Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | September 18, 2015 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Dawn broke, and he had to admit the spires of the city were lovely. Flying cars shuttled the rich to their jobs, where they would unplug from the car and jack into the grid that ran the economy across the solar system.

The weekend loomed, and they would show up at his farm, nerves wracked by the information firehose applying pressure across their augmented senses. He’d grind beans, crack eggs, grate cheese, slice ham, spread butter, and serve a simple breakfast to them before their stress overcame their superior health care.
He breathed deeply of the new day, pitying them.

via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction

The Desert, The Aliens, and Unanswered Questions

Posted on | September 18, 2015 | 12 Comments

— by Wombat-socho

Most of you are probably unfamiliar with the National Fantasy Fan Federation, which has been around literally since the dawn of SF fandom. I myself thought it had died off, but evidently it is very much alive, and hard up enough for members and volunteer staff that they made me head of their Membership and Recruitment Bureau, which is why I drafted this blog post on why you ought to join the N3F. On a related topic, apparently Sasquan is still refusing to release to the public the Hugo nomination ballots – not the Hugo ballots themselves, just the nomination ballots. What could they be trying to hide?
Also, for those of you who missed the announcement a week or so ago, the Kindly Ones are collecting nominations for the 2016 Hugo Awards here.

But enough of fannish politics. I’ve been spending most of last week reading S.M. Stirling’s The Desert and the Blade, wherein Crown Princess Orlaith and Empress Reiko head into the Mojave in pursuit of the legendary Grass-Cutting Sword, one of the Three Sacred Treasures of the Imperial throne. Meanwhile, Orlaith’s mother, Lady Protector and High Queen Matilda, fears her daughter’s impetuous questing has endangered Montival, since there are factions within the High Kingdom whose loyalty died with her husband, Rudi. If you don’t like the Change series, that’s fine (but spare me the reminders in the comments) but if you do, be reassured that this is worth the $14 Penguin is extorting for the Kindle edition.

I hadn’t planned to pick up Robert Frezza’s Cain’s Land for a while, since in a lot of ways I think it’s the weakest of his Suid-Afrika trilogy, but there it was…anyhow, aliens have been discovered, and canny Imperial Commissioner Mutaro decides that the best man to contact them – and, if necessary, defeat them – is renegade Colonel Anton Vereshchagin. From there, the action matches the description one of Vereshchagin’s men gives of wars: “A little humor, a little horror, and a lot of sweeping up.” Well worth picking up, if not quite as good as the first two books. Not available in Kindle, sadly.

Some years ago, I met James Daniel Ross at Balticon, where he was flogging his new book, The Chimerium Gambit to various fans of combat SF, and indeed, he had some interesting changes to ring on the hoary old trope of futuristic mercenary troops. I haven’t read its sequel, The Key to Damocles, but I have read two of the shorter “Mission Files” stories, Restavek and Not One Word; they are every bit as good as The Chimerium Gambit albeit shorter and cheaper. Recommended.

I’ve been waiting a while for Brian McClellan’s The Autumn Republic to come out on Kindle, and so far it’s been worth the wait. This is the cap to the Powder Mage trilogy that began with Promise of Blood, and a damn fine trilogy it’s been. There may be other authors out there who can combine magic and Napoleonic warfare, but McClellan does it while juggling half a dozen POV characters and half again as many subplots. Cannot recommend highly enough.
So what are y’all reading?

Category: Books

Social Justice, Matt Damon and the Hollywood Fantasy of Prostitution

Posted on | September 17, 2015 | 51 Comments

Am I the only one who remembers what Hollywood did to Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears? Clancy wrote a 1991 Cold War thriller that portrayed a terrorist collaboration between an East German nuclear physicist and Palestinian radicals. However, by the time it emerged as a movie in 2002, the cinematic arbiters of political correctness had changed the bad guys into “a South African arms dealer” and “a secretive far-right cabal seeking to impose a white supremacist world order, led by Austrian billionaire and neo-Nazi Richard Dressler” whose plan is “to transform Europe into a united fascist superstate.” Yeah, because there’s no way anyone would buy tickets to a movie in which Palestinian radicals engaged in a terrorist plot. Too much like real life.

That P.C. Hollywood reversal came to mind when I read this at AOSHQ:

In a new Project Greenlight, Damon argued with a black woman about the need of a Director of Color (is that a thing?) for their movie, based upon the fact that in one scene a black prostitute is slapped by a white pimp. Given that single incident, she called for a black director, or a team of a female director and black one, to make sure the nameless prostitute was invested with dignity and something something Oprah Winfrey’s book club.
Well, Matt Damon, who is a goonish, thuggish leftist when it comes to imposing SJW crap on other people, actually began lecturing her that she was wrong.
This is, as you know, a crime; a white person can never contradict a black person in Obama’s America.

You can read the whole thing. Damon was forced to apologize, and this is just another controversy over “representation” (which is to say, tokenism and quotas) in Hollywood, but perhaps I’m not the only one who noticed this:

“. . . a black prostitute is slapped by a white pimp . . .”

Uhhh, how do I say this? Without sounding like a racist, I mean.

Maybe I’m not an expert on the demographics of the prostitution industry, but do a lot of black prostitutes have white pimps?

3 plead guilty in New Orleans to running
violent interstate prostitution ring
Three Memphis, Tennessee, men accused of enslaving and beating prostitutes in New Orleans pleaded guilty to federal charges [April 20], bringing to five the number of pimps convicted here in an interstate sex trafficking ring.
Christopher “Gutter” Williams, Duane “P-Nut” Phillips and Anthony “Animal” Ellis admitted to conspiring to commit sex trafficking. . . .
The self-styled pimps routinely beat their prostitutes and joked about it, prosecutors said.
They required the women to adhere to a strict code of behavior and took drastic measures to keep them from escaping. In at least one instance, Phillips required one of his women to get a tattoo that identified her as belonging to him.
“The women that he prostituted were not allowed to speak to or look at any other pimps,” court documents say. “On multiple occasions, Phillips ordered one of the women whom he had forced and coerced to prostitute to physically assault other women who had broken his rules.”
Williams demanded that his prostitutes refer to him as “Daddy” and show him respect at all times. He required them to earn at least $500 on a typical weekday and $800 on the weekend, taking all of their earnings.
Court documents say he sought to impregnate the women “because he thought that it would be harder for the women to leave him if they had a child with him.”
The documents say he would punch and kick women who disobeyed him, generally striking them on parts of their body that would not be visible in public. Once, however, he broke a woman’s nose. . . .
During a trip to Houston, Ellis ordered a prostitute who he said had disrespected him in front of other pimps to stand in the corner of a room, depriving her of food for eight or nine hours.
The men watched one another’s backs, bailing each other out of jail and keeping an eye on prostitutes belonging to a fellow pimp if he faced an extended period of incarceration. . . .
Ellis is the nephew of Granville Robinson, another alleged pimp charged in the case. Court documents say Robinson once struck a prostitute with a glass coffee pot and severely beat another woman with a piece of wood.
Two other Memphis men — Zacchaeus Taylor, described in court records as Phillips’ protégé, and LaQuentin “Nino” Brown — previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.

Now, I was not able to find mug shots of all these pimps, but click here to see a photo of LaQuentin “Nino” Brown, and it seems safe to assume that his associates in this Memphis/New Orleans pimping operation were of a similar ethnic persuasion. Consider this recent news article:

A Memphis man convicted last month of attempting to kill a Gentilly man, and who was also accused of pimping teenaged girls for sex in New Orleans, has been sentenced to 100 years in prison under Louisiana’s habitual offender law.
Timothy T. Jones, 25, received the punishment Friday (Sept. 4) from Criminal District Court Judge Karen Herman. She said Jones showed depraved indifference when he left the victim partially paralyzed following the Feb. 17, 2014, shooting. . . .
A New Orleans jury Aug. 26 found Jones guilty of attempted second-degree murder and three counts of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. He also awaits trial in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, where he’s accused of trafficking juvenile girls for prostitution.
He was convicted in state court of trying to kill a man in February 2014, shooting him twice in his home in the 2500 block of Gladiolus Street. That man, who refused to testify against Jones during last month’s trial, was an alleged pimp as well, authorities said.
Police and federal marshals arrested Jones on Feb. 11, 2014, in a hotel room in the 300 block of St. Joseph Street in the Warehouse District. Authorities went there seeking Christopher Williams, another alleged pimp.
During his arrest, police found a pistol and an AK-47 rifle in a room tied to Jones, whose previous robbery conviction in Tennessee meant he was barred from having guns. Police booked him with the gun offenses.
Days later, after posting bond, Jones shot the Gentilly man.

So while the feds were looking for the pimp Christopher “Gutter” Williams in this motel, they just accidentally found another pimp, Timothy Jones. After he posted bond, Jones then shot another pimp.

A similar ethnic persuasion, you see. The same demographic as Alvin Houston, 27, and Shawna Calhoun, 24, who were charged with pimping a 13-year-old runaway in Maine. The same demographic as South Carolina interstate sex trafficker “Pimpstick Quezzy.”

Far be it from me to generalize unfairly from such examples, and I really don’t want to contribute to any prejudicial stereotypes, but it does seem to me that we may discern a pattern here. And the pattern we may discern doesn’t fit the cinematic scenario that provoked a high-profile argument between Matt Damon and Effie Brown.

That is to say, white pimps slapping black prostitutes is probably about as rare in 21st-century America as South African arms dealers and billionaire neo-Nazis plotting to transform Europe into a fascist superstate. In other words, it’s the kind of inverted through-the-looking-glass social-justice fantasy Hollywood loves.

Ask yourself a few questions: If feminists want to save young girls from the violent misogyny of sex traffickers, why do we never read any columns from Amanda Marcotte or Jessica Valenti about LaQuentin “Nino” Brown, Timothy “King Lucci” Jones, or “George “Pimpstick Quezzy” McLeod? Is there a truce between feminists and pimps? Is this about “intersectionality”? Do feminists only care about crimes against women when they involve white frat boys at elite universities?

“Haven Monahan” could not be reached for comment.

Category: Crime, Hollywood, Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 09.17.15

Posted on | September 17, 2015 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: #IStandWithAhmed (facepalm)
The Camp of the Saints: Big Brother Is Analyzing You
Proof Positive: “Pay No Attention To The Empty Suit Behind The Curtain!”
Michelle Malkin: Hollywood Lib Matt Damon’s “Diversity” Drama
Doug Powers: Bernie Sanders – America Was Founded On Racist Principles, And Here’s How Much It’ll Cost To Fix It
Twitchy: Did Carly Fiorina Introduce Millions To The Planned Parenthood Scandal?
Conservative Review: Absent From The Debate – Obama’s Refugee Calamity

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Trump Goes Quiet When Debate Turns To Substantive Issues
American Thinker: A Pretender Tells The Truth To Pop-Music Prostitutes
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – American Exceptionalism: An Experiment in History
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin On Liberals’ Refusal To Stop Planned Parenthood
Don Surber: NYT – She’s Just A Girl
Jammie Wearing Fools: Carly Fiorina Makes Her Case To Be The GOP Frontrunner
Joe For America: Ted Cruz Takes On Islamic Terrorism In Powerful New Ad
JustOneMinute: We Are Governed By A Bloviating Moron Not Named Trump
Pamela Geller: Obama Pushing For 100K Muslim Refugees While Deporting Iraqi Christian Refugees
Protein Wisdom: Obama To Troll Pope At White House Reception
Shot In The Dark: “A Cold Mississippi”
STUMP: Public Pensions Point/Counterpoint – How Expensive Are They, Really?
The Gateway Pundit: IRS Revokes Nonprofit Status Of Veterans Group That Hosted Trump On USS Iowa
The Jawa Report: PaliWood On Tour, Hungarian Edition
The Lonely Conservative: White House Dramatically Increases Number Of Syrian Refugees They Want To Take In
This Ain’t Hell: Chad McRee – Another Army Colonel Fired
Weasel Zippers: Texas HS Student Punished For Wearing American Flag T-Shirt To School
Megan McArdle: How Healthcare.gov Went So, So Wrong
Mark Steyn: Who’s Imploding Now?

Category: Linkagery

Did She Have a Tumblr Blog?

Posted on | September 17, 2015 | 38 Comments

Nickole Dykema was arrested Tuesday.

Florida is the Weird News Capital of the World, but sometimes the news from Florida is so weird it seems too weird even for Florida:

A Florida woman has been arrested after police discovered over 3,500 weapons in her mobile home.
Deputies arrived at the Brooksville residence of Nickole Dykema to arrest the woman on outstanding warrants Tuesday night, and found the 47-year-old staring at them through a broken window and cursing while ignoring their requests to come outside.
When one of the officers finally entered her trailer to bring her in, she took a machete and went after the man — missing him by inches.

This led to a five-hour standoff that ended when an officer finally tasered Dykema, leading to the truly weird part of the story:

Police say Nickole Dykema is on probation and shouldn’t have had any weapons in her home. But, investigators discovered more than 3,500 knives, swords and blades, a satanic-like shrine, fake bloody body parts, and that’s just what evidence techs have tallied so far.
It all came from a home on Eldorado Avenue in Brooksville, where neighbors say Dykema has been terrorizing them for months. . . .
“I was just petrified all the time,” says neighbor Dorothy Clagg.
Clagg says living next to Dykema isn’t her idea of a peaceful retirement, it’s been torture. “She had a habit of banging on the inside of her house all the time on the walls, and screaming and hollering,” says Clagg.
Dykema is caught on Paula Deford’s home security cameras slashing screens and slicing up the air conditioner unit. “She cut all the screens on these windows in one incident,” says Deford.
That’s what brought investigators to Dykema’s house on Tuesday night to arrest her. She shouldn’t have a single weapon. She’s on probation after being caught shoplifting at Dollar Tree in December, stealing chef knives with a sword down her pants and dagger around her waist. . . .
But Tuesday night’s discovery even stuns investigators: thousands of weapons hanging from the walls, ceiling fans, and stabbed into a mannequin head.

The Daily Mail reports:

Photos of the home shows that the rooms are all unlit and contained hundreds of of blade weapons along with fake heads, fake severed limbs and fake skeletons – almost all with knives stuck in them.
One room also had a picture of a pentagram hanging on the wall with miniature axes sticking out of it and a skeleton dangling in the center.
There is also a satan-like shrine surrounded by skulls, though the pentagrams above that area do not have a goat inside them as is the copyrighted logo of the Church of Satan.

This raises obvious questions: How did she get so crazy? Was she a Women’s Studies major? A feminist blogger? Did she own cats? Perhaps most importantly, is she registered to vote as a Democrat?

Category: Crime, Florida

The $10 Answer: Phyllis Schlafly

Posted on | September 17, 2015 | 74 Comments

When the Republican presidential candidates were asked in Wednesday’s CNN debate which woman they would choose to replace Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill, I was disappointed with their answers. Ben Carson said his mother, Mike Huckabee said his wife and Jeb Bush named Margaret Thatcher, while Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump seemed to agree on Rosa Parks.

Gentlemen, you are Republicans and you were debating at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Didn’t the name of the most important Republican woman of the 20th century cross your mind?

Yes — Phyllis Schlafly, whose 1964 book A Choice Not an Echo became a bestseller and was widely credited with rallying conservatives behind Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign.

Yes — Phyllis Schlafly, who brilliantly organized conservative women in the 1970s and ’80s to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment.

Yes — Phyllis Schlafly, whose Eagle Forum is to this day one of the most effective grassroots conservative organizations in America. Didn’t it occur to any of these Republican candidates that, if they had named Phyllis Schlafly to be on the $10 bill, they might have instantly won for themselves the loyalty of many thousands of conservative women across the country? Especially among social conservative voters in Iowa, and among voters old enough to remember the Goldwater and Reagan campaigns, the name Phyllis Schlafly still possesses a special magic.

That was a missed opportunity.

I don’t think we should change the $10 (nor, as some have suggested, the $20), but when Republicans miss a chance to praise Phyllis Schlafly, it bespeaks an ignorance of their own party’s history — or perhaps an unfortunate ingratitude for Mrs. Schlafly’s accomplishments.

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Category: Debates, Republicans

Why Do Feminists Hate Sex Robots?

Posted on | September 16, 2015 | 185 Comments

Professor Kathleen Richardson wants to ban sex robots.

In the zero-sum-game worldview of feminism, anything that makes men happy is bad. Kathleen Richardson, a professor at De Montfort University in England, is afraid that having sex with robots will make men happy:

“Sex robots seem to be a growing focus in the robotics industry and the models that they draw on — how they will look, what roles they would play — are very disturbing indeed,” she told the BBC.
She believes that they reinforce traditional stereotypes of women and the view that a relationship need be nothing more than physical.
“We think that the creation of such robots will contribute to detrimental relationships between men and women, adults and children, men and men and women and women,” she said.

Notice that Dr. Richardson is only worried about how these robots would affect “traditional” stereotypes of women, whereas stereotypes of men are evidently not at all “disturbing” to her. While I am also against robot sex — it’s just plain creepy — I might change my mind if scientists could program these robots to make sandwiches.

We wouldn’t want feminist professors to make sandwiches, would we?

That would be “very disturbing indeed.”

(Via Memeorandum.)

Category: Sex Trouble