Lee's Blog

In the comments to the previous post, macaroni observes

Maybe Jack is a little afraid of his ability to defeat the “Black Wind” and believes he could win many smaller battles against evil in the future and that it would better serve “mankind” in that way. He just needed something to prod him off his logical thinking. Smile. He who runs away lives to fight another day….. No “Charge of The Light Brigade” for Jack.

That makes sense, but there are three points that argue against it.

First, Glaeken has survived for 15,000 years battling against the Adversary. He isn’t into the “Charge of The Light Brigade”. Granted, he’s telling Jack to act instead of doing it himself, but Jack is his Heir — the one who will take over the defense of the world when he is gone. Glaeken would never tell Jack to charge to his death. He told Jack to perform a physically demanding task that he himself is no longer up to, that’s all. And in fact, as it turns out, there really isn’t any physical danger; the important thing is to keep moving as fast as possible so as to kill the focus of the Black Wind before the mental effect (feelings of depression and futility) is able to stop you.

Second, even if this were a situation where Jack had to leave tens of thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — to die because he had to live to fight another day (which is a situation that Glaeken might really have found himself in), he should have felt regret. Indeed, if he were not a narcissistic sociopath, he would reasonably have been calling Glaeken names because Glaeken ordered him to leave those people to die. This actually happens sometimes with firefighters and the like, I am told — they know that they cannot save people, but it tears them up not to try.

There is no possibility that Jack would react like the firefighters, however. He made that absolutely clear in a previous book, Harbingers, where he stated that, if Vicky and Gia died, he would leave everyone else in the world, including his supposed friends Abe and Julio, and his beloved sister’s children, to die horribly, and that he would not lift a finger to save any of them. Instead, in that book, he sadistically trapped and killed four of the firefighters who were carrying on the fight that he explicitly refused to join.

Third, there is still the fact that Jack called Glaeken a name because Glaeken pointed out that the people that Jack “loves” — in his stunted, narcissistic fashion — will also die if he does nothing.

Think of this in purely realistic terms. Imagine that Glaeken and Jack are in an apartment building late at night, and they observe a man pouring liquid all around the building. Glaeken says that the man is a known arsonist and that the liquid smells like gasoline, so he must be planning to burn the building with everyone sleeping inside. Glaeken tells Jack to stop the man from lighting the gas, because Glaeken is not able to limp down there and stop him in time. Jack says no, trying to save all those people would endanger his own valuable hide. Glaeken says, “Vicky is at a sleepover in this building.”

Is the natural reaction to call Glaeken a bastard for pointing out to him that Vicky is in danger too? Or to thank him for preventing Jack from making a horrible mistake — leaving Vicky to die with all those others?

I would understand Jack’s reaction (not sympathize or agree, but understand) if Glaeken had said, “Some of those who will die are nine-year-old girls just like your Vicky, just as cute, just as well-loved, with just as much potential that will be wiped away through your refusal to save them.” That really would be emotional manipulation, trying to reach whatever fragment of conscience Jack may possess, trying to show him that there is something going on that he “cannot abide in his sight”.

But Glaeken’s statement simply brought to his attention that Vicky and Gia really were in danger. How could that warrant calling him names? Unless, of course, in Jack’s mind, Glaeken’s statement counts as emotional manipulation because it forces him to actually live up to his claim that he loves Vicky and Gia more than life itself. To him, Glaeken’s statement counts as emotional manipulation because he would rather walk away and let all those people die including Vicky and Gia, and after they were dead he would just shrug and say, “Well, that’s not my fault because Glaeken didn’t explicitly warn me that they were in danger, but now that they’re dead, I don’t ever have to lift a finger against the Adversary.”

So, with all due respect to macaroni, no, I don’t think Jack’s actions are explicable by his thinking this is a “Charge of The Light Brigade” situation.

There are times when I really, sincerely, despise Repairman Jack and wonder why I even read the books. Case in point: “By the Sword”.

At the beginning of this book, Jack is “fund-raising” by enticing muggers in Central Park to try to rob him, then incapacitating them and taking their ill-gotten gains, which he will donate to the Little League. As he leaves the park, he sees a thug about to attack an old man, and he decides to intervene because there are certain things that “I will not abide in my sight”, such as beating up a defenseless old man. The old man in question is Glaeken (the Sentinel who’s been defending the Earth and humanity for 15,000 years), so he handily dispatches the thug by himself, but we’re supposed to think that Jack is an honorable person.

Fast forward to a later scene. The sole surviving member of a murderous cult has just invoked the “Black Wind”, which was demonstrated earlier as capable of killing absolutely every living thing within a very wide distance. The earlier usage was in an uninhabited area and only five people died. This time it is in New York City. Jack and Glaeken are watching from the roof of the next building.

Glaeken describes the action of the cloud, says “more than three thousand will die tonight …. Imagine the terror. Imagine the Adversary’s joy. You’ve got to stop that [person].” Jack whines that he can’t just shoot the guy because it’s too far. “Then you’ll have to go over there.” “Swell.” Jack is unenthusiastic because “Jack didn’t feature entering that place and fighting his way to the roof for nothing.”

Well, you know, Glaeken is 15,000 years old. He’s seen quite a lot in that time. He has senses that perhaps the rest of us lack. He says the guy has to be killed to save thousands of lives. Perhaps Jack should listen to him. But no, Jack continues to whine and ask for explanations as the Black Wind grows. Finally Glaeken points out that the Black Wind may last “long enough for the winds to reach Sutton Square and beyond.” Sutton Square is where Jack’s girlfriend lives.

Jack responds, “”You’re a bastard, you know that.”

No, Jack, Glaeken is perfectly justified in calling you names, but not vice-versa. Jack can’t “abide in his sight” an old man being beat up, but he’s perfectly cool with standing by and watching thousands murdered — thousands of defenseless old men and women, helpless children, the pregnant teenage girl that he believes to be in the basement of the building currently being engulfed by the Black Wind. And he calls Glaeken names? If I used that sort of language, I’d call him a lot worse.

In fact, my only criticism of Glaeken is that, if I’d been writing the book, he would have said, “I’m an old man and I’ve fought the Adversary for fifteen thousand long years. I doubt I can stop this Black Wind but I cannot and will not run from it. I will take the sword and try to stop it. You run away, little Heir, and prepare yourself to be the Sentinel after my death, but run far and run fast, because the Adversary will know I’m dead, and he will be looking for you and yours.”

Why should Glaeken even argue with this utterly selfish, utterly useless “Heir” in an attempt to get him to recognize the need to risk — not necessarily lose but merely risk — his own life to save tens or even hundreds of thousands of innocents. Maybe shaming him would do some good, though I doubt it. He’s too selfish to even worry about losing the favor of the most ancient living being in the world. He’s too selfish to think that he should “give back” a bit to a man who has suffered and sacrificed for him and his loved ones for thousands of years.

Unfortunately, I already know the end of Nightworld. Jack survives.

If the people gloating over the Declaration of Dependence actually live in the same country I do.

All through the debate over federal health control, these people were saying that if you don’t have health insurance, you have no medical care of any kind. If you break a leg, they seem to imagine, you take a big slug of whiskey, put a belt between your teeth and get some strong friends to straighten it as best they can and splint it with a broom handle.

Well, no, that isn’t how it works. I used to work in a doctor’s office. People came in who were on Medicare or Medicaid, and we treated them; the working poor came in and we treated them, took time payments (without interest, of course), and wrote off what they couldn’t reasonably pay. Doctors are compassionate people. They have to pay the overhead, they often have heavy debts, and they want to make a good living to make up for those grueling years in med school, but they also want to see people get well — even people who can’t pay.

This morning, in a response to the outrage at this virulent assault on freedom, privacy, and human dignity, some totalitarian sneered, “Oh noes, the black people will get to be treated in our hospitals!”.

Again, does this totalitarian live in the same country I do? Has he ever actually set foot in a hospital? I have. More hospitals than I really wanted to, in truth. And every single one of them has patients of all races, doctors of all races, nurses of all races … Every one of them was fully integrated from top to bottom. You basically have to be willfully ignorant or astonishingly stupid to think otherwise. But I was referring to a totalitarian, so that goes without saying.

Well, there is one benefit to the Declaration of Dependence: it will get the uninstitutionalized mentally ill off the streets. Into Federal prison, it’s true, but off the streets. 

The homeless guy who followed me down the street in NYC, screaming obscene suggestions for acts I should perform with my mother: do you think he files income tax returns? No, and nobody cares because he has no income anyway. But do you think that he can get his act together enough to apply for insurance? That he can manage to apply for an insurance subsidy?  That he will manage to hold onto his proof of insurance so that he can produce it when the gendarmes shout “Papers!” at him?  No, so to prison he goes.

I trust the congresscreatures that voted for this travesty will tout this great benefit to their subjects. And I trust they will remind their subjects to keep their papers on them at all times.    

I was born in a free country. I woke up yesterday in a mostly free country. I woke up today in a partially free country.

IANAL, but I wonder if last night’s atrocity can challenged on grounds that Congress has delegated its lawmaking authority to private institutions which would, I think, be unconstitutional.

That is, Congress requires me to pay income taxes, but the requirements exist in laws duly passed by Congress; the forms to use, the deadlines, even the places to pay, are all established by law. Under last night’s Declaration of Dependence, I am commanded to identify an acceptable private actor, fill out their forms (which are entirely at their discretion and will differ from actor to actor), meet their deadlines (again at their discretion), and make payments as they require (using payment vouchers or whatever as they decide), all on pain of death. Oh, sure, the Feds say this is on pain of a fine, but as Walter Williams has said, all laws are on pain of death: if you don’t obey, they fine you; if you won’t pay, they arrest you; if you resist arrest, they kill you.

So, can Congress constitutionally delegate to unnamed third parties the power to issue requirements for satisfying federal law?  The power to decide, in other words, whether I am a federal felon?   

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if [this nation] last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

On many of the websites that I normally read, anyone who expresses the slightest hesitation about accepting apocalyptic anthropogenic global warming as an established fact is instantly condemned as a vile denialist, a heretic, really. No argument, no explanation, no discussion is allowed.

This upsets me, but it also makes me think long and hard about why I find it difficult to accept apocalyptic anthropogenic global warming as an established fact.

The first reason that I find this hard to accept is that, long before I ever even heard of anthropogenic global warming, I knew about the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. I knew about the grapes that grew in Britain in the MWP and died in the LIA, about the Viking colony in Greenland that was planted during the MWP and disappeared in the LIA, about the villagers praying to God to stop the glaciers from destroying their villages, about the starvation that followed the repeated crop failures due to cold weather, about trees breaking apart when their sap froze. A claim that the Earth’s temperature had been absolutely rock steady (varying no more than 0.1 degree), and colder than today for a millennium was quite incredible.

Yet the claim continues to be made. I can see, I guess, how the average temperature of the entire planet could be fairly stable even if the land in the Northern hemisphere was experiencing severe cold weather.

One way would be if severe cold weather in the winter were offset by severe hot weather in the summer. This is not the explanation, however, because the eyewitnesses did not report unusually hot summers and, in any case, the glaciers were advancing. Glaciers advance because the snow that falls in the winter fails to melt in the summer. Severe hot weather in the summer would melt them back. In fact, both summers and winters were colder than normal.

Another way would be if the temperature of the rest of the world were absolutely steady. In that case, the Little Ice Age would be sort of like my holding a handful of ice cubes: the average temperature of my surface overall probably changes very little, but the hand that’s holding the ice definitely feels the cold. I think that’s what the climate alarmists contend.

I haven’t found any real explanation of how climate alarmists wave away the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, other than the claim by the IPCC that the Northern hemisphere (including both the land and the oceans, I presume) at the depth of LIA was a mere degree cooler, on average, than it is today. But then, my google-fu is weak.

However, there’s another problem with the claim that the world temperature was rock-steady for a millennium, despite trivial variation in the land areas of the Northern hemisphere, and that is the Maunder Minimum. This spanned the period from 1645 to 1715, and was a period when the Sun was very quiet, had few to no sunspots, and was thus cooler than normal. It seems … odd … that no part of the Earth except land areas of the Northern hemisphere would suffer any discernable decline in temperature during a seventy year period of less solar radiation.

To be continued…

As I was heading home a few weeks ago, one of my co-workers was headed the same way and we got to talking. He was going to pick up boxes of Girl Scout cookies for his daughter, who was of course the Girl Scout in question. I observed that there is a particular type of cookie that I especially love, and I described it although I could not remember the name.

The next day, as I was cleaning out my desk, he brought me a box of Samoas. Yes, that was exactly the type I like, so I immediately bought the box. I shared out my cookies with my neighbors, who asked suspiciously if I had found them in the back of my desk. I assured them that, no, the cookies were completely fresh, and pointed out that I had gotten them from Steve.

They immediately called Steve over and wanted to order cookies from him. He was totally unprepared — he had no catalog and no order forms — but we’re computer people, so someone googled up the Girl Scout cookie website so everyone could see what was available, and he wrote the orders on a piece of scrap paper.

Having escaped from that group, he bowed to the inevitable and sent out an email offering cookies to everyone in the office. He told me later that in an hour and a half, he had orders for 130 boxes.

He had not been prepared to take orders because he had thought it an imposition on his co-workers to expect them to help out his daughter. But free enterprise will out …

The IPCC report was supposedly the work of a group of scientists, conscientiously reporting the state of scientific knowledge. It was not supposed to be political hackwork, cherry-picking or making up supposed evidence in order to deceive readers into taking the desired action. Yet there are numerous cases now where it has indeed been shown to be hackwork. One of its sources was a boot cleaning guide, for crying out loud!

Various people online have objected that, oh, well, the report is hundreds of pages long and only about four fraudulent statements have been publicized so far. I mentioned before one of my favorite lines from Alas, Babylon: if you shake a haystack and four needles fall out, chances are that haystack is just thick with needles.