Off to Be the Wizard

Off to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer is a novel about...

Amazon description:

It's a simple story. Boy finds proof that reality is a computer program. Boy uses program to manipulate time and space. Boy gets in trouble. Boy flees back in time to Medieval England to live as a wizard while he tries to think of a way to fix things. Boy gets in more trouble.
Oh, and boy meets girl at some point.

Off to Be the Wizard is a fun, comedic novel about computers, time travel, and human stupidity, written by Scott Meyer, the creator of the internationally known comic strip Basic Instructions.

Magic will be made! Legends will be created! Stew will be eaten!

I'll point out at first that I don't really care for science fiction and the reason that I bought this book s becasue it was $4 and becasue its author is the creator of the occasionally amusing cartoon Basic Instructions.



The Amazon description laid out the story quite well.  I'll add that I suspect that its the author's first book attempt, becasue, while its very readable and interesting, no one will confuse it with Lord of the Rings.  (I wasn't impressed with LOTR either.)

Its a fine and acceptable book.  But like I said in my last post, non-fiction is just better.

Its worth a read for some simple entertainment, and I'll recommend it as such.

The Temple Tiger

The Temple Tiger by Jim Corbett is a book by, and about, several stories of Jim Corbett killing several man-eating tigers and leopards in India.

His Wikipedia page comments on several of the man-eaters that he killed:

Between 1907 and 1938, Corbett tracked and shot a total of 33 man-eaters, though only about a dozen were actually well documented. It is claimed that these big cats had killed more than 1,200 men, women and children. The first tiger he killed, the Champawat Tiger in Champawat, was responsible for 436 documented deaths. Though most of his kills were tigers, Corbett successfully killed at least two man-eating leopards. The first was the Panar Leopard in 1910, which allegedly killed 400 people. The second was the man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag in 1926, which terrorized the pilgrims on the holy Hindu shrines Kedarnath and Badrinath for more than eight years, claiming responsibility for more than 126 deaths.

Other notable man-eaters he killed were the Talla-Des man-eater, the Mohan man-eater, the Thak man-eater, the Mukteshwar man-eater and the Chowgarh tigress.

The Temple Tiger tells the stories of hunting several man-eaters, including the above mentioned Panar Leopard.  This is actually the second book of his on this subject.  His book Jungle Lore was first and is apparently similar.

The stories are short(ish), fun, and easy to read.

I decided in 2011 to spend more time reading exclusively non-fiction books and stop watching tv.  Those have been two good decisions. 

"They" say, "truth is stranger than fiction." 

I don't know about stranger, but The Temple Tiger is another non-fiction book that just happens to be better than any book of fiction that I try to read.  The Wikipedia page lists several books by Jim Corbett and points out Kenneth Anderson who also wrote about killing man-eaters in India.

So long as there are non-fiction books like this, I'll not run out of interesting reading materiel.  (And I was behind on my reading already.

A Revolutionary Line of Thought

When I first discovered "Game" I was amazed and pleasantly surprised by it.  I spent the two evenings after I first discovered Roissy reading nearly all of his old posts.

I was constantly amazed at what I read.  It made so much sense.  It explained many experiences that I was confused by before.  The crimson arts make so much sense, it explained so much.

This past weekend I went to an event that was nearly as enlightening, nearly as informative, and nearly as important.

I like to hunt deer.  I've had more success with it than anyone that I know.  But I always knew that there was more to learn.  I knew that there were things that I was doing that could, and should, be done better.

Tony LaPratt's Ultimate Deer Management is exceptionally impressive, and I don't doubt that it works.  It makes too much sense not to work.

Due to his rules of proprietary information, etc. I can't say much more than its about managing your deer hunting property in a better way.  Check out his website for more information on what he does.

Perhaps I'm beginning to understand more of what it means when old guys say that they once thought they knew everything, but no longer think so.

I may be over-emphasizing this but that Ultimate Land Management is really incredible, despite, or maybe becasue of, its simplicity.

I may be over-hyping things that I really like on this blog (read Bourbon for Breakfast already), but this time I really mean it. 

(Just like all those other times.)

One Less Jogger on the Road

Its amazing what you can find on YouTube.  I hadn't heard this since my age was in the single digits.

Stupid Blogger.  Click this link instead.

 You Shot the TV:

Boycott Electonic Arts

I wrote a post about the video game company Electronic Arts.  They seem to keep making their product worse and the consumers seem to keep buying them.

I thought the problem started more recently, but Matt pointed out that they have been bad for quite a while.

EA's CEO can afford to be a dick because his company has been pulling these kinds of stunts for twenty years and have yet to see any kind of blowback. Even during the golden days of video games, EA wrecked everything it touched.

The market is always right.  So EA must be doing something well.

Life is too short to keep a list of companies to boycott, and it won't make any difference anyway.  But I do not want to support several companies with whatever small support I might give by buying their goods and services.

Here I go recommending a feel-good plan of action that will accomplish nothing.

A list of companies whose products that I'm not interested in:

Electronic Arts
Pizza Hut
Mitsubishi
General Motors
Chrysler
Any other company that accepted bailout money
General Electric

I'm sure that we could list many more.

And maybe I can do more about it, but life is too short...and that's why they'll win.

"At least until we kill off their Internet sales by demanding they file dozens of monthly or quarterly tax returns."

Source

The issue:

the problem of collecting sales taxes on Internet transactions,

Why its bad:  

Sadly, no. Rather, as an SBA guidebook for small businesses points out, you have to file a tax return with each and every locality for which you have collected tax. The bill streamlines this a bit, but you've still got to keep 50 states’ worth of records and file 40-odd states worth of returns.

Why its good for big business and bad for small ones:

For Amazon—the actual target of these laws—this is trivial. Its staff of crack accountants can probably roll these things out before their Monday-morning coffee break. For a small vendor, however, that's a whole lot of paperwork. Imagine being a small eBay vendor that has to file a different set of tax returns every quarter or every month, depending on who happened to buy your handmade toaster cozies. The bill makes this slightly easier by exempting the smallest businesses and saying that you only have to file one return per state. But that's still hours and hours of work per month, for folks who are probably already working pretty damn hard.

The disappointment:

This bill, in fact, is good for Amazon—it kills off their small-fry competitors who can't afford the staff accountants (or the software) to file 46 returns every month. And it frees them up to open warehouses in more states, the better to minimize their shipping costs. Presumably, that's why they're in favor of the bill.

A conclusion:

It doesn't seem worth hassling them to get a few extra bucks out of Amazon. Some of those small businesses are the future big businesses of the world. More of them are a way for hardworking people to achieve the American Dream of being their own boss. All of them are contributing to the general welfare. At least until we kill off their Internet sales by demanding they file dozens of monthly or quarterly tax returns.

***

Liberals always confuse slave labor with the making of money through free trade of goods and services.  They always think that the rich got rich by "stealing" from the poor.  This isn't the case in America.

It is difficult in trying to explain that free exchange of goods and services for money will occasionally result in some providing lots of goods and services and them getting lots of money.

Working against our attempts to describe this is crony capitalism.  Where the government helps big businesses limit the competition from competitors.  This crony capitalism is the reason why some big businesses support things like Obamacare.  They get to prevent competition and they don't need to improve or adapt.

Its not really the fault of the big businesses (here's where the Occupy Wall Street people went wrong).  These businesses are doing what they need to in order to survive.

The big businesses had better go along with it, and encourage it.  If they don't, someone else will write the laws to oppose them.

The only way to end it is to end government involvement in the free exchange of goods and services.
This is one reason for a small government that does not enter into these affairs is better than one that picks winners and losers.  No big government and businesses will need to survive on their merits alone.  They could ask for all the bailouts and favorable laws that they want, and it wouldn't matter if the government refused to get involved.

Both political sides have some measure of similar ground here.  By way of analogy: liberals want the crack addict to stop asking for it, and the conservatives want the enablers to stop enabling.

***

Government laws that help established business and hurt new ones is not new.

When you need a license to drive a taxi, that is crony capitalism.

When you need a license to be a plumber, that is crony capitalism.

A tariff is crony capitalism.

Legally required training for anything, is crony capitalism.

Light bulb bans are crony capitalism.

CAFE laws (gas mileage standards) are the same crony capitalism.

***

The government does hurt big businesses too:

This bill, in fact, is good for Amazon—it kills off their small-fry competitors who can't afford the staff accountants (or the software) to file 46 returns every month. And it frees them up to open warehouses in more states, the better to minimize their shipping costs.

If it were not for the onerous government laws and taxes we already have, Amazon would be able to open more warehouses, etc. (read that as: "jobs")

My Book

I've posted the rough drafts for two chapters in my forthcoming book about the basics of deer hunting on my hunting blog.

Chapter 9: Improving Your Hunting Property

Chapter 20: Positioning Your Stand