Quick Hitts

Many atheists, myself included, once passionately believed in our religion. We would fiercely defend it against all critics, usually with canned talking points we knew by heart. When doubts started creeping in, we went on serious searches for answers, and were dismayed by what we found. At first we rejected anything that contradicted our beliefs, but as the evidence piled up that became harder and harder to do. Eventually, it became impossible. We left our beliefs behind (and in some cases, all our friends and family as well) in order to embrace reality and more forward.

I find it very discouraging that so many atheists, the majority of them in my experience, are progressives: far-lefties who believe in the state with the passion they once reserved for religion. They reject religious laws as nothing more than words written down by goat-herders thousands of years ago, but have a great reverence for words written down more recently by weasels in suits. They deny that taxes are taken by the threat of force. They talk endlessly about The Social Contract, a construct as imaginary as The Holy Spirit. When expensive Keynesian economic policies inevitably fail, they insist it was only because they weren’t big enough. They love Obamacare. They will do everything they can to eliminate choice in education – fighting against charter schools, private schools, homeschooling and unschooling. They defend Obama murdering American citizens with drones. They denigrate capitalism, always confusing it with the corporatism we have in place in the US. They refuse to admit that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. And they despise the very idea of libertarianism.

The worst example of this is Humanism, which I’ve written about before. Join any humanist form and leave a few posts that are liberty oriented. Talk about the rights of the individual, the invisible hand, or the advantages of free-market capitalism over socialism, then watch how they react. (Do not try this experiment unless you have a thick skin and flame-proof underwear.)

Progressives have no idea what libertarianism is. They’ve created a voodoo doll caricature of it, and they hate that doll.

The typical libertarian, according to them, is a selfish loner who doesn’t care about anyone else, not even a little. He wants to create a society that will cater to him, while contributing nothing himself. He’d like to live by himself, counting his bullets and his pre-1965 silver coins, only leaving his lair to buy dangerous drugs from vending machines conveniently located on school grounds. On the way, he’ll rub his hands and chuckle as he steps over the corpses of the poor who died in the street for want of food and medical care.

In realty, Libertarians are the same as most other people. We want a happy, productive life full of friends and family, helping out others as much as we can, teaming up with like-mined people to accomplish mutual goals, while being free of violence and coercion. There are only a few things things that separate us from the general population: we recognize that the source of most violence and coercion is the government, we rebel against (and often ignore) stupid laws and we are quite willing to let other people lead their lives as they see fit, even if we strongly disapprove of their choices.

(The term “voluntarist” is becoming popular among the liberty-minded. I like it; it encompasses non-violence, involvement and cooperation in one short word.)

Trying to explain this to a progressive usually a waste of time – it’s like arguing evolution with a fundy. Information on libertarianism is readily available, but they prefer to embrace their ignorance, clinging to it like the religious cling to their gods. Smugly hating the caricature is so much easier than learning the reality.

This is a plea to my friends who are progressive atheists. You know, from experience, how to rigorously examine deeply held beliefs. Please apply that skill set to your political and economic beliefs as well. Ponder the idea of force, and stop denying that it’s the government’s only tool. Figure out how many government “solutions” are responses to problems created by government in the first place. When there is a problem, ask if it can better solved by individuals acting freely, than by government force. Stop making excuses for the failure of Keynesian policies. Consider the idea that free individuals can, as a direct result of acting in their own best interest, create a society of abundance and liberty. Reject the caricatures of libertarians presented by The Daily Kos, ThinkProgress and Mother Jones. Visit Reason, The Cato Institute, and other sites that espouse real libertarian thought. Listen to Free Talk Live to hear real libertarians vigorously debate ideas with each other. Smartenize yourself on the subject. And most importantly, stop trying to force your morals and life-style on everyone else with laws and rules and regulations.

You can do it. Please, give it a try.

Please.

I just read an article that is so profound, so full of wisdom, so insightful, that it changed the way I look at the world. I’m going to have to alter my entire belief system and way of life, but I’m looking forward to that. Before continuing, please read this remarkable article: Nobel Prize to Deny God? Yep.

I’ve learned so much from this.

I learned that the Nobel Prize isn’t a real thing. Why else would they put it in quotes?

I’d always been under the mistaken impression that the motives for trying to better understand the universe were to improve our lives, and to satisfy simple human curiosity. I never suspected it the real motivation was to deny God. Good to know.

I discovered that the word “billion” is spelled with a “B,” and although ten billion dollars is a fraction of a percent of what godders spend erecting shrines to their various sky daddies, spending it to build a “Particle Collider” is a waste of money. And, considering the quote marks, I was surprised to learn the particle collider isn’t a real thing either.

I’ll admit that I have only a vague understanding of particle physics. I thought the Higgs was being sought to explain why some particles that shouldn’t have mass, do.  But this article taught me it is the particle from which all other particles sprung, via the process of spontaneous combustion.  I feel so much smarter now.

I learned that the press is Marxist. I knew the most of the mass media leans to the left, and some slant in that direction more than others, but Marxist? Wow, that’s a revelation.

I discovered that if we find water on Mars, that will prove humans lived there. So Ray Bradbury wasn’t an author of fiction, he was a historian. Sweet!

I was unaware that the primary purpose of space exploration is to deny the existence of god. I had foolishly believed that the question of God has never been part of space exploration, or any other scientific endeavor. Now I know I was mistaken.

So thank you, Christian Coalition, for Smartenizing me. I have been an atheist for most of my adult life, but your brilliant arguments and insights have changed my mind completely.

I am now off to dedicate my life to Jesus. Hallelujah!

It seems that half the stories and blog posts on the ‘net are now list articles. Here are seven reasons I hate them.

1) Its Lazy Writing – Good articles make a point or three, backing up opinions and ideas with compelling writing. This requires time and craft. List articles, by contrast, are stupidly simple to write, and many of them are tossed together by stupidly simple writers.

Even the titles are artless. Why waste precious minutes creating a compelling title, when you can just pound out something as simple as “7 Reasons I Hate List Articles?”

2) They Create Fake Controversy – Articles listing the n best (or worst) movies or books or albums is a cheap way to generate fake controversy and generate the buzz of meaningless arguments. It insures people will post it to Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest along with their complaints. “I can’t believe they left out Wreckless Eric and included The Fabulous Poodles.” Which, in turn, generates traffic and comments.

3) Padding – It’s easy to inflate the number with worthless items, like this one.

4) None of Them Are As Good As Cracked – When I was a kid, Cracked was the magazine you bought when you couldn’t wait for the next issue of Mad. It was Mad Lite – not quite as good, but passable.

But it’s grown up to be one of the funniest web sites on the net, as well as an excellent skeptic site. You laugh while you learn stuff, a potent and powerful combination. Nearly all of their articles are in a list format. They are the king of list articles – all the others are cheap imitations. Why waste your time with cheap imitations?

5) Slide Shows – Few things are as annoying, and completely unnecessary, as slide shows, and many list articles use them. If you have ten photos (or ten ideas), spread them across two pages instead of forcing readers to click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click to see them. I’ve seen slide shows featuring a hundred “best albums” or “best books.” It’s a cheap trick to inflate the number of clicks you receive at the expense of the reader’s time and patience. Rather than click through slide shows, I just click the little x on the tab and they magically disappear.

6) I Find Them Oddly Compelling – I often feel compelled to click such articles, and I hate that I’m so easily manipulated. I see “46 Ways To Make a Woman Orgasm” and think, “Gee, what are the three I don’t know about?”

7) They’re Trite – They’re so common and over done my reaction (unless #6 takes over) is to roll my eyes and move on. I’m sick of them, and hope enough readers are getting tired of them that they’ll stop drawing traffic and writers will abandon them.

If you’re tempted to write a list article – don’t. If you’re tempted to click on a link to one – don’t. And if you’re tempted to post a link to one – don’t do that either. Unless it’s a link to this one. Send this to your friends, and make it the last list article you ever link to.

Note: This is not a beginner’s tutorial; it assumes you already know how to use Scrivner.

I got the idea for Blood Witness in the early eighties. I poked at it for a couple of years before I finally sat down and finished it. Then I spent another year on revisions and edits. I made a half-hearted attempt to find an agent before mothballing it. In 2009 I turned it into a podiobook, and then published as an e-book on Amazon in 2012. Total time from concept to publication: 30+ years.

I got the idea for World of Tanks: The Missing Manual, in April of this year. After thinking about it for a week or so, I pulled up Scrivner and started writing. It took about three weeks to complete the first draft. I spent another three weeks polishing and tweaking it, adding new content and creating diagrams. Then I sent it off to my volunteer editors/beta readers.

They sent it back with lots of suggestions and ideas. I implemented about 90% of them. For a final proofreading, I sent it to my daughter, who has never played the game, to see if she found anything confusing, and to find any remaining spelling or grammar errors . Her best catch: Referring to “public battles” as “pubic battles.” That would have made it an entirely different game.

After making the final corrections, I created a cover and uploaded the book to Amazon. Total time from concept to publication – less than four months.

That’s quite an improvement.

 

World of Tanks is a MMO where players drive around in vintage WWII tanks and shoot at each other. I’ve been playing it for a year or so. There are three classes of tanks, plus tank destroyers, plus artillery. There ten levels (tiers) of each vehicle, spread across six nationalities. There are hundreds of vehicles to pick from, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. Vehicles can upgraded with improved modules, outfitted with equipment, and stocked with supplies (which are called “consumables”). Then there’s the crew, which improves with experience, and can be trained in various skills. And that’s just the tank part of the game. Players also need to learn battle tactics, how to manage the in-game economy, the best way to team up with other players, how to find and install game modifications (mods)…so yes, it’s complicated.

I wanted sections on tanks, crew, game economics, strategy and tactics, and a smart-ass glossary, so those were the first documents I put in the project. I started with the tanks, briefly describing the attributes of different nations and tiers. Then I added separate documents for each type of tank, followed by documents that covered different tank modules, equipment and consumables.

I’d usually start with a largish chunk, which I them broke down into separate documents. For instance, I had one document on consumables, which I then broke up by making each consumable a separate sub-document. Most of these documents were just a paragraph or two. I could see how well each one worked as a standalone piece, then, with one click, read the entire Consumables section as one long document. It was simple to juggle the order of each piece to get it just right.

Being able to jump quickly from document to document, adding a bit here and a bit there, made building the manual fairly easy. I’d be writing about, say, consumables, and that would remind me of something about the crew, so I’d click into that document, write, and that would call to mind a particular battle tactic, so I’d click to that document, and the whole book fleshed out rather quickly. When I wasn’t sure where to put something, I put it in an “Odds and Ends” folder. About half of what started there ended up in other places, and the rest stayed; Odds and Ends became a chapter in the book.

The logical order for the contents was Tanks, followed by Crew, Economics, Tactics, Mods, and Odds and Ends. But people would be downloading samples, and I wanted to give them something up front that would pique their interest and make them want to buy the book immediately. The Economics section has detailed advice on how to minimize the grind – the often-excruciating process of working your way though a lousy tank to unlock a good one. That was something that everyone would appreciate. I made Economics the first section of the book with a drag-n-drop.

I was about halfway through WoT:TTM before I gave any thought to labels. When writing fiction I use them to indicate character POV, which helps to see how the story is flowing, and use Status to indicate where a document is in the editing process. (To Do, First draft, Revised First draft, etc.) I’d been using status the same way with WoT:TMM, and wasn’t using labels for anything. About half way into the project I had an idea: why not use the labels for status instead?

Here are the colors I used:

Now I could tell at a glance which parts needed attention, and what kind of attention they needed. It also created a rainbow in the binder, with the changing colors indicating progress.  The white (needs to be written) turned to bright red (first draft), then to light red (polished first draft), which turned to yellow, which turned to light green and then dark green, with occasional interruptions to remind me I needed to create diagrams or do more research.

The beta readers were World of Tanks players, and they found lots of small factual errors, and a few big ones. Some suggestions required major revisions and additions. The binder became more yellow as I made them.

After making the changes I printed the whole thing out on paper and went through it line by line, reading out loud, looking for and correcting anything we’d all missed. As I finished each section, I changed the labels to light green, then sent it off for “final” daughter-edit.

I exported it into an RTF format, then to a Word format, and then into Jutoh, a program that makes producing the final e-books fairly simple. (Yes, I know Scrivner can export to an e-book format, but I prefer the flexibility of Jutoh.)

After publishing it, some of the reviews mentioned spelling/grammar errors, so I sent it to yet another editor, Johnny Virgil, who caught several errors that all the rest of us had missed.

 

My biggest writing nemesis is distraction. The two main sources of distraction are research and clumsy phrasing.

In a scene that takes place in the mid-80s, a character was drinking Johnny Walker Black. But wait, was that available then? I looked it up, and no, it wasn’t. So I needed to have him drinking a different premium scotch. Should it be something common, or more esoteric? I thought esoteric, but not too esoteric, would be the right choice. That led to looking for reviews and information about scotches of all sorts. I looked at the clock and found I had spent an hour researching that one sentence.

Sometimes it takes far too long to re-work a clumsy sentence. Fixing it, getting it just right, can break my workflow and waste a lot of time.

My solution to both problems is highlighting. If I need to research something, I highlight the sentence in pink. I change the status to “needs research,” except for this project, where I used the label instead. Knowing it will be easy to find and fix the problem later makes it easy to keep writing without getting stalled. The same process works for clumsy phrasing or the not-quite-right word. Those get a yellow highlight in the text and the appropriate status (or label) change.

World of Tanks: The Missing Manual is selling well on Amazon, and getting good reviews. I intend to update it on a semi-regular basis. The game is updated several times a year, which means some of the info in the manual will become outdated, and I keep learning new things I’d like to add. I’ve already started making changes and additions, and the color-coding in the binder makes it very easy to see which sections have been changed or added, and how much work each piece needs. When I’m ready to publish the new version, I’ll be able to pull out the changed/added documents and send them to my editors instead of having them go through the entire book again.

I could have written the whole thing in Word, but it would have frustrating and taken longer, probably much longer. Scrivner made it much easier, and more importantly, helped make it a better book.

Eight years ago, Roland J. Down, a large local company, installed a new heater and air conditioner in my home. I’ve had them do a few annual inspections since then, so a week ago, when the air conditioner died during a heat wave, I gave them a call. 

The repair guy showed up on time, diagnosed the problem immediately, and fixed it quickly. I was surprised that his truck said Service Experts instead of Roland J. Down, but that seemed trivial. I was very happy, until after he left. I did a quick search for the part he replaced and saw what it cost, compared to what they charged me.

Evidently, most of the local heating and cooling contractors have hooked up with Service Experts. I don’t know if it’s a franchise or if Service Experts bought the businesses. I do know that I was ripped off.

They didn’t have an e-mail address, so I filled out their “Contact Us” form and sent them the following letter:

Last week I called for service on my air conditioner, expecting it would be a day or two before you could send someone out. I was pleased when you told me you could have a technician here in a couple of hours.

He arrived on time, and when I told him what the symptoms were, he said, without hesitation, “It’s probably the capacitor.” He checked the unit, took one look at the capacitor, and said, “That’s the problem. I can tell just by looking at it.” He got a replacement part from the truck and fixed it quickly. It took him about fifteen minutes, total. Then he checked the unit in my basement, did some tests, and said everything was working fine. He did is job quickly and well.

We then had an informative conversation about the best way to save on both my heating and cooling bill.

The bill was $267 dollars. The fee for the call was $99, which is reasonable, but the capacitor seemed overpriced at $174 dollars. Using the old part as a reference, I looked it up on-line, and found I could by it, retail, for less than twenty dollars. I know and accept that repair services have high markup for parts. Markups of 100% are common. Some places charge 200%. But 835%? $174 for a $20 part? That’s ridiculous. That’s insane. That’s a complete rip-off.

Let’s leave out the fact that you’re buying these in bulk, and no doubt playing far less than the retail price. We’ll just pretend that you’re paying twenty bucks for them. Let’s also agree that a 100% markup is acceptable, making my price for the part $40. With these generous assumptions, you’ve overcharged me by $134, plus tax. I would like a refund of that amount.

I realize that I agreed to that price, and paid it, and that if you refuse to humor me there’s nothing I can do about, other than share this story with my friends.

But I have a *lot* of friends.

I await your prompt response.

Regards,
Dave Hitt

That was more than a week ago. I’ve received no reply, so this is step one of letting all my friends know what to expect. If you call anyone affiliated with Service Experts you can expect prompt, competent service, and you can also expect to be royally screwed on parts.

This is the part:

As I said in the letter, I don’t mind paying $99 for the service call. The fact that it only took him fifteen minutes to replace it and then test the system doesn’t matter – I was paying for his expertise. But paying $174 for a $20 part – that matters.

Now I know what to look for, and how simple it is to replace. If it goes again I’ll be able to fix it myself for twenty bucks. I wouldn’t have minded paying $140 to learn that. But $274? That guarantees I’ll never again call Roland J. Down, or anyone else affiliated with Service Experts.

The next time I have a problem with my system, I’ll call a local, unaffiliated contractor. Sorry, Service Experts, you only get to screw me once.

This is in response to this article, so please read it first.

There’s no excuse for this level of ignorance – he could have cured it with a ten-minute Google search or a fifteen-minute conversation with an actual libertarian. Even the URL, which contains the phrase “libertarian-tea-party,” is wrong. (Most likely, it’s an attempt to manipulate SEO.) Pointing out all the errors Mr. Sanghoee’s article contains would require an article at least three times a long as his, so I’ll just point out a few of them.

Libertarians never took pages from the progressive playbook, nor from any playbook other than their own. We seek individual liberty, which naturally includes things like gay rights and ending the drug war. Libertarianism also lines up with some conservative causes, like gun rights and smaller government, but that too is happenstance. When you start from the principle that people own themselves (the core principle of the philosophy) and work up from it, some conclusions come out on the right side of the political spectrum, some on the left. This confuses people like Mr. Sanghoee, who evidently can only understand the false dichotomies of Left v. Right or Republicans v. Democrats. Libertarians reject that inaccurate two-dimensional view of politics. Our view includes the third dimension of liberty v. tyranny.

Libertarians are strongly in favor of free trade, and are opposed to military interventions and war.  A few minutes of research would have saved Sanjay from the embarrassment of making the uninformed claim that libertarian foreign policy would, “would hurt us in every way imaginable.” Libertarians would like a world where nations trade and cooperate with each other instead of using bombs and robot death planes to murder people.

Sanjay’s insistence that Rand Paul and the Tea Party are libertarian proves he has no clue what Libertarianism is. He doesn’t hate libertarians; he hates what he imagines them to be, which isn’t even close to reality. It’s like someone saying they hate Justin Bieber because they can’t stand progressive jazz. And while lefties will read his nonsense and nod in agreement like a Michael Moore bobble-head doll, anyone with a clue will just shake their head in disgust and write off Mr. Sanghoee as just one more ignorant lefty who has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.