Neal Stephenson is fascinated with sword-fighting, and is trying to raise the funding for what he intends to be the ultimate sword-fighting video game (to be named “Clang,” and to be developed by Subotai Corporation) using Kickstarter.

He tells us that the project needs to attract pledges amounting to $500,000 (!) by July 9th to develop the game. (Those Seattle game designers clearly all drive Porsches and drink plenty of Cristal.)

They are up to $230,449 right now with 26 days to go. You have to cough up at least $25 for the right to download a copy which is estimated to be finished by February of next year. They will charge your credit card on July 9th, assuming enough optimists climb on board to provide the half million in funding.

On the one hand, I have a strong positive regard for sword-fighting and admire Neal Stephenson. On the other hand, I worked in the game design industry in my youth and, boy! our budgets were orders of magnitude less than $500,000 a game.

I’m not sure how long they’ve been trying to Kickstarter this one, but there are only 26 days left and they are not quite halfway there, which does not look good to me.

Nice costume though, Neal.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

James Piereson, in the New Criterion, argues that the era of the New Deal political coalition has finally reached its end, and a new epoch of American politics resting on entirely different bases is struggling to be born. America is ready for a new political realignment.

The conflict today between Democrats and Republicans increasingly pits public sector unions, government employees and contractors, and beneficiaries of government programs against middle-class taxpayers and business interests large and small. In states where public spending is high and public sector unions are strong, as in New York, California, Illinois, and Connecticut, Democrats have gained control; where public sector interests are weak or poorly organized, as in most of the states across the south and southwest, Republicans have the edge. This configuration, when added up across the nation, has produced a series of electoral stand-offs in recent decades between the red and blue states that have been decided by a handful of swing states moving in one direction or the other.

This impasse between the two parties signals the end game for the system of politics that originated in the 1930s and 1940s. As the “regime party,” the Democrats are in the more vulnerable position because they have built their coalition around public spending, public debt, and publicly guaranteed credit, all sources of funds that appear to be reaching their limits. The end game for the New Deal system, and for the Democrats as our “regime party,” will arrive when those limits are reached or passed.

This point will arrive fairly soon for the following reasons: (1) unsustainable debt; (2) public promises that cannot be fulfilled; (3) stagnation and slow growth; and (4) political paralysis. The last point is important because it means that the parties will fail to agree on any preemptive solutions to the above problems until they reach a point of crisis.

Read the whole thing.

As everybody knows, in today’s United States, we typically do not really own our homes, we rent them from our government. Quit paying property taxes and the real owner will quickly throw you out.

When I was in my childhood, half a century ago, in small town America, property taxes for my parents were affordable. They paid a bit over a $100 a year.

Things are different today. Most people owning a middle class home within fashionable regions pay something along the lines of $8-10,000 per annum to local government for the privilege of continuing to occupy their home.

The New York Times reports on a really revolutionary measure about to be voted upon in North Dakota that could change all that.

Since Californians shrank their property taxes more than three decades ago by passing Proposition 13, people around the nation have echoed their dismay over such levies, putting forth plans to even them, simplify them, cap them, slash them. In an election here on Tuesday, residents of North Dakota will consider a measure that reaches far beyond any of that — one that abolishes the property tax entirely.

“I would like to be able to know that my home, no matter what happens to my income or my life, is not going to be taken away from me because I can’t pay a tax,” said Susan Beehler, one in a group of North Dakotans who have pressed for an amendment to the state’s Constitution to end the property tax. They argue that the tax is unpredictable, inconsistent, counter to the concept of property ownership and needless in a state that, thanks in part to wildly successful oil drilling, finds itself in the rare circumstance of carrying budget reserves.

“When,” Ms. Beehler asked, “did we come to believe that government should get rich and we should get poor?”

Read the whole thing.

Via Drudge.

If they pass it, it will make moving to North Dakota, winters and all, decidedly attractive.

I used to live in Fairfield County, Connecticut. Our town was really actually a bedroom. The residents were nearly all upper middle class professionals who worked long hours and commuted significant distances (commonly an hour and 45 minutes to New York City) to do so. On week days nights, they got home, ate, and staggered off to bed.

The politicians, the PTA, the League of Women Vipers, and all the other forces of Progress consequently could do whatever they pleased. Normal people were simply too exhausted from making a living to get involved in the political process. The only people who did were those who wanted something. And what they wanted was more, and for the rest of us to pay for it.

Consequently, the town budget and the real estate taxes went up, good times and bad, annually. If there was a recession on, the increase might be a mere 6-8%. In good years, it would be more like 10-12%.

When we bought our house, we were paying $2000 a year in real estate taxes. Twenty years later, we were paying $10,000.

What this meant is that there were no retired people in town. Nobody could own real estate in our town on a retirement income. As soon as someone stopped working, he sold out and moved to a Sunbelt state with lower taxes.

From the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation.

One should never listen to the advice provided by large quantities of booze. More.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Narco Polo reports that, in Afghanistan, motivated seekers of intoxication will resort to smoking the stingers of local scorpions.

[I]n Afghanistan even the ubiquitous scorpions can be used for intoxication. Tartars in Bamiyan province prepare scorpions by smashing them between stones and letting them dry. The main part of the tail, with the sting, is then crushed into a powder and smoked with tobacco and/or hashish (marijuana).

[A witness] in the Afghan town of Peshawar described the reaction:

The effect was instantaneous with the man’s face and eyes becoming very red, “much more than a hashish smoker” …. He also seemed very intoxicated but awake and alert, although he stumbled and fell over when he tried to rise from a sitting position …. the smoke tasted “sweeter” than that of hashish, although … it smelled foul, and the intoxicating effect lasted much longer. (1, p. 247)

As with most drugs, anecdotal reports of scorpion’s effects vary widely. It is likely that the numerous Afghan scorpion species have divergent psychoactive properties. Scorpion has been reported to keep one awake, cause severe headaches, and rival the effects of a “strong mescaline trip.” (1, p. 248) One Kabul man who had smoked between 20 and 30 times reported the effects to last three days. During these periods he had difficulty opening his eyes, his head spun, and he had constant visual hallucinations.

Globally, scorpion smoking is still rare. The failure of the war on other drugs has not driven people to seek it out … yet. If drug war success sparking scorpion use sounds unbelievable, in India’s Western states police crackdowns on mainstream illicit drugs have already led to “sting sellers.” A police officer in the city of Bharuch said:

Because of our successful drives against the sellers and addicts of alcohol, opium, cough syrup, and heroin in urban areas, young people are flocking on the highways to try the new craze of scorpion sting.

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The same practice was described as occurring in Pakistan in 2001. Reuters via Wired:

When they’re in season, Ghulam Raza smokes scorpions.

He says he dries their stingers in the sun and grinds them, then lights the powdery venom and sucks the smoke deep into his lungs.

“Oh yes,” he said when asked if the scorpions make him high. “When I smoke scorpion, then the heroin is like nothing to me.”

The place where Raza and other Pakistani junkies smoke dope or shoot up in the southwestern city of Quetta is a good place to find scorpions. It is the main cemetery, a dust-filled field of tombstones and corpse-sized mounds of rocks. …

In the cemetery, sometimes one of them will get very stoned and drop into an open grave.

General Gordon is clearly intentionally turned so as to avoid exposing the wounded side of his face.

Defending the sunken road, known as “Bloody Lane,” at the Battle of Antietam, Brigadier General John B. Gordon was commanding the 6th Alabama Regiment. In his 1903 memoir, he describes being wounded repeatedly.

General Gordon, nonetheless, survived the battle, and the war, and lived until 1904.

My extraordinary escapes from wounds in all the previous battles had made a deep impression upon my comrades as well as upon my own mind. So many had fallen at my side, so often had balls and shells pierced and torn my clothing, grazing my body without drawing a drop of blood, that a sort of blind faith possessed my men that I was not to be killed in battle. This belief was evidenced by their constantly repeated expressions: “They can’t hurt him.” “He’s as safe one place as another.” “He’s got a charmed life.”

If I had allowed these expressions of my men to have any effect upon my mind the impression was quickly dissipated when the Sharpsburg storm came and the whizzing Minies, one after another, began to pierce my body.

The first volley from the Union lines in my front sent a ball through the brain of the chivalric Colonel [Charles C.] Tew, of North Carolina, to whom I was talking, and another ball through the calf of my right leg. On the right and the left my men were falling under the death-dealing crossfire like trees in a hurricane. The persistent Federals, who had lost so heavily from repeated repulses, seemed now determined to kill enough Confederates to make the debits and credits of the battle’s balance-sheet more nearly even. Both sides stood in the open at short range and without the semblance of breastworks, and the firing was doing a deadly work. Higher up in the same leg I was again shot; but still no bone was broken. I was able to walk along the line and give encouragement to my resolute rifle-men, who were firing with the coolness and steadiness of peace soldiers in target practice. When later in the day the third ball pierced my left arm, tearing asunder the tendons and mangling the flesh, they caught sight of the blood running down my fingers, and these devoted and big-hearted men, while still loading their guns, pleaded with me to leave them and go to the rear, pledging me that they would stay there and fight to the last. I could not consent to leave them in such a crisis. The surgeons were all busy at the field-hospitals in the rear, and there was no way, therefore, of stanching the blood, but I had a vigorous constitution, and this was doing me good service.

A fourth ball ripped through my shoulder, leaving its base and a wad of clothing in its track. I could still stand and walk, although the shocks and loss of blood had left but little of my normal strength. I remembered the pledge to the commander that we would stay there till the battle ended or night came. I looked at the sun. It moved very slowly; in fact, it seemed to stand still.

I thought I saw some wavering in my line, near the extreme right, and Private [Benjamin F.] Vickers, of Alabama, volunteered to carry any orders I might wish to send. I directed him to go quickly and remind the men of the pledge to General Lee, and to say to them that I was still on the field and intended to stay there. He bounded away like an Olympic racer; but he had gone less than fifty yards when he fell, instantly killed by a ball through his head. I then attempted to go myself, although I was bloody and faint, and my legs did not bear me steadily. I had gone but a short distance when I was shot down by a fifth ball, which struck me squarely in the face, and passed out, barely missing the jugular vein. I fell forward and lay unconscious with my face in my cap; and it would seem that I might have been smothered by the blood running into my cap from this last wound but for the act of some Yankee, who, as if to save my life, had at a previous hour during the battle, shot a hole through the cap, which let the blood out.

I was borne on a litter to the rear, and recall nothing more till revived by stimulants at a late hour that night.

Dawn Loggins

The New York Daily News has the story of a young girl, abandoned by her parents, indigent, who slept on friends’ couches and worked part-time jobs to survive.

She was never trained in personal hygiene or social conventions by anyone, wore the same dress for months at a time, and was forced to transfer to six different schools. She worked a job as a janitor in her high school but nonetheless got straight A’s.

“There are no excuses,” she told the interviewer from a local radio station. “It all depends on you, and no one else.”

It doesn’t take a village. It takes personal determination and drive.

The stories he could tell. (click on picture for larger image)

From Oleg Sandro-Panfilov via Viktorija Ruškulienė (at Facebook).