perfidy

My home town

Actually, things aren't so bad. Except for some soreness in the back from giving the Dad a hand with moving, things are verging on decent.

As Foseti mentioned, we had a little reactionary gabfest on Friday. Along with his observations, I'd add that reactionaries seem to be rather tall. It's unusual that I meet people taller than me, and Foseti is just fricken' huge. Wiry, though. Odd that sometimes when you meet for the first time a person you've never seen, they are almost exactly the way you pictured them. Except for the extra 6-8 inches, Foseti is just how I thought he'd look.

It is refreshing to talk to someone who not only doesn't freak out when I say what I think (my friend Christian is very kind, and doesn't freak out) but actually agrees, or even is more hardcore on the point than I am. The reactionary is decidedly outside the mainstream. And the monkeybrains part of your being just shrieks inside you when you are disagreeing with everyone. Seeing that there is someone who actually exists - not just words on the screen - and agrees with you is very calming.

Devin's Hackertopia idea has got me thinking.

I think the biggest problem would be critical mass. If you don't get a sufficiency of smart, interesting people to move there; smart, interesting people won't move there. How do you bootstrap the process? Rather than planning a large community - start with the village and grow up from there.

If one could purchase a 160 acre plot in the adjacent to the middle of nowhere, it wouldn't cost that much. For example, this place:

Is located in Monroe County, WV, near I-64 and I-81, near the Virginia border. It costs $350k. Not an unreasonable sum, all things considered. A moderate amount of effort could produce a roughed out town square, a home, and the first building of the Hackiversity. Build a nice stone structure, fully wired, and set it up as a hacker space, and you might be able to get it started. Over time, the founders could sell plots out of the original 160 acres - reserving some for the university and some for the public square - to finance public works and to purchase nearby land for expansion.

New residents could buy into the municipal corporation, or not; buy land, or rent. Those who bought shares would have a hand in the governance as shareholders, and would share in the profits, if any.

If the university made a name for itself, the city could grow pretty rapidly.

Devin Finbarr has an excellent post up; Hackertopia: Creating a City as a Startup. This is not surprising. What's interesting is that Hackertopia is a more or less concrete idea for instantiating some reactionary/formalist ideas in the real world.

I like the idea. I think that if it could be created, it would be a nice place to live. The biggest problem I see with the proposal is that while the founders might be able to get out from under some state regulation and taxes, they're not going to be able to escape the fed. And while state regulations and taxes can be add to the burden of starting businesses, creating wealth, or just living your life - they are just the cherry on top of the Everest-sized ice cream sundae that is the Federal Government.

Federal taxes will weigh down every effort of the citizens of Hackertopia. Environmental impact statements and OSHA regulations will slow and hinder every business. And that's just the normal run of things. If certain elements in the government decided to not like Hackertopia, it would be far worse.

What would be needed would be a special economic zone, or the like, where existing federal regulations would not apply. And that is a highly dubious proposition, unless things get much worse.

Still and all, I could see how building a city like this would be for the good - it could at least be a place where most of the worst, localized excesses of democracy are limited. What Hackertopia most reminded me of is Precipice, a city in John Brunner's novel Shockwave Rider. It's a book well worth reading - and though the town in the novel is more of a libertarian utopia, it shares many characteristics with Devin's Hackertopia. But one of the key things that allowed Precipice to come into being is the big one, the giant earthquake that levels SF and is entirely beyond the capacity of the nation to recover from. A large swath of ruined California is effectively abandoned - a "paid avoidance zone" where the rule of the Federal government is light, because the cost of rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure is just too high. In this extra-legal zone, Precipice flourishes because it's economy and people are not warped by the heavy hand of increasingly deranged government.

While I haven't had a lot of time for writing in the last little while, I've been thinking about the wheres and whys of a reactionary experiment. Granted, we have some partial examples - Hong Kong before the takeover, Singapore, and so on. Chili under Pinochet.

It seems to me that part of the problem with the libertarian ideas that Aretae espouses - and which to a great extent I sympathise with - is that they don't take into account the monkeybrains aspect in regard to the politics. Economics - yes. But people are not comfortable professing loyalty to amorphous collectives operating for the common good. And certainly not to co-operative protection agencies and the like. The United States, and to a lesser extent other democracies, have gotten around this by creating a civic religion centered on constitution idolatry and the veneration of civic saints. This faith is failing now, and seems unlikely to recover, and certainly will not be replaced by un-coerced love for the bureaucratic state and its organs.

The idea of a monarch gives a human thing for people to latch on to, give their loyalty to, and to build community around. Providing you can get to the point where having a king seems like a good idea, and people have agreed that that particular guy is the one who should be king. A Moldbug-style neo-cameralist CEO probably wouldn't inspire that, unless it was Steve Jobs. To me, the idea of having a Calvin Coolidge sort of king - one who would not interfere in the economy, or in our lives, but would serve as a guarantor of order and prosperity; and at need a final arbiter of disputes - that would be best.

The color-coded terror alert level system has gone away. For years, perfidy proudly placed the current terror alert level prominently on the front page as a public service. Then we realized that it was all a crock of shit and canned it.

One last time, though, for old time's sake:

My father has impeccable timing. After moving every single thing that I own at least four times - from where it was to a box, the box to storage, storage to new house, box to its new home - Dad informs me that he needs help moving. I am so tired of picking things up and moving them that lifting my coffee mug to my mouth is aggravating. But, devoted son that I am, I will chip in for the big win, and move my Dad's crap, too this weekend.

The new place is slowly attaining a semblance of order. I have to say that shit-canning half your stuff makes the moving and unpacking process much easier. Having an office again is a real bonus too, and this week I get to put all my books in real, actual bookshelves!

I'm sure you will all be deeply interested to know that my neolithic herder diet is going pretty well. Last July, my pants were a verging on fatbody 44" waist. This last Black Friday, I stopped by the Eddie Bauer warehouse outlet store thingy in Columbus and (rather optimistically, I thought) picked a pair of 38" pants to try on. They were too big. I went back for a 36", and they were just right. Pardon my French, but holy mother of fuck, I just dropped eight full inches of waistline. I haven't been in a 36" since no one knew that Clinton liked getting BJs from pudgy chicks. And I still have another twenty pounds I want to lose. The Thanksgiving holiday was a minor setback, as far as the diet goes - what with all the stuffing, rolls, sugar cookies, pumpkin pie, und so weiter. But a few days of hardcore paleo should remove most of what I gained at the feast.

Aretae is suggesting a 100 push up challenge. I think this would dovetail nicely with the superslow that I've been doing. Aretae has a charming habit of answering questions that I haven't realized I needed to ask. The gym at my office sucks ass, really, and I don't want to keep spending money on something that sucks. I also don't want to spend money on a home gym, which would likely also suck, and be something I have to move in a couple years. What I need is a weight and equipment-less superslow workout scheme. The 100-pushup thing could be part of that.

What else is going on? There's been some interesting stuff on the internets. I can't remember what it was, but if you poke around I'm sure you'll find it.

[wik] Video no longer available, and sadly there's no context to even guess at what it once was.

[alsø wik] Is it proper to have a "wik" when there's no content before it?

[alsø alsø wik] Should this one be "alsø wik," and the one before be "wik?"

Well, I'm moved. Mostly. Still have some random crap to get out of the old place, but all the important stuff is in the new place, and all the furniture is where it is supposed to be. Lots and lots of unpacking left to do, of course, but the family is settling in in its new digs.

Cool thing about renting #1: it can be much cheaper. I just gave myself a $15000/year raise. Actually, more like a $21 k, because I'll actually keep all this money.

Cool thing about renting #2: other people fix things. This is a real time and aggravation saver.

And, I have about twice as much living space as in my previous mountain fortress, though the neighbors are much closer. Sigh. It about evens out.

The little girls do love the fact that they can now literally run in circles. I don't think they liked being forced to run from one end of the house to other and back.

After the unpacking is finished, I think I might actually start blogging again.

In the meantime, read Aretae, Foseti, Devin, Isegoria, Charleton, and Vox Day. Good stuff, there. I was particularly taken by Charleton's riff on Moldbug, here, and Foseti's review of "The Dark Side of the Left." Congrats, also, to Foseti on producing an heir.  Reactionaries need heirs.

I've ripped just about all the movies I have that have not been scratched to unusability by children; sat on, broken, or lost: were originally VHS or Tivo'd and burned to disc; are unsuitable because they're full-screen, not widescreen; or were lent out and never returned. The list of those movies below the fold:

24, season 1
28 Days Later
48 Hours
A Christmas Story
A Few Good Men
A Fish Called Wanda
A League of Their Own
A Perfect War
Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Adaptation
Addams Family
Addams Family Values
Air Force One
Airplane!
Amadeus
American Splendor
Arsenic and Old Lace
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Backyardigans
Back to the Future 2
Bambi
Barry Lyndon
Barton Fink
Batman
Batman Returns
Battlestar Galactica
Beetlejuice
Better Off Dead
Big Trouble in Little China
Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Black Adder
Black Adder Goes Forth
Black Adder II
Black Adder the Third
Blade II
Bob the Builder
Bond: Casino Royale (original)
Bond: Diamonds Are Forever
Bond: Die Another Day
Bond: From Russia With Love
Bond: GoldenEye
Bond: Never Say Never Again
Bond: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Bond: Thunderball
Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies
Bond: You Only Live Twice
Boot Camp
Borat
Brazil
Bridget Jones
Bridget Jones 2
Caddyshack
Caine Mutiny
Casablanca
Casino Royale (new one)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (original)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Johnny Depp)
Charlie’s Angels 2
Charlotte's Web
Chasing Amy
Chicken Run
Clerks
Coal Miner’s Daughter
Cyrano de Bergerac
Deep Cover
Demolition Man
Dennis Leary
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Disney Princess Stories
Doc Hollywood
Doctor Who (A whole season, don't know which one, haven't watched it.)
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Dora the Explorer
Down Periscope
Dr. Strangelove
Dragnet
Edward Scissorhands
El Mariachi
Elektra
Enter the Dragon
Eragon
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Evil Dead 2
Evolution
Farscape, season 1
Firefly
First Blood
Fisher King
Formula 51
From Dusk ‘Til Dawn
From the Earth to the Moon
Garfield
Garfield 2
Ghostbusters 2
Gun Shy
Half Baked
Hamlet
Hamlet
Happy Gilmore
Hard Hat Harry
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
Hellboy
Hellboy 2
Hulk
I, Robot
Idiocracy
Immortal Beloved
Inside 9/11
IQ
Ivanhoe
Jackass, the Movie
Jaws
Jerky Boys
Jewel of the Nile
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Johnny Mnemonic
Judge Dredd
Jurassic Park III
Kids in the Hall, Season 1
Kill Bill Vol.1
Kill Bill Vol.2
King Kong
Labyrinth
Lady and the Tramp
Lawrence of Arabia
Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events
Lethal Weapon 1
Lethal Weapon 2
Lethal Weapon 3
Lethal Weapon 4
Lewis Black
Liar, Liar
Lindbergh Declassified
Little Einsteins
Little Mermaid
Live Free or Die Hard
Lost Boys
Major League 2
Man on Fire
Mars Attacks
Midnight Clear
Midnight Run
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
More than a Game
Mother Night
Mouse Hunt
Much Ado About Nothing
My Fellow Americans
Mystery Men
Napoleon Dynamite
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
National Lampoon’s Eurotrip
National Lampoon's Vacation
Oceans 13
October Sky
Once Upon a Time in China 1
Once Upon a Time in China 2
Once Upon a Time in China 3
Othello
Pale Rider
Paper Moon
Patriot Games
Penguins of Madagascar: Happy King Julian Day
Penguins of Madagascar: I Was a Penguin Zombie
Penn and Teller Get Killed
Penn and Teller’s Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends
Phantoms
Plains, Trains and Automobiles
Point Break
Primer
Puppet Masters
Puppets Who Kill
Ransom
Real Genius
Remo Williams
Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Robocop
Robots
Romancing the Stone
Rome, HBO Series, Season 1
Romeo + Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Rushmore
Sanjuro
Saving Private Ryan
Scooby-Doo
Scotland, PA
Secret of NIMH
Sesame Street Dinosaurs
Sesame Street: Follow that Bird
Seven Samurai
Short Circuit
Six String Samurai
Solaris
South Park, seasons 1-3
Speed Racer (tv show)
Speed Racer (movie)
Sphere
Spongebob SquarePants: To Love a Patty
Syriana
Take the Money and Run
Tango and Cash
Tequila Sunrise
Terminator 3
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension
The African Queen
The Agony and the Ecstacy
The Big Sleep
The Court Jester
The Crow
The Desperate Hours (original)
The Desperate Hours (stupid remake)
The General
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Incredible Hulk
The Inspector General
The Jerk
The Long Kiss Goodnight
The New Adventures of Batman
The Pentagon Wars
The Princess Bride
The Prisoner of Zenda
The Producers
The Professional
The Right Stuff
The Rocketeer
The Secret of NIMH
The Shawshank Redemption
The Shining
The Three Musketeers
The Transporter
The Usual Suspects
The Whole Nine Yards
The Zero Effect
They Live
Things to Do in Denver when You’re Dead
This is Spinal Tap
Thomas the Tank Engine
Three Outlaw Samurai
Throne of Blood
Thunderheart
Time Bandits
To Have and to Have Not
Top Gun
Toys
Trading Places
Transformers
Transformers II
Twilight Zone the Movie
Twister
Uncle Buck
Underworld
Walk the Line
What Women Want
Wild at Heart
Zelig

I'll eventually get all of these from Netflix. Add these together with the movies from the last post, it's north of 600 discs.

Here, in case you're curious, is the current list of movies and tv shows that I own, and have put on my hard drive:

12 Monkeys
2001: A Space Odyssey
2003 NCAA College Football Championship Game (OSU beats Miami)
2012
3 Days of the Condor
300
9
A Bug’s Life
A Fistful of Dollars
A Knight’s Tale
Air America
Aladdin
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Alien
Aliens
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
Animal House
Apocalypse Now
Army of Darkness
Atom Age Vampire
Austin Powers: Goldmember
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Avatar
Back to the Future
Bad Santa
Band of Brothers
Bandits
Barbie and the Diamond Castle
Barbie Fairytopia
Barbie Presents Thumbelina
Batman Begins
Beast from Haunted Cave
Beauty and the Beast
Because of Winn-Dixie
Being John Malkovich
Best in Show
Best of John Belushi
Beyond the Gridiron: History of Woody Hayes
Big
Black Hawk Down
Blade
Blade Runner
Blade Trinity
Blast from the Past
Blazing Saddles
Bloodlust
Blue Steel
Bluebeard
Blues Brothers
Bolt
Bond: Dr. No
Bond: Goldfinger
Bond: The World is Not Enough
Braveheart
Brotherhood of the Wolf
Bubba Ho-Tep
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Cars
Chappelle's Show, season 1
Charlie’s Angels
Cinderella
Claymation Christmas (Includes Easter and Halloween)
Club Dread
Constantine
Coraline
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Curious George
Dangerous Liaisons
Dark City
Dark Star
David Spade: Take the Hit
Dawn of the Dead
Day Watch
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
Dead Men Walk
Death to Smoochy
Destination Moon
Die Hard
Die Hard with a Vengeance
Die Harder
Dog Soldiers
Down from the Mountain
Emma
Enemy of the State
Equilibrium
Eraser
ET
Evil Dead
Fantasia
Fantasia 2000
Fargo
Felix the Cat
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Fight Club
Finding Nemo
Flight of the Navigator
Flushed Away
Fools Rush In
Full Metal Jacket
G Force
Galaxy Quest
Gattaca
Generation Kill
Ghost Dog
Ghostbusters
Gladiator
Glory
Good Morning Vietnam
Grosse Point Blank
Groundhog Day
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Heathers
Hell Town
Henry V
Herbie Fully Loaded
Hero
High Noon
Highlander
History of the Cleveland Browns
Hot Fuzz
House of Flying Daggers
House on Haunted Hill
Ice Age
Ice Age 2
Independence Day
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Iron Giant
Iron Man
Iron Man II
Jacob's Ladder
Jurassic Park
Key Largo
Kung Fu Hustle
Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda and the Furious Five
Lake Placid
Last Man Standing
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Looney Tunes Back in Action
Loony Toons Golden Collection
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lost in Translation
Madagascar
Major League
Mallrats
Master and Commander
Maverick
Me, Myself & Irene
Meet the Robinsons
Men in Black
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Miller’s Crossing
Minority Report
Minuscule (Animated Short Movies about bugs)
Miracle
Miss Congeniality
Mission Impossible
Monster House
Monsters vs. Aliens
Monsters, Inc.
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Monty Python’s Meaning of Life
Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Mulan
Muppets in Space
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Cousin Vinny
My Fair Lady
Night Watch
Nightmare Before Christmas
Nightmare Castle
Nothing to Lose
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Oceans 11
Oceans 12
Office Space
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Outland
Over the Hedge
Patton
Payback
PCU
Penguins of Madagascar: A Christmas Caper
Penguins of Madagascar: New to the Zoo
Penguins of Madagascar: Operation DVD Release
Peter Pan
Phil the Alien
Pinocchio
Pirates of the Caribbean
Pixar Short Movies
Popeye (Cartoons)
Princess and the Frog
Pulp Fiction
Push
Quantum of Solace
Raising Arizona
Ratatouille
Ray
Red Dawn
Red Planet
Reign of Fire
Reservoir Dogs
Revolt of the Zombies
Robin Hood
Rosenkranz and Guildenstern are Dead
Saved
Schoolhouse Rock
Serenity
Shakespeare in Love
Shaun of the Dead
Shrek
Shrek 2
Shrek 3
Sin City
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Sleeping Beauty
Small Soldiers
Snatch
Sneakers
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
So I Married an Axe Murderer
South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut
Spiderman
Spiderman 2
Spiderman 3
Spongebob SquarePants: Absorbing Favorites
Spongebob SquarePants: Atlantis SquarePantis
Spongebob SquarePants: Pest of the West
Spongebob SquarePants: SpongBob vs. The Big One
Spongebob SquarePants: SpongeBob Goes Prehistoric
Spongebob SquarePants: Spongicus
Spongebob SquarePants: To SquarePants or not to SquarePants
Star Wars Episode I
Star Wars Episode II
Star Wars Episode III
Star Wars Episode IV
Star Wars Episode V
Star Wars Episode VI
Star Wars: Clone Wars, season 1
Stargate
Strange Brew
Strawberry Shortcake
Stripes
Supertroopers
Sweeny Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (original version)
Tears of the Sun
Terminator
Terminator 2
The Abyss
The Big Lebowski
The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Dark Knight
The Fifth Element
The Godfather
The Godfather Part II
The Godfather Part III
The Golden Compass
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
The Hangover
The History of Buckeye Football
The Hunt for Red October
The Hustler
The Incredibles
The Jungle Book
The Last Boy Scout
The Limey
The Lion King
The Little Mermaid
The Lonely Guy
The Loved One
The Magnificent Seven
The Maltese Falcon
The Man in Black: Johnny Cash Live in Denmark
The Man in the Iron Mask
The Manchurian Candidate
The Mask
The Matrix
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
The Monster Maker
The Mummy
The Patriot
The Pest
The Protector
The Ref
The Replacements
The Ringer
The Saint
The Scorpion King
The Sixth Sense
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Three Stooges Collection
There’s Something About Mary
Tinker Bell
Tomb Raider
Tombstone
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
Trainspotting
Treasure Planet
Unbreakable
Unforgiven
Up
V for Vendetta
Van Wilder
WALL-E
Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Wererabbit
Wallace and Gromit in Three Amazing Adventures
Wallace and Gromit: Cracking Contraptions
Wanted
War Tapes
Wayne’s World
Wayne’s World 2
Wedding Crashers
We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story
When Harry Met Sally
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Wizard of Oz
X-Men
X-Men 2
X-Men 3
Young Frankenstein
Zombieland

Fascinating article on the connection between batshit, sovereignty, empire and the reach of the constitution.

I stumbled on a 969-page typescript treatise which is kept in the library of the US State Department. Flipping through this great leather-bound brick of onion-skin pages, I gradually absorbed that the whole massive volume had been put together in the 1930s by a lawyer working for the US Government who’d been given a killer assignment. Apparently somebody had walked over to the desk of this poor functionary, scribbling away in some basement office, and said something along the lines of: “You know, we have a bunch of islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean—little islands. How about you figure out what the deal is with all these places, legally speaking.” I was holding the result: The Sovereignty of Islands Claimed Under the Guano Act and of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, Midway, and Wake. And it was splendid to behold: nearly a thousand pages of intricate legal arguments and historical documentation on the strange history of the United States’ nearly invisible, but surprisingly vast, insular empire.

...The Guano Islands Act of 1856 arguably laid the legal groundwork for American imperialism.

I love sentences like that.

You can sort of see it [the language of the act] drift from talking about the waters and other resources “appurtenant” to the guano islands, to being used to talk about the relationship between the islands themselves and the United States. It was basically a fudge. A way of taking the places as possessions, while being careful not to call themterritories, since that implied constitutional entanglements. It was a way of taking the places without really taking responsibility for them within the federal system. The bill also carefully removed the language of “sovereignty,” since that, too, seemed potentially to entail various obligations under domestic and international law. And finally, to get the bill to pass, they also stuck in a bit about how the United States could get rid of the places if it wanted—that there was no commitment to hang onto these islands after the resources had been stripped or their utility otherwise terminated.

And the act passes in that form?

It does, and boom, there are all these wildcatters and roughnecks throwing up the Stars and Stripes on little mounds of manure all over the world. In the end, more than seventy such islands are actually secured under the act, and many more are claimed (unsuccessfully, for one reason or another). But that’s not the interesting part, really—although it’s curious enough, and there are some great stories about what goes down on these islands: shanghaiing Polynesian laborers, piracy (of course), mutiny, etc. Some of the islands are still claimed by various shady types. Indeed, a rather mysterious gentleman contacted me some years ago in connection with his alleged title to an uninhabited guano island in the Caribbean.

Awesome.

The Onion never fails me:

One scroll recounts the demise of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), who died of exposure and malnutrition within sight of the shores of his beloved island home, while another tells tale of a giant ice floe that carried the entire House Ways and Means Committee into the Arctic night, never to be seen again.

Dangling desperately by a lashing line, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) is said to have fallen into a churning maelstrom off the Horn of Africa while raging at the heavens and shouting, "Fools! Fools! There is no Sword! There is no Bipartisanship! It's all a lie, and we all bound for Death!"

"One of the messages, burnt on the edges and smelling of brimstone, tells how they stopped on a remote island for provisions and were imprisoned by a mighty one-eyed monster who bellowed, 'But there's no way to pay for all this!'" Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters from atop the Washington Monument, where she awaits the Congressmen's return, clad in widow's black burlap and gazing out to sea. "They seem to have defeated this Cyclops, but of the coveted saber, there is no word."

"And now I've received news that fishermen in Monterey Bay have found in their nets the bloated remains of Barney Frank," Pelosi added.

Tales sung by bards since time immemorial describe the Sword as a master blade forged at Lexington and Concord, broken during the Civil War, reforged by Abraham Lincoln, wielded by the imp Joe McCarthy until he was driven mad, used briefly at a Cleveland City Council meeting during a unanimous vote on a zoning variance, and then lost somewhere in the misty murk of Indochina.

I would apologize abjectly for my dearth of posting, except for the fact that I don't think it has had an adverse impact on, well, anyone. So there.

But, for those who do care, here's what I've been up to. Most of my free time over the last month has been occupied with purging, Soviet-style, my belongings. Eight entire Nissan X-Terra loads of my possessions have been lined up against the wall, shot, and taken to the dump. Their families were billed for the cost of the bullets. An additional five loads have been taken to the Militant wing of the Salvation Army, and one full load of books - 26 liquor boxes worth - were sold or donated as well. There is another two loads of detritus staged next to the garage waiting for their dirt-nap, and I'm going to have to borrow my neighbor's trailer to take a load of busted or worthless furniture and appliances to the landfill.

By comparison, only four loads have been taken to the storage facility. The house is now down to currently-being-used clothes, kitchen stuff, furniture and only ten books. I've also ripped nearly every DVD I own, I've thrown out the cases and someone is going to get an unexpected gift of nearly 400 movies.

It is liberating, nay, exhilarating to get rid of so much crap. My soul feels lighter and cleaner.

So that's to the good.

As far as the reason for all this - it doesn't look like we'll even be making the attempt to purchase another home. From what I've been reading, the housing market collapse is far from over. Even though we could by the same house for half what we paid four years ago, it looks like if we did, we could find ourselves underwater again within a year. Which would suck. Note to self: buy low, sell high.

So I think we'll be renting. I'll lose some tax write-offs, but paying between a third and a half of what I've been paying will more than even that up. Much more, really. And besides, I'll have another child deduction next year.

So I'll be moving within the month, which will continue to cut into blogging time.  But less so, since I've already gotten through the obsessive difficult part.

In discussing the Fred Phelps menagerie of douche-canoes, my friend Uncle Jimbo has this to say about our beloved gubmint:

Government is a blunt and stupid tool run by blunt and stupid tools.

"Science and Mother Nature are in a marriage where Science is always surprised to come home and find Mother Nature blowing the neighbor."

From Shit my dad says

Every week, I wait and wait and wait, pining for the next installment of Badass of the Week.  It's sad, perhaps.  But nothing gets me going like tales of ball-destroying, face-ripping bloody carnage.  Every one hopes in their heart of hearts to be a badass.  And the Badass of the Week is quite the archive of inspirational badassitude.  But how, we ask, do we become badasses our own selves?

We now have the answer:

[wik] I think we here at perfidy should get some credit just for having a category entitled "Lead Pipe Cruelty."

I have benefitted greatly from the home brew/craft brew movement.  Over the last 30 years, I have enjoyed many a tasty beverage.  It could be argued that America has the best beer on the planet.  And we have Jimmy Carter to thank for that.  Thank you, Jimmy Carter.

But it never occurred to me wonder why the rules aren't the same for liquor.  It came as a mild surprise to me learn that the revenuers are still raiding moonshiners, and breaking up their stills.  Yet, they are.  It is a felony in this country to distill even a drop.

Back twenty years ago, I was climbing in WV, and at the camp that night the populations of out-of-state rock climbers mingled with the locals.  The locals had 'shine in mason jars.  And that was some of the best whiskey I've ever tasted.  It was like drinking an alcoholic hot pepper, and it was like smoking a cuban cigar, and it was like breathing in the air on a cold Fall day.  Nothing I ever paid for in a liquor store ever matched it.

This video from Reason explains a bit of why almost no one ever gets to experience that.

There is a time and place for everything, except possibly your impression of Christopher Reeve as a lifeguard.

From Capitalist Lion Tamer

I've run across a few sciency links that caught my interest.

• E.O. Wilson, famous scientist, inventor of sociobiology and proponent of the kin selection theory that attempted to explain the selflessness of ant workers has changed his tune.
  

  The researchers offer their own alternative theory, based on standard natural selection, but with a twist: After starting with a focus on a single founder, selection moves to the level of colony. From this perspective, a worker ant is something like a cell — part of a larger evolutionary unit, not a unit unto itself.

  “Our model proves that looking at a worker ant and asking why it is altruistic is the wrong level of analysis,” said Tarnita. “The important unit is the colony.”

  The researchers propose a theoretical narrative that begins with a primordial, solitary ant — perhaps something like the ancient Martialis heureka — that lived near a food source and developed genetic mutations that caused it to feed its offspring, rather than letting them fend for themselves. Called progressive provisioning, such nurture is widespread in insects.

  Another mutation could result in offspring that stayed near the nest, rather than leaving. They would “instinctively recognize that certain things need to be done, and do them,” said Nowak, describing real-world examples. “Put two normally solitary wasps together, and if one builds a hole, the other puts an egg in it. The other sees the egg, and feeds it.”

  That would be enough to form a small but real colony — and from there, eusociality could emerge from an accumulation of mutations that led to a hyper-specialization of tasks, limited reproduction to queens alone and favored the colony’s success above all else. Within this colony, a queen would be analogous to a human egg or sperm cell — a unit that embodies the whole. Worker self-sacrifice is no more nonsensical than that of a white blood cell.

  The researchers called this series of steps a “labyrinth,” one that isn’t easily navigated. Hence the rareness of eusociality, which is believed to have arisen just 10 to 20 times in history. But their theory explains everything that kin selection does, plus what it doesn’t.

  “There is no need whatsoever to invoke kin selection or inclusive fitness,” said Corina — not in eusociality, not in any cooperative behavior.

  Interesting in that kin relationships (while not unimportant) are subordinate to evolutionary changes that allow cooperative behavior.  The relevance to HBD, and evolutionary changes that may have altered human patterns of socialization over the past few millenia, will deserve some pondering.

• I'm curious as to why this report gets mainstream coverage without a hint of disdain, when other plasma theorists are ridiculed.  It's the same thing.  But still, good that the researchers are using real experiments rather than computer models to try and figure something out.
• The Younger Dryas was a period of intense cold almost 13,000 years ago.  Overall, there's been continuous warming since the end of the last ice age - the Younger Dryas period is a sharp, and rather long, exception to that trend.  Some have speculated that a (relatively small) cometary impact may have caused the cold.  This period also saw the extinction of megafauna in N. America, and the demise of the Clovis culture.
  

  In sedimentary deposits dating to the beginning of the YD, impact proponents have reported finding carbon spherules containing tiny nano-scale diamonds, which they thought to be created by shock metamorphism or chemical vapor deposition when the impactor struck.
  The nanodiamonds included lonsdaleite, an unusal form of diamond that has a hexagonal lattice rather than the usual cubic crystal lattice. Lonsdaleite is particularly interesting because it has been found inside meteorites and at known impact sites.

  But, another team of researchers has reported that they found no diamonds in YD boundary layer material.  Instead, they say, it's graphite.

  “Of all the evidence reported for a YD impact event, the presence of hexagonal diamond in YD boundary sediments represented the strongest evidence suggesting shock processing,” Daulton, who is also a member of WUSTL’s Center for Materials Innovation, says.
  However, a close examination of carbon spherules from the YD boundary using transmission electron microscopy by the Daulton team found no nanodiamonds. Instead, graphene- and graphene/graphane-oxide aggregates were found in all the specimens examined (including carbon spherules dated from before the YD to the present). Importantly, the researchers demonstrated that previous YD studies misidentified graphene/graphane-oxides as hexagonal diamond and likely misidentified graphene as cubic diamond.
  The YD impact hypothesis was in trouble already before this latest finding. Many other lines of evidence — including: fullerenes, extraterrestrial forms of helium, purported spikes in radioactivity and iridium, and claims of unique spikes in magnetic meteorite particles — had already been discredited. According to Pinter, “nanodiamonds were the last man standing.”
  “We should always have a skeptical attitude to new theories and test them thoroughly,” Scott says, “and if the evidence goes against them they should be abandoned.”

  Of course, that attitude is also required for existing theories. But nevermind. The fact that there is a YD boundary layer, and it's composed of a thick layer of carbon - well, that should be indicative of something bad going on, like perhaps lots of things burning. I'd be curious to hear what the YD impact proponents have to say about this.

• The Burgess Shale is a fascinating bit of meaty science - and now, there is another.  The new fossil beds are only a few miles from the Burgess deposits, but scientists have already discovered eight taxa previously unknown to man.  Pretty cool.

I've been busy.  In fact, I am still busy, and am sacrificing my work for your benefit right now.  Because I love you, and you're just that cool.

So, from the now defunct blog Seasons of Tumult and Discord, there's this bit that caught my eye.  Since you can't go to the blog anymore I'll post the whole thing and italimacize the part that caught me:

Guilt is a luxury by Talleyrand

Specifically white guilt.  People assume that white guilt will continue until they are completely dominated.

Keep telling yourself that lie if it makes you feel better.

Whites have been feeling guilty for the past, because they can afford to feel guilty about the past.  Does it matter if the government discriminates against them in good times?

Nope, they can do well somewhere else.

But in the lean times that are coming, it will matter and it will matter more and more.

Just as feminism will never be satisfied if men have any power or autonomy, because any power a man has by its very nature diminishes the power of women, so too do racists view any power a white man has as limiting the power of minorities.

Some of my faithful readers probably read racist and got a little confused because the word racist wasn’t used to describe white folk.

The word racist itself is beginning to lose its meaning, because everything a white person does is deemed racist.  And although whites have rolled over for decades, because they could afford to roll over, when it becomes an obvious issue of survival, whites aren’t going to care about being a racist.

In fact, if I were hazard a guess, in ten years there will be politicians that will embrace that they are “racist” and it will work in their favor, that is the kind of shift that I see coming, and it won’t be a pretty one.

Those that see the next century as asian, I’m telling you right now that the Chinese empire will fall as surely as that gigantic dam they built will collapse in the next ten to twenty years causing widespread destruction and upheaval.

Whites aren’t behaving ferally tribal... yet.  But they will be the way things are going.  When there is a huge societal shift, the behaviors of yesterday get repudiated and the pendulum swings in the other direction hard.

And the last time they were that way, the whites conquered most of the world and subjugated native people everywhere.  Is this really the sleeping giant that we want awakened?

Apparently it is.

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. The whole western world going hulk-smash would be a bad thing, to be sure. But there ain't a lot the rest of the world could do to stop it, no matter how many more of them than us there are.

Well, this is fascinating. It appears that solar flares have an effect on radioactive decay rates here on Earth:

On Dec 13, 2006, a solar flare sent a stream of particles and radiation toward Earth. Purdue nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins, while measuring the decay rate of manganese-54, a short-lived isotope used in medical diagnostics, noticed that the rate dropped slightly during the flare, a decrease that started about a day and a half before the flare.

Long-term observation of the decay rate of silicon-32 and radium-226 seemed to show a small seasonal variation. The decay rate was ever so slightly faster in winter than in summer.

If this apparent relationship between flares and decay rates proves true, it could lead to a method of predicting solar flares prior to their occurrence, which could help prevent damage to satellites and electric grids, as well as save the lives of astronauts in space.

All well and good - flare warnings would be of great benefit. But it seems to me that the article is missing something very important: if radioactive decay rates here on Earth are subject to variation based on electromagnetic activity from the Sun, what does that mean for all our radiometric dating techniques? The Carrington Event back in 1859 was orders of magnitude more powerful than the flare in '06. The Sun was quiescent for centuries in the Little Ice Age. What other changes in our electromagnetic environment have occurred in the past 50000 years? If they were strong enough, they could have a significant effect on the calculated age of archaeological finds.

Also, I remember being taught that radioactive decay was a constant.  Why was I lied to?  Or is this really that ground shaking a discovery?

In other Sun news,

• Solar cycles have been detected in another star. They're much shorter than ours, though, less than a year. Interesting.
• Shocking news:  "Large changes in the sun's energy output may drive unexpectedly dramatic fluctuations in Earth's outer atmosphere."  You think?  Why would that be unexpected?  Or is it unexpected like each month's unemployment numbers?
• And, bonus vaguely sun-related link: Bull-killer, Sun Lord, about Mithraism in the Early Roman Empire.  I think my neighbor is a Mithraist.  He was in the army, and he doesn't like the Chicago Bulls.