is Not The Answer".

That's kind of an unsafe generalisation to make, you know? It depends very much, methinks, upon the question. For example, being originally from England, if the question is "Why does your Cerebrate not know, and indeed not need to know, all the words to Deutscheland Ueber Alles?", then war is very much the answer.

Further examples of similar kind are left as an example for the reader.