The Road Less Traveled

Ants Don't Matter:

2012-01-28T18:03:00.000-08:00

The course of history is not determined by the masses, but by the elites at their head.

The same 'masses' lived in Imperial Germany under the Kaiser, Weimar Germany, the Third Reich, West Germany, and the united Germany of today. One single lifetime can encompass the entire range of Germany's evolution in the 20th century.

In that time, whether that long-lived fellow was clever or dumb, social or anti-social, productive or lazy, was all meaningless in the face of Germany's sweeping, dramatic changes at the heights. The elites made Germany many different things over the period of time that our average fellow had absolutely zero impact on world historical events. Not a single ant in 20th century Germany was vital to the changes that occurred in Germany's outlook, behavior, economy, technology, art, philosophy, wars, etc. Even the vast accumulation of ants, though it sounds like they should matter, don't matter, because ants don't stand up for themselves but inevitably fall under the sway of some elite movement or propaganda or another. IE, ants never unite among themselves, but always serve an elite who has tied them to his own personal dream via intelligence, charisma, leadership, good looks, lies, or whatever.

Culture does not emerge from the bottom up. It starts at the top and trickles down. In 1775 most Americans had no desire to war with Britain or become an independent country. But then Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, a few generals took matters into their own hands and started a shooting war, a few lawyers wrote articles in their state papers, and pow, a new nation was born with fervent support from the ants.

Ants are not infinitely pliable -- they'll eventually turn against their current elites and follow other elites if they are too mistreated -- for instance the French Revolution moving swiftly into the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. But they also never seize the limelight themselves. No historical epoch will recount a bad leader using bad policies in his kingdom starting foolish wars while debasing the currency, but in the end it was harmless because the common folk worked especially diligently that year, stopped doing crime, were extremely brave in battle, and increased farm yields ten percent by plowing with all their muscled might, and the country came out ahead thanks to the individual efforts of the ants all working together.

This sort of fairy tale has never occurred so there is no reason to believe it will occur in the future, either. The range of influence an ant has in the larger world is simply too small to make any difference in the sweep of history. The only way to make a real difference in this world is to master nature, or master other men. The title 'elite' refers to scientists, artists, politicians, propagandists, generals, financiers, and CEO's. Depending on the caliber and intentions of these people, your country will end up progressing or regressing, growing or shrinking, happy or unhappy. It doesn't require the input of anyone else -- that's all taken care of by the elites' influence on the masses -- or in other words, it's an inevitability that the ants will be doing the right thing if the elites are doing the right thing -- which is leading the masses down the right path.

There are many good examples of this phenomena: North Korea and South Korea consist of the same population, the same ants, but the caliber and intentions of their elites are different, and as a result North Korea is hell and South Korea is heaven.

Before the Meiji restoration, Japan was living in the feudal age. After the revolution, Japan became so modern so fast it beat Russia in the war of 1905 -- this with the exact same population, even during the same lifetime, as before the Meiji restoration.

The country changed not due to the people underfoot, but due to the leadership at the very top. Even in democracies where leaders are voted into office by ants, their votes were predetermined by the efforts of the artists, propagandists, and financiers ahead of time. In a climate where thinking outside of the box is unthinkable, the politicians who can gain the vote of ants' predetermined ideas due to their limited education and media exposure all serve the elites' pre-extant will. Democracy has such giant loopholes that it was ridiculous to think it would ever counteract the power of the elites.

This is why I find it so ridiculous to sit around complaining about the conduct of ants in the world.

"This or that ant did this or that crime." So what? Stuff like that isn't going to change history.

"This or that ant cost the government money." So what? That pitiful sum of money will make no macroscopic impact on the economy.

Websites that focus on the misbehavior of broad masses, and think a country can be destroyed, or saved, by changing the behavior of the broad masses, are horribly mistaken.

Yes, a bad populace can destroy a country, and a good one can save it, but the only way you can ever affect ant behavior is, first of all, to affect ELITE behavior towards ants. Only people with the power to change how ants think and act will change how ants think and act. This does not include the ants themselves, who are helpless tools of the elites and predetermined to do what they are told. Not by some obscure help book that tells them to do x and y for their own good, but by the rulers of the country who are currently in power.

Power is what is needed to reform the masses. With power, you can even change an entire people's religion (witness the Muslim conquests or the ancient ruler of Russia who switched the people from pagans to Orthodox Christians.) Without power, you cannot affect the behavior of the masses, because your 'input' to their system is dwarfed by the constant 'input' they receive from those in power -- via school, tv, the press, movies, politicians' speeches, artistic sculptures and buildings, etc. It is also dwarfed by technicians who transform the role of the ants in the blink of an eye. For instance, whoever invented the tractor changed the behavior of ants, who used to farm their own plots of land 90% of the time by hand, into a completely new existence beginning in the 20th century.

The people we need to change aren't the masses. The masses will change themselves to fit their elites. They are a compliant, gullible bunch that will basically do whatever they're told, even to the point of mass enslavement, even if you kill 1/3 of the total population like in Cambodia. The people who need to change are the elites themselves.

And elites aren't going to change because you're complaining about bad schools they don't go to, crime in urban areas they never enter, illegitimacy rates when their families have an 85% successful marriage rate, and so on. How can I state this more clearly? What motivates elites to change isn't horror stories about black crime. It has to be something that actually involves them.

Currently elites get to feel morally superior to everyone else because they're so 'tolerant,' 'understanding,' and 'objective,' as opposed to the stupid masses who cling to their prejudices against blacks. What's in it for them to change their behavior? What's in it for them to change America? You would have to make them feel even more morally superior, even more proud of themselves, if they did something else -- or you would have to make a group of people even more competent than the current crop take power through some sort of insidious means. In any case, you couldn't just whine about black crime and expect something to change.

Appeals to an elite person's material advantages will not work. They already have all the money they'll ever need, even if the status quo is maintained. Threats of violence won't work, they know full well that the police and the military are firmly lined up behind them. At such a time as the threat would become credible, they would no longer be the elites, now would they?

The only impetus for an elite person to change is some combination of pride and shame. If they are made to feel good about themselves and admirable to others, that would appeal to even the richest man in the world. Likewise, even the richest man in the world can't stand being called names and treated like dirt. Therefore, the best tactic to change elite behavior is to praise elites who behave in a fruitful manner, and mock those who behave in a rotten manner.

Mocking ant behavior is a waste of time because A) everyone knows the masses are despicable, that's why they're the masses. B) ant behavior won't change until the elites above them decide they should change, no matter what you say or do.

Basically, it's pointless to attack blacks. They may seem like soft targets, but it's just bullying the weak, which actually makes the author seem weak and contemptible themselves. Can't they pick on someone their own size?

Do you think Voltaire or Rousseau spent all day mocking peasant drunkenness or illiteracy? No, they challenged the prevailing elites, their political and religious and philosophical foundations, without a care for the world about what the ants were doing or thinking. Did Martin Luther nail his protests against the door of the village idiot? No, he nailed it to the door of a cathedral where an elite could read it loud and clear.

Elites tend to be smart people who understand the basic rules of logic. They can easily be shamed if they find themselves on the wrong side of an irrational, absurd argument. If you shame them for making obviously dumb statements, they will retreat from their positions and change themselves, just to avoid falling into the same trap twice. Likewise, if you cast a certain character as a hero in a convincing way, either through fiction or non-fiction (Like Plutarch's Lives or the gospels that narrated the life of Christ), elite people can't help but want to be like said hero and share in their glory. Elites have standards, unlike ants. It's hard for them to just drown themselves in liquor or soap operas and feel themselves complete. Unless they can wake up looking Jesus or Bismark or Augustus or Plato or Newton in the eye, they'll quickly grow despondent and unsatisfied. Show them someone better than themselves, and they will change to be like them, for the sake of their own pride.

Elites, more than anyone else, don't want to lose to anyone. They want to be the best. If you show a best that's better than them, they will respond. Olympic athletes perform all their greatest feats when in close proximity to each other, in direct competition. The spirit of wanting to beat the people they admire around them gives them superhuman strength, determination, talent, and ability.

The elites in the outside world are the same. Show them someone even greater than themselves, and the spirit of competition will burn fiercely, until they find some way to equal themselves to this legendary elite competitor at least in their own eyes, if not the public's.

In any case, the target should always be the elites, not the ants. Output should be intended to be 'input' into what forms the mind of the elites. The master of men are the elites -- so the master of the elites are the gods of this world.

This is what Dostoeveskey meant when he said poets form the '2nd state within a state.' Because poets rule even the rulers of a country, poets are in fact the rulers from the very beginning.

I'd like to see more people directly taking on the elites, via people who are better than them, or debates that clearly outdo their arguments, in a way that threatens the one thing elites still have to lose -- not their lives, not their property, but their social status and their self-identity. Blogs posting videos of misbehaving proles and saying 'when will we learn?' aren't going to change history.

Uncle Tom's Cabin changed history. Lincoln said to Harriet Beacher Stowe, "so you're the little girl who caused this big war?" Or whatever. And how did she do it? By changing the opinion of the elites. Suddenly, it was shameful to support slavery, and brave and cool to be an abolitionist. With that headwind, the elites started making decisions on how they would preach to their ant congregations, what articles to print in their ant newspapers, and so on. Soon enough an anti-slavery hysteria had picked up in regions that had never before given a damn -- and pow, the war between the states began.

The goal is to become a master of elites. The means are varied. But none of them involve bullying the weak. We can afford for say, 90% of people to be criminals, impoverished, lazy, divorced, or whatever, and it really won't have a large impact on the welfare of the country -- as measured by the per capita GDP of its elites, its artistic and scientific advances, its military might, etc. South Africa, despite being a complete basket case, is a relatively rich country in the world because the elites are still in charge of almost all its assets. Even though Mexico is only 10% white, her elites run Mexico in every field, and they're almost 100% white. As a result, Mexico, Brazil, and such countries really don't suffer from what their ants are doing in the slums and ghettos and boondocks. Just ignore them and move on -- in the circles the elites move in, it's as foreign to their existence as a city in China. (No, probably more foreign. Let's go with a city in Nepal to get a proper sense of their meaninglessness.)

Thomas Friedman Throws America Under the Bus:

2012-01-26T07:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/opinion/friedman-average-is-over.html

Average is over? Are you serious? You will no longer 'make it', ie, survive, in America unless you are above average?

As evidence for this new startling conclusion, he cites other recent articles that have warned about the dangers of increasing foreign competition and automation:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/8844/

He also throws out some additional statistics and anecdotes:

Yes, new technology has been eating jobs forever, and always will. As they say, if horses could have voted, there never would have been cars. But there’s been an acceleration. As Davidson notes, “In the 10 years ending in 2009, [U.S.] factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs — about 6 million in total — disappeared.”

And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Last April, Annie Lowrey of Slate wrote about a start-up called “E la Carte” that is out to shrink the need for waiters and waitresses: The company “has produced a kind of souped-up iPad that lets you order and pay right at your table. The brainchild of a bunch of M.I.T. engineers, the nifty invention, known as the Presto, might be found at a restaurant near you soon.

What the iPad won’t do in an above average way a Chinese worker will. Consider this paragraph from Sunday’s terrific article in The Times by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher about why Apple does so much of its manufacturing in China: “Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly-line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the [Chinese] plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. ‘The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,’ the executive said. ‘There’s no American plant that can match that.’ ”

So, it's impossible for Americans to work 12 hour days on a single biscuit. It's also impossible to wait a table cheaper than a tablet. All the jobs of the lower class are rapidly evaporating into thin air -- 6 million manufacturing jobs in the last ten years. Once machines have a cheap pair of 'eyes' that can help them navigate roads and workplaces the last advantage humans have over machines at routine tasks will be gone, and prototypes of this ability already exist. Google can make a perfectly safe car drive about in city traffic on its own, at the price of $200,000. Once that price drops to 1/10 of the current price, humans will never drive again. And a new technology dropping to 1/10th the price of its current level isn't unprecedented. Gene sequencing, flatscreen tv's, and computers have already done the same.

But get this, there's no sense of panic in Thomas Friedman's voice. He has the solution, you see. The magical solution no one else has ever thought of before:

In a world where average is officially over, there are many things we need to do to buttress employment, but nothing would be more important than passing some kind of G.I. Bill for the 21st century that ensures that every American has access to post-high school education.

That's right, college educations!

Let's ignore the fact that you need at least 110 IQ to complete any meaningful college courses, which puts college fundamentally out of reach for the vast majority of Americans. Let's just live in lala land where all brains are equal and anyone can learn nuclear physics if only they were funded with the right textbooks and teachers. This isn't a solution, it's a joke.

How, in this advanced day and age where machines are better than us at Jeopardy and Chess, are we still so primitive when it comes to certain facts of life?

Why is it that we can build invisibility cloaks but we still don't understand that IQ varies between individuals and is genetic, ie, FIXED, ie, it cannot be changed no matter what you try to do to said individual? You cannot educate someone to be smart. They got that from their parents. Period. This fact has been widely available in the scientific literature, and proven by every single scientific study ever made, for the past hundred years. It is absolutely beyond question, there simply isn't a single scientist who says genetics has no influence whatsoever on intelligence. But in the press, we keep being told that IQ doesn't matter, only 'education,' as though one's level of education causes your IQ, instead of the OTHER WAY AROUND.

These people are being disingenuous. It is impossible that they don't know about the facts of IQ. They simply aren't willing to face the implications of these facts. They are deliberately concealing reality, rather than uncovering it, which is the job of journalism in a free society.

The fact is, not everyone in America can become a nuclear physics major, so Friedman's "G.I. bill for the 21st century" is a joke. It won't help anyone or solve anything. It is dead on arrival. Meanwhile, automation will continue to replace jobs throughout the manufacturing and service sectors until there is simply nothing left for anyone with 'average' IQ to do.

What's to stop us from making robo-nurses? Computerized teaching at home? A robotic army? Computer lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, etc all based on the Watson software? What possible jobs are left that couldn't in some way be done by a computer?

Aside from platitudes about there 'always being more jobs,' what can we offer to the 'average' who are no longer good enough to get a job?

For thirty years now, wages haven't increased, while unemployment has gone up. We have been skating on the edge of disaster for a long, long time. The marginal utility of an additional worker was basically zero. Now we have gone over that point and companies have found that the marginal utility of an additional, average worker is negative. They can no longer afford to give them a living wage, health care, a pension, and make a profit. They are all turning to Chinese who eat a biscuit every 12 hours and machines.

If we don't do something quickly, we are looking at the end of the world. A robot apocalypse where the vast majority of Americans are jobless, homeless, and starving on the streets because they can't find work anywhere because they can't compete anywhere. In this robo apocalypse, stockholders and CEO's will be making huge profits. Why, it wouldn't be surprising for the top 1% to earn more than the bottom 90%. But what good will that be for the rest of us? Who cares if machines make us more productive if the benefits of machinery only accrue to a tiny few, while the costs are distributed across the many?

We would be better off smashing the machines and shutting off our borders from all foreign trade than to let this robo apocalypse continue. If we could return to a 1950's lifestyle, where unskilled labor could find union jobs for high pay and permanent job security, who would complain?? Only the top 1%, whose stock dividends wouldn't be making enough. The poor billionaires would have to settle with millions of dollars instead.

But it isn't necessary to deliberately sabotage our productivity gains. Indeed, if we just invert our perspective, the robo apocalypse is a robo nirvana. The day is fast approaching when humans will be entirely free of work, the grueling, monotonous, degrading activity that takes up about half of our lives. Robots will be better at every job than us, while still being incapable of enjoying leisure time. At that moment we will have maximized the value of human life. Humans will engage in specifically human things, like reading books and playing tag -- and machines will specialize in specifically machine things, like 24 hour non-stop welding of metal parts together and endless truck and train drives across the continent delivering goods to people's doors. If only we would redistribute the gains that are currently going to the top 1% due to automation, back to all Americans, the entire future can change from hell to heaven.

Instead of teeming masses starving in the streets for lack of money, due to a lack of jobs, we can give them the money that machines made doing the jobs humans no longer do. The money hasn't disappeared. Indeed, we are richer than ever. Even as manufacturing jobs declined, our manufacturing output increased. The money isn't gone, there's still enough money to completely replicate the lifestyle of our 1950's ancestors and more. It's just all in the hands of the top 1%. It's just all rotting away in some dank vault somewhere, accruing interest, for the mega-rich. Break into the vaults, take the money, and we could still, all of us, not just the 'above average,' be saved.

$12,000 a year for every single individual in the United States is 25% of GDP. Get rid of almost every program in the government today, increase taxes to be on par with the rest of the developed world, and we could, today, give everyone in America a living wage every year for the rest of time. This could discourage labor from finding jobs? Don't worry, they can't find jobs anyway. The machines and the Chinese have already taken them all. They already have nothing useful they could possibly do whatsoever. All you're doing at this point is torturing them for things beyond their control, and shaming them for sins they never committed.

This won't encourage welfare queens because your citizen's dividend doesn't increase per kid. The child's citizen's dividend is saved in a government account until they reach the age of maturity, after which point all the saved up money is released, giving them a chance to buy basic necessities like a car, a house, health insurance and a college education up-front, interest/rent free. If this still causes a giant plague of extra births, then regulate the birth rate in this hypothetical future date to keep the system from collapsing.

The citizen's dividend is the only solution to the robo apocalypse. "Higher education," the current solution, is nothing but a spit in the face of the working, and unemployed, poor. Do you think they can so easily get an education? If they could, why haven't they done so already? You're basically just saying 'try harder' or some other irresponsible statement without ever once walking in their shoes. How can you make a judgment about how hard they are trying unless you see a brain scan of them, for instance, lighting up their entire brain to solve a math problem that an intelligent person solves with a part of the brain the size of a pencil eraser lighting up? Who's trying harder now?

The poor and dumb have problems the rich can't even dream of. They are surrounded by bad influences telling them, in extremely persuasive voices to them, because they are too stupid to see the flaws in the logic, to do all sorts of stupid things. They are encouraged to do drugs, crime, alcohol, sex, have children outside of marriage, get tattoos, piercings, hair dyes, tans, and other things that discourage employers, take out risky loans at high interest, go deep into credit card debt -- anything you could imagine. All the while there are the specters of bad home environments, constantly moving from place to place without any roots, child abuse, poor health, poor nutrition. . . what do you know of the poor? How can you just tell them to 'try harder?' Their life is harder than anything you'll ever know. Every day they try harder just by staying alive than you try hard by passing college.

It is not the 'average's fault that 90% of people used to be employed as subsistence farmers. These people evolved the intellect necessary to be a farmer and no more. They cannot be asked to do anything more complicated than subsistence farming. It would be like asking a 40 watt bulb to shine at 100 watts by 'trying harder.'

Enough with the blame the victim mentality. Peasants used to work extremely hard tending their crops for virtually no reward. They lived a bare-bones existence that was seldom above starvation level and died en masse to the endless plagues that swept the land. These same people are the 90% of today, struggling to compete with tireless machinery and robot-like Chinese who can work 12 hours on a biscuit a day. Their laziness was never a question -- give them an environment where they can get a job, and they've worked themselves to the bone for nothing, just to enrich some passing knight in his sprawling manor. The question is whether our upper class has gotten any better than the past. Do we intend to let them starve to death in the streets again, ravaged by plagues? Or are we going to take care of them with the vast profits made available by the industrial revolution? Who are the real 'problem segment' of the population? The 90% who fall short even though they try their best, or the 1% who are so pitiless they'd rather run up their electronic banking numbers than save hundreds of millions of their fellow American's lives?

We are reliving the feudal ages. But we don't have to play the role of Marie Antoinette all over again. There's still time to do the right thing and save the people outside clamoring for bread.

We don't have to hear that the people need jobs, and reply with a sneer, like Thomas Friedman, "Let them become nuclear physicists!"

This time, why don't we just give them the bread already?

Who knows, it might even save the upper classes' heads this time.

A Righteous Jew:

2012-01-19T08:31:00.000-08:00

Jews have a term for good non-Jews. They're labeled 'righteous gentiles.' What does it take to get on the good side of Jews? Simple, a righteous gentile is someone who cares more about Jewish welfare than any other group, including their own.

Just be a slave to the Jews and you will join the ranks of righteousness.

Everyone else, obviously, is an anti-semite.

Jews only care about themselves. Their entire religion is about themselves. Their God is entirely dedicated to them, and no one else (unlike the Christian or Muslim God who cares about all humans, Jehova is solely the God of the Jews and has no interest in what anyone else does aside from Jews, or what happens to anyone but Jews. It's such a fitting God. A racist God for a racist people.)

Jews consider themselves the Chosen people. If they're religious, it's because God favors them, which makes them superior to all other humans. If they're secular, it's because they're so much smarter, wiser, and more enlightened than all the other goys on Earth. But their overwhelming sense of arrogance is the same, and as a result, all their thinking about the outside world is the same as well. What's good is what's good for the Jews, the Chosen people, and what's bad is what's bad for the Jews. There is no other value to consult because Jews are the only valuable beings on Earth. Everything else's value is a measure of how useful they are for Jews. Jews are the sun, and everything else can only have the reflected light glory of, at best, the moon.

This is the thinking behind the term Righteous Gentile, which is really one of the most condescending terms on Earth. For anyone who wishes to be a lapdog to the self-decided Chosen people, go ahead and get your praise. No one with any sense of pride, however, would wish to be 'worthy' of such an honor.

I could be a smart-aleck and turn the formula around. "I don't hate all Jews. There's still the possibility of a 'righteous Jew' out there, somewhere. A righteous Jew is someone who prefers and serves gentiles over and above his own race. A righteous Jew would be a Nazi collaborator, like George Soros' Dad. See, I don't hate all Jews. It's possible for some of them to earn my praise."

But then I'd be putting myself on their level. I think people should reap what they sow, but, as entertaining as the thought of turning the formula around may be, it isn't genuinely accurate, because the world is not simply a war between the races. Good doesn't equal 'my race' and evil doesn't equal 'their race.' Righteousness should never have been defined as allied to any race at all. Righteousness is reserved for those with allegiances to God. Not with the Christian God, or the Muslim God, or the Jewish God (which would immediately revert to 'good' just being allegiance to the Jewish race again,) but a God much higher than all of them, the God that created the absolute principles of this universe, including the moral ones, that brought not only light, but also love, truth, and beauty into this world.

Any old star can 'let there be light.' But only God can let there be good. Or in other words, whatever good that exists in this world is so supremely brilliant and deserving of worship beyond all else that exists in this world, that it immediately takes on the meaning, form, and reality of Godhood. You could say the Godhead is composed of a dizzying melange, or collage, of so many good things that no human could ever comprehend or contain it all. Sort of like a robot constructed out of a junkheap, God is continuously being built upon from every spare part it finds. Whenever someone smiles, it manages to grow a bit more towards infinity.

God is good incarnate, wherever that might be found. And it isn't so petty as to play favorites. A righteous gentile is a gentile who is on the side of good, of God, and a righteous Jew is a Jew who is on the side of good, of God. There's no difference whatsoever.

The reason I hate the vast majority of Jews has nothing to do with their race and everything to do with their actual behavior. I don't think their behavior is inevitable. If someone could ever give them a good thumping on the head and a lecture on right and wrong, they could be made to see a much better path. But if everyone is too afraid to ever confront a Jew, disagree with a Jew, or criticize a Jew, how will they ever be redeemed away from their insane, destructive path and converted to worship of the one true God?

Jews currently believe that the world should be turned into one giant diversity park, where everyone enjoys both equality and freedom, despite these two ideas being contradictory. Women and men should be the same, straights and gays should be the same, all races should be the same, the rich and the poor should be the same, the able and the disabled should be the same, the smart and the stupid should be the same, and so on. And once everything has been leveled, every individual will be free from societal pressure to conform to any group identity. All group identifications will be abolished, and individuals, each equal to every other individual, will follow their own instincts alone and self-actualize through some blazing pioneering path of happiness that's just right for them. This is the liberal dream, first defined and argued for by Jews, that has taken most of the world hostage.

It isn't a dream though, because the results will only be a worldwide nightmare. If you mix two dissimilar numbers, it can only be done by reverting to the lowest common denominator. Or if you don't like math, think of it this way. To get two species to be the same again, they can only meet by tracing their evolutionary trees back to their first common ancestor. The only way to force dissimilar things back into equality is to revert to a far more primitive, lower beginning, some sort of primordial goo, which not only erases our differences, but everything else valuable about mankind and society as well.

Our religions are different, so according to liberalism they must be abolished. Our sexes are different, so they have to go. Our outward appearances are different, so they must be homogenized into one muddy brown. Everyone has to become bisexual or at least transvestite so we can all get along. Rich people's money has to be spent on poor people to make up the difference. Smart people must be silenced and controlled, or simply done away with (the answers they came to in Cambodia and Mao's China), so as to not outshine dumb people and make them feel bad. One person, however stupid and irrational, will still have equal say in the future of the world to another, no matter how brilliant or learned, via the democratic idea of universal suffrage. Liberalism must level everything, or we will never reach the next stage of universal freedom. But the leveling is just another word for destroying. It's impossible to rise up the poor and stupid of this world, because they were born that way and cannot achieve more than their inborn potential, so liberalism always resorts to tearing down the heights instead.

Leveling equals destroying everything great and good in this world. The Jewish dream is to destroy everything great and good in this world, like a lawnmower who's only sense of perfection is a freshly mowed field of corpses.

Communism was not a perversion of liberalism. It was the idealistic, logical conclusion thereof. Today's liberals are too cowardly to destroy everything all at once, so they've stuck with their drip, drip acidic approach that destroys things over centuries instead. To tell the truth, I admire the communists more. At least they had the courage of their convictions.

Furthermore, the liberal, Jewish dream would be bad even after the equality part. Suppose they really did manage to erase all distinctions between people. Everyone acted, at least in public, as though everyone else were their equal in every way. This would mean that there could be no moral system that distinguished some people as better than others due to their behavior, because some people would be more apt at achieving that behavior, and then a new crevasse would open up, threatening the liberal utopia with a 'disproportionate impact.'

To achieve equality we would have to sacrifice any belief in the Good at all. Only relativism, ie, nihilism, can save liberalism from its internal contradictions.

And if you have a world of pure nihilists, who assert that nothing is innately good and therefore no one is better than anybody else, what use freedom?

The second part of the liberal dream is that the world, once being freed of all its onerous group identities and responsibilities, could finally blaze forth on a pursuit of happiness. But how can a nihilist be happy? From the very beginning, we had to give up the idea of good and evil, when we gave up group categorizations.

Where should they 'blaze forth' to? All their blazing will only taste like ashes. After all, everyone knows that everything they do is pointless and meaningless from the start, because all actions are equally good and everyone is equal, whoever they are, whatever they're doing.

Even the same individual is equal no matter what choice he makes. After all, if two different people can't be made unequal by their choices, how could the same person become better or worse via making the same different choices?

For a nihilist, there is no freedom at all. It's a paradox. Complete freedom of action implies a complete meaninglessness as to where he goes, what he does, and who he is. That is the only time society would grant him a complete freedom of action in the first place -- when no one cared what he ended up doing. The end result will be people who do nothing. Complete freedom of action includes the freedom of inaction, which, after all, is a lot easier than action. Since action and inaction are equal, inertia would lead to the same inevitable result in every human soul.

A worldwide plunge into alcoholism and drugs.

Russia already told us this would be the result, but no one else seems to have connected the dots. The liberals of the Soviet Union taught, for seventy years, that everything was equal in this world, and no one was better than anyone else. Most of all, they taught that there was no God and this universe was a random, purposeless whirl of atoms, no more, and no less. Then Russians became the people with the worst birth rates, suicide rates, lifespans, alcohol rates, and drug rates in the developed world. But no one ever thought, no one ever wondered, if these two trends were in any way connected.

So I will be the one to make the connection: Liberalism leads to nihilism which leads to self-extinguishment. You erase yourself, in one way or another, and float like seaweed through the sea of whirling atoms until you can finally sink back into blissful non-existence.

It had nothing to do with Russia's lack of freedom. Russia wasn't free under the Tzars and they didn't behave anything like that. Rome wasn't free under the Emperors but they never annihilated themselves. Entire slave populations, whipped and clad in chains, have still lived better than the Russian people brought up in the Soviet Union's schools. If merely lacking freedom led to people abnegating life, we would have seen these trends in worse forms in the past, and in different places. Instead we see practically every culture and people on Earth, whether freer or less free, never acting even remotely as badly as the Russians.

The limitless freedom of liberalism is in fact an illusion. The people who obtain it soon learn to repent of their gains. It's a cursed magic item that eats away at your soul and kills you from the inside out. If liberalism ever did manage to give people limitless freedom, it would be the death of them. If they manage to give the world limitless freedom, it would be the end of the world. Limitless freedom means purposeless chaos. The terms are interchangeable.

Everyone, to be healthy, to feel that their lives are worthwhile, must be constrained by their sense of values. They must have goals. And in doing so, they soon find that everything that hinders their goal, they are no longer free to do. And everything that advances their goal, they are no longer free to NOT do. In fact, they are bound day and night to continue on their pilgrimage, their one lone, straight path to God. The happiest people in this world aren't free of anything. There is a reason behind each and every decision they make in their lives, and they feel the bitter sting when they fall short of it, and a warm self-satisfaction when they fulfill it.

A goal that binds one person likewise binds another. If it doesn't have the weight, the strength, to bind another person, why would it have the weight to bind yourself?

Some shitty maxim like 'everyone is free of each other but can religiously compel their own actions', who would swallow it? If what you're doing is so good, so meaningful, so important, why wouldn't it be a categorical imperative? Why would it only include you? Why, in short, would freedom trump it? If freedom is more important than your 'purpose in life,' that which is supposed to regulate your actions, then why can't other things be more important too? Soon enough you're right back to drugs and alcohol. Unless the good actually matters, it doesn't matter. For the good matter, it has to be the most important thing on Earth. More important than other people's freedom.

To stop the lassitude of nihilism, libertarianism, some crazy principle of non-intervention, is a dumb joke. If something matters, then it must police everyone, not just one. Humorously enough, this logic is implied in the idea that 'freedom' is so important that no one can violate its reign. I grant the logic, there must be something important enough that no one has the right to go against it -- or else I too have the right to go against it, which means I have no reason to pursue anything in particular, which means drugs and alcohol and death. The problem is freedom is just a negative. If the greatest thing in this world of all is a non-existence, a non-entity, such as 'non-aggression,' or 'non-oppression,' then there is nothing good in this world. Good is, apparently, a temporary lack of evil in the world. What a ridiculous foundation for people to build their spiritual houses on.

Freedom is a negative, it simply denotes a desire for certain things not to happen or exist. It has no positive value. It does not assert that anything is actually good in this world. Therefore liberalism, (libertarians being a subset thereof) which has tried to make freedom its God, ultimately worships emptiness, nothingness, nihilism, death. How could it be otherwise? Unless you worship SOMETHING, of course you'll end up worshiping NOTHING.

But there is something of value in this world. Not just a lack of aggression, or a lack of oppression, or such nonsense. There's the actual presence of love. The actual presence of beauty. And the actual presence of truth in this world. There's also some other cool things, that are probably just derivatives of the forementioned terms: Honor, Pride, Justice, Purity, Cheerfulness, Happiness, Wisdom, Piety -- many, many virtues already found, and many, many virtues yet to be found, reserved for the angels, perhaps, or those who will come after the angels, or those who will come after them.

If you value these things, you can build your house on a solid formation, something that actually exists, instead of the thin air of 'lack of x' which is freedom's formula. And, incidentally, you'll throw freedom away as a useless chimera, not only for yourself, but for everyone. In its place will be a new word, a word full of purpose and meaning: Duty.

A world built out of rocks of duty is more fulfilling than a world built out of voids of freedom. Freedom will collapse down immediately, composed, after all, of nothing but air. But the rocks can build all sorts of structures. Eiffel towers and Hagia Sophias of the soul. Rocks can do anything, shaped well enough. Rocks are pretty cool.

Therefore left-liberalism, which stresses equality, and right-liberalism, which stresses freedom, are equally ridiculous and equally destructive to mankind. Swallow any variation of hemlock and the result is still the same. Liberalism's internal conflicts, the fights you see between Obama and Romney, are a fight over which poison we should be picking. It's irrelevant. It's a farce.

Only something that opposes both freedom and equality as improper for the human condition and the human spirit could ever save the world, or even a single individual, from oblivion.

It would say this: You are called upon by God to fulfill your religious duty, to add to my collage. If freedom tells you that would violate someone's whimsy, also known as their 'free will,' then smash freedom. If equality says that would have a 'disproportionate impact' on an 'underprivileged minority,' then smash them already and move on. We don't have time for these stupid, gadfly like buzzing distractions. We aren't the liberals' servants, or beholden to their false idols. We are the servants of God, the righteous, and they are beholden to us, for we are their superiors.

There needs to be a revolution. A physical revolution that puts the power of the state into the hands of the observant. IE, we need to install God's law, not these ridiculous heresies thought up by liberals who date all the way back to the Enlightenment -- 'freedom' and 'equality.' But before then, there needs to be a cultural revolution. There needs to be people with the voice to speak up for a new and higher God, and people with the ears to listen when the bell is tolled. Once the cultural revolution is complete, the physical revolution would be a synch, after all. And before the cultural revolution is complete, the physical revolution wouldn't achieve anything, because no one would be willing to enforce or obey the laws of God in the first place. The people who are speaking and listening to the book of God are the Chosen people. They can be any sex, sexuality, race, blah blah blah they want to be. But so long as various sexes, sexualities, races, and blah blahs behave worse than others, don't expect me to judge them or treat them equally to their betters. If that makes me a racist, sexist, homophobic anti-semite, well, oh well.

After all, it also lets me join a rather exclusive club, in this day and age. I will also join the ranks of the righteous, and live forever in the bosom of God -- as a part of his collage of all that is great and good in this universe, as a memory that I *happened*, and I was Good, that cannot be denied or retroactively undone by any passage of years.

My Reply to Susie Green:

2012-01-14T00:41:00.000-08:00

Vdare.com has a new column out today which is particularly disgusting.

http://www.vdare.com/articles/jews-leftists-immigration-my-journey-to-nietzsche-some-responses-to-readers

Jewess Susie Green pretends she is on 'our side.' ((The side of white, western civilization.)) But we learn what she really thinks and cares about at the very end of the column:

"Because of the errors and superstitions of today, the West is doomed to endure a very long and painful period of barbarianism, misery and even mass death. When it finally becomes unavoidably clear that group differences are real, I worry that the Jews, as the intellectual leaders of modern egalitarianism, will be shamed and no longer respected in philosophy and the social sciences."

Got that? Because of the Jewish-led philosophy of egalitarianism, the West is doomed to barbarism, misery, and mass death. Pretty grim, huh? That sounds like a pretty strong indictment of Jews in general. It would be reasonable to resent Jews just a tad if they were to cause all that in the future, now wouldn't it?

Nope! Susie Green doesn't think so. No matter what Jews do, Jews can never be blamed or resented for it, for that way leads anti-semitism, which, to her, is an even GREATER evil than sinking the entire West, billions of people, into 'barbarism, misery, and mass death.'

"Even worse, there is a danger that, out of this dark period, a deep anti-Semitism will emerge, as revenge for the betrayal by the intellectuals. The Right could become what the Left already claims—Nazis—and Left could become the lesser of two evils."

Did you read that correctly? "EVEN WORSE" than the majority of the 1st world reverting to the stone age, losing at least half of our population, and the remainder living in eternal 'misery,' is the prospect that ANTI-SEMITISM might rear its ugly head again!

The most damning statement of all is that even at this point, even once the left has plunged the flower of the Earth, billions of beautiful, brilliant white people into 'barbarism, misery, and mass death,' it would still be preferable to stick with the left than to side with the "GREATER" of two evils, Nazism.

Because we all know that Nazi Germany was EVEN WORSE than living in the stone age, with half the population mere skulls and crossbones, and the other half miserably going about their broken, wasted lives, because it DISLIKED JEWS.

It is worse for Jews to be hated, as a world historical outcome, than that all whites should suffer and die.

So says Susie Green, and she's "on our side."

No, Susie Green, you're not on our side. You're a sick, sick woman, a Jewish Supremacist, who is only thinking about what is good for the Jews, and you could care less about what happens to the rest of us. You hate white people and loathe them as all potential, proto-Nazis just waiting to burst out of our Jew-hating cocoons. You would prefer we all die out in your fantasy dystopia than that we should ever see and realize just who were our friends, and who were our enemies, all along. And that puts you decidedly on the "other" side.

Pro-white Jews are a joke. All they care about is anti-semitism, their own Jewish hides. They police us like they're our betters, and act as though they're the only people with the right to criticize Jews. At the last moment, they always betray pro-white peers and stab us in the back. Just like they stabbed Germany in the back in World War I. Just like they stabbed Spain in the back and aided the Moors. Just like they stabbed Tzar Nicholas in the back and assassinated the Imperial family of Russia, ushering in the communist reign of terror. Just like they stabbed America in the back with the 'HART-Cellar' immigration act of 1965 that took a 90% white nation, the strongest, richest, happiest nation on Earth, and gave it away to the 3rd world flood. Jews have betrayed and destroyed every single culture that ever tried to coexist with them. Rome, Byzantium, Germany, Russia, and America were all betrayed and ruined by the Jews. They are the most evil force, the most evil people, to ever live.

Like parasites, they seek out the strongest and healthiest hosts, the population that is the kindest towards them, the most industrious and creative among each other, and then suck them dry with lies and cons, only to finally finish them off, when they are no longer useful to Jews anymore, in an act of bloody insurrection. Then the Jews, the eternal wandering Jews, go find a new host and repeat the process over, and over, and over again.

And we never learn. We never learn. Even after they have destroyed every good country that has ever lived in the past, we still worry about Jewish suffering, prejudice against Jews, paranoia against Jews, as the 'greatest' evil, greater even than the end of the world. Even though we know the history of the Jews, even though we know they were the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution, even though we know they were the ringleaders of the 1965 immigration law, the Civil Rights act, and everything else that has destroyed America, we allow them to write articles on our own websites where they get to denounce whites yet again as horrible awful proto-Nazis while giving the Jews another pass, another excuse, another lie about how they're really on "our side this time."

Jewish apologists always have some excuse about how their host society 'hit them first,' sort of like a two year old, ignoring the fact that two wrongs don't make a right, and that the complete overthrow and destruction of a fundamentally good country just because you were slightly oppressed in some minor way is a ridiculous overreaction that cannot be justified in any way. But it's not even true. America never did anything to Jews, except keep them out of prestigious country clubs and put a quota on their college opportunities. Meanwhile, we defeated their most hated enemy, Nazi Germany, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of white lives and our entire treasury, in the process saving the lives of all the remaining Jews of Europe, and they still betrayed and murdered us.

As thanks, they freed the black plague on us, imported the entire impoverished, criminal, illiterate and Spanish-speaking population of Mexico into our borders, and broadside us every day with slavering hatred and derision in their propaganda factories: Newspapers, Magazines, TV shows, Hollywood movies, even our churches and public schools. They hate white Americans so much that they pulled off the ultimate coup, they even made us hate ourselves, and wish ourselves dead.

The children of Portland State University cheered when Bill Clinton announced the white race would soon go extinct in America's future. Normally, people do not cheer their own deaths. For that to happen, they must first learn to hate themselves. And where did they learn that kind of hate? Certainly not from their own ancestors. The white ancestors of America were proud of their nation, proud of their founding fathers, proud of their constitution, proud of their race, proud of their European roots and culture, and declared over and over that America was a white man's country and destined for white men's children. So where did this self-hatred come from? Where did they learn to turn their back on themselves and beg for a chance at mass suicide? Not from our mouths, this continuous poison. Not from us!

We learned it from the Jew. The Jews who wrote Archie Bunker sitcoms, movie scripts like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," commercials where dumb white male employees are shown up by wise black bosses, Holocaust education thrown into the face of every 5 year old on up in school, every year, all year, and every single editorial in every newspaper we ever pick up. We learned to hate ourselves because the Jews told us we were hateful beings. They told us this because they hated us. And they hated us for -- no reason at all. For saving them from Nazi Germany. For sacrificing ourselves so that they might live.

Jews betrayed Russia, which led to the deaths of 100 million people. But let's just ignore that. The Jews were being oppressed. There were pogroms in Russia's past. They were forced to live in special zones set aside for them. It was just so horrible. Anyone treated like that would kill 100 million people, right? So, never mind.

Tell me what America ever did to the Jews to deserve this:

According to Susie Green, America's future is doomed to 'barbarism, misery, and mass death.' And according to her, this is all because of Jewish-led egalitarianism. So, Susie Green, explain to me what we ever did to the Jews to deserve this last, final betrayal? What did we do to the Jewish people to deserve our wholesale destruction? Jews are the most honored people in America, the richest, the most powerful; a protected, Chosen race who all revere in public and fear to offend in private. All our presidents go pray at the wailing wall in Israel while wearing a yarmulke. We set up a giant Menorah on the White House Lawn every Christmas, a supposedly Christian holiday, but don't put up any corresponding crosses. We built the holocaust memorial, a crime we Americans didn't commit and actually put a stop to, before we put up a memorial to our own fallen troops in World War II. What more do you want from us? Our firstborn sons? We already gave our firstborn daughters, 37,000 a year according to the Justice Apartment, over to be raped by your black-unleashed-plague. How much more of a price must we pay to redeem our white blood in your eyes, for our awful American crimes against Jewry?

Enough. Jews always had some half-cocked excuse for every other betrayal of their host peoples before us. But they have no excuse for what they did to America. They are, definitely, beyond any doubt, the aggressors in this unsought war of annihilation.

Jewess Susan Sontag says white people are the cancer of human history. Jew Tim Wise says he is rejoicing in the collective sound of white America's fading heartbeat. We give them everything, do everything they say, fall prostrate at their knees, and they still want us all dead. Not just one or two radicals, but practically every Jew in America. Why do I know this? Because the 'mainstream' Jews never renounce these radical Jews, they never denounce them in a public forum. They never say, "these radical haters of white America do not represent us, they do not speak in our name, true Jews love America and love white Americans most of all for the opportunities they have given us by allowing us to immigrate into this wonderful land." Instead, said 'mainstream' Jews almost universally donate to, endorse, and vote for the traitor's party of America, the one that is full-steam ahead for wealth distribution from whites to non-whites, unlimited immigration of non-whites into white lands, unlimited black-on-white crime, and affirmative action for non-whites against whites, the Democratic party.

The Jew's destruction of America, if it should come to pass, will be an unforgivable sin no amount of great composers or physicists will ever exculpate. It should harden our hearts to Jewish whining, Jewish pleas about prejudice and paranoia, forever. I don't want to hear about anti-semitism anymore. I don't want to hear about the evil gentiles who unfairly want to harm perfectly innocent Jews who just want to play the violin or whatever. I don't want to hear about the dangers of Nazis coming back to power.

Guess what, Jews. You had your chance to show that you could make a better world than the Nazis, and you blew it. You destroyed everything you touched. You murdered everyone you ever gained power over. Nobody could be worse than you.

Winter Anime 2012: First Impressions

2012-01-11T01:40:00.000-08:00

Inu x Boku SS hasn't come out yet, but I'm tired of waiting. It's time to give a first impression of every new series that came out this winter anime session:

Aquarion Evol: This series is incredibly confusing. It uses all sorts of 'fake' terms that only the sci fi world in question knows about, leaving the viewers clueless. In addition, none of the reasoning behind the characters beliefs or actions make sense. The whole world doesn't make any sense, either. The main character senselessly dislikes his ability to fly, the military senselessly dislikes robot fusions, and so on. Nothing makes sense, nothing is explained. A senseless anime like this should just fly away.

Ano Natsu: None of the characters have any personality or depth. They are completely forgettable. I couldn't tell you any of their names. A boy without parents has a mansion to himself (where have I seen this before?) when he meets an alien who has fallen from the sky (where have I seen this before?), who just happens to like the shallow, perverted, boring main character for no reason (where have I seen this before?). Skip.

Another: A horror story that makes no sense, because no one has explained the strange paranormal world our hero has gotten himself involved in. Horror stories are supposed to be scary and suspenseful, so I'll give this one a pass. My only problem is that I don't like scary stories in general. P.A. Works animates this show very well, though, they have great quality standards as far as that goes. Is this anime genuinely good? Good at scaring people only? Or just bad? I guess time will tell.

Daily Lives of High School Boys: Crude and stupid. Poorly drawn/animated. Some comedy is gold, but you have to wade through slime to get to it. Skip.

Papa no Iu: This anime impresses me. In terms of shamelessness, it really has figured out a new and brilliant formula. There's an older sister and a younger brother, not related by blood. The sister marries a twice-divorced father, who has one kid each from each of his previous wives, and the two have a kid of their own to make a third. So now this unrelated by blood brother is the uncle to three unrelated by blood daughters who are each completely different from each other. Following yet? It gets better. One of the nieces has a crush on her uncle, while the other just seems to want to seduce every man who approaches within a 50 meter radius. A niece harem is well on its way. But don't worry, there's also a strange woman he goes to college with who dresses up in sexy outfits at all times and seems to like him, maybe, or maybe she's just strange and doesn't do anything for any particular reason. The uncle of course protests his innocence and says he'd never do anything with his nieces, and just wants to be with the college girl, but the entire anime revolves around throwing him into risque situations with said nieces and watching everyone squirm. Japan, Japan, Japan.

Recorder and Satchell: A spiritual successor to Morita-san, it's a short comedy where the guy looks much older than he actually is, and is therefore always taken for a child molester. We always needed a comedy about child molestation. Go, Japan!

New Prince of Tennis: An excellent start to the new season. Brilliant art and animation, better than Prince of Tennis ever got, featuring all the characters we've grown to love showing off like cocks on a walk. Does it get any better than this?

Baby, Please Kill Me: Terrible art and animation comedy, where the girls act idiosyncratically, which is funny. It is kind of funny, sadly. But still, skip.

Amagami SS+: Typical filler, the characters don't act like they really would. Still, the art and animation and music are all so good, and Amagami is such a great nostalgic world, that I'll continue watching anyway.

High School DxD: Porn, skip.

Senhime Zesshou: This story is good. It's very confusing, and throws you into a strange world with no explanation, but whatever. What instantly stood out were the characters. A story's quality is the characters, nothing else really matters. The genre, setting, even the plot is meaningless. If the characters are interesting, the story is interesting. If you fall in love with the characters, you fall in love with the story.

At the very beginning, a magical girl sacrifices herself on the battlefield to save a young girl's life. That girl goes on to value her life deeply, and when her life, and that of a child's, are menaced later on, she goes to every extreme to save herself and the child, just like the girl who sacrificed her life for her. It was extremely touching. It felt real. At the last moment, refusing to give up, she transforms into a magical girl herself. Everyone knows the most important trait of a magical girl is Heart, and thus she qualified for a powerup by simply fighting with all her heart as a normal person.

Meanwhile the magical girl partner to the one who died has become cold and mechanical. She no longer has Heart, because she lost her Heart when she lost her friend. But she does have skill, and power, and goes on fighting without any real feelings about fighting anymore, as a sort of habit, a memory of a memory. An echo on the shadow of a lake of her original self.

Can the two together become the strongest combi? I really, really hope so!!! I hope this story delivers up to the potential of its first episode. After all this praise, it had better deliver on the subsequent eps.

The Knight Area: I love soccer, so it's high time they made an anime about soccer. I totally understand the protagonist's problem of living under the shadow of greatness and thinking you can never do anything like that. It's a problem everyone has to face as we realize just how many talented and skilled people there are in every field ready to outpace and outcompete you. This series will hopefully provide an answer to that question, and many others, all the while reminding everyone why we love the sport of soccer, and why it's the world's game, the pinnacle of sports which is more popular than all the others combined.

Zero no Tsukaima F: Terrible first episode. It has everything I hated about season 3 just continuing as before. The future developments are so obvious. It will turn out that the pope is really a villain behind 'everything' and, bleh, I don't even want to bother writing out the rest of the story for them. I'll watch it out of loyalty to its previous greatness but it actually sucks with every fiber of its being.

Nisemonogatari: Alternatively, this series rocks with every fiber of its being. Bakemonogatari and Ef are the only two modern art, avant garde animes I'll admit are artistically great. ((Unless you want to count Madoka, in which case I disagree, it wasn't avant garde, it was Magical Girl at its finest)) Nisemonogatari picks up right where Bakemonogatari leaves off and immediately gets into a series of humorous, deep, insightful conversations between genuinely interesting and brilliant people who genuinely care for each other. The amount of love vibes between everyone is only matched by the amount of sexiness vibes. The art is incredible. Nisemonogatari is breathtaking. I can't wait until it plunges into the real meat of the plot in the eps to come.

My only complaint is that it's too short, and won't be animating the entire novel series upon which it is based. But there's hints that someday a third season will take care of that issue, only after, of course, this one sells well.

Mouretsu Pirates: This series is good. It has a really likable heroine, an interesting world, a great sense of humor, good art. . . it's exciting and happy. How good is it? That really depends on where the series goes from here. For now it's a must-see.

Brave 10: Enter the reluctant hero iteration #190340. Reluctant hero is thrown into a situation against his will, he grumbles about it, while still somehow being dragged along by everyone else. He keeps saying he isn't a do-gooder but always ends up doing good anyway. Ugh. And the girl is genuinely likable too. The combat in the series is completely haphazard. Expect no deep struggles like Naruto or Flame of Recca delivers. Skip? Sure, why not. Skip.

Rinne Lagrange: A great first episode that personifies the main character in a flash, and makes us like her almost instantly in doing so. A girl who is so overflowing with energy that she feels the need to spontaneously help everyone else she meets is suddenly tasked with saving the world (or something similar.) She treats the task just like any other errand she does as a good neighbor and citizen and plunges in headfirst. You gotta love her. She's great, and so is her new straight-faced emotionless alien friend ((Total ripoff of Nagato Yuki but we'll ignore that)).

Now if only Inu x Boku SS would air. . .

Also, of course, there's still Bleach, Chihayafuru, Naruto, Guilty Crown, Shakugan no Shana, Fairy Tail, Bakuman, Suite Precure, Hunter x Hunter, Gundam AGE, One Piece and Mirai Nikki.

But in any case, we have just from shaky first impressions tiers that look like this:

Must-See:

Fairy Tail
Bakuman
Suite Precure
Hunter x Hunter
One Piece
Nisemonogatari

Should See:

Bleach, Naruto, Shana, Mirai Nikki, Rinne Lagrange, Mouretsu Pirates, Senhime Zesshou, and New Prince of Tennis.

No Harm in Seeing:

Chihayafuru, The Knight Area, Guilty Crown, Gundam AGE, Amagami SS+, Another.

If you Really Have to:

Recorder and Satchell, Papa no Iu, Zero no Tsukaima.

Don't:

Everything else.

That gives us 20 series, or 23 series if we're pushing it. Not bad, really. Better than I expected. But I doubt any of these series, even though they're watchable, will break into my rankings, that aren't already ranked. A very solid but forgettable winter.

A Kinder, Gentler War Between the Sexes:

2012-01-10T12:50:00.000-08:00

How do we protect women from the abuses of the past?

If women can't support themselves, they are beholden to others, who may not have their best interests at heart.

If they are beholden to bad parents, they may be forced to marry bad people. Never mind marrying someone they do not love, love is just a word and has no real significance to the well-being of a relationship. But marrying an actually evil, loathsome, or despicable person is just a lifelong sentence of rape, no one should have to do it.

If they are in turn beholden to bad husbands, they cannot get free of them. There is no divorce, and anyway, they have no means of supporting themselves once they are single again. Even good parents can make mistakes and trust a deceitfully benign looking man with their daughters. It is only the wife who can find, through long experience and use, the true nature of her husband, which can be full of cruelty, violence, cheating, or any rotten thing. But at such a time as she would like to leave such a man who has revealed his true colors, she finds it legally and physically impossible. This, too, is a sentence of lifelong rape. There is no penalty in the criminal code as severe as the ones we condemned endless millions of innocent women to in the past.

Women should not have to marry men they do not want to out of economic necessity. They should not have to stay with men they do not want to out of economic necessity. Both paths lead to unhappy outcomes for women, and a sort of licentiousness among men where they can get away with anything and there are never any consequences in their lives.

There was a legitimate reason, then, for 'women's liberation,' and women rightfully fear the imposition of a reactionary despotism by disgruntled men. If this world were simple and only men could be evil, we could reach a quick and easy conclusion, just let women decide everything for themselves.

Women can choose to abort their babies or not. They can choose to divorce their husbands, cheat on their lovers, go to work, stay single, or do anything they like. Then the old abuses wouldn't happen, right?

Wrong. Women are still instinctually inclined to companionship with men, it just now occurs outside the bailiwick of marriage. These 'boyfriends' who come and go are generally worse people, more abusive, less loving, less loyal, etc than wives of the past ever suffered. Yes, technically, women can dump them one after the other, and they do so, but what's the use when the next guy is so much like the previous one, when every single one of them is violent and degraded? When women pile up a long string of exes, all of whom have criminal records, take drugs, are unemployed, cheat on her, and beat her when they're angry or suspicious, does a woman really benefit from her 'right to dump?'

The right to choose is meaningless if all your choices are equally terrible to begin with. Do you wish to die by burning or drowning? It's your free choice!

Women are not happy alone. They may put a brave face on it, but they desire company and companionship, and once they've missed it for too long, like a sailor adrift in the ocean mad with thirst, they will lean over and start slurping the saltwater in the hopes of slaking their burning need. If society allows women to be adrift in a sea of worthless men, women will find themselves no longer in a prison confinement like in the past, but in the insane asylum of the present.

Alternatively, giving women the right to choose about anything, while closing the door on a host of old abuses (men betraying women, men not supporting their women, men being cold and cruel to the women in their power), simply opens up the door on a host of new abuses (women betraying men, women dumping men, women not having any children, and women not raising the children they do have.) While one set of abuses made a woman's life a powerless sinkhole, this set of abuses is even worse, because it means the literal extinction of humanity. Furthermore, it goes hand in hand with the previous problem I was speaking of: When single mothers fail to raise the next generation, said children are even less capable of having a good relationship with the opposite sex than their parents were.

It turns out that if either group has ascendancy over the other, abuses will ensue. One abuse is painful, but kept mankind going for tens of thousands of years in a world that was getting better every day. The other is lethal, and has spun out of control in less than a hundred years, making the world worse ever since its inception. Women have no right to whine about reactionary despotism when the birth rate is below replacement, they don't give children a two parent, stable home, they betray and abandon innocent, perfectly nice and competent men for no reason, and they don't provide good examples for their children, or teach them the most basic levels of moral behavior.

Women complained about their lot in life for centuries until men deigned to listen. Being reasonable people, we felt sympathy for them and agreed to cast loose their chains. How do they repay us? With a war on men so fierce and terrible that all 'feminist' nations are in danger of emptying out and reverting to wilderness. This isn't what we intended, a world without marriage (remember, starting in 2011, the majority of households in America are unmarried, and 40% and rising children are illegitimate.) A world, really, without families, or relationships of any significance or worth, at all. A world, ultimately, without even life.

The question, then, is this:

How do we address the concerns of women, and correct the ancient abuses, if letting women choose to do whatever they please is not the answer, and only leads to worse, though sometimes different, abuses?

The first answer is obvious: Give everyone in your country a citizen's dividend. If people have a basic income that can provide for them, regardless of their parent's neglect or lack of a husband, they will be free of the tyranny of need. People should not use your feelings of hunger, cold, sickness, or the like against you, forcing you into glorified prostitution/slavery, which is all marriage based off of poverty can be called.

If we all had a citizen's dividend, then women would not have to be a burden to their parents, who could then use the guilt of that fact to force them into unwanted marriages. They would also have a recourse to go it alone if their husband could not or would not treat them like wives instead of chattel.

In one swift stroke, the citizen's dividend breaks the stranglehold of abusive/neglectful parents and husbands and sets women free for life.

But if we stopped there, the modern abuses wouldn't stop, and we'd only be worse off than when we began. Yes, we want women to be free from rape/prostitution/slavery, but that doesn't mean we want them to be free of marriage, family, children, virtue, and life itself. Women's liberation wasn't meant to be that free.

The next set of laws must constrain our modern abuses: Marriage is for life. Adultery is forbidden on penalty of death. If you get pregnant by a man, you must marry the father of your child and raise said child, not abort it.

These three laws would clean up almost everything wrong with relationships today. Children would be born, they would have parents, and families wouldn't split up anymore. But it doesn't cure everything. If married life is still vile to women, they will simply make sure they don't get pregnant by men -- using birth control or just abstaining from contact with men entirely.

There needs to be a way to reassure women that marriage is not the equivalent to serial rape, life imprisonment, or slavery. The answer to this is the most important reform of all -- moral education.

Currently we believe education is for the sake of teaching people skills they need to make money, and in a more vague way, how to hold the right 'beliefs' to be a good 'citizen.' There is no attempt whatsoever to encourage virtue and personal morality. Likewise, the media and entertainment world is 'free' of censorship, able to encourage any sort of lifestyles or behaviors equally, without any interest in whether they have an uplifting or corrosive force on general public morals.

Both of these abuses must be cleared out before we can create the first ever 'happy for both sexes' society.

Why were men so abusive to women in the past, or today?

1. Because it was tolerated.
2. Because they were never taught to be any different.

Both of these problems are moral issues. A culture tolerates bad behavior because it has not been taught to see that behavior as reprehensible. In short, if someone thought something was truly evil and bad, he would not tolerate it, he would destroy it at any cost. A culture that looks the other way, a culture that is indifferent, to sin is a culture that does not admit the sin even exists or feels anything but a drunken lassitude about the whole matter.

If we brought our children up in proper schools, that taught them what was acceptable in life and what wasn't, they would be more judgmental towards a) themselves when they behaved unacceptably, and b) others when they behaved unacceptably. Men and women both would be called on their sins, and shamed by their peers for them. They would be ostracized, punished, disowned by their family, any legion of penalties even before the law stepped in. And the law SHOULD step in, both as a reinforcer of the public perception that this activity is intolerable and evil, and as a means of keeping order and virtue in the public by excising the cancers in its midst.

If the media were regulated and censored, we would not allow stories that promote sin to be broadcast 24/7 into our children's (and adults, for that matter) heads. Instead, we would seek out stories, fictional or non-fictional, that encourage virtue and discourage vice in whoever hears them. In this way, people would be constantly edified by their entertainment, rather than coarsened and taught an anything goes mentality where 'everyone does it so why can't I?'

The power of peer pressure, the law, education, good parenting and storytelling all put together is a formidable thing. The odds of any sinner resisting and defying them all, and sinning into the teeth of this headwind, is extremely low. In any case, the damage will be kept to a human minimum beyond which nothing more could be done.

What do I mean by sin, in this context?

What I'm talking about is the sort of behavior that is, or was, making women unhappy in the past. Sin = lack of compassion. Sin = selfishness. Sin = debauchery. Sin = lying. Sin = breaking your word of honor. Sin = breaking your promises. Sin = violence against women. Sin = violence against children. Sin = abusive, cutting phrases that constantly undermine and condemn the person you are supposed to love and cherish. Sin = not helping your wife raise the kids, set a good example, do the chores, work, etc. Sin = lack of good grooming, diet, exercise or whatever that makes you look uglier than you need to be. Sin is, in short, anything that women might disapprove of in men and drive them from marriage into a preference for a monastic abstinence.

If we raise our men to be moral, and stop doing things that hurt women, women will flock back into our arms, and marriage as an institution will be restored. Coercion will Protect the institution, but the institution will not be forced upon women. Only men's good behavior can induce women to make that first, crucial step of consent.

Even this isn't good enough though. There are two problems with even this plan:

1) Some people want to work, but can't find employment, and thus appear as 'worthless' to women when in fact market forces have rendered most people, men and women, uneconomic. This isn't due to their laziness, but just the reality of automation and modernity.

The solution to this issue is the citizen's dividend. Allow these men and women to collect a paycheck every month for doing precisely nothing, enough to support themselves and not be a burden on their wives/girlfriends/husbands/boyfriends, and a lot of the strain in boy-girl relationships will disappear overnight. If people can't find useful work, but can still support themselves, the charge of 'parasitism' and using relationships to extract money from their partners will go away. Laziness will have to be judged by other means, like whether they're willing to do chores, play with the kids, or excel at a sport or hobby by putting in real effort to the task. Men could then escape the 'sin' of bumming around and still look admirable in the eyes of women again.

2) Many men wouldn't sin, and would actually be wonderful husbands, if they were given the opportunity. However, since they don't see any reward in keeping to such high standards, because there is no guarantee women will reciprocate by holding to high standards themselves, and there is no guarantee women will reciprocate by falling in love with said men, the whole thing falls apart.

So long as women all fall in love with the same top 10% men, the lower 90% have no reason to better themselves. They see no point in even competing. They drop out of the competition and find other, lesser ways to satisfy themselves, not because they actually love drugs or alcohol or whatever it is they do, not because they prefer their lifestyle to love, marriage, and children, but because they never had a choice to begin with, they knew it, and they carved out what meager happiness they could. Women then turn around and blame them as the reason for why women won't commit to such worthless losers, and the vicious cycle continues.

How do we break this cycle? I think it can be done. Here's what I'd do:

First off, we have already banned divorce and adultery. This means that the top 10% men cannot grab off a larger and larger share of the women in a giant harem. ((It is irrelevant whether alpha men have large numbers of women simultaneously or sequentially, the sequential women will avoid relationships with lesser men and prefer singlehood, followed by a short time with the alpha, if there is any chance of getting the alpha at all.))

Next off, the first woman who gets pregnant by a man marries said man, which means men who are hot commodities clear off the market quickly. Men are eager to have sex and will quickly get someone or other pregnant if women give them the opportunity, which will then force them to marry said women by law. Popular, attractive men will be married early in their lives and they will then vanish from the scene. Women will have to look elsewhere for companionship from this point forward. And I'm talking like by eighteen years of age, they will have to give up on their prince charmings, who some lucky girl has already snagged by getting pregnant, and look to the rest of the male world.

Basically, a return to monogamy will immediately help out men's chances with women. Which will encourage them to stay in the race and act as virtuously as they can, which will then make women find them more attractive and eventually 'settle' for them in a respectably short amount of time.

Is monogamy alone sufficient to give men a shooting chance, which will give them the energy to stay an attractive mate even when no one is looking their way? I hope so, but I doubt it. In that case, there needs to be a still greater incentive for men to stay good even when there's no visible reward.

Let's try this, then: For men who can prove to a sort of government dating service that they have behaved honorably and well, and are of perfectly marriageable material, they are entered into a 20+ dating service. Women who are not married after age 20 are automatically enlisted into this dating service. Then men and women are matched by lottery, or perhaps computer personality analysis or the like, and required to make an honest effort of dating for a month, after which point they can elect to marry, continue dating for up to six months before coming to a conclusion, or break up, and re-enter the dating lottery. The lottery won't pull out your number more than once every six months, so if you find someone you like and marry in-between runs, you're free to go.

Yes, this is coercion against women, but it's a soft touch. Basically, there are penalties for staying single and not doing your duty by men or the next generation. The penalty is that you will thrown into a whirlwind of relationships you did not seek one after the other until you get off the merry go round, by marrying already.

If women are goaded into dating and marriage, men will have a chance. They will see that they have a real chance, but ONLY IF THEY STAY VIRTUOUS. Only if they meet the standards required to be a good man, do they qualify for these marriage sweepstakes. For people who drink, use drugs, swear, look ugly, are fat, lazy, mean, violent, cheat, etc, there is no recourse for them. They don't get access to any women and no one has to put up with their attentions. They will become like the untouchable class and just left to rot somewhere in a deep hole. Men who wish to marry, who want to love and be loved by a girl, know that if they dot their i's and cross their t's, society will afford them the opportunity to meet that dream girl. Women are never forced into actually marrying a guy, but they will find it easier to do so than to constantly be dating people they don't like year after year. And loser men will no longer be able to bother women at all.

I think this is a fair compromise. Perhaps it won't be necessary and simple monogamy laws will suffice. But in any event, it is a better world than the one we live in, or the one from the past that women wished to be liberated from. No one can complain when there are so few perfect solutions to such a complicated question.

More than anything else, we must have the courage to start experimenting again. This is not the best of all possible worlds. There is a great deal of misery underneath our liberated and anything-goes modernity. We can't stop here, or settle for this. It would be a death sentence for mankind. If these policies don't work, we must have the courage to at least first see if they don't work by actually trying them. Then we can learn from the mistakes we made, we can learn why it didn't work, and try something ELSE, which takes said mistakes into account. The scientific method can't figure out anything without experimentation. With no data to observe, no conclusions can be reached. It's impossible to improve this world without sometimes making mistakes and making it, temporarily, worse than before. The willingness to change always carries some risk with it. But it's also impossible for this world to stay the same indefinitely -- it MUST improve. Therefore, we must continue instituting new laws and codes of behavior, until we find something that does work. Will it be our first try? Our second? Our third? Who knows. But it must happen all the same. There is no future in staying like this.

The Unemployment Inferno:

2012-01-05T12:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.technologyreview.com/article/39319/?p1=A1

Occasionally, mainstream publications repeat what I say here on this blog, minus one central point that lets them change their conclusion from my own.

Needless to say, this 'central point' that allows them to deviate is based on a lie, the lie of human equality. Subtract that lie and, lo and behold, mainstream publications are repeating, word for word, my own opinions and validating, word for word, my policy proscriptions.

This article is splendid and should be read in full, but needs one tiny edit -- the idea that 'education' will save us is a lie. Therefore, I'll just copy and paste this article, then subtract the education nonsense that is humanly impossible for the vast majority of mankind, and see where we end up.

The United States faces a protracted unemployment crisis: 6.3 million fewer Americans have jobs than was true at the end of 2007. And yet the country's economic output is higher today than it was before the financial crisis. Where did the jobs go? Several factors, including outsourcing, help explain the state of the labor market, but fast-advancing, IT-driven automation might be playing the biggest role.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people have feared that new technologies would permanently erode employment. Over and over again, these dislocations of labor have been temporary: technologies that made some jobs obsolete eventually led to new kinds of work, raising productivity and prosperity with no overall negative effect on employment.

There's nothing to suggest that this dynamic no longer operates, but new research is showing that advances in workplace automation are being deployed at a faster pace than ever, making it more difficult for workers to adapt and wreaking havoc on the middle class: the clerks, accountants, and production-line workers whose tasks can increasingly be mastered by software and robots. "Do I think we will have permanently high unemployment as a consequence of technology? No," says Peter Diamond, the MIT economist who won a 2010 Nobel Prize for his work on market imperfections, including those that affect employment. "What's different now is that the nature of jobs going away has changed. Communication and computer abilities mean that the type of jobs affected have moved up the income distribution."

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee study information-supercharged workplaces and the innovations and productivity advances they continually create. Now they have turned their sights to how these IT-driven improvements affect employment. In their new book, Brynjolfsson, director of the Center for Digital Business at MIT's Sloan School of Management, and McAfee, its principal research scientist, see a paradox in the first decade of the 2000s. Even before the economic downturn caused U.S. unemployment to rise from 4.4 percent in May 2007 to 10.1 percent in October 2009, a disturbing trend was visible. From 2000 to 2007, GDP and productivity rose faster than they had in any decade since the 1960s, but employment growth was comparatively tepid.

Brynjolfsson and McAfee posit that more work was being done by, or with help from, machines. For example, Amazon.com reduced the need for retail staffers; computerized kiosks in hotels and airports replaced clerks; voice-recognition and speech systems replaced customer support staff and operators; and businesses of all kinds took advantage of tools such as enterprise resource planning software. "A classically trained economist would say: 'This just means there's a big adjustment taking place until we find the new equilibrium—the new stuff for people to do,' " says McAfee.

We've certainly made such adjustments before. But whereas agricultural advances played out over a century and electrification and factory automation rolled out over decades, the power of some information technologies is essentially doubling every two years or so as a consequence of Moore's Law. It took some time for IT to fully replace the paper-driven workflows in cubicles, management suites, and retail stores. (In the 1980s and early 1990s productivity grew slowly, and then it took off after 1996; some economists explained that IT was finally being used effectively.) But now, Brynjolfsson and McAfee argue, the efficiencies and automation opportunities made possible by IT are advancing too fast for the labor market to keep up.

More evidence that technology has reduced the number of good jobs can be found in a working paper by David Autor, an economist at MIT, and David Dorn, an economist at the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies in Madrid. They too point to the crucial years of 2000–2005. Job growth happened mainly at the ends of the spectrum: in lower-paying positions, in areas such as personal care, cleaning services, and security, and in higher-end professional positions for technicians, managers, and the like. For laborers, administrative assistants, production workers, and sales representatives, the job market didn't grow as fast—or even shrank. Subsequent research showed that things got worse after 2007. During the recession, nearly all the nation's job losses were in those middle categories—the positions easiest to replace, fully or in part, by technology.

Brynjolfsson says the trends are "troubling." And they are global; some of the jobs that IT threatens, for example, are at electronics factories in China and transcription services in India. "This is not about replacing all work, but rather about tectonic shifts that have left millions much worse off and others much better off," he says. While he doesn't believe the problem is permanent, that's of little solace to the millions out of work now, and they may not be paid at their old rates even when they do find new jobs. "Over the longer term, they will develop new skills, or entrepreneurs will figure out ways of making use of their skills, or wages will drop, or all three of those things will happen," he says. "But in the short run, your old set of skills that created a lot of value are not useful anymore."

This means there's a risk, unless the economy generates new high-quality jobs, that the people in the middle will face the prospect of menial jobs—whose wages will actually decline as more people compete for them. "Theory says the labor market will 'clear.' There are always things for people to do," Autor says. "But it doesn't say at what price." And even as it gets crowded and potentially even less rewarding at the bottom, employees at the top are getting paid more, thanks to the multiplier effects of technology. Some 60 percent of the income growth in the United States between 2002 and 2007 went to the top 1 percent of Americans—the bulk of whom are executives whose companies are getting richer by using IT to become more efficient, Brynjolfsson and McAfee point out.

Dramatic shifts have happened before. In 1800, 90 percent of Americans were employed in agriculture. The figure was down to 41 percent by 1900 and stands at 2 percent today. People work, instead, in new industries that were unimaginable in the early 19th century. Such a transformation could happen again. Today's information technologies, even as they may do short-term harm to some kinds of employees, are clearly a boon to entrepreneurs, who now have cheaper and more powerful tools at their disposal than at any other time in history. As jobs are lost, Brynjolfsson says, "we will be running an experiment on the economy to see if entrepreneurs invent new ways to be productive equally quickly." As examples, he points to eBay and Amazon Marketplace, which together allow hundreds of thousands of people to make their living hawking items to customers around the world.

The problem, he says, is that not enough people are sufficiently educated or technologically savvy to exploit such rapid advances and develop as-yet-unimagined entrepreneurial niches. He and McAfee conclude their book by arguing that the same technologies now making industry far more productive should be applied to updating and improving the educational system. (In one promising example they cite, 58,000 people went online to take an artificial-intelligence class offered by Stanford University.)

IT-based entrepreneurship isn't the only potential technological driver of new jobs. Revitalizing manufacturing (see "Can We Build Tomorrow's Breakthroughs?") could also help. But automation has made manufacturing far less labor intensive, so even a manufacturing revival is not likely to mean a great many new jobs on balance. Likewise, anyone whose hopes are pinned on "green jobs" may be disappointed. Though jobs will be created in the switch to cleaner energy sources, jobs tied to traditional energy will be lost in the same process. Many economists are not certain what the net effect will be. And in any case, these days manufacturing and energy account for small slices of the U.S. economy, which is now driven much more by the service sector. That's why fast-advancing information technologies, with their pervasive reach and their potential to create new services and satisfy new niche markets, may be a better bet for job creation—though the tumult IT is causing in the labor market isn't necessarily going to resolve itself quickly.

Peter Diamond says that one of the most important things the government can do for employment is to take care of basics, like infrastructure and education. "As long as we have so many idle resources, this is the time when it's advantageous—and socially less expensive—to engage in public investment," he says. Eventually, he believes, the economy will adapt and things will work out, once again. "Jobs have been changing and moving around—within the country, out of the country—for a very long time," he says. "There will be other kinds of jobs that still require people."

First, let's see how far technology review correctly diagnosed the situation. 6 million jobs lost since 2007. The largest cause is automation (the rise of the machines.) The middle class is taking the most damage, because machines have not yet become cheaper/more efficient than human hands, legs, and eyes at menial tasks, nor are they outsmarting our CEO's, but even this is only a matter of time. Machines have replaced workforces before, but never so quickly, and never with the extensive artificial intelligence capabilities they now have in the present -- this wave isn't like the others. Even though GDP and productivity has been rising for decades, income and employment has not. It's the greatest disconnect ever seen.

However, technology review must have some fig leaf to cover the meaning of their article up with some camouflage. Enter the 'silly, magical thinking' that saves us from what would be our natural conclusions:

"Over the longer term, they will develop new skills, or entrepreneurs will figure out ways of making use of their skills, or wages will drop, or all three of those things will happen,"

First off, people don't develop new skills. This relies on magical thinking. Reality dictates that people with below 100 IQ cannot learn anything relevant to the economy. They can never outsmart a machine, or, more properly speaking, a more intelligent person overlooking and cooperating with multiple machines. The labor contribution to a product is minimal, maybe 20% of the price of production. A businessman isn't interested in hiring tons of people, he's interested in hiring the right person, who can make the most of the remaining 80% of his investment -- the price of his capital, land, taxes, maintenance, etc. He isn't going to trust a bumbling moron with ten million dollar machinery just to raise employment, and certainly not for slightly lower wages.

Skilled workers is just a euphemism for intelligent workers. It's been shown through numerous studies that a worker from say, Harvard, and another from the University of Iowa, after two years on the job their IQ, not their college degree, is a better determiner of their workplace productivity. Give an intelligent person a chance to learn the job and they will do so. Give dumb people that same chance and they won't figure it out in a million years. They are a hopeless group that education cannot change.

Time and again Technology Review predicts that education will ride in on a white horse and save the day. They do not, however, point to a single example of education working. This is amazing. A scientific website, without any evidence, without even a single real-life example, keeps citing the magical education fairy as the answer to our woes.

Where is the school that mass-manufactures brilliant new entrepreneurs off an assembly line? There isn't even such a thing as an Entrepreneurship major. Where is the high school, or junior college, that can guarantee employment for anyone who graduates from their ranks? Where is the statistical evidence that education is helping anyone find a job? A recent survey of college graduates discovered that only 57% of these graduates said their degree had helped them find a job, which is amazing when you realize businesses are required to hire people on the basis of college degrees and not IQ tests. College was found to be much better at helping children 'find themselves' or 'self-actualize' or some other new age hippy crap. Basically, college is an extended vacation for rich people. It used to be a place to find a marriage partner, but nowadays marriage is so delayed that even college is too early to find anyone during. There is only a tiny correlation between the education people receive in college and the jobs they receive afterwards, and that tiny correlation only exists due to government coercion.

The last option is that wages will drop. The problem with this is that wages would have to drop by 50% every two years just to keep up with Moor's law. It's a ridiculously temporary solution. Let's grant that menial labor could live off of half as much as they're being paid today. We'll slash the minimum wage in half and pay people only $3 an hour. In doing so, let's say this out-competes machine vacuum cleaners or whatever and puts people back in the assembly plants. How long before somebody somewhere invents a ten nanometer chip and computers leapfrog the workers once again with another doubling of productivity? Two years? Five? Ten?

Let's say it's now ten years later and the only solution for workers is to work for $1.50 an hour. If they put in a good day's work, we'll say 10 hours of hard physical labor, they'll get $15 dollars. Unfortunately, since they worked so hard and long, they'll be needing a lot of food, so let's subtract $5 off the top. Now they have $10 to pay all of their bills, electricity, gas for the car, debt payments for the car, insurance payments for the car (a car is a necessity to get to work and back for most Americans), rent for the apartment, phone bill (phones, likewise, are a necessity for work). . . But let's say they manage it all. They share a car between ten friends, a phone between ten friends, an apartment between ten friends, and so on, and their $10 manages to pay for it all. Then they get sick and, too bad, they don't have health insurance because America still doesn't have public health care, because we're the only rich country on Earth that hates its poor people with a passion and denies the poor even the most basic goods in life. Or even better -- then they die of old age and guess what, they're $10 a day couldn't both pay for themselves and a family.

Supposing menial labor could compete with machines by just lowering wages again and again, it's still a hopeless endeavor because the minimum wage isn't just that which is necessary to sustain life, but also enough to provide for at least two children who will take the worker's place when they die. I do not believe it is physically possible to support 4 people on $15 dollars a day in America. Our money simply can't buy enough basic goods necessary for survival for that to happen. The idea that there are infinite jobs once we allow 'prices to drop' is, therefore, a myth and a lie.

Nobody's willing to work for the wages of death. If they're going to receive less money than it takes to live anyway, they'd rather not work at all. That is the true minimum wage, and it's a hell of a lot higher than $1.50.

There are other alternatives, but they are equally disgusting. "There are infinite jobs if workers accept bad enough working conditions." Right, so, let's move their pay back up to $10 an hour, but now they have to risk their life among dangerous machines or shark fishing or coal mining miles underground with shoddy equipment. After enough deaths and maimings or lung disease plus our wonderful lack of American public health care, I think these workers would quickly despair and quit too. Or let's imagine the workers are women and they all take up strip dancing, lap dancing and prostitution. What a wonderful future we've made for ourselves. Infinite jobs for all our daughters, they can be forced to suck stranger's cocks by the thousands for a living or die of starvation on the streets. It's a libertarian paradise.

There are not infinite jobs worth DOING. That is the point technology review misses. There's this thing called utility, it measures benefits and costs. When you include the cost of employment, the benefits can easily be outweighed. At such a point as any possible new job carries with it higher costs than benefits, that is when you have reached maximum employment. That threshold is much sooner than the threshold of 'there's nothing left doing of any worth on this planet.'

If education can't make everyone into Steve Jobs, and we can't actually afford to lower our work safety laws, our child labor laws, our drug and prostitution laws, our minimum wage laws, and so on, then Technology Review's solutions are bunk.

It's true that we've always adjusted to machine workforce displacement before. But that was then and this is now. This time, things are different. This time the machines are so smart and so ubiquitous that there's simply nothing the lower half (and soon the upper half) of mankind can do. Nor is it true that we got off 'painlessly' from the industrial revolutions of the past. The most important statistic you will ever hear in your life is the one given by Peter Drucker in 'The New Realities': In it, he states that from 1900-1990, the average human's work hours over the course of a year decreased by 1/2. It's not that we 'adjusted' to machine disruptions in the past and found full employment again. We kept the same number of nominal jobs, but everyone was working half as hard. In fact, we had already been displaced by machines, without even knowing it. Now we are finding that even this shell game of pretending to have jobs has come to an end, and now workers, even working a few hours a week, are no longer needed for any useful end.

There are only three true solutions to automation: Fake, government jobs for everyone, destroying our machines and reverting to a Mennonite past, or the citizen's dividend.

The libertarian dystopia of infinite jobs at infinitely low wages is worthless, as is the pipe dream of liberals that everyone can 'do anything they want' so long as they get an education first.

The real solution being implemented, stealthily, in the world today is makework in, you guessed it, the worthless 'education' sector to give everyone fake jobs. There are other worthless sectors of the government, like the 'defense' department which does nothing to defend us but still costs 1 trillion dollars a year, or the health care sector which spends 50%+ of its money extending old people's lifespans by a single year. All told, government makework has been the only sector for job growth throughout most of Europe for decades, and is now the sole source of jobs in America as well. Even this is coming to an end due to the crippling cost in taxes creating these jobs takes. As governments find they can no longer employ people at $100,000 a year doing absolutely nothing of worth while still balancing their budgets, they are slashing public payrolls and unemployment is swelling up again. The game could be extended a little longer via hyperinflation, paying government workers in monopoly money by the gazillions and stealing the savings of the whole world to pay for it, but even that would come to a grinding halt eventually in total national ruin.

It should be obvious why going backwards isn't the solution. Without artificial intelligence and sophisticated machinery, we can never escape this planet, which is doomed to die from the sun going Red Giant, or from losing all it's carbon, or being drowned in comet water, etc. The Earth won't last forever, that's certain, and therefore we must leave while we still can.

That leaves the citizen's dividend. Paying people the bounty of our machine labor which has displaced their own labor, without having to work for it. It's just that simple. In the past we lived off of the work of plants and animals -- we expropriated their horsepower and photosynthesis to serve our own needs, and we thought that was just fine. Even though the crops grew themselves, we ate them and no one called said farmers 'worthless parasites.' Now we need to realize the same thing about machines -- machines are our servants, not our masters. We aren't parasites for living off the labor of machinery, just as we weren't parasites for living off the labor of animals and plants. This is our right as intelligent beings, we aren't parasites, we're masters of the universe and this is our tribute given to us by our inferiors.

The small number of human workers still needed to keep our machine economy going will still be paid handsomely. The citizen's dividend can be funded with current, or lower tax rates than we pay today. Government spending can pay out a citizen's dividend without any increase by just cutting all the unnecessary parts we exercise today. There is no excuse for why the citizen's dividend is unacceptable unless the current world is also unacceptable, which paradoxically means that no solution is acceptable and suicide is the only answer. I can't very well debate with nihilists who think the proper response to automation is going (mostly or totally) extinct. For everyone else, logic and facts dictate the citizen's dividend. There's no other way. Technology review likes to pretend there are other ways, but it relies on ignorance of the genetic, unchangeable nature of IQ, which is simply ostrich-like head-in-the-sand thinking in this day and age. Libertarians like to pretend there are answers, but when you hear what their real solutions are: Give people starvation wages, with no workplace safety, employ kids, legalize drugs and prostitution (including child prostitution, since after all, child labor laws are wrong. . .), trash the environment beyond all repair, and so on, you realize that libertarians are just misanthropes who desire to bathe this world in suffering and death. The nihilist solution of killing off everyone who's unemployed or about to be unemployed, in contrast, is a thousand times more humane, even if it reduces the human population to just 1% of what it is today.

We have entered jobs hell. There is no going back. Hell is permanent. We are in the first or second ring of the Inferno, but there's only lower circles from here. Unemployment isn't some sort of aberration, it is now the permanent norm. We can accept that and adjust our lifestyle to it (by passing the citizen's dividend), or descend in to ever worse circles of hell as we fruitlessly attempt to achieve the impossible with one mad scheme after another of full employment.

If we still have souls, we can't endorse sadistic libertarians or nihilist exterminationists. If we still have brains, we can't accept magical thinking liberals that think government debt can be extended into infinity, money can be inflated endlessly, or education can turn everyone into a super-genius.

If we are still sane, good people, if we are to ever be sane, good people again, we will pass the citizen's dividend.

What the new Winter Anime Season Should Be:

2012-01-03T21:11:00.000-08:00

It's the new year, and we all know what that means:

Time for the winter anime season!

I haven't seen any of the new series, so there's no telling how good they will be. However, many series are continuing series or sequels to older series, and we can count on their quality. It won't be enough to maintain the high level of the fall anime season, but then nothing could. This is what we lost:

Idolm@ster, Shinryaku, Working, Fate/Zero, Tamayura, Kimi to Boku, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, and Morita-san.

This is what we kept:

One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Suite Precure, Bakuman, Fairy Tail, Hunter x Hunter, Mirai Nikki, Chihayafuru, Guilty Crown, Shakugan no Shana, and Gundam Age.

12 series isn't bad, but what can we add to it? Returning greats include:

Shin Prince of Tennis, Nisemonogatari, Zero no Tsukaima and the fillericious Amagami SS+.

If those four turn out well, we would still need five more watchable series from the newbies. I kinda doubt that'll happen but who knows.

But I'm going to take this opportunity to lodge my voice of protest yet again. What should the anime lineup this new season Really be?

1. Clannad -- Tomoyo After Story.
2. Little Busters.
3. Rewrite.
4. Haruhi Suzumiya continued.
5. Full Metal Panic continued.
6. Claymore continued.
7. Ranma 1/2 Remake.
8. Sailor Moon Remake.
9. Dragonball Kai continued.
10. Working continued.
11. Oreimo continued.
12. Flame of Recca continued.
13. Hikaru no Go continued.
14. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha continued.
15. To Aru Majutsu no Index continued.
16. The World God Only Knows continued.
17. Rurouni Kenshin continued.
18. Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu continued.
19. Negima! remake.
20. Spice and Wolf continued.

You see, Japan? You don't need any new series (except everything done by Key). After all, you haven't gotten your original series down right in the first place. Before inventing new content, create one single anime adaption from beginning to end with no filler and nothing cut. Because I'm nice, I'll even stop my demands at #20. But practically every good series hasn't ended well, or has been messed up by the animators from the original source. It's horrible. I hate it. And I'm going to complain about it every year (perhaps every day of every year), until you listen and change your ways.

1001 Books:

2011-12-31T08:54:00.000-08:00

Just a fun little aside:

You know how every anti-racist comes on to this site and declaims about the ignorance of racists, then prays for our hearts full of hate, then sums it all up with a comment about us living in caves?

Well how does that compute with the fact that in the waning days of 2011, I've surpassed the sound barrier and read a whopping 1001 books across my lifetime?

I doubt any of these detractors have read even 100 books, much less 1,000+. The fact is, it takes a lot of self-study and self-education to break free of the 'matrix' of liberal lies taught in school and the media. Therefore, to be a racist, you must first be a free, inquisitive, original thinker. Racists are a cut above normal men, not below. We are smarter, more intellectually curious, more self-sacrificially honest, and better informed than any of our peers.

Racists also possess courage, though. I think that's our defining trait. Everyone in the back of their heads knows we are right, they know that races, sexes, sexual orientations, religions, cultures, and ethnicities are fundamentally different and that some groups are superior to others. They just don't dare say it, not even in their own conscious thoughts. The willingness to embrace this truth and then to say it, without 'retreat, surrender or apology,' is what makes racists truly admirable. It's the single major difference between us and everyone else. Even knowing what the consequences will be to us, we go out and tell the unvarnished truth that the world needs to hear, if we are to protect the superior from the inferior. Because unlike everyone else, we care about the great and the good, as opposed to 'getting by,' and will gladly give up the second for the first. That's the stuff heroes are made of.

'Discrimination' is simply another word for judgment, it means valuing one thing over another. There cannot be morality without discrimination. For something to matter, it must matter more than something else. If we 'hate' something, it's because it is in direct conflict with something else we love. To hate is the only proof we love at all. People who hate nothing, love nothing, because they don't care what happens to the things they 'love,' or else they'd be incensed at any and all threats to it.

Racists have an overflowing abundance of hatred for this world precisely because we have an overflowing depth of love and passion for this world. We don't just throw the world away and prepare for the harps and togas of the afterlife. We want THIS world to be a paradise, the real world, the only world we have. Nor do we think in some sort of nihilist fashion that it's okay for the world to be destroyed so long as we are happy, or so long as it happens after we die, because we think we're a part of something larger than ourselves -- ie, we're collectivists, and even after our deaths our collective will live on -- even if we're unhappy, we can be happy for the sake of our collective if it is prospering. Racists are fundamentally different from hedonists/solipsists/liberals/nihilists and fundamentally different from religious types AND fundamentally different from libertarians. We are our own type, the most complete type of Man: A man of action, who cares about something other than himself. Just by definition you can tell how praiseworthy we are compared to every possible alternative.

Ignorant? Try 'best informed group on Earth.' Haters? Try the most loving and altruistic people on Earth. Cave dwellers? Try the most progressive thinkers on Earth, who rely on science and logic, not superstition and emotional fluff to come to their conclusions.

We are the best. We're more elite than 'the few, the proud, the marines.' Let's enjoy the New Year's celebrations -- because the future, more than any other group or type of thinker, always belongs to us -- the scientific collectivists who care about this world and this world alone. Every year that passes we get closer to our goal, and our victory is even more assured.

Genetic engineering, AI, spaceflight. Who will use these tools most effectively to craft their utopia? Nihilists who don't care what the world looks like? Religious people who just want to die and go to heaven? Libertarians who refuse to organize their communities along any rational, holistic lines? Or us? Who is situated to turn technology into a community that will be more powerful, more beautiful, and more united than anyone else? It can only be us. We're the only group suited for the job, and the world knows it. That's why they're so deathly afraid of Nazis and rant against them day and night -- one of us is equal to a thousand of them, and ten of us is almost enough to conquer the world, and they know it. Last time it was Germany vs. the world. But this time they'll have allies everywhere -- wherever people are bright and honest enough to see.

This time we're going to win.

2011 Summed Up:

2011-12-28T08:09:00.000-08:00

At the halfway point of 2011, I wrote an article "2011's Progress Report" detailing all the good things that had occurred this year. This is to counteract the constant doom and gloom on the right that only wants to report the bad things and predict even worse things every day.

Now that the full year has transpired, it behooves me to finish up the list I started in the previous article.

http://diamed-the-road-less-traveled.blogspot.com/2011/06/2011s-progress-report.html

As a launching point, let's talk anime:

At the halfway point, I'd identified five good new series founded in 2011: Moshidora, Gosick, Ano Hana, Hanasaku Iroha, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica. At the end of the year, I can add five more: Idolm@ster, Usagi Drop, Steins;Gate, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, and Nichijou. Not only did 2011 contribute 10 of the top 110 anime series exclusively, it added sequels to 35 of the top 110 anime series, giving 2011 participation in 45/110 of all good anime. That's an unbelievable record of achievement. 2011 should be remembered as the 'year of good anime.'

The Kindle and ipad have taken off, just as predicted. The Kindle even has a low-price 80 dollar e-reader. This means that anyone with 80 dollars can read anything published from 1911 or before for free. It's a new gutenberg moment. Reading will become more popular and deeper, as people gain access to books that were largely out of print or impossibly expensive up until now.

The natural gas revolution continues, with domestic production of natural gas being 30% fracking now, making natural gas a new cheap, clean, renewable-energy cooperative 100 year long supply silver bullet.

Dynasty Warriors 7 got an expansion pack, Final Fantasy XIII-2 came out, Innistrad came out for Magic fans, the 3ds and PS Vita consoles were released, and some blockbuster titles sold record amounts: Call of Duty, Skyrim, etc. Though not released yet, WoW announced a new Panda expansion which should be a lot of fun. 2011 was also a good year for gaming.

Solar panel prices have halved since the beginning of 2011. They need to continue halving if they wish to someday surpass fossil fuels, but that seems certain to occur, because innovations that have been reducing costs while improving efficiencies seem to flow in every week.

Just as I predicted, Gaddhafi's terrorist regime really was overthrown and now Syria's Assad is in trouble. 2011 has certainly been a good year for Arabs yearning to be free.

Kepler has discovered more Earth-like planets in the habitable zone. There seem to be hundreds of them all around us. 2012 will confirm a lot of these sightings and give us a better sense of where we should go to populate next.

As predicted, the 2011 college football season really was awesome, as was the dizzying series of conference realignments.

In addition, the LHC is fairly confident they discovered the last particle in the standard model, the Higgs boson. That's pretty cool. I guess we'll know more in 2012.

The women's world cup, where Japan defeated the U.S.A. in a shootout to bring the cup back to their tsunami-ravaged country, was a better story than could have even been scripted. The entire tournament was a delight to behold, with far better sportsmanship and refereeing than the men's world cup of 2010.

Despite all the complaints about the economy, it did grow this year. Stock markets are up from the beginning of the year. Unemployment is a little murky, but it's probably lower than it was at the start of the year. Growth is proving difficult, but not impossible, post 2007.

For a 'skip year,' in-between Olympics, election cycles, and everything else, 2011 sure managed to do a lot. But looking forward, 2012 should be even better. We will have more discoveries from the Kepler and the LHC, commercial rockets servicing the ISS for the first time, faster computers and cheaper solar power, a further boom in shale-oil and gas, the London Olympics, a football season with all sorts of new conference schedules, and tons of good new anime. And with any luck, our affirmative action president will be shown the door.

Science is Stuck in a Ghetto:

2011-12-18T18:20:00.000-08:00

Where did all the real scientists go?

On the one hand we have theoretical physics, which hasn't made any progress since 1920 or so. Even if the LHC does discover the Higgs, that just confirms what we already knew. There was even an interesting article saying anything beyond the Higgs is absolutely unprovable. It would require a particle accelerator the size of the milky way galaxy to reach the 'next fundamental particle' after the higgs. So basically theoretical physics is dead.

Meanwhile, 'practical' science is just the unending nagging of a Mother: "Clean up the atmosphere, don't leave your carbon strewn all over the air, clean out your fridge, you're making a hole in the ozone. Honestly, why can't you clean your water supply twice a day like I ask -- ?"

'Practical' science, if we ever listened to it, would put us back in the stone age. It's in fact the exact opposite of real science, which is how to advance our civilization's power over the environment. Instead all it talks about is the fearsome environment and how we must obey its needs. Screw that. Nature exists to be conquered and enslaved by mankind, not the other way around. If science can't deliver the goods, then science is worthless.

Whenever I go to the 'science' section of the news, it is inevitably talking about the same damn thing: Global warming. So what if the world warms? So what if it causes floods and droughts? That's what science is for. To invent crops that can handle the weather changes. To artificially cool the Earth at will. To stop floods with dikes. To do whatever we feel like doing. Maybe we should create sky islands and float well above the weather. Or I know, we could global warm this planet to death, and go inhabit another planet, starting the process all over again. I don't want to listen to scientists whine about what we can't do. I want them to tell us what we can do.

In the 1950's it seemed like we had a proper understanding of science. Science was there to unlock the future and provide for the present. Now all science is determined to do is make us 'sustainable' and 'preserve the past.' Who cares if we drive 90% of life to extinction? Is it human life, or is it water fleas? What do I care if the oceans become too acidic for coral reefs? What do I have to do with coral reefs?

When was the scientific age of Flash Gordon and Star Wars hijacked by these nagging worryworts?

Science is no longer science. It's just the political arm of the pagan religion of nature worship. Apparently all the liberals who ceased being Christians still wanted humanity to be subservient to some higher force and so they chose grass and sea fleas and coral reefs instead of an august supernatural dispenser of justice. Do they realize how pathetic that sounds?

There is only one proper target of worship, and that's Man himself. Man, which created everything good in the universe, and everything of value, and is the source of all value in the first place. Before us there was nothing, and no one even knew about it. After us there was everything, and we all knew all about it. It's like night and day. Man should be the only factor in any of our calculations, everything else is dispensable and worthless, unless it somehow helps Man.

Science needs to stop telling us what we need to do to accommodate ourselves to nature. It needs to start telling nature how to accommodate itself to us. The process is called geoengineering. We are the world's masters, and it's time we start acting like it. The fish are running out? Then create fish farms and we'll raise fish to eat ourselves. The world is warming? Then cool it with sprays of water all throughout the ocean powered by the sun or the waves. We can do anything we want. Right now we want to burn oil and coal for cheap energy that heats, cools, lights, drives us around, and runs our factories. We aren't going to give up these comforts, period. It simply isn't going to happen. Science needs to shut the fuck up about 'stopping emissions.' No. It doesn't work that way. We get our cheap power and that's final. If you want us to cut emissions, give us a source of infinite, emission free, cheap power instead. That's the real job of science. To give us whatever we want. It isn't to tell us what we can't have. Why don't all the climate scientists get a damn degree in fusion power instead and give us what we've wanted for a hundred years now?

Or I know, they could quit all their yapping about global warming and study cancer instead. We want a cure to cancer. And aging. And alzheimer's. And everything else too. Go study stem cells, or biology, or whatever, and figure out how to make us immortal.

That's what science is supposed to be doing. That's what it was supposed to have accomplished by now, long ago. In the 1950's we assumed we'd all be immortal and have flying cars powered by Mr. Fusion. What went wrong?

Science decided that was too hard and instead it would be easier to whine and yammer on about how we should go back to the stone age. It doesn't require much intelligence to write a new article every month in a prestigious science journal that humans still inscrutably refuse to return to the stone age, and this is a shame, because scientists refuse to invent anything that could solve this problem, because they're still too busy writing up a new article on why humans should return to the stone age already.

It would be nice if we could round up every worthless climate scientist and science magazine that publishes articles on global warming and throw them into a concentration camp where they are told to make a real invention that genuinely helps out mankind or they can kiss their freedom good bye.

The soviets did it, Solzhenitsyn wrote an entire book about it, called 'The First Circle.' We should just throw them all into a gulag and give them butter rations and eggs based on their results. Give us AI. We were supposed to have AI, and spaceflight, by 2001, you worthless scientists. Maybe a gulag will be better motivation than another banquet celebrating the 20 millionth conference on why we should go back to the stone age at producing real results.

There was recently this ridiculous article on google news, talking about a six months pregnant woman sliding around an icy lake in Alaska, studying the all-important amount of methane bubbles that were being released due to global warming. She talked like her little ice skating adventure was crucial to the fate of the planet, but warned everyone in hushed tones that it would of course require 'much more study,' maybe even an entire lifetime of work, to discover just exactly how this Alaska methane bubbling up from lakes would affect world temperature. I have never heard of such worthless, fake makework. Who cares if the world is 2, 3, or 10 degrees hotter down the road? The job of scientists isn't to tell us what the heat of the world will be 100 years from now. It's to control the heat of the world no matter what is going on. IE, invent a way to cool the planet and it won't MATTER how much methane escapes from your icy pond, you fucking nitwit. Here's a suggestion, why don't we just move the planet physically further away from the sun? There, problem solved, FOREVER.

Stop studying things that don't matter just because it allows you to go on exotic vacations all around the world! How many scientists are getting taxpayer dollars to go on vacations to pacific islands so they can study 'just how high the sea level has risen this year?'

What a joke! It's not your job to measure sea level rises, it's your job to CONTROL THE SEA. TO CONTROL NATURE. Not to jet around the world and stroll around a beach in a bikini!

We spend a pitiful amount of money on space flight. Less than we used to in the 1960's. And our space capabilities are no better than they were 50 years ago. If we had seriously invested in space -- telescopes large enough to find habitable planets abroad, space elevators that could deliver infinite weight worth of goods into orbit, giant space ships that could provide radiation shielding for colonists, we could have left this planet long ago. All the sci fi authors assumed we'd be gone by now. It's 2011. The science has been available all along. We just refuse to implement it. We're too busy cavorting on beaches counting sea turtle hatchlings and taking helicopter tours of the arctic to make sure the polar bears are okay in the face of 'global warming.'

Scientists have betrayed us. They refuse to tell the truth about race and IQ. They sit on their psychometric studies and blather on about known lies like 'stereotype threat.' 150 years ago, Galton discovered that IQ was genetic and that some people had more of it than others. He then immediately leaped to the natural conclusion that we should only allow smart people to breed, so that the world's population quickly became twice as intelligent and sophisticated and healthy and strong and beautiful and moral as before. 150 years later, our scientists are pygmies of cowardice, and refuse to repeat what the brave Galton and the brave Shockley said in the past. The science hasn't changed. In fact, we now have over 100 years of extra data confirming the exact same belief we had 150 years ago: IQ is genetic and has a dramatic impact on every field of endeavor and every quality of life, and it varies between individuals and groups by vast amounts. If scientists would tell the truth, they could lead to a social revolution in the world.

If all the scientists, together, wrote a new article on the necessity of eugenics to improve the human gene pool as they today write articles on 'global warming,' we would have become supermen long ago. Scientists have failed us! They lied to us! They hid their data and their conclusions because they were afraid, they were cowards, and they didn't want the press to call them names. The science has been available all along. We could have instituted these breeding changes long ago -- we could ALREADY BE LIVING IN THE FUTURE WHERE THE EUGENICS PLAN HAS ALREADY SUCCEEDED -- if not for these worthless scientists who instead talk about how sad it is that our gallant glaciers no one is living on in the middle of nowhere are receding. Because obviously uninhabitable wastelands of freezing cold ice are better than clear land we might actually be able to farm or graze or live on.

We should have gigabyte per second internet connections that are able to stream HD 3d movies for everyone at will. The science was available long ago. But the government abandoned the internet to a corrupt monopoly that gets more money by limiting access to the internet than by expanding it. As a result, America is an internet desert, far behind the connection speeds of the rest of the world. We, who are supposed to be so rich, live like primitives from the stone age compared to our 'poorer' cousins in Europe and Asia. Where are the scientists pushing for universal high-speed internet access, a true human right that has a real impact on people's quality of life? They're too busy lobbying for a carbon tax.

Where are the robots? Asimov assumed we'd be living side by side with robots long ago. What is the holdup? Google has already succeeded in driving the streets of California without a driver. Watson already won at Jeopardy. What is the problem? Give us our robot companions, our Saber Marionette dolls, already. Robotics should be a simple problem. Give robots a simple ability to sense the world around it and respond to it appropriately. Something the dumbest bugs can do, even plants can do, our computer scientists have failed to program as of yet.

There isn't nearly enough research into robots. Computer power has plateaued. Instead we're concentrating on worthless things like energy efficiency. We don't need cheaper computers, we need STRONGER computers. Computers that can think as quickly and as well as humans. There is plenty of power around us -- like I said, there's enough coal, natural gas and oil in the Earth to fuel cheap power for centuries. And if scientists would ever get off their ass and stop telling us why we can't burn our abundant cheap power supply, we could have fusion power too. We don't need power-saving chips! We need POWERFUL chips.

I know there are thousands, if not millions of seriously dedicated people currently researching or funding immortality, AI, spaceflight, fusion power, etc. My complaint isn't with them. It's with the hundreds of thousands and billions of people who aren't researching these issues and aren't funding them. These are our TOP PRIORITIES. Global Warming is a meaningless distraction. Even if it occurs, it's meaningless. Even if we don't find any way to cool the Earth back down again, it's meaningless. Even if half the population of the world starves to death as a result, it's meaningless. Do you think junk like that matters once we've discovered spaceflight and colonize new worlds????????????????????????????

Science is in a ghetto. It has stopped being an innovator and has simply carved out a niche for itself to hibernate in. A junk science where no one's predictions can be falsified because they're all 100 years from now, 'climate science' and 'string theory,' is where all the scientists love to live. It is completely undemanding. It doesn't need to produce results. It doesn't need any scientist to be brave and tell the truth. It doesn't require any degree of intelligence. A scientist can go throughout their entire lives babbling nonsense and they'll never be called on it.

The solution is to cut off all funding, and all ATTENTION IN THE MEDIA AND ALL STATUS/PRESTIGE/APPLAUSE for any of their junk findings about worthless science that is not geared towards the betterment of mankind. If that fails, we can throw them in a pit and tell them they can come out when they have a working model for a wormhole generator.

Government is Good:

2011-12-17T15:06:00.000-08:00

The purpose of government is to make people better than they otherwise would be.

An ideal government has the consent of the governed. IE, the people realize their own flawed nature, their own weaknesses, and ask for the government's help to POLICE THEMSELVES towards their better angels instead of their demonic, animalistic impulses. This is because they know they will have a better life if the good is brought out of them, and their neighbors, instead of relying on their natural, and their neighbor's natural, states. This is also because parents realize they need all the help they can get to raise their children to be good people, and if society is hell-bent on corrupting them, there is nothing parents can do to save that which they love most on this Earth.

The government's role can be performed in many ways. Law is one of them, but it isn't the only one. Taxation and spending policies are another tool in the arsenal of human betterment. Lastly, there's education and 'culture.' When the government recognizes official holidays and celebrates them lavishly itself, while subsidizing their celebration among the people, that's 'culture' at work. The government is the most powerful force in the universe, it has enslaved electricity since the 1800's and surpassed gravity in the 1960's, and it can be the greatest force for good in the universe, using these 5 tools, if it so chooses. Nothing else can compare. The unified strength of a group of people will always surpass any particular individual, and the unity of government will always be stronger than any other unifying bond. ((For instance, even though there are 1.2 billion muslims on Earth, they never act in concert, so it's easy to bomb first Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Libya, without any unified response, but only local governmental-national responses each time.))

People who wish to unilaterally disarm, ie, have some sort of minimal government that only uses one of these five tools -- law -- will obviously fall behind those who use all five to their maximum potential to improve mankind.

People who wish to get rid of even law will quickly find that without government people are naturally evil and only destruction awaits them.

The fact that people are naturally evil without government does not mean that human nature is evil. Human nature evolved with government in mind. Government is part of human nature and it has always been with us, it is a tool as essential as our brain, body, clothing, hunting spears or computer terminals. Human nature, when government is taken into account and used, is actually quite peaceful and productive. Even though it takes twenty years to raise a child, it only takes a few seconds to snuff out said child's life. Even so, most people live to old age and very few are killed. The difference is astounding. That something so hard should be more probable than something so easy denotes a wonderful human capacity for good. But that capacity relies on government and cannot last without it.

Those who use fewer laws to improve mankind will naturally fall behind those who rely on more. The more totalitarian your state, the better. Because government's sole purpose is to improve mankind, there can never be too much of it. That's like saying humans have some fixed amount of good they can be and being any better would be counterproductive.

There is no such thing as too much government. There is only 'ineffective' government. When a government, by being forceful and aggressive, demands people act in certain manners, but the results are the exact opposite of their intentions, the problem wasn't the goal -- 'a better populace,' or the means -- 'forceful, aggressive policymaking,' but solely the methods -- 'collective farming' or 'gulags.' When 'big government' fails in its mission that does not mean we should give up government, our better angel's best and strongest ally, in principle, but solely those methods that failed to produce the results we wanted and expected.

A scientific culture would keep tinkering with the five tools government has at hand -- culture, education, taxation, spending, and law -- to produce maximum results. We would copy things that work from abroad and wouldn't cling to any particular formula, always looking for innovative ways to improve our populace. If a policy didn't work, like throwing dissenters into gulags, we would quickly abandon it and try something else. ((The soviets quickly discovered simply denying dissenters entry into college was punishment enough to win full obedience.)) We would create a laboratory of independent states and they would all compete with each other under a dizzying variety of plans, where we could just see for ourselves which policies worked best on whom, where, how and why.

The excesses of 'big government' have always been their methodology, not their nature. Since government is designed scientifically, by a collection of the brightest minds in the nation, it will never fall short of any individuals' thinking. IE, leaving each individual to 'better himself' is absurd, as most are too stupid and all are too few to match the collective intelligence of a governmental hive mind dedicated to 'bettering everyone.' Furthermore, the government has tools the individual lacks in 'betterment.' An individual can't pass laws, but a government can. An individual can't create a new culture, only the government can. An individual can't embark on a trillion dollar spending program, but for the government that's pocket change. And so on. Even if individuals could somehow conceive of ways to improve themselves better than the concerted efforts of the brightest minds in the world could, it would be pointless because only governments can actually put into play any such efforts/reforms.

Government is more powerful than human nature. Note, for instance, that nothing has genetically changed between the Vikings of old and the Swedes of today. But Sweden has become a completely different nation. This is because Swedes today have different educations, a different culture, a different law code, and different taxation and spending policies than they did as plundering Norsemen on dragon ships. Not only that, but its quite apparent that modern Swedes live longer, healthier, happier lives than their ancestors, and they also cause the rest of Europe a lot less trouble. Everyone wins. Human nature is just one more obstacle to design around, like the law of thermodynamics. No governmental policy should contradict human nature, that's like imagining away the law of gravity, but there's always a way to manipulate it. Whenever scientists discover a natural law, they do not then throw up their hands and say 'humanity is powerless, we may as well live in straw huts and give up.' They say, 'how can we use this to empower ourselves? how can we trick the universe's natural laws into serving us and our desires instead?' They think about it, and then they come up with the internal combustion engine. Or the transistor. Or whatever. And life improves.

Government must do the same about human nature. We must enslave the drives and natural impulses of man, just like we learned to enslave electricity, wind, water, and every other force found in nature. Take whatever is out there and build canals that route it to serve human needs. Nature is all-powerful, but it's also powerless, because it can't assert itself. The same for an individual's instincts, which stand no chance against the will of the people, backed up by trillions of dollars and millions of heavily armed soldiers. Sure, it is impossible to stamp them out, but it is possible to sublimate them into any number of alternative pathways. The mating instinct can be turned into a courtship plus marriage culture. Selfishness can be courted into the 'invisible hand' of economics. And so on. There is no human instinct that cannot be turned, even 180 degrees, into a force for good. Careful scientific planners have found ways to harness the lightning and the heat under the Earth that drives volcanoes to serve human needs. Compared to that, what chance do a few human instincts have?

If people do not realize it is in their enlightened self-interest to consent to a government that is designed around improving themselves and their neighbors, then it is still permissible to rule them. This is because they are too stupid and evil to rule themselves, and will just make a mess of their own lives, and the lives of those around them, and the corner of the environment/natural resources upon which they sit. No one has a right to waste space or breathe air. That could always go to someone else, someone more worthy. This principle is best described by: The superior should supplant the inferior, but the inferior should not supplant the superior. We don't have time or space to give a continent away to stone age barbarians still using human sacrifice and cannibalism to get by. We must conquer those places and put them under the law, the government, and quickly improve them to a point of minimum acceptability, so that the Earth's utility is maximized.

Part of forcing people to accede to governments they do not consent to is quickly teaching them to consent to them. Part of our duty, when we make unwilling servants out of unassimilated groups, is to assimilate them. Use the five governmental tools to quickly beat them into shape, until they, or at least their children, come to realize the benevolence and grace of the government they exist under. If a group stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the benefits of their government, and refuses, generation after generation, to assimilate to it, the only choice is to deport them or kill them off. Killing them off can be done in a variety of ways, by limiting their childbirth rates to 1 per family, etc. It needn't involve any pain or distress to the living. But in any event we cannot allow rivals to the government to form. People who have their own governments, or people who systematically disobey the government, or people who constantly proselytize to the masses against the government, will topple the world's greatest force for good given time. They are like a cancer and they must be cut out.

Thanks, Women's Lib!:

2011-12-09T18:59:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_force

This graph represents the number of people of able working age, 16-64, who are actually working in America. When the graph begins, we are looking at the baby boom, where a generation of American women exceeded the necessary 2.1 fertility rate for a people to maintain their survival as a people. It looks like they aren't working, but in fact they were working very hard at the most important job on Earth, creating and nurturing new human life.

This ended with 'women's lib,' the idea that women should be in the workplace instead of at home, doing men's work instead of their own biologically proscribed, biologically evolved, biologically necessary role. The fertility rate among white women is now at a lethal 1.7 children per couple. If this trend continues, the white race in America will slowly fade into non-existence. American women are actually quite admirable in this sense, however. In Europe and East Asia, the fertility rate is usually much lower, down in the basement of 1.0 or so. However, I would just like to stress that women weren't sitting around sipping tea in 1948, when the graph begins. They were preserving our race, something which white women today are no longer interested in doing. Any reasonable person would count their work of creating and nurturing white children to be far more valuable than anything white women achieve in the workplace of today.

What did women's lib give us? Apparently, nothing much. Even though all women gave up the idea of producing a new generation of children or providing a happy home for men to come back to after their work was done, all they managed to achieve was a tiny bump in America's total workforce participation. It started at 59%, but is now all the way up to 64%. We moved 5% of our population out of the home and into a cubicle. And the price we must pay is the gradual extinction of white America. What a tradeoff! What will we think up next?

Women's liberation, the idea that women should take up productive jobs, was ultimately zero sum. Every job they 'took up' came at the expense of men, whose labor force participation has been plummeting ever since that dreadful day. But men, obviously, cannot create babies nor can they care for them at young ages -- they are not physically or mentally or emotionally equipped to do so by the iron law of Nature -- so men who don't participate in the workforce are simply dead weights. Women who don't participate in the workforce can be doing the most valuable work of all, having and raising children. But men can't do anything useful without a job. All they can do is take and sell drugs. A lot of them end up in jail, others dead, but all of them end up unhappy. Women stole men's reason for being, while simultaneously losing their own. They did not in fact raise employment as a whole, they didn't create a 'rising tide that lifted all boats.' They unemployed men via competition, while simultaneously refusing to create families men could be a part of either.

Another interesting fact that came out this year, according to the census bureau, is that for the first time in American history, the majority of households in America do not consist of married couples. Read that again -- for the first time in American history (let's be serious, for the first time in history, as historically marriage has always been a fixture of life), the majority of households do not consist of married couples. Women's liberation has succeeded in completely atomizing the adult population away from 100,000 years of evolved preference for company of the opposite sex. Love is officially dead.

We have not yet reached another threshold, though it's inevitable that we will at this point:

In 2010, 40.8 % of all births in America were to unmarried mothers, down marginally from 41.0% in 2009. http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/11/illegitimacy-rate-fell-in-2010.html

"This is in part due to the sharp fall in total births to Hispanics. The Latino illegitimacy rate still grew from 53.2% to 53.3%, but the Hispanic share of total births declined from 24.2% to 23.6%. The non-Hispanic white illegitimacy rate was stable at 29.0%, while the black rate fell from 72.8% to 72.5% and the Asian rate from 17.2% to 17.0%."

As the white population declines and the Hispanic population increases, the illegitimacy rate will normalize to above 50%, the hispanic illegitimacy rate. We're already at 40.8% because hispanics and blacks have far more children than whites and Asians. Already, the majority of children born in America are non-white. Tick, tick, tick.

Women's lib also gave us this bright new world of single motherhood. In the past even blacks, the vast majority of them, had stable, married homes. But all that was swept away by women entering the workforce. Once women could support themselves, they found men to be an unwanted hindrance to their 'self-expression' or whatever and dumped them to the wayside.

Secretly nestled in the heart of womankind was the wish to be free of mankind. The moment they had the opportunity to support themselves and their children with their own labor (or government handouts, as the case may be), they immediately took it. Divorces skyrocketed, and illegitimacy became the norm. Adultery, around this time, also skyrocketed from some tiny number among women to around 40%. Women's liberation gave us all three of these scourges simultaneously.

It should be obvious that adultery makes at least men unhappy, though it probably hurts women too because the more women who are willing to cheat, the more men who have the opportunity to cheat on their wives.

Single motherhood not only obviously, but also statistically hurts children. They have lower life outcomes by every metric, live in poverty, have higher drug abuse rates, crime rates, etc. Perhaps the saddest part of being an illegitimate child is the rate of child abuse, sexual and physical, of their mother's new 'boyfriends.' Hansel and Gretel was the tale of the wicked stepmother, but no one imagined how bad it would be if we created an entire society of wicked stepfathers, men who would prey on the children of previous men, single mother's young daughters especially as an 'upgrade' from their current wasted, aged mother-partners. A new statistic just came out this week http://newsone.com/nation/tjstarr/half-of-black-girls-sexually-assaulted/, reporting that 60% of black female children experienced sexual abuse at the hands of black men at some point. You can bet most of those came at the hands of their mother's new 'boyfriends' or 'husbands,' or from other young black males who are practically feral for lack of discipline, ie, a stronger black male father who can force them to behave, at home.

Or perhaps the saddest part of single motherhood isn't easily found in the numbers. Perhaps its the fact that women are so busy working they can't spend any time as actual mothers with their children. Perhaps it's the fact that babies aren't cuddled enough as babies. Or the fact that children can't show off what they just drew to Mother who will praise them for it, but instead know their daycare providers better than their own family.

Or perhaps the saddest part of single motherhood is that men no longer get to be fathers. That entire field of experience is cut out of their lives. They will never know what it means to be a positive force in a child's life, or ever be thanked for it or loved for it in return.

Or perhaps the saddest part of single motherhood is that children don't get any fathers. Supposing said fathers not only act as a force against poverty (single parent homes are no match for two parent homes in providing a good material lifestyle for their children), or crime, drugs, and underage sex (fathers are better teachers of discipline and obedience than mothers), but are also genuinely useful as advisers, playmates, and examples (sons to be like, daughters to marry someone like,) by excising this entire pillar of support from children's lives, every new generation stands upon a shakier foundation than the last. Twisting and toppling in the wind, children of single mothers try to do better for their own children, but generally end up doing even worse, and the children of those children inevitably slide even deeper into the hole. It's a vicious cycle with no return to the happy days of yesteryear.

Divorce has a host of different ills, besides the harm it does to children. It impoverishes both sides, needlessly doubling the costs of housing, cars, etc. It breaks and embitters hearts, making men hate women in general and women hate men in general, because they've simply hurt each other too much to ever forgive the opposite sex. It isolates people into unhealthily small personal lives, not ever able to share their thoughts or feelings or have a healthy sex life or exchange loving little intimacies. No one is there for them anymore, and no one will help them. Divorce is like space -- if something goes wrong, no one will hear you scream.

Nor do divorced couples somehow recover over time. Divorcees tend to have unstable relationships for the rest of their lives as well. Obviously, once the precedent is set that divorce is acceptable, 2nd marriages end up with 2nd divorces, and 3rd marriages with 3rd divorces. A divorced couple can expect to be, on average, single for life. They can also expect that whatever future bonds they do have with other adults are tenuous and fragile at best, never amounting to anything. Love is not resilient, nor is it strong. It is a hothouse flower that must be protected with all someone's will and all their soul. It requires all the reinforcement it can possibly gather, from religion to virginity to vows of permanency to personal honor to personal pride to communal shame/praise. Blasted once, it never returns. The wounds of the heart do not heal.

It is commonly pointed out that during a hurricane or other natural disaster, policing stops and suddenly crime runs rampant. Looting, sexual assaults, and other crimes start crawling out of the woodwork and taking over the minds of a great many 'ordinary,' 'law-abiding' citizens when the police were still around.

Women's liberation is the same. Women who ordinarily, while the community was still around, did not divorce, now divorce on the drop of a hat. When before divorce meant financial hardship and really wondering where bread would come from, now it doesn't even merit a slap on the wrist from friends and family. This does not mean the very lawbreakers are better off. Looting, arson, and rape demolishing a city from within do not even help the looters, arsonists and rapists. It spirals out of control and quickly engulfs their residences and women as well. Everyone is better off if no one riots, even the rioters. However, each individual rioter sees that it is to his personal advantage to riot, so long as no one else does. It's the same for divorce. Women also suffer from divorce, but their minds are too distorted to see this from an objective, enlightened point of view. They go with their base instincts, just like the feral criminals after a hurricane, and end up destroying themselves along with everyone else. The answer for criminals and women is the same -- keeping the police force around and protecting the peace for everyone's sake, including the rioters and women. The 'police force' that kept women married was their lack of employment opportunities and lack of welfare. We could return to that world, or we could go about it in an entirely different way, if we feel that would be too sad -- for instance simply banning divorce except in carefully designated situations.

At the very least we could protect men via prenuptial contracts by giving them an option of 'super-marriage' where divorce is specifically prohibited and men are allowed to keep living with their wives and children, who are not allowed to cheat on them or deny them their rights as husbands and fathers. Soon all men would demand (as any sane man would), marriage solely on these terms, and the ancient marriage custom of a true union until death does us part would be restored. Women would no longer be able to snag good men or have high-spec children without paying the price of their liberty.

However, is it really such a bad idea to deny women employment and welfare yet again?

Suppose we only gave welfare to married couples with two children or more. A citizen's dividend of $24,000 a year for every married couple with two or more children, but nothing for single people or married couples who don't at least give our race a fighting, breathing chance by perpetuating it into the future.

How many women would stay home and prefer to make babies? They could get a good deal of money without working in this way.

If that isn't enough, we could just change the rules again: Only married couples where only the man works with two or more children can receive the citizen's dividend of $24,000 a year. We can call it the 'homemaker's rightful due check' or the like.

If that were the case, and divorce was banned except in extreme cases, how many women would leave the workforce? Without dragging them out of their cubicles by gunpoint, I suspect we could still engineer a major change in society.

The other benefit to this change, where adultery, divorce, and illegitimacy cease, is that male unemployment would go back down again.

If you recall, men have no reason for being if they can't be a productive member of society. Society expects it of them, and they have no natural role as birth-givers or breast-feeders/care-givers for children. If they can't work, what can they do? If they don't work, what will they be respected for? While for women work is entirely optional, and is in fact a bad option, at least until our fertility rate returns to survivability, for men it's a do-or-die necessity. But due to women's liberation, women didn't join the workforce, they mostly simply TOOK jobs from men. The marginal utility of this action is incredibly negative: Women, who don't need jobs, took jobs from men, who do.

When before 87% of men were employed, now 70% are, and falling every year. What are the remaining 30% supposed to do? How are they supposed to feel? Who will want to marry these ne'er do wells? And yet if a woman isn't employed, so long as she's virtuous and attractive, any number of men would propose to her in a flash. Do you see what a decimating choice it is to take a job from a man and give it to a woman? It's not a zero-sum game. It's negative sum every time!

Men have been forced out of their jobs, out of their families, out of any role in society, and eventually simply out of existence. The lifespan of men is much lower than women, and their suicide rate is much higher. Women's liberation is a war on men. It's a wonder there's any of us left at all. But if this 'liberation' continues, you can expect some sort of new hypergamy, where 1 man services ten to a hundred women, and the other 99 men are simply culled. Maybe, with advanced medicine, we can just sex select 99 women for every 1 man born to start with, so the 99 men with no place in society don't have to die in pain and obscurity. But then, that would go against the whole point of hypergamy. Women want to be with the best 1%, not simply to share high quality men, so that requires 99 loser men who suffer and die for every 1 happy man who lives the dream. Sadly, the place of men in this world is to be upstaged by better men, so that women can achieve their dream of high-status mating with only the *best*. If the remaining 99% weren't around to show how much they sucked, how would women know how wonderful they were to snag the top 1% alpha male? This way, many women's egos are stroked. Farewell, betas, you didn't suffer and die in vain! After all, you increased many women's vanity before the end!

Seriously, though. More than anything or anyone else, more than gays, jews, blacks, hispanics, muslims, tree-huggers or any other imaginably baneful group (the federal reserve? The illuminati?), all the evil in today's world is due to women's lib.

If we devenomed the poison of women's lib, through any variety of means, none of them necessarily 'returning to 1950,' the world would be virtually perfect. I mean, look at the world of today. We've got machines that can do almost all our work for us. We've got bountiful harvests and no famines in forever. We've got vaccines and antibiotics so that we can safely love all our children without losing any of them. We've got an amazing variety of high-grade entertainment, from books to movies to music to TV shows to video games. We have practically ended war as a force in this world. World GDP has been steadily rising for decades. From every possible vantage, the world is better than it was 60 years ago -- except one -- human happiness.

According to happiness surveys, we're pretty much at a nadir. Humorously enough, women's happiness is suffering the most in the modern world. I could say serves them right, but they're dragging men and children down with them, which isn't as acceptable. So for all our advances, it's meaningless, because we allowed women's lib through the back door.

Reverse women's lib. I don't care how. Once we have the will, there will be a way. And we could not only reverse our happiness indexes. We could shoot them up to the highest level recorded in human history. And we could do it without deporting a single immigrant or enacting a single holocaust, too. So, from that point of view, it's a much more viable way to improve the world without ruffling feathers. Any way you look at it, the enemy is 'womyn.'

Time to Go Bowling?:

2011-12-05T12:48:00.000-08:00

Am I a genius or what?

Over a month ago, I said LSU vs. Alabama was the 'real national championship' regardless of who played in January for the title. Then, lo and behold, the BCS system agreed with me, and decided that none other than -- LSU and Alabama will be playing in the BCS championship game this January too!

There's no way around it. LSU demolished every single opponent aside from Alabama this season. No one else has shown they would stand any chance against LSU. Oklahoma State barely escaped with wins against several weak teams, and lost to an unranked Iowa State. Alabama lost, in overtime, to #1 LSU, and that's it. Other than that their record is spotless. Alabama is clearly the second best team in the country. Stanford got creamed by Oregon, who was in turn creamed by LSU earlier this season. A national championship game between LSU and Stanford would have been a joke. I'm glad that the system got together and decided not to play favoritism, but to simply put the two best teams in the nation together, even if they've played before, and even if they're both in the same division of the same conference. As a result, we're going to have a good game in 2012, instead of a blowout, which it would have been if anyone else had gone up against the invincible LSU Tigers.

This has also left room for a great 'kid's division national championship,' #3 Oklahoma State vs. #4 Stanford. Now both of these games will be close, instead of say LSU blowing out Oklahoma State and Alabama blowing out Stanford.

The third best bowl game this season will be the Cotton Bowl, #6 Arkansas vs. #8 Kansas State. The plucky wildcats have won many close games, and the plucky Arkansas razorbacks have salvaged many 4th quarter comebacks, to get where they are today. A competition between who's the pluckier sounds rather awesome.

Congrats to Clemson for their first good season in forever and the usual suspects (Oregon, Virginia Tech, Wisconsin, West Virginia) for being the kings of their little ponds. Michigan hasn't been a good team in forever so I'll be interested to see them play this bowl season as well. However, it seems clear to me that the SEC and the Big 12 were the two strongest conferences by far this year, and the champions of outside conferences would only be mediocre in either of those two conferences. Georgia, South Carolina, Oklahoma, or Baylor could easily whip Michigan, for example. That's just the second tier of the SEC and Big 12!

Anyway, the bowl season is the highlight of the winter holidays. But that's only the beginning. After that we have the pro football playoffs (the only time I tune in for pro football because before then none of their games matter), then March Madness (the only time I tune in for college basketball cuz that's the only time the games matter), and then the Summer Olympics begin!

While people are preaching about a 2012 apocalypse, I'll be eating popcorn and enjoying sports, sports, sports!

While we're on the topic of entertainment though, I said recently I had rewatched Star Wars and found them to be depressingly bad. I was happy and relieved when I tried rewatching Lord of the Rings and found them to be as beautiful and moving as ever. Some of the portions dragged, quite a lot, to the point that I was too bored to watch any of the movies straight through, but other parts were incredibly exciting, so I'll forgive the boring parts. If anyone hasn't seen this trilogy yet, they need to go out and do so. The Hobbit should be arriving in theaters this year to continue the tale. It will be nice to get back to Middle Earth.

And did I mention that the spiritual successor to Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time's concluding novel Memory of Light, is coming out in 2012? Only 50 times? Well, it is. And it's going to be the crown jewel of the greatest written work of all time.

I've really enjoyed 2011, but as we transition into 2012, it's clear that it's only getting better from here.

A Rent-free Society:

2011-12-04T14:19:00.000-08:00

Rent is a scourge that transfers wealth from the poor to the rich. It is a system put into place many centuries ago where the 99% is exploited by the 1% for everything they have, which leads to a virtuous cycle of keeping the 1% forever with 99% of the money.

Rent, as an economic concept, works like this. For no reason at all, simply because you happen to have a legally protected 'property,' you can charge other people fees they have no choice but to pay. It is unearned wealth centered around people who never have to work in their lives, but gather into themselves the vast majority of everyone else's work. Their productivity goes to feed these happy few.

Examples of rent abound, but the most common example looks like this:

Suppose you're an older person, who has accumulated a great deal of wealth via careful planning and savings accounts, and now wishes to use it to accumulate yet more wealth. All you need do is buy capital and your journey can begin. You can become a landlord, and charge other people rent to live at your place. Or you can buy government bonds, and receive free taxpayer money extracted at bayonet from the public at large. Perhaps you can lend to a company risk-free, because companies are obligated, even when bankrupt, to pay back their creditors first, with interest, before they worry a lick about their workers. Or you can buy some sort of money market fund, where the bank does all the lending, and is officially too big to fail, so the government will always bail you out, with interest, if your loans go bad.

The difference between a rent-seeker and an investor is this -- investors are shareholders who can win or lose in a new venture, they could lose everything and no one will save them. Rent seekers, on the other hand, seek out, like burrowing worms, risk-free ventures where their money effortlessly compounds on itself, making more and more money in an exponential cycle. Investments require people to think through their decisions and carefully allot their money in productive places. Rent-seekers do not have to worry about whether their money is being productive or not, they have enough legal power backing them up that they'll always get their cut regardless of what happens.

The worst rent-seekers of all are the bankers. Bankers are allowed to make money ex nihilo, out of nothing, with an effortless wave of their hand. They can then use this imaginary money that took no effort to make as a loan, which they only give out at interest.

This is phenomenal. Banks can give themselves money effortlessly, just by putting a few extra zeroes behind their computer screens, but they demand that we, the receivers of this free money, pay them back and interest. The interest we pay back to these banks has to come from our labor, for the privilege of having received their free money it took them no effort to create, and then loan us. So our production is transferred to their wealth, which was COMPLETELY UNEARNED. Why do banks get this free money? Why can't we just invent money out of thin air ourselves, and give ourselves this imaginary money without interest? Because men with bayonets and government badges will kill you if you try that, that's called 'counterfeiting,' but when banks do it it becomes magically 'capitalism.' The same act, done by different people, is in one case worthy of million dollar bonuses, and in another case will get you thrown in jail. Amazing!

All interest is rent. There is no moral or logical basis for why you should have to pay back more in a loan than you originally received. It operates on the same basis as previous examples of rent-seeking, a risk-free, government force backed enterprise where wealth is simply transferred from those without capital (the money to hand out in loans) to those with capital. (the banks, who can create for free as much capital as they wish to have.)

It is despicable that anyone should have to pay interest on anything. It is against the laws of every religion on Earth, because from the very moment it was conceived of, it was recognized as an evil and fraudulent act. But people will use the argument of 'expediency' and 'practicality' for our interest driven economy and look the other way. They'll say it's impossible to set up society any differently, and stop the rent-seeking that pervades the capitalist system.

They're wrong. Capitalism, which is a derogatory term for people making money from money, instead of from productive labor, is not only evil, but also completely unnecessary to a well-functioning economy or society.

The first principle of a just state: No one should be able to make money, risk-free, from money. All money must stem from either risking your previous money as an investor/shareholder, or working to earn more.

This means no one can buy property and then charge people rent to live in it. Renting is forbidden. Everyone must own their own homes/apartments/trailers whatever.

This also means the government cannot sell bonds, nor can companies, nor can anyone else. Banks cannot make any loans with interest. If they feel like making loans with no return, they're free to do so, though I have no idea why they would. Government must fund itself via taxes -- nothing else. It cannot simply print money out of thin air to purchase what it desires, nor can it empower the federal reserve or any other mafia to do so. If there's some sort of national emergency and it wishes to extract enormous amounts of taxes and then pay people back later, they are quite free to do so -- just without any interest. The difference between taxes and mandatory loans is beyond me, but if they feel the need to arrange it that way, whatever. The federal government, obviously, cannot borrow from foreign countries and pay them back with interest either. Interest is forbidden.

Loans generally fall under three categories:

1. Consumers who cannot stop consuming at a level beyond their productive capacity, who will go any depth into debt at any interest rate in order to feed their addiction. Obviously, just like a drug dealer, a lender at interest is exploiting these poor fools and stealing all of their wealth now and in the future for themselves. This should be banned. It's obvious it should be banned. We should not tempt the weak into sin and then rape them and steal from them forever after because they were too weak to resist our evil tricks and seductions. That is not sufficient as a reason to hurt others, just like it isn't sufficient that we can rape and steal from people with our bare hands when they are too weak to fight us off. That is no moral license to actually go and do so.

2. People who need the basic necessities of life but cannot yet afford them -- a roof over their head, a car to get them to and from work, an education so they can get a job, health care so they don't die while they're still too poor to afford health care through their own wages. Lending at interest to these people is criminally exploitative. You are creating an entire class of debt slaves who must toil not only for their own upkeep, but also for your 'interest' as well. Life is inherently unjust -- young people have not yet had the time to become high-earners or accumulate wealth, so it is physically impossible for them to have enough money to afford the very things that are necessary to live, and become high-earners, such that they could afford the things that would allow them to live, and become high earners -- I hope you can see the circular trap here. It is the trap of the interest parasites, and it has been set up deliberately to extract unearned wealth from these helpless victims' labor.

There is no reason for this exploitation, young people did nothing wrong just by being younger than old people, so why are they punished with interest-bearing loans? If we expect young people to buy their own houses, cars, health care and educations while they still aren't situated to earn the money for these massively expensive assets, they have no choice but to go into these unequal deals -- otherwise what, starve on the street homeless without a means to get to work or an education to be hired? An unequal choice like that is no choice at all. Young people are not taking these loans consensually, this has nothing to do with contracts. They have no CHOICE but to make these ridiculously unfair contracts, because necessity has brought them to the edge of ruin otherwise. If you have death on one hand and slavery on the other, most people choose slavery. Maybe it's 'their' fault for not being brave enough to willingly prefer death, but then you are returning to category 1. People do not have the right to abuse 'cowards' who don't prefer death to slavery just because they're 'cowards' and so they deserve it, for the same reason weak people who can't win fights don't deserve to be raped or mugged, and dumb people do not deserve to be conned and duped. Weakness is not an invitation for the strong to swoop in like vultures. In a moral universe, it is something to be nurtured and sheltered, and eventually made strong.

3. The third category of loans are people who seek to start a business or buy heavy machinery for a factory, who believe they will quickly make a profit and be able to pay back that loan and then some if only they had some seed money. This type of loan is a wonderful boon to society because it gets money in the hands of those best able to produce with it, thus making society richer and more efficient as a whole. These loans need not be interest-bearing loans, however. They could all be set up as investments. Basically, anyone who wishes to start a company will have to sell stock for it, period. No bonds, no bank loans, nothing. Stocks have shown themselves to work just fine, now and in the past, at getting capital to where it needs to be. I see no reason why rent, and interest bearing loans, ever got involved, except that maggots always find a way into everything.

Young people must be afforded the means to buy everything they need to get started in life before they get started in life. In this way, they can be protected from going into debt, ie, interest bearing debt, ie, debt slavery where their labor creates unearned wealth for old people who are trying to make money out of money just because they were born first into the world.

Luckily, the means to vouchsafe this are already available. Everything works perfectly if we institute a citizen's dividend.

The law will work like this: Parents are mandated to provide for their children all the basic necessities of life from 0-18. This includes health care, a roof over their heads, food, water, education, and a means to go to and fro in their daily lives. While this is occurring, the government is depositing, every year, $12,000, $1,000 a month, for each and every citizen, whether child or adult. Adults are given this money freely, to spend how they see fit. But children are not given this money until they reach age 18, it is kept in a bank deposit, that no one can touch, until that day.

This has several advantages -- adults will not recklessly bring children into this world, because they will not make a profit from it, like today's welfare checks that directly increase an adult's spending power the more children they have. Meanwhile, children will have all the money they need to go 'out into the world' like society demands of them at age 18. The money is fairly and evenly given to every citizen, the exact same amount, so no corruption or favoritism can be shown for any group that could be pitted against any other.

18 years x $12,000 = $216,000. Every child in America will have $216,000 to buy everything they need to get started in life -- a home, a car, a college education, a health insurance plan, whatever they feel they need. And if they spend this money frugally, they'll have plenty left over for other things.

This money is real money and can be spent however the newly minted adults feel. If they want to blow it all on a giant party, then starve to death homeless on the streets, then so be it. I have no interest in helping such losers. I am trying to help the exploited victims who have done nothing wrong but are simply too young to have accumulated their own capital by keeping them out of rent/debt, not help people full of sin and vice who only receive their just desserts.

The secondary benefit of this 'real money' rule is that it will not be a subsidy to, say, housing or health care. Subsidies do not work because if everyone receives the same subsidy for any specific product, corporations will simply raise their prices and rake in the free extra money without having to provide any more value. They will simply be robbing the government blind. But real money doesn't work that way. If colleges raise tuitions to $100,000 a semester, then people will choose to spend their money on housing and health care instead. If houses all shoot up to $500,000, people will go to college instead and stay at home. The corporations cannot simply extract the money they 'know you have' by raising prices. The money is fungible and no new-adult is obligated to spend it on any particular good. Corporations aren't dealing with 'company scrip' that can only be used to buy their products, they do not have a monopoly on these consumers. They cannot exploit them by rising prices by exactly $216,000. Competition and consumer choice will demolish any company that tried.

In a society where every child is given $216,000 to start out in life, they won't need to take out a loan for anything they need to have. They can simply buy it out of their own pockets, cash up front. No one will be able to charge them interest or rent for a single thing in life. The parasites can all go back to Monrovia or Romania or wherever the vampires now roam.

Not only will these 18 year olds have $216,000 to buy every high-ticket item they need in life, they'll have another $12,000 a year streaming in from their adult citizen's dividend, which they can spend freely as well. This can go to paying for a new car when the old one breaks, house repairs, food, or even the miracle of new life, a child. They will never be in need, they will never face want, in a modern society which has long had enough money to help everyone, but has never had the moral will to do so.

Which gets me to my next point. People will holler and wail, saying, how could we ever afford this? $12,000 to everyone in America every year? Are you a communist? Do you want to steal all our savings and tax us at 100%???

Of course, these people are retarded. This is because the GDP of the USA is 4 times as large as the citizen's dividend I want instituted. The federal government already is spending 25% of GDP, right now, this year. There actually would be no change in how much 'government interference' there is in people's lives. Government spending would stay the same, heck, it would even go down if the economy would ever recover and improve again. And government spending is always extracted from the people, whether they tax it or not, in the form of inflation -- the devaluing of everyone's money due to rising prices (Because there is smaller supply to meet demand, because the government 'bought' a portion of that supply with their funny-money-printed-from-thin-air.) Whether the government requisitions goods and services by printing imaginary money or by taxation, the goods and services are equally requisitioned, therefore the government is already sucking 25% of the GDP out of people's wallets right now, today. However, inflation is such an inefficient market distorter as compared to taxes, that it's actually doing far more harm than a straight 25% of GDP tax would be.

But, people will say, the government's current spending priorities are better than a citizen's dividend.

Bullshit. The government is a cesspool, dominated by special interests and corruption, a giant organized crime den. Not one penny of government spending is more worthy than a citizen's dividend.

If parks, museums, mail, opera houses and roads were so valuable, user fees could be paid out by the people who actually use them, and these institutions could become self-supporting.

The federal government doesn't need a military, because the citizenry of the USA are so well armed that no nation on Earth could possibly defeat us even without one. Nor does the federal government deserve a military so that it can put down armed rebellions of the USA's citizenry. The militia was always meant to be a state, local thing that responded to the people's will, not an instrument of tyranny to put down the people's will. We can disband the standing army and raise militias, from the states, and raise taxes dramatically to gear up for war again, if and when, say, Russia decides to launch "Red Dawn" on the California coastline. Until then, screw the military and its endless foreign wars and occupations and pork barrel special interest giveaways. It is the biggest waste of money in the government's entire arsenal.

All the random branches of government like labor, energy, state, etc are vestiges of an ancient, dead age and have no conceivable purpose in the modern world. Cut them all. Scrap them entirely.

Say no to Foreign Aid.

This leaves us only with transfer programs. The only remainder of federal government spending is in taking money from some people and giving it to others, because we feel bad for them.

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are the majority of every federal budget. Add in food stamps, section 8 vouchers, education subsidies, and the 1,000 other charity programs, and it's clear that the government is already handing out trillions of dollars to people for free. The only difference is that these people have to meet special, arcane requirements that allows the electorate to be bought by the government and for corruption to spread its hand and take a cut in the form of bureaucrats, lobbyists, etc. Take out all the corruption and fraud ((Medicare fraud costs the USA taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars a year)), take out all the middlemen ((Federal employees get paid far more than private employees to do nothing but hand out checks to the lucky few special interests who got the ear of Washington)), and we can serve the same ostensible purpose ((Don't you feel pity for these people, the sick, the elderly, the single mothers, etc?)) with the citizen's dividend and get much more bang for our buck.

Get rid of all the transfer programs. Use the revenue to fund the mother of all transfer programs, a free and fair, universal Citizen's Dividend. This can pay for Grandma, Grandpa, baby Joe and Mr. Smith. It can pay for everyone, they will receive as much as they ever needed, just like before, only this time no one will be exploited and no one will be left out.

Supposing there is some conceivable use to some portion of the federal budget, we can raise taxes temporarily to 30% of GDP from the current 25%, and pay for these programs on top of the citizen's dividend. However, the economy will grow so quickly from a citizen's dividend, because everyone will be free of debt slavery and itching to spend money that the economy will boom like never before. The economy is 70% based on consumer demand. If we put money in people's pockets, they will turn around and spend it, which will be the best source of new jobs and new growth in history. America's economic fortunes will gale forth like a hurricane, and then we can lower taxes down to 25% again, or 15%, or whatever low percentage is necessary to provide $12,000 a year to everyone.

The economy will also boom because all the inefficiencies will be gone. No more public health care means people can buy any care they like in a free and fair competition. No endless paperwork, no lawyers with endless lawsuits, no regulations and no subsidies will make the price of health care drop like a rock. The same will be true of every other field. If we just get rid of the entire government and all of its intrusions, via taxes, regulations, transfers and subsidies, our economy would bloom. But we would not lose our precious safety net that makes sure everyone in our society, rich or poor, can lead a good life. This one, this single, actual good use of government will remain. A government of, by, and for the people which will make every single person in it happy. Governments are instituted amongst men to secure their happiness. A citizen's dividend is the only way to make people happy. Therefore, all we ever needed to institute a good government was to pass the citizen's dividend.

We can do it while making our economy freer and more dynamic than ever, without raising taxes, while completely demolishing inflation and the public debt. ((No more deficit spending, because we can only spend what we tax, ie, no more imaginary money ever again. Plus, we have banned interest payments, so we don't have to pay back interest on our previous debts any longer. We'll be free.))

And while we're going about creating this utopia of good governance, on the side we'll have corrected the largest two flaws in capitalism: the suffering of the unfortunate, and the predation of the fortunate. No one will be so poor they can't afford a roof over their heads, and no one will be so rich and powerful they can make money from money, risk free. Everyone, in these terms, will be equal. Like a democracy always should have been from the start.

2012 Anime Preview:

2011-11-30T08:46:00.000-08:00

This fall anime season is blazing by, and it's almost time for the winter 2012 anime season to begin. Obviously, until I watch what is on offer, I don't have many opinions about this coming season. http://thecartdriver.com/charts/ has a thorough run through of what's coming up for those who are interested.

I'm more interested in what's been announced to appear in 2012 as a whole. Among series currently ranked in the top 110, 30 have already promised to return with new content in 2012. Sometimes that content may be just a tiny dollop, and sometimes it's a whole new tv season, but the point is we're already well on our way to having fantastic year of anime in 2012. 30 doesn't match the record setting 45/110 that 2011 possessed, but it does exceed everything 2008-down. IE, even this far out, when most 2012 series still haven't even been announced much less aired, it has already promised to be in the top 4 years of quality/quantity anime. I would be happy with simply what's already been promised coming out for 2012 and nothing else making any impact at all. It would still be a stellar year to look forward to. We're living amidst an embarrassment of riches in anime, I would almost feel guilty if any more good series were released next year.

To get people excited about the coming year, let's give a rundown of what to expect:

#2. Pretty Cure has promised a new DX Movie (where all the pretty cures from all seasons have an adventure together) and a new tv season, Smile Precure. Suite Precure will also be airing a ways into 2012, which has been a wonderful ride. I hate comparing Precure seasons one to the other because they're all so good, so suffice to say that Suite Precure, like the others, is a must see. For the first time ever Suite Precure is coming out in 1080p blu-ray as well, which shows the series is really stepping up its game to please its customers by drawing harder and better than ever.

#3. One Piece has a new movie planned in 2012 and will continue at least until the end of this fishman island arc. From there it might flounder into filler, or maybe it will somehow keep pace with the manga, each episode only covering a single chapter? Time will tell. In any event, we can expect this immortal series to just keep on going like clockwork, as it has for the last 12 years.

#4. A long promised Code Geass side story is finally slated to come out this year. It won't be very long, and is supposed to feature new characters in Europe. But if it's Code Geass it's going to be amazing somehow or other.

#5. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha has a new movie planned for release this summer. It will be a retelling of the Nanoha A's season, the best season in Nanoha. The first movie was a graphics boost of the original Nanoha season, and was extremely faithful to the source, while also even finding time to add new content. If this movie does the same for A's, it will be a wonderful addition to the franchise.

#7. Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni has a couple more oav's on the way. I have no idea what they'll be about, but expect more random silly filler. Better than nothing, right?

#10. Fairy Tail will still be in the Tenrou island arc come 2012, after which it will probably go into filler, because its rapid pace has gotten to the point where it is almost caught up with the manga, more's the pity. Fairy Tail barely relied on any filler for over 100 episodes, which has delivered us with a fast paced shonen action masterpiece up until this point, but now we can expect the series to lose steam, just like Bleach, Naruto and One Piece did before it. It was nice while it lasted, right? There's also a Fairy Tail movie coming along in 2012, though it will be unrelated to the real plot.

#11. Naruto will finally be leaving filler land in 2012 and can hopefully deliver this entire 'great ninja war' in one uninterrupted bonanza. Hopefully the manga artist intends to finish the series with this giant war and therefore the anime can end on a high note of non-filler non-stop action as well. Meanwhile, Naruto also plans to make yet another filler movie in 2012, much like One Piece does. Naruto is a shadow of its former self, focusing on the least likable, least interesting characters in the series, and regurgitating undead copies of earlier enemies while saying the same tired cliched generic heroic lines that they've been saying for the last ten years. If 2012 is the year we can put a stake in this zombie anime about zombie ninjas then hallelujah.

#25. Bakuman's current fall season is going to spill over into 2012. I have no idea what plot twists await us now that Detective Trap has been cancelled in the latest episode. :(. But I'm sure they'll recover and write an even more exciting manga next time! You can do it, Ashirogi Muto, achieve your dreams and marry your girlfriends!

#28. Hayate no Gotoku will be releasing its theatrical movie to blu-ray disk, which is the first time people outside of Japan will have a chance to watch it. It will also have new content that the movie goers didn't get to see either. At some point during this year a third TV season of Hayate should also be coming out. There is so much uncovered content in the manga that the anime could have a field day and be about practically anything, but I do hope it stays faithful to the source and doesn't have any filler. With hundreds of manga chapters to choose from, it doesn't have any excuse to just wander around like Hayate's first tv season did. The characters in Hayate no Gotoku are uniquely likable and it will be so good to have them back on the screen again.

#31. Evangelion 3.0, the next movie in this ever-more-screwed-up version of the original TV series, is slated for release in the fall of 2012. I would say that these movies are 'filler,' because they no longer have any resemblance to the original, but they're done by the same people who did the original, who therefore have the right to change their own story however they please. Instead I will say this is a 'retelling' of Evangelion, which so far has been graphically much more beautiful, but storyline wise much worse than the original. Let's hope they keep the gorgeous graphics part and write a good story for this third movie.

#34. Saki Achiga-Hen will be about another group of girls in the same mahjong tournament as Kyosumi (Saki's crew). They're in another bracket so if they both beat all their competitors these two schools would meet in the finals for the national championship. That sounds like an incredibly awesome idea, to write a season for two different sides who will eventually clash in an epic conflict in some sort of third season finale, giving as much characterization to the 'antagonists' as the 'protagonists.' I don't know if that's what will happen, but here's hoping.

#35. Major's final oav covering Goro winning the World Series will spill over into 2012. That will mean Major has released new anime installments for 9 years running. Even though this will be the 'true final last episode,' it's great that an anime series managed to stay so good for so long.

#36. Prince of Tennis continues to deliver! Like One Piece, Naruto and Bleach, it refuses to end and so now we have 'New Prince of Tennis' discussing a training camp that happens after the middle school tournament (already won by our heroes Seigaku.) The manga they intend to animate is great fun so this animated series will also be great, hopefully with a major graphics upgrade from the Prince of Tennis of past years. However, without the drama surrounding a high-stakes national championship on the line, I doubt this series will have any real 'plot' or 'point' to it. Oh well. Nevermind that and let's play ball!

#41. Hanasaku Iroha promises to have some sort of new anime in 2012. Details at this point are vague.

#42. Usagi Drop has a few short extra specials within its blu-ray disk version of the TV series that aired in 2011, some of which disks are being released in 2012. They're adorable sweet nothings, and I'm glad to have them.

#44. Rurouni Kenshin is slated to have some additional OAV's of the Kyoto (Shishio) arc coming out in 2012. I assume they'll be graphically better and more true to the manga than the original TV series. Always a plus, though it's ridiculous they didn't instead choose to animate the as of yet completely unanimated Revenge (Enishi) arc. It's practically an insult to give us more of what we don't want while refusing to give us anything we do want. Who are these production companies and why do they make the decisions they do? God only knows.

#56. Bleach is currently in a strong arc that goes a bit into Ichigo's past and family and friends. It's a lot more fun than more meaningless Captains versus Hollows fights or even more meaningless filler arcs. This will continue into 2012, but soon enough we'll be back to filler again, because Bleach is always right on the heels of its manga source. Has any company thought to just take a long break and get back to an anime once the manga has years of lead time again? Just a thought.

#57. Amagami SS wasn't content with its source material, the video game dating sim, that produced such a fantastic first season. So this time it's going to add a second season of pure filler about their 'after stories.' It could be horrendous, but it could also be sweet and fulfilling. It's always nice to see a romance work out in the long run as well as the short run. Better than nothing, right?

#60. Zero no Tsukaima will finally be returning to give us a satisfying ending with a real end point. The first season was good, and the second season was great, but the third season of this series was horri-bad trash. One of the problems with the third season is nothing happened and there was no ending, no closure, to anything. Hopefully this fourth season, by fixing these problems, will be Zero no Tsukaima's salvation as a whole. The series definitely deserves to end on a better note than the 3rd season, and it now has the entire, completed, light novel series to work from as a source. I have high hopes for this one. You know another light novel series that's over where the anime just left us hanging? It's this little thing called Full Metal Panic. Whoever decided to finish up Shakugan no Shana and Zero no Tsukaima, could you please give the people over at Full Metal Panic a call? Pretty please?

#62. Showing that Japanese have a healthy appreciation for irony, the Berserk movies of a manga that has been ongoing for some 20-30 years will be a reprise, a retelling, of the same manga material covered in the Berserk anime TV season. Nevermind the last 20 years of material, let's just stick with the first 5 and do them all over again. These people must have heard about the other studio's plan for Rurouni Kenshin and thought this was a fantastic idea and sought to imitate it for all they're worth. Nevertheless, we can assume the movies will be higher graphics versions of the anime, which Berserk really deserves, since the manga has such stellar production value that almost every page is alive with ink.

#65. Maho Sensei Negima's movie 'final' will be released in February, with loads of additional content. It will be like a totally different movie than the one Japanese watched this summer. This entire anime has been a trainwreck. Why is this the final anime of Negima? The Negima manga is still continuing. Furthermore, they never once tried to accurately animate the entire series in its full detail without deviations from the script, and they never once showed the all-important school festival (Chao) arc. The animators of Negima seem to have some sort of vendetta for this series, determined to make it as bad as possible. Even so, since it's based off of one of the best, hands-down, mangas of all time, the anime has STILL ended up being good. I just can't stand what has been lost and this arrogant decision to give up on a Negima series that deserved so much more support. Fine, since they insist on animating this series in a completely wrongheaded fashion, it's best that it finally ends in 2012 anyway. In the chronicles of anime maladaptions, this will always rankle as #1. Well, there was Full Moon wo Sagashite. . .

#67. Like Zero no Louise, the second season of Shakugan no Shana was terrible because it had no ending, no closure whatsoever. It basically torpedoed the series, which for the first season was actually quite good. Shakugan no Shana III final is meant to fix that tragedy, and it will take longer than just this fall to do it. This ongoing anime project will slip over into 2012 to tell the tale in its entirety, and then we'll finally know if Yuuji and Shana get together, if they defeat Bal Masque, and so on. Sadly, the anime is trying to compress so many details from so many Shana books into just one anime season to wrap it all up, that it's coming out as a confusing mess. There's like 50 characters running around of whom we know nearly nothing about. This season has its good points, but it's nowhere nearly as good as the first season. As such, it's just another disappointment. It was nice of the animators to give us a real ending to this long-running story, however. I'm definitely thankful for that.

#70. Strike Witches has a movie planned for this 2012 spring. I have no idea what the plot could be about, since in the previous season the main character lost her magic powers. I guess they'll get around that somehow?

#71. Hunter x Hunter's remake will continue into 2012 without a hitch. There's tons more manga content to 'retell.' This new series has been fun, but it's an incredible disappointment that they won't stick to the script and insist on cutting portions of the manga while adding in their own filler nonsense. Who do they think they are and why do they think they know better than the original artist how to make a good story? You can't trust anything you see in front of you when it comes to this Hunter x Hunter series. It's completely hit or miss whether the scene you're watching actually happened that way in the manga. What a waste of what could have been a great new shonen action anime series.

#72. Gundam AGE will continue in 2012, as will Gundam Unicorn, and there's also a Gundam SEED HD coming. Gundam's quality is never that high, but they make sure to make up for that with quantity. This year's slew of Gundam releases is no change to that formula.

#73. Fate/Zero is going to pick up again in the spring of 2012, giving us the concluding half of this epic tale of contesting wills, swords and sorcery. I expect it to be as spectacular and riveting as the first half has been, but with almost everyone killed off, instead of all staying alive and gracing the screen with their colorful antics. Too bad, that, but it's how the plot works so it can't be helped.

#79. To Heart is going to have another cute little oav, this time about its fantasy rpg game where everyone dresses up to battle slimes or whatever. No doubt this was intended to help sales of the game -- but that's what the oav's for To Heart have been intended for for many years now, neh? They're still great.

#84. The critically acclaimed and fan favorite Bakemonogatari is returning for a second season. The question is 'how long will it be?' The light novel series off of which it is based is done, and there's plenty of source material to work off from, but they could cruelly animate just one or two and leave the rest to rot (sort of like Haruhi did for its second season while giving us endless eight. . .), or they could be awesome and with this season wrap up the entire project going from one densely packed episode of action and intrigue to the next. Meanwhile, a prequel to Bakemonogatari, Kizumonogatari, will be coming out as a movie this same year. There's just no telling how good all this will be.

#94. Steins;Gate is slated to have some special extra episode alongside its blu-ray release in February. It clearly won't be about much since the anime covered everything satisfactorily already, but it can't hurt. There's also a plan for some sort of Steins;Gate movie, but I doubt it will come out this year. The movie will also suck, since the series already has a satisfactory ending and doesn't need anything more tacked on top of it. But let's ignore that.

#95. Believe it or not, Gunbuster is slated to have a short extra special included in its new 2012 blu-ray release. All hail Gunbuster! Old series never die, it seems, they just take long hibernations.

That's all that's been confirmed so far. I'm not sure if I got people excited about the coming year, though, because I attacked virtually everything coming up as 'not good enough.' Hehe. Well, to enjoy anime, you have to understand it, and that means its strengths and weaknesses. Every anime fan rags on every anime, it's just what we do. The same for football fans who agonize over every missed tackle and dropped pass of their beloved team's.

The Last Illusion: Education

2011-11-28T13:52:00.000-08:00

Recently a lot of mainstream articles have been correctly identifying the problems in the world today:

Blacks and hispanics get worse outcomes in school, and as a result, get lower paying jobs, or no jobs, in the workforce.

Low-skilled workers are being outcompeted by computers/machines/Chinese/Indians and as a result we are facing record unemployment rates.

The gap between the rich and the poor just keeps on widening as the rich get richer by making use of the productivity of machines while the poor lose their jobs to said machines and make no money at all.

The African birth rate is unsustainable.

Men who can't find productive employment can't find any marriage prospects, which has led to a drastic decline in the birth rate of the developed world.

Virtually everyone now *gets* these things. They have diagnosed the illness -- from 1900 to 1990, the number of hours worked by mankind halved as machinery took over the load. This did not result in massive unemployment because we had not yet reached that historical moment in the trend. Instead it meant everyone was able to relax more and take longer vacations, shorter workweeks, we were able to exclude elderly and children from the work force, attend college indefinitely, etc. However, since 1990, this trend has continued and no doubt accelerated. There are now machines like Watson which can compete evenly with doctors and lawyers at their 'skilled' jobs. Machines can see the world around them and safely drive on our streets. How long before all the forklift and trucking and taxi jobs are gone?

Recently an article appeared saying that an old coal plant was finally being shut down and replaced by a new natural gas plant. The old coal plant employed around 200 people. The new gas plant, a modern marvel, employed exactly one, an engineer who overlooked the whole facility and called for backup help if anything broke. What if we did that countrywide?

The truth is machines are only going to keep improving in efficiency. Moore's law dictates that much. It's a miracle employment lasted this long, and in the background, it really hasn't. We're already working only half as hard as we did a century ago. And since 2000, not a single job has been net created in America. As many people have been fired as hired, even though the population of the USA, in that time, has shot up by some 30 million. This means that we actually have been losing workforce continuously, as in a natural system employment would rise in line with population, not stay completely neutral as population rose dramatically. Like I said, this horrible reality has been masked, but the mask is now off.

We now know that not only is massive unemployment a reality, but that it isn't going away. In fact, it's getting worse, when measured accurately -- minimum wage is now only 2/3 of what it used to be, when adjusted for inflation, workforce participation rates are at record lows, etc. The mainstream newspapers and magazines are all willing to admit this much, they also admit it has to do with free trade and machines. If that's the case, why hasn't the mainstream media called for systemic, radical change in our society? If a doctor sees a patient, sees that he's bleeding to death, correctly diagnoses that he's been shot and that's why he's bleeding out, why would a doctor just sort of stand by and watch, saying, 'there's nothing I can do?' Isn't it obvious what needs to be done? Isn't it obvious we need a blood transfusion plus immediate surgery? Or, in the nation's case, isn't it obvious we need public health care and a citizen's dividend, such that even the unemployed can have health insurance and a minimum living wage?

Apparently, no. Even when the answer is staring us right in the face, even when it's completely crystal clear what the problem is, and that the problem exists, it is not crystal clear to these mainstream commentators what to do about it. They all stop short of offering true reform, true change, true solutions to our problems. Instead they invoke a single magic word, the silver bullet, the panacea, that they promise will cure all our ills in a jiffy: Education.

Blacks and Hispanics aren't performing well enough in school? We need education reform. That will 'close the gap' in a jiffy.

Low skilled workers can't find jobs? Just make them high skilled workers with extra education! Problem solved.

Africans are too poor and have too many kids? Women's education will solve that in no time. Just get the women in school and all cultural or biological differences will melt away.

The birthrate in Japan and Europe is around one half what it needs to be just to not go extinct? Well, men just need to man up and keep up with women by going to college and grad school, getting decent provider wages, buying a decent $500,000 house while paying down a $100,000 student loan, and make a nest fit for a bride like any good male songbird does.

There's inequality in America? The poor haven't made any progress wage-wise since the '70's? Just make everyone as rich as Bill Gates by giving them all Harvard educations. That will cure our inequality in a flash.

It's like some sort of mandatory sentence or paragraph at the end of every mainstream article, sort of like Cato's 'Carthago Delenda Est!'

Just get everyone a graduate degree!

A graduate degree in every pot!

The problem with this idea is it doesn't work, it won't work, it can't work, and it is ludicrous to believe it could work for even a split second. So why has the entire 'thinking' class come to the universal conclusion that education is the solution?

Has basic reality become so divorced from these talking heads that they actually believe the stupid nonsense they're saying?

First off, 'education' has no actual productive use. Colleges don't teach people actual job skills that they could use to actually make something or do something if they were hired. Education is a zero-sum game. It serves simply to sift out the weak from the strong, so that companies can hire the strong with a high assurance that their job training of their new prospect will succeed and he'll be an asset to the company. Even doctors and lawyers, who spend 10 years in 'higher education,' must first serve as low-paid interns where they actually learn all the actual details of their jobs. The degree is just a ticket to the internship, the internship is the source of all their job skills later in life. If there were a magic radar that could discover these doctors' and lawyers' potential without the ten years of higher education and just hire them immediately as interns, said interns would be just as successful at learning on the job. Oh wait, THERE IS A MAGIC RADAR THAT DOES JUST THAT. IT'S CALLED AN IQ TEST! But never mind that, it's illegal to hire people on the basis of IQ tests in America, so let's instead make everyone go $100,000 into debt and waste ten years of their lives just to produce the exact same result, no more or less trustworthy a signal, than a 5-minute IQ test would've produced for free.

Higher education is a joke. It doesn't teach anything useful, it just serves as a very long, very expensive test of two basic traits: IQ and pain tolerance. The IQ part goes into understanding whatever nonsense is being thrown at you that you will never, ever use on your job, whether it's feminist theory or the history of Russia or organic chemistry ((Because surgeons really need to know how molecules bind to sew up a patient's bleeding artery, right?)) However, there is a correlation between IQ and the ability to learn, which can be applied to Russian history in college, and on the job training at work, so the nonsense is an effective IQ test an does achieve the result of discovering whether people are suited for a job later in life.

At the same time, college is one of the most stressful environments people are ever put into. If they manage to go through all of those sleepless nights and turn in their dozen papers after reading a dozen books in a couple weeks, then they'll probably be willing to work hard on the job as well. If they punctually attend their college classes, that's a good hint they won't sleep through work and leave you stranded. If they actually humiliate themselves enough to write about why gays were essential to the Enlightenment and how Chinese fireworks are the basis of the modern world yada yada yada then they'll probably be willing to put cover sheets on your T-3 report while sitting in a tiny cubicle day after day, too, without killing everyone around them.

College is an excellent torture lab. If anyone can get through college, after all the shit they throw at you, then they can handle work too, however shitty that work is. Nothing is as bad as college. And remember, in college, you pay them, but at work, they pay you. The corresponding benefit-to-cost ratio is ridiculously slanted towards the workplace. If employers could test to see if you wanted the job by just cutting off your right hand, or by locking you in a cold room for three sleepless days and nights, I'm sure they'd prefer to do a cheap and fast test like that -- but since such measures are frowned upon, 10 year college torture labs will do.

Nothing you learn in college will ever be applied to any job you get. However, the degree does tell employers two important things -- you'll eat shit for them and you're smart enough to get the job done. Every year employers need a certain amount of labor to keep their machines (their capital goods) humming. They skim the top pickings off the college crop, the people who ate the most shit and learned the most nonsense, and leave the rest to go hang, unemployed AND saddled with massive student loan debt, laughing all the way to the bank. It's a wonderful system for them. But it's clearly insane for everyone else. In the past, we had a perfectly good system that gave everyone job security and job skills -- it was called the master-apprentice system, where people from a young age were hired and immediately set about learning the trade of their employer. They didn't get much pay, but they got some, plus room and board. They certainly didn't go into $100,000 of debt while learning about Eskimo mythology.

Whatever happened to the master-apprentice system? Why can't we just go back to that? When did we buckle in to the employer's demands and just hand the whole world over to them? Why don't the 99% ever flex their muscles and vote in their own self interest? Answer: They're too stupid to even realize how badly off they are, under the current system, and they're too stupid to imagine anything better. Smart people realize how to game the system and join the 1%. They have no incentive to tell the dumb 99% that it's possible to change the system entirely -- how would they join the 1% then?

But I digress. The real problem isn't that education is a giant scam, even though it is. The real problem is that it's a ZERO-SUM scam. If everyone got a graduate degree, how would employers figure out who to hire? They only have so many open job slots, and they want to hire the best people for the job -- the people with the most IQ and the highest pain tolerance. They still aren't interested in anyone else. Even if 10 million people have the necessary skills to do the job they have to offer, they could always make a higher profit by hiring the single most qualified person for the job and leaving the rest to go hang. These employers don't have 'infinite' jobs available. They are limited by the needs of their capital goods. If a modern natural gas plant only requires one engineer to power 100,000 homes, then the energy sector can only hire 1,000 or so engineers in all of America to power all of America. Even if 10 million people get a degree in 'natural gas power plant oversight,' only 1,000 people will get the job, because there are only 1,000 natural gas power plant jobs in the USA.

Educating a workforce to do work that isn't even available is just as useless as not educating them at all. The market signals whether there is a need for certain jobs or not, by raising wages in said field. If wages are going up in a sector, that indicates the employers are desperate to attract employees and bending over backwards to get them. You can be sure they aren't raising wages out of a humanitarian love of mankind. Guess what? Wages aren't going up ANYWHERE. That sort of goes hand in hand with my statistic -- we haven't created any new jobs since 2000.

The rich aren't getting richer because people are paying them higher wages, they're getting richer because their capital is becoming ever-more-valuable. They are making all of their money through capital gains. (Which, conveniently for them, is taxed at a much lower rate than income, the money peons make, go figure.) Wages, straight out 'here's your weekly paycheck and health care benefits,' are in fact dropping since 2007, across the board. People are just lucky they have a job, any job -- no one is in a position to demand a raise. That's how employers like it, and that's how the situation is going to stay -- forever. If wages do start to rise in any field, say, nursing, they'll just holler about it to congress and get 10 million visas for 10 million Filipinos to come over here and become nurses at half price, and the wages will go back down again. Do you think the rich are dumb? They haven't let wages go up since 1970, they're not going to start now.

If we did need a more highly educated workforce and there really were jobs going unfilled that employers desperately wanted to hire people in, we would see increased wages competing for workers. Since we don't, these jobs don't exist. It is a myth that there are 'infinite jobs' available for anyone with a good education. In fact, phd's, the most educated of the educated, only 1/3 of the time have a job in the field they were educated in. The rest wasted 10 years on a piece of paper that didn't teach them anything of use for any job they were in. All it did is, again, signal that they were smart and pain tolerant and thus signal to employers they were better than Joe Schmoe at flipping burgers.

If you dim that signal by handing everyone a bachelors degree, employers will just demand a graduate degree from anyone looking to get a job. If you give everyone a graduate degree, they'll demand pure phd's to get a job. If you give everyone a phd, they'll demand some 4th new degree that takes even more money and time to earn. They aren't interested in what you learn in school, they're only interested in separating the wheat from the chaff. Suppose everyone made a herculean effort and got a degree, what would employers do? They'd be facing a lottery situation when making hires. That would be crazy, and so they wouldn't allow it. They'll up the standards to whatever it takes until they can hire the top 1% again like they wanted from the start. The qualifications for a job are that you outcompete everyone else -- it isn't that you cross some dumb threshold of knowledge in your field and become competent to do the work. It's a zero-sum, dog-eat-dog world. There is no such thing as a 'knowledge economy.' There's only a 'more knowledgable than thou' economy. We are gazelles and cheetahs take the hindmost. It doesn't matter if even the slowest gazelle is running at 50 miles per hour. The point is you're the slowest and now you're dead. Sucks, huh?

But even this is too optimistic. The truth is, not only is education a farce, and not only would the one purpose of education be abrogated if we gave everyone an equally good education (which is to separate the weak from the strong), but it's impossible to educate the 'weak' as well as the 'strong.' It is impossible to drum calculus and continued fractions and chaos theory into someone with 100 IQ. They could go to school for twenty years -- they wouldn't learn it. They can't learn it. It's simply beyond their comprehension. People have physical, real barriers to learning which effort cannot overcome. It's called stupidity. Only 1 in a thousand people can learn the junk college has to offer. It's utterly fruitless for anyone else to attend in the first place. The reason why blacks and hispanics do poorly in school isn't racism, and it isn't a poor home environment, and it isn't lack of funds, and it isn't bad teachers. It's just physical reality. Their brains aren't equipped to even pass high school. Their high school degrees are affirmative action fakes -- a black or hispanic senior in high school has something like an 8th grade reading level of a white. That's for the blacks and hispanics who stay in school, around half drop out before then, realizing it's utterly hopeless and they just don't get it anymore.

Why would they? How many ancient greeks or romans studied conics and calculus under Pythagoras or Euclid? Do you think every last Tom, Dick, and Harry was enrolled in the freaking Lyceum? But high schoolers, much less college kids, are today expected to know stuff greeks could never dream of. We have to do math functions only mathematicians will ever use, like derivatives and integrals and matrices and imaginary numbers, while also learning three hundred chemical formulas and how potassium bonds with nitrogen by rote, while also learning the difference between bosons and fermions and ionic bonds vs. covalent bonds in atoms, while also learning the history of the whole world including every last name of every Chinese, Aztec, and Mali dynasty, while also learning how electricity flows through a circuit diagram, while also learning -- I mean, really? How many adults could pass a high school test on any subject? Seriously?

Our heads are crammed full of arcane facts covering any imaginable subject -- except anything that might actually be useful, like what constitutes a good life and the difference between right and wrong -- and that's before we enter college, where they expect you to read books like candy and then do some cutting edge graduate assistant research to help win a nobel prize in some laboratory. It's insane. The expectations are too high. I recall that some society trained their warriors to also be poets, and demanded everyone be good warrior-poets. But what do we call today's education system, which demands everyone be physicist-chemist-artist-musician-historian-economist-philosopher-biologist-mathematicians? Warrior poets are a kind of neat concept, though I have no idea how the two are related, but really? We need to become masters in ten different fields, all too hard for most brains to ever comprehend?

There is simply no way we can 'close the gap,' between the one in a thousand people who actually enjoy this sort of challenging material, and the 999 who hate it and can't understand it and are driven to tears by it as they study sleeplessly night after night in the vain hopes of memorizing enough to scrape by with a C.

We aren't doing anyone any favors by giving them 'more' education. God save us from more education. We're already more educated than Thomas Jefferson ever dreamed of being, and yet he managed to somehow write a Constitution and serve as our president for two terms without knowing about electron clouds. ((How can anyone go through life without being able to draw a diagram of electrons distributed by their energy levels in concentric rings???))

We could do everyone a massive favor by giving them less education. Less schooling, less homework, less pressure, less material, less everything. We could do much more with less for our average and below average folks, you know, the 90% of real humans we expect miracles from in an utterly cruel and pitiless manner under the current school whip. It's called tracking -- give everyone an IQ test, and then teach them according to their means. For people who aren't very bright, don't waste time teaching them about the Ming Dynasty, apprentice them out to some job they could learn like auto mechanic and let them go. Please, just let them free! I'm like Moses here. Let the prisoners of our education system free where they can go be productive again in the real world!

Better yet, don't even waste your time finding them a job and just give them money. There are no more jobs for anyone but that one natural gas power plant engineer. Machines do everything else today. Jobs are just welfare already. So let's just cut to the chase and give everyone welfare from the start.

If we could get it through to the mainstream columnists that A) if you gave everyone equal educations, that would defeat the point, and there would still be no new hires. B) it's impossible to give people of unequal IQ's equal educations, then this last illusion holding us back from the real tides of real reform would finally be shattered.

We are sitting here on the crux of change. People want change. Presidents promise change. Mainstream columnists keep saying we need 'change.' No one thinks the status quo can continue for much longer. No one thinks these unemployment rates are sustainable. But everyone is caught by this will o' the wisp of 'education, education, education.' This magic bullet that serves as a miraculous cure is foundering our ship of state and it's sinking our country into oblivion.

Education isn't the solution, it's a joke. It's part of the problem. The solution is the citizen's dividend. It has ALWAYS been the solution, and it ALWAYS will be. But people would rather believe in 'education,' this mystical empowering force which, without any track record, is supposed to save everyone if we just 'work harder,' than the citizen's dividend, which rewards laziness. People would rather see the whole nation burn if they can believe in their moral universe that 'hard work' is rewarded and 'laziness' is the sole cause of unemployment. It's like an obsession to them. If you deny the worth of education, that's like denying God, because the implication is that hard workers and lazy people are equally unemployed and unemployable and that it's impossible to save one group without saving the other. Since they would rather play Zeus and smite the sinners with unemployment, they have no interest in saving the 90% of Americans who are up a creek without a paddle and facing economic Armageddon. They are more motivated by hate -- "We have to punish the free riders, the parasites, the leeches!" Than love, "We need to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and cure the sick."

Education = I'm full of hate and I want you to die.

Citizen's Dividend = I'm full of love and I want a system that works for everyone.

It's a simple choice. Almost all politics, all policy debates, all national dilemmas are. We can either be good or evil. The problem is the mainstream has decided to be evil.

The solution to that, the conscious decision of the entire American people to embrace a lie, the illusion that all we need is more education, even when it's patently absurd, just so that they can continue to be evil, ie, so that they can continue to hate the weak and the helpless and hurt them even more with more immigrants, more machines, more outsourcing, more inflation, more unemployment, more spending cuts, more insults (parasites! leeches!) with a clean conscience, guilt-free, is beyond me.

There is no solution when an entire country embraces Satan, Evil, the Big Lie. All you can do then is watch your country die.

2011, Best Year in Anime History:

2011-11-22T07:35:00.000-08:00

Last time I posited this question, I wasn't certain. 2010 was offering a good deal of competition for 'best year ever' across various matrices. This time, however, I'm certain. 2011 is the best year in anime history.

What changed my mind? For one thing, Bleach, Fairy Tail, Pretty Cure and One Piece, long-running series all, are currently hitting on all cylinders, far better than average. When they're good, the year in anime is good. When they're bad, the whole year falters. For another, there's a huge list of high-quality series currently airing this fall, from Idolm@ster to Bakuman to Working, that just make every week a wonder of enjoyment.

Lastly, there's the undeniable quality of Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, the love(?) comedy that has such wonderful wit, humor, incisiveness, and gorgeous girls as a cherry on top. Sena and Kobato especially stand out. If we add this series to the top 110 list, we give 2011 a landslide victory.

Here's the newly updated list:

1. Clannad (2007-2009)
2. Pretty Cure (2004-2011+)
3. One Piece (1999-2011+)
4. Code Geass (2006-2009+)
5. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (2004-2010+)
6. Seikai no Monshou/Senki/Danshou (1999-2005)
7. Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni (2006-2011+)
8. K-On! (2009-2011+)
9. Kanon (2002-2007)
10. Fairy Tail (2009-2011+)
11. Naruto (2002-2011+)
12. Dragonball (1986-2011+)
13. Haruhi Suzumiya (2006-2010)
14. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007-2009)
15. To Aru Majutsu no Index/Kagaku no Railgun (2008-2011+)
16. Angel Beats (2010)
17. Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011+)
18. Da Capo (2003-2011)
19. Katanagatari (2010)
20. The Idolm@ster (2011+)
21. Vandread (2000-2001)
22. Full Metal Panic! (2002-2006)
23. Kobato (2009-2010)
24. Working! (2010-2011+)
25. Bakuman (2010-2011+)
26. Record of Lodoss War (1990-1998)
27. The World God Only Knows (2010-2011)
28. Hayate no Gotoku (2007-2011+)
29. Sora no Woto (2010)
30. Toradora! (2008-2009+)
31. Evangelion (1995-2009+)
32. Basilisk (2005)
33. Galaxy Angel (2001-2006)
34. Saki (2009+)
35. Major (2004-2010+)
36. Prince of Tennis (2001-2011+)
37. Inuyasha (2000-2010)
38. Ranma 1/2 (1989-1996)
39. Sailor Moon (1992-1997)
40. Air (2005)
41. Hanasaku Iroha (2011+)
42. Usagi Drop (2011+)
43. Angelic Layer (2001)
44. Rurouni Kenshin (1996-2001+)
45. Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
46. Ef (2007-2008)
47. Ore no Immouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (2010-2011)
48. 12 Kingdoms (2002-2003)
49. Uuchuu no Stellvia (2003)
50. Utawarerumono (2006-2010)
51. Summer Wars (2009)
52. Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu (2010-2011+)
53. Cowboy Bebop (1998-2001)
54. Samurai Champloo (2004-2005)
55. Battle Athletes (1997-1998)
56. Bleach (2004-2011+)
57. Amagami SS (2010-2011+)
58. Macross (1982-2011)
59. Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (2011)
60. Zero no Tsukaima (2006-2008+)
61. Mononoke Hime (1997)
62. Berserk (1997-1998+)
63. Claymore (2007)
64. Valkyria Chronicles (2009-2011)
65. Negima! Magister Magi Negi (2004-2011)
66. Sora no Otoshimono (2009-2011)
67. Shakugan no Shana (2005-2011+)
68. Card Captor Sakura (1998-2000)
69. Nichijou (2011+)
70. Strike Witches (2007-2010+)
71. Hunter x Hunter (1999-2011+)
72. Gundam (1979-2011+)
73. Fate/Stay/Zero (2006-2011+)
74. Martian Successor Nadesico (1996-1998)
75. Read or Die (2001-2004)
76. Break Blade (2010-2011)
77. Kimi ni Todoke (2009-2011)
78. Spice and Wolf (2008-2009)
79. To Heart (1999-2010+)
80. Bastard! (1992)
81. Mahoromatic (2001-2009)
82. Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka (2008-2009)
83. Fatal Fury (1992-1994)
84. Bakemonogatari (2009-2010+)
85. Lucky Star (2007-2008)
86. Azumanga Daioh (2002)
87. Alien Nine (2001-2002)
88. Iria: Zeiram the Animation (1994)
89. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
90. Guyver (1986-2006)
91. Spirited Away (2001)
92. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
93. Scrapped Princess (2003)
94. Steins;Gate (2011+)
95. Gunbuster (1988-2006)
96. Shamanic Princess (1996-1998)
97. Akira (1988)
98. Moshidora (2011)
99. Soul Eater (2008-2009)
100. Tamayura (2010-2011+)
101. Ninja Scroll (1993-2003+)
102. Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (2011+)
103. High School of the Dead (2010-2011)
104. Hikaru no Go (2001-2004)
105. Kanokon (2008-2009)
106. Flame of Recca (1997-1998)
107. Sora no Manimani (2009)
108. Ghost in the Shell (1995-2011)
109. Gosick (2011)
110. Shinryaku! Ika Musume (2010-2011+)

42 of the top 110 best anime franchises have already aired this year, and Toradora, Rurouni Kenshin, and Major are set to join the ranks before year's end. When all is said and done, 45 of the top 110 best anime franchises will have aired in 2011, at least in part. 10 of the top 110 best anime franchises were actually founded in 2011 and have only aired during this year. That's spectacular. The previous best record, 2010, only had 36 of the best 110 series airing, though it did have 13 premiers to 2011's 10. 2009 had 39 of the top 110 series airing, and premiered 10 series as well. 2008 had 28 of the top 110 series airing, and premiered 5. 2007 had 25 of the top 110 series airing, and premiered 7. 2006 had 23 of the top 110 series airing, and premiered 5. As you can see, the trend just goes lower and lower each year back in time. It's an indisputable margin of victory.

What Does Racism Even Mean?

2011-11-20T03:55:00.000-08:00

The dictionary definition of a racist is someone who thinks 'his' race is better than another race. But what do you do when that's simply blindingly obvious? How can you not help but think that, when good and evil are compared side by side in the full light of day?

How could anyone not be a racist when comparing whites to blacks?

How could anyone think anything but 'whites are better than blacks?'

How could there be any attempt to compare the two by any measure? Just by mentioning the comparison everyone knows who will win.

Whites are better athletes than blacks, just look at their olympic medal count.

They're also better warriors than blacks, just look at the war record when whites fight blacks.

Whites are more moral than blacks, just look at our crime rates, levels of corruption or illegitimacy rates.

Whites are smarter than blacks, just look at our nobel prizes.

Whites have done more good for the world than blacks, just look at our inventions: modern medicine, including vaccines and antibiotics that ended plagues as a historical force, the green revolution that fed the world and ended famines as a historical force, cars, airplanes, trains, steel for tall buildings, computers, the internet, etc, etc. Blacks meanwhile invented obscure nothings that nobody cares about and somehow pass them off as equal to white progress. Who are they fooling?

Whites are even prettier than blacks. Black women straighten their hair and bleach their skin just to look a little more like white women, not that it works. Most black men flee as far from their own women as possible in the hopes of getting a white woman instead, as shown by O.J. Simpson, Tiger Woods, etc. Meanwhile no other male of any other race has any interest in dating a black female -- as shown by endless online dating sites.

There isn't any imaginable metric wherein whites could be compared to blacks and blacks could end up superior, except for laughably obscure, trivial issues like 100 meter dash speeds. How could anyone not be racist? Are they blind? Deaf? Living in a dream world?

But here's what really gets me, if I were hispanic, I would think the exact same thing: Wow, hispanics sure are better than blacks. And if I were Asian, I would also be thinking the exact same thing: Wow, Asians sure are better than blacks. And the same if I were Arab, Indian, or any other combination. In fact, every single race from every single country, if you ask them honestly, both has a history of racism against blacks, and still currently thinks they're better than blacks!

Do Hispanics in L.A. worship blacks as the superior race? What about Korean shopkeepers in L.A.? Do they think their black customers are superior to them? Does anyone not just look at this race and cringe in embarrassment and not laugh a little inside? Behind closed doors, isn't every single member of the human race laughing at blacks as the most pathetic creatures on Earth?

Am I supposed to believe that the sole parameter that makes you a good person is that you aren't racist, and therefore, since every race except blacks are racist against blacks, both historically and to this day, blacks are the greatest race on Earth, and racists should all be ashamed of ourselves because our sense of superiority is false?

Or am I supposed to believe that racists are so blitheringly stupid that they would ever make such an absurd statement as "Every single member of my race is better than every single member of your race," even though that would have to include child rapists like Sandusky from Penn State over Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell? Is there anyone on Earth saying anything that stupid? Can anyone imagine the most strident racist on Earth saying something so patently absurd as every single black on Earth is worse than the worst non-black to ever live? Jack the Ripper? Jeffery Dahmer? Mao ZeDong? Pol Pot? Seriously? Of course no racist thinks anything of the sort. Of course, therefore, 'racism' can't be the belief that every single member of your race is better than every single member of someone else's race. If that were the meaning of racism, then no one in world history has ever been racist. No one, not even insane people, have ever come to such an absurd conclusion.

Or is racism the belief that the various heirarchy of races is set in stone and can't change over time? Is it simply the belief that races are genetic and not 'cultural?' But this too is such a hopeless endeavor. Even supposing blacks were only inferior due to possessing an inferior 'culture,' how many thousands of years have they been the lowest race on the totem pole? They have always served as slaves to the outside world, whether to whites, arabs, hispanics, Amerindians or anyone else. They are currently still being worked like slaves by foreign Chinese 'advisors' in Africa today. They are always the poorest people in any country they live in, whether it's white, brown, yellow, or any other color. Let's suppose that somehow all the scientific data is wrong and there is nothing 'inherent' about this racial heirarchy.

Let's just imagine for a moment that everyone is born a blank slate and starting from tomorrow on blacks could be the new master class in every country and we their slaves.

What does it matter? Is there any conceivable way their culture could be changed to something that is superior to our own? With their poverty, their illegitimacy rates, their lack of stable homes, their crime rates, their rotten school, their corruption, their dictatorial regimes and bad governance, their complete lack of role models, moral guides, or any civilizing force whatsoever, who but God could possibly 'change' their culture?

If the pitiable state of blacks is due to 'culture,' then when will this change? Culture is transferred in an unbreakable chain from cruddy parents to cruddy children to cruddy grandchildren. No amount of money or schooling can intervene. No intervention is enough. Changing black culture was what midnight basketball, welfare, affirmative action, food stamps, HUD housing, Section 8 vouchers, medicaid, free public schooling, head start, the free lunch program, and everything else were FOR. If that didn't come even close to working, what hope is there that some bright new program will? Seriously? Does anyone really think the next 'intervention' will finally succeed and blacks will become the greatest race of all in no time?

So are racists evil because they believe it's hopeless and blacks are inherently inferior, whereas non-racists know it isn't hopeless, because though no nation on Earth has ever managed even at the price of hundreds of billions of dollars and endless time and effort has ever managed to change the self-destructive black culture, it's still possible somewhere 'over the rainbow' and the miraculous solution to everything is always 'just around the corner?'

Racism = realism? The only moral stance is to believe in an obvious fairy tale that no one beyond the age of five could stomach, like the idea that the communist utopia is just around the corner and these 50 year long food shortages and bread lines are just a 'temporary setback' due to 'local causes?' The black cultural revolution is about as 'just around the corner,' one good 'social program away,' as the communist utopia was in 1989. No one believes it anymore. I can forgive ignorant fools believing it in 1960. But that was 50 years ago! Barely any black alive has ever been discriminated against in any way. Almost all of them, contrarily, have received extra benefits and handouts throughout their entire lives. We have been doing nothing but showering them with attention, praise, money and unearned jobs and the whole world, from France to Britain to the USA to Brazil has nothing to show for it. Blacks don't succeed ANYWHERE, no matter HOW much we 'invest' in them.

If the definition of a racist is someone who isn't insane or delusional, who thinks that not only are blacks blatantly inferior, but that there is no way this is going to change as far as the eye can see, then THE WHOLE WORLD IS RACIST.

If a racist is someone who thinks every single member of their race is better than every single black who has ever lived, then NO ONE ON EARTH HAS EVER BEEN OR IS NOW A RACIST.

EITHER WAY RACISM IS A MEANINGLESS WORD.

The only other possibility is that racist means 'someone who loves their own race.' But what's wrong with loving your own race, so long as you aren't black? All non-black races have something to be proud about. It's not racist for blacks to love the black race, is it? Isn't that because they have good traits they can take pride in? Well then, how much more so is that true for any other race on Earth? How especially true is that for whites, who have Beethoven's Ode to Joy?

So maybe racist means loving your race beyond the objective and fair proportion you should love it just because it's your race?

But how is that different from loving your family more than its allotted measure simply because it's your family?

Suppose that is a sin. Suppose loving your family members is a grievous injustice that must be done away with for the sake of a truly just world. Fine. In that case, we can also say racism is a sin, for the very same reason. But when has love ever hurt anyone? When is 'too much love' a culprit in any crime? Even if the love is unmerited, even if it's unjust, isn't love so good that we should embrace it, wherever it came from, however it came to be, as a good thing?

I keep hearing that all this world needs is love.

In that case, why call loving your family more than you 'should,' or loving your race more than you 'should,' evil? Isn't it a virtue to love anyone for any reason? What harm does it do? And how much good arises from family love, national love, racial love? How much does it unify us, empower us, create harmony and order between us, to think we're all on the same side and all a part of something bigger and better than ourselves? If the two were put on a scale, would we really be so quick to throw out this 'irrational' 'racism' ?

I love my race, the white race. I love them because they deserve it, as the progenitors of nearly everything good in this world, and I even love them because they don't deserve it, just because they're like me and I love myself. Is this 'racism' such a terrifying thing that it must be stomped down at all costs?

Psychologists have shown that ethnic pride/belonging makes children more confident and happy among minorities. Am I to believe that the exact opposite is true of white children? That they should hate their race and hate anything that is similar to themselves for their own mental well-being and spiritual grace?

A racist is someone who doesn't hate himself? REALLY? Seriously? That's what it boils down to?

If that's the case, I reject any meaning to the term 'racism' down this path as well.

Either everyone is a racist or no one is a racist. The false distinctions liberals make to put on airs over their more honest and truthful opposition is all a lie, a mask. They know, underneath, that they are making distinctions without a difference. If they actually believed whites and blacks were equal, they'd be living in South Central L.A., not in their 90% white suburbs. They'd be sending their children to ghetto schools, not private schools or 90% white public schools. They'd actually marry blacks, instead of other whites or Asians. As Joseph Sobran said, in residence and dating habits, liberals are indistinguishable from members of the Ku Klux Klan.

If they seriously believe they're enlightened because they have a black friend or two and know not all blacks are evil, then guess what, no one is so stupid as to think otherwise, so no, that doesn't make you 'enlightened' and us 'benighted.' In fact, liberals themselves mock the argument 'some of my best friends are xxx' as some sort of indicator that you aren't racist. This is because they know that racism is a belief about averages, and that NO ONE ON EARTH IS SO STUPID AS TO THINK IT'S AN ABSOLUTE PERTAINING TO EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL, therefore assuring people that you don't think the superiority of your race is an absolute pertaining to every single individual is a laughable instance of 'anti-racist enlightenment.'

If being racist simply means loving your race and wanting it to survive, prosper, and be happy, then only nihilists/genocidal haters would be 'anti-racist.' If this makes you a 'racist,' then it's simply a badge of pride. If an anti-racist is simply someone who wishes death and suffering upon his own race, then in what twisted world is this a badge of honor?

Liberals are taking the position that they are better than 'racists' because they properly celebrate the genocide and coming dispossession and misery of the white race. But God can see that anyone who celebrates such horrendous things is not good, he's evil. Only Satan could celebrate death and pain.

Alternatively, liberals are taking the position that they are better than 'racists' because they believe the black cultural rejuvenation is going to occur 'tomorrow,' whereas gloomy racists hatefully, hatefully, hatefully think nothing will change. Not in five years, not in fifty, and not in five hundred. And yet fifty years have already passed and, if anything, blacks are worse now than they've ever been. Their families are more broken, even more black men are in prison, their STD rates are skyrocketing (a new study came out just a couple days ago pointing this out), their wealth has been wiped out by the recent depression, their unemployment numbers are higher than ever for the same reason, and so on. Liberals had a point in 1960, when we didn't have enough data so we could really believe in the tooth fairy, santa claus, and the black cultural rennaissance. That is ridiculous in 2011. We're all adults now. Santa Claus isn't real. Communism doesn't work. And blacks aren't going to have their long awaited renaissance where they all become properly pinky-bent tea sippers with dapper accents riding white unicorns through grassy fields. No one in their right minds could possibly believe this anymore.

You aren't superior to 'racists' for believing ridiculous falsehoods like the black unicorn manifest destiny renaissance, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. It just means you're a child who needs to be kept away from anything dangerous or serious until you grow up, or an insane person who needs to be put in a strait jacket before you hurt someone.

If you aren't 'racist' because you believe in the black unicorn riders who will come back with the Messiah alongside the black freedom riders of the 1960's come Judgment Day, this does not make you better than me. This makes you an irrepressibly irritating idiot.

The Unimportance of Individual Accomplishment:

2011-11-11T09:05:00.000-08:00

My previous post completely demolished the theory that all races have more or less achieved equal results across time. The idea that sometimes some races do better, and other times other races do better, is a complete myth. In fact, Caucasians have been the leaders in all fields of human accomplishment across all time. Starting in ancient Babylon and leading up to the present, we've always had better government, better art, better warriors and better math/science/philosophy than our Mongoloid or Negroid competitors.

This post is going to smash the next liberal myth. According to liberalism, individual variation is more important than group variation, therefore people should all be judged as individuals instead of as members of a group. But is this actually true?

In all of African history, was there a single Negroid individual who accomplished anything? If he did, it was forgotten instantly and never made it to the next generation. The difference between the greatest Negro ever and his Negro compatriots is so small as to be invisible. They both left zero human accomplishments whatsoever behind them. Why judge Africans as individuals? They all are equally worthless. Insofar as black individuals are worthwhile people in the modern age, it's because they are no longer members of a black group, but are part of a larger, more effective whole, like the majority non-black USA. In fact, high-performing modern black individuals prove, definitively, that group accomplishment is a more powerful, vital factor than individual accomplishment.

Think about it. If there were a hundred black Einsteins in prehistory, we don't know anything about them and they left nothing behind. But if a black today is good at anything, they can become president of the United States and leader of the free world. All individual black accomplishment is, therefore, due to the opportunities given to them by their larger group, ie, the American people, not due to their own individual merit. That same level of individual merit, if it had existed in the context of Rwanda or Haiti, would've resulted in nada, zero, zilch.

Individual achievement is only made possible by the people around said individual. There is no such thing as a 'lone genius' and even if there were, his achievements would not be transmitted to the future so they would be essentially meaningless. There is, therefore, no such thing as an individual achievement. At the very least there needs to be people to observe the achievement and remember it after your death. Every achievement is a group achievement. Everyone starts off as a helpless baby, so at the very least everyone's achievements must be partially shared with their mothers who gave them suck, right?

Unless you're saying many great individuals were raised by wolves in the wilderness, never learning human language, who went directly from howling in the wilderness with their packmates to discovering quantum physics?

But if you're dependent on your family for your 'individual' success, what about the neighborhood who gave your family a job? What about the police who kept you safe? The firemen? The schools that educated you in your youth? What about the miners who got the coal that heated your home while you studied for school? Weren't they all necessary as well for your one moment of 'individual' achievement?

And then what about the past? Wasn't everything that existed in the present, from your city to your school to your laws to your economy to your language to your infrastructure, all of it due to people who lived and worked in the past? What about your genes? Didn't they evolve in the past? It's not like individuals make their own genes, or their own environment, so they aren't responsible for a single damn thing that went in to their own shaping. If you aren't responsible for who you end up being, how can your accomplishments be your own? Don't they belong to everyone who ever affected you in any way across all time? Aren't they, in fact, a shared achievement between millions, if not billions of people who all worked together to achieve this final result?

The greatness of individuals is directly correlated to the opportunities their society gave them, the inspiration other great men gave them, the financial support of outside investors or government aid, the stability of their home environments, the genes of their ancestors, etc. It has little if anything to do with the individuals themselves. Great individuals are basically the luckiest members of a group. The group churns out accomplishment at a constant and steady rate, that is determined by the group's quality. Individuals just happen to luckily be the vessels, the bearers, the custodians of these group accomplishments at any given time. If they hadn't done it, someone else would have, at around the same time. Notably in science this phenomena has occurred over and over. Two different people invented calculus, Newton and Liebniz. Two different people discovered evolution. Two different people invented the light bulb. And so on. Individuals aren't important. Groups that continuously produce great individuals ARE.

Trying to judge people as individuals is hopeless. The only fair measure of someone 'as an individual' is if he were raised by wolves. Every single wolf man we know today hasn't contributed in any way to human accomplishment. Wolf men are not known for their nobel prizes or their best selling novels. They aren't known for anything.

Why should I judge people as individuals? If a black man is doing well, it shouldn't do credit to him as an individual, it should do credit to whatever group that produced him. All high achieving blacks, for instance athletes, politicians or musicians, were given their opportunities to excel by whites. Therefore all black accomplishment actually only does credit to the white race. Sucks, huh? But blacks in their own countries do not enable great black men. So why should blacks get credit for black achievement in majority white countries? Clearly the vital factor here is the white group, not the black individual. There are black individuals in Africa and America, but they only achieve anything in America. Am I supposed to turn a blind eye to this strange fact?

Good groups produce good individuals. Every individual alive today exists thanks to the group that nurtured them and empowered them. Every great man of the past exists thanks to the group that remembered and honored him. There is no such thing as an achievement in isolation. Individuals, meanwhile, cannot produce good groups. A good person in the midst of evil is simply powerless to save even himself, much less anyone else.

Only the average worth of a group has any relevance. An evil group will tear down all good individuals. A good group will make any good individual even better. The group determines EVERYTHING.

If someone says to me that X hispanic or Indian achieved Y feat, I must first ask them, in the context of what group? If they did it by living among whites or working in a white country or using white invented technology or relying on white philosophical/political concepts, then it's meaningless. The idea that whites aren't essential because individuals from non-white groups can succeed by relying on a white group is fallacious. Once that white group is gone, the individual accomplishments of said non-whites will also disappear. Only if individuals accomplish something as a result of their own group can you say whites are unnecessary so let's go ahead and breed/demographically displace them out of existence. East Asians have shown some merit in being able to achieve on their own without us, though almost everything good about East Asia was borrowed from whites. No other culture can say even that. They're all completely incapable of creating a decent life for themselves, absent our intervention and help.

To actually prove that individual variation is more important than group variation, you would have to point out a high density of individual achievement in the midst of a dysfunctional society. To do that, you would need 'individual' achievers who emerged spontaneously from out of their OWN GROUPS. Like Athena from the head of Zeus, nuclear physicists would have to start popping out of Somalia and Zimbabwe and storming the nobel prizes and Olympics without any assistance from anyone.

You can't simply point at an individual and say, look, X individual isn't white but he's great, because said individual is transient and will be dragged down by the average worth of their group without us. Why is the NFL in America and not Africa? Because without white fans paying the big bucks, blacks can't play football, now can they? So it doesn't matter how good they are at football, their football skill only does credit to the larger society around them which gave them that opportunity -- a white society. If it were the other way around, the premier football league in the world would be in Africa, not America.

Judging everyone as individuals is a meaningless concept. Instead, we should judge people by their group affiliation. IE, what group are they for? A good group, that creates individuals of high average worth? Or a bad group, that destroys everything it touches? A black who affiliates himself with 'America,' 'freedom,' 'capitalism,' or 'football' is probably a great guy. This is because he is part of a good group. He makes the group strong, and then that group goes on to make other members of the group, the children of the next generation, even stronger. But if a black says he's a 'black,' then he's a terrible person, because he's part of a terrible group that has done nothing in history but rape, loot, and destroy.

There's no such thing as an individual accomplishment, but individuals do have free will to pledge their loyalty to the group of their choice. People are not *just* black or *just* women or *just* homosexual or *just* anything else. They can discard these innate properties and choose to join a more wholesome group spiritually and intellectually. A black who simply happens to be black, but is loyal to the white group, Western Civilization, is actually a great guy. A white who just happens to be white, but is loyal to the black group, drugs and rap, is a complete loser.

The easiest and most accurate way to judge a person by is what groups he has identified himself with. Find out what someone loves and is loyal to and you have found out his worth. Whatever he personally achieves is due to the group he loves. Likewise, the things he loves were at least partially successful due to his support. Therefore, the group's worth is his worth, and his worth is the group's worth. The strength of the wolf is the strength of the pack, the strength of the pack is the strength of the wolf. The only important decision or action any individual can make, the only time an 'individual' can be judged for anything at all, is the moment of decision, which pack the wolf joins. After that it's all just inevitable.

The Importance of Indigenous Accomplishment:

2011-11-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

Many people fail to understand the difference between mimicry and innovation. Progress can only come about through innovation. No matter how good a country looks via mimicry of its betters, it's essentially unimportant, because they aren't a factor in human progress. They won't make any contribution to the future of mankind, they'll just continue to parasitically live off of the contributions of others.

When people point to Ethiopia as a shining symbol of African achievement, you have to understand that Ethiopia never produced anything unique to themselves. They simply borrowed everything from abroad. Ethiopia's location, just across the red sea from the Arabian peninsula, made them more a part of the middle east than Africa proper. Ethiopia lived off of the intrinsic strength of the Caucasian nations bordering them, whereas those nations did not depend on Ethiopia to become great themselves. The same is true of Mali. Mali did have a big city that was very showy, but it was all a result of their connections to Arab traders who they borrowed from. Their Islamic faith was borrowed from their Caucasian neighbors, as was their architecture, etc. You can't judge Africans by their 'edge' countries which were influenced by their Caucasian neighbors. Tourist islands in the Caribbean face the same problem. The high standard of living in these tourist islands is due entirely to their Caucasian neighbors who are providing the tourist dollars, it has nothing to do with the native black islanders. The ancient Zimbabwe ruins are due to, believe it or not, Jewish traders who moved all the way down there in the ancient past and influenced the natives both genetically and culturally. African Americans have too many Caucasian neighbors and too many Caucasian genes to be a representative sample of Africa either, so their high per capita GDP versus the outside world is meaningless. You can only judge Africa by purely African countries who have no contact with the outside world.

This is called isolating your variables. It's standard procedure in science. A polluted sample with any foreign influences is considered corrupted and must be discarded. We need a clean laboratory environment where nothing from outside interferes with our study of the nature of what's inside. To get a true picture of the Negro, you have to travel to the hearts of darkness, the places that never saw a Caucasian in their lives: Congo, Cameroon, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, Niger, etc.

In the modern period, almost every single black country is at least somewhat influenced by the outside world, and so almost all of them have managed basic things like large buildings, roads, clothing, written language, etc. But these were all innovations when we originally arrived. They had to pick them all up from us. It was not native to their own 'civilization.' As a result, the most accurate measure of black 'achievement' is 'zero.' It isn't 'greater Zimbabwe,' 'Mali,' 'Ethiopia,' or 'Egypt.'

The same is true on the other side of accomplishment. Currently East Asians are outperforming Caucasians by many rubrics. However, some of the best East Asian 'achievers' actually live in white majority nations. It's evident that their greater ability to succeed is due to the foreign influence of all the whites around them, since they were never so impressive scientifically, economically or artistically when living amidst themselves. For East Asians actually living in East Asia, we have to remember that China was still a backwards, impoverished land full of tyranny and famine when the West started sailing around the world to meet them. Korea was just a puppet state of China, equally poor and worthless. And Japan stayed a feudal era country wielding bows and arrows deep into the 1800's. These nations had no higher math, no scientific method, no musical tradition equivalent to our Classical music orchestras, no artistic tradition equivalent to our Michelangelo Renaissance, no literary tradition equivalent to our Shakespearean England, nothing.

The indigenous accomplishment of Japan, China and Korea was decent -- they had some inventions we didn't, some art that was worthwhile, some philosophy that had a few insights we lacked, but in reading Murray's Human Accomplishment, you quickly realize that it pales in significance or quantity compared to either ancient Europe's achievements (Greco-Roman political freedom, military prowess, philosophical profundity, the people's general prosperity, artistic ability, just law codes, etc), or modern Europe's achievements (the steam engine, electricity, computers, landing on the moon, splitting the atom, the airplane, etc.).

Comparing a few pitiful inventions of the Chinese like 'the compass' to the absolute juggernaut of modern science which was 100% invented by whites is just a joke. There is no comparison. The world does not operate today on the basis of Chinese inventions. Everyone, everywhere, is using exclusively European inventions in every aspect of their daily lives. Nor was the 'compass' a necessary antecedent to the steam engine, the computer, or calculus, so China doesn't somehow get credit for all western inventions through some sort of arcane back door either.

The present success of East Asians is due to their mimicry of the West. They are simply adopting our inventions -- human rights, democracy, equal treatment of women, capitalism, the scientific method, the rule of law, etc -- and becoming rich off of them. Their books, movies, music, and tv shows are based off of our books, movies, music, and TV, all of which we invented on our own. The fact that their books, movies, music, and TV is often better than ours doesn't mean East Asians are superior to whites. It just means that sometimes even apprentices can surpass their masters. Until these apprentices invent their own art forms, political models and scientific theories which we end up mimicking, color me unimpressed. Great mimics don't make great innovators. The two are entirely separate fields.

Even today, the majority of innovation stems from the West. The nobel prizes distributed this year went primarily to Jews, ie, Caucasians, not East Asians. This has been true over the entire previous century. It appears fated to continue for the entire next century as well.

2011 Saimoe Final Champion:

2011-11-06T07:45:00.000-08:00

Mami Tomoe wins the 2011 Saimoe contest, which covers the 2nd half of 2010 and the first half of 2011's anime season girls. Madoka Magica was an unbeatable brand in the end that made popularity trump quality from start to finish. Madoka Magica's art style is creepy and expressive, not 'ultra cute,' so how is a side character who dies in episode 3 of said series the cutest girl in anime? Oh well. It's time to put these results aside and look forward to Saimoe 2012. K-On will be back for that contest due to the upcoming K-On movie, as will Shana due to the present Shana fall season anime. Then there's the girls from Idolm@ster, Working, Hayate, Negima, and who knows who else. Most importantly, Madoka Magica won't be able to compete in 2012 because their anime is done and won't be airing any new content in the years to come. Ho ho ho!

On the same day, LSU squeezed out a 9-6 overtime victory over Alabama and Oklahoma State made a goal line stand to win 52-45 vs. Kansas State. The college football season is getting heated up now, with all the conference championships and BCS bowl spots still up for grabs.

I also wanted to add a new 'great voice' to my list: Yoshino Yusuke from Clannad, Okizaki's coworker and mentor, whose real name is Hikaru Midorikawa. He also plays as Tenshinhan from Dragonball Kai, Tokia Mikagami from Flame of Recca, Yukito Kunisaki from Air, Li Xingke from Code Geass, Dune from Heartcatch Precure, Sabi Hakuhei from Katanagatari, Heero Yuy (Hiro Yui), the main character of Gundam Wing, Lancer from Fate/Zero, and a million other roles, all of them fitting the role of 'absolute badass.' His voice is so heroic that the moment he starts talking you want to swoon. It saddens me a little that he largely plays side characters, maybe because he is simply too badass and perfect to play a main character (which is generally someone average people can sympathize and identify with.) But he enriches every single series he's in and his voice is so distinctively wonderful it would be foolish to leave him unmentioned any longer.

If we add in Hikaru Midorikawa, the great voices list now looks like this:

7 Men:

Hikaru Midorikawa, Yuuichi Nakamura, Norio Wakamoto, Jun Fukuyama, Showtaro Morikubi, Noriaki Sugiyama, and Tetsuya Kakihara.

13 Women:

Satsuki Yukino, Yukari Tamara, Mai Nakahara, Mariya Ise, Nana Mizuki, Ami Koshimizu, Eri Kitamura, Mayumi Tanaka, Aki Toyosaki, Ayana Taketatsu, Aya Hirano, Rie Kugimiya, and Kana Hanazawa.

For a grand total of 20 great voices so far.

Many series can't be completed as anime because their source isn't yet complete, for instance One Piece or Fairy Tail. I don't blame the anime industry for situations like that. But there are some series whose sources are complete or at least extremely advanced beyond the anime, but are being painfully ignored. These series desperately need to be remade or restarted, depending on whether the series was either not followed faithfully or not followed to the proper ending, or both:

Rurouni Kenshin, Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon, Dragonball Kai, Index, Full Metal Panic, Haruhi Suzumiya, Negima, Berserk, Claymore, Soul Eater, The World God Only Knows, 12 Kingdoms, Spice and Wolf, Card Captor Sakura, Akane-iro, Guyver, Sora no Manimani, Valkyria Chronicles and Flame of Recca.

This forms a grand total of 20 'lost series' that could have been done much better even though they already rank in the top 110. In some cases you could just edit already drawn footage, like in Card Captor Sakura or Dragonball Kai, but in every case the series needs to be restored to a source-faithful original intent, and all of them need to follow through to their proper endings.

These 20 'lost series' are my biggest complaints with the anime industry. While they're busy making nonsense like Maken-ki these 20 series are being ignored, despite how famously good and popular they were. It's sheer nonsense. I can't fathom what's going on in the heads of anime producers. Do they just roll dice to determine what project they'll animate next? And what kind of sick joke are they playing on us by remaking Kenshin and Berserk in a way that covers already covered portions of the series while ignoring the portions that have never yet been covered by any animated work? Is that just to add insult to injury? Or what??? Heads should roll.

Saimoe 2011 Final:

2011-11-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

Well, the final two have been decided. It's an all Madoka Magica final, but the participants weren't whom I expected:

Kyouko Sakura vs. Mami Tomoe.

Both girls are pretty, to be sure. They're also likable. I just can't agree that they're the prettiest or the most likable anime girls of the previous year. I'm not sure how the democratic process arrived at such a strange conclusion. In any event, the final is in a couple days, and one or the other of these side characters who die early in the show will be crowned queen. The results don't sit well with me. Sort of like how Taiga won Saimoe 2009. Taiga is certainly pretty and likable, but the prettiest or the most likable girl in 2009? Impossible. Even Minori from the same show was better in both aspects. Saimoe contests tend to be hit and miss. Azusa, the winner of Saimoe 2010, was definitely a hit. This result is definitely a miss. I could've somewhat accepted the results if it were Madoka or Sayaka, but Mami vs. Kyouko? There's no way they're qualified to share a stage with Sakura Kinomoto, Azusa Nakano, and Nanoha Takamachi from previous Saimoe's.

Still, Saimoe 2011 was beneficial in many ways. Most of the characters I liked did succeed deep into the tournament, showing there is somewhat of a consensus for what constitutes an attractive anime girl, who the best voice actresses are, what anime series were the best last year, etc. It also introduced me to series I'd previously dismissed like Tantei Opera Milky Holmes and Strike Witches via the success of their girls in the Saimoe contest.

As the fall anime season has progressed, it has become clear that the old franchises are still performing splendidly, but the new ones are mediocre. Of the new series, Boku ha Tomodachi ga Sukunai is the best, but it's still no match for the second seasons of Working or Bakuman. (Who is though? They're both within the top 30 anime ever. . .) For that reason, this is a good opportunity to implore Japan once again to stop making new series and concentrate on finishing the series they've already begun but never finished over the previous decades. Hunter x Hunter's remake is amazing, much better than its original predecessor. Why don't they take this chance to learn from their success and remake all the old good series?

The two worst flaws of anime are that they never have a proper conclusion, and they never faithfully follow their source material. Continuously churning out wholly new series when you haven't made a single faithful, start-to-finish copy of your old greats is insane. Why didn't they continue Dragonball Kai to the very end? Why stop at Cell? It's rude to the fans, it's rude to the maker of the series, who clearly thought the Buu cycle was important and entertaining, and it's rude to the rest of Dragonball Kai, which now has no real purpose or merit, since DBZ is still the definitive version -- the only one that includes the Buu saga.

Dragonball must be the most famous anime on Earth, but even it can't get a decent, faithful-to-the-source remake that extends all the way to the true conclusion, the Buu arc. If they won't even remake Dragonball, the anime industry is basically thumbing its nose to anime fans everywhere and saying they don't care about their artistic legacy or their reputations anymore. It's not just Dragonball that's been butchered, it's nearly every single good series ever. Either it didn't faithfully follow its source material, or it never reached the actual endpoint of the series, but stopped animating the source material halfway. I can represent this visually with two symbols: & means it never finished and * means it didn't properly follow its source material.

1. Clannad (2007-2009) &*
2. Pretty Cure (2004-2011+)
3. One Piece (1999-2011+) &*
4. Code Geass (2006-2009+)
5. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (2004-2010+) &
6. Seikai no Monshou/Senki/Danshou (1999-2005) &*
7. Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni (2006-2011+) *
8. K-On! (2009-2011+) &*
9. Naruto (2002-2011+) &*
10. Dragonball (1986-2011) *
11. Haruhi Suzumiya (2006-2010) &*
12. Kanon (2002-2007)
13. Fairy Tail (2009-2011+) &
14. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007-2009)
15. To Aru Majutsu no Index/Kagaku no Railgun (2008-2011) &
16. Angel Beats (2010) &
17. Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011)
18. Da Capo (2003-2011)
19. Katanagatari (2010)
20. The Idolm@ster (2011+)
21. Vandread (2000-2001)
22. Full Metal Panic! (2002-2005) &
23. Kobato (2009-2010) *
24. Working! (2010-2011+) &
25. Toradora! (2008-2009+)
26. Record of Lodoss War (1990-1998)
27. The World God Only Knows (2010-2011) &
28. Bakuman (2010-2011+) &
29. Sora no Woto (2010)
30. Hayate no Gotoku (2007-2011+) &*
31. Evangelion (1995-2009+) &
32. Basilisk (2005)
33. Galaxy Angel (2001-2006)
34. Saki (2009+) &
35. Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
36. Major (2004-2010+) &
37. Sailor Moon (1992-1997) *
38. Air (2005)
39. Prince of Tennis (2001-2011+) &*
40. Hanasaku Iroha (2011+)
41. Usagi Drop (2011+) &
42. Inuyasha (2000-2010) *
43. Ranma 1/2 (1989-1996) &*
44. Angelic Layer (2001)
45. Ore no Immouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (2010-2011) &
46. Ef (2007-2008)
47. Rurouni Kenshin (1996-2001+) &*
48. 12 Kingdoms (2002-2003) &*
49. Uuchuu no Stellvia (2003)
50. Utawarerumono (2006-2009)
51. Summer Wars (2009)
52. Mononoke Hime (1997)
53. Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu (2010-2011+) &
54. Cowboy Bebop (1998-2001)
55. Battle Athletes (1997-1998)
56. Samurai Champloo (2004-2005)
57. Amagami SS (2010-2011+)
58. Macross (1982-2011)
59. Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (2011)
60. Zero no Tsukaima (2006-2008+) &*
61. Berserk (1997-1998+) &
62. Claymore (2007) &*
63. Valkyria Chronicles (2009-2011) &*
64. Negima! Magister Magi Negi (2004-2011) &*
65. Read or Die (2001-2004)
66. Sora no Otoshimono (2009-2011) &*
67. Bleach (2004-2011+) &*
68. Card Captor Sakura (1998-2000) *
69. Shakugan no Shana (2005-2011+) &
70. Nichijou (2011+) &
71. Strike Witches (2007-2010+)
72. Hunter x Hunter (1999-2011+) &*
73. Gundam (1979-2011+)
74. Martian Successor Nadesico (1996-1998)
75. Break Blade (2010-2011) &
76. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) &*
77. Kimi ni Todoke (2009-2011) &
78. Spice and Wolf (2008-2009) &*
79. Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka (2008-2009) &*
80. Bastard! (1992) &*
81. Mahoromatic (2001-2009)
82. Alien Nine (2001-2002) &
83. Fatal Fury (1992-1994)
84. Bakemonogatari (2009-2010+) &
85. Iria: Zeiram the Animation (1994)
86. Guyver (1986-2006) &*
87. Lucky Star (2007-2008)
88. Azumanga Daioh (2002)
89. To Heart (1999-2010+)
90. Spirited Away (2001)
91. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
92. Fate/Stay/Zero (2006-2011+) &*
93. Scrapped Princess (2003)
94. Steins;Gate (2011+)
95. Gunbuster (1988-2006)
96. Shamanic Princess (1996-1998)
97. Akira (1988)
98. Moshidora (2011)
99. Soul Eater (2008-2009) &*
100. Tamayura (2010-2011+)
101. Ninja Scroll (1993-2003+)
102. Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
103. High School of the Dead (2010-2011) &
104. Sora no Manimani (2009) &
105. Kanokon (2008-2009) &
106. Hikaru no Go (2001-2004) &*
107. Gosick (2011)
108. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)
109. Ghost in the Shell (1995-2006)
110. Flame of Recca (1997-1998) &*

And that's just the ones I know about. Ten of the top 13 either didn't follow their source correctly or didn't reach a definitive ending. How maddening is this? Shows that should be the greatest works of art known to man are left dangling in the wind due to inscrutable decision making processes that abandon every single project halfway. Kyoto Animation is the worst culprit in this. They created their own filler ending for K-On instead of following the manga exactly, made a joke of a Haruhi Season 2 then just discontinued the series entirely, stopped Full Metal Panic before any of the romance elements were resolved or the last boss Leonard Testorossa was defeated, refused to animate the followup to Clannad, Tomoyo After Story, and have basically non-stop screwed us over. It's like they delight in spoiling the quality of their own works. Shows that would be perfect instead all end up the same way under the care of Kyoto Animation: unfinished and unfaithful.

But Full Metal Panic, Clannad, K-On, Haruhi, and Dragonball aren't the only victims. The World God Only Knows was cut off far too soon, right when the series was getting more involved and more interesting. Rurouni Kenshin never animated the revenge arc properly. Sailor Moon never followed the manga properly like it should have. Ranma 1/2 is a mess of filler and left out scenes. The entire plot of Spice and Wolf was to reach this town in the north, but the anime stops before it even gets there. Are you kidding me? The entire plot of a story is 'let's get to this town' and the story ends before they reach it. Who thinks this crap up? Oh the fans will love this. There's endless more Index light novels J.C. Staff could have adapted, but instead they're busy making nonsense like Tantei Opera Milkey Holmes which can't hold a candle to Index's quality. Why? It makes no sense. It's completely ludicrous. To think how many fans of the Index anime there must be left dangling in the wind because J.C. Staff didn't immediately dive into a season 3. Does Touma ever get with Misaki? What happens to Accelerator? So many questions -- and no answers. Thanks, anime!

The best scene in the Negima manga, Negima vs. Chao, isn't even animated. The anime butchers and leaves gaping holes in the rest of the series it does pretend to cover, and now it ends while the manga is still ongoing. Thanks for nothing, anime studio! You take one of the best mangas of all time and turn it into dog food by treating it in such a ridiculously disrespectful manner. Anime studios complain about low sales to justify their butchering of anime projects, but did they ever stop and think that maybe it was because they always butchered everything that it didn't sell well in the first place? Maybe if they had followed the Negima manga faithfully they would have had spectacular sales. It's not like the manga itself sells poorly. But we'll never know, since they were so sure their filler was a better idea. How convenient to blame customers for their own mistakes as an excuse to not satisfy their customers! It's like a wife-beater asking his wife why she keeps 'making him do this.' The fault is entirely the anime studios for not just following the source as it was laid out for them, but somehow it magically becomes the viewers' faults for not liking their altered version of events. Just calling an anime Negima doesn't make it Negima. Only following the source makes your Negima-named anime a Negima anime. If you don't follow a good source, of course you'll end up with a crappy, low-selling series.

Sales figures are no excuse. Madoka Magica sold 50,000+ blu-ray discs per volume. Why? Because it didn't have any filler and it had a definitive ending. If every series followed the Madoka model, they could be just as popular and sell just as well. It's the anime studios' own disrespectful business model that is causing all of their problems with customers. We don't want another mindless fan-service romp through the gardens of love. What we want is more Haruhi, Claymore, Berserk, and everything else you refuse to animate. Until you start making what we want again, of course you'll keep losing money. Do car industries blame customers for not buying their cars while stubbornly refusing to change, or do they try to build cars customers will actually buy? How about Apple? Google? Do they make profits by ignoring their customers' wishes?

Have they even tried, even once, to actually follow their source faithfully all the way to its definitive conclusion? Until they do, what right do they have to complain about the product's sales? Who knows, maybe if people knew what they were watching would actually reach a conclusion, they would buy it. But since every anime starts and then just trails off into oblivion, it's such a turn-off that no one wants to get involved in the first place. What's the use? It's not like you'll ever find out what happens to these characters you're introduced to anyway.

At the very least these companies could give us a written promise that they will someday go back and remake/complete every series they previously quit midway during. It doesn't have to be this coming winter season, but fans of a series have a right to know what happens at the end of the series. They shouldn't just be left in eternal suspense, not ever knowing what happens to any of their favorite characters in any series ever made. This is why Wheel of Time was continued until the very end, even after the author of Wheel of Time died -- because the fans of Wheel of Time had a moral right to know what happened and not just be left in suspense. Why don't anime producers understand this simple concept? Wheel of Time did right by its fans. So now Kyoto Animation needs to do the same. Drop all the junk, drop all the new projects, and complete Full Metal Panic and Haruhi all the way to the actual ending. Engaging in any new projects at this time is simply a betrayal of all their fans and all their customers of the past. By producing the first half of an anime, you get people excited and interested in a series. Turning around and starting a new series, when our appetites have already been whetted for the old ones, is acting like a tease. It's immoral. It's flagrantly immoral. And it has completely permeated the anime business. Aside from a few wonderful exceptions like Code Geass and Pretty Cure, barely a single good story in the rankings actually has an ending. Fixing this should be the anime industry's one and only priority.

Saimoe 2011 Final Four:

2011-11-01T09:40:00.000-07:00

And the final four areeeeee:

Erica Hartman, from Strike Witches.
Madoka Kaname, from Madoka Magica.
Mami Tomoe, from Madoka Magica.
And Kyouko Sakura, from Madoka Magica.

Astarotte was my last 'horse' in this race, but I'm rather pleased with my predictive power. I said characters like Astarotte should win, but that ultimately characters from Madoka WOULD win due to Madoka being the most popular anime of 2011. Since this is Saimoe 2011 it only makes sense that the breakaway show of the year would get all the attention. It also only makes sense that the title character and lead would defeat Sayaka, a side character in the quarterfinals, despite my preference for Sayaka Miki over Madoka Kaname.

Erica Hartmann might just beat Kyouko Sakura to create a non-all-Madoka final, but she will most definitely lose in the final to Madoka. Madoka, meanwhile, who didn't lose to Sayaka Miki, couldn't possibly lose to Mami Tomoe. I predict now that not only will the franchise Madoka Magica win, but that Madoka herself will win from amidst that franchise. We won't have long to wait to see, the final is in a mere four days.

On one hand Saimoe 2011 is playing out, and on the other hand we're rounding the bend towards the greatest #1 vs. #2 match in regular season college football history (more or less). LSU vs. Alabama should be a spectacular 'final' as well, at about the same time.

Looking a bit further ahead, 2011 still has a new Kenshin special, a new Major OVA, a new Toradora bonus episode, a new K-On! movie, a new Gundam OVA and a new Higurashi OVA to come. So that means that 2011 will have released new content for 41 of the top 110 anime franchises ever. This is far and away better than any previous year in anime history. IE, 2011 will have been the best year in anime history.

But 2012 isn't looking too shabby either. 2012 promises a Bakemonogatari sequel tv series and prequel movie, another Amagami SS tv series, another Prince of Tennis tv series, a new Zero no Tsukaima tv series, a Higurashi OVA, a To Heart OVA, a Berserk movie, a Strike Witches movie, an Evangelion movie, and a new Nanoha movie. This is just the tip of the iceberg, what the anime industry has let us know so far. They've also made promises concerning Fate/Zero, Steins;Gate, Hayate, Saki, and Code Geass; and doubtless immortal series like One Piece, Naruto, Gundam, Bleach, Pretty Cure, Fairy Tail and Hunter x Hunter will also be joining us for 2012. Lastly, Hanasaku Iroha, Usagi Drop, and many other 2011 series are still being released in blu-ray with additional bonus content, which means 2012 will include all of them too.

We're already up to 23+ of the top 110 series being represented in 2012, and we only have the barest idea of what's coming out next year. If that's not enough, the London 2012 Olympics are just around the corner.

Most importantly, Memory of Light, the final book in the Wheel of Time series, quite possibly the greatest literary work ever, is coming out in 2012. It would take something phenomenal in the entertainment world to overtake 2011's output, but with the help of this lone book, it might just be enough.

Lots of Good News:

2011-10-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

The first item of good news is that Astarotte beat Misaka Mikoto for a spot in the elite 8. Her next opponent is Erica Hartmann from Strike Witches. The remainder of the elite 8 in the Saimoe contest are Kyouko, Mami, Sayaka and Madoka from Madoka Magica (Just as I predicted, all 4 made it), Kuroneko from Oreimo, and Squid Girl from Shinryaku.

Madoka and Sayaka are fighting each other, so at least one Madoka girl has to lose this time. I'm hoping Sayaka will win, she's my favorite girl in Madoka Magica. I predict the other two Madoka girls will win handily against their opponents. And I'm hoping Astarotte will win again and advance all the way to the final four. That way, my eye for the cutest girls will have peer backing.

The next item of good news is that 13 top 100 anime shows are airing simultaneously in this ridiculously quality-packed fall season. Getting to watch Bakuman, Hunter x Hunter, Working, Fate/Zero and One Piece all in the same day is basically dying and going to heaven. What a season! Wow! I salute you, Japan.

More good news is that LSU and Alabama, #1 and #2, both unbeaten, will be facing each other November 5th in the most epic regular season SEC match in history. This will go a long way towards determining the national championship game in January -- but to be honest, this is probably going to be a tougher and better match than the national championship game itself. This IS the national championship game, for all intents and purposes. If you're going to watch a single football game this year, this is it.

The next item of good news is that World of Warcraft has announced an expansion, Mists of Pandaria. It has scrapped the old talent system and built an entirely new one that gives you completely overpowered abilities, but only 6 of them, and each of them is mutually exclusive with the other two options you might have chosen. This means there's now a great deal of customization and personalization of your characters. Hard choices will have to be made every 15 levels to create the perfect Paladin for *you.* In addition, the level cap is being moved up to 90, there's a new race, Pandarians (Panda-people) with all sorts of good racial abilities and great looks, and a new class, monks (Kung-fu Pandas) with an entirely new look and feel who can tank, heal, or dps just as you please, and a new continent full of new looking Asian-themed zones and dungeons to play around in. This expansion really has it all. Cataclysm was great in that it remade all the beginning zones to be a truly fun experience, and Wrath was great because it had the new death knight class, and Burning Crusade at least made Shamans and Paladins more reasonable/mainstream, but Mists of Pandaria is all of those expansions put together -- a new race, a new class, a new continent, and a complete reworking of the gameplay.

I was kind of hoping for the Emerald Dream to be the topic of the next expansion, but, I guess there's always next time. For now I'm excited enough by the prospect of playing a kung-fu panda.

Other good news is that the continuously high price of oil has caused a boom in oil production from slightly more expensive sources, like deep-water drilling, tar sand oil, and shale oil, which is found in the Americas instead of the Middle East. Soon enough America will be the oil provider to the world, and this will give us increased economic and military security, while at the same time undercutting all the dictators and terrorists of Dar'al'Islam.

Speaking of dictator terrorists, there's more good news, Qaddafi is dead. He met his just desserts at the hands of an angry mob. Not only did he commit terrorist attacks against us in the past, there's well documented human atrocities he committed against his own people, and now a stunning report that he had personally accumulated from the backs of his poor citizenry a stunning 200 billion dollars, making him the wealthiest man on Earth, all via theft. With that kind of money, he could have founded a Mars colony, but instead he chose to squirrel it away in Swiss bank accounts and never spend a dime. This insane usage of his people's tax dollars earned via his country's natural resources has to be his worst crime of all.

Obama so far has shown an amazing record for killing bad guys that Bush was completely incapable of fulfilling. He's also shown that we can win a war via pure air power, defeating an ancient enemy of the United States without losing a single man in the process. Hopefully Syria rises up next and we can send our planes over there to start a new bombing campaign. The dictator of Syria, Assad, has already been machine gunning his own people who were only engaged in peaceful protests, and his father killed 12,000 people who yearned for democracy in his day, so the moral legitimacy of that nation's leaders is also nonexistent.

More good news is that Final Fantasy XIII-2 will be coming out soon, and it will focus on Sera, Lightning's younger sister, who was always the most beautiful and interesting character, even in the original game, but maddeningly couldn't be used as a playable character even though she had l'ciel magic. Clearly the best was saved for last. There's also hope that Final Fantasy Type Zero and Final Fantasy XIII Vs. will finally come out this year as well. Square-Enix has really made us wait for all of its announced projects a long time, but that's just because they care about being the best and making games right. I have no problem with delays so long as the game at the end is good.

While we're at it, Dynasty Warriors 7 Xtreme Legends, an expansion pack to the best Dynasty Warriors game ever, will come with an unprecedented 3 new characters, including the woefully left out Pang De from DW5, Guo Jia, a great general from Cao Cao's early days, and Wang Shi, a girl who once fought Ma Chao in real history. ((I'm fine with cute girls who never existed at all, but historical warrior girls are always a plus.)) Putting DW7 and DW7 Xtreme Legends together, I just don't see how any game could ever be more fun than 7. It has everything and everyone now. Maybe once there's a PS4 and an even better graphics engine, but until then, DW8 won't stand a chance to this perfect gem of a game.

There's also some hints that an Xbox 3 and a PS4 are on their way. My view of the matter is that we should stay with the PS3 until programmers can't find any way left to make the graphics better, but after that, it's time to move on to a new generation console. New games won't be fun if they don't offer any novel experiences to gamers. So far every PS3 game has looked better than the last, but that probably won't be true for the years to come, so it's time to start developing the PS4 now, not after all this momentum has winded down. PS3 is so close to surpassing Xbox 2 sales and claiming its status as the best gaming platform of this generation. It only needs to somehow outsell the Xbox for 3 million more units. All the talk about how terrible a bet Sony made will be silenced by the victory of the PS3 and the blu-ray disk that they invented. I can't wait to see the pie on people's faces when the final results are in.

Fall 2011 Anime Worth Watching:

2011-10-19T23:42:00.000-07:00

After watching a few more episodes of various series, I feel I can put a more decisive stamp on the fall season.

I watched the first episode of Last Exile, and it was terrible. Aside from cute throwback references, musically and artistically, to the original series, it was completely worthless. All the characters were annoying. The CG effects weren't realistic at all, they were just jarring and ugly. And all of the soft porn seems to have been thrown it at random on the premise that 'sex sells so may as well.' Sex may sell, but if it doesn't have any purpose in the story, it ruins any piece of art it touches.

I have the same objection to Ben-to, C3, and Maji de Watashi. Too many corporate bureaucrats thinking to themselves, "sex sells, so may as well." No integration of said sex into the plot whatsoever. Therefore, all three series are total failures.

Meanwhile, Boku wa Tomodachi has improved yet again. Surprisingly, it's one of the best series this fall. The episode about them playing first Monster Hunter, then a visual novel, was not only hilarious but so, so true, in every way. It caught the spirit of both games perfectly.

Mirai Nikki, meanwhile, was much worse in its second episode, as a series of unrealistic events happened in a row -- where did all 9's bombs come from? Look how much work it took for Breivik to make one single bomb, which ended up being almost entirely ineffectual. How did 9 wire the whole school and lay a minefield at that???? Where did her motorcycle come from? She was standing in an empty field all alone, and then suddenly she was on a motorcycle. I assume her magical motorcycle came from the same source as her magical bombs? But how does the ability to foretell the future grant you the right to conjure magic items out of thin air? The whole thing smacked of bullshit.

Nurarihyon just gets worse every episode. There's no reason to watch this show anymore either.

So how does the new fall season outlook look like? Maybe if I divided it into tiers:

Must See:

Suite Precure.
One Piece.
Idolm@ster.
Fairy Tail.
Bakuman.
Working!.
Hunter x Hunter.
Fate/Zero.

Should See:

Tamayura.
Bleach.
(non-filler) Naruto.
Shakugan no Shana.
Boku wa Tomodachi.
Guilty Crown.
Shinryaku.

No harm in seeing:

Gundam Age.
Kimi to Boku.
Mashiro-iro.
Morita-san.
Chihayafuru.

If you're about to die of boredom:

Nurarihyon.
Mirai Nikki.
Ben-to.
Maji de Watashi.
C3.
Last Exile: Fam.

Not even under torture:

Everything else.

What Does the CIA World Factbook tell us about 2050?

2011-10-19T21:31:00.000-07:00

Once you've read the Bell Curve or Wealth and IQ of Nations, you will learn one piece of the two-piece puzzle that, together, proves the world is coming to an end.

The first piece of the puzzle is that IQ is genetic, not environmental, and that the average IQ of a sub-saharan African is 70. Whites are considered retarded at IQ 70, by the way. There is no possibility whatsoever that a bunch of retards can inherit a sophisticated modern civilization. It will revert back to neanderthal, stone-age levels if left to 70 IQ primitives in a matter of moments. Just look at Zimbabwe. After seizing white farms, they were unable to produce any crops themselves, and ended up just overseeing vast wastelands. Now Zimbabwe receives foreign aid to feed its people, when before it was the breadbasket of Africa. What happens when the whites are all gone? Who will give Zimbabwe foreign aid then? At that point Zimbabwe's descent will go all the way back to its destined endpoint, the neolithic age. As will the entire rest of the world, since there will be nobody, anywhere, left to bail the blacks out.

The second piece of the puzzle is the CIA World Factbook. This piece tells us demographic trends, ie, what populations are going to grow in the future, and which will shrink. Guess who has the highest birthrates? The dumbest people on Earth. And guess who has the lowest? That's right, the smartest people on Earth. This is a formula for Armageddon. How could it end any other way?

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2054rank.html?countryName=Afghanistan&countryCode=af®ionCode=sas&rank=17#af

If you go to this link, you will a list of countries by their birth rates. In fifty years, these are going to be the sole inhabitants of the Earth -- them and, of course, their children, who will be of the same color they are, and the same IQ.

1. Niger.
2. Uganda.
3. Mali.
4. Zambia.
5. Burkina Faso.
6. Ethiopia.
7. Angola.
8. Somalia.
9. Burundi.
10. Malawi.
11. Republic of the Congo
12. Mozambique
13. Chad
14. Sierra Leone
15. Benin
16. Sao Tome and Principe.

Someone please stop me if they're starting to see a pattern here.

If we wanted to save the world from its impending new neolithic age, we would have to A) stop foreign aid. B) stop immigration. C) Reduce the birth rate of African countries. D) Cull the black race from existence.

Liberalism precludes us from doing any of the above. All of them are too 'insensitive' and 'mean-spirited' and 'discriminatory' to implement. Even though there are a thousand solutions to the problem of African birth rates, not a single one of them can be implemented, because all 1,000 of them require, first, that people cease being liberals.

But it is impossible to overcome this first, all-important hurdle. Liberalism is all-powerful, it is invincible, if it could have been overcome, it would have been long ago. Now, it's too late. All non-liberal countries on Earth have been smashed by liberal countries in war and occupied until they switched to the 'liberal' side. Not even China dares to say or do non-liberal things like 'we must lower black birth rates or world IQ will plummet.' If China can't say this, who can? Every country on Earth loves to talk about how anti-racist, tolerant, and diverse they are. No one is willing to stand up for civilization and against black breeding habits. If no one is even willing to say anything about it, what are the odds anyone is willing to DO anything about it?

Not only are 99% of the people in the civilized world liberals, they are such fanatic liberals that no amount of evidence or facts, no amount of logic and science, can persuade them to abandon liberalism. They would rather the world end than admit liberalism is wrong. They have abandoned politics, liberalism is a new faith. Like the Christians of old, words no longer reach them. This is just one more reason liberalism is impossible to overcome.

But it gets even worse. Not only has everyone decided to become a reason-immune liberal zombie, but they've set up an entire indoctrination system that brainwashes every last child on Earth into the cult of liberalism before they can come up with any reasonable mindsets or views of their own. Liberalism has made sure that no new generation will be anti-liberal either. There is no way to start with fresh, blank slates and argue the pros and cons of liberalism to a neutral child. All the children are kidnapped into public schools and force-fed liberalism non-stop, 18 hours a day. On TV they see nothing but chummy blacks and whites getting along and going on dates together. In school they read nothing but how evil racists were in the past and how saintly blacks were in overcoming their suffering as victims of evil racists. There is nothing but 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' 'The Color Purple,' 'Roll of Thunder, Hear me Cry,' 'A Raisin in the Sun,' and lord knows what else. For variety's sake, liberalism will throw in some more victim-porn -- every year gets a new Holocaust book, and every year teaches us that "johnny has two mommies," but in the end it's all about the poor, poor blacks. The apple in the liberal's eye is the black race. They, above all, can never be criticized or confronted about anything.

In a setting like that, how could kids emerge as anything but die-hard liberals? When they're taught 18 hours out of every day that blacks are exactly like whites, except they are saints who never do wrong and are always heroes who overcome evil whites in the end, when exactly can we teach a new generation of kids to step up to the plate and stop the coming black birth rate Armageddon? Are kids being given the education and moral sense necessary to stop foreign aid to Africa, immigration from Africa, or African birth rates? Give me a break. Kids, once brainwashed enough by our schools, would be willing to do anything for the poor starving Africans. We will ship off all our money as foreign aid. We will invite every last one of them to immigrate into our countries to live off our taxpayer dollars as welfare queens. We will call each and every new child a 'blessing' of 'diversity' to be 'celebrated,' even when they're 99% of the population and we're only 1%. Each new black child will only add to our wonderful diversity. Whites are automatically non-diverse, and blacks are automatically diverse, even when the ratio is 1:99, didn't you know?

You can't persuade the current generation of liberals, who are still stuck in the civil rights era and how they heroically defeated the South at Gettysburg to free the slaves. They are so infatuated with the idea of blacks as victims that they are unwilling to listen to any story where blacks are the perpetrators of any foul deed. But you can't persuade the next generation of kids anything anti-liberal either, because they are carefully indoctrinated by their parents to be even more fervently liberal than even the civil rights era parents could dream of.

But, surely China, Japan, and South Korea won't pay attention to this nonsense, right? After all, they aren't taught to worship blacks 24/7, right?

Sorry, by 2050, China, Japan, and South Korea won't exist.

Coming in 2nd to last in the entire world in birth rates, Japan had 7.31 children for every 1,000 women this year. That's 1/7 the number of children Niger is having. For every Japanese person in 2050, there will be 7 Niger-s. So it doesn't really matter if Japan is liberal or not. It won't exist in the first place. Japan will be an abandoned, dead isle.

South Korea comes in 7th to last, at 8.55 children per 1,000 women.

China comes in 159th, at 12.29 children per 1,000 women. That's still 1/4 the number of children Niger is having. It's also still well behind the number of kids necessary simply to maintain your current population. In 2050 China will be a shell of its former self, populated solely by old tottering grandmothers. They won't be able to resist the 'black plague' of African immigration either. No one will resist them, because liberalism is a terminal illness that infected China, South Korea, and Japan long ago.

You see, liberalism says that women don't need to start families or have children, but can just abort all their babies if they feel like it. Since this is what women feel like doing, the inevitable result is the death of your nation. It doesn't take long to commit suicide as a country once you've adopted an insane, utterly nihilistic belief, now does it? Fifty years will be plenty of time for liberalism to abort, birth control, dump and divorce away every prospective child in East Asia. By the time liberalism is through with a woman's womb, not a single child ever escapes destruction. It is a death cult, in addition to being all powerful and all pervasive, it is also all destructive.

Humorously, if liberalism would at least enforce this measure of women's rights on Africans, then Africa wouldn't swarm over in its trillions to devour the whole world, like it is slated to do given current birth rates. But liberalism is hypocritical as well as evil. It only wants women's rights for evil racist people, like whites and Asians. If you are black or brown, you get a free pass, you can do whatever you want, have as many babies as you want, beat your wives into submission all day long, and they'll do nothing but write books about what heroes and saints you are, while celebrating the diversity of your 'colorful culture.' Liberals are the most disgusting creatures on Earth, snakes that have far less pride than Satan ever managed. They will hiss warnings about global warming down one fork of their forked tongues, demanding all the intelligent, enlightened races stop having any children whatsoever, while simultaneously celebrating Africans and Muslims reproducing like flies and immigrating to every corner of the Earth as a wonderful 'enrichment' down the other fork of their forked hissing tongues. They don't even bother with consistency. The consistency can be found in this argument, and this argument alone: Whites and Asians must die to make room for more blacks and browns, the only truly worthy life forms. Women's rights, global warming, gay rights, and every other cause must take a secondary place to this all important primary mission of liberalism.

But what about the worse is better theory? Won't whites and Asians wake up one day, in the middle of some black ghetto, and realize this is insane? That no one could really want blacks to inherit the Earth? At that time, won't they turn this all around?

Sure they will. just like the whites of Zimbabwe turned everything around there. Just like the whites of Brazil turned everything around. Just like the whites of South Africa turned everything around. Just like the whites of Detroit. . .oh wait, ACTUALLY, NO ONE HAS EVER TURNED AROUND A BLACK PLAGUE IN HISTORY.

Blacks are like entropy, they are the arrow of time. Once blacks infect a region, it's lost forever. It is never reclaimed by whites. It's just gone. Erased, from existence. So no, worse is better will not save us, because it never has. It's silly to think we'd suddenly realize that liberalism is insane when so many worked examples have ALREADY PROVEN THAT BEYOND ALL DOUBT, and yet whites never learned from those lessons either, so why would they this time?

Because this worse will be worse than any worse that has ever come before?

Perhaps. But then, for that to happen, Armageddon will have already occurred. To get any worse than Zimbabwe, we're already talking about the collapse of the entire world. So this doesn't say anything against my case. It just says that after Armageddon, maybe someday, some scattered few white or Asian cavemen will pick up the pieces, once civilization has been well and truly smashed beyond all redemption. Is that something we should be hopefully looking forward to? Really?

Liberalism cannot be overcome by force. There would need to be a sizable portion of at least the military on the side of 'racism' and 'discrimination.' 'Hate,' and 'bigotry.' But as I just said, 99% of people are liberals, and children are even more fanatically liberal than adults. Since the army recruits from children, many of whom these days are colored in the first place, how could you possibly get the army to join your side? How could you possibly beat the army in a violent war? Hopeless. Utterly hopeless. What can a few handguns do against the all-powerful bombers and satellite tracking drones of the US Army? What about their tanks? Their nukes? What could a handful of racists do against a force like that? It's so utterly hopeless it makes you want to cry. The people would also, having been brainwashed 24/7 that racism is the ultimate evil, 100% support any war, no matter how ruthless and deadly, against a racist power that dared to oppose liberalism. You are better off being an army for the freedom of cows that wants to impose vegetarianism on the world than an army fighting for the survival of the white race.

The one army, the one nation, that liberals will never allow to live will be a racist, white nation. They will never negotiate peace with racists. They will kill every last racist on Earth, at any price, no matter what. That is how much they hate racists. It is a white hot fury beyond anything else in their lives. They hate us like Christians hate Satan. If we came to blows with liberals on the issue of race, they wouldn't treat us with the kid gloves they treated the Afghans and Iraqis with. It would just be indiscriminate slaughter to the last man, woman, and child. It would be our extermination.

Reason cannot overcome liberalism, force cannot overcome liberalism, kids can't be turned against liberalism, China and Japan can't overcome liberalism. And if you can't overcome liberalism, you can't stop the black plague. Once the black plague has swept the planet, goodbye civilization.

THE END.

That is why we must transcend while we still have time. Technology, given time, will give us new options we never had before -- becoming a new life form even more powerful than the US military, escaping to a place liberals and blacks cannot follow, or changing all life on Earth simultaneously to a more acceptable form that even liberals would approve of. These options will become available in the near future given current trends in technological innovation. Various people have various dates for this singularity, but not a single person 'in the know' doubts it will happen. Technology buffs all take it as a given that we will invent all three of these tools given time, that it is within human intelligence and the laws of physics, that it CAN and WILL be done if we just keep cracking away at it.

Even if we reach these technological singularities a little after 2050, in, say, 2100, it might not be too late, because the black plague may hit some places initially harder than others, sparing our scientists for a few more years before they too are flooded by the entropic wave of death. This is our one and only hope. Unrealistic?

And some other hope is more realistic?

Just be lucky we have any hope at all.

Why we Should Ignore the Coming Armageddon:

2011-10-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

It might seem strange to people when I write a post pointing out ten different ways the world is coming to an end in just the next few decades, but then go back to posting about how great anime is afterwards. However, these posts are not contradictory. In fact, they're complimentary.

For the world to have value, it must be able to produce value at some exact time. If only the future has value, then the universe has no value. Think about it. Once we finally get to this valued future, it will become the 'present,' and thus lose all of its value again. We would never actually reach the valuable part of existence. Therefore the present must have value, independent of the future. Since the whole universe is doomed to heat death in a few billion years (not long at all, considering it took 13 billion years just to reach sentient life in the life-cycle of this universe), there's no point to anything unless the present has value. If death, destruction, and doom were enough to invalidate the value of life, entropy would have already done that -- we hardly need demographics to lend a hand.

It would be nice if mankind had a future past 2050, but it isn't necessary for people alive today to still lead a good life. A life full of valuable, meaningful deeds is still open to us, so long as we enjoy what time is left to us. There are basically three meaningful ways to enjoy life -- love, beauty, and truth. Or if you prefer verbs -- caring, appreciating, and understanding. They are all mental activities (thus free to produce, non-zero-sum goods) and they are all infinite in scale and scope. There is never too much of any of these feelings inside our heads. We could always do with some more. We are currently living in the best era of human history, an era with more love, beauty, and truth than any that has ever gone before. We will soon be entering a dark age with little of any of these things. Therefore we should appreciate what we have even more poignantly, not less, than we ordinarily would have, had we not known about our doomed future.

We're probably going to be the happiest generation of mankind for a long, long time. We will be blessed with all the best games, music, books, sports matches, movies, tv series, etc, that will ever be made in human history. If we don't consume them, who will? Once civilization collapses, no one will have access to any of these joys we are being saturated with daily. Won't all these vehicles of love, beauty, and truth feel lonely in the future, when no one is left to listen to them? It's our job to not let a single such toy go to waste.

Patrick Buchanan recently wrote a new book, Suicide of a Superpower, that grimly lays out the same old facts -- the entire civilized world is running out of people, while importing immigrants who can't tie their own shoes, much less pay as much money in taxes as they receive in benefits. The end result will be a planet of the apes. How could it be any different? Demographics is destiny. While Nigerians have ten kids a piece, Japanese have one, if they're lucky. The future, therefore, belongs to Nigeria. The whole world will just be "Greater Nigeria." Congratulations world, you sacrificed the entire world upon the altar of diversity, outdoing the Aztecs by leaps and bounds. Once and for all we will prove we weren't racist. Only at the price of everything good, clean, beautiful, pure, and sacred in this world. But who cares! At least we weren't racist!

I have no reason to hope for, or expect, anything but the grim future Patrick Buchanan paints. Only living in a dreamland can deny the reality in front of all of our faces -- Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Haiti will soon = the entire population of the Earth. The ruthless logic of differential birth rates demands it. The ruthless logic of geometric expansion dooms all of us. In the end it's just mathematical. Opposing this force of mathematical inevitability is like Caligula's war with the sea. No matter how many times I raise my voice in opposition to overpopulation and mass immigration, everyone is too busy celebrating diversity to listen. In the end, the entire civilized world, not just America, committed suicide, all at once, all together, and all for the sake of 'not looking racist.' It would be unbelievable except that we're seeing it before our very own eyes. If someone had time traveled back to 1911 and told them what the world is doing today, they would lock us up in an insane asylum. No one would believe us for a second. Just like it's impossible for any sane person on Earth today to believe what is happening in front of them, while the insane masses hold hands and sing kumbayah.

It is unprecedented in the history of mankind for a people, a nation, a culture, a race, to unilaterally and peacefully hand over its territory to an alien race/nation/culture/people, and then die out while chanting hymns to tolerance and diversity.

It is even more unprecedented in the history of mankind for invaders to successfully conquer their SUPERIORS in terms of military power, economic productivity, or any other measure imaginable. People who cannot figure out how to open doors or pee in toilets are displacing and conquering people who sent astronauts to walk on the moon and split the atom. This is today. This is tomorrow. This is the anti-miracle our brave new world has produced. Something so farcical, so evil, that only a supernatural power could possibly conceive or explain such a feat.

Given how unprecedented the situation of today is, it's obvious that this time the world really will end, unlike all previous times where the world did not. It's true that for thousands of years the world hasn't ended, it's in fact improved itself and reached new heights of greatness and glory. But that was then, before we started letting in shambling neanderthals across every border and giving them free food and medicine to breed as prolifically as they like. Now, things have changed. We have figured out the perfect recipe to destroy the world, and we have implemented it. Yes, past tense. We have already implemented it. Like a boulder pushed down a mountain, it has already been irrevocably set in motion. The end result, when it lands at the bottom of the hill to a resounding crash, is ALREADY FOREORDAINED. There's nothing more anyone can do to stop it.

The only hope mankind has left isn't for people to suddenly wake up, abandon liberalism, and go about reducing the population of stupid breeders that has infected the whole world with their immigrant tentacles. Part of the irrevocable process we have set into motion is a media, and an education system, that systematically prevents such an awakening from ever occurring. This generation is even more happy-fairy-dopey liberal than the last, not less. No doubt the next generation will be even more indoctrinated than ours, the press and the schools have gotten this down to a science. There's nothing a few lone voices in the wind can do to overthrow their edifice of lies. The insanity is so constantly reinforced, and ENFORCED, (firing dissidents, ostracism, hate speech laws, etc), that the only possible path to politically forestall Armageddon was shut off long ago. It was probably shut off in 1945, when the last light of hope went out in the flash of the nuclear bomb that evaporated Nagasaki.

If you want to save the future, don't worry about winning hearts and minds. There is only one path left: invent a technology so profound that it changes the entire equation overnight. Genetic engineering, space flight, or artificial intelligence. That's it. Nothing else will do. Even free energy or immortality won't save us at this point. Luckily there are very smart, very passionate people with large amounts of money working on all three projects as we speak. Will they complete their revolution before 2050? I don't know. Some people say their miracle inventions will appear in a decade. Others say it will take centuries. It's really up to God at this point.

But there is one thing we can do, and that's enjoy our daily lives. Whether the world ends, or has only just begun, we still have the same moral duty -- to maximize our life utility, to get as much out of life as we can, and fill the universe with value, as opposed to dead empty matter like its been for so many billions of years, and will be for so many endless eons to come.

Do not lay up treasures on Earth, because blacks will steal them or break them in 40 years anyway. Lay up treasures in Heaven, ie, your own brain, by creating happy memories. Blacks can't steal that wealth yet. Nor can they tax it away. Affirmative action doesn't yet know how to deprive us of our thoughts and give them to the less deserving.

Whether scientists invent a miracle or blacks destroy the world, people no longer have any use for accumulating material goods. They will become 0 either way, in one case because they are irrelevant, surpassed by infinitely better and more goods, and in the other because blacks will steal them from you so all you'll have done is enrich them, not yourself. This is the time to store up spiritual goods and go on strike against the normal, material world.

It's the right time to watch anime. Everything else, at this point, is pointless.

Fall Anime Season Fully Revealed:

2011-10-16T09:35:00.000-07:00

The fall anime season included a lot of series that came out over many weeks. Finally we have a full picture of this new anime lineup, so let's see what the situation now looks like:

Monday's Shows:

Bakugan, Gintama, Chibi Devil, Tamogotchi, Yu-gi-oh: beneath my notice.

Tamayura: Excellent. In the top 100 anime ever.

Tuesday's Shows:

Sengoku Paradise: beneath my notice.

Bleach: A very good start to the next non-filler arc. In the top 70 anime ever.

Shinryaku: A fun start to another lighthearted squid girl season.

Kimi to Boku: A novel story about a group of boys instead of girls, worth watching for that alone.

Wednesday's Shows:

Happy Kappy, Inazuma Go and Danball Senki: beneath my notice.

Maken-ki: worst anime ever?

Morita-san: Cute, but too short.

Mashiro-iro: Cliched, but fluffy.

Chihayafuru: I like how the characters have forgivable character flaws, they're just the right balance and it really brings out their personalities. I'm not sure if the plot itself is any good though.

Thursday's Shows:

GDGD Fairies, Hyouge Mono, Pokemon Black/White: Beneath my notice.

Sket Dance: Saw the first episode ages ago and hated it. Maybe it got better later? I wouldn't know.

Naruto: Still in filler. The next non-filler arc sucks anyway. How the mighty have fallen. Even so, a top 10 anime ever.

Friday's Shows:

Copihan: I should try this show sometime.

Busou Shinki: Bad premise, bad execution.

Un-go: Terrible series. It acts like a detective story, but it's not, because you can magically retrieve any information you need to solve the case. The art is awful, the characters are annoying. Rarely do you see such a mangled idea.

Guilty Crown: An exciting first episode. The art is exquisite. The question is can it transition from flashy visuals to a moving story with characters we genuinely care about? It won't be a great series if it stays like this.

The Idolm@ster: The 2nd half of this already perfect series is equally perfect. Creative episodes that continue to perfectly express their unique idea of a bunch of idols performing for a crowd in all sorts of various venues in various ways is simply fantastic. Whoever wrote up the concepts for these individuals episodes is a creative genius. Whoever draws these characters is an artistic genius. The voice actors are all geniuses. By God how do series get this good?

The only flaw to this series is that it's non-serious, which limits its potential. The happy-go-lucky atmosphere is perfect for the show, but limits itself versus tearful tales like Kanon.

Persona 4: Ugly art, confusing scenario, annoying characters, contradictory scenes. A terrible series beyond redemption.

Boku wa Tomodachi: Funny situation, pretty girls. It can't go too far wrong. It won't be very good either, though.

Mawaru Penguindrum: The first episode was ridiculous and annoyingly avant-garde. I stopped watching after that.

Saturday's Shows:

Seikaiichi, Cardfight, Duel Masters, Tottoko Hamtaro, Shimanchu, Detective Conan: Beneath my notice.

Pretty Rhythm: Good idea, but poor execution. The computer graphics are ugly and the annoying ugly characters are annoying and ugly.

Jewelpet: I should watch this show sometime.

Last Exile: I still haven't seen this new series. :(.

Fairy Tail: A great show in the midst of a great new arc. Since the anime is just barely behind the manga, maybe they intend to stop Fairy Tail after this and go on hiatus? My complaints with Fairy Tail remain, though. The art isn't as good in the anime as it is in the manga. One of the top 20 anime ever.

Bakuman: A great show in the midst of a new development, what do you do once you Are serialized and a success? Can you maintain that success? Good times in this classic series. In the top 30 anime ever.

Shakugan no Shana: A decent show thrown into complete disarray by a new plot twist. It's too confusing to think much of the series as it currently stands. Hopefully in time all will be revealed. The production value is like usual wonderful though. In the top 70 ever.

Working!: An amazing comedy that continues to fulfill my expectations. I only hope it has more serious romance elements again like it did in the first season. The cast is so lovable and so various that it's just a delight for the eyes. In the top 30 anime ever.

C3: A story I thought was about cute box girls became a Soul Eater type demon weapon fighting series. Neither version has been very good. Who knows, maybe the third episode will be an entire new story about something entirely different too?

Sunday's Shows:

Digimon, Battle Spirits, Beyblade, CF B-daman, Fuji Log, Mainichi Kaa-san: Beneath my notice.

Phi Brain: Puzzles? I hate puzzles.

Nurarihyon: Barely watchable action series. At least you learn a bit of Japanese mythology along the way.

Gundam Age: A good start to the new Gundam series. The enemies fought intelligently, giving the Gundam a lot of trouble right out the gate. The cute blonde girl was exactly the kind of partner you'd want in life, supportive and compassionate. For a Gundam series, it's already looking above average. Since Gundam is the never-ending series that has been airing since 1979, it's cumulative worth puts it in the top 80 anime ever.

Beezlebub: The moment I saw the baby peeing in the first episode I stopped watching this show. I don't care what happened after that.

Toriko: The art looked stupid and the premise is stupid and the characters seem stupid ever since the story was introduced. Zero interest in what happened after that.

Horizon Nowhere: This show insulted Clannad, and made fun of people who liked it, which is unforgivable.

Mirai Nikki: This show is confusing, but refreshingly funny as well as exciting. It doesn't seem to take itself too seriously, which is good. A reliably mediocre show?

Hunter x Hunter: The new remake of Hunter x Hunter started off spectacularly. The new art, music, and animation were all Grade A. Eventually the story will start to falter, though, because Hunter x Hunter's plot was never that good. It never went anywhere, either. Hundreds of chapters later, nothing the story's beginning plot was based around has been resolved. As a result, Hunter x Hunter is snugly in the top 80 anime ever.

One Piece: The New World arc after a two year timeskip is suitably epic and awesome. Some of the best One Piece ever, funny, exciting, badass -- in short perfect. In the top 10 anime ever.

Ben-to: Proof of concept that you can make a story about anything, and so long as you use a few stock cliches the story will still be great. Hilarious meta-anime that proves that anime is always good no matter what you do.

Maji de Watashi: An anime that started off confusing and descended into eye candy. On the other hand, the girls really are pretty, as is the animation, and their personalities aren't bad either. . .

Fate/Zero: Fate Zero is going to take a year to clear up all the confusion the previous series, Fate/Stay, created. Maybe they can do Fate Hollow next? In any event, a very welcome addition to the Fate Stay storyline with great action, great art, and a very original concept under-girding it all. The exciting new beginning lands the series in the top 100 anime ever.

Suite Pretty Cure: Suite continues to excel in every particular. Among Pretty Cure seasons, it's in the top half. Pretty Cure is basically as good as it gets. In the top 10 anime ever.

* * * * * *

So there we have it. Around 13 must-see series, and a plethora of watchable extras, as well as a ton of junk. The Fall Season delivers a lot of everything, it's just a lot of anime whichever way you look at it.

The Fall Season should keep anyone happily occupied. It doesn't get any better than this many hit shows at once.

Meanwhile, the Saimoe contest is down to the Sweet 16. Who made it? Only 1 girl I vouched for has survived this far, Astarotte from Astarotte's Toy. She'll be in a tough match against Mikoto Misaka, the protagonist of Railgun. But predictably, all 4 girls from Madoka Magica are still in it. None of whom have to face each other in this round. So they'll probably all 4 be around for the elite eight too. Madoka Magica is showing Saimoe how it's done, that's for sure.

Only Index/Railgun and The World God Only Knows has multiple characters left other than Madoka Magica. Index/Railgun still has Index, the leading femme from Index, and Mikoto, the leading femme from Railgun. The World God Only Knows has the two shinigami girls, Elsea and Haqua. That's a surprise for me. I love the series, but I didn't take the girls to be any prettier than an average anime show. A lot of voters seem to be voting for their favorite girl, instead of their favorite looking girl. Well, beauty is internal as well as external in the end.

Top 110 Anime: Blu-ray

2011-10-12T07:20:00.000-07:00

One reason anime has become so much better than in the past is the adoption of HD, flatscreen TV's and the blu-ray disc. The blu-ray disc is able to record high definition content, and the HD tv is able to play it. Once enough people owned these two tools, anime was forced to live up to its new, higher standards or risk becoming irrelevant. Though I'm sure animators would have wished to remain at the lower standards to reduce workload, technology forced them to 'up their game' and provide visually spectacular series that fully employed the technology of the modern era. Nowadays, virtually any series is better drawn and better animated than even the best series of the past. The dumbest shows can have such splendid visuals that you can simply ignore the plot and watch for the art alone. Infinite Stratos is one popular example of this phenomenon.

In that case, no series can be described as in its 'finished' form until it's available on blu-ray. Once you're released on blu-ray, it's impossible to look any better, because blu-ray disks capture every pixel of detail there is to be had in the show. But commonly dvd disks have to erase detail to save on storage space and can't display high resolution pictures. Now, among expert circles, there are sometimes advocates for the dvd release being higher quality than the blu-ray release, due to obscure technical details. But the overall trend is in favor of blu-ray, so let's just ignore these exceptions and assume the blu-ray release is always the final, perfect form of a show.

Blu-ray releases also commonly come with extras, even extra episodes, that give new additional content to each of our favorite shows. Therefore whenever a series is announced to have a blu-ray release, people can celebrate because it will mean a little extra bonus to the length of the series, as well as to its visual quality. Due to this fact, a series can't be called 'over' until its blu-ray release has arrived. Before the blu-ray release, all series are just 'works in progress.'

Of our top 110 series, how many have gotten a blu-ray release? I'll need two symbols to answer this question: # = completely released in blu-ray. % = partially released in blu-ray, or planned to have a blu-ray release. Those without any symbol are the sad remaining series that have received no attention from the blu-ray fairies at all.

Why should it matter what series have blu-ray releases? Because if you want to collect and watch the best anime series, your archived version needs to be of the best possible quality. The best deserve the best. Top anime deserves nothing but blu-ray copies for future viewing and reviewing.

1. Clannad (2007-2009) #
2. Pretty Cure (2004-2011+) %
3. One Piece (1999-2011+) %
4. Code Geass (2006-2009+) #
5. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (2004-2010+) %
6. Seikai no Monshou/Senki/Danshou (1999-2005)
7. Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni (2006-2011+) %
8. K-On! (2009-2011+) #
9. Naruto (2002-2011+) %
10. Dragonball (1986-2011) %
11. Haruhi Suzumiya (2006-2010) #
12. Kanon (2002-2007) #
13. Fairy Tail (2009-2011+) %
14. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007-2009)
15. To Aru Majutsu no Index/Kagaku no Railgun (2008-2011) #
16. Angel Beats (2010) #
17. Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011) #
18. Da Capo (2003-2011)
19. Katanagatari (2010) #
20. The Idolm@ster (2011+) %
21. Vandread (2000-2001)
22. Full Metal Panic! (2002-2005) #
23. Kobato (2009-2010)
24. Working! (2010-2011+) %
25. Toradora! (2008-2009+) %
26. Record of Lodoss War (1990-1998)
27. The World God Only Knows (2010-2011) %
28. Bakuman (2010-2011+) %
29. Sora no Woto (2010) #
30. Hayate no Gotoku (2007-2011+) %
31. Evangelion (1995-2009+) %
32. Basilisk (2005) #
33. Galaxy Angel (2001-2006)
34. Saki (2009+) %
35. Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
36. Major (2004-2010)
37. Sailor Moon (1992-1997)
38. Air (2005) #
39. Prince of Tennis (2001-2011+)
40. Hanasaku Iroha (2011+) %
41. Usagi Drop (2011+) %
42. Inuyasha (2000-2010)
43. Ranma 1/2 (1989-1996)
44. Angelic Layer (2001) #
45. Ore no Immouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (2010-2011) #
46. Ef (2007-2008) #
47. Rurouni Kenshin (1996-2001+) %
48. 12 Kingdoms (2002-2003) #
49. Uuchuu no Stellvia (2003) #
50. Utawarerumono (2006-2009) #
51. Summer Wars (2009) #
52. Mononoke Hime (1997)
53. Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu (2010-2011+) %
54. Cowboy Bebop (1998-2001) %
55. Battle Athletes (1997-1998)
56. Samurai Champloo (2004-2005) #
57. Amagami SS (2010-2011+) #
58. Macross (1982-2011) %
59. Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (2011) %
60. Zero no Tsukaima (2006-2008+) %
61. Berserk (1997-1998+)
62. Claymore (2007) #
63. Valkyria Chronicles (2009-2011) #
64. Negima! Magister Magi Negi (2004-2011)
65. Read or Die (2001-2004) #
66. Sora no Otoshimono (2009-2011) %
67. Bleach (2004-2011+) %
68. Card Captor Sakura (1998-2000) #
69. Shakugan no Shana (2005-2011+) %
70. Nichijou (2011+) %
71. Strike Witches (2007-2010+) #
72. Hunter x Hunter (1999-2011+)
73. Gundam (1979-2011+) %
74. Martian Successor Nadesico (1996-1998) #
75. Break Blade (2010-2011) #
76. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) #
77. Kimi ni Todoke (2009-2011) %
78. Spice and Wolf (2008-2009) #
79. Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka (2008-2009)
80. Bastard! (1992)
81. Mahoromatic (2001-2009) #
82. Alien Nine (2001-2002)
83. Fatal Fury (1992-1994)
84. Bakemonogatari (2009-2010+) #
85. Iria: Zeiram the Animation (1994)
86. Guyver (1986-2006) %
87. Lucky Star (2007-2008) #
88. Azumanga Daioh (2002)
89. To Heart (1999-2010+)
90. Spirited Away (2001) #
91. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
92. Tamayura (2010-2011+) %
93. Scrapped Princess (2003)
94. Steins;Gate (2011+) %
95. Gunbuster (1988-2006) #
96. Shamanic Princess (1996-1998)
97. Akira (1988) #
98. Moshidora (2011) #
99. Soul Eater (2008-2009) #
100. Fate/Stay/Zero (2006-2011+) %
101. Ninja Scroll (1993-2003+)
102. Howl's Moving Castle (2004) #
103. High School of the Dead (2010-2011) #
104. Sora no Manimani (2009) #
105. Kanokon (2008-2009) %
106. Hikaru no Go (2001-2004)
107. Gosick (2011) %
108. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)#
109. Ghost in the Shell (1995-2006) #
110. Flame of Recca (1997-1998)

44 of the top 110 are completely released in blu-ray.
35 of the top 110 are partially/planned to be released in blu-ray.

That leaves 31 unreleased in blu-ray in any way, shape, or form. Most of these are old series that were drawn poorly to begin with, so nobody sees any point in a blu-ray release. They're also too old to generate much commercial notice, meaning a blu-ray release would doubtless lose money for a company instead of earn money. But some really should be released in blu-ray -- old Miyazaki films, for one. Or recent good series like Kobato and Tengen Toppa Gurrenn Lagann. Hopefully someday people revisit their decisions on these old series and give us a top archival copy in the future. It took a long time, but even Star Wars got a blu-ray release eventually.

But let's assume the 31 unreleased series are never released in blu-ray. That still means that 35 of the series already in our top 110 are going to become Better in the near future. For free. Just by changing the medium of their release, they'll get a little bit more fun and aesthetically pleasing than ever before. That's around 1/3 of the total good anime out there slated for improvement. This is just one more reason that the future of anime is bright.

2011, Best Year in Anime History?:

2011-10-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

A great thing about large statistical samples, like a 'top 110 anime' list, is that you can analyze the data to find trends.

One thing that should immediately strike people is just how many of these top 110 series occurred during 2011. Even though any series ever made is allowed to compete in this contest, it is so slanted towards currently airing shows that the rest are barely worth mentioning.

In the top 10, 6 shows aired in 2011.

In the top 20, 11 shows aired in 2011.

In the top 30, 15 shows aired in 2011.

In the top 40, 17 shows aired in 2011.

Out of all 110, 39* have aired in 2011.

* Rurouni Kenshin is airing in December of 2011, so it hasn't technically come out yet, but for comparative purposes it should be counted towards 2011's points total regardless.

That's over 1/3 of the best anime ever airing in this year alone. Now, many of these are long series, and I'm not saying they aired entirely during 2011 and at no other time, but the fact is the present has an advantage over the past -- good series stay with us while bad ones quickly die away, leaving an ever larger field of good series still in the mix. It's like watching evolution in action.

Previously I announced 2010 was the best year in anime. How does it fare against 2011?

In the top 10, 6 shows aired in 2010.

In the top 20, 12 shows aired in 2010.

In the top 30, 17 shows aired in 2010.

In the top 40, 19 shows aired in 2010.

Out of all 110, 36 shows aired in 2010.

So depending on what number you look at, either 2011 or 2010 could be the best year in anime ever. No other date comes close. Except, of course, 2012! If you look at the + signs attached to currently airing series, most of the new content from those franchises will be coming out in 2012. There's slated to be a new Berserk movie, a new Nanoha movie, a new Strike Witches movie, and a new Evangelion movie, just for starters. 2012, through + signs of known good series, is already shaping up to be a fantastic year for anime.

Even so, I think 2011 takes the cake, for providing so many series that debuted during this year -- Steins;Gate, Gosick, Moshidora, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, The Idolm@ster, Hanasaku Iroha, Usagi Drop, Ano Hana, and Nichijou. 2011 is not living off of 'borrowed light' in the least. 9 series, 2 in the top 20, have been created ex nihilo. (Though admittedly, 2010 managed to debut 2 series in the top 20 as well, Katanagatari and Angel Beats.)

2011 has had its ups and downs as a year in world history, but as a year in anime, it's the best year ever, by a tiny margin over the 2nd best year ever, 2010, the year before.

The trend should be obvious. Anime's future is much brighter than its past. Anime was already the best art in the best art form possible. But now it's becoming so far and away better than everything else -- music, books, paintings, sports, live action movies, plays, operas, ballets, video games -- it's just becoming embarrassing. The greatest thing that could ever happen to an alternate entertainment product is to be adapted into an anime. A good video game? In that case, adapt it into an anime. A good book? Turn it into an anime. A good live action movie? Make an anime of it for 1/10th the price and 10 times the quality. A sporting event? Instead make an anime of that same sport and it'll be even better. A painting? An anime is many paintings. A song? An anime is many songs. Ballets? Anime has great dance sequences in its openings and endings already. Operas? Anime characters can sing beautifully, and often do so, since they have the best voice actors on Earth.

Anime is now the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use it.

Top 100 Anime: Now Featuring 101-110!

2011-10-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

In the brief time since the last post, let's see what else we've learned about the fall anime lineup:

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukinai might actually be good. :). My first impression was based off of Episode 0. Now that I've seen episode 1, I'm more hopeful. You feel bad for the characters, who all lack friends due to factors outside of their own control, and the situation is inherently hilarious, which is always a plus. But it's still too soon to tell if this series is actually watchable.

Shakugan no Shana has returned, with a crazy plot twist from where we last saw the series in season 2. The plot twist is too rapid and unexplained to really make sense of what is going on, but it's at least exciting and certainly novel of the series to put Yuuji and Shana on opposing sides fighting each other. I expected this season of Shana to be good and I have no complaints so far.

Maken-ki is a shameless, terrible series beyond redemption.

One plus from this fall anime season, however, is that it's finally gotten my 'anime watched' list up to 330. I decided to make my cut-off point before a series is worthy of mention to be in the 'top third' of what I've watched. A series counts as watched if I saw at least three episodes of it (or all of it, if that happens to be shorter.) This means that if I see a series I instantly hate and abandon it immediately, it never even gets on to my list. Staying in the top third therefore means that you're in the top third of at least watchable anime. Another way of looking at it is saying this anime, by earning a ranking, is definitely worth watching, as opposed to 'watchable' like the competitors it beat.

The point, however, is that being in the top third of 330 shows means my rankings can now finally expand to the top 110, as opposed to just the top 100. Any excuse to tinker with the rankings is always welcome, so first I'll post the new, distinguished Top 100 List, taking into account the new fall season:

1. Clannad (2007-2009)
2. Pretty Cure (2004-2011+)
3. One Piece (1999-2011+)
4. Code Geass (2006-2009+)
5. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (2004-2010+)
6. Seikai no Monshou/Senki/Danshou (1999-2005)
7. Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni (2006-2011+)
8. K-On! (2009-2011+)
9. Naruto (2002-2011+)
10. Dragonball (1986-2011)
11. Haruhi Suzumiya (2006-2010)
12. Kanon (2002-2007)
13. Fairy Tail (2009-2011+)
14. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007-2009)
15. To Aru Majutsu no Index/Kagaku no Railgun (2008-2011)
16. Angel Beats (2010)
17. Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011)
18. Da Capo (2003-2011)
19. Katanagatari (2010)
20. The Idolm@ster (2011+)
21. Vandread (2000-2001)
22. Full Metal Panic! (2002-2005)
23. Kobato (2009-2010)
24. Working! (2010-2011+)
25. Toradora! (2008-2009+)
26. Record of Lodoss War (1990-1998)
27. The World God Only Knows (2010-2011)
28. Bakuman (2010-2011+)
29. Sora no Woto (2010)
30. Hayate no Gotoku (2007-2011+)
31. Evangelion (1995-2009+)
32. Basilisk (2005)
33. Galaxy Angel (2001-2006)
34. Saki (2009+)
35. Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
36. Major (2004-2010)
37. Sailor Moon (1992-1997)
38. Air (2005)
39. Prince of Tennis (2001-2011+)
40. Hanasaku Iroha (2011+)
41. Usagi Drop (2011+)
42. Inuyasha (2000-2010)
43. Ranma 1/2 (1989-1996)
44. Angelic Layer (2001)
45. Ore no Immouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (2010-2011)
46. Ef (2007-2008)
47. Rurouni Kenshin (1996-2001+)
48. 12 Kingdoms (2002-2003)
49. Uuchuu no Stellvia (2003)
50. Utawarerumono (2006-2009)
51. Summer Wars (2009)
52. Mononoke Hime (1997)
53. Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu (2010-2011+)
54. Cowboy Bebop (1998-2001)
55. Battle Athletes (1997-1998)
56. Samurai Champloo (2004-2005)
57. Amagami SS (2010-2011+)
58. Macross (1982-2011)
59. Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (2011)
60. Zero no Tsukaima (2006-2008+)
61. Berserk (1997-1998+)
62. Claymore (2007)
63. Valkyria Chronicles (2009-2011)
64. Negima! Magister Magi Negi (2004-2011)
65. Read or Die (2001-2004)
66. Sora no Otoshimono (2009-2011)
67. Bleach (2004-2011+)
68. Card Captor Sakura (1998-2000)
69. Shakugan no Shana (2005-2011+)
70. Nichijou (2011+)
71. Strike Witches (2007-2010+)
72. Hunter x Hunter (1999-2011+)
73. Gundam (1979-2011+)
74. Martian Successor Nadesico (1996-1998)
75. Break Blade (2010-2011)
76. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
77. Kimi ni Todoke (2009-2011)
78. Spice and Wolf (2008-2009)
79. Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka (2008-2009)
80. Bastard! (1992)
81. Mahoromatic (2001-2009)
82. Alien Nine (2001-2002)
83. Fatal Fury (1992-1994)
84. Bakemonogatari (2009-2010+)
85. Iria: Zeiram the Animation (1994)
86. Guyver (1986-2006)
87. Lucky Star (2007-2008)
88. Azumanga Daioh (2002)
89. To Heart (1999-2010+)
90. Spirited Away (2001)
91. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
92. Tamayura (2010-2011+)
93. Scrapped Princess (2003)
94. Steins;Gate (2011+)
95. Gunbuster (1988-2006)
96. Shamanic Princess (1996-1998)
97. Akira (1988)
98. Moshidora (2011)
99. Soul Eater (2008-2009)
100. Fate/Stay/Zero (2006-2011+)

Next comes the newcomers, the 101-110 rankings. For people who aren't interested in anything past the top 100 anime, just avert your eyes. For people who are still interested in good stories all the way to the top 150, or 200, etc, these additional series rankings will still come in handy:

101. Ninja Scroll (1993-2003+)
102. Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
103. High School of the Dead (2010-2011)
104. Sora no Manimani (2009)
105. Kanokon (2008-2009)
106. Hikaru no Go (2001-2004)
107. Gosick (2011)
108. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)
109. Ghost in the Shell (1995-2006)
110. Flame of Recca (1997-1998)

A lot of series just missed the cut, which is sad for them. Better luck next time, once I've watched 360 separate anime franchises. But lets look at the ones that did make the cut a little more closely.

In my top 100 rankings, I moved The Idolm@ster dramatically up to #20. I'm sure the upcoming episodes will justify my faith in the series' quality. Likewise, the Hunter x Hunter remake propelled Hunter x Hunter to a new high of #72. If it continues to impress me, maybe it'll keep going up? For now I think that's about right. I decided it was methodologically sounder to combine all the series in the Macross and Gundam franchises into one series, just like I've done with Pretty Cure, which contains many series that, though they don't have anything directly to do with each other, are all under the umbrella of a single franchise. Using this new franchise grouping, Macross, which includes tons of ovas, movies, and series, moved up to 58. Likewise, the many separate series of Gundam, none of which were good enough to qualify individually, together as a franchise can reach the top 100 as #73. Not only do I think this is fairer to Macross and Gundam, I think it would be strange for one of the most popular and highest selling anime brands of all time, Gundam, to not even appear anywhere in my rankings. This is a good solution to that 'face value unbelievability' issue.

For anyone who doesn't know, both Macross and Gundam are giant mecha space war franchises. Any further description is supercilious.

The recently ended Steins;Gate tv series gets its first appearance in the Top 100 rankings because of its interesting plot, unique characters and appealingly loving relationships. A sci fi thriller about time travel always has problems concerning the meaninglessness of everything you see happen because it can just be undone later, and the overwhelming power of the time traveler which makes all obstacles look like jokes. Despite these problems, Steins;Gate still managed to deliver a good story by concentrating less on the action and more on the people involved.

Tamayura and Fate/Stay are in the top 100 because I promised they would be now that they've been expanded upon in this new 2011 fall season. :). I'm looking forward to them fulfilling their potential in the months to come and proving my rankings right.

Ninja Scroll, Kanokon, High School of the Dead, Hikaru no Go, Sora no Manimani and Gosick are all series I've had in my rankings before, but were pushed out by all the new good series that kept jumping ahead of them. It's no wonder that they're now hanging out in the 101-110 category. The interesting new inclusions are:

The Miyazaki movie Howl's Moving Castle, which finally gets to join Kiki's Delviery Service, Mononoke Hime, Nausicaa and Spirited Away in the rankings, doing the general thing all Miyazaki movies do: A feel good adventure about using strong moral character to overcome supernatural events.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, another story about time travel, where a girl has a scary power where every bad karmic event she avoids via time travel ends up harming someone else instead. With enough time traveling she finally secures a route that saves 'everyone,' but even then it requires sacrifices. Though initially appealing, the characters aren't likable enough to have enduring value like Summer Wars or Miyazaki films have.

Ghost in the Shell is another movie, this time about a dystopic sci-fi future where people use high tech gadgets not to improve the world and their quality of life, but apparently to do crime and, alternatively, catch criminals. I dislike pessimistic shows like this, and the tv anime sequels did nothing to change my view of the matter. However, I will admit that Ghost in the Shell is famous for a reason -- a lot of innovative new ideas that befits a sci fi series, great art and great music. I guess my complaint with this series is the same as Cowboy Bebop -- if even our futures, even after we invent artificial intelligence and space travel, are unhappy, then what's the point of continuing to live as a species? We should just all kill ourselves now and be done with it. Therefore I don't like stories that spread messages like these. . . >.< But I'll still rank them both as deserving anime franchises because I can't deny quality even when I don't like the theme.

Last and Least is Flame of Recca. Flame of Recca is an interesting inclusion that's neither famous, nor new, nor anything else. Here's what makes it 110 on the dot, though: Extremely interesting fights, with clever weapons and tactics throughout the series. Great music. A tournament system which meant it was possible to win some/lose some, which always makes a story more interesting overall because the heroes aren't just totally overwhelmingly powerful. And a cool plot that, sadly, the anime mangled by trying to just 'finish things up' instead of following the manga to its proper conclusion. Like Claymore, this series could use a remake where the true story was told in full, but even in its mangled form it's worth at least a little. The hero and the anti-hero are brothers and share many similarities despite fighting on opposing sides, which makes them both badasses. I like situations like that, they remind me of the heroes of Troy vs. Greece in the Iliad, where you end up cheering for both sides equally.

By expanding my rankings to 110 and combining the Macross and Gundam franchises I've managed to gather a lot of fish into my net. Famous movies and series like Ghost in the Shell, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Gundam and Howl's Moving Castle are now all properly represented. This will embellish my rankings by letting people know I haven't forgotten about these famous anime franchises entirely, but am properly keeping track of everything good that's ever been released. As for why Death Note and Full Metal Alchemist still don't make the cut? Honestly, I doubt they ever will. They both have such annoying, fundamental flaws, that I simply don't agree with their popularity whatsoever. I'd much rather trumpet some other series that's been neglected and abused, but is actually much better than either of those well-known show-offs, like Kanokon or Flame of Recca.

I also thought it would be neat to give a sort of Oscars like reward to the series listed. I wanted to give a 'best of genre' award and 'best oav' award for shorter shows and 'best movie' for movies. This gives people an alternate way of ranking series that may not be the best, but are at least the best at what they are doing:

Best Movie: Kiki's Delivery Service.

Best OAV: Battle Athletes.

Best Shonen Action Series: One Piece.

Best Magical Girl Series: Pretty Cure.

Best Visual Novel-type (Dramatic Romance?) Genre: Clannad.

Best Sports Genre: Saki.

Best Comedy Genre: Working!

Best Slice-of-Life Genre: K-On.

Best Mecha Action Genre: Code Geass.

Best Real Life-ish Genre: Bakuman.

Best Sci Fi Genre: Seikai no Monshou/Senki/Danshou

Best Romance Genre: Toradora!

Best Fantasy Genre: Record of Lodoss War

Best Mystery Genre: Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni

That concludes the anime Oscars. Next up? We'll find out if 2011 is the best year in anime ever.

Fall 2011 Anime Season Begins:

2011-10-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

The Saimoe contest has finished round two, leaving only 32 girls left to fight over the crown of 'most attractive anime character from the 2nd half of 2010 up to the first half of 2011.'

My prediction that Madoka Magica would win is coming true. Madoka Magica leads the contest with 4 characters from the same series. Everyone else has less now, starting from 3 characters on down to just 1.

The series with 3 characters left standing are Index, Milky Holmes, Strike Witches and The World God Only Knows. I have no real complaints with these results because these series really did feature some gorgeous girls.

As for girls I was hoping to see win, most have already lost, but Astarotte, Last Order and Aria are still alive. That's not a bad eye for quality, for three of my picks to still be in the top 32.

Expect Madoka Magica to continue sweeping the Saimoe field in the weeks ahead. They're simply invincible fan favorites.

Meanwhile, the fall anime season has begun. Only about half the new series for this fall have debuted yet, but I'm tired of waiting so I'll cover what I've seen so far now and what's still coming later:

First off, the immortal series:

Suite Precure: Fantastic, like usual. The mystery behind Cure Muse is finally being unveiled.

One Piece: It's never been better in One Piece land. Without any episodes of filler, One Piece has boldly followed the manga past a 2 year time skip and is revealing everyone's new looks, with a great new opening and a great new story arc.

Naruto: Still stuck in filler. This series hasn't been any good in ages. It will be leaving filler in a couple weeks though, only to dive into another boring 'training arc.' Naruto lost all of its magic after the time skip and the new name Shippudden. My only hope is that we're nearing the end of both the manga and the anime. If only the series had remained about all 12 kids that the story so wonderfully introduced at the Chunnin exams, instead of focusing on Naruto, one of the least interesting characters in the series, maybe this story could have gone somewhere. Instead the 11 other kids have been sidelined while a continuous slew of newly introduced nobodies I've formed no emotional bonds with are concentrated on instead.

Bleach: Still stuck in filler. It should be leaving filler in a couple weeks to start the new Bleach storyline after the new Bleach timeskip. Unfortunately, the new Bleach storyline is dumb -- the series should have ended when Ichigo beat Aizen and was told he would lose 'all of his powers.' It's ridiculous that he can 'get them back' in the very next arc. What a dumb show. It hasn't been good since he went to rescue Rukia from spirit society -- like Naruto, it just lives off of reputation and momentum.

Fairy Tail: Just one arc behind the manga, Fairy Tail continues to deliver, refusing to go into filler and just plunging ahead into a new exciting arc wherein Fairy Tail fights with the strongest of the Dark Guilds. This arc really gives everyone in Fairy Tail a chance to shine and is one of the best in the series. (The best was probably the civil war with Laxus.)

As for other immortal stories like Gintama and Pokemon, I just can't get myself to like or watch them. In addition, there's around 20+ other immortal series, most aimed at kids, that I've never even bothered to watch a single episode of. With names like Cardfight, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Bakugan, you just know they won't be any good.

Continuing Series: Some series are still continuing, having begun this Summer, Spring or even Winter. Of these, only three are worth following:

Nurarihyon: Everything's set for a climactic battle between a bunch of powerful demons for control of Kyoto. This sounds exciting but it's actually quite boring, because you just know Nura's group will win every fight while not suffering a single casualty. That's the kind of story this is. Worth watching out of morbid curiosity just to prove my prediction right.

Morita-San: This has always been such a sweet series. The episodes are only a few minutes long a piece though so not much to say about it.

The Idolm@ster: One of the best anime series of all time. Every episode is amazing in itself, but last episode which had a full-blown concert featuring all the girls at their very best really took the cake. I can't wait to see what happens next for all the girls, and I hope especially to see a more thorough delving into some of the less featured characters as of yet.

Returning Series:

Returning series tend to be reliably good, because they're being returned to due to being popular the first time around. The Fall Season is chock full of returning series this time. Of those I've seen so far, I can give a thumbs up to All of them:

Tamayura Hitotose: This TV series will hopefully tell the story better than its 4 episode OVA predecessor, which was already amazing. I expect this series will put Tamayura into the top 100. The story is simple, a group of girl friends connected by the protagonists' love of photography whose father, a professional photographer, died at an early age. She's now trying to follow in her father's footsteps. But there's just so much feeling inside this simple story that it turns out to be much more than it sounds.

Bakuman: The continuation of Bakuman continues to be stellar. They're thrown right into their new status as professionals, meeting with VIP's, getting real pay, and hiring assistants as they gear up for their serialization debut. The dream to have their manga turned into an anime is still a long way's away, and I'm sure there are going to be lots of roadblocks and pitfalls ahead. This is such a wonderful story, documenting the difficulty of real life without having to add in any additional storytelling gimmicks or nonsense. I feel it's one-of-a-kind in this way.

Working: Working is back, and hilarious as ever. Though the jokes tend to be repeats of situations we've seen before, there always seems to be a new twist to them that make them just as hilarious, or even more hilarious, than when we watched them the first time. Working is the best comedy anime ever, it's such a pleasure to have it back on air again. Despite their foibles, all the characters are likable people that you'd love to be around, which makes every episode a pleasure beyond just the jokes.

Fate/Zero: I've never been a big fan of Fate/Stay/Night. I never felt like it lived up to its hype. But the first episode of this prequel, Fate/Zero, blew me away. By starting at the beginning, I finally have a sense for all the characters in the story and what is going on, as well as how they got to be in the positions they are. Fate/Zero is explaining not only itself, but also Fate/Stay, which is a real case of 'value added' to a product not even on display. I'm extremely excited to see how this series develops. In true highlander fashion, of the initial 7 mages in the competition, only one can prevail in the end. Though if my memory serves from Fate/Stay, no one wins this competition and it ends in a draw between the last two survivors. Nevertheless, how we get from here to there is going to be an exciting ride. It won't even end this fall -- Fate/Zero is slated to continue in the spring season of 2012 as well. Perhaps once Fate/Zero comes to its climactic conclusion, whenever that is, it will have clawed the Fate/Stay/Night series into the top 100 as well.

Hunter x Hunter: This remake was something I was looking forward to, but if it stays as good as this first episode, it will far surpass my fondest hopes. This series isn't just good, it's great. The music is great, the HD widescreen art is great, the voice acting is great, the animation is great, the characters are great and the plot is great. Did I mention the action is great too? If Hunter x Hunter maintains its quality at this level, I'm going to have reconsider its ranking of merely 87th.

Shinryaku!?: Squid Girl returns. It's as artistically pretty and humorous as ever. Overall a feel-good story where nothing really goes wrong. Compared to Working, though, it's no match. Definitely worth watching, but it won't be winning any awards.

New Series:

Compared to the returning series, the new series offer slim pickings. I haven't totally lost hope for this season, but nothing really strikes me as good so far.

Kimi to Boku: These boys don't seem very happy. Are they gay? I can't tell. But in any case I'm not sure what the anime is about -- how depressing life as a boy is? I guess that's a fair enough topic. I'll give it a couple more eps to impress me.

Phi Brain: Puzzles? I hate puzzles.

C Cubed: Yukari Tamura is an amazing voice actress, so of course she's made this new box girl very cute. Box Girl is drawn to be cute too. Aside from the box girl, though, everyone else is annoying, and even the box girl is somewhat annoying. I can't say I have high hopes for this one. I'll give it a couple more eps and see.

Chihayafuru: Excellent art, and a realistic and engaging story. Here's my worry though: Can you really do an anime about Karuta? It'd be like watching an anime about bowling. It's so easy to perfect the game that there soon won't be any difference in skill between any of the players. Plus I'm not overly excited about watching a girl in a love triangle struggling to choose between two boys. I already watched Vampire Knight thank you very much.

Mashiro-Iro: Who doesn't like one boy who somehow charms five different extremely attractive girls to all fall in love with him? This theme has been just a little overdone. If this series wants to be good, it will have to impress me by rising above the normal, Hoshizora quality level. Still, I hold out hope, because the same premise is behind Clannad, the greatest story ever told, Amagami SS, Kanon, Akane-iro, etc. For this genre, it's all about execution. The results can go from wonderful to horrible. I'm cheering for you, Mashiro-Iro.

Busou Shinki: Looks terrible. I had all the fighting dolls I could take with Rozen Maiden.

Boku wa Tamadochi: Looks terrible. At least the art is good. Same harem theme as Mashiro-iro, but already light years behind in execution. I'll give it a few more eps to confirm my suspicions.

Maji de Watashi: Looks terrible. The art is good, and it's the same harem theme, but mixed in is some sort of chaotic comedy aspect(?) No idea what's going on in this series. I'll give it a couple more eps to save itself from the chopping block.

Horizon Nowhere: Looks terrible. It has all the worst traits of anime combined, and on top of it insults Clannad, which is unforgivable. No thanks.

As yet unknown series:

Will Shakugan no Shana be good? Un-go? Guilty Crown? Last Exile? Gundam? Maken-ki? Who knows. I haven't seen them yet. I can review them, and follow up on some of these other new series, in a future post.

The Challenges of 2050:

2011-10-01T01:22:00.000-07:00

The challenges facing us in 2050 will be the worst dilemmas ever faced in the history of civilization.

Rather than having one or two problems to deal with in a century, we will be facing all of these problems at once. It will be a perfect storm. If we can weather this crisis, we can probably live a worry-free future until the universe undergoes heat death, billions of years from now. But if we can't, it's basically the end of the world.

Here's what we're up against:

1. Global Warming.
2. Overpopulation of 3rd worlders.
3. Underpopulation of 1st worlders.
4. Dysgenics (within both 1st world and 3rd world populations, as well as the rising preponderance of 3rd worlders as a percentage total of human beings).
5. Peak water, peak fossil fuels, peak phosphorous, peak topsoil, peak rare metals, peak everything. This obviously is related to (2) overpopulation.
6. Demographic aging, ie, a preponderance of unproductive people vs. productive people. This is related to (3) underpopulation.
7. Automation causing mass unemployment without any safety net in place.
8. Free trade and mass immigration doing the same.
9. The end of fatherhood and the growth of the broken home.
10. Islam
11. Debt
12. The diversity cult
13. Relativism/Nihilism

Any one of these challenges is similar in difficulty to the Cold War or World War II. But instead we will have to overcome all thirteen of them at once. Who has the plan to do so? Who has a workable strategy that will simultaneously tackle all these disparate issues, all of which threaten the long-term prospects of humanity?

1. Starting from the top, it should be obvious to anyone that the Earth has a good climate suited to modern living. Radically changing that climate could have any number of catastrophic, unpredictable results, which we aren't prepared for. Ignoring global warming doesn't make it go away. The effects of global warming are already apparent all around us, and will become ever-more-dramatic with each passing year. Our cities, coastlines, farms, and everything else are built to work within a certain temperature range. If that temperature range changes, everything will have to change with it, which would mean the population displacement and economic infrastructure destruction of the whole world. We must deal with global warming now, before it becomes too severe and too late. There already exist viable alternatives to global warming inducing CO2 emissions -- wind, solar, nuclear, carbon-capture coal, etc. Just because they cost twice or three times as much as current energy prices doesn't mean we can't switch to them now. Global warming will cost far more than that when it arrives. Plus, as the technology matures and economies of scale kick in, those inflated prices will quickly decrease to the same levels or even lower than the electricity bills we see today.

2. Overpopulation is an obvious problem. We can define overpopulation quite simply: wherever people do not have a high standard of living, they are overpopulated. The solution to poverty is to reduce the population until the land can support everyone who lives on it. That has always been the solution across all of world history. The most overpopulated places in the world, therefore, are not Singapore or the Netherlands -- they are places like Africa, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The solution is to link foreign aid/charity/trade to their agreement to reduce births. Only once they have a below replacement birth rate should we have any trade dealings or allow any immigration from these corners of the globe. You don't have the right to conquer the world via irresponsible breeding. Whether they reduce this birth rate through female education, free birth control pills, or sterilizing billions of people isn't my problem. I just want the mission accomplished.

3. Underpopulation is a less obvious problem, but it's similar to what happened when the Amerindians owned America and the Aborigines owned Australia. If people are not making full use of their land, this is a tragedy that needs correcting. There's also the problem that once underpopulation begins, it turns into a vicious cycle that leads to yet more underpopulation, with no conceivable end in sight. Underpopulation will continue to shrink the population until nobody is there to claim the land at all. Underpopulation isn't a problem in a vacuum, either, because the people specifically falling in population are the richest, smartest, most productive people on Earth. An underpopulation of these vital groups translates into the impoverishment of the entire globe. We need these people to exist so that they can make money, science, and art for the rest of us. First, we need to find out why people aren't having children. Is it lack of financial security? The inability to find a good mate? Hatred of children in general? Once we identify the problem, we need to provide people with the solutions, so that they don't have any more objections. Once all their difficulties are addressed, we can see what our new and improved birth rates are. If they're still too low, we can move on to mandates and the like. But come what may, we need America, Europe, China, South Korea, and Japan to increase their high IQ birth rates so that the future has some hope left in it.

4. Dysgenics. Another disturbing trend is that not only between populations (Dumb Africans vs. smart Japanese) are the dumb people having vastly more kids, but even within populations the same trend is occurring. Dumb Japanese have more children than smart Japanese. This is true across the whole world. Each generation humanity is becoming dumber, on average, than the previous generation that used to live on Earth. We are devolving as a species. Intelligence is vital to the welfare of the individual and the community. Intelligence is correlated to education levels, income, marital stability, scientific and artistic accomplishment, lower crime rates, longer lifespans, and everything else good on Earth. It is impossible for a dumb country to be happy. Intelligence is what separates us from the animal kingdom and what makes humanity special. We must preserve and increase our intelligence again at any price. There is nothing more important than who is having our children and how many. But as noted before, the worst people are having the most children under the status quo. As a result, average intelligence will continuously decrease, as will average happiness and average standard of living, which inevitably must follow the quality of people's brains. We will start to address dysgenics by increasing 1st world birth rates and decreasing 3rd world birth rates, but our job still won't be done until the top 10% of each country in IQ is also having 5 kids a piece while the bottom 10% is having 0. We must reward high IQ parents and punish low IQ parents until the numbers add up and the human genome goes back to evolving again. And by evolve, I mean, 'genetically improving towards a stated goal -- in this case higher intelligence,' so don't give me crap about how everything is always evolving. Cockroaches are always evolving, but they never seem to get any smarter, so what is their evolution worth?

Unless people claim that giraffes, with the proper nurturing, could outperform humans at IQ tests, IQ is genetic. If intelligence is a genetic trait, then perforce selective breeding of intelligent parents will produce higher intelligence kids than the average. Any argument contrary to this is just contrary to basic logic and science.

5. Peak Resources. The world's population is too high. If everyone lived at the same standard of living as citizens of the USA, we would have outstripped our resource base by 3 times what we have. Since I don't believe people in the USA have too high a standard of living, and in fact wish for everyone to have a much higher standard of living in the future, it's obvious that we must affect the other side of this equation -- we must lower world population until our resources can provide for a happy, worry-free life of abundance and prosperity. It's obvious who our first targets should be, the teeming masses in Africa, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc who have been recklessly driving up their populations despite having no access to any additional resources that might provide for them. Birth rates must be reduced.

There is no amount of new resource discoveries or efficiency innovations that can handle our skyrocketing world population. The world's population growth is not slowing down. In just a couple decades we went from 6 billion people to 7 billion people. In the next couple decades we'll be up to 9 billion people. The madness has to stop. No amount of horizontal drilling can serve the needs of an exponentially growing squirming mass of African babies. To encourage these countries to switch to below-replacement birth rates, we must cease trading with them, cease providing foreign aid, and cease any sort of diplomatic engagement, World Cup invitations, Olympic invitations, etc, until they control their birth rates. Only then will they be allowed to re-enter the world community and stop being pariahs. If they are too stubborn to reduce their birth rates and end up dying off in mass famines, that's their problem not mine. At least then the peak resources crisis will be averted.

6. The aging crisis. We can start solving the aging crisis by increasing births in the 1st world. But it's too late to fully avoid this disaster, because we have been ensuring it for the last century, one personal choice at a time. The only solution is to stop supporting our elderly with public funds. If they want to live till 110 on their own savings, more power to them. But the nation's welfare resides in its children, not its undead, and that is where public funds need to be devoted. Since children can still reproduce, have brighter minds, more creative thinking and learning capacities, are healthier, stronger, better warriors, better looking, earn higher incomes, etc, than undead elderly, we must reverse this perverse world view that subsidizes the elderly at the expense of the young. We are basically subsidizing the inferior in preference to the superior. Subsidies always get you more of whatever you subsidize. So, naturally, due to policies like social security and medicare, we have generated an undead zombie apocalypse of bent-over, hunchbacked, pock-marked, toothless, rotting elderly who seek to eat us alive so that they can stay animated corpses a bit longer. Once we drop the public funding, we can expect diseases to quickly kill off our super-sized elderly demographic and return us to a saner population pyramid.

7. The robot apocalypse. If only the robot apocalypse were the rise of AI that defeated us in war. In that case we could just bless the robots and hand the baton of the future over to them. This robot apocalypse is a much worse scenario, however -- sub-sentient machines working in concert with a few high IQ overseers are more efficient producers than middle class workers. However, if we imagine a society with a few super elites overseeing a robotic world, vs. a lot of humans living out their daily lives in peace and plenty, it should be obvious that what is more 'efficient' isn't also 'best.' We are already seeing the consequences of automation in the world around us -- wages haven't risen since 1970 and unemployment is at its highest levels in a century. But these trends will grow exponentially by 2050. Computers continue to gain better battery life, better AI, and higher processing power/memory storage capabilities. Each of these innovations makes them more and more likely to outcompete human workers. It will start with self-driven cars, tractors, etc. Factories will be fully automated producing all our manufactured goods. And eventually robots will be doing all the cooking and cleaning and shelf-stocking and waitressing. They will even take over the jobs of lawyers, doctors, and accountants, as we invent the perfect software program that can automatically do those jobs instantly and for free, instead of requiring a 10 year degree for humans. Each time robots improve, people will lose their jobs. Losing your job has a cascade of bad effects -- it lowers your potential at finding a mate, which in turn causes people to live as singles instead of married couples. Married people are statistically happier and healthier across the board. Furthermore, single people can't reproduce or raise children as well as married people can, which exacerbates other problems in our 13 challenges list. It also causes financial stress, and would eventually lead to homelessness, starvation, crime, drug abuse, alcoholism, and suicide. If the people who lose their jobs already had children, the children will also suffer the consequences of their parents' misfortune.

We must separate this chain of cause and effect or watch 99% of humanity boil away in suffering and death. When automation is fully in place, only 1% of mankind will be employable. These will be the creative, managerial, software engineer, rocket scientist types that no one else could dream of being no matter how hard they tried. Before that happens, we need to give jobless people A) a sense of self respect and community respect, so that they can continue to find mates, and B) enough money to get by. This won't be difficult. As I said above, machine labor is fixing to be incredibly powerful and efficient. There will be enough wealth available for everyone, so long as we distribute it. But it will require the cessation of the demonization of our unemployed as we ignorantly blame people who are not to blame for their inability to compete with machines which surpass all human abilities for tireless work, strength, error-free repetition, durability, etc.

8. Free trade and mass immigration are not in themselves problems. But if you don't address their consequences they become massive problems. The consequences of mass immigration from 3rd world countries are overpopulation, Islam, dysgenics, global warming, mass unemployment, insurmountable public debt and peak resources. Mass immigration exacerbates every single one of these problems. Free trade exacerbates many of them. A world without borders, either for trade or travel, is an ideal goal. But before that can happen we must fix everything that's wrong with the world. Immigrants must be as capable as the natives in the land they are immigrating to. We cannot use mass immigration as charity -- it will mean our extinction.

9. Broken homes. This problem affects everyone. Today's women are less happy compared to previous generations, according to their own surveys. They don't actually enjoy being the breadwinners and the sole nurturers of their families. Children also suffer from broken homes. They are poorer, have fewer role models, and are more likely to get into trouble -- the statistics are all ironclad -- children without fathers have higher teenage pregnancy rates, higher crime rates, higher drug abuse rates, higher divorce rates, higher everything rates than children with fathers. But the primary group who suffers from broken homes is unattached men. Men without wives or children live meaningless lives. They are so unhappy they die 20 years earlier on average than married men. They do not work hard, because there is no one to work hard for. They don't act responsibly, because there's no one they have to be responsible for. They are more violent, more prone to commit crimes, riot, or start wars, because testosterone levels literally go down when men are around women and children. Men are at their best when they have a wife on one arm and a kid to dandle on their knee. Not only are they happier, but they're also healthier, more productive, nicer, and more virtuous people than when they are alone.

It appears that people's natural instincts are self-destructive. Women always feel the itch to 'do better' than what they currently have. This propels them into recklessly dumping the boyfriends or husbands they have in the hopes that the next one will be better. However, as women age and develop bad reputations as traitors and sluts, they in fact can only find worse prospects each new relationship. No one's interested in an old woman who already has children and a record of adultery or divorce to the previous hapless male who tried his luck with her.

Likewise, men's natural instincts propel them to never settle down but instead try and have sex with as many different girls as possible while refusing to become stable, productive members of society. Men, if left to their own devices, will waste away their lives playing games or drinking while hoping for the occasional fling with a pretty girl to spice things up. The combination of women who are always greedy for 'more' and men who are always willing to settle for 'less' is a dystopia for all parties.

The only answer to this dystopia is force. We must counteract our natural base instincts with forceful community standards that do not let people choose to drink their preferred poison. Just like we know better than to allow children to do whatever they feel like, we must know better than to allow childish adults to do whatever they feel like. For their own good, as well as the good of the next generation, and the good of mankind, we must correct their mistaken instincts and lead them back to the path of happiness and harmony: Marriage should be encouraged, via incentives as well as cultural respect/praise, and unmarried couples should be discouraged, via disincentives and cultural opprobrium. If this doesn't work (however, it did work in the 1800's so I see no reason why it wouldn't work again today), then we must switch to mandatory marriage, arranged marriage, whatever it takes to get the sexes back together again in a civilized bond, instead of a cave-age primitive free for all.

10. Islam. Islam is the worst religion on Earth, and also the fastest-growing. Any country that becomes Islamic ceases to be free, happy, prosperous, scientific, or artistic. It essentially joins the dark side. Islam has been growing like a cancer all across the world, and has spread its tentacles into Russia, Europe, Africa, Australia, India, and even North America. The religion will destroy any region it gains control of, just like it's destroyed Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan, Kosovo, Albania, Sudan, Somalia, etc. Look at any problem spot on Earth and they're probably a bunch of muslims.

I could condemn the theoretical tenets of Islam, their heaven and hell, their calls for world conquest, their pedophile murdering rapist prophet, their banning of innovation and the death penalty for apostasy, but what's the point? We don't have to worry about their theoretical flaws. We can see their empirical, real life flaws without knowing any of that. It's self-evident that all muslim countries suck. Therefore, we know Islam sucks. Therefore, Islam must be destroyed.

The solution is the same as always -- cut off all trade with, immigration from, or diplomatic contact, World Cup invitations, Olympic invitations, etc with Islamic countries until they renounce Islam. If this means all those desert dwellers die of famine, that's their problem, not mine. They could've renounced Islam and lived, but the only good Muslim who refuses to abandon their evil creed is a dead Muslim. Muslims in countries that are majority non-muslim must simply renounce their religion or be deported to a muslim majority country, wherever they ethnically hale from, and then pariahed just like everyone else in their country from all international recognition.

11. Debt. The debt burdens of the world are getting ridiculously out of hand. Almost every country has a debt above 100% of its GDP, or will soon reach this limit. The interest on the debt is above what taxpayers can afford to pay. Once the elderly cash in their pensions and social security checks and receive free health care, the debt will grow to astronomical proportions. Even without this elderly deluge, debt is causing a long-term peonage to a few greedy bankers and capitalists of the entire population of the world. It seems as though people spend their whole lives paying interest on various debts -- car debt, college debt, mortgage debt, credit card debt. Debt, debt, debt. When do people escape their debt peony? Age 50? Why should everyone live as slaves to a few people whose only virtue is that they had capital when you didn't? There must be a universal default on all outstanding debts. Once this is accomplished, we need to put into place other solutions that mean we won't just instantly go back into debt again. We should ban interest-paying debt entirely as usury. The solution to businesses who want seed money is to sell stocks, not go into debt. The solution to individuals who want a house now, not later, is to take out a loan on the basis of their citizen's dividend. IE, a principle only debt that will be paid off every year by the diversion of your annual citizen's dividend income to your present needs. You will not be in debt to a greedy capitalist banker, you will be in 'debt' to the government, which will advance you the money immediately, and simply not send you any citizen's dividend until your advance has been paid off.

In this manner, no one will be working for anyone else's benefit, or earning money for free just by smoking a cigar.

There will also be no such thing as being 'bankrupt' or owning 'negative' amounts of money. Since the government is giving you a citizen's dividend for free, its retaining of these funds doesn't materially hurt you -- it just ceases to materially help you. You will always own whatever you've accumulated so far and you'll always be able to start over with a clean slate.

Loans from the government with future citizen's dividends used as the repayment method would also work in case people got sick and needed health care but couldn't afford it. We could eliminate the health insurance middlemen. Or if you got in a car crash and needed your car fixed or replaced, you could get a loan from the government and repay it over time with your citizen's dividend, without having to pay for expensive auto insurance. Or if you have a tooth ache, you don't need dental insurance, etc. We can get rid of all the parasites who live off of financial transactions instead of real productive labor.

12. The diversity cult is madness. People are happiest in homogeneous families, homogeneous communities, and homogeneous countries. The best countries on Earth by all statistics are homogeneous countries like Denmark, Norway, and Japan. Everyone acknowledges these facts, but somehow worships diversity and says it 'enriches' us anyway. Diversity of any type -- racial, religious, ideological, ethnic, whatever, hurts us and makes everyone unhappy. The study that proved this came out years ago, written by Robert Putnam, called Bowling Alone.

Diversity not only tears families and countries apart (leading to higher divorce and domestic abuse rates and more civil wars), it is underpinned by a web of lies. The totalitarian enforcement method to keep these lies in place is as bad as 1984/Soviet Russia. Because of diversity, we must pretend that all the races are equal, even when it's self-evident they are not. They are not equally physically athletic, they are not equally physically attractive, they are not equally moral, equally intelligent, equally productive, or equal at anything else. Religions are not all equal, some teach bad behavior while others encourage good behavior. Ethnicities aren't all equal, Nordic whites are smarter than Mediterranean whites, Chinese are smarter than Vietnamese, and so on. Straights live longer than gays and molest fewer children. These are all just facts. But all these facts are unspeakable because they undermine the cult of diversity, which relies on everyone being 'equal' in every way no matter how diverse a country becomes. The diversity cult replaces progress, a nation built around Superior Vs. Inferior, with stagnation, a nation built around everyone being Equal no matter how they behave or what the statistics show. It also replaces harmony, everyone loving everyone else, with discord, everyone hating everyone else with a totalitarian government the only lid on their mutual feuds (Just look at that paragon of diversity, Yugoslavia.)

Countries are becoming ever-more diverse as the century continues. In each and every case, this diversity has made them worse off. Diversity is innately bad, and it also is bad because, inevitably, it means lowering standards for our less able, instead of importing more-abled people to raise our native standards. To stop the destructive influence of diversity, we must first overthrow the lie of the diversity cult. Science must trump wishful thinking. Everything begins there.

13. Perhaps the greatest threat in 2050 is philosophical, however. Religion had one important positive: The belief in absolute good and evil, right and wrong. When we lost our religions because they scientifically no longer made sense, we randomly also threw out this idea of the absolute. But long before we had religion, greek philosophers believed in Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, and discussed thoroughly the moral virtues and the necessity to lead a good life.

We must return to these greek philosophies, these atheist absolutes. People cannot lead lives without purpose, without morality, without meaning. They must feel that what they are doing is right, true, and good, and not just 'pleasant,' like a drug rush. This makes people happier, it empowers them, and it inspires them towards greater participation in our most angelic capacities: Love, Beauty, and Truth. We will never become better people until we embrace the very idea of better and worse, good and evil, right and wrong. And if we do not become better people than our depraved and despicable status quo, then we may as well throw in the towel altogether and cease existing. (Which, of course, is the position of a large portion of mankind now, called nihilism.)

As religion continues to become less and less meaningful or accepted by the developed world, we risk falling into an abyss of relativism and nihilism that robs the energy from people's daily lives and turns them into moral monsters. If there's no such thing as right and wrong, then all is permitted. When all is permitted, people follow their basest instincts. These inevitably lead to mass suffering and mass destruction. Base instincts might have evolved to be suited to a cave-man's life, but they are hopelessly out of place and counterproductive in the modern world. Man has evolved to be evil, only culture makes us good. When culture surrenders the field and says 'just follow your instincts, we no longer have any opinion on right and wrong, good and evil, it's all just relative,' then mankind becomes a sea of demonic beasts.

Education must include a moral element. Culture must stress the importance and praiseworthiness of being good. Punishments for crime, corruption, and sleaziness must be increased dramatically. Everyone, even the dumbest among us, must start to get that the community doesn't consider everything 'equal' or 'relative.' It demands a certain code of behavior and will eliminate anyone who doesn't fit in. once they realize the new ground rules, they'll quickly shape up. Maybe they'll be as moral as the Greeks and Romans were during their golden ages. For now, I'd just be content with them thinning down and getting rid of their piercings and tattoos.

Any one of these 13 challenges, if unaddressed, will grow exponentially until it singlehandedly destroys the world. Most of them are slated to destroy the world by 2050. If all thirteen continue to grow unchecked, then 2050 will be a net negative world, a true hell on Earth.

There is still hope, however, that some place, somewhere, however small, gets control of these challenges, and separates itself off from the vast majority of the world. This can be done via border controls, a secret society, space travel, a robot revolution, or any number of means. These solutions are so sad, however, because it means saving a handful of people while the other 10 billion burn in hell. It would be much better for everyone if our solutions were not technical, but cultural and political, because only cultural, political solutions can save everyone. Technical solutions are just a lifeboat for mankind. Political solutions would be so much better.

21st Century Bill of Rights:

2011-09-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

How do we avoid the collapse of the world?

Currently, the world is slated to collapse somewhere around 2050 because at that point no amount of taxes or debt can possibly pay for all the medicare and social security of our elderly. This collapse will be universal -- it's true of China, Japan, Europe and America. The entire developed world is going to be majority too old to work by 2050 and ready to cash in their benefits checks to the nearest government office.

Who will provide them with all this free money? There aren't enough young people to provide it. By 2050, the undead age 60+ population will be higher than the productive 20-60 age group. Even if we ramped taxes up to 100% we couldn't pay the promised amounts for our retirees.

The answer is obvious, we must either do away with these retiree benefits entirely, or drastically reduce them. But how do we do this in a democracy? The electorate will also be majority 60+ year olds who will demand infinite money, 100% taxes, infinite debt, anything so that they can suck our blood for the rest of their comfy lives.

The answer is we must suspend democracy and introduce a new constitution that expressly forbids parasitism such as this from ever occurring again. The new constitution should have two new rights in the 'bill of rights.'

1. The right to a citizen's dividend. Each citizen's share of the citizen's dividend will be equal to 25% of your country's GDP divided by your country's population.

2. The right to not be taxed through any other means except one flat sales tax, which will not surpass 100% of the sale price. (ie, government can at most double the price of goods and services, thus bringing in 50% of the nation's GDP for total reallocation.)

In this manner we can give to the elderly -- or anyone else, for that matter, whether they be the homeless, the poor, the sick, the disabled, or whatever -- only that which is within our means. Everyone has a stake in the economic health of their society -- the only way to get a higher citizen's dividend is for the GDP to grow proportionate to the population. You can no longer claim any larger portion of the pie for yourself. Special pleading, on the taxes as well as the spending side, is no more.

In addition, everyone can have the guaranteed assurance that the majority of their work will be for their own benefit, no one else's. This is the difference between taxation and slavery -- in slavery, you are allowed to keep only enough money that you stay alive, primarily serving the interests of others, under normal tax rates, you are the primary beneficiary of your own labor, and only a minority portion goes to serving the interests of others. With this guarantee, we can end tax slavery just like we ended all the previous slaveries that have emerged across human history.

While we're at it, let's pass some more rights under this new democracy-free constitution:

3. The right to a mother and a father. Children cannot be born except to married, heterosexual parents, and said parents cannot abandon their children via separation or divorce until they are fully grown and out of the house.

4. The right to a clean environment, now and for the foreseeable future.

5. The right to an education that deals with science, logic, and facts, not religious or PC falsehoods, and that children actually enjoy.

6. The right to a crime-free, corruption free community.

With these rights in place, the disaster that this coming century is promising to become will be forestalled. Dysgenics will be replaced by eugenics, global warming will be stopped, the debt crisis will end, children will be raised well both at home and in school, and want will become a thing of the past. But bold steps like these can't be undertaken so long as we worship democracy. Democracy or Freedom, you can only have one. Under democracy we will be the tax slaves of the elderly for the rest of our lives, as they vote themselves infinite pensions, social security and medicare. Only through unelected leadership can we hope to be free.

The Unsalvageability of Star Wars:

2011-09-22T19:55:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge fan of Star Wars. I must have watched the 4-6 movies thirty times a piece, and the 1-3 movies maybe ten times a piece. So when I heard that they were all six coming out on blu-ray for the first time with all sorts of extras, I immediately placed my order.

Having re-watched the series yet again, however, I couldn't believe how bad it was. Contrary to my childhood memories, the series sucks in almost every important way. Compared to basically any anime series in the top 100, its flaws are just enormous.

I will put in a few good words for Star Wars. The visuals are gorgeous (when it isn't corny CG effects that look horribly fake), the music is fantastic, and the acting is good. Harrison Ford as Han Solo was really fun and memorable. Natalie Portman was gorgeous as Padame, especially in the first two movies. Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Emperor, Darth Vader (4-6 version) were all really good. Obi-wan 1-3, Qui-Gon Jin, and Anakin 2-3 were also okay. Especially Anakin in Revenge of the Sith when he got to just be an evil badass.

My objections aren't to obscure things like the acting, cinematography, soundtrack, visual effects or whatever. The production value of Star Wars is extremely high. The problem is more basic. The movies themselves don't follow the basic laws of good storytelling.

Basic Law #1: Don't give annoying, ugly, stupid characters huge segments of screen time. What on Earth were they thinking about when they invented Jar Jar Binks? And yet, are the droids any better? The wookies? The ewoks? The other gungans? No matter where you turned huge amounts of screen-time was being gobbled up by sub-sentient primitive retards.

Basic Law #2: On second though, don't give annoying, ugly, stupid characters any time at all. Why did I have to watch that stupid frog boss of the gungans go blu-blu-blu-blu-blu slobbering with his fat open mouth in front of the camera? Was I condemned to hell without my knowledge? Or how about the Return of the Jedi 2011 blu-ray version where this awful CG hairy beast screams right in front of the camera alongside this ugly pink blob of a terrible CG alien singer in this cacophony from hell called a song? Why am I being subjected to these torments? Why must I endure even a single second of something being ugly or stupid in front of me? Yoda in Empire Strikes Back also belongs to this group. He acts like a complete idiot in front of Luke, stealing his stuff and throwing it carelessly about the camp, and then expects Luke to show 'patience' when I would have just blasted a hole through his idiotic head about 30 seconds into his 'I'm a primitive native idiot alien' performance.

Basic Law #3: The enemy should never spare the good guy in any situation. There are no excuses. Any excuses are patently offensive and absurd. The title is "Star Wars" not "Star Peace" or "Star Hostage Crisis" or "Star Prisoners." The Empire is supposedly at war with the Rebel Alliance, or previously, we were in the middle of the Clone Wars. But throughout 1-6 the good guys were continuously spared by their enemies. How many times were the good guys taken prisoner instead of killed like they should have been? How many times did they break free afterwards? I hate it every time. The cumulative viewing of it happening 5 or 10 times per movie is enough to drive you insane.

How many times was Padame taken prisoner? At the very beginning of the movie on Naboo, she was taken prisoner instead of killed, in order to sign a 'treaty.' As though a treaty signed under duress has any legal validity. She was freed by the two jedi. Okay, fine. Later she goes back to Naboo, which has inexplicably lifted its blockade of like 100 battleships down to just 1 droid control ship that sits fragilely vulnerable in the sky. There she storms the palace trying to capture the viceroy of the Trade Federation. But she is eventually captured by a bunch of droidekars. Seconds later, inexplicably, all said droidekars have left and there is only a tiny, weak guard of droid robots that are easily overpowered by Padame, who then captures the viceroy in turn. Why did they capture Padame? Why didn't they kill her? If they did want to keep her prisoner, why did they leave such a scanty guard when seconds before they had rolled out an army of 10 invincible droidekars? Where did they go???????

So ends movie 1. In movie 2 she's captured again, this time on the insect planet of Genoisis. Instead of being killed, they throw her into an arena to be eaten alive by wild beasts. But she somehow gets free of this evil execution platform, only to be surrounded by battle droids and -- TAKEN PRISONER AGAIN. But wait, Dookoo decides to kill all his prisoners after all, but then a clone army rescues all the jedi + Padame from certain doom.

Prisoner Padame count: 4.

Let's compare her to Princess Leiah. How many times was Leiah taken prisoner? The original time, in movie 4, at the beginning of the movie. She's held prisoner in the hopes of interrogating her. Fine, whatever. Then she's freed by Luke Skywalker. In the next movie, however, she's captured again in Cloud City. There's a song and dance until it's eventually decided that she will be 'taken to Vader's ship.' At this point Lando rebels and frees her from the stormtroopers. You would think they would have learned from their previous mistake when Leiah got free last time because they didn't execute her, but no. But never mind that, it gets better! In movie 6, Return of the Jedi, Leiah is taken prisoner 5 more times! She decides to join a commando raid on the forest moon of Endor. The first time she was in a speederbike duel and a scout trooper, instead of shooting her like he should have, told her 'freeze, drop your weapon.' She was then rescued by an ewok and then mercilessly killed the two scout troopers who had mercifully spared her. Why did they spare her? Who knows? Are they under strict orders to never actually kill any member of the rebel alliance? Then the ewoks took her prisoner as well, not allowing her freedom of motion when she saw the ewoks set to kill her friends. After being freed from the ewoks, she joined the attack on the shield generator, where 'an entire legion of the Empire's best troops' awaited her. Unfortunately, these troops were also under strict orders to not kill any members of the alliance. Instead of mowing down their opponents in a firefight, they took them all prisoner instead. Why? There's just no telling. But as a result, they were then quickly freed by the ewoks and got to rejoin the fight. They then started killing stormtroopers left and right in an all out battle, but STILL, STILL the storm troopers took her prisoner one more time. Instead of shooting the commandos dead when they had a chance in the middle of an all-out battle, they again told them to 'drop their weapons' and 'put their hands up.' Leiah, being spared, then had the time to shoot them both dead without a hint of mercy on her part.

That's right, Leiah mercilessly kept killing the people who kept trying to mercifully hold her prisoner, who always had their guns trained on her first, who were always in a winning position where they could have killed her, but always decided not to. She also mercilessly killed Jabba the Hut who had previously spared her and taken her prisoner as a dancing girl (though why jabba the hutt was sexually interested in a female not of his species is never explained) In this way Princess Leiah was taken prisoner a record 5 times in Return of the Jedi.

It isn't just the girls who are taken prisoner instead of killed. Even though it was absurd to think Luke could be 'turned' to the Dark Side against his will, he was taken prisoner in Return of the Jedi instead of executed immediately. Because of that, he was able to defeat Darth Vader, kill the Emperor, etc. Obi-wan was taken prisoner in movie 2, but wasn't executed immediately, so he was eventually freed. Anakin as well was taken prisoner in movie 2, and was eventually freed. Multiple times in movie 3, Anakin and Obi-wan had droids point guns at them and say "drop your weapons" or "freeze" or the like. Every single time if the droids had simply shot their defenseless opponents in the back, our heroes would have lost and died. But because they hesitated, every single time Anakin and Obi-wan were able to kill said battle droids and free themselves once more. Han Solo was also taken captive at Cloud City, but was randomly encased in carbonite, alive, both for that movie and the next movie, when Jabba had previously said he wanted him dead. Then Luke, Han, and Chewie, instead of being killed immediately by Jabba, were given this ridiculously complicated execution via 'sarlacc pit,' that of course went all wrong as they fought themselves free of the situation.

Han and Leiah were even in a way taken prisoner by a giant space worm that they had unintentionally flown into in movie 5. If the space worm had simply closed its mouth it could have eaten them for sure, but apparently it was too stupid to realize this, so they flew free after all.

Who can stand this nonsense? Even Schmi Skywalker was taken prisoner by 'Sand People.' Even Luke was taken prisoner by an abominable snowman! Yes, even wild animals take prisoners instead of kill their prey, even when their goal is to eat them!!!! Is Star Wars this strange galaxy where all evil-hearted men are simply compelled by an overwhelming desire to take good people prisoner and can't help themselves? Is it like eating or sleeping, prisoner-taking is just built into their genes?

Everyone in the Star Wars crew should have died ten times over by the end of the two trilogies. In both cases the Empire or the Trade Federation should have easily won, but threw their victory away in the most contrived of ridiculous fashions.

Basic Rule #4: Explain what the Hell is going on and why. There is no explanation of the setting in Star Wars. We are never given any clue as to what is actually going on and why. There's a Rebel Alliance fighting for 'freedom' against the Empire. But what does that mean? The Emperor was duly elected by the Senate and the constitution was duly amended by said Senate to give him permanent rule. He was never undemocratic at any point. It was the Jedi Council that was undemocratic, by trying to assassinate Palpatine instead of going through the courts/senate impeachment process and assume martial law themselves. The Jedi Council was never democratic, it had this strange shadow government control of the Old Republic and didn't elect its members, but simply appointed them on the basis of strange subjective criteria. Jedi could do whatever they wanted, but the people had no power over them or checks on their authority. If freedom = democracy, everyone should have supported the Empire. The fact that 'queen' Amidalah and 'princess' Leiah existed, doesn't show a very democratic streak in these 'anti-imperial' 'freedom fighters' anyway.

If freedom equals human rights, then how am I to judge if the Alliance or the Empire was more free? I never once saw what daily life in the Empire looked like. Nor did I ever once see what daily life among the Old Republic was. Nor did I ever once get to see what daily life among the Rebel Alliance was. Since I am given no knowledge whatsoever of the human rights, the bill or rights, or the constitutions of the two forces that were competing for power, how can I judge which was more free? Am I supposed to condemn the Empire for having a more disciplined and better uniformed military than the guerrilla fighters of the Rebellion? That's absurd. Militaries are inherently 'non-free.' That says nothing about how free or non-free the normal imperial civilian was in his daily life. Am I supposed to surmise that the Empire didn't give its citizenry human rights because it blew up the entire planet of Alderaan for siding with the Rebellion? But how is that any different from 'free' America nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki or 'free' Britain firebombing Hamburg or Dresden? The Empire and the Rebel Alliance were at war. Civilians are routinely targeted in war, by both 'free' and 'despotic' nations. If you side with the Rebellion you can expect to be a legitimate target in war. The German and Japanese women and children were targeted and killed by our soldiers. I don't hear any complaints about that. Generally speaking, even fewer human rights are granted to rebels than foreign nations at war. People generally consider terrorist non-state guerrillas to be the worst sort of scum, deserving of no legal protections. The Empire was the legitimate government of the galaxy, the Rebel Alliance was just a random collection of malcontents who didn't like how the status quo was. Typically, when suppressing a rebellion, no one blinks an eye at whatever extreme measures are used.

No one can point to a single reason why the Empire was evil or the Old/New Republic was good. We have no data on this vital question. We do not have economic data about GDP, we don't have test scores showing rising or falling education levels, we don't hear anything about crime rates, tax rates, or deficits. We don't know a single damn thing about how happy, respectively, people are under the three different governments portrayed in the movies. We just have to take the Jedi's words on everything. But the Jedi are full of crap and can't be trusted.

Which leads me to:

Basic Rule #5: Don't create a morality by assertion. Don't just say crap without any debate, without anyone questioning whether it's true or not, and think you can get away with it. Yoda makes one of the most offensive speeches in human history when he tells Anakin, who is concerned about his wife dying in childbirth, that he should rejoice when people die and are 'transformed into the Force,' and that love was a grave sin because that just meant 'fear of loss' which is the Dark Side of the force. This hypocrite, despite his professed love of Death and preference for the afterlife over this life, stays alive himself for over 800 years, and then even cheats death again by reappearing as a spirit! It must be nice to have one solution for everyone else, and another for yourself! This hypocrite also didn't devote his life to killing as many people as possible. If, after all, everyone is better off after being 'transformed into the force,' why didn't Yoda hurry along this blessing by slaughtering everyone in the galaxy? People make a big deal out of Anakin killing 'younglings,' (who, after all, were armed and fought him with lightsabers, clearly siding with the treacherous coup-jedi who had attempted to assassinate the legitimate Chancellor of the Republic hours earlier), but why should they care since they are supposed to rejoice when children are slaughtered because then they transform into the force? Wasn't he just giving them the blessing of the afterlife like Yoda had told him was the most wonderful thing in the world seconds ago in the movie?

The jedi are avowed worshipers of Death who rejoice in the death of women in childbirth. They are, therefore, some of the most evil people to ever live. However, they paint themselves as 'selfless' heroes who everyone should look up to and obey. They talk about how the light side is only for 'defense,' not 'aggression,' but they launch a coup and attempt to assassinate the legitimate Chancellor of the republic, who fights only to defend himself when attacked. Likewise, Luke Skywalker twice attacks without being attacked in Return of the Jedi. He barges in to Jaba the Hutt's palace and attempts to assassinate him. A bit later in the movie, he tries to assassinate the Emperor who had previous to then not raised a single hand against him. how does this compute? Why can Luke just randomly attack people and not join the Dark Side, but everyone starts nitpicking whatever Anakin does as 'aggression'? Yoda tried to assassinate the Emperor even though the Emperor wasn't paying him any mind in movie 3, how was that 'self defense'? Wasn't that just straight out aggression on Yoda's part?

The jedi constantly talk about staying calm and acting rationally, but their hyper-paranoia concerning the dark side isn't calm or rational. What difference does it make if you shoot lightning yourself or reflect someone else's shot lightning back at them? That's the difference between good and evil? Seriously? What, exactly, is wrong with using the Dark Side of the force?????? How does using certain magic spells, no matter what cause they advance, inherently evil? And is it really true that nothing good ever comes out of fear, anger, or hatred? Doesn't anger give us focus and make us stronger? Doesn't fear give us strength and clarity in order to survive dangerous situations? Do people with adrenaline rushes necessarily turn to evil? Or do they, say, save their child's life via moving a car out of the way? Those people were angry and afraid, but they used those emotions for good, not evil.

The jedi code that forbids marriage and children is part of their cult of death. Jedi powers obviously are genetic, or else Luke and Leiah wouldn't have also been jedi. So by refusing to let jedi mate, they are dysgenically ensuring the wiping out of the ability to use the force in mankind (and alienkind.) What kind of idiotic religious order demands celibacy such that they extinct themselves and jedi cease being born anywhere? Why shouldn't jedi try to have as many offspring as possible so that everyone will have the convenience of the force? Couldn't we all use some telepathy and telekinesis in our lives?

The jedi are despicable in every way. Yoda says to Luke that he should just abandon his friends and continue training for the sake of the 'cause.' But what is Luke's cause? What does he care about overturning the empire? Didn't he always do everything for the sake of his family and friends? Luke was counseled by the heartless jedi to lose everything so that he could be a good soldier who sacrificed everything for a meaningless abstraction. A mere change in government that makes no overall difference in the quality of his life. This is how jedi think. But humans think much differently. Instead of condemning Luke for going to save his friends at Cloud City, the audience was cheering his decision. Only the jedi disagreed with his priorities. Real people with hearts think differently.

What kind of crap is a proverb like 'Do, or do not, there is no try?' Of course there is a 'try.' Football teams don't go out having decided already whether they will 'win' or 'lose.' That's called a fixed match, and it's illegal. Football teams all 'try' to beat each other. That's the best they can do. Because matches are not predetermined. In fact, nothing is predetermined in this world. All people can do is try their best, it's absurd to demand more. To say either 'win with certainty or don't bother at all' wouldn't lead to good results. Everyone would just wholesale abandon every task -- because after all how can you be certain about anything in life? We try, but we're never sure we'll succeed. According to Yoda 'that is why we fail.' What utter bullshit. I think it's yoda who fails for spouting crap.

Jedi don't distinguish between anger against injustice and hatred of evil, and anger and hate without any just cause. Even though anger and hatred can motivate people to overturn evil and fix the problems in this world, they condemn it wholesale, with no exceptions. It's all part of the 'dark side.' What an absurd philosophy.

What was with Obi-wan's statement: "Only the Sith deal in absolutes." You've got to be kidding me!! So Jedi are relativists, and only evil dark side force wielders believe in absolute truth, a set Good and Evil, 2+2=4, logic, or any other absolute in this world. Why would anyone side with jedi hippy relativists, which is another term for nihilists, who reject all absolutes in life? If everything is relative, then even that statement is relative, ie, there must be some absolutes for the statement everything is relative to be absolutely true. The very statement is therefore a contradiction, a paradox. Jedi are spouting ridiculous paradoxes in order to condemn their opponents. Sorry if I believe 2+2=4 absolutely, without any exceptions, every time. I guess that makes me a Sith Lord.

Whenever the Jedi open their mouths to say something vaguely wise you just want to stuff a sock down it and tell them to shut up. It's never wise. It's always atrocious. And it makes you perforce side with the Empire, no matter what they do, because at least they don't spout off obviously false things like the Jedi constantly do. The rallying cry of the Emperor was simple: "Anyone but the Jedi!" "Empire 2012" could have run that as their election slogan and won in an overwhelming landslide.

Basic Rule #6: Don't treat deadbeat dads like they're important. Why the hell does Luke care that Anakin is his father? He never met his biological Father all his life. What does it matter who he is? His biological father didn't raise him. His biological father never loved him or cared for him. His biological father is trying to kill him or enslave him. So why does he go on and on about how important it is that Anakin is his father? It's stupid. It makes no sense. Family ties aren't biological, they're formed by love and companionship. If you're a deadbeat dad who never shows up to raise his child and never shows any affection for said child, news flash, you no longer qualify for the term 'Dad.' You aren't related to your children in any way. They aren't your children, period. What is Luke getting so emo about? Why doesn't he just brush aside that detail by saying, "Well, thanks for the force-power genes, Daddy-O, but aside from that I don't really give a damn. This changes nothing between us." That's what any normal, sane individual would do upon hearing the news. But instead it warps him into this giant crusade to 'save' his father in Return of the Jedi, which normally would have just gotten him killed, except for the equally insane 'always-take-people-prisoner Empire' he was fighting.

Basic Rule #7: Romances should be between people who actually like each other. The romances in Star Wars are awful. Does the west have any idea whatsoever what love even looks like? Why did Anakin fall for a girl who didn't share his political or moral views? Isn't that important? If you can't agree with someone about things of extreme philosophical importance, you'll never get along for your entire lives over every single issue. Of course Anakin and Padame would be torn apart by their philosophical differences. It was inherent from the beginning. Anakin clearly said he wanted a dictator in movie 2, and Padame clearly said she was for democracy. What were they thinking by marrying? They were simply carried away by lust. I can't imagine anything else that they would like about each other. Couples should always agree about important things. It is a recipe for disaster when you have different religions or politics and try to become a couple.

Why was Anakin cast as younger than Padame? That's stupid. Girls don't fall for younger guys. It would never happen. Guys prefer younger girls who actually admire them and agree with them, not disrespectful 'you'll always be little Ani to me' and 'don't look at me that way, you're making me uncomfortable' bitches like Padame was in movie 2.

The 1-3 romance was atrocious. It was unbelievable. Anakin should have married a nice, young, imperialist lass who he met during his duties as a jedi or as a sith. He should have struck up a conversation with a girl who was pro-palpatine, like he was, and talked about how nice it would be to become Emperor and Empress together. Then he could have ruled with her and had kids with her who weren't stolen from him and created a nice Sith dynasty. His insistence on pursuing a girl he had nothing in common with was his undoing. Sheer madness. As the right hand man of the Emperor and the strongest jedi of all time, he surely had the 'cred' to get any woman he wanted. So why didn't he, with all his fame and money and power, choose a girl who'd actually love him and stay with him?

As for 4-6, the Han Solo - Leiah Organa pair is awful. They do nothing but insult each other in movie 4. How often do people who insult each other non-stop become couples? In movie 5, Han Solo keeps hitting on Leiah (which is sexual harassment/sexual assault these days, and extremely rude in any era), even though Leiah continuously rejects him. She calls him all sorts of names and says she has zero interest in him, she's more interested in wookies, but he ignores it all and practically rapes her. Then, inexplicably, it turns out Leiah liked him after all. What is this, stockholm syndrome? After you're sexually assaulted enough, your feelings for the boy changes? What kind of message is this sending to girls and boys around the world? "no means yes." Great! Let's teach this to all the kids! Who's worse between the two, Leiah who continuously snipes at Han "You do have your moments, not many, but you do have them." Do you really need to insult a guy after he personally escapes from an entire fleet of star destroyers after flying through an asteroid belt that no other pilot was able to survive? Is that not enough to not be given a cheap dig out of the blue? Or Han for kissing Leiah without permission while she's calling him a scoundrel and telling him to 'stop that?'

These romances suck. Why don't they go watch some Key anime and try again? The west apparently has no idea what love really looks like. But with a jedi order inherently opposed to romantic love as 'the dark side of the force' = 'fear of loss' and demands celibacy to 'stay in the light,' I guess you could expect results like these.

Basic Law #8: Stop winning fights with luck. There is nothing admirable or inspirational about good guys winning battles due to good luck. That's just a deus ex machina. It's completely deflating. You just sit there wondering why they ended up so lucky and resenting the movie for cheating. It was impossible, over and over again, for the heroes to be so lucky. How did a single A-wing bring down a victory-class Star Destroyer by ramming into the unprotected bridge, which was completely exposed to the slightest scratch? How badly designed are these ships? Vulnerable spots like that should have redundant backups. You should not be able to destroy an entire victory class star destroyer, population 1 million or whatever, by hitting a postage-stamp sized room with an explosion. In other cases, R2-D2 somehow luckily defeated 2 battle droids who were designed for combat. One time Jar-Jar fought an entire battle with luck alone. He would hop around, juggle balls, fall off trucks, and inadvertently destroyed massive numbers of enemy droids and droid tanks. It was insane. It was like he was the greatest warrior of all time practicing drunken boxing. But we are to believe that all of these events could have transpired by luck. Anakin in movie 1 destroyed the entire droid control battleship (which was inexplicably left alone to guard naboo when originally it had dozens of friends in space) via luck, thus winning the battle of Naboo. If the good guys aren't saved by being taken prisoner, they're saved by luck. Their luck never fails them no matter how grim the situation.

It may not have failed them, but it certainly failed to impress this viewer.

Basic Rule #9: Non-stop action does not make your story interesting. It was rare for five minutes to pass in Star Wars without someone facing a near death experience. At no time could you ever simply sit down and have a peaceful conversation about daily life. Luke is immediately attacked by a snowman on Hoth. When he lands on Dagobah, a swamp beast immediately attacks Artoo. When they fall in the trash compactor, they have mere seconds before a tentacled monster drowns Luke. Seconds later the trash starts compacting, threatening to crush them all. There is NO TIME FOR ANYTHING. The hectic action is non stop. The moment they're done shooting storm troopers and fighting Tie fighters in a new hope, they have to go right back to blow up the death star with 12 whole x-wings and y-wings. (Yeah, that sounds likely to work.) If you got out a stopwatch and tried to find five minutes without some weapon being used anywhere in any of the 6 movies, I don't think you could reach 10 minutes.

In movies 1-3, there's always another evil jedi to lightsaber duel, or a droid to shoot/stab. It doesn't stop. It simply never gives it a rest. In return of the jedi perhaps the most peaceful moment in the movie is when C3P0 narrates their previous battles with the Empire to the ewoks in their tent. In Empire the Falcon is hunted from the beginning of the movie to the very end. There is simply no time whatsoever they aren't under fire while their 'hyperdrive is malfunctioning.' Even during Luke's supposedly peaceful training he ends up having a sword fight with a phantom Darth Vader. Apparently the movie makers decided that one scene in the six movies didn't have enough action and needed more. Even when the jedi are simply traveling from the gungan city to the naboo city, they end up having to escape ravenous giant fish. I can't stand this breakneck pace. If the world is really this dangerous, everyone would die by age 5, which the jedi would rejoice about, because then they'd get to 'transform into the force.'

A story without any peaceful living doesn't have any characters. Most people operate in one manner when under stress, when called to action, and another when relaxed and carefree. We will never know the other side of any character in star wars. They are continuously at war. I know nothing about any of these people except how good they are with blasters and lightsabers. Actually, the most peaceful scenes can be found in the Empire, when people are generally just talking to each other about tactics or orders. They tend to be in safe, clean environments, not attacked by snowbeasts and swampbeasts, but unfortunately violence even creeps into their lives as Darth Vader is constantly choking someone or other. Just a thought -- why didn't Darth Vader simply choke his Jedi opponents to death too? Why even bother with a sword? Or lightning? Choking seems to actually work.

I've never seen such a hectic panoply of scenes without any sensible transition. The non-stop action leaves you with a headache, but it doesn't leave you with any clear sense of what happened and why. You can barely understand anything except 'bam' 'whap,' 'pow' like an old batman comic.

In anime, fighting has careful analysis by all parties, who explain the method and meaning behind their moves and why they are fighting philosophically. Everyone's character is fully explained and all of their actions are carefully analyzed. There is no explanation or analysis in Star Wars. It's just wall to wall mindless action. The difference between fighting series like Naruto or Dragon Ball and Star Wars are enormous. In Star Wars, there's always a fight ongoing, which is also true of Naruto. But in Naruto there are flashbacks where people's characters are delved into as children. In Naruto people have strategies and plans behind their attacks and aren't just rushing forward mindlessly. In Naruto everything makes sense and the author takes his time. In Star Wars nothing makes sense and you always feel rushed. Who can stomach such nonsense?

When you realize that Star Wars is the 'best of the West.' IE, we simply can't produce anything better artistically, that these are the most famous, enduring, and popular movies Hollywood's ever made, you realize that not only Star Wars, but Western Culture is completely unsalvageable.

You Want Muslims to Assimilate to This?

2011-09-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

Dear Prudence: My boyfriend is a reformed swinger.
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The west is a diseased, depraved, dying culture that deserves to be destroyed.