PICTURE OF THE DAY

Paris face with a London bootie.

ASK A MAN

"If a woman looks at me and then looks away, that tells me she does not find me attractive or that she is just not interested, end of story."

The Frisky is a site which features dating, flirting, and relationship topics from a more playful and humorous side. They regularly feature things from a man's perspective and although its given the humor treatment, generally it is pretty accurate. However, I have a slightly different look at things than the frat boys that write these articles so I thought I'd tackle a couple of the topics here.

The first one they cover is female hints guys don't get (courtesy Linkiest). Phil Dotree lists five feminine hints, what they are supposed to mean, and what he says guys think. Here's what I think:

Looking at us, then looking away.
You Think: You're coyly telling a guy that you're interested in him.
I Think:She didn't like me, or is scared of me, or doesn't want me to pay attention. It was a mistake, she looked over and realized we'd made eye contact so she quickly looked away to prevent me from approaching or thinking she was interested. That's really what we think, girls, unless you really vamp it up. You don't seem coy. You seem nervous.

Acting tired.
You Think: You're telling a guy that you want to leave a party to go home right away, in a way that doesn't offend the people around you.
I Think: Its time to go - if I notice. Don't be too subtle. Unlike Mr Dotree, who peddles the "men are clods who cannot comprehend subtlety and hints" canard, I know most men do understand hints just fine. We may not understand your subtlety but the idea of being subtle and comprehending it is not beyond our limited, beast like capacity. If you get ignored when you say that, it probably means he wants to stay because he's having fun. Consider another guy if this is a pattern.

Various breakup lingo.
You Think: By being polite, you're sparing the guy the indignity of being dumped.I Think:You're being polite, just like he says in the article. Look, there's no good way to break up with someone if they like you. Grit your teeth and just make sure its clear. And don't try to word it the perfect way so you don't seem like the bad person. Plausible deniability doesn't work here, no matter how much women love to cling to it. This has to be straight forward and direct or its heartless and cruel. He'll be upset at you no matter what you do if he really cares for you. Remember when you pulled off a bandage, how it hurt a bunch all at once to do it fast, but hurt more over a long period of time to do it slow and "gentle?" Yeah. Oh, and make sure he understands the real reason, or it will torture him for years.

Flirting touches.
You Think: You're flirting by making excuses to touch him, wiping some lint off of his shirt or touching his shoulder when he says something mildly amusing.
I Think: Good lord am I that messy? Leave me the hell alone, what are you a chimpanzee? Sound touchy? Maybe, but guys just don't do that and it seems weird to us.

Another article from the same site is this one: Compliments that men take as insults. Also written by Dotree, I'll cover most of them as well:

You’re not like my old boyfriend. The less I hear about your old boyfriend, the better. I don't want pictures of you he took, I don't want to go to the restaurant you went together, I don't want comparisons, even if they're meant to be complimentary. Men are competitive about this kind of thing, and you're setting me up with a foe I can't beat: a memory. It just makes me frustrated. The more you compare us and I come out on top, the more I wonder what the hell attracted you to both of us and why you really left him.

You’re so sensitive. No straight guy wants to be Alan Alda. Please. Here's how Dotree puts it and he puts it well:

Guys don’t want to be thought of as sensitive, especially, ironically, the sensitive guys. We want to be tough badasses. We want to be Patrick Swayze in “Road House,” not Patrick Swayze in “Ghost.” If you call us sensitive, we’re just going to cry about it. Try tempering the compliment with this instead: “Oh, you’re really sensitive underneath that rugged exterior and those strong arms that could probably disembowel a man in about two seconds if given the chance! I’m really sexually attracted to you.”

“You’re very thin.” Yeah, great, I'm a skeleton. That's not a compliment to a guy, it might be to a woman who seem to think they need to be a twig to be attractive but to a man it says "you're nonathletic and weak, scrawny, a runt." Try something like "you're fit" or "you're in good shape" unless you really mean scrawny.

Men aren't extremely touchy and hyper sensitive, we just are touchy about different things than women are, and sometimes what you mean well grates on our worldview. Over time we can work it out together, but while men are constantly being lectured about how they ought to be more sensitive and understanding and change to adapt to what women want... women need to hear that, too. Because a good relationship means both give, both adapt, and both grow together.

FOOD POLITICS

"One of the few places I thought I could escape from the Obamas was The Food Network."

Several of my favorite shows on television are on the Food Channel. I don't catch them very regularly but when I am lying down to watch TV, they're the first I look for, particularly Dinner Impossible and Good Eats. The Food Network is a nice bright point on television. Nobody bashes religion or politics or anything else on there (unless its bad food). They just cook and share their love of food and cooking.

At Big Hollywood, James Hudnall shares my enthusiasm:

So for many years I found escape on TV in the Food Network, because aside from the fact I like food and cooking, I loved that it was a politics-free zone. There was no angry Bush bashing, no digs at Cheney and Rumsfeld. No moral equivalency. No screaming about the 2000 election. It was all about the joy of food and cooking and how it brings people together.

In a world so divided, it was a reminder that we can all get along if we can find some common ground.

I’m sure the chefs and personalities on the network have their political views. The fact that so many of them are based in New York would suggest most lean Democrat. But the beauty of that network is never, ever does anyone let on where their politics lie. We don’t need to know who they voted for because that has nothing to do with food. It’s not relevant. And that made it a refreshing place to be.

Mr Hudnall believes that will soon be changing. The White House chef Cristeta Comerford (who is no doubt a very good cook) will be going up against one of the Iron Chefs and instead of the chairman, Mrs Obama will be revealing the secret ingredient that each chef will need to craft their hasty meal around.

I personally disagree with Mr Hudnall. Granted, I'm a bit tired of the Obamas being continuously on every single media outlet in existence, but this is a bit different. Like previous first ladies, Mrs Obama is using her position to promote things she cares about. The only real difference is that while, for example Nancy Reagan's attempts to cut back on drug use were mocked (and continue to be) this effort is being praised and treated as something special. Marion Burros at the New York Times gushes:

The first lady’s cameo on “Iron Chef” is the latest example of her willingness to get her message across to the public in ways few of her predecessors would have considered.

Actually, all first ladies use television and whatever appropriate media sources are available to push their ideas. First ladies in America tend to use their public persona and easy camera time to encourage things they want to see happen and discourage things they do not. Its part of the job - Mrs Bush in the last administration was unusually quiet and restrained, but before her the other presidents' wives were very public and active.

As much as the Times calls this a "collision of politics, cooking, and popular culture, there's really no politics involved here. Mrs Obama gets a few minutes of screen time talking about children's nutrition - hardly a topic anyone can complain about - then the show goes on. Given her proclivity for attacking America and white people, its probably best she doesn't get a lot of free time in front of a camera, but this really isn't political. Its just the first lady doing what first ladies do.

I agree with Hudnall's complain that this approach is a bit in contrast to actual policy decisions by the Obama administration:

The Obama Administration has been hostile to agriculture. From refusing to send water to California’s San Joaquin valley farmers to bills that would limit your rights as a home gardener. This while they are promoting “organic gardening.”

But I don't mind this particular bit. Just as long as it doesn't get political. People really do watch some channels to escape that for a while, at least.

Old Habits, pt 7

"A detective digs around in the garbage of people's lives. A novelist invents people and then digs around in their garbage."
-Joe Gores

This is the point where the slang really starts to become part of the story. Any time Stoce is talking to someone rather than narrating he slips a bit more into gutter, especially if he feels more comfortable or is with someone else who is from the streets.

Hopefully the context helps provide what he's saying but as I noted a few days ago, the final product will have a glossary at the end to include all of my borrowed, invented, and redefined phrases and words.

Stoce is kind of mean to little Greaze here, but he's not a kind and gentle sort of guy and that's what Greaze is used to: tough, heartless, and uncaring. Anything else would confuse the little kid, although it doesn't take too long for Stoce to start treating him with a little more respect. It is a sad truth of life that living to survive tends to strip away all the layers of civilization and respect until people start to act more and more like animals. Maybe Stoce can learn to rise above that.

Oh and the names. I don't really plan out most names, I just start writing and something comes out. The street names are pretty much like you see here, something simple, easy to remember, and a little bit childish in nature.

There are exceptions, though. Erkenbrand is something I'd planned to use for a long time, its lifted from The Two Towers, a member of the Rohirrim with old english roots. Thealea is a nickname someone I know from the past on the internet used, and it stuck with me. All the place names are from my established Fantasy Hero world, its all mapped out and described, at least the parts I'm writing about.

Old Habits, part seven.

Quote of the Day

"There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an 'escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.'"
-Mitch Hedberg

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME

"be on the lookout for anti-Muslim reaction"

OK now this is what we know so far about Ft Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hassan:

• He was a Muslim.
• He was a psychologist in the army and counseled Muslim soldiers.
• He gave away his furniture several days before the shooting
• When he was shooting the (unarmed) soldiers he cried "Allahu Akbar!"
• He refused to have his picture taken with female soldiers.
• When he made speeches as part of his capacity as a psychologist, they were about passages of the Koran.
• He claimed suicide bombers were heroes like soldiers who threw themselves on a grenade
  
• He went to the same mosque as the 9/11 pilot terrorists... at the same time they did
• He tried to contact al`Qaeda several times

President Obama's reaction: "we don't know all the answers yet and I would caution to jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts."

General of the Army Casey's reaction? See the quote up at the top.

According to the USA Today, military officials were trying to piece together what could have possibly prompted this man to kill fellow soldiers. According to his cousin, Nadal was a good boy who wanted to get away from war and didn't even like going to the firing range. He did, however, deliberately sign up to the US military and did sign up for multiple advanced weapons training classes despite this alleged animus toward violence and war.

My reaction? This man shouldn't have been in the US army, let alone promoted to the position of Major. He clearly was an open Muslim radical who the US intelligence services were aware of and the military should have known about long before he snapped and shot a bunch of his own guys. Some in the legacy media are trying to claim this is part of a basic problem endemic in the US military, that the military is at the breaking point and in crisis! I say it does show a problem with the US military, but not what they claim. It is an indication of how stupidly PC and diversity minded to the cost of lives, morale, and unit cohesion they've gotten.

How many people are going to die before the kneejerk "protect the Muslims and their image" stupidity stops?

Here's a partial list of military problems with radical Muslims in their midst:

• NAVY SIGNALMAN HASSAN ABUJIHAAD last year was convicted of tipping off al-Qaida to battlegroup movements in the Persian Gulf, including disclosing classified documents detailing the group's vulnerability to terror attack
• ARMY RESERVIST JEFFREY LEON BATTLE in 2003 pleaded guilty to conspiring to wage war against the U.S., confessing he enlisted "to receive military training to use against America"
• ARMY RESERVIST SEMI OSMAN in 2002 was arrested for providing material support to al-Qaida and pleaded guilty to weapons charges after agreeing to testify against other terror suspects
• MARINE ABDUL RAHEEM AL-ARSHAD ALI trained at a suspected al-Qaida camp and was charged with selling a semiautomatic handgun to Osman
• ARMY SGT. ALI "THE AMERICAN" MOHAMED trained Green Berets at the elite Swick warfare school at Fort Bragg before stealing classified military secrets for al-Qaida and helping plan the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa
• ARMY SGT. HAMMAD ABDUR-RAHEEM in 2004 was convicted of terror-related charges
• ARMY SPC. RYAN G. ANDERSON in 2004 was convicted of leaking military intelligence to al-Qaida terrorists, including sensitive information about the vulnerabilities of armored Humvees
• ARMY SNIPER JOHN ALLEN MUHAMMAD was sentenced to death after fatally shooting 10 in the nation's capital a year after the 9/11 attacks
• FORMER ARMY LINGUIST AHMED FATHY MEHALBA in 2005 was convicted of stealing secret documents listing, among other things, the names of al-Qaida detainees from Gitmo
• SENIOR AIRMAN AHMAD AL-HALABI in 2004 was convicted of mishandling classified documents as an Arabic linguist at Gitmo
• ARMY CAPT. JAMES "YOUSEF" YEE in 2003 was formally charged with mishandling classified information – including maps of a new Gitmo facility – as a Muslim chaplain at Gitmo.

Maybe its time to change the policy regarding this religion a little?

Picture of the day

Courtesy IMAO

All that's missing is the teleprompter.

THE FALL OF THE LEFTIST DREAM

"Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers?
-Scorpions, Winds of Change

20 years ago, as you likely know by now, the Berlin Wall was torn down by the people of Germany. It didn't "fall" like it was old and rotten, it didn't somehow come down on its own. The people of Germany tore it down by hand and chisel and bulldozer and explosive. Now, after two decades Germany is still struggling with the sudden inclusion of a bankrupt and ruined half of its nation, held prisoner by Communist tyranny for fifty years.

Those who lived in this misery are typically the ones who best understand how bad it was and how much liberty means to them. Some, like the writer of Unbearable Lightness of Being, long for the bad old days when everything was provided and you didn't have to think or be responsible for yourselves. For the academics and other leftists of the west, the collapse of Soviet Communism and liberty brought Eastern Europe was a bitter, jagged pill to swallow.

Rather than admit their error in claiming the system was superior, that there was greater equality and that the system was only having problems due to weather and western interference, the left clings to the myth today that it is a great system that was bungled by poor leadership. Rather than admit they were in error in claiming that Communism was going strong and would never collapse, those statements in the 80s are just conveniently forgotten.

For some, the very idea of the fall of Communism is so bitter they can't bring themselves to celebrate the anniversary or visit the site, even when invited. The UK Guardian is a pretty hard left newspaper in England, although often it has good reporting. One of its features is the Comment Is Free section in which they invite people to write on various topics, usually how bad Israel is. Recently a former Communist East Germany resident named Bruni de la Motte wrote about the anniversary (hat tip McQ for this bit):

Of course, unification brought with it the freedom to travel the world and, for some, more material wealth, but it also brought social breakdown, widespread unemployment, blacklisting, a crass materialism and an "elbow society" as well as a demonisation of the country I lived in and helped shape. Despite the advantages, for many it was more a disaster than a celebratory event.

When the communist system fell apart, the government cleaned out the most blatant and least qualified communist indoctrinators from academia - something she bemoans as a loss of jobs for people with degrees. They were "blacklisted" because they were not teachers, but people whose job was to make little communists out of students. This, she thinks, is an example of how bad things are. She complains that

Since the demise of the GDR, many have come to recognise and regret that the genuine "social achievements" they enjoyed were dismantled: social and gender equality, full employment and lack of existential fears, as well as subsidised rents, public transport, culture and sports facilities.

I suspect that word "many" is best defined "my communist friends and people who had cushy party-given positions."

Every time an old system falls apart, there are people who bemoan the old days when things were great - for them - and try to convince others about how keen it was then. For some, communism is great. Being a pig was wonderful on Animal Farm. Being the old faithful draft horse? Not so much.

The reality of the communist tyranny is difficult for some people to believe, and ever easier to discredit and rewrite as time goes on. These efforts to change the failed misery of Soviet dictatorship into a flawed, but fundamentally good thing will continue and grow as time goes on. Like the holocaust deniers who gain volume as the survivors die off and can't show them it was real, as Soviet communism fades in the mirror, the voices become louder about what a great place it really was.

For those who lived in it or knew it well, the truth is so shocking the lies sound like insanity. Marian Tupy was one of those, and she writes in The American:

Shortages, some Americans will recall from the 1984 Robin Williams movie “Moscow on the Hudson,” were an everyday reality in the Soviet bloc. As a kid, I remember being taken by my aunt (a hardcore communist) to a shop where the only sign of life was a fat fly buzzing atop a lonely gray sausage—the sole indicator that the shop was, in fact, a butchery. Born after the communist take-over of Czechoslovakia in 1948, she did not know any better. Like Williams’s character Vladimir Ivanoff, she saw endless lines for one or two rolls of low-grade toilet paper as perfectly normal. Paradoxically, it was her trip to the workers’ paradise (a reward of sorts for true believers) that made her doubt communism. “Russia,” she said upon her return, “is a very poor country.”

Of course, shops can be filled with goods, roads can be rebuilt, and houses renovated. The psychological scars of communism take much longer to heal. As one traveler to Russia wrote in 1982:

If it is hard to describe the economic wasteland of Russia to someone who hasn’t been there, it is even harder to describe what their totalitarian system has done to the human spirit … It isn’t just the drabness and grayness one sees everywhere. Or the rudeness and surliness one encounters so often. It’s that you virtually never see people laughing, smiling, or just seeming to enjoy themselves. People seem to walk slightly bent over, their eyes always averting a stranger. There is an overwhelming sense of oppression and depression.

People who lived in and suffered from this tyranny are the first to sound the alarm when they hear similar rhetoric or policies being offered by politicians. I know of some eastern Europeans who are terrified that Obama and the Democrats in congress will bring about the same horrors in America, the one place they looked at as a beacon on a hill just like Ronald Reagan claimed. No amount of assurances and arguments can shake that chill in their hearts when they hear about social justice and equality being defined as equally owning the same things but not equally sharing liberty. Having lived the end result of this line of logic, they fear its beginning - and justly so.

Ilya Somin, who knows of what he speaks from experience, has written two essays at Volokh Conspiracy about the evils of communism and why it is critical people never forget that, either. Somin writes:

As [Hollander] points out, communist atrocities have not received their full due in the West, despite the fact that the victims of communism (including some 100 million dead) far outnumber even those of the Nazis. Part of the reason is that the communists, unlike the Nazis, were perceived as having noble motives. However, this is a poor distinction. After all, Hitler and his supporters also believed they were doing the right thing, every bit as strongly as Lenin or Stalin did.

Evil is evil, even if its done by the guys who you seem to admire. That inequity is stark when you compare how the Nazis leadership was treated and how the Communist leadership is treated today:

Even after sixty years, US and European officials continue to hunt down Nazi criminals. Yet very little has been done to bring to justice the perpetrators of communist atrocities. This, despite the fact that many of the communist atrocities are much more recent than the Nazi ones, and more relatively high-ranking perpetrators are still alive. As in the Nazi case, it is impossible to capture and punish all of the guilty. And there is the additional problem that some of the worst communist criminals are protected by governments in nations where the communist party is still in power (China and North Korea, among others). Still, the best should not be the enemy of the good. The international community should at least try to punish those communist perpetrators who can be found, while putting pressure on recalcitrant governments to try or extradite the others.

The point I'm trying to make isn't "lets get the commies" it is that we cannot be deluded into thinking that communism was a benevolent idea poorly applied or betrayed by its corrupt leadership and sabotage from the west. That it is a basically flawed ideology that inevitably, inexorably leads to crushing tyranny and some of the greatest horrors of the 20th century. We cannot forget that, either.

The jubilation and soaring hope I felt as I watched the Berlin Wall fall is impossible to relate. It was inconceivable that this could happen in my lifetime, it was amazing to behold and something dearly hoped for. So many people living in such misery under the iron boot heel of oppression for so long were finally given a chance at freedom and their own lives. The evil had been crushed under the weight of its own impossibility and incompetence. Communism isn't just a bad idea it doesn't work.

Those lessons must not be forgotten. Worrying about communist ideas filtering into the west and creeping into education and culture isn't some paranoid leftover from the cold war. It was mocked just as hard during the cold war by the very same sorts of people (often the same people) who now say "well that was only important then you see, now its all over." Liberty's price really is eternal vigilance, from enemies both foreign and domestic. The winds of change blew 20 years ago. Lets not let stand by and watch them blow back.

THINK OF THE CHILDREN

"I kissed the baby bye-bye, but my wife couldn’t because she was so upset.’"

How many pounds are there in a stone? I know, what stone and are we talking British currency here? The English use "stones" to measure weight in people for reasons of tradition and likely inertia. The rest of the system tends to be metric, but this one hangs on for some reason. To answer, its 14 (or about 6 kg).

The reason I ask is this little quote from a recent news story in the Daily Mail:

Before she became pregnant, the mother, 40, who cannot be named for legal reasons, weighed 23st.

At that time one of her children, a toddler, weighed 4st, her 13-year-old son weighed 16st and an 11-year-old weighing 12st.

So that ends up 322 pounds for the mother, 56 pounds for the toddler, 224 pounds for the 13 eyar old, and 168 pounds for the 11 year old. So what does this family look like?


Actually they're overweight, but not as corpulent as you'd expect from those numbers. Some people carry weight better than others, and if their build is large enough it can look less noticeable than you'd expect. The younger kids especially don't look all that fat, at least from the back.

But they were so fat and such a problem that the British government decided to step in. In March of 2008, social workers told the family that they had to lose weight, and if the younger kids didn't slim down, then they would have to "intervene." In September of that year, the city government took the oldest children away and put them under government minders: three specialists paid about $190,000 a year to get them slimmed down.

When the mother gave birth via C-Section last week, the Social Services folks swept in and took the baby away. The family has been trying, unsuccessfully, to recover their children from the government for over a year and now just had their newborn baby taken away.

Here's how the Daily Mail explains it:

The family first came to the attention of social services in March 2008 when they asked for help in caring for the children, including the three-year-old girl, who has developmental problems.

But social workers who visited the family were shocked at the size of them - including a 21-month-old boy, who they claimed was overweight at 1st 12lb.

The council then took the radical step of threatening the mother and her husband that, unless all the children lost weight, they would be removed from the family home.

They were also ordered to send their children to dancing and football lessons to help them lose weight.

The family say they were also warned that their six children would be take into care if they failed to lose weight.

Is there more to the story? I expect so, the Mail is nothing if not reactionary and sensationalistic, but the city council isn't being very helpful:

A council spokesman said: ‘We will not comment in detail on any family with whom we are involved, but we have made it clear on numerous occasions that children would not be removed from a family environment just because of a weight issue.’

He added: ‘Any decision about a child’s situation is given full and careful consideration.

'It is never taken lightly and always at the forefront is what is the best course of action for the welfare and safety of the child.

‘The decision to remove children from any parent’s care on a compulsory basis is not made by councils but by the children’s hearing system.’

Basically, the UK government's bureaucracy is set up in such a way that the "Children's Panel" has so much power they can take children when they wish and do so based upon absurd categories such as "your baby might get fat." Well, in a nation where the cost of health care is skyrocketing and the quality is plummeting, I guess from the government's perspective this kind of thing is a reasonable cost cutting exercise for the benefit of the collective.

Think about that a moment. The reason they think this is reasonable is because the government is paying for health care out of everyone's exorbitant taxes. Because overweight people are deemed to be a greater burden on the health care system, the government thinks it is perfectly reasonable to step in and seize children from families to slim them down. After all, that cost is passed on to everyone, and it is the government's responsibility to care for everyone's health. Think of the children.

Whether these kids are this way because they are eating a lousy diet or because they are genetically predisposed to storing fat (or have some kind of medical condition) is really beside the point. The point is that the UK continues to be a screaming warning sign of how socialism and well meaning tyranny actually works out.

Where are kids better off: under grossly overpaid "specialists" in the government clinic, or with their parents who may not feed them the ideal diet? Given that a lot of recent research suggests that carrying extra weight isn't as dangerous or health-destroying as previously thought, this seems like a pretty easy question to answer.

Yet when the government has more power and more responsibility over your life, this becomes a more difficult question to answer, for detached bureaucrats, at least. The more power you give the government to do what you think you want or need, the more power it has to take away from you what it thinks it needs. That line has to be drawn pretty carefully, and Britain has sailed so far over that line its past the horizon.

How did they get there? Inch by inch, incremental changes and a people who didn't fight it, or even thought they wanted each of these changes. A people who surrendered their personal responsibility so much the father just kissed his baby goodbye when the government showed up to take it. Just how heartless a government drone do you have to be to take a baby out of its mother's arms just after birth?

But by all means, lets have government run insurance here, too. After all, it works so well in other nations.

Old Habits, pt 6

"Part of the ability to keep writing over the years comes down to living with the expectation of disappointment."
-Norman Mailer

I love sea novels. Hornblower, Aubrey, Bolitho, pretty much all of them, even the ones that aren't that great like George Ambercrombie Fox. I am not so fond of modern ships and warfare, but the old sailing stories of wooden ships and iron men are very entertaining. As a result of reading all these novels I've learned a small bit about sailing, even though I've never set foot on a sailing ship nor been at sea in my life. The closest I've come is a few stops at museums and docked boats.

Some time I'd like to write a sea novel, but I fear my almost total ignorance of actual sailing experience would make the stories seem false and flat. The great sea novelists all went sailing around and did a tremendous amount of research. I can do research, but not the sailing about, and I'm not sure I really would want to in any case.

So for now I can just slip some of the accumulated ideas and descriptions from dozens of novels I have read into other stories. Since the protagonist of this story is a street rogue, he knows almost nothing of oceans or ships. He's not even gone aboard one to rob it, so the descriptions and explanation have to be from his perspective rather than some old salt who is used to it all. In a way that's more useful for the reader: not everyone has read enough or studied ships enough to know a t'gallant from a cathead and it is easy to get lost in all the jargon.

So Stoce finds himself definitely out of his element, trying to play a lord based on seeing some while he "visited" their homes and not even sure where the ship is going. All he knows is that its safer on the ship - despite the dangers of the sea - than at home.

Old Habits, part six

Quote of the Day

"It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously."
-Peter Ustinov

SCIENTIFIC IGNORANCE

“We don’t expect people to know everything about science; the problem comes when they don’t consider checking it or asking a few questions before they speak out."
-Ellen Raphael

I'm ignorant of a lot of things, and the older I get the less I am confident I know anything at all. The problem is, of course, that the older you get the more things you become aware of and after a while it seems overwhelming. There's so much to know and so little I actually do, and the comparison becomes more vast each day.

For people who speak or write publicly, the best tactic when faced with this sort of thing is to try to learn more of what you discuss or speak about, and to recognize your ignorance. Ignorance is nothing shameful in its self, it only becomes shameful when it is without excuse or on display in the place of learning.

Recently the Celebrities and Science Review 2008 looked at statements and quotes by famous people and compared them to actual scientific fact and data as it is understood today. Their pamphlet (pdf file) includes such gems as this:

“...what you put on your skin goes into your bloodstream.”
-Mrs Ron Wood on why she uses organic beauty products

“ …every day there’s a new report warning that obesity levels in children are out of control... The fact that those kids who drink the most milk gain the most weight should cause alarm bells to be ringing everywhere. It isn’t and milk is still being pushed as essential for children.”
-Heather McCartney, Vegan

“ I mean, one of the biggest problems that exists right now in the world is nuclear waste… that’s something I’ve been involved with for a while with a group of scientists — finding a way to neutralise radiation.”
-Madonna whose guru claims to have cleaned up a lake near Chernobyl

“ I want to cook with the best ingredients and have food the way it should be: healthy, tasty and grown with nature.”
-Chef Jamie Oliver on the benefits of organic food

The PDF pamphlet includes responses by experts such as the one who points out that you cannot "neutralize" radiation - kabbala or not - and the one who asks what exactly Jamie Oliver thinks non "organic" food is if not raise in nature.

There are other problems with scientific ignorance among the celebrity, as Steve Connor writes about in the Independent:

Mr Obama and John McCain blundered into the MMR vaccine row during their presidential campaigns. "We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate," said President-elect Obama. "Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it," he said.

His words were echoed by Mr McCain. "It's indisputable that [autism] is on the rise among children, the question is what's causing it," he said. "There's strong evidence that indicates it's got to do with a preservative in the vaccines."

Exhaustive research has failed to substantiate any link to vaccines or any preservatives. The rise in autism is thought to be due to an increased awareness of the condition.
...
Kate Moss, Oprah Winfrey and Demi Moore all espoused the idea that you can detoxify your body with either diet (scientifically unsupportable) or, in the case of Moore, products such as "highly trained medical leeches" which make you bleed. Scientists point out that diet alone cannot remove toxins and that blood itself is not a toxin, and even if it did contain toxins, removing a little bit of it is not going to help.

Now, none of this would matter if people would recognize that these are chattering goofballs who know little to nothing about science and should be taken as seriously as any advice on brain surgery or sailing 17th century frigates they might offer.

The problem is because some rich, good looking person says something in a prominent place, they tend to be taken seriously. Oprah said, it, I can trust Oprah! Why, that beautiful model thinks cosmetics are absorbed through the skin, she'd know about cosmetics! Jamie Oliver is a great chef, he knows about food! Except... they don't know much about science and when they pontificate about that, its often wrong and silly.

Being wrong isn't so bad, I do it all the time. Being publicly, prominently, and confidently wrong is a problem - especially when someone like Ted Danson puts on his "take me seriously" glasses and talks about the destruction mankind is wreaking on a planet he knows virtually nothing about.

However, sometimes the criticism takes on a different character. Nailing Senator McCain's ignorance on vaccines which could cost the lives of millions if taken seriously is one thing - he needs to know more before opening his pie hole (an all too common occurrence for politicians in general and McCain in specific). The Independent, however quotes a criticism by the Sense About Science guys which is not so accurate.

Sarah Palin, Mr McCain's running mate, waded into the mire with her dismissal of some government research projects. "Sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not," Ms Palin said. But the geneticist Ellen Solomon takes Ms Palin to task for not understanding the importance of studies into fruit flies, which share roughly half their genes with humans. "They have been used for more than a century to understand how genes work, which has implications in, for example, understanding the ageing process," she said.

Experimenting on fruit flies is not just entertaining but it is quite informative about how DNA works. Their life cycle is so fast that you can see how many generations behave with slight modifications. That's all true and good.

The problem is, Mrs Palin was not criticizing fruit fly research. She was criticizing paying Parisians for fruit fly research. Not only is it absurd for US tax dollars to pay for French research but its unconstitutional for the US federal government to pay for any such research. The writers seemed to miss that entirely (probably wanting to get a boot into Palin's ribs).

Conspicuously missing from the entire article and the Sense About Science work? Any attacks on Al Gore's often ridiculously ignorant and wildly inaccurate and misleading pontifications about global climate and its effects. Nothing about the hockey graph being demolished. Nothing about the polar bear population explosion being portrayed as endangerment. Nothing about prominent politicians claiming the polar ice cap is shrinking when it is growing. Global warming comments are left off entirely from the examination of scientific ignorance.

And that's a shame because if there's one area in which celebrities are shooting off their fool mouths about in ignorance more than any other, its climate change.

WORD AROUND THE NET

"Two-thirds of the time (41 of 61), the White House has held bills for five days or more before President Obama has signed them. The only thing keeping him from fulfilling his promise as to these bills is the simple failure to post them on Whitehouse.gov."

And now your weekly round up of interesting stories and posts I saw but didn't find a way to turn into a full post of my own.

England's battle against potential pedophiles has ramped up again. Last time we saw this fight, it was parents banned from sports events because someone naughty might show up claiming to be a parent. This time the Watford City Council decided that parents aren't allowed on public playgrounds because one of them might be a pedophile in disguise. Laura Clark reports in the Daily Mail:

Children as young as five will instead be supervised by council 'play rangers' who have been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Councillors insist they are merely following Government regulations and cannot allow adults to walk around playgrounds 'unchecked.'

Naturally, the government can raise your children better than you.

Courtesy Rocketman at Piece of Work in Progress, we learn that the Obama Administration is starting to change its tone regarding Zelaya and Honduras. Previously, the US government was doing everything it could do put the would-be leftist dictator back in power, going so far as to cut off all aid to Honduras and rejecting their diplomats. Calling the legal ouster of Zelaya by the other branches of the Honduran government a "coup," the Obama administration insisted that it would not recognize a re-election as valid. That seems to be changing, however:

In a letter sent to the U.S. State Department on Wednesday, Zelaya asked Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton “to clarify to the Honduran people if the position condemning the coup d’etat has been changed or modified.”

His request came after Washington’s top envoy to Latin America, Thomas Shannon, told CNN en Espanol that Washington will recognize the Nov. 29 elections even if the Honduran Congress decides against returning Zelaya to power.

Clearly Zelaya hears the back-up alarm on the Obama bus beeping; my advice would be to move out of the way since far more intimate “allies” have ended up under that bus since Mr. Obama came on to the national scene.

Big Hollywood has collected eleven disturbing videos of elementary school kids organized and directed to sing the praises of President Obama. But it was those who supported President Bush who were creepy and cultish. Elementary school kids are not political nor do they have the experience, rational capacity, or understanding to be so - and they are very unlikely to tell their teachers "no." This stuff is really disturbing to me.

Depression, according to a study covered by the BBC, might result from poor diet.

Data on diet among 3,500 middle-aged civil servants was compared with depression five years later, the British Journal of Psychiatry reported.

The team said the study was the first to look at the UK diet and depression.

They split the participants into two types of diet - those who ate a diet largely based on whole foods, which includes lots of fruit, vegetables and fish, and those who ate a mainly processed food diet, such as sweetened desserts, fried food, processed meat, refined grains and high-fat dairy products.

After accounting for factors such as gender, age, education, physical activity, smoking habits and chronic diseases, they found a significant difference in future depression risk with the different diets.

Those who ate the most whole foods had a 26% lower risk of future depression than those who at the least whole foods.

I'm a bit skeptical of these kinds of studies since there are so many variables with mood and depression and I don't care for the term "whole foods" because it seems to lend its self to that goofy "organic" term. However, there definitely are benefits to eating less processed foods and cooking from scratch (cheaper, for one thing) and I suspect strongly that the preservatives and processing of food has more problems than we're aware of at present.

Commercial Investment Trust (CIT Group) went bankrupt despite a 2.3 billion dollar bailout package worked out by Obama's tax cheat Treasury Secretary Geithner. The bailout was primarily money to allow CIT to repay its senior creditors (such as Goldman-Sachs) 70 cents on the dollar, but the company ultimately failed anyway. That money thus will not be repaid and it looks more and more like yet another example of mega corporate fat cats being protected by Washington politicians at the expense of other businesses. CIT lived long enough for their big time creditors to get paid off, then fell apart - apparently that's all the "bailout" was meant to accomplish.

The Examiner has a list of "stimulus" package spending which has raised eyebrows all week. Take a look at the list, here's a few samples:

• $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn.
• $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla.
• $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.
• $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles
• $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades
• $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway

Because, you know, Microsoft can't afford that on its own.

The list goes on and on. Some I can somewhat defend, but most are just boilerplate government giveaways and earmarks for areas that congressmen like or want to support.

President Obama promised before taking office that he'd put all bills he signed online to be viewed for 5 days before he signed them as part of a greater effort for government transparency. He repeated the promise when he took office. It has never happened. At the Cato institute, they have a list of bills which are most recently passed but haven't hit the web site, save one (which wasn't officially listed as part of a transparency effort).

Among the excuses for why the website isn't hosting new bills to be viewed was the claim that the Bush administration was so backward and stupid when it came to computers that everything had to be upgraded and rebuilt. David Almacy, former White House Internet and E Communications Office Director of Media Affairs for President Bush has a blog called Capital Gig. On it, he says that the computers were all up to date and what's more a new website with the latest tech and format was set up specifically to aid President Obama in the transition to the white house (a contrast to stealing all the W's off the keyboards when President Clinton's juvenile staff left office).

Someone ain't tellin' the truth here and my money is on the Obama White House.

DISTRICT 23

"I guess Fox News will put this into immediate rotation, even though its hogwash."

There was a lot of discussion about what the NY-23 election meant and how it turned out. The disgraced Republican Party candidate dropped out because she was polling lower than a third party Constitution Party candidate, and ultimately the Democratic Party candidate won by a small margin.

Among the discussions two points came up which show how politics and arguments can work so often on the internet. CNN and leftist blogs such as Daily Kos declared this election a massive win over conservatism because the Conservative Party candidate lost to a Democrat. Why is a 3rd party candidate who filed a month before the election losing a big deal to them? Because, they argue, this district has been held by Republicans since before the Civil War. It was a huge blow to the GOP and conservatives everywhere, they argue, for this seat to be lost to a Democrat after all this time.

Yet at Newsbusters and other right leaning sites, they pointed out that this is not a district held by Republicans since before the Civil War, and a list of the other Democrats who've held the seat recently is given:

• Jacob H. Gilbert (D) March 8, 1960 – January 3, 1963
• Charles A. Buckley (D) January 3, 1963 – January 3, 1965
• Jonathan B. Bingham (D) January 3, 1965 – January 3, 1973
• Peter A. Peyser (D) January 3, 1979 – January 3, 1983
• Samuel S. Stratton (D) January 3, 1983 – January 3, 1989
• Michael R. McNulty (D) January 3, 1989 – January 3, 1993

Which sort of negates the "before the civil war" line and makes the jubilation on the left make less sense.

To this, the left responds "well that's just the district which has changed its boundaries over time, being re written and gerrymandered repeatedly. The area which New York congressional district 23 covers right now has always been Republican. And they're right, that geographical location has always been Republican.

So in a sense, both sides are right: the argument that this district lost a permanent Republican seat is false, but the argument that a Democrat had never before been elected by the folks living in a certain geographical area is true.

And this gives a little glimpse into the sort of sophistry, linguistic tricks, and arguments used not just on the internet but around the nation. What is at stake here is bragging rights.

Conservatives see a nobody who came from nowhere and had little typical charisma coming close to winning the election and ousting a leftist GOP candidate. They see the Republican Party machine being spanked for trying to push a candidate more leftist than the Democrat who was running against her. Leftists see a huge victory for Democrats who have a seat they never did before and a crushing defeat was dealt to conservatives for rejecting the GOP which is undergoing a civil war which guarantees its destruction (or at least being out of power long enough to implement their socialist schemes).

Which is right? Not technically right, not arguably right, but objectively and rationally correct? US Congressional Seats are held by districts, each location in the country represented by someone in congress. These districts can be redrawn regularly (and trust me, next year the scheming and redrawing will be baffling and amazing to behold; every change in power brings more outrageous gerrymandering), so they shift geographically but the name and seat remains constant. District 23 is district 23 and has been for over a century.

Thus, when the left cried that this district had been held by a Republican since before the Civil War, they were wrong. Factually and rationally, they were incorrect and rationally flawed. That district has been held and that seat has been occupied repeatedly by Democrats. Only as of the Contract With America revolution of 1994 did a Republican take that seat most recently.

However, what they meant to say, and failed to properly express, was that the people who live in the area now known as District 23 have not for generations voted for a Democrat. But that's not a very neat package, its long and confusing and not tidy enough to stick to memory. It is a poor talking point.

And that's the problem with talking points. They sound good, they hit a point well, they score points politically, but usually they're not exactly correct. And when corrected they can make you look pretty bad. Declaring something then saying "well, technically, that's still true, and you're just trying to spin!" wins no one over. It sounds weak and legalistic, which is not particularly attractive. The need to be concise, memorable, and easy to repeat means often that talking points aren't really true at all.

*This post was inspired by the discussion in comments at Right Wing News.

A NEW PLAN

“Neither good intentions nor efficiency of organisation can preserve decency in a system in which personal freedom and individual responsibility are destroyed.”
-Fredrick Von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

I suspect that this week's election was the final nail in the coffin of President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and Speaker Pelosi's health insurance takeover plan. There weren't the votes before the election and watching a key state turn red after being blue for its history is not going to encourage more Democrats to sign on to the plan. President Obama's name, likeness, and presence were all used to attempt to help the Democrat win in New Jersey and Virginia, and both lost by a big enough margin they didn't try the "recount until I win" gambit.

Still, although President Obama's deadline passed, the house version is being pushed with every trick in the book. Recently the health insurance industry did a study of the 2000-page health insurance takeover plan and found it had a lot of hidden costs that accounting tricks to game the Congressional Budget Office missed. Brad O'Leary at the American Thinker writes:

The results are quite sobering. The study shows that "between 2010 and 2019 the cumulative increases in the cost of a typical family policy under this reform proposal will be approximately $20,700 more than it would be under the current system." (Emphasis mine.)

Rather than challenge the study's results on merit, Obama and Pelosi wasted no time demonizing the health insurance industry with hyperbole and rhetoric. And then Pelosi lowered the boom, expressing "tremendous interest" in revoking the industry's decades-old antitrust exemption. This proved to be no empty threat, as the Democrat-run House Judiciary Committee promptly passed a bill to do exactly that.

The Democrats in the US federal government wasted no time trying to intimidate insurance companies into silence. Now, whether or not the findings of this study are valid, I do not know - certainly I'm just as reluctant to take the word of big companies on trust as I am that of politicians.

However, if there's a need to revoke the insurance anti-trust exemption, shouldn't that be done one way or another? If there's good cause for such an action, its good whether they support or criticize this health insurance bill, isn't there? Lacking such consistency one cannot help but suspect this is bald extortion, the Chicago Way.

Republicans have not been idle. They've offered up several alternative plans, none of which have gotten out of committee and none of which have gotten the slightest legacy media notice. It is one of the lamest talking points on the internet that the GOP only obstructs and offers no ideas, that the Republicans simply say no to everything without suggesting anything else. They suggest, but have no power to get those suggestions anywhere, and the legacy media looks the other way and turns up their I-Pod to not hear the shouting.

One such alternative plan was recently studied by the Congressional Budget Office and the results are quite different from the $1.8 trillion tax-boosting, premium-boosting Democratic Party version. Rather than bloating an already gargantuan federal budget, the plan is said to reduce it by a small amount:

CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that the amendment would reduce federal deficits by $68 billion over the 2010-2019 period; it would also slightly reduce federal budget deficits in the following decade, relative to those projected under current law, with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between zero and one-quarter percent of gross domestic product.

OK that's a large amount, but relative to the size of the insanely swollen debt, it is small. The CBO also estimates that based upon the plans in this bill, the number of people insured would increase, but the cost of their premiums would be reduced.

Sounds wonderful, right? What a great idea, those Republicans are sure sticking it to the Democrats. If only they had the power to implement their ideas! Not so fast.

"People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self."
-Eric Hoffer

Nowhere in the US Constitution is the federal government permitted to take money in taxes and spend it on other people for their well being. See, the US Constitution is based on a simple principle: that all the power in the US belongs with the individual citizens, and that the federal government is allowed, by the governed, to do certain, specific things. And only those things. The Constitution is not a partial list of powers the government has, it is a total list of the few things the government is permitted to do.

Here's what the founding fathers said about this principle. Remember, these are the guys who argued, fought for, wrote, debated, and passed the US Constitution. They knew what they meant and what it was supposed to be when it was written.

If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.
-James Madison

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
-Thomas Jefferson

"On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
-Thomas Jefferson

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
-James Madison

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined... [to] be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce."
-James Madison

This is what made the US so radical, this is what made the Constitution such an astounding, historical, and important foundational document which dozens of other nations have copied and revere. This is the basis of American liberty and exceptionalism: the principle that the people are the power and the government does what they wish.

The founding fathers were men who knew tyranny well and loved liberty more. They were men who fought to create a republic which would be difficult to maintain but worth every moment of effort for its rewards.

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority...the
Constitution was made to guard against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
-Noah Webster

The Republican Party has lost that, if it ever once understood this principle. Ronald Reagan, for a few decades, pushed a reluctant party toward that conservative basic understanding of the country and the constitution, but it has strayed far away from those days once more. The gleeful and boasting legacy media and Democratic Party are right: the Reagan Revolution is over - but t'was Republicans what killed the beast.

"A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should I think be steadfastly resisted to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the government the government should not support the people.”
-President Grover Cleveland

Earlier in this Decade, the Republican Party comfortably controlled both houses of congress and the white house. They could pass anything they wished, and failed to pass what they didn't wish to. Social Security reform and reform of the ghastly housing and lending laws were two such failures. Prescription Drug legislation was one they wanted to pass: a massive increase in government size and spending on something the US Constitution did not permit."Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of Liberty abused to licentiousness."

-George Washington

This GOP alternative health insurance plan is exactly the same sort of plan. It is just a slower version of the Democratic Party's mad rush toward socialism, trampling the US Constitution under soiled boots. Just because the GOP plan costs less and is less intrusive doesn't somehow make it a good plan.

"Nor is our Government to be maintained or our Union preserved by invasions of the rights and powers of the several States. In thus attempting to make our General Government strong we make it weak. Its true strength consists in leaving individuals and States as much as possible to themselves—in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence; not in its control, but in its protection; not in binding the States more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit."
-Andrew Jackson

So don't cheer this idea, mourn the fact that even ostensibly conservative Republicans such as John Boehner who co sponsored this bill think that's a proper alternative to the even worse Democratic Party plan. And mourn the fact that the GOP continues to offer its self not as a viable and desirable alternative to the awful Democratic Party, but instead presents its self as a less-awful alternative.

Remember, always, the words of President Ford: "If the Government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have.

*Tip of the pirate hat to Ace of Spades HQ for the health insurance politics stories

Old Habits, Pt 5

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."
-G. K. Chesterton

I don't like thieves. I have been robbed before in my life, personally and as a household. It is a miserable experience. Thieves don't just rob your things, they rob your dignity and your efforts. For a woman they rob her sense of safety and stability. For a man they rob his sense of strength and confidence. It isn't the things that are stolen so much as the other painful experiences that makes a thief's work feel so rotten.

It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, stealing from someone is an ethical violation, it is objectively wrong. Rich people have more to spare and are less financially troubled by replacing things that are stolen, but the same trauma and frustration occurs. Taking something minor is just as bad as taking something major.

Yet at the same time, in another sort of life and time I could have been a thief. The thought that goes into it, the thrill of doing something and getting away with it, the skill and pride in work, all of the things that go into doing thievery are appealing at some level. Not so much the taking of other peoples' things as the rest of the work that goes into it. That's a large part of why I enjoy the Thief series of games: all the interesting parts without the criminal and moral failing.

Writing a book about a thief doing his thing is a bit of a departure from the idea of heroic fantasy. He's not a big tough strong guy who fights for justice and saves the innocent. Stoce won't ride into a dragon's lair to save the princess, he'd stay home and think the king was an idiot for letting her go to begin with, and wonder if that won't distract him enough to be easier to rob. Stoce doesn't try to help others, but as the book goes along he finds himself doing it anyway because as rough a life as he's had and as criminal as he is, deep down he's a pretty decent fellow.

The trick is to find a way to show that and lead him to modify what he does for the good of others without it being preachy or contrived.

Party 5 of Old Habits may be found here.

Quote of the Day

"You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself."
-Sam Levenson

Old Habits, Pt 4

"Learn as much by writing as by reading."
-Lord Acton

In a fantasy novel, multiple languages will usually crop up because of the various races and cultures that are present. Something few I've read have tried to address, however, is the way different classes speak. Pick some poverty stricken ghetto dweller and put him by the richest, best educated person in the city and ask them a few questions. The answers you get will vary not simply in knowledge and experience, but actual language. Yet usually fantasy novels have everyone speaking in the same dialect and tone - even otherwise well written stories.

So I've tried to focus on differences in language in this book. The segment up today highlights one sort called "gutter." A couple of times I've posted in WATN about slang and alternate languages, whether it was about text messaging, internet abbreviations, or the rhyming slang of the past. I love languages, especially unique and interesting dialects. The way people craft their own version of an established language is interesting to me, especially criminal elements.

Gutter was fun to come up with, and while I don't use a lot of it in the book, it is such a part of the main character's upbringing and culture he puts slang into his dialogue without thinking about it. Stoce prides himself in being able to speak with the better classes of the city but in truth he still is very much a street kid.

At the end of this book I intend to put a glossary explaining the words he uses. In context they should make enough sense, and he explains some of them, but it has been very entertaining to come up with the new slang on my own.

Part four of Old Habits can be found here.

Quote of the Day

"A life of pleasure makes even the strongest mind frivolous at last."
-Edward Bulwer-Lytton