Mailvox: the right place

TL asks about games:

What are some good Turn Based Strategy games that don’t require endless micromanagement

My all-time favorite is Fantasy General, which you can find pretty easily around the Net. The graphics are quite crude by today’s standards, but it’s a great game with one of the best simple campaign aspects that I’ve ever played. There’s no resource management at all, but you can’t afford to be careless with your forces or you’ll find yourself hopelessly outmatched after a few battles. If I were ever to write a book on game design, Fantasy General would be one of my examples of game design greatness. Total War: Shogun and Total War: Medieval are both great turn-based games with real-time battles and mild resource management, but I was hugely disappointed by Total War: Rome.

As far as new games go, I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t played it yet, but I’d recommend at least checking out Supreme Commander. The designer is an old acquaintance of mine, and while I seem to recall that it’s real-time, he put a particular emphasis on including turn-based style strategics rather than the pure tactics of the conventional RTS.

Posted by Vox Day.

Smells like Team Clinton

I mentioned two possibilities behind the Sinclair accusations in my column today. Looks like it was the more probable of the two:

The Minnesota man who accused leading presidential candidate Barack Obama of cocaine use and having sex with him in the back of a limousine nine years ago has reportedly failed two polygraph tests administered by the website WhiteHouse.com.

Posted by Vox Day.

Shooting the Americans Americans won’t shoot

Apparently it’s not enough that the federal government is permitting the civilian invasion of America by its neighbors, now it intends to permit open military invasion as well:

In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency, even one that does not involve a cross-border crisis. The agreement, defined as a Civil Assistance Plan, was not submitted to Congress for approval, nor did Congress pass any law or treaty specifically authorizing this military agreement to combine the operations of the armed forces of the United States and Canada in the event of a wide range of domestic civil disturbances ranging from violent storms, to health epidemics, to civil riots or terrorist attacks.

Somehow, I doubt the “domestic civil disturbances” they have in mind have anything to do with the ones mentioned, but rather refer to those Americans who tend to take their Constitutional inheritence from their revolutionary Founding Fathers a little too literally for an ironically named Washington’s taste.

Posted by Vox Day.

Mailvox: Persecution complex

Recovering Evangelical offers supporting evidence for my previous conclusion about him:

The point I made was that the problem is not peer review as a process, but that some scientists are shady. The idea that there’s something wrong with the practice of science because some people display favoritism in the process of peer review is, to use a term you applied to me, “moronic.” To call peer review “not science” for this reason is “idiocy.”

Perhaps, but RE has failed to grasp the relevant point, which is that favoritism in the process of peer review was not the problem I was discussing. Favoritism may be an issue, but it is not the fundamental problem, it is only a symptom of that problem. RE doesn’t seem to understand that the only thing about peer review that is even related to science is that it is a professional activity in which many scientists currently engage. It is no more inherently scientific than white lab coats, because it is merely a form of collective editing by scientists used as an anticompetitive barrier to entry. Peer review does not involve use of the scientific method, as no replication or experimentation is involved. Nor does peer review add anything to the body of knowledge in itself, it is specifically designed to remove potential additions to that body and can be confirmed to have been an inhibiting factor in the legitimate increase of scientage on numerous occasions. This latter fact cannot always be attributable to shady behavior of individual scientists, in fact, the shady behavior usually concerns attempts to pass peer review, not the peer review itself. If one prefers Popper’s definition of science to Myers’s, then note that peer review also has little connection to the falsifiability or unfalsifiability of a hypothesis.

To delete my initial comment, as you did, is “cowardice.” To claim that it’s because I am a troll, or the same poster who’s been banned before, is “bullshit.” Can’t you track IP addresses?

That’s absurd. RE was behaving in a similar manner and making arguments very remniscent of those made by a previous troll who had been banned eight times and regularly makes use of different names while hiding his IP address. It’s hardly incomprehensible that “Recovering Evangelical” could be confused with “Cosmos” aka “Why Christians Are Wrong”, especially when similarly nonsensical accusations are being thrown. Moreover, as soon as it became clear that RE was not Cosmos/Pintopolis/TCW etc, I apologized and allowed him to continue posting.

Aren’t you held up to be some kind of uber-computer nerd? I submit my e-mail address with every post! I’m sure you have the ability to find out, generally, who/where I am, or at least who I’m not, especially if you’ve banned this other person 8 times before.

Perhaps, if I’d kept track of Cosmos’s original IP and took the time to track down both physical addresses. I don’t bother wasting that kind of time and effort, though especially not when it’s someone who is so prone to slinging personal insults as you are. And if RE is determined to behave in a manner as tiresome and repetitive as Cosmos, I won’t hesitate to add him to the list of 20 or so people who have been banned over the last five years. His readiness to behave in an obnoxious manner doesn’t make me inclined to tolerate him for long.

In response to my contention that “I see this as another one of VD’s misrepresentations,” you say “That’s because you’re stupid.” This is hypocrisy, because you ridiculed “BD” for doing the same thing to you. In fact, you dedicated an entire front page post to it.

No, this is merely stating the obvious. BD’s statement was ridiculous because I am demonstrably not stupid. This is a matter of public knowledge. RE, on the other hand, has submitted a good deal of evidence demonstrating that he lacks the intellectual capacity to understand some fairly simple and straightforward concepts. What applies to RE does not necessarily apply to me.

So yes, you displayed cowardice when you deleted my initial comment, hypocrisy when you responded to it by claim that I was stupid, you lied when you painted me as another poster, and to claim that peer review isn’t science because some scientists display favoritism or other human faults, is “moronic.” Case made, charges stand. Please try and refute, my day has been slow so far and I could use some entertainment.

I didn’t say that peer review isn’t science because some scientists display favoritism. I said it is: “little more than the scientific version of union thuggery.” RE’s inability to comprehend what I wrote or understand why peer review is not science is why he can be reasonably be described as possessing sub-standard intelligence, which means that I am not a hypocrite. While I was mistaken about his identity, he has not shown any evidence that I knew he was not Cosmos, (there had been some previous speculation by several regulars that he was), so he has no grounds for claiming that I lied. My reposting of his argument and his nonsensical insults should suffice to belie the claim of cowardice.

Posted by Vox Day.