Posted On: Saturday - April 13th 2024 7:00PM MST
In Topics: Pundits Books
Peak Stupidity has been looking forward to this new book by Conservative pundit and Noticer Extraordinaire Steve Sailer. As we noted at the bottom of this post regarding another favorite writer of ours, the 3 copies of Noticing arrived.
This post's title says "OVERview". An actual REview will be coming, but it might be a while. I can imagine reading this book in 6 ± 2 hours straight, but I want to savor it. I also like the idea that I'll be reading it while traveling some soon, so others may just "notice" the book. "Oh, yeah, it's the book by Steve Sailer, you know." "Steve Sailer?" "Well, yeahhh.", as if everyone should know him. Maybe people do. "Oh, he's the guy who just wrote a couple of posts about O.J. Simpson recently." "O.J. who? I think it's Bart or Homer you mean."
Anyway, I'll lay out the "chapters" here. The quotes there are to explain and avoid possible confusion - these chapters are not the smallest sections. Besides some introduction and afterwords, there are 14 sections called chapters. Each is on one of Mr. Sailer's favorite, or maybe more like one of his most important, areas of expertise, with 3 to 6 of his articles from the past (this is an anthology) in each. (The average is 4.2 articles per chapter.)
There's a foreword that I think would have been better called "Background" or "My Background". This is a quick occupational, political and literary background of Mr. Sailer. I just finished it, and it's pretty interesting - I hadn't known the half of it before. However, a foreword ought to be a few pages that explain his motivation for writing this anthology and maybe relate the chapters to each other in some way. Only the the last page and a quarter has this, but, if you've got an afterword, you've got to have a foreword, I suppose. That last bit starts with:
In contrast to the new inegalitarianism, I believe in the equality of the moral worth of all individual humans to be the subject of empirical analysis. In my ethical system, everybody counts and thus everybody is fit to be counted.A few of his very good examples follow, then:
That's not a popular attitude, to say the least.
When it comes to data analysis the contemporary rules are also plain to see. You are encouraged to notice some disparities but not others.
But it's hard to think up these kind of potentially constructive approaches under the current mindset in which the only permissible response to pattern recognition is to blame the pre-defined Bad Guys: straight white men.Yes, I do! However, we do all need to keep in mind that the people making these rules are well aware of what they are doing and aim to keep the rules they way thay are. They hate us, the "Bad Guys", and want us dead. That's how Communists operate.
Not surprisingly, American intellectual culture has tended to get dumber and duller under the reigning rules.
I hope you find my anthology a refreshing contrast.
Anyway, the 59 articles come from various publications, but I'd say more than half of them were published in TakiMag. I didn't realize he'd been on there for that long - from just skimming through, it seems like it's been 12 years or so. Other articles are taken from VDare directly, and then the older ones come from National Review (a few especially well-written ones), The American Conservative, and a couple of other publications. Those were from the time before Steve Sailer was unPersoned. The Unz Review is not one of the sources cited at the beginning of any articles, though I swear I saw the site mentioned within one of them when I skimmed through earlier. No UR commenters are mentioned - sorry, guys.
I see a slight chronological progression here (not necessarily with the individual articles), but otherwise not a real pattern. That's OK. Mr. Sailer says that many of his general topics are orthogonal to each other. (How many dimensions can he think in?) Anyway, here you go. The quick notes are mine:
Chapter One: Citizenism (4 articles)
Chapter Two: Invade the World, Invite the World (6 articles)
Chapter Three: The Sailer Strategy (3 articles)
Chapter Four: Villains and Heroes (5 articles) Note: Heroes and Villains is a Beach Boys song that Mr. Sailer must know and like. I guess he didn't want to use it directy.
Chapter Five: Human Biodiversity (4 articles) Note: This is not a Sailer-coined term. I just learned that it was first the name of a book by one Jonathan Marks.
Chapter Six: The Level Playing Field (4 articles) Note: Within this chapter (3rd article, p. 183) you will find, YES, an article on Golf Course Architecture! I DID try to read it. No can do.*
Chapter Seven: The Half-Full Glass (5 articles)
Chapter Eight: The Blank Screen (3 articles) Note: These 3 are about Øb☭ma.
Chapter Nine: World War T (4 articles) Note: Great prediction, I gotta say.
Chapter Ten: Sailer's Law of Female Journalism (3 articles) Note: I wish he had a few more in here. His getting into the minds of women is very illuminating to me.
Chapter Eleven: Jews and Gentiles (4 articles) Note: It could be "Jews v Gentiles", in the Peak Stupidity style, but that would have quite a different meaning.
Chapter Twelve: The Coalition of the Fringes (5 articles)
Chapter Thirteen: Sailer's Law of Mass Shootings (4 articles)
Chapter Fourteen: The Great Awokening (5 articles)
Look for an actual review of some sort in the medium future. In the meantime, we're bogged down, what with more Climate Calamity™ stupidity, fallout from the 4 year-ago Kung Flu PanicFest with a new attempt being made, that Babylon Bee style true story, and more ... depending on just what kind of war will be ongoing come Monday ... Thanks for reading!
* It's perfectly fine with me that he's got his niche obscure topics. After all, I doubt that discussion of the erroneous physics calculations done within exercise machine computer chips are the most exciting thing for our readers either! (Ask me more! I mean, if it is...)
Comments:
Moderator
Wednesday - April 17th 2024 8:14PM MST
PS: Possumman, I'd be curious to see what the library would have to say if you told them not that you wanted it, but that you wanted to donate a copy, as you were sure others would want to read this book. Even if they said OK, I wonder what they'd actually do with it then?
Possumman
Wednesday - April 17th 2024 12:26PM MST
PS. Asked our local public library via online form to purchase copies of this book. They said they had reviewed my request and declined to purchase it. No further explanation given. I'm shocked they seen to be extremely well stocked with gay literature.
Moderator
Monday - April 15th 2024 6:22PM MST
PS: oops, Mr. Hail, I'd meant to type "I know that you tried to give him some good constructive suggestions.", not "criticism".
Moderator
Monday - April 15th 2024 4:50PM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, sorry for the late replies here (and in a few minutes) under the most recent post. I've been busy the whole time from when I finished that short post on LewRockwell.com till now.
I have the book in front of me. "STEVE SAILER" in 0.2" high lettering (I don't know the "point" system) centered above 0.7" high letters reading "NOTICING" and then "An Essential Reader | 1973-2023" in 0.2" letters centered underneath. At least his name is there on the cover, but I see what you mean about amazon. His name is there as the author, but his name in caps is not part of the database title. BTW, his name is centered on my real books, but not in the graphic.
A bigger BTW, is that "Noticing in books" gets to one other book called "Noticing". That one is by Kobi Yamada and Elise Hurst. So, I needed to include Sailer to get to his book. I think you are right that "A Steve Sailer Anthology" as part of at least Passage Press' title would have been better. It's possible someone might think this is a book on psychology, but I think "An Essential Reader" should clear this up.
Were someone to see me reading the book and notice (heh) the cover, he would see clearly Mr. Sailer's name. I don't know. I know that you tried to give him some good constructive criticism. An interesting thing would be to see which, if ANY, unz commenter suggestions seem to be included in the pick of the 59 articles. Something tells me he didn't really put much stock in the commenters' suggestions.
I have the book in front of me. "STEVE SAILER" in 0.2" high lettering (I don't know the "point" system) centered above 0.7" high letters reading "NOTICING" and then "An Essential Reader | 1973-2023" in 0.2" letters centered underneath. At least his name is there on the cover, but I see what you mean about amazon. His name is there as the author, but his name in caps is not part of the database title. BTW, his name is centered on my real books, but not in the graphic.
A bigger BTW, is that "Noticing in books" gets to one other book called "Noticing". That one is by Kobi Yamada and Elise Hurst. So, I needed to include Sailer to get to his book. I think you are right that "A Steve Sailer Anthology" as part of at least Passage Press' title would have been better. It's possible someone might think this is a book on psychology, but I think "An Essential Reader" should clear this up.
Were someone to see me reading the book and notice (heh) the cover, he would see clearly Mr. Sailer's name. I don't know. I know that you tried to give him some good constructive criticism. An interesting thing would be to see which, if ANY, unz commenter suggestions seem to be included in the pick of the 59 articles. Something tells me he didn't really put much stock in the commenters' suggestions.
Hail
Monday - April 15th 2024 6:46AM MST
PS
-- On the Sailer book title, again --
I wrote a few weeks ago how there are certain signs of serious missteps in the putting together of this book. I mean, if it is intended to be an accessible compilation beyond the semi-ghetto of people who are already Sailer readers and are plugged into his own self-promotional network.
A serious problem is the title itself, to the degree that I can't believe no one "flagged" this as a problem, I mean a practical problem for accessibility, or the imagined way I like to think (the right) people find books: browsing through shelves and seeing titles and covers.
See PS Entry-2925:
https://peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=2925
Quote:
______________
I just noticed, the official title as it appears on Amazon is:
"Noticing: An Essential Reader (1973-2023)"
The words "Steve" and "Sailer" are NOT IN THE TITLE! The title simply says that it's "an essential reader" about, apparently, "Noticing."
A casual passer-by might think the tome aims to help an understanding the concept "noticing" itself. In fact, of course, it's a compendium of Steve Sailer's essays and things. Noticing is just a clever little one-liner he made up. The point is that it's Steve Sailer's selected work.
It was a big mistake to not title put the man's name in the title itself: "Noticing: An Essential Steve Sailer reader, 1973-2023" or "Noticing: A Steve Sailer Anthology, 1973-2023";
____________
-- On the Sailer book title, again --
I wrote a few weeks ago how there are certain signs of serious missteps in the putting together of this book. I mean, if it is intended to be an accessible compilation beyond the semi-ghetto of people who are already Sailer readers and are plugged into his own self-promotional network.
A serious problem is the title itself, to the degree that I can't believe no one "flagged" this as a problem, I mean a practical problem for accessibility, or the imagined way I like to think (the right) people find books: browsing through shelves and seeing titles and covers.
See PS Entry-2925:
https://peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=2925
Quote:
______________
I just noticed, the official title as it appears on Amazon is:
"Noticing: An Essential Reader (1973-2023)"
The words "Steve" and "Sailer" are NOT IN THE TITLE! The title simply says that it's "an essential reader" about, apparently, "Noticing."
A casual passer-by might think the tome aims to help an understanding the concept "noticing" itself. In fact, of course, it's a compendium of Steve Sailer's essays and things. Noticing is just a clever little one-liner he made up. The point is that it's Steve Sailer's selected work.
It was a big mistake to not title put the man's name in the title itself: "Noticing: An Essential Steve Sailer reader, 1973-2023" or "Noticing: A Steve Sailer Anthology, 1973-2023";
____________
Hail
Monday - April 15th 2024 6:43AM MST
PS
The publisher has said there will never be an ebook or any sort of digital version of "Noticing."
The publisher has said there will never be an ebook or any sort of digital version of "Noticing."
Adam Smith
Sunday - April 14th 2024 7:13PM MST
PS: :o)
Yes, Achmed, this link should be safe to try on a tablet, or pretty much any device.* Anything that will play a .mp4 file. Mega.nz lets me stream it in my browser or download it to watch off line. The file itself plays in both VLC and firefox. (I haven't tried it in anything else.) And both firefox and chrome let me stream it. If you have any trouble streaming on your device you might have better luck downloading the file first.(?)
It's not so much that the other link wasn't safe, it's just that I don't know for sure what other machines (especially windows boxes) might find at that link. It might be full of ads (or some sort of browser helper object or something), kinda like how you have many popups and advertisements on zerohedge. That piratebay link works fine for me, but so does zerohedge.
You can go try it if you like. (It's 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 ok.) The page might be busy with ads. But it's not like that other link is something you can just click on to watch the movie either.
That piratebay link will take you to a page with a description of the movie and the file, and it contains a link to a torrent file or what they call a magnet link. The torrent file (or magnet link) has to be loaded into a P2P download manager that can handle torrent files. Once loaded, it will find other people sharing that movie and download bits and pieces from those who are sharing it.
It's a pretty cool way to download things, but some ISP's don't like people using torrents and some really don't like people sharing copyrighted material. It is best to use a vpn when downloading copyrighted material so your ISP doesn't send you a nasty letter threatening to cut off your service.
* I would guess an 𝑜𝑙𝑑 computer might have trouble playing it because of the file size (or perhaps a missing codec if the machine is ancient), but my laptop here is `13 years old and it doesn't have any trouble with the file.
Anyway...
Cocaine Cowboys looks more like a documentary than a movie. I hope you enjoy it.
And I hope you and Mrs. Newman enjoy the last couple hours of your weekend! ☮️
Yes, Achmed, this link should be safe to try on a tablet, or pretty much any device.* Anything that will play a .mp4 file. Mega.nz lets me stream it in my browser or download it to watch off line. The file itself plays in both VLC and firefox. (I haven't tried it in anything else.) And both firefox and chrome let me stream it. If you have any trouble streaming on your device you might have better luck downloading the file first.(?)
It's not so much that the other link wasn't safe, it's just that I don't know for sure what other machines (especially windows boxes) might find at that link. It might be full of ads (or some sort of browser helper object or something), kinda like how you have many popups and advertisements on zerohedge. That piratebay link works fine for me, but so does zerohedge.
You can go try it if you like. (It's 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 ok.) The page might be busy with ads. But it's not like that other link is something you can just click on to watch the movie either.
That piratebay link will take you to a page with a description of the movie and the file, and it contains a link to a torrent file or what they call a magnet link. The torrent file (or magnet link) has to be loaded into a P2P download manager that can handle torrent files. Once loaded, it will find other people sharing that movie and download bits and pieces from those who are sharing it.
It's a pretty cool way to download things, but some ISP's don't like people using torrents and some really don't like people sharing copyrighted material. It is best to use a vpn when downloading copyrighted material so your ISP doesn't send you a nasty letter threatening to cut off your service.
* I would guess an 𝑜𝑙𝑑 computer might have trouble playing it because of the file size (or perhaps a missing codec if the machine is ancient), but my laptop here is `13 years old and it doesn't have any trouble with the file.
Anyway...
Cocaine Cowboys looks more like a documentary than a movie. I hope you enjoy it.
And I hope you and Mrs. Newman enjoy the last couple hours of your weekend! ☮️
Moderatorq
Sunday - April 14th 2024 6:42PM MST
PS: Great, Adam. I need to wake up super early tomorrow, so I'll queue it up for later this week. I take it this is the one that is OK to try to view on a tablet?
Moderator
Sunday - April 14th 2024 6:40PM MST
PS: Mr. Smith, an on-line version of this one will come out sometime I guess. I do wish him well in making money, but then, the more people who read it in ANY form, the better. I don't want to be hypocritical here when we've been asking for other books in electronic form, that is, FREE electronic form. I bought the 3 copies to support him. I will say that the cover, binding, printing, etc. seems to be of good quality.
Again, no ctrl-f though, for me. OTOH, most of this stuff comes back to me. He's had a handful of LOL snark I've seen.
In one from VDare alone, "Five Years After 9/11: Why Did Bush Blunder?", as he writes about some really, really stupid Neocons (ahaa, this is the, or one of the, articles that mentions "Idiocracy"), he notes about #3 man in the Pentagon in 01, one Douglas Feith:
"In a memo a few days after 9/11, Feith first proposed attacking South America as "a surprises to the terrorists", which, it indeed would have been, as well as a surprise to the rest of humanity over the age of two.". LOL!
Again, no ctrl-f though, for me. OTOH, most of this stuff comes back to me. He's had a handful of LOL snark I've seen.
In one from VDare alone, "Five Years After 9/11: Why Did Bush Blunder?", as he writes about some really, really stupid Neocons (ahaa, this is the, or one of the, articles that mentions "Idiocracy"), he notes about #3 man in the Pentagon in 01, one Douglas Feith:
"In a memo a few days after 9/11, Feith first proposed attacking South America as "a surprises to the terrorists", which, it indeed would have been, as well as a surprise to the rest of humanity over the age of two.". LOL!
Adam Smith
Sunday - April 14th 2024 6:39PM MST
PS: Good evening, Achmed,
Here's a link for Cocaine Cowboys...
https://tinyurl.com/ymvntv7f
I haven't watched it yet, just enough to check if it was working and if it was the right movie.
Cheers! ☮️
Here's a link for Cocaine Cowboys...
https://tinyurl.com/ymvntv7f
I haven't watched it yet, just enough to check if it was working and if it was the right movie.
Cheers! ☮️
Moderator
Sunday - April 14th 2024 6:31PM MST
PS: We at Peak Stupidity are all indebted to you, Adam Smith. I do have the Shriver book coming from the library too, but I especially look forward to "Cocaine Cowboys", but also "Once upon a Time ..."
For Mr. Keif, after reading about 6 selected articles of this Noticing book, I can see that Mr. Sailer does talk about the movies, at least. The one that I'd read before was about Afghanistan, and it had an embedded review of "The Man Who Would Be King", with all that background of the director and the changing selection of lead actors (eventually Sean Connery and Michael Caine). As Mr. Sailer got into the review, I could tell he liked that more than the actual "noticing" part of his writing, which was the basics of the society in Afghanistan, with reference to the American war there. This article was from '01 (United Press International), so he must have included some of this in a much later Unz Review post. I know this because the talk about this movie got me to go borrow it and watch it for the first time only a few years ago - no more than 5.
He got into "Idiocracy" to a much lesser degree in another article.
For Mr. Keif, after reading about 6 selected articles of this Noticing book, I can see that Mr. Sailer does talk about the movies, at least. The one that I'd read before was about Afghanistan, and it had an embedded review of "The Man Who Would Be King", with all that background of the director and the changing selection of lead actors (eventually Sean Connery and Michael Caine). As Mr. Sailer got into the review, I could tell he liked that more than the actual "noticing" part of his writing, which was the basics of the society in Afghanistan, with reference to the American war there. This article was from '01 (United Press International), so he must have included some of this in a much later Unz Review post. I know this because the talk about this movie got me to go borrow it and watch it for the first time only a few years ago - no more than 5.
He got into "Idiocracy" to a much lesser degree in another article.
Moderator
Sunday - April 14th 2024 6:24PM MST
PS: Thank you, Mr. Blanc. That was my typo and not present in the book. (Dang lack of an electronic version! so far...).
Again, this was not a review, but, I'll say, just as with most of Mr. Sailer's blog posts and articles, I think the editing is very good. Someone spent a lot of time going over it, and I haven't find any typos, incomplete sentences, and that sort of thing, so far. It is extremely well written. I've always seen that this guy spends more time on his Taki columns than on the posts, as far as putting things together well.
Again, this was not a review, but, I'll say, just as with most of Mr. Sailer's blog posts and articles, I think the editing is very good. Someone spent a lot of time going over it, and I haven't find any typos, incomplete sentences, and that sort of thing, so far. It is extremely well written. I've always seen that this guy spends more time on his Taki columns than on the posts, as far as putting things together well.
Peak Stupidity Book Club
Sunday - April 14th 2024 12:20PM MST
PS: Good afternoon, everyone...
Lionel Shriver Mania (995kb .epub)
https://tinyurl.com/5n82pfmd
And only five days late!
(I'm still waiting on someone to leak a digital copy of Sailer's Noticing...)
In other news... I got your movie, Mr. Moderator. It's uploading (slowly) right now.
I'll post the link when it's finished.
And I queued up "Once upon a Time in the West"...
You know... for the future.
Happy Sunday! ☮️
Lionel Shriver Mania (995kb .epub)
https://tinyurl.com/5n82pfmd
And only five days late!
(I'm still waiting on someone to leak a digital copy of Sailer's Noticing...)
In other news... I got your movie, Mr. Moderator. It's uploading (slowly) right now.
I'll post the link when it's finished.
And I queued up "Once upon a Time in the West"...
You know... for the future.
Happy Sunday! ☮️
MBlanc46
Sunday - April 14th 2024 11:20AM MST
PS “Mortal worth”? Hmmmm. “Moral worth”?
Moderator
Sunday - April 14th 2024 5:26AM MST
PS: I'm not sure what you mean, Alarmist. If it's that I don't agree with Mr. Sailer's basic opinion that we can fix all our problems if only people would just GET what he's saying, yeah, I disagree strongly.
It it's about his blog, I liked it a lot, but that was just about trying to cut down my internet time, my commenting more than anything else.
It it's about his blog, I liked it a lot, but that was just about trying to cut down my internet time, my commenting more than anything else.
Moderator
Sunday - April 14th 2024 5:24AM MST
PS: Dieter, I should have gone and dug out the actual math symbol, ±, Dieter instead of lazily writing +/- that way. However, once I just now changed that, I also thought that, no, nobody but THE UNZ himself could read it in 2 hours, so I changed it to 6 ± 2, as in 4 to 8 hours. It's a guess, but then I think of reading and average 5-6 page chapter in from 5 minutes to 10 max. That's just under 300 minutes to just under 600 (10 hours), I think 4 to 8 hrs though would cover most people, were they to barely put the book down and read it cover to cover.
His analysis of Jared Diamond's book (which I read some of, ~20 years back) was mentioned in that background, but I don't see it as any of the articles. I can't guarantee it's not mentioned in any of them though... Kahnemann/Twersky? Nothing in the book is very new, so I don't believe so, Dieter. The latest stuff is his discussion of the deaths of exuberance by the Black! folk, though I don't see that exact term yet.
Yes, Tom Wolfe is mentioned in the background (OK, Foreword), but I would imagine his writing comes in somewhere else too. There are no articles that sound explicitly like movie reviews, though, again, I would guess some insight related to movies or movie actors is in some articles. As far as "Once upon a Time in the West", that's too new for this book unfortunately. You reminded me that I want to watch that one.
and with not too much new material
His analysis of Jared Diamond's book (which I read some of, ~20 years back) was mentioned in that background, but I don't see it as any of the articles. I can't guarantee it's not mentioned in any of them though... Kahnemann/Twersky? Nothing in the book is very new, so I don't believe so, Dieter. The latest stuff is his discussion of the deaths of exuberance by the Black! folk, though I don't see that exact term yet.
Yes, Tom Wolfe is mentioned in the background (OK, Foreword), but I would imagine his writing comes in somewhere else too. There are no articles that sound explicitly like movie reviews, though, again, I would guess some insight related to movies or movie actors is in some articles. As far as "Once upon a Time in the West", that's too new for this book unfortunately. You reminded me that I want to watch that one.
and with not too much new material
The Alarmist
Sunday - April 14th 2024 4:36AM MST
PS
It’s like a love-hate relationship, eh?
It’s like a love-hate relationship, eh?
Dieter Kief
Sunday - April 14th 2024 12:23AM MST
PS
Thx. - that is interesting, Mod.
Read the book in 4 +/- 2 hrs.? Whut doesistmean?
Which chapter is the one that has his economy articles?
The Glass half full ones? His analysis of Jared Diamoond's Guns Germs and Steel? Of the Kahnemann/Twersky pseudo-insightsd? Of the strengthes of Gerd Gigerenzer - and Tom Wolfe???? - His incredibly sharp 'n' clear analysis of Tarantino's Once Upon a time in the West?
Thx. - that is interesting, Mod.
Read the book in 4 +/- 2 hrs.? Whut doesistmean?
Which chapter is the one that has his economy articles?
The Glass half full ones? His analysis of Jared Diamoond's Guns Germs and Steel? Of the Kahnemann/Twersky pseudo-insightsd? Of the strengthes of Gerd Gigerenzer - and Tom Wolfe???? - His incredibly sharp 'n' clear analysis of Tarantino's Once Upon a time in the West?