Things I Wonder About, Part (I lost Count)

Can I assume that we're over the Duck Dynasty fad?

Having not participated in any fads (as far as I know), I'll ask the rest of you: where do you keep all that junk?

I recently watched a few minutes of an Insane Clown Posse (h/t) video on youtube.  I thought I should be expecting more gore or violence, but is that all there is? 

How pitiful must the fans of two dumpy middle aged men be?

(Rap sucks as a music form, by the way.)

I listen to Rob Zombie now and then, I've never watched a music video from him.  Shirley, they're dark and evil?

Is that all there is?

Is it all tame or has my perspective changed?

(Powerman 5000 isn't as good as I remember from casually listening in high school.)

One chapter in the last book I read contained a story more awful than anything in any of the metal music videos that I've seen.

The Last Ivory Hunter by Peter Capstick

One chapter describes examples of the thinking of Africans.  One story is about a boy who's eye has popped out and is hanging along his cheek.  The hunter the book is about asks the boy's father why he's not going to the hospital.  "I'm busy," he says. 

Another time the hunter sees a man with a moving sack on the back of his bike. 

"What's in the sack?"

"My son, he was burned a week a go.  I figured that he'd die, but he hasn't so I brought him here."

The kid had his charred arm amputated and the hunter also discovered his chest infested with maggots.

Which is more dark, those stories or anything from dark musicians?

---

Why is it people are so sheepish in their habits?  If I'm traveling and I'm hungry, I'll occasionally stop and discover that every restaurant is packed.  Why becasue it turns out to be noon or six.  Why would anyone eat at any other time?

Is it my imagination or is my increased experience with various Microsoft products leading me to believe that I need to minimize my exposure to them?

A Throne of Bones

by Vox Day

Like I said yesterday, I'm no fan of sci-fi, but after having read A Magic Broken I was interested enough to buy and read A Throne of Bones.

I quite liked how the book was arranged, having been written from the perspective of many different characters to move several plot lines along.

My favorite novelist Eric van Lustbader writes his books in the same way, although he uses fewer characters and story-lines that weave through each other a bit more than those in A Throne of Bones, and van Lustbader's books jump around a lot more in time than Vox's linear storyline.

(Read: Jian by Eric van Lustbader)

The final battle in A throne of Bones was the most interesting battle description that I have read in quite a while, becasue of the constant changing perspectives.

The storylines, kinda, moved through different characters in a world of magic, men, elves, dwarves, orcs, and so on.  (One thought that I had was that an army of men in this world would have one  advantage over men fighting in the real world.  Imagine: orc: "Hey man, help me destroy your city and I'll bribe you with a bunch of money and all the orc women you could want...")

Rather than go through the details of the story, I'll describe the story as one about armies, politics, and magic.  The armies and battles that they fight are possible the best fictional ones that I've ever read,  the political issues are interesting in how I'll need to reflect on them a bit more (or gain more knowledge of their world) before I know which side I would've preferred, and the magical scenes were, for the most part, simple understandable and not outrageous.

The book was very good and I'd recommend it.

My criticisms is as follows:

When reading about many characters whose names come from unfamiliar places it becomes much more difficult to remember who is who, especially when many characters seem to be called different things by different characters.  The appendix (?) at the end did help clarify many of the ranks of the various soldiers, but I spent much of the first few chapters trying to figure out if there were several characters or only a few each being described by his family name by one character, then given name by another character, then nickname, then rank, and so on.

The descriptions of the military units left me at a loss too, becasue I am no scholar of Ancient Roman military structure.

It seemed as though there were several points where the book seemed to be a parallel of what happened in real history, and I recognized a few of them.  But some things like the paragraph about Marcus' horse having the same name as Alexander the Great's did in real life, was cool that I recognized it, but seemingly unnecessary. 

One more thing I would criticize is that this book seemed to be more of the beginning and middle of a story.  There was no definite ending to the book.  For example, after reading the last segment of Fjotra's story I was still exepecting more to it until I ended the book and it wasn't there.

I could see the final scene in the book being very cool to end part one of a series of movies, but it was not quite the conclusive ending that I was expecting.  I can understand not wrapping up all of the storylines, but it did not seem as if the main storyline was concluded.

It may well be that this is one of several books about the characters in the book, and it would be nice to know which books I should have read first and when others will come after.  I'm glad that I read A Magic Broken before A Throne of Bones, but I wonder if The Wardog's Coin, which I'm about to read should have been read before too.

Good book, would recommend, not perfect.

A Magic Broken

by Vox Day

I'm not really a fan of sci-fi, or fantasay, nor do I know, or care about the differences between the genres.  But I do read Vox Popoli regularly and so when Vox had A Magic Broken avilible for free a while ago, I got it and then recently read it.

So the story is of a magician and a dwarf who enter a town of men and leave with a female elf.

My summary is short and so is the book.  But despite my minimal interest in this type of book, its shortness would be my only critizism.

And that's not much of a criticism.  Were Vox to publish a similar book of size and scope every so often, I would be happy to buy and read them.

Apparently this book is kind of a warm up for a longer book A Throne of Bones.  Which I just finished reading  and will have a longer review for tomorrow.

Jim Corbett: Master of the Jungle

by Tim Werling

Jim Corbett was an Englishman who lived in India from 1875-194?.  He is famous becasue he killed many of the worst man-eating animals in history.

There are leopards and tigers in India and many people who live in small villages and survived by hunting and some small farming operations.  Very often some leopard or tiger may become unable to hunt its normal prey, or just finds that people are easy to catch and they become man-eaters.

Jim Corbett killed lots of man-eaters including several famous for killing several hundreds of people before being shot by Jim.

If you look for "man-eater" in Wikipedia you'll find listings of the most famous man-eating animals.  Most of the leopards and tigers were killed by Jim Corbett.

Champawat Tiger: killed 430 people WR

Leopard of Rudraprayag: killed 125 people



This book is a storyized narrative of Jim Corbett's life.  Born in India, hunted various things, and then was repeatedly called upon to kill man-eaters.  Most of the book is interesting enough as a story-like version of his life and first several hunts, although it ends with a mere summary of several famous man-eaters as if this author ran out of time, or pages, in order to keep the story going.

The book is on a very interesting subject, but I preferred reading a few of the books by the man himself to this biography.  Jungle Lore, for example.

My Book

Shoot Deer, my book, as a beginner's guide to hunting whitetails is available for Kindle.  Free Northerner posted a review on his blog.

I'd like to point out that I was unhappy with the editing of it and I've had it edited by someone other than me.  I am in the midst of making some changes, and adding pictures.  I am particularly reworking the chapters on public land, rifles, muzzleloaders, and how to shoot a bow.

I would recommend waiting to buy my book until I re-release it.

In the meantime I suggest that anyone interested in hunting whitetails read two other books on the subject:

Outwitting the Whitetail by Perry G. Reilly

More of a pamphlet than a "book", but it is just about everything that you need to know about hunting whitetail deer.

One Man's Whitetail by Gene Wensel

A better hunter than me is Mr. Wensel.  He hunts exclusively with traditional bows, which makes everything much more difficult.  After being nearly done with writing my book, I re-read this one and discovered three anecdotes that I had attributed to long-lost magazine articles were actually from this book.

He wrote my book two years after I was born!

Visit my deer hunting blog if you have any questions or want more information.

shootdeer.wordpress.com

Happy hunting.

Random picture from my collection

The Man in the White Suit

by Ben Collins



This is by and about the man who played "the Stig" on BBC's Top Gear.  (I like the following clip better than anything with the Stig in it, and it was also the third result in a search for Top Gear videos.)

Its an autobiography of his life as a professional car driver.  He's also been a movie stunt driver, raced, and done well in races like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and so on.  No doubt a very interesting career.

However, his writing skills may be even less than mine (although he had a professional editor).  Its an interesting enough read, but I come to the conclusion that it would have been much better had it been written by a professional writer about him, rather than by him.

A while ago I reviewed How to Archer.  Also about a tv show that I like.  Like the Man in the White Suit, the tv show is very good and the books are merely getting by on the name recognition og the show.

Two books based on tv shows that I would watch were I watching tv, and both were books to avoid.

If you've only watched the shows, then you're already ahead.

Confessions of an Online Hustler

Matt Forney's book: Confessions of an Online Hustler: How to Make Money and Become an Internet Superstar is an informative book on how to make a living through the internet.

It seems that Matt has spent years trying to make a living through the internet by various means.  His listing, and descriptions, of the various things that he's tried, was interesting as a study of what's out there, and was also interesting as to some things to avoid.

The guides and specifics of what to do in order to be as successful as possible are very informative and could help reduce much of the trial and error you upcoming internet hustlers need to do in order to be successful.  Not only does he go over to main points to hit (start blog, identify what of your writing is most read, start new blog on this subject, write book, add advertisements, etc.) he even covers things such as the arrangement of your blog!

He specifies exactly why you should do everything how he suggests with all of the examinations of all the experience he has gained in online hustling.  Including: blog hosts, blog arrangement, driving traffic, etc.

His details are specific, his experience is genuine, and his writing is always interesting, and never boring.

Shoot Deer

My new book is out, and after a day, I've sold 0.  I don't expect to sell a pile of them, but I even more appreciate why people feel the need to lie and exaggerate in order to promote their stuff.

Now that deer season is mostly over here in Wisconsin, I'll be able to return to somewhat regular blogging.  Ironically, if I had wanted to maximize my sales of a book about hunting, I would have missed many days of hunting in order to write about it, and promote it. (Matt has a book on how to do this.  I read the book a while ago, but have been so busy, I have not reviewed it here.)

I doubt that getting your hobbies and work combined is a good idea; every guy I know who wanted to get a job in fishing needed to specifically give up fishing time in order to work, and yet was expected to still catch more and bigger fish.

The Elephant Whisperer

by Lawrence Anthony

Last year I listed my top ten favorite books of fiction.  A few changes may have happened since, but the top two books on my list are accounts of a pair of some of the most successful elephant hunters.

Commenter Vicomte wrote:

I take issue with your first two recommendations.

HUNTING ELEPHANTS?

Seriously, that's just messed up. If you like reading about that kind of crap, then you must be an awful person. Your obviously not aware of that elephants are kind, gentle creatures, and are very intelligent. Elephants have been known to cry and burry(sic) their dead loved ones. They even burry(sic) people that they find and think are dead. Sometimes they make a mistake and burry(sic) a person that is lost and has fellen(sic) asleep, but that's not there fault we're all human after all.

So if you want to go and read this garbage then I hope you enjoy being by yourself because thats(sic) where you'll be up in your IVORY tower because no one wnats(sic) to be with a jerk that murders animals because their sick and twisted.

If you want to read a good book about elephants by a decent and caring human being that truly appreciates the majesty of these beautiful creatures, I reccommend(sic) The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony.

Firstly, I'd like to point out that some people are just no fun at all.

Secondly, am I being rude, or grammatically correct, in noting his, or her, spelling errors?

But the purpose of this post is to be about the book recommended in his, or her, comment.

To give you an idea of how far behind in my reading list I am, let me point out that I had not planned on reading this book, perhaps just reading a few Amazon reviews of it.  And so when the book was recommended I added it to my Amazon.com "wish list."  Then, last Christmas, my mother was insistent on asking me what I wanted for the holiday.  "Nothing," was not the correct answer, apparently.  So I directed her to my wish list and forgot about the book I was going to read reviews about eventually.  (Fascinating story, huh?)

So here we are with my new book, and I started reading it.

The book is about a guy who bought a game farm in South Africa.  He and his French wife ran (run?) it to show off the animals to tourists.

The author starts by talking about poachers killing animals in his preserve, their selling of the meat, and his attempts to stop them.  And so on, and so forth...

One day he receives a phone call asking him if he wants a small herd of elephants (seven, as it turns out).  He says, "yes," and spends a few chapters talking about his preparations for fencing them in and their transportation, etc.

I've only read a few chapters past this point but I have enough to tell you that Vicomte's idea of elephants being wonderful isn't as rosy a picture as he, and the author of the book would like us to believe.

The author and his wife (did I mention that she is French?  The author is very proud of this fact.) seem to enjoy living amongst the animals of Africa, and he paints a mostly rosy picture of their park and the animals.

But if you merely read the book, you'll notice that not everything is as nice as he leads us to believe.  He tells one story about his dog being harassed by some monkeys.  And one day his dog kills one.  After he pulls the dog away the monkeys silently collect their dead troop member and carried him away.   "I have no idea what they did with the body," he ends the story with.  He leads to that line by pointing out how wonderful nature and the animals are.

Note an excerpt from Vicomte's comment:

Elephants have been known to cry and burry(sic) their dead loved ones.

If you read this story you'd be led to believe the monkeys took their family member always, had a funeral, and buried him with respect...

That's what our author and Vicomte seem to think.  I like their thoughts on the subject.  They make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Would you like to know what the monkeys almost certainly did, in reality?  They took their dead family member away, away from the dangerous dog, and...ate him.  You can't just go around leaving good meat to waste.

And that's much the story throughout as much of the book as I've read so far.  If you stretch you mind enough... and believe hard enough... you to can enjoy the wonderfulness of the world like Vicomte does.

I like the optimism and joy of that thinking, but to think that way you need to ignore reality.

The reason the relocated elephants need to be fenced in is because when they are not, they kill people and destroy homes and food.  "Conservation's Chernobyl," is how the book's author described what would happen if his elephants got out, again.

One more story from the book to more fully illustrate my point: The elephants are kept inside of an electrified fence.  They prefer to not touch it.  During one escape attempt the elephants pushed their least liked kin into the fence and tried to force him through it so that they would not get shocked.  That elephant wasn't pleased with the situation.

I like the pleasantness, too much is mean these days, but that pleasantness isn't reality. 

I'm not sure if I'll finish this book, The Odyssey is calling me.

Incidentally, have you heard about the elephants killing rhinos for fun?

China: A History

by John Keay

This is a great big book on the history of China.

The first point that jumps out at me is the fact that if you are not an emperor, then you'll be almost completely ignored by history.  Even if you are an emperor you'll likely get no more than a mention, unless lots of important stuff happened while you were in charge.

Then again, if we wanted to remember everybody, we'd have no time for anything else.

Another point of interest is that the name we know people by are different from what we think they are.  Confucius was not some guy's name.  His name was Kong.  The way it works "in the East" is family name, then first name or title.  Master Kong is "Kong Master," as in Kong then something approximating "fucius" for "master".  

The first Chinese emperor is known as Qin Shi Huang.  This is a "name" he picked for himself.  (I hear many Chinese pick the name they are known as as an adult, themselves.)  It actually means "first emperor."  It would be like referring to George Washington as "first president," and mentioning him by no other name or title.  First President was born in...  First President was a military officer in the French and Indian wars. First President lead the revolutionary army during the war of independence.

Apparently, the next guy was "second emperor."  And after that other dynasties took charge and changed their naming ideas.

Another interesting note is how much of China's history occurs after around 300 BC.  There is a chapter, or two, before then, but I don't recall anything about the earlier times.

One of the early empires was known as the Han.  Today the largest, numerically, ethnic group is the Han Chinese.

The Han empire was divided by some events into the "Former" and "Later" Han.  One of the most important characters in between the two empires was known as Wang Mang.  He was emperor for a while and wanted to reform the country to make it more prosperous.

He instituted price controls, divided the land equally among the citizens, and so on.

Guess what happened when he improved the lives of the poor by taking land from the wealthy, gave it to the poor, and did things like institute price controls?

A.  Prosperity ensued, Wang Mang was widely admired, and his dynasty lasted hundreds of years.

B. Nothing good, starvation and so on, his line ended with him, and all historians from the time despised him.

If you've visited this blog before, you don't need to be told which was the case.

That is not the only economic fact I found interesting.  A while before 500 AD land ownership was banned and whenever there was a war the citizens fled to wherever there wasn't a war.  Around 500 AD the various emperors determined that they needed to incentiveize staying in place, so they allowed private property to accumulate.  And the book explicitly stated that this was the last time, until Mao that China attempted to progressivize the country.  They seemed to notice that it never turned out well and they avoided much of it for around 1500 years.

Anyway, from my perspective, it seems that the various emperors can be grouped into four parts, in somewhat equal measure: the well meaning, the mean and awful, those with no interest in running an empire, and those who were too young and had regents run things for them, often to take up the title themselves and join one of the first two parts.

The succession of emperors takes up a large part of the book.  Their numbers and even the empires that they ran are too numerous to mention, or even understand after reading such a book.

***

This is a good book.  Even though I'm not as interested in India as I am in China I would read Keay's History of India if I was not already so far behind in my reading.

Recommended for those of you who are interested in lengthy readings on the whole history of China. 

The End is Near and its Going to Be Awesome

by Kevin Williamson

The book talk is on CSPAN's BookTV.  Watch it here.

The last time I saw him on BookTV I thought his book and its subject were interesting but I was disappointed when I read the book.  I may try again becasue this book could be very interesting.

Rather than go through the whole book talk, I'd like to highlight an early comment.

A recent immigrant from Bangladesh works near Kevin's office and he's noted that she has the same cell phone as the POTUS.  He's willing to bet that her children don't go to the same quality of school as the president's kids.

Cell phones and schools, one is run by the government and one is not.  Which is better?  Which is more egalitarian?  Why does anyone want the government to run anything?

The Propagation of our Poor Economy & Society Explained

the state taxes men and places men in debt and taxes them again via the inflation tax

if you abolished the fed and ended the irs, women would no longer be able to butthext with abandon.

ben bernankiferierze et al profit massively off the base female desire for alpha fucks in the butthole and beta bucks, seized at gunpoint, to raise their thug offspring.

the welfare/warfare state is a big wealth-transfer business from men to women, and so naturally the fed funds it, as they must convert their worthless debt into physical property, which they do via feminism/alimony/sexual harrassment cases/welfare, all of which da ebernififiersz get a massive cut of.

the federal reserve created and funded the feminist movement to seize assets form men, while also seizing their future wive’s assess and ebebenrnakifying and deousling them in collegz lzlzozozozolozlzo

-GBFM

If you don't think your assets would be seized at gunpoint, then let me direct you to the difference between the top and bottom line of you paychecks, for the gun point: see what happens if you don't pay and resist arrest.

Taxes mostly come from those with jobs and pay for those who don't have them, and men have more jobs than women, ergo....

Another Book Update

I've not been writing as much as I should.  I am around 40,000 words.  I'll likely end up at around 60-70,000.

I keep reconsidering the order of the chapters, and that's affecting how I write them.

As ever, let me know if you think that I've missed anything, and I'll be sure to add it.

New chapter arrangement:

Introduction
1. Who, What, When, Where, Why, How?
2. Whitetail Deer
3. Whitetail Deer Antlers
4. 3 Steps to Shooting Big Bucks
5. Where Deer Live, Generally
6. Where Deer Live Specifically
7. Alternatives to Owning Hunting Land
8. Hunting Without Land or Money
9. Buying A Hunting Property
10. Neighbor Relations
11. Improving Your Property
12. Food Plots
13. Where to Put a Food Plot
14. Food Plot Equipment
15. Creating Food Plots
16. Trail Cameras
17. Hunting Methods
18. Stand Hunting
19. Stand Styles
20. Hang On Stands
21. Stand Recommendations
22. Setting Your Stand Up
23. Stand Positioning
24. Hunting Clothing
25. Hunting Clothing Recommendations
26. Guns
27. Rifles
28. Shooting a Long Gun
29. Rifle Recommendations
30. Cartridges
31. Shotguns
32. Muzzleloaders
33. Telescopic Sights 
34. Bows
35. Shooting a Bow
36. Bow Recommendations
37. Bow Accesories
38. Hunting Accessories
39. Where to Spend and Where to Save on Equipment
40. Stealth
41. The Entrance
42. The Hunt
43. The Exit
44. Deer Activity
45. Deer Aging
46. Which deer should you shoot?
47. When should you make your move?
48. Where should you shoot?
49. Blood Trailing
50. Field Dressing
51. Skinning & Butchering
52. Antler Removal
53. Antler Scoring
54. The Tricks to Becoming a Successful Deer Hunter
55. My Hunting Successes (and Failures)
56. Stories
57. Interesting Ideas
Conclusion

Redistributing Wealth

I've been reading Beyond Democracy.

One point made in the book is that democracy includes the redistribution of wealth to the majority of voters.  Not all voters will agree with this.  (Because they're stupid.)

Some people advocate the outright redistribution of wealth, and healthcare, and so on.  They say that its not fair that the rich have more and better.

This book points out that these people only make this point in the confines of modern western countries, not throughout the world.

The GDP per capita in the United States is around $48,000 (questionable source).  If you make less than $48,000 and live in America, then redistributing wealth (if done honestly and fairly lol) should raise your annual income to $48,000.  You'd be made better off.

If you're honest about improving the lives of the poor by redistributing wealth, then why stop at our country's borders?  You should advocate redistribution, or universal healthcare, throughout the world.

The world GDP per capita (another questionable source) is around $12,000.  If you make more than $12,000, then redistributing wealth (if done honestly and fairly lol) should lower your annual income to $12,000.  You'd be made worse off.

If you advocate redistribution of wealth, or for universal healthcare, or similar,  but do not give away all of your annual income over $12,000 to the poor of the world, then you are a hypocrite.

***

Even more oversimplified: Of course Warren Buffet and I should share our wealth equally.  No, I don't want to share my wealth equally with the residents of Tanzania.

***

You hypocrites want the wealth of others for yourselves.  And you're not even willing to steal it yourself.  You'd rather vote for the government to take from those others by force.  If they get thrown in jail or killed while resisting arrest becasue they don't want to pay, then what's it to you?

Robbers, muggers, and thieves are honorable compared to those of you who advocate redistribution of wealth or universal healthcare.  At least they do the dirty work themselves.

Three Years of Hate & A Beautiful Anarchy

I just finished concurrently reading two books at once.  Three Years of Hate is a collection of blog posts from the now defunct blog In Mala Fide.  A Beautiful Anarchy is a collection of stories about life, politics, and economics from the director of Laissez Faire Books.

My decision to review them together comes from their similarities.  Both books review several other books.  (I now plan to read some of those reviewed, including: one from Hans-Herman Hoppe, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, and Frost's Freedom Twenty-Five.)

More interestingly, both of these books are about life and the authors' dissatisfaction with the way the world now "works." 

Three Years of Hate covers our society from the a young man who is unimpressed with various parts of our society.  The author has learned that our society doesn't work the way we were told it did, or the way id did for previous generations.  The life arc of an American man is no longer to go to school, go to college, get a job, get married and have kids.  All aspects of that are corrupted and worse than they were in the past.  Schools are more interested in teacher pay than teaching kids.  Colleges are interested in maximizing enrollment and not interested preparing students for life after school.  The rate of unemployment and underemployment is such that even finding a job is more difficult than it once was.  And to round it out, modern girls don't seem to resemble the better women of ages past.

Much of this book seems like a reaction to our crumbling society, and during the early part of the book I wondered if Three Years of Hate might not be one of the books that best describes why many young men are turning away from the direction the rest of society wants to direct us.  (Free Northerner has a similar statement about the book Men on Strike.)

This books spends some time criticizing people of nearly all political persuasions, including libertarians, amongst who the author of  A Beautiful Anarchy might be considered. 

Three Years of Hate criticizes the political ideology of libertarians but I am unconvinced that he is right about that, in part becasue of how well books like A Beautiful Anarchy show off how well the parts of our economy work when they are not interfered with by the government.

The technological progress of our world is astounding.  The fact that you can now instantaneously talk to anyone in the world is so amazing, and yet so common that we overlook it.

The two preceding books of A Beautiful Anarchy, Bourbon for Breakfast and Its a Jetsen's World, are even more filled with examples of the greatness possible when people are left to their own devices. 

But like Three Years of Hate, they point out the growing danger in our world.  This danger corrupts, threatens us, kills us, and forces us to pay for it, while demanding that we agree that its doing all of this for our own good.

Governments are the problem, and they have always been the problem.

Three Years of Hate may be called all sorts of unpleasant names.  Its author may be criticized for all sorts of things, but in some ways A Beautiful Anarchy is even more radical.

Three Years of hate will direct you towards why it is best that you enjoy the decline as best as you can, but A Beautiful Anarchy directs you towards questioning why we need any government at all, and indeed points out that the problems in this world are worse than you'd think.  Where else will you hear a national currency questioned, the Federal Reserve questioned?  Who else criticizes democracy itself?

But rather than the downer that is reading about the bad deal our society is A Beautiful Anarchy points to the good stuff, and then points and laughs at the bad parts.

The most memorable line from either book comes from A Beautiful Anarchy.  The author is in Nicaragua and is amazed at how well the black market exchange rate works when it is run by eight year old boys who are exchanging the currencies.  Many people think that not having a national currency would be too complicated, and the math would be too difficult.  The author wonders if having multiple currencies would increase our math skills up to the level of the Nicaraguan peasant children.

Both of these books cover the problems in this world.  They cover several of the same subjects, like Occupy Wall Street.  One author participates in a protest and then considers donating to one of the people the protest was against.  And the other author spends a chapter pointing out that that the OWS is close to being an important protest that could improve things, but instead they are unable to come up with a consist set of goals, and then those goals that are stated always seem to be goals that would give us more of what has caused most of our problems to begin with.

Both books are interesting.

Read Three Years of Hate to understand why young men are unimpressed with the world our parents have left us.  Then learn about some ways to enjoy the time you have.

Read A Beautiful Anarchy to understand that the problem is severe and terrible, and learn where to look for the great works that more fully explain where the problems come from.  A Beautiful Anarchy, and its two predecessors, also show us how to improve our lives despite our problems.  (The first chapter of Bourbon for Breakfast is about how to "hack" your government regulated shower head for improved performance.)

Two books, both with valuable information.

How to Archer

Before I stopped watching TV I liked watching Archer.

So I read How to Archer, which is based off the book.


My review of it:

Its mostly the same jokes from the TV show.  Jokes meant for TV but in book form is not the best arrangement.

Skip it.

Although the chapter on cocktails reminded me that learning more about traditional cocktails could be a cool thing to do.

Jane Austen's Books

Girls are no longer being taught whatever it is they need to do in order attract someone to marry.

A commenter on a post from Sunshine Mary used an example from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to illustrate a point.

It seems to me that if a girl wants to get married, or just be more attractive to men, then reading classic books like those written by Jane Austen would put them a whole lot closer to being attractive than they are now.

Books by Jane Austen may not exactly be what I'd point to for a girl working on improving her attractiveness, but reading them should put a girl in a much better frame of mind as opposed to reading 50 Shades, or Eat, Pray, Love do.

I actually did not mind reading Jane Austen, particularly: Emma and  Pride & Prejudice.

Long ago I was curious about why no girl wanted to talk about such books with me.  Now I know.  But I would still appreciate a girl who actually preferred classic, or other more unique, books, movies, and music, as opposed to reading, watching, and listening to all the same [expletive deleted] that everyone else does.  Or at least, don't be surprised when I don't express any interest in things like whatever is currently on TV.

(If you are going to read classic romance novels, stay far, far, far, far away from Jane Eyre.  Further than that even; run away.  Jane Eyre is awful.)

Why Politics is a Ruse

In my favorite author's latest book, A Beautiful Anarchy, a few chapters look at the book and movie (or is it a tv series?), The Hunger Games.

Apparently, in The Hunger Games the world exists with a large government that occupies and distracts its populace with games of watching selected young people fight each other to the death. 

The rest of the population spends much of its time talking about and paying attention to this event.  They think about their guy's chances against another place's guy in this event.  They cheer their guy and boo his opponents.

All this is done so that the population will be too distracted to think about the real impediment in their lives, the government that arranges all of this.

A few quotes from a post at Foseti about working for the government:

We spend inordinate amounts of time and money determining who will occupy short-term elected positions in government. Once there, people make a living thinking about what these politicians should be doing. On the other hand, we spend almost no time thinking about who will permanently occupy the bureaucratic positions that are actually responsible for implementing governance.

The vast majority of the employees of the government, like me, are unelected and – for all intents and purposes – cannot be fired. Focusing on the 0.0001% of government employees that get elected (obviously!) misses the remaining 99.9999%. Virtually everyone thinks that its possible to "change" government while maintaining 99.9999% of its employees. This belief is obviously retarded.

During the presidential elections we often hear it called a "horse race."  Everybody likes his guy, at least becasue he's "least bad," and boos his guy's opponent. 

The presidential election is run more similarly to American Idol rather than an actual situation where we pick the best person to run the executive branch of our government.  And as Foseti says, no matter who is elected the people who make the rules will stay right where they are:

When we are taught how laws are made, we’re told something like: someone writes a bill, both houses of Congress vote on the bill, if it passes it’s signed by the President and then it’s law at which point it might be interpreted by the courts.

This is correct as far as it goes. However, have you ever asked yourself who that "someone" is who’s writing the bills? Seems like a powerful position, no? That someone is generally unelected and cannot be fired.

The common story also doesn’t go far enough. Regulations are now, by any serious metric, more important than laws. Regulations are written and implemented by agencies, often with little or no judicial oversight. Modern laws aren’t even really laws anymore, they’re just lists of regulations that Congress hopes agencies will implement.

Even if Romney had been elected, how much different would any of the Federal Agencies look?  Do you actually think something like the IRS would have been eliminated?

***

How much time is spent discussing things like elections and major laws?  Why do we, in comparison, ignore the "little" regululaitons that dictate every aspect of our lives?

Like The Hunger Games, politics, and the discussion of politics, is a distraction from the fact that no matter who is elected, no mater what their campaign promises, we will have government laws, rules, and regulations dictating how fast we can drive, how old we must be to buy guns, OSHA laws, EPA restrictions, residency requirements, federal, state, and local taxes, ......

Even Progressives Should Understand Basic Economics

I'm listening to this book talk from a progressive. 

One thing that I find rather irritating about it is how, in parts, he refers to working in jobs that have a higher purpose, or a higher morality, than working for money.

The way capitalism works, when there is no government interference, is that the people who provide others with goods and services get rewarded with certificates of performance (money), with which they can reward others for their service.

If I cook ten meals and am rewarded with 200 certificates of performance, then haven't I done more good than someone who has only cooked one meal for twenty certificates of performance?

In this example, haven't I done more good? 

Would I be more evil becasue I am richer?

Even if I only served becasue of my personal greed for more money and my own self interest, haven't I served more?

Even if you don't think that they are moral, Wal-mart does more good than all the non-profit groups in the world do.  Wal-mart does not waste resources.  A non-profit that gives more than is takes in is wasting resources.  Wal-mart's low prices means that more people can have more food and clothing then they could at higher prices.  This efficient and makes people richer which increases their standard of living.

Companies like Solyndra and Fisker (even if they are "green" and morally superior to evil capitalists) are wasting resources.  They waste raw materials and they waste the labor and effort of their employees. 

In a capitalistic world, without government interference, then person who serves the most receives the most.

The basics of economics are really very simple.  Anyone can understand them.  There is even an aptly titled book which will explain economics without complex formulas or graphs or charts.

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

For Fukui's Sake

For Fukui's Sake by Sam Baldwin is an account of an English guy's two years as an English teacher in Japan.

Its what you'd expect from a first time author. 

He was sent to a small city in Japan, Fukui, but traveled around the country a bit.  His account of climbing Mt. Fuji is interesting.  Apparently you just walk to the top.  And apparently its tiring and you'll never want to do it again.  Its the same story with climbing Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro, according to Michael Crichton's Travels.

The author's comments on living in Japan and about the Japanese people are interesting too.

I'd say, however, that if you want to read a book about traveling somewhere, then I'd recommend a book from Roosh, Naughty Nomad, or Neil Skywalker instead.