Psychological displacement in management, politics, and the culture wars – New Class Traitor

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

*Note from Sarah – Having located the cleaned up version which New Class Traitor sent me, I replaced the post*

Psychological displacement in management, politics, and the culture wars – New Class Traitor

All of us have a number of psychological mechanisms for coping with “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. Some are adaptive (anticipation, humor, building social support networks, …) while others are maladaptive.

Displacement (a term originally coined by Sigmund Freud) is one such maladaptive strategy: the mind substitutes a “safer” goal, object, or target for one deemed to be unattainable or overly dangerous. Some classic examples of ‘displacement’ are a bully picking on a weak kid in response to being picked upon by a bigger bully, or the abusive mid-level employee who works out pent-up rage at bosses or customers on his underlings. Or, for that matter, the frustrated-at-work husband or wife doing so on their spouse.

Like all of us who have dealt with management (in my case, from both sides of the fence) I have on numerous occasions witnessed two ‘displacement’ mechanisms on the part of managers who were incompetent or out of their depth.

The two mechanisms are seemingly opposite but in fact closely related. Let me deal with the most common one first.

Faced with large and seemingly insurmountable problems, the outclassed manager starts hunting around for some umpteenth-order detail problem that (s)he deems to be manageable — then makes this the top priority, both to deflect attention from inertia on the first-order problems and to be able to “solve” something and declare victory, thus creating an illusion of competence and/or relevance.

One example known to me occurred at a large organization that shall remain unnamed. The previous CEO had been fired, and his successor inherited — together with a fundamentally sound fiscal situation — many problems such as toxic employee relations, administrative overload, and the appalling state of the organization’s IT management.

A competent manager — or even an astute amateur — would have tried addressing these problems first. Instead, the new CEO came out with a campaign to… address employee health by encouraging employees to bike to and from work, and providing loaner bikes on bike racks. Other initiatives were similar “polishing of the candlesticks while the house is on fire” — some of them might even have been good ideas if everything else were running smoothly. Needless to say, he did not last long in his job.

[See also “Ten habits of incompetent managers” http://www.fastcompany.com/919287/ten-habits-incompetent-managers ]

Interestingly enough, we see parallels of this ‘displacement’ behavior in the culture wars. One example is the preoccupation of various European and American anti-racist groups with the racism and judeophobia on the part of the old ethnic-collectivist extreme-“right” — while (at least publicly) largely ignoring the surging, much clearer, and more present danger from the (equally collectivist) hard-left and Islamists, whom they are unable or unwilling to confront.

Another is that of certain “transgressive” artists petting themselves on the back for images like a crucifix dipped in urine — while suddenly having second thoughts when the ox being gored is Islamic rather than Catholic, Protestant, LDS, or traditional Jewish.

Yet another is that of a POTUS who, faced with unprecedented national debt, a stagnant-at-best economy, and a foreign policy that is falling apart at the seams everywhere, instead pontificates on all sorts of trivial issues.

For yet another: in California, Proposition 8 would likely not have passed without the overwhelming support of the Latino and especially black communities — but the anger of pro-“gay marriage” activists was displaced from these ‘unsafe’ targets to a few LDS and evangelical individuals who had had the temerity to put their own money where their beliefs are.

One more example: various “social justice warrior” (more correctly: social justice Tartuffe) groups obsessing over all sorts of anti-female and anti-homosexual “microaggressions” while completely ignoring the hardcore misogyny and homophobia emanating from the Islamist sphere. Hmm, lemme see, who is the bigger ‘homophobe’: somebody who refuses to bake a wedding cake for Adam and Steve — or who actually makes custom wedding rings for Eva and Sylvia but dares display a poster asserting his personal belief in traditional marriage — or would that be those who hang “the people of Lot” from cranes (Iran), throw them from buildings (ISIS), or crush them under toppled walls (Taliban)? Or who is the bigger misogynist: somebody who disputes the tale of “mattress girl” or the gangs grooming adolescent girls as prostitutes, mass-raping women, or executing women for the crime of having been raped?

The more cynical among us would point out to the fact that the fate of “gays” in Iran does not lend itself well to collecting of cheap political points by self-serving radical-left hacks. However, I also believe that, for many other feminist or “gay” activists, there is the realization that radical Islamism is an opponent too big to handle — or where pushing back might bring them into ideologically uncomfortable ad hoc alliances with conservatives and libertarians — or even (gasp!) old-school Euro nationalists. So therefore the anger is displaced to “safe” targets.

So much for the first displacement mechanism. What about the second one? It takes the nominally opposite tack of diverting all attention to some superissue broadly seen as overarchingly important — about which one can then pontificate at will, thus freeing oneself from the need to actually try and address more mundane problems. For example, here in Israel (where I live part-time), the agenda of the day is understandably dominated by ‘ha-matzav’ (the [security] situation). Politicians of any stripe who want to raise their public profile — without the thankless hard work of writing and passing legislation that deals with mundane things like roads, crime, still pervasive oligopolies,… — can instead spew hot air about ‘the situation’/’the peace process’/… while quiet professionals get to do all the actual heavy lifting involved.

Abroad, “global warming” can act as a similar “get out of work free” card.

Some people engage in both forms of displacement at the same time. The former Mayor of New York was clearly very successful in creating and fostering the financial news agency that bears his name — but appeared to be out of his depth running a city with a population larger than Israel and a metropolitan statistical area population between Rumania and Australia. Rather than dealing with mundane yet serious issues like the bed bug epidemic, deteriorating personal safety post-Giuliani, or the woeful vulnerability of the city’s infrastructure to disasters both natural and man-made — hizzoner started on the one hand nannying the size of soda servings, and on the other hand pontificating about ‘global warming’. Neither of which was much help when Hurricane Sandy hit the city. The cold equations have no mercy on those who ignore reality.

362 thoughts on “Psychological displacement in management, politics, and the culture wars – New Class Traitor”

  1. …largely ignoring the surging, much clearer, and more present danger from the (equally collectivist) hard-left and Islamists, whom they are unable or unwilling to confront.

    Another is that of certain “transgressive” artists petting themselves on the back for images like a crucifix dipped in urine — while suddenly having second thoughts when the ox being gored is Islamic rather than Catholic, Protestant, LDS, or traditional Jewish.

    Oh yes. And if anyone so much as dares criticize Islam, Sharia, or Muslim culture, it’s bigotry!1!!!11

    I ran into this in one of the comment convos over at T.L. Knighton’s, and out of respect for Tom I bowed out of that conversational direction already, but one of the commenters there decided naturally to pursue, insisting that my views / explaination were purely bigoted and set up a kafkatrap where, pretty much no matter how I respond, I could see the ‘gotcha!!’ there.

    I’ve been called a bigot too many times and simply don’t care any more. It’s stopped having meaning. Frankly, if disliking Islam because in Islam, gays are hanged, a woman is worth so much less than a man, and that non-Muslims are second class citizens is bigotry… *shakes head*

    What part of the Internet Arguing Checklist is it again?

    I actually don’t have much tolerance for that kind of gleeful witch-hunting rage or goalpost moving, especially these days when the grieving and sadness feels like a physical weight draped around my shoulders.

    A couple of days ago, I was persuaded to log back into Lineage II (an MMO) and people were happy to hear my voice and ‘see’ me in game again. So when I saw that goalpost moving and the attacks being lined up, versus people going ‘hey, come play with us!’ I decided to play. Choosing between the snarling and the much more pleasant company of gamers both male and female simply enjoying themselves, there’s simply no contest.

    1. I’ve been called a bigot too many times and simply don’t care any more. It’s stopped having meaning.

      We were having a similar discussion over on rotten chestnuts. The key quote?

      “At some point, somebody is going to say those nine magic words: If I’m gonna be accused, I wanna be guilty.

      “And then things get really interesting.”

      1. Yeah. I mean, if someone is going to go out of their way to completely misconstrue what I’m saying in order to paint me as a bigot, there’s really nothing I can do to dissuade them, no matter what I say. I mean, I’ve got one crazed stalker doing that on a regular basis already, all the way with levelling threats at my children because he’s already dismissed me in his head as a bigot, thus not worthy of consideration. The way he brought it about too is very similar to what’s being done by this Chris person, so really, it doesn’t matter what I do at this point. I’ve seen it done too many times, over the years.

        1. I don’t know about others, but I, for one, am fully fed up with this anti-bigot bigotry! Face it, most bigots can’t help being what they are; usually bigotry is inherited or even inflicted on a person by early life experience. This practice of blaming the victim needs to be stopped.

          No longer can we accept otherizing of bigots, prejudice-shaming or the other tools of anti-bigot bigotry. The next time you observe anybody attacking somebody for being bigoted speak up and call out the anti-bigot’s own bigotry for what it is. Face it, the majority of the human race is bigoted in one way or another (and most of those who claim not to be bigoted are simply in denial) and we need to accept this as just one more orientation, one which should be welcomed as a normal expression of human being.

          2. Your anti-bigot bigotry stance has triggered me! Surely anti-bigots have the right to silence their victims via twitter shaming and blocking campaigns for their own good. Well, provided “their” means, you know, the “right” people.

            I must retreat to my safe space and contemplate the offensiveness of pigeon genitalia, and wonder, perhaps, if someone will defend said genitalia. Perhaps the phrase “male pigeons cannot help it if they have three grams dangling off their nether regions” can be used.

            1. That explains why radical feminists seem to be cool with radical islam: they both hate man-spreading. The feminists just haven’t gotten to the guy pigeons yet.

              1. The true joke here? Pigeons don’t HAVE external genitalia. They mate by pressing their cloacae together — the “cloacal kiss” of most birds. ISIS is executing real human beings over the salacious display of nonexistent sex organs.

          3. It isn’t “anti-bigotry bigotry” actually. It’s usually bigotry claiming to be “anti-bigot” to justify their behavior by screeching bigot and attacking people.

      2. This, on several levels, from individual to the international. For example, I truly wish that Bush at some point had said “screw it, you wanna accuse us of going to war to take the oil, let’s just do that.”

          1. Thinking domestic politics, imagine the “fun” if Bush said “You call me a dictator so I’m going to show you how a dictator would treat the opposition”. [Very Big Evil Grin]

            1. You mean if Bush had declared, “You want universal health insurance? You’ve got it!” and rammed through legislation establishing dysfunctional insurance exchanges using dodgy assumptions, disbursed subsidies not authorized in the legislation and done it all by funneling billions to supporters in the IT industry in spite of their demonstrated incompetence at setting up and operating those exxchanges?

              Or perhaps you mean if Bush had used the IRS to go after Code Pink, Acorn and Unions operating actuarially unsound insurance and pension schemes?

              Or perhaps Bush could have promoted subsidies and preferential requirements for his oil field buddies while actively suppressing development of environmentally friendly alternative energy sources on spurious grounds, such as the way windmills and solar arrays tend to disrupt local ecologies and significantly endanger species?

              Suppose when the Pelosi-Reid Congress insisted on higher spending levels than Bush thought wise he had shut down the government, even to the extent of closing national parks and the Washington Mall?

              The mind reels at the perfidy of such actions!

              1. It’s not tyranny when a Democrat does it.

                Jeez, haven’t you figured that out by now? 😦

              2. Bush would be a more straight-forward type of Dictator.

                Where sending in the FBI didn’t work, he’d send in the troops.

                None of this “hiding behind legalities”. [Very Big Evil Grin]

                  1. That’s Chicken Feed.

                    A real dictator would shut down the News Media that criticized him.

                    A real dictator would arrest his political opponents.

                    A real dictator would arrest members of academia that criticized him.

                    And so forth.

                    Anybody who considers any current or past American Presidents a dictator do not know how real dictators work.

                    1. “A real dictator would shut down the News Media that criticized him.”

                      As opposed to a wanna-be dictator that would just arrest guys who made a youtube video they could blame for their own misdeeds?

                  2. I believe you’re thinking of the B&E that was done to rescue that Elian Something kid from the clan keeping him captive.

            2. It would certainly have been fun for a couple thousand people doing or agreeing with such accusations to have been rounded up and brought to the national mall, where he gave a televised speech on “If I were really a dictator…”.

      3. There’s that stunning line from one of Jefferson Airplane’s Sixties political songs: “What they say we are, we are.”

      4. As I like to put it, harkening back to 70s TV, “If I’m going to do the time, might as well do the crime. Yeah, just do it.”

      5. I used to take pride in not being a racist.

        Having a couple of cousins I don’t care for, I cannot see blood as a useful way of evaluating people. As far as populations go, I am convinced that the non-physical aspects significantly outweigh the physical aspects.

        Thanks to a combination of shifting definitions of ‘racist’, and the word’s overuse to debasement, I no longer care.

        If not being a racist today requires endorsing views that would have been necessarily racist under the old definition, than I will be racist by today’s standard. It no longer matters to me.

      6. “If I’m gonna be accused, I wanna be guilty.”

        Make that “If I’m gonna be accused, and convicted, I wanna be guilty.”

        That said;

        I hereby call for a New Colonialism. It having become clear that nothing, no reparations possible, no degree of rational respect for other cultures, is going to keep the Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressive swine and the barbarous heathen that use them from attacking all that is good and decent in Western Culture, I propose that we admit that the Post Colonial Experiment is a failure. The Old Ways may have been rife with exploitation, massacre, and paternalism, but frankly the new ways of genocide, Kleptocracy, and famine-as-a-tool-of-state are not an improvement. With certain marginal exceptions (I’m looking at YOU, India) the Native Peoples have NOT proven themselves capable of self-governance and , worse, they seem incapable of keeping their cultural problems to themselves.

        Let us model ourselves on the Raj; impose Western standards of justice (English Common Law, not the later idiocies so beloved of the Insane Left), cut incipient warlords off at the knees, and tell the Imams to moderate their vitriol if they want their Mosques to be left standing..

        This is what they claim we want to do (why? It would be so much friggin’ WORK). This is what they are inevitably pushing us towards – I mean what the F*CK do they think is going to happen if they do manage to nuke Israel or New York? Don’t believe we can get that angry? Go ask the Japanese about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If we do it deliberately, instead of in a rush and a rage, it might not be so bad.

        Oh, who am I kidding. It’s gonna be a mess. but if we move FIRST we might preserve something they would otherwise destroy.

        1. Impose “Western standards of justice” on the world? We can’t even impose them on the West any more.

            1. They can go work on intercultural coordination of judicial practices in Southwest Asia and the western uplands of South Asia. After the last one succumbs to the advocates of retaining local traditions (or sees the light and manages to get away), we send in the troopers.

        2. I said once, long ago, that colonialism wasn’t completely horrible and evil, as it had it’s benefits and it’s downsides (The discussion, for some context, talked about how quickly Africa disintigrated back to tribal genocide and other detrimental results; and how similar occurred in areas when the colonial era came to an end for places that didn’t keep it’s Westernization.) Clamps naturally ran around quoting that completely out of context.

          1. Ah, but Colonialism HAS to be all Belgian Congo Heart Of Darkness, because if it wasn’t somebody might take a close look at the history of the Left supporting violent nutters with a nice line in Revolutionary patter. And that in turn might inspire people to examine the Left’s schoolgirl crushes on mass murdering monsters like Stalin and Mao. And that in turn might force the LIRPs to take a cold look at their responsibility for 100 million murders in the 20th century. And their tiny minds and shriveled souls cannot (for the most part *nods to David Horowitz*) deal with the guilt. Their minds would break. And on some level, they know it.

            1. I’ve made several comments that sometimes, I wish they’d made the Philippines State Number 51 of the United States.

              This was back when Estrada was president, and he was the one we revolted against because of his very obvious and very VISIBLE corruption.

              Conversations with my friends back in the old country after the current president was elected? “Shit. We should have let Estrada win a second time. At least then we knew what would happen.”

                    4. Colony? (Holds out right hand, palm parallel to desktop, waggles it gently) I dunno. I think making it a colony would have required sending in a lot more of “our” people as colonists, the way we did it in Hawaii.

                      Call it a protectorate.

                      Geeze — had America been the colonialist empire the proglodytes claim, we’d have at least three more states: the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba. That might make for an interesting alternate history.

                      Oh hell, might as well say it: Fifty-four states. We’d have colonized Japan (we practically did, under MacArthur) after WWI, Part Two*. Heck, was we what they accuse us if being, sole possession of nuclear weapons at the end of that war? Give Germany to the Brits (their monarchy is a German line, after all) after dealing France a sop. Tell Russia to stand down its Army, toot suite, and arrange democratic elections transition governments in Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, the Balkans, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. China gets dismembered, number of pieces TBD but at least five.

                      I ask myself, WWKD? (What Would Kratman Do?)

                      *Perhaps a better title would be The Great War, Two: The Quickening?

                    5. *Perhaps a better title would be The Great War, Two: The Quickening?

                      The Great War Two: Atomic Boogaloo

                    6. “after dealing France a sop.”

                      I was going to ask why we wouldn’t just take France for ourselves, but then, why would we want it?

                    7. I think of it as WWI: Part Two the Sequel.
                      Why keep France? Um, the ski resorts? Give those to the Swiss to run, let the Bretons and folks of the Languedoc do their thing, and build a nice protective wall around the Il du Paris so no one can possibly attack it ever again.

              2. the first principle of conservatism: things can always go worse.

                I always wonder why it isn’t common knowledge.

    2. The problem with calling you a bigot is a bigot ‘unfairly’ dislikes another group. IMHO, Islam has quite a few reasons to dislike them both fair and logical. Strapping bombs on children comes to mind as one of my personal dislikes.

          1. Well, that, and Sharia law is fundamentally incompatible with Western civilization. Y’know, the parts of the world which doesn’t think a woman who has been raped should be executed… because that’s ‘adultery’ or ‘dishonor.’

              1. I think it is also ‘shame’ versus ‘guilt’. To us, it isn’t the woman that is guilty of forcing their will on another but to them, since the man got away with it and the woman will not properly bleed on the sheets on her wedding night, she gets the blame.

            2. I think it is funny to point out how honor killing can be understood as serving a collectivist feminist agenda.

            3. Sharia law, at least so,far as can be shown, is not compatable with a technological civilization. It needs constant infusions of technology and expertise from outside of sharia law to function.

              One of many reasons I favor continuing to import oil from the middle east; the sooner we drain the sillly sonsofbitches, the sooner we can let them rot.

        2. I don’t have a problem with EVERYTHING under Sharia law, just most of it. For example, I would have no problem whatsoever with the penalty for thieving to be having your hand cut off.

      2. I am totally a bigot. Against recreational drug use. My distaste for that choice of action goes well beyond the rational and measured. At least for certain substances.

    3. It isn’t just bigotry they accuse. It is Racism, which is about as stupid as all their other tirades, but that is the leftoids for ya. They actually think a religion is a race? That is about as stupid as they come.

      1. It seems to be, for them, that Race = culture = religion. There are people who simply cannot separate them. They go equally blank when a white guy says he’s a devout Buddhist as when an Arabian looking individual sports a cross. The later is more likely to result in apoplexy when the blankness ends, which is, interestingly, a different end of the same problem. To them it seems to be like listening to people suggesting that they casually detach body parts and put them to uses other than their intended. They don’t seem to realize that people can be internally diverse, and not between people but inside their own heads. They don’t think people have ‘parts’ but are solid fused wholes like chunks of obsidian. No internal variation.

            1. The alternative to that is get off the internet. Definitely a possibility given how far out in the country I just moved… but eh. I shall support the wordpress patriarchy and check the box so I can get things in my inbox and phone (at least until they hook up my internet at the new place.)

          1. Eh. We say that a lot, but the kinds of blank looks I’ve seen are the kind you get when you suggest the blue sky is green. Water is, in fact, dry. Their dog is actually a chimpanzee. That sort of thing. It is a level of bafflement usually reserved for violations of the laws of physics rather than violations of psychological fashion.

        3. This is why they experience difficulties approaching brain seizure when tasked to describe an English or Jamaican Negro — or any other melanin-endowed person without American ancestry.

          For that matter, the melanin-challenged who were born in Cape Town fluster them.

          Poor things, they try so hard to get with the program.

          1. For that matter, the melanin-challenged who were born in Cape Town fluster them.

            Not sure of birthplaces, but given that both are from South Africa (IIRC), I now have a vision of getting Kim du Toit and Peter Grant on opposite sides of a group of them, doing a tag-team takedown.

            1. Dave Freer can do clean up and take any that attempt to escape.

              Ever notice that this group tends to attract people from certain geographies?

        4. And for some real head-turning, when Something Happens and, say, a cop shoots someone in a not obviously bad situation… they open up with something like “Muslim teen shot!”

          And somewhere in the story there will be a picture of a guy who looks pretty Generic American. (Real life America, that is– tan colored with dark brown-to-black hair. Can be anything from Irish and Italian through Spanish or South American into Arabic and, of course, Heinz 57 or “yes.”)

          Don’t get me started on when they assume a background for you that you don’t actually possess…and then refuse to adjust to reality. (I think I mentioned the Italian friend who cannot get people to stop speaking Spanish to them?)

          1. We had a troll at Chicagoboyz just the other day who assumed that I was the most ghastly awful racist because I described our current president as being “slightly permanently-tanned golfer”. This being an expression used by a couple of friends of mine of color in my Air Force days.
            The post where I used the expression was actually about the disinclination of just about everybody save bloggers, Pam Geller and a bunch of veteran motor-bikers to uphold the concept of freedom of speech. (I made fun of the troll until he went away…)
            This kind of cr*p does get wearing, after a bit. After a while, you feel like working up a fake KKK member card and sneering, “Yeah – and what do you want to make of it?”

            1. I’m not racist, I simply can’t stand idiots. If you think that makes me racist then it is you wearing the sheet, not me.

            2. I’d love to look one of those folks in the eye and growl, “I’m a Celtic Supremacist and a member of the Indo-Arian Nation. We OWNED Europe for ten thousand years through terror and fire. Now bugger off.”

              Hmmmm. Maybe I should get a shirt made with a reproduction of a fibula on it and the slogan “Halstatt Forever!”

            3. I would…. but I’m not independently wealthy, and the first thing they would do is dox me, and then call my employer. Since any explanation, including none, would be further proof I wasn’t On Board, I’d get fired.

              1. In which case you could sue for wrongful termination, due to being fired for discriminating against KKK members.

      2. Oh, yes. Though some if called racist for it actually manage to realize that they are the racist ones.

    4. “Frankly, if disliking Islam because in Islam, gays are hanged, a woman is worth so much less than a man, and that non-Muslims are second class citizens is bigotry… ”

      I’m a bigot.

    5. I had one of these belaboring me in my comments yesterday.

      http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2015/05/hugo-awards-ms-marvel-volume-1-no-normal.html

      I didn’t have much use for Ms. Marvel from the Hugo graphic novel packet. (Or any of the rest of them, OMG they’re porn!) Its SJW checkbox crap, IMHO. This Christopher Souza guy is trying to make it because I’m a racist.

      Its not because I’m a racist, its because I can’t stand liberals/SJWs. Liberals are the True Enemy of Life.

      1. If Aquaman doesn’t get a pass on being the Lamest. Superhero. Ever just because he doesn’t celebrate Ramadan or have girly-bits, neither should dreck featuring those who do.

        Fair’s fair 🙂

      2. That might be the same Chris from TL Knighton’s comments yelling at me that I’m a bigot. My problem with Kamala and the portrayal of her family is, given her disobedience and desire to become a hero, vis a vis the link about honor killing I gave, even if her parents did not decide to kill her, her increasingly fundamentalized brother is likely to. Instead, that Chris person was pointing at the straw arguments where he claimed that “I” was upset about Kamala being a willful girl, and ‘thought’ that there ‘should’ be no Muslim heroines, or that willful girls don’t exist in Muslim families.

        Nope, ignore that reality that even in America, in sufficiently traditional Muslim households, as well as in other Western countries, willful girls who are seen as dishonoring their families with disobedience and persist in doing so are honor-killed.

        But since the writer is herself a Muslim convert… well, expect sudden portrayals of forgiveness, mercy and being proud of the girl that work if the family were more Westernized (thus absorbing the more Judeo-Christian values of acceptance and forgiveness!) than traditional Muslim.

        You know what would have been more interesting and better?

        Portraying Muslim Arab superheroes in the Middle East. How WOULD superheroes realistically live in the norms of strict Muslim society in say, Saudi Arabia, in the universe that has superheroes globally as well as intergalactically. Would female superheroes be required to have a male relative accompany them on their superheroing, or would a male handler work? Would they have to allow their male team-mates to breastfeed milk directly from their own breasts to make them ‘milk mothers’ to their male team-mates (that’s a real thing, go look) or something? Would they have problems with the Imams, or would the Wahhabi religious authorities give superheroes of both genders special dispensations, or would they run afoul of the Koran and Hadiths and Sharia? Who would they battle?

        That would have made it more presentational of true Muslim culture.

        1. There have traditionally been some religious and cultural ways of getting around some of this stuff, but a lot of them have been literally killed off by Wahhabism. For example, not too many female imams or religious scholars these days, except in the waybacks of China or in Iran’s big holy city. But that used to be a thing in places and in Shi’ite areas.

          But yeah, Sunni Pakistanis have some particularly toxic things going on, particularly depending on which tribal background folks have, and the comic seems to be hiding from that. (Not to mention that shared legacy of riot and massacre right after the partition of India and Pakistan.) And Pakistan’s creepy, Taliban-loving intelligence service has been known to throw in ever more fun.

          Of course, the paradox is that there are some really wonderful Pakistani folks over here; but the unspoken truth is that they came over to the US to get away from a lot of stuff going on back home.

            1. In very deed. Much badthink. (My deamon hunter story has quite a bit of that as well.) I haven’t decided if she’s Arabic or Persian (Iran or some other country) but a very formerly Muslim woman superhero who is the only one who still actually wears a mask. Why? So her family, particularly her sisters, aren’t subjected to abuse for her actions (and she’s actively trying to get them out but isn’t quite ready to just kidnap them yet, though she’s probably going to get pushed that way). Her arch enemy? Her radical fundamentalist brother who is also has super powers. (Scary thought. ISIS with super powers.)

              1. I’d lean toward Persian. Shia Islam has always had a more forward-looking take on the world, with a greater emphasis on education and individual spiritual gifts (prior to 1979, I should add), and a positive distrust of governments (prior to 1979, and even lingering to today). Women also had more room within society (prior to 1979).

                1. That’s what I was thinking though they have their own nuttiness… do not be a Sunni in range of a Shia on the anniversary of Mohamed’s death. Bad day bad juju beans.

                  Have you good references. I haven’t been sure what I can actually trust in the book stores around here. The available materiel seems a little schizophrenic on the subject so most of what I’m going on is what I saw in country.

                  1. Let me poke around a little. Most of the Red family collection focuses on the first 200 years or so of Islam. To start, you might look at Garthwait _The Persians_ and Viorst _The Shadow of the Prophet_, just the appropriate chapters in Viorst.

              2. Been done; look at the Wearing the Cape Series, especially book 1. The Caliphate terrorist group and Seif al-Din will look very familiar.

                1. Thanks for the information. 🙂 I’m actually not surprised it’s been done. If it has been thought of, most of the time it has been thought of before.

                  1. Just because it’s been done doesn’t mean your approach or presentation will be the same. It’s good to play around.

                    Shia Islam would be easier, yes; Sunni / Wahhabist would be harder for the hero/ine/s.

                    …and Clamps detected at Brad’s again. e_e

                    1. Oh, I have every intention of writing that story. I even have a world it will fit neatly into.

                      Yeah… the Wahhabis I have seen are rather nuts. Actually seen: Politely announce to the soldier escorting you from one part of detention center to another that you are going to attack another prisoner who is doing nothing but standing there and apparently wearing some physical sign of being non-Wahhabi. Soldier warns of inevitable consequences of such an action. Guy does it anyway and gets, as warned, dog piled. (And craziest of all, seems good with this! ‘Do what you must I understand’ was the direct quote.) The more I hear, the more I conclude this is normal for that sect.

                      For clamps… is it bad that I want to make him the guy in the story who thinks he’s a superhero but just shows up for comic relief?

                    2. I would suggest making Clamps a Joe Buckley-style running gag, but I recognise he’d probably think it a badge of honour.

                    3. Which is why I hesitate… the sad thing is I’d most likely to tone him down to make him believable on a story level which is great irony in a story with superpowers.

                    4. Give him a completely useless power like “turning himself green”. [Evil Grin]

                    6. No, not bad at all. After all, writers have been known to base characters off of people they know, or aspects of such.

                      Besides, Clamps likes to rip off quotes wholesale and use them thinking that it makes him sound very smart, regardless of whether or not the quote makes any sense at all.

                      Oh Chris Chupik has some wonderful news over here:

                      https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/sheepdog-staring-at-the-horizon/#comment-13620

                    8. @RES – We tried at one point to try make him into a believable villain, but nothing made sense, not even when we tried making a Joker type psycho, because the Joker makes some sense, and Yama is pretty much a tantrum-throwing hamster that eats its’ young and then gets upset that there’s a mess.

                    9. Which is why I think comic relief is about the only way to portray him. He has no super powers (Unless you count ‘being irritating’) but getting him to go away requires methods that the superhero types aren’t willing to go to so they have to keep squishing him. (I see him getting left on the tops of several buildings so he doesn’t have cars landed on him during fights. Or worse, accidentally get cars flung at heroes who aren’t looking that way because there’s more than one bad guy.)

                    11. That wouldn’t be the proper approach; rather, he is somebody with delusions of super-villainy whose schemes are always overly complex for too meagre rewards. Rather than simply snatch the lollipop and run he’s forever developing Rube Goldbergian plans for distracting Nursey with a marching band (which he expands to a four float parade, with clowns and elephants, which he invariably sends down the wrong street), so he can fool Baby with a faux candy pop (which all and sundry know is the one he will wind up with) and escaping via three cross-town busses, a taxicab, a Central Park horse & buggy and a swim across the East River.

                      He’s the 3-walnuts guy who can’t keep up with where he’s hidden the pea.

                      He thinks he’s Bugs Bunny when he’s actually Daffy Duck.

                      He is Despicable Me>\‘s Gru without the likability.

                    15. I hadn’t seen your reply, RES, before making mine. I like this idea! He survives on sheer luck… or perhaps aforementioned other villians using him as a distraction.

                    17. Sorry, he’s Wile E Coyote: He thinks he’s a Super-Genius, Observers beg to differ.

                    18. Make him a powerless wimp dealing with villains with Real Superpowers. [Evil Grin]

                      Mind you, the problem would be keeping him alive. [Very Big Evil Grin]

                    19. The villians use him as a constant distraction and irritant upon the heroes therefore stroke his ego, wind him up, and point him in the right general direction? It might explain why he keeps turning up.

                    20. Yes! He’s the distraction the villains use to advance their schemes. Because he is so ineffectual and harmless the Heroes exercise extra care to avoid hurting him — care which he interprets as proof they’re afraid of him.

          1. What is their stance on formula?

            Asking implies that I give a fraction of a hoot, but I cannot resist:

            1. Oops – with the benefit of the higher contrast that follows posting of a comment, I perceive that in my (what I now perceive as hasty) rearrangement of sentences in the above post I failed to change the punctuation of the (formerly) first sentence to a period.

              I apologise for inadvertently showing the Huns my colon.

  2. A lot of that stuff goes back to the “magical thinking” that has been promulgated in school and popular culture. This has been deliberately done by the powers-that-be to create an easily distracted populace that is easier to control.

    Just look at the current situation – Islamic extremism, a combative Russia and China, and a severely out-of-control federal bureaucracy are problems that should not be ignored, but yet the big story in all press organizations is Bruce Jenner.

              2. It was so badly ‘shopped that I thought they had done one of those jobs where you take one person’s face and paste it on another person’s body.

          2. How about “Oh yeah, that tranny the media has chosen to turn into a cause celeb.” That Jenner.
            Got nothing against gays, or trannies, kind of like lesbians. May have been one in a previous life. But this incessant over the top in your face promotion of what I was raised to believe should be a personal and private issue has segued past boring and well into annoying for me. Feel the same about that whole pack of Karwhosians everybody is always going on about.

            1. The man is insane, but let him point out he is still a Republican and they’ll start ignoring him again … well, they will after they slander the #e!! out of him

              1. The poor guy spent years with a hive of fame whores. That can’t be healthy, psychologically.

            2. Over at National Review Online’s gangblog, The Corner, David French has a trenchant comment on the awarding of ESPN’s ESPY Courage Award to Jenner and some of the people who ESPN deemed less praiseworthy, such as Lauren Hill or Noah Galloway (pictured).

              French concludes:
              Caitlyn Jenner showed “Hollywood courage,” defined as an action that is guaranteed to win the thunderous applause of the cultural elite — and gain fame and fortune — while earning the disapproval of a distant social conservative culture that coastal liberals rarely encounter and can’t begin to understand. Noah Galloway, by contrast, sacrificed his body for his country – defending the ESPN’s right to make its pitiful cultural statements – then showed perseverance through pain that we can scarcely comprehend. But whatever. He has to marry Caitlyn Jenner for ESPN to care.
              nationalreview[DOT]com/corner/419254/yes-espn-did-pick-caitlyn-jenner-ahead-iraq-war-vet-and-amputee-noah-galloway-espy

              Only William (John Adams) Daniels can properly express my dismissal of such values as ESPN deems “courageous.”

              1. Any man living in complete luxury and security who chooses to write a play or a novel which causes a flutter and exchange of compliments in Chelsea and Chiswick and a faint thrill in Streatham and Surbiton, is described as “daring,” though nobody on earth knows what danger it is that he dares. I speak, of course, of terrestrial dangers; or the only sort of dangers he believes in. To be extravagantly flattered by everybody he considers enlightened, and rather feebly rebuked by everybody he considers dated and dead, does not seem so appalling a peril that a man should be stared at as a heroic warrior and militant martyr because he has had the strength to endure it.

                ― G.K. Chesterton

      2. I have to confess, my first thought at The Reveal was nothing of sociological, political or moral import, but “why the hell does any adult want to be named ‘Caitlyn’?”

        1. I automatically translate any of the umpteen misspelled variants of that name as “Hey You!” even though it’s usually not the bearer’s fault.

          For some people… the only explanation for their names is that their parents hated them and wanted them to suffer.

        2. Jenner’s transformation was truly groundbreaking… in becoming Caitlyn, Bruce not only became a female, but a tween.

        3. I’m apparently missing something about the name ‘Caitlyn’. What was wrong with the name ‘Caitlyn’ before some guy I didn’t give a flip about decided he wanted to be called, that?

          The only Caitlyn (other than a Dalmatian my Aunt used to own) I’ve ever known is a really nice girl. (well, adult, she is 24-25)

          1. I think it’s just not a name you’d expect a 65 year old to choose for herself.

            1. Wrong gender descriptive. Despite claiming he’s female, he still is and always will be a male, now surgically mutilated into a man with boobs.

                1. Phew! Now at the end of this comment thread – and everyone had the decency to *not* post a picture.

                  Thank you all. I was already beyond bleach, considering nitric acid…

    2. Been mulling over a post, but don’t really have the time… if anybody wants to run with it, before I manage:
      That whole “school shouldn’t teach you what to think, it should teach you HOW to think” is a large part of the problem.
      How many times have we laid out a mathmatically simple chain of logic, and folks ignore it because they’ve been taught to think in stories or by emotion?
      Not things where they disagree on facts, or the A=>B=>C logic, they just ignore or insist it’s wrong, because.

    3. Funniest (and most frightening) comment on this twaddle I’ve yet read:

      Progressives are trying to set up a social interaction Kobayashi Maru in which no matter what you do, you end up offending someone who can now review your interaction under their new IRS tax code of greeting etiquette and audit you for an act of intolerance for using a pronoun somebody doesn’t prefer.
      Jim Geraghty,
      http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/419255/big-questions-flow-jenners-big-change-jim-geraghty

      1. A few further down treats:

        Among some Americans in 2015, the urge to play Sensitivity Police and throw someone into Social Media Jail is overwhelming, and steamrolls over logic, consistency, and good faith.

        We fuddy-duddies thought that gender was pretty much a matter of whether you had an “innie” or an “outie” in the non-belly-button sense. There’s now a concerted effort to say it’s defined by how you feel. The old system had the problem or perceived injustice of defining people by a gender contrary to how they felt; the proposed new system of 51 or so separate genders is going to require us to make giant, sweeping changes throughout society.

        Think about all the ways we’re divided by gender in society: Bathrooms. Locker rooms. Professional athletic leagues. Olympic sports. Scholarships. Universities. Title IX sports programs!

        If a company’s management consists entirely of men and transgendered, are women represented? (The highest paid woman CEO in America . . . was born a man.) Can a transgendered man reassigned as a female who owns a business qualify as a female-owned business for Federal purposes? How about someone who identifies as “transfluid”? If not, who is the federal government to tell these individuals that they’re not really as female as they feel?

        Can a male student who identifies as a woman attend a women’s college? (Answer: In some cases, yes!) Can that student compete on a woman’s sports team? Can a man who self-identifies as a woman compete in the WNBA?

        Hillary Clinton wanted to host a women-only fundraising event. Would she have excluded transwomen? How about a “genderfluid” individual who felt feminine that day?

        What entrance do transwomen use at a mosque?

        What percentage of women believe that transwomen should be able to use every corner of our society that is traditionally and/or legally set aside for women? I’m sure some women think all transwomen should go to every women-only space. I’m also sure some women don’t, and they’re going to complain that some biological men are stepping into realms in which they don’t belong. When the biological-women-only-feminists and the transgender activists clash . . . the trigger words are going to fly. There won’t be enough safe spaces.

        2. My attitude towards trans* individuals is that they’re whatever they say they are as long as they’re consistent. If they change every day they’re after attention. If they live and act as whatever they say they are then why should it matter what they’re packing as long as they don’t try to show it to me? I do have very strong opinions about their involvement in athletic activities where they have separate leagues for men and women, though that’s mostly because whatever a person starts with is going to give them a distinct disadvantage or advantage no matter where the end up.

          As for whether they’d count for events or awards based on gender, I go with what The Fine Young Capitalists decided upon with their game design contest for women which was if you identified as a woman before the contest was announced then you were a woman. Which of course got them accused of trans*phobia, but it struck me as a remarkable fair way of handling things.

          1. Bruce Jenner is too old to be competitive in Men’s track and field now, but I wonder if “Caitlyn’ Jenner might still be capable of breaking some records in Women’s events… What would people say about Citizen Jenner’s gender then?

            1. Just a reminder of what Citizen Jenner accomplished 39 years ago:

              There is no way I’d watch a Kardacian reality show or Jenner playing dress up… but if the show started with ‘Caitlyn’ getting up at 4AM to eat a big bowl of Wheaties and then go to the track to start training for the 1500m, I would at least regret not seeing it.

        3. “What entrance do transwomen use at a mosque?”

          Their only function at a mosque will be to serve as hanging art. It’s a sign of the crazy they refuse to admit this.

      2. Progressives are trying to set up a social interaction Kobayashi Maru in which no matter what you do, you end up offending someone who can now review your interaction under their new IRS tax code of greeting etiquette and audit you for an act of intolerance for using a pronoun somebody doesn’t prefer.

        Pretty much. It’s already unwinnable – just watch the social justice bullies eat their own. Hell, just look at Communism and Socialism.

        1. More like the only way to win is to hack the simulation up with a machete,

    5. This has been deliberately done by the powers-that-be to create an easily distracted populace that is easier to control.

      Yep. Here’s another example of that symptom.

      http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/06/03/renowned-author-calls-out-randi-harpers-amazon-trolling/

      I find somewhat more interesting that Jenner came out as Republican at the same time but am very amused at how quickly that was ignored over the sex change operation.

    1. I remember the first time I read that powerful poem — which hangs on my home office wall — and in my head substituted the ‘copybook’ by ‘balance sheet’. Not what Kipling meant, but it works just as well. Kipling meeting Tom Godwin, if you like.

      1. Been at least a week since someone posted them here:
        As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
        I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
        Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
        And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

        We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
        That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
        But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
        So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
        We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
        Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place.
        But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
        That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

        With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch
        They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch
        They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
        So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

        When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
        They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
        But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
        And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

        On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
        (Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
        Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
        And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

        In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
        By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
        But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
        And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

        Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
        And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
        That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
        And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

        As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
        There are only four things certain since Social Progress began —
        That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
        And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire—

        And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
        When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins
        As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn
        The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
        – See more at: http://doctorspiller.com/Rudyard_Kipling.htm#sthash.nfkPXyw0.dpuf

        1. Utterly tangential observation but the rhyme in the second stanza relies on pronouning Rome closer to Rum. Interestingly this is also close to the Arabic pronunciation of Rome. In fact, after the fall of Constantinople Mehmed II took the title Kayser-i Rum or Caesar of the Romans.

        2. If Sarah ever redecorates around here (hey, after two houses, the blog should be easy!) maybe she should just make that poem part of the sidebar, we quote it so often.

            1. Hopefully, I won’t be banned or carped for this, but I’ve never thought highly of Kipling’s work, I consider him somewhat of a pompous-*ss. Now, of course, YMMV.

              1. Different str— er, let me try again. One man’s meat is another man’s poison. Or as my family says, “To each their own said the old woman as she kissed the cow.”

                Aw crud. That is so going to be misinterpreted. *sigh*

                    3. The problem with zig-zag is that too often you should zag-zig. [Evil Grin]

                  1. Not if she’s ordering like a buddy of mine did: ”Wipe it’s ass, trot it past the grill, and bring that sucker out here.”

                    Look on waitress face” Priceless.

                    1. I usually tell the waiter/waitress “Walk the cow past the fire and I’ll rip off the piece I want.”

                3. Eh, if you hadn’t wrote the first sentence you would have been fine. As it was, that, er, colored the interpretation of the rest of your comment. Which is probably why skimming it in a hurry I read the second “man” in your post as “woman”.

                  2. I’ve tried not to mention that I don’t like cats

                    They are kind of stringy, but there’s an old Army trick… put enough hot sauce on it and practically anything is edible.

                    Uh oh, did I say that out loud?

        3. So very true, and we as a people keep not understanding this. It just keeps repeating. Depressing.

  4. I had the “delightful” experience of having a manager who displaced domestic trouble onto his co-workers. I did not realize that was what was going on until one day when I followed his instructions precisely, gathered additional pertinent information, and saw him glance at it and toss everything into the trash, then told me to go do janitorial chores. (Which was part of my job, but NOT when I was wearing a business suit and in between flights.) At that point I quit caring about anything he requested/ordered/demanded.

    And the exact same story applies to my experiences with the self-proclaimed activists. Once I was a member of the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Now I give to the local shoe-string-budget wildlife refuge and help a place that does big-cat rescue.

    1. With local charities you can keep track of what they’re doing. Big charities, not so much. Plus, they need to pay their executives huge amounts to manage all that money, and hold galas and fundraisers for the big donors….

      I work with the local Boy Scout troop. The kids who join, we, the adults who’ve been doing it for years, can help and mentor.

    2. Our CU CEO had some ‘issues’ with her younger son being a cocaine addict. Depending on his behavior the night before, she could be personable, or take it out on the employees. They developed a code Patty-A was the good one and Patty-B was the bad.
      World Wildlife Conservation was the one that finally irritated my Mother. She said they weren’t interested in protecting nature for our enjoyment, but locking humans out completely.

      1. As Eric Hoffer observed:
        ‘Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.’

      2. “She said they weren’t interested in protecting nature for our enjoyment, but locking humans out completely.”

        Pretty much what all self-proclaimed ‘conservation’ groups, with the exception of those with the prefix ‘sportsman’ desire. I have posited that their theology must believe that humans are an extraterrestrial life form, since they always conclude humans are not a part of nature.

        1. It is only humans that alter nature with their artifacts.

          Well, termites build mounds, buffalo & elephants wallow and beavers dam, but that’s missing the point.

          1. I believe RAH covered this extensively. And I would follow his advice on pity and contempt for them, but they keep using the law to steal my money.

        2. She taught me, take only your memories (and photographs) leave only your footprints. Once we started overnight hiking she added, “You pack it in, you pack it out.”

    3. The one manager that I got along with the worst – and as soon as I walked into the place, everyone looked at me and predicted that I would not get along with him – had an ex-wife who looked very much like me. Yep – all of his anger at his ex-wife got displaced onto me.

      Of course, the ex-wife was not entirely blameless: the rumor was that he had gone home for lunch unexpectedly one day, and discovered his wife and his supervisor doing it doggy-style in the middle of the living room. Needless to say, that particular unit was resoundingly messed-up for a long while afterwards.

    3. A newbie here 🙂 When Sarah did a “calling all stations” for guest posts during the house pre-sale prep, I offered this subject and was taken up on it. What you are seeing is, however, the unedited raw text rather than the somewhat edited version I emailed later — perhaps that can be fixed.

          1. NP. Sorry I didn’t find it last night. I was painting walls all day, then did some fixes on Through Fire and by the end of that my eyes were crossing.

            1. I see you’re following your doctor’s orders to the letter.
              And that letter would be an “F” you naughty portagee you.

          2. I got here early enough to read the original and just now, the edited version. The first one was fine, but I understand the concern when posting to a site that has a bunch of writers reading your stuff.

  6. Good post. It’s quite true that failing managers often focus on some relatively trivial issue; also, failing managers often attempt to expand their organizational sphere…in a few cases, this is actually justified, it may indeed be the case that the VP of Sales also needs to control Sales Technical Support to do his job properly…but in most cases, it’s simply empire-building in the hope that the expansion to new responsibilities will somehow minimize the failure to do the existing responsibilities properly.

                1. +100 to geek points. Or nerd. Whichever you prefer =D

                  @Bruce – … “Can you make us go?” (Sorry, I live with a Star Trek nerd. That line refers to a race that the Borg refused to assimilate because it was of no benefit to them to do so…)

                  1. There was a “Paklutus of Borg” bit on one of the Usenet groups for Star Trek some decades ago. 😉

                  2. -laugh-
                    Is this when I admit that I bought the fasa ship recognition guides *just* because I liked the art? Never had a chance to use them in a game. (plus I used them to help design my own ships for something unrelated.)
                    I use to be a die-hard Trekker, had the behind the scene books by Whitfield and Gerrold, and a shelf full of the novels. Still have several of them, but gave up collecting when I read the _third_ version of how Sarak and Amanda met. –sigh-

            1. Then you probably don’t want the D7C, although it is considerably harder to stop than the winged iteration Boeing produced.

        1. I thought DeLoreans made better time machines due to the stainless steel body. Wouldn’t you have to gold plate the Vette to get the proper surface potential?

  10. From the OP:
    “Hmm, lemme see, who is the bigger ‘homophobe’: somebody who refuses to bake a wedding cake for Adam and Steve — or who actually makes custom wedding rings for Eva and Sylvia but has the temerity to display a poster asserting his personal belief in traditional marriage”

    They don’t distinguish between the two. Both should either be 1) made to participate or 2) not exist. Not exist as a business, I mean.

    … and the OP continued:
    ” — or would that be those who hang “the people of Lot” from cranes (Iran), throw them from buildings (ISIS), or crush them under toppled walls (Taliban)?”

    Come on, this is something a good solid twitter campaign can solve. Well, that and appropriate blocking software. Then you never have to be troubled by such headlines again!

    (Okay, yes, I’m too cynical today.)

    1. I found that business with the jeweler to be the most objectionable. The jeweler made the rings to the clients’ order, refused them nothing, met all the conditions of the transaction, but because they held a personal belief the clients didn’t like they cancelled the deal. Seems the thought police are now with us. We cannot simply cooperate, we must now at least represent an air of acceptance for any behavior that the fringe promotes.
      As for the atrocities being committed by Islam under Sharia, proof to me that true evil exists in this world. And it will continue until good men decide to end it.
      Islam Delenda Est.

      1. Which goes to show that making those who disagree compliantly participate is not their goal at all, it is the total conscription into the belief system they are demanding and those who do not will be eliminated with prejudice.
        Gee, who else does that sound like?

      3. That’s the one that totally frosted any last respect I had for the gay “rights” activists. Not for people who are gay or whatever, for the movement and the “leaders” pushing it onto the rest of us. What consenting adults do in private on their own time is between them and their deity of choice.

        1. I firmly believe that the end game desired by said “leaders” pushing the gay marriage agenda is anyone who attends a Christian church that doesn’t approve of gay marriages to be unable to adopt children with the excuse of they are members of a “hate group that seeks to deny civil rights to homosexuals” or some such bs.

          1. No, the end game is that they are unfit to raise children. That will give them more children to have adopted by others.

          2. I read yesterday about a court case proceeding in NJ about the SPLC (a dozen lawyers of their own plus another dozen or so “white-shoe” pro bono lawyers) suing a small Jewish non-profit (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Healing, or JONAH) for offering therapy for gays who wish to be straight. Even though all recipients of therapy sign explicit waivers acknowledging the status if such therapy the Southern Poverty Law Center is suing JONAH under consumer fraud statutes.

            While I cannot lay my cursor alongside the article I read, [searchengine] turns up a bunch of SPLC promos and this Breitbart item:

            POWERFUL LEFTIST GROUP SUES TO CLOSE JEWISH COUNSELING SERVICE FOR GAYS
            by AUSTIN RUSE29 May 20150
            Jury selection begins today in a trial that pits a $340 million left-wing group against a small Jewish non-profit. The result could be the closing of all counseling services in New Jersey that aim to help those with unwanted same-sex desires.
            [SNIP]
            SPLC is now claiming that JONAH made promises that do not comport with scientific findings about the permanence and changeability of homosexuality and that the treatment they underwent was odd. SPLC also claims that homosexual desires do not need to be “cured” and that it’s impossible anyway. All this adds up to consumer fraud, according to the suit that has been going on since 2012.
            [SNIP]
            Representing JONAH is Charles Limandri of the non-profit Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund. He told Breitbart News that no non-profit has ever been sued under the New Jersey Consumer Protection Act primarily because non-profits do not make money. The Consumer Protection Act was created to go after shysters getting rich defrauding unwitting customers in the marketplace.

            Limandri calls it “a contrived lawsuit put on by gay activists” in order to punish their political opponents.

            Moreover, he said JOHAH is entirely voluntary and has no money to speak of. Even so, if JONAH loses, it would be on the hook for all legal expenses of the plaintiffs, which, according to Limandri, are north of $4 million.
            [SNIP]
            Limandri and JONAH did seek a summary judgment based on their assertion that homosexuality can be changed and therefore helping someone work to overcome it cannot be fraud, even if it fails. The Judge refused and discovery dragged on at ever mounting legal fees, which, to Limandri, was the point of SPLC’s “law-fare” suit. SPLC is very rich and JONAH is desperately poor.
            [SNIP]
            The Judge is not allowing a raft of expert witnesses from JONAH–including major figures from psychiatry–because they intended to testify that homosexuality is a “mental disorder.” The American Psychological Association took homosexuality out of its diagnostic manual in 1973 and even though many noted psychiatrists still treat it as such, the Judge ruled that science has settled the matter and no evidence contrary to that can be submitted.
            [SNIP]
            The stakes couldn’t be higher for Arthur Goldberg and JONAH. They could be on the hook for an amount of money they can never pay off, and in that way, SPLC has already won simply by bringing the suit. The prospect of lengthy and very expensive litigation is enough to scare some out of the practice altogether.

            1. “SPLC also claims that homosexual desires do not need to be “cured” and that it’s impossible anyway.”

              Maybe JONAH should subpoena Deblasio’s wife.

            2. One one hand, JONAH’s therapy methods sound utterly bizarre, unhelpful, and dangerous. (Not surprising: psychology in general is still so far from being a science that anyone making claims like they are is probably doing something completely cuckoo.) On the other hand, the plaintiffs and judge are trying to make a much stronger case, one which would equally affect a hypothetical magical therapy that actually worked.

            1. Don’t tell people to do that! I wouldn’t even tell someone I hated to look at pictures from Folsom Street Fair.

                1. PETA wouldn’t dare. Lots of people at Folsom Street Fair who know how to inflict pain…

              2. They had a Gay Pride Parade in Dayton last year. I happened to be taking the bus elsewhere and ended up riding alongside the parade setup right beforehand. Everybody was fully clothed but the signs were often quite rude, or funded by ANSWER.

                Also, it looked like it was all out-of-towners, many from out of state. Our folks of that persuasion were apparently staying home, so the fun must be not very.

  12. I recall that They had been quite able to condemn the Taliban in Afghanistan for forcing women under cover and the destruction of the historic Buddha statues. That is until, after 9-11 when the world actually intervened and the inherent hatred of military actions superseded other concerns.

    To admit that there might be major problems with Islamic extremism or Russia and China would be to admit that their world-view is wrong.

    They were raised to believe that every problem and every kind of social wrong was a combination of the big corporations, the right-wing conservatives, the military industrial complex, old white European male thinking and fundamentalists of the Christian stripe. They were told that if only the West were to embrace and live responsibly with our mother earth and develop true understanding and compassion for the peoples of the world then we would see a great golden age and live happily ever after.

    1. Shortly after 9/11, I had an AO roommate who’d been an artist in NYC.

      Her studio had a great view of at least one of the impact points. Joined up, passionately, even while being a flaming liberal.

      At one point, she interogated me about why we weren’t doing anything about Iraq, and had a New Yorker piece about how horribly the Kurds and Marsh Arabs were being slaughtered. (I think I sent her for a loop because I’m pretty dang quiet, but was also very obviously ideologically her opposite…and liked her, anyways. Plus, I was a dang kid; she had an age waver.)

      She graduated before anything Iraq related, but I often wonder what she thought of it…..

  13. How about the boss that bases his actions and criticisms of his workers totally on his belief of ‘What his boss wants’? Note his belief is not necessarily what his boss really wants, but rather what the thinks the boss wants. I had one such ‘supervisor’. Usually, I just took any real issues to his boss before I mentioned it to him, and that worked fine (as he was also ‘gutless’ [a polite variant from another part of anatomy]).
    One particularly memorable instance was a blistering (to him) scolding of me because I was upset that the Government wanted to use my credit rating to give me a credit card used only for government travel. First it was voluntary, then the usage of the card became “Mandatory”. I repeatedly, and loudly informed all and sundry that any adverse action taken and I would sue, sue, sue. “Why can’t you get along? What is it with you that the principle of the issue is more important than your job?” What was unknown to him is that I actually had a serious discussion with his boss requesting his advice on the card issue. The big boss was off at a Staff meeting when this scolding came, and when his boss returned the told me that he mentioned my position and my planned response to the Station lawyer. The lawyer’s response was “Don’t let him sue, he will win the case.”
    So what is the problem with a boss that doesn’t give a sh*t about his employees, doesn’t give a sh*t about what is fair and right, and only cares about keeping his head in the sand (or lacking sand, within a body cavity)?

    1. “So what is the problem with a boss that doesn’t give a sh*t about his employees, doesn’t give a sh*t about what is fair and right, and only cares about keeping his head in the sand (or lacking sand, within a body cavity)?”

      That’s not a mental problem. That’s pure meanness.

      1. My late-hubby met a few in the electronics field who were just plain mean and corrupt. They would steal hard drives and sell them on the economy… Even when my late-hubby pointed it out and documented it, the boss was allowed to continue. It also meant that the late hubby lost his job at the end of the contract. The boss was given a new contract and went to Germany to be in charge of a bigger project.

  14. Having been at all levels of the workplace — from a temporary manual laborer to the head of a medium sized enterprise — I opine that is is easy, with much justification, to lay all problems on the head of the “boss”.

    I have had bosses that were near homicidal with regard to us employees and near suicidal with regard to their own bosses. And, often, they got promoted, leaving behind carnage that we never recovered from. And then, we underlings got blamed for the carnage.

    My all time worst experience with bosses followed this pattern:

    Me: Boss, if you do that a really, really bad thing will happen. In a series of emails and reports delivered personally to you over a period of months — with notes to read them immediately, I have documented in detail the consequences of making this decision. Don’t do it. Please, don’t do it.

    The Boss does it.

    Boss: I’m calling you in to explain why you failed to inform me of the consequences of my decision.

    Me: But I did. And here’s the proof.

    Boss: Oh, tush. If you had presented your proof in a convincing manner and in a way that would have gotten my attention, of course I would not have made the decision. But you were derelict in not getting my attention, even though I told you to go away many times, so it is all your fault.

    OTOH, from the viewpoint of the Boss, there are a passel of employees who cannot or will not perform their work, no matter how intense the pressure or dire the consequences. And their response to every issue in the workplace is that the Boss is not doing his job. Which is to get them even more money and have them do even less.

    It goes both ways.

      1. They tend not to make such demands of me as my language gets descriptive and profane and, well profanely descriptive without it reaching that point. Once also very loudly.
        Latest was a decision of a bit of chemicals dripped into a guys eye to make up do what caused the drip full time, but wear goggles. When I asked, on several occasions, who came up with this stupid idea because some of the stuff is worse than what got in his eye, and will cause damage if gotten on the skin, I got “I don’t know, but it seems you have a point” … meanwhile the others still are doing that method. I’ve refused. There is a few times I must (acid comes in a drum) but I can stay above any drips.

        Oh well, only a year or so of this … maybe (Hah, right, I’m moving to a bigger version of the Corp)

      2. If you were the boss who wouldn’t listed to the employee the first nine thousand times, the words you should have said were, “Damn, you were right. I screwed up.”

    2. My husband has had that situation happen several times.

      He printed up the emails, with date-stamps, filed reports, sent it up the chain of command, and got it into legal.

      Hasn’t actually fixed any of the problems, yet, but it has kept anyone in his office from being a fall-guy.

  15. “ The cold equations have no mercy on those who ignore reality.”

    The Mainstream News Media, OTOH, are happy to provide air (and print) cover for those who ignore reality for the correct reasons.

  16. One of the greatest travesties perpetuated by higher education, in particular every MBA program I’ve heard of, is their core principle that a good manager can manage anything. Knowledge of specifics is not necessary or even desirable. This may in fact benefit the individual manager in his rise to ever greater compensation and power, but often as not it leaves a swath of failure, destruction, and anger behind them.
    A manager who does not understand what those he manages do is a fool and can be played as such. Where it can still work is when there are trusted assistants who cover said manager’s rear end for him and ensure that work is being accomplished correctly and to plan. But such a situation is almost never an official part of a company structure, but rather a voluntary association. And should any component of that association change, a working process can turn disfunctional literally over night.

    2. If “a good manager can manage anything” then the only logical conclusion is that there are no good managers (by definition.)

      1. At the time I took a couple years off from real work to get my engineering degree, conventional wisdom was to get a STEM BS and follow it up with an MBA. That combination assured you a solid job and quick advancement. Had my doubts at the time, and admit to a certain schaden freude that I seem to have been proven right. I graduated BSE with dual concentrations in Industrial and Systems Engineering, was immediately hired and let my new employer pay for my Masters in Operations Research. Of course that was all going on 30 years ago.

        1. Yep. My company no longer will pay for a MBA. If I wanted to get a masters in ME or any other technical discipline, they will gladly pay for it.

          1. A slight variant from Uncle Lar, look into Computational Operations Research. I’ve taken a few graduate courses and I believe it will be a high demand skill set in the near future.

            1. Operations Research is simply Systems Engineering at the graduate level, and Computational OR is a further specialization. Though when considering modern complex systems it’s almost impossible to analyze them without the use of computer tools. Crunching all that data by hand becomes daunting. So in some regards all OR is computational whether it goes by that name or not.

              1. Makes sense. The courses I took were at William and Mary and were ‘interdisciplinary’ between the Math and Computer Science departments. Remember William and Mary has no Engineering department, but the lead from the Math dept’s PhD is in Industrial Engineering, and the lead from CS simply knows everything.

  17. I no longer care– yep. I treat everyone the same. If they answer I’ll continue to talk to them. If they don’t, I don’t. If they consider me racist because I have a certain skin color, then I consider them bigots for even thinking of skin color as anything more than melanin or lack of–

    I judge more on the body language.

      1. it depends. Apparently my late-hubby was an asshole. I didn’t see that side of him. LOL Even my brothers considered him pretty scary sometimes.

        1. depends on the situation, He didn’t seem to be one because he was not one, but did a good simulation to get folks to do what he wanted/needed, or, as often happens was one who made hard calls folks didn’t like and they decide it is the same.

  18. <i<“The former Mayor of New York was clearly very successful in creating and fostering the financial news agency that bears his name — but appeared to be out of his depth running a city with a population larger than Israel and a metropolitan statistical area population between Rumania and Australia.

    And the people of NYC then went and elected a fool who makes Bloomer look competent … almost

    2. Both are imagined presidential.

      Of course, with the current occupant as benchmark …

          2. !@#$#$% computer
            And far more intelligent than the No.2 man too
            (all the time between these posts was just getting this pc to type.)

        3. Now, now, ya’ll are being too hard on our president. He has a tough job. The constant sun exposure, sand down the shaft, and you know it *has* to hurt every time his face gets smacked with a golf ball. And always being swung around by that angry-sounding dude! You’d think the secret service would be more concerned.

          Seriously, does anyone know the name of our president’s handler?

      1. Not that they produced grade C fiction, but whenever I start to think that RAH or Pournelle’s progressive politician characters are unrealistically evil or foolish I just have to turn on the news and watch De Blasio or his ilk.

  19. Per the OP, has anyone else noted that the US will not act (as in going to court) corruption in the IRS, or VA, or La Migra — but has just launched a major legal action against —- FIFA?

    After all, the IRS might audit you or the VA might deny you medical care or the EPA might seize the pond in your pasture — but FIFA can only refuse to sell you World Cup tickets in Russia.

    1. An important job of the minions is to make sure the circus part of bread and circus has a full time politically correct scandal in the center ring. The main goal is to make sure no one pays attention to the many scandals President Nine Iron is involved in. I believe it wasn’t just Bruce/Caitlyn that had the sex change. Eric Holder had one and came out as Loretta Lynch. Old corrupt department, meet your new corrupt boss.

      1. No, Holder didn’t pass through a transmogrifier to become Lynch. They have a huge supply of these ultra-liberal lawyers (I think there’s a factory in New Haven and another in Boston producing them) and don’t really need to go to such lengths to produce them.

        Their greatest problem is finding the few that are not obviously bat-guano-crazy to appoint as Reasonable Public Faces for the Planters’ Party Mix they use to staff their departments.

    2. FIFA is actually pretty bad, but since it contains many, many melanin-enhanced individuals, as well as the melanin-challenged enjoying the graft and corruption, expect any investigation to stall or be called off as racist.

      Right now the Clue-impaired have a mental image of soccer as that thing white suburban moms do, so it’s fair game.

      1. You are severely underestimating the left if you think this will matter in the slightest. FIFA is filled with men promoting manly sports in misogynistic, sexist, and Title IX-violating ways. Leftist victimhood supersuits are made of tissue paper and easily dissolved so long as the right person is wielding the garden hose. Just ask Sarah Palin. Just ask Clarence Thomas.

      2. You know, your pointing this out seems a bit racist.

        And, as long as white soccer moms vote the right way (oh, and offer their children to the maws of Baal or, as we call it now, the public school system), we’ll leave them out of this.

    3. FIFA cannot refuse to sell me World Cup tickets in Russia, as I am not in the market for such.

      The government’s preferred method of suing itself is (for example) the EPA to fund groups to bring suit to force the government to enact policies the activists (and EPA) desire.

      Any suit by the DOJ to enjoin a branch of the government (e.g., the IRS) would fail on the grounds that the executive branch already possesses the authority to enjoin subsidiary agencies and the courts have no authority to act in internal branch arguments.

  20. Reblogged this on The Arts Mechanical and commented:
    There is a LOT of displacement thinking in leadership today. Unfortunately, as somebody brought up, the Gods of The Copybook Headings will always have their way.
    The gods of the copybook headings by Rudyard Kipling:
    As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all. We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn: But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind, So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind. We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace, Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place. But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome. With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings. So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things. When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: “Stick to the Devil you know.” On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife) Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.” In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.” Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew, And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four— And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more. As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man— There are only four things certain since Social Progress began — That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire— And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return! – See more at: http://doctorspiller.com/Rudyard_Kipling.htm#sthash.nfkPXyw0.Uf5Mr8hr.dpuf

  21. Instead, the new CEO came out with a campaign to… address employee health by encouraging employees to bike to and from work, and providing loaner bikes on bike racks.

    ….how would that even work, unless it was a shop where that was 24/7 and very, very chunked up on when people got their lunch hour(s)? There’d be a run on bikes when people stop to eat, and a glut when they get back.

    You know, exactly like rush hour?

    /sigh

    1. More importantly, have you seen the stats on the frequency of bike-related injuries? Why, just this last weekend our super-stud athlete SecState was forced to turn over critical nuclear arms limitation negotiations to underlings just because he fractured his femur riding in a convey of protective agents!

      Yeah, I, too, was surprised to learn he had a femur. I thought all his bones were surgically removed in Vietnam.

      1. Seattle area– not only do we have hit-and-runs with bicycles that send people to the hospital (not all little old ladies, either, joggers are frequent targets, and that’s just the ones where they try to find the assailant) but we also have suicidal idiots who think their presumed superiority outweighs physics.

        2. You mean like the guy a couple of weeks ago who cut across in front of traffic at night just as the light turned green for the lanes he was crossing to go? I almost didn’t see him in time to stop.

            2. I’ve actually hit someone at night, who ran across the road in front of me, Young man, wearing a hoodie (restricting peripheral vision…) no streetlights, light drizzle, wearing dark clothing.

              He was flipped up over my car, then he picked himself up and ran the rest of the way across the street.

              First words to me, the police, and the ambulance crew? “It was my fault. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

              His parents attempted to sue me. Sigh…

        1. well, they seem to have removed the contents of his skull while leaving it intact….

      3. Pity he can’t act his age. I think he gets off wearing tight spandex shorts. A man of his position should be riding a stationary bike and taking a chauffeured limo for transportation. On the bright side, I guess there is nobody interested in assassinating him, so it isn’t a security risk. You would think after the wind surfing he would have learned his lesson.
        They did remove his bones, but they were replaced with the crushed bones of the little Vietnamese children he and Hanoi Jane caused to be killed.

  22. Pingback: Timely Quote | Head Noises

      1. An outstanding response to a bunch of asses. Earlier today, I was asking myself, “Since you have found all these good writers at ATH, why don’t you visit their blogs?” Now I know why. I don’t think I could deal with a daily dose of that bile they are spewing all over Brad without smashing the keyboard to pieces, or hurling the monitor across the room. Although there was an outbreak of File 770 here the other day, it is a sea of calm sanity compared to the swill Brad is dealing with.
        I think the only solution is to crush the AP, drive them before us and feel joy at the lamentations of Scalzi. Perhaps after a defeat at this year’s Hugos they will STFU for 5 or 6 months.
        To see something I love destroyed by such arrogant assholes is sad. I wish RAH was here with a funny line or two.

          1. “Do we have Clamps sighting?” “Er… yes.” “One that God Himself would be shocked at?” “Nah, just his usual piddling, imperiously waving his tiny little arms and hissy fits.” “Oh well.”

              1. Does he ever claim to be wealthy, live in a big house, etc?

                I’ve had trolls elsewhere make that claim. Maybe he’ll be slightly unique and not do that. Though it’s amusing when they do that while railing against the rich and so on.

                1. He has claimed the opposite actually, which is odd, given that he lived / lives in Marshfield, which is, I am told by people who live there, a ‘rich people suburb.’

                  His deceased father was a lawyer, so…

                  We do know he loves Macs, and those are not cheap.

                  1. I was so pleased to see some of our regular posters jumping in the fray with you. Do these people have a life? or a job? I visit here as much as possible, but sometime I have to miss entire days 😦 because life intervenes.

                    3. Y’know, I actually wonder that at times – What they do for work since they seem to have time for doing nothing but searching out controversy and drama on the Internet, and commenting there, as well as searching out conservative, Libertarian and right-wing sites to comment on. Chris Gerrib, Daveon, Yamamanama / Clamps – they’re part of the troll trio Mary Catelli, Foxfier, Dr. Mauser, John Van Stry and Jordan179 used to encounter on a regular basis back when we were regularly active in Jordan179’s livejournal discussions. I’d run into Daveon and Chris and Yama in random places, and was surprised when I saw them on say, Vox’s blog or John C Wright’s blog – I know Chris and Daveon have commented in MGC, ATH and MHN a few times as well. I’d run into those usernames at random on the Internet, and they were consistent in behavior.

                      And one of the things I always wondered was “Why the hell are they going to the non-Left sites online and constantly bitching at the non-Leftists for NOT being Leftist/acting like Leftists/doing stuff like Leftists would?”

                      Anyway, back when I ran into them in Jordan179’s LJ, they formed a trio of trolls with rather distinct behaviors – Daveon was the ragey, condescending jerkass in approach- always sneering at the conservatives, Yama the incoherent psychopath with free-association mode of vague thought who hates Israel, worshipped Saint Pancake and cheered on the Palestinians on a regular basis, and there was Chris the weasely, goalpost moving dishonest but erudite and civil-seeming ‘debater’ and setter of kafkatraps.

                      LOTS of people would fall for those traps too, because they THINK that because Chris Gerrib sounds all reasonable, he’s approaching the discussion honestly, but over time we realized that he wasn’t and he was subtly manipulative and would constantly ignore answers – often very detailed ones. When directly challenged – he would occasionally irritate Jordan enough that Jordan would – he would take wounded tones and cherry pick through tangled arguments to try portray the angry host as unreasonable. I think I started participating in the blog discussions …around… 2003-2004-2006 era of years (I’m not sure any more of when, but I think I was in college still) and Jordan’s blog was really, really active for discussions for current events, history, ‘what if’ scenarios of both current events and history, and so on. I actually miss those years because oh man, they were vibrant with intelligent discussion that was open to all. It was Yama who started having us friendslock our blogs so he couldn’t harass people for joining in those discussions later on; seeing who was active versus people who lurked.

                      Vox exposes Chris Gerrib as the two faced hypocrite he is in this post:
                      http://t.co/oTEANtrUP4

                      It’s all about the feels – not about the right thing, not about morals, not about rational thought. It’s definitely not about the quality of the books with the antis.

              2. You know, I joke when I call him You Know Who, but like Voldemort, he always seems to know when he’s being spoken about . . .

                2. …even when he’s using a pseudonym.

                  Which kind of ruins the purpose of using a pseudonym. 😀

    1. Thanks for the link! First, anything that has a video of Richard Feynman (my hero) is top notch.

      Second, I clicked through to his review of ‘Gone Home’ (and he was much nicer to it than I would be)… It was kind of my introduction to the gaming version of ‘Why do all new SF books suck?’ The answer, of course, is that the games (and books) aren’t meant to be entertaining, they are meant to be socially enlightening (and very boring). No one ever bothered to ask, but NO. I do not want to be socially enlightened.

  25. Very Off Topic.

    I was thinking of “useless superpowers” to give a certain person and thought of “can’t be permanently killed”.

    However, I remembered one character in the Wearing The Cape universe who has that “superpower” even if he doesn’t act as a superhero or let it be known that he can’t be permanently killed.

    He was the hero of a short lived mystery series (in universe) who somehow became real.

    He can’t be permanently killed as only his author can permanently kill him and his author is dead.

    He became a policeman in Chicago and is currently part of the police force that deals with superhuman crime as we met him when the Main Character was called in to help with a robbery that was obviously done by a super villain (a shape shifter).

    Oh by the way, part of the reason that he hasn’t “come out” about his superpower is that it still hurts when he’s killed and he’s not sure that he could remain a cop if it was known.

    1. Is it so wrong of me to think of Clamps’s super-power being the ability to transform himself into a dog turd? Sure, he can always escape (if only by abandoning his loot because he never has presence of mind to stash it before transforming) and can even reconstitute that portion of himself lost to the pursuing character’s shoe.

    2. I’d seen something similar in the Sic Semper Morituri Ranma/Eva/Lovecraft multicross fanfic.

      The most extreme case of the lot is an OC cursed to survive until just before the end. The cast has figured out that their penultimate step is killing four of their own, and he is one of the volunteers.

      This is largely spoiled by the first bit of the story, and the title translates to something like ‘Thus always we are going to die’.

    3. Well, that and he has the ability of most fictional detectives of being able to pull clues out of thin air.

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