Philosophy Archives - EricSMueller.com

Books I’ve Read 2020

I haven’t posted on my blog for a year and a half. I log in periodically to install updates, but I guess I haven’t had much to say. 2020 was a good and busy year. I completed my Master’s degree, my children live with me now, and we had to sell our little old house and buy a larger new one. We also had to upgrade one of our vehicles. My children are very active in the youth program at our church, and one started his first job (McDonald’s, where I started about 30 years ago.) This requires me to do a LOT of driving.

I used to write a lot of book reviews. Starting around 2008, I began tracking how much I read every year. My best year was over 70 books. My worst year was 22. For 2020, I read 35 books. Since I keep them in a table in Microsoft OneNote, I’ll just paste the table here, then going forward I’ll resume writing reviews for books and posting them. I’m going to adopt the star system Robert David Steele uses for his book reviews. I copied directly from his blog and left his links in place if you want to check out his book reviews. Steele also uses a 7th star for “Cosmic, life altering” books, which I included in my ratings.

Of course, rating books is relative. I might read my first book in a subject and give it 5 or 7 stars, but after reading more on the subject, I may come back and downgrade the first book when I understand it in context.

6 Star (top ten percent across 2000+ books)
5 Star (totally satisfactory recommended without reservation)
4 Star (important contribution with some flaws)
3 Star (fragmentary contributions in a poor contextual work)
2 Star (a fractional contribution in annoyingly flawed context)
1 Star (toxic ignorance)

It turns out my table doesn’t convert to the Internet very easily. This is the best I can do. I’ll go back to writing regular reviews of some books so I don’t have to do this again. I had to set fixed width to get my Notes column to show completely, so it is a long, narrow column.

For 2021, I’m planning to add some structure to my reading. I normally stumble across a book, or I choose from my vast backlog something I feel like reading at that moment. I’m planning a goal of 10-15 books that I will read, which should give me 20 or more open slots that I can get to spontaneously. I’m picking 10 books from Steele’s recommendations, and another 3 for professional development. I especially want to get my mind around a subject Steele talks about “True Cost Economics”.

Last note regarding my “Catholic Project” mentioned in several of my notes. During the summer of 2019, I woke up one day with a strange urge. For some reason, I had a burning urge to reinvestigate Catholicism by listening to what Catholics have to say about it. I listened to some of their podcasts and read several books; mostly from Catholic Answers apologists. It was an interesting project. I discovered some of what we are told about Catholics are lies that have been repeated for hundreds of years. Then there are a lot of misconceptions. I underwent a similar “Freemason Project” in 2016.

Number	Author	Title	Date	Notes
1		Ghost Fleet	3 Feb	Recommended by a Marine Col at an event I went to. I do not concur with his recommendation. Red Storm Rising was better. 3 Stars for a decent story in the context of a war with China with 2015 technology and a flawed (well, “Official Narrative”) understanding of geopolitics. I liked the privateer though. Very busy story with a LOT of threads to keep track of. It both jumped around too fast and not fast enough depending on the story.
2	Trent Horn	Counterfeit Christs	1 Mar	4 stars. Read as part of my Catholic project. Easy read, not very memorable.
3	Tim Staples	Behold Your Mother	6 Mar	5 Stars. Part of my Catholic project; really did help me understand the Catholic perspective on Mary. Very comprehensive; covers topics like “the new Arc of the Covenant”, which I’d never heard before.
4	Michael S. Tyrrell	The Sound of Healing	18 Apr	5 stars. Bought with Wholetones. Comprehensive understanding of music and frequencies. Not the world’s best written book, but very good in its niche. The “Key of David” is tuning A to 444hz.
5	Jimmy Akin	The Fathers Know Best Part 1	30 May	Free from Catholic Answers
6	Fr. Hugh Barbour	Prayer 20 Answers	2 June	Free from Catholic Answers
7	Roger Stone	Jeb! And The Bush Crime Family	13 June	5 Stars. Contains a LOT of information about the family going back to Samuel, the CIA, drugs, the Franklin Scandal, etc.
8	Roger Stone Robert Morrow	The Clintons’ War on Women	17 June	5 Stars. Overlaps with Jeb! And The Bush Crime Family a little bit.
9	Tony Dungy	Uncommon	17 June	4 stars. Read as part of men’s group. Good read on being an “uncommon” man i.e. living Christian virtues in a non-Christian world. Heavy football focus written by a retired coach.
10	Dr. Edward Sri	Praying the Rosary Like Never Before	17 June	4 stars. Part of my Catholic project. Good information. I got bogged down and came back to the book several months later.
11	Gary Michuta	Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger	20 June	5 stars. Comprehensive coverage of the history and issues surrounding the deuterocanonical or apocryphal books. Part of my Catholic project. I told a Catholic friend about it, and summarized it as “Catholics give you more Bible for your money”. She said she was going to use that.
12	Dr. William Davis	Undoctored	25 June	5 stars. Lots of rehash from Wheat Belly, but the program is good (if I could only get my wife on board…)
13	David Wilcock	The Synchronicity Key	26 June	I’ll give Wilcock 5 stars for this. I bought the book because he said it explained “The Hero’s Journey”. He covers lots of other topics, such as reincarnation, which I’m trying to give a fair hearing to. Also gave some of his own story, at least, how he ended up in California. One comment about Wilcock is that he needs to respect his own ignorance of the Bible. I think he said in 2019, he read the Gospels for the first time. Yet throughout his career, he’s thrown out Bible verses badly misinterpreted. He needs to respect where his knowledge lies and be honest in areas where he’s ignorant, such as the Bible and Christianity. He pontificates here as if he’s studied it as well as the “Law of One” or the alternative science he writes about, and he does not know what he’s talking about. And if he’s going to claim Jesus taught reincarnation, he needs better references. He claims one of the Church Fathers taught it (I think he says Origen), but I’m willing to bet he’s as ignorant of them as he is of the Bible itself. He also claims Constantine held the counsel of Nicaea to lock up Christian teachings and create the Catholic church as a system of religious control, but gives no reference. I think he’s just passing on bullshit he read somewhere that he takes as true, but he is out of his area of expertise here. I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened, but it should be documented somewhere if it did.
14	Christopher Hitchens	The Missionary Position	27 June	5 stars. Acerbic wit, and a contrary position on “St. Theresa”, who had shitloads of money but operated her orphanages in poverty. She also associated with a LOT of unsavory people, including Robert Maxwell. Also took a lot of money from those people. She is NOT the saint everybody thinks she was. I also suspect she was involved in human trafficking, but can’t back that up yet. But she was in the perfect position and had contacts who were.
15	Devin Rose	The Protestant’s Dilemma	29 June	5 stars. Part of my Catholic project.
16	Michael Malice	Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il	4 July	5 stars. Very amusing and fascinating look into Kim Jong Il’s life. It actually humanized him.
17	Brian Godawa	Enoch Primordial	18 Jul	4 stars. Great fictional account of Enoch’s times. Gets a little repetitive from his Noah book though.
18	Philip Delves Broughton	Ahead of the Curve	23 Jul	5 stars. A journalist attends HBS
19	Peter Theil	Zero to One	2 Aug	4 stars. Bought it years ago through a recommendation. It gives a little insight into Theil’s career and a few things you can do and should consider in yours.
20	Fr. Gabriel Amorth	Memoirs of an Exorcist	4 Aug	4 stars. English translation of the Italian transcripts of an interview with the Vatican’s late Chief Exorcist. Good understanding of Exorcism in Catholicism.
21	Mark Dice	The True Story of Fake News	9 Aug	5 stars. Solid research by Mark Dice, as always. His recent books overlap somewhat, but so does the Fake News and Tech Tyranny, which Robert David Steele calls #GoogleGestapo
22	Mark Dice	The Liberal Media Industrial Complex	15 Aug	5 stars. Solid research by Mark Dice, as always. His recent books overlap somewhat, but so does the Fake News and Tech Tyranny, which Robert David Steele calls #GoogleGestapo
23	Mark Dice	Bilderberg: Facts and Fiction	16 Aug	4 stars. Great work as Mark always does, but I don’t actually remember reading it. I was trying to plan out reading for 2021, saw this, thought “I’ve had that for years; I better read it”, then found it on my record of books I’ve read. This was during one of my spurts where I read several books in a short time frame before going a month or more between finishing a book.
24	Brian Neimier	Don’t Give Money to People Who Hate You	20 Aug	5 stars. Short read. Summarizes the “Death Cult” and the “witches”, who they are, and how and why you should avoid them and their products. How to support independent creators who don’t want to destroy you.
25	Dr. Steve Turkey	The Return of Christendom	22Aug	4 stars; short read. Summarizes how Christendom is coming back worldwide.
26	Robert Kaplan	Asia’s Cauldron	20 Sep	2 stars. I bought it several years ago when I trusted Stratfor and finally got around to reading it this year. It is a decent high-level overview of the players, issues, and histories of Asian countries. I’ll recommend a better work when I come across one.
27	H.A. Ironside	The Four Hundred Silent Years	26 Sep	4 stars. Somewhat dry, but an attempt at a history of what happened during the so called 400 “silent years”, which Catholics don’t consider silent (see “Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger”). Having read that book first, I found this author’s discussion of the deuterocanonical/apocryphal books to be argumentative and somewhat uninformed.
28	Randolph Richards Brandon O’Brien	Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes	9 Oct	7 stars. Should be required reading for all Christians. Both authors have lived and been missionaries overseas. We tend to interpret the Bible through 21st century American eyes, and that is not how it was written or understood throughout history. The authors discuss this, discuss how the cultures they’ve lived in see things, discuss how the ancient Israelites saw things, and explain several passages and the differences between the ancient culture and how our culture sees them.
29	Anonymous Conservative	The Complete QAnon	25 Oct	5 stars. AC covers the mysterious backchannel Military Intelligence source “Q” from his own unique perspective. He starts with his story; how after he published his first book, two neighbors moved out and an entire surveillance network moved in. He explains what he’s seen of this surveillance network and how it operates. At the end of the book, AC covers Q’s first 400 posts and exposits on them from his unique viewpoint. AC himself is about as mysterious as Q. I’ve read everything he’s written since about 2013, and all I really know about him is I think he has a daughter named Amy, he loves guns, he’s a patriot, he’s trained in martial arts, and he lives within a two hour drive of Baltimore. And I think he accidentally dropped that point. I used to think he lived in the mid-west but I had nothing to base that on. He also was apparently some kind of scientist. I don’t even know how old he is. Sometimes I think he’s the same age I am; sometimes I think he’s in his 60’s.
30	Dr. Michael Heiser	The Unseen Realm	20 Nov	7 stars. The definitive work on the subject; best I’ve ever read. Dr. Heiser covers the supernatural understanding of the Bible we should all have, including God’s Divine Council, who all these other “gods” mentioned were, the Nephilim, angels, demons, and so on. I don’t read many books that are life and worldview altering, but this is one.
31	Joachim Hagopian	Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down	3 Dec	http://www.redredsea.net/westpointhagopian/index.html Author successfully sued West Point and forced them to abide by Due Process. 5 stars. Free online at the link above. West Point may have once been a great institution, but now it turns out lying, treasonous scumbag Generals who lose wars. It keeps cadets busy on mickey mouse bullshit that has never been proven to produce good officers or leaders. It covers up scandals, such as the West Point childcare pedo scandal in the 1980’s (See Satanism & Pedophilia Book 4), which will be on my 2021 books.) For more on West Point, look up John T Reed, another West Point grad with a lot to say on the subject.
32	Joachim Hagopian	Book 1: A Quarter Million Millenia of Human Enslavement, Child Rape and Blood Sacrifice from Antiquity to the Modern Catholic Church	6 Dec	Book 1 of 5 (four more coming) https://pedoempire.org/contents/ 7 stars. While this should be common knowledge, it is VERY dark material and not for the faint of heart. But if you don’t already know the world is run from the shadows by Satanic pedohiles who drink adrenochrome, you’re better off staying away. I can’t really send you to a 101 level material for this subject. Maybe there should be one. Look for “Fall of the Cabal” on YouTube. But this book series is an exhaustive documentation of people and organizations behind it all, and their methods of operation including blackmail, assassination, brainwashing, gaslighting, and so on. The series traces this network up to the UK as the center with Lord Rothschild as the head. I don’t know if there is anybody above Rothschild. This author did not document, but I suspect there are people or forces above him. The author was a therapist who has worked with children affected by pedophiles and has expertise in the subject. Book 1 introduces the subject, gives some background (Annunaki) and covers high level organizations. Book 2 covers the Royal Family and Jimmy Savile, also the BBC, Parliament, and so on. Book 3 covers Rothschilds and more pedo scandals from around the UK. Book 4 comes back to the US. Book 5 will be about Australia and the rest of the world. All books are available from Amazon or can be read free at the link above, which is how I read them. Book 4 should be out this month (physical) and Book 5 in March. I am currently reading book 4.
33	Joachim Hagopian	Book 2 The United Kingdom – The World’s Pedophilia Epicenter	22 Dec	Book 2 of 5 (planned)
34	Joachim Hagopian	Book 3:The Rothschild Illuminati Bloodline and Ties to More British Scandals	29 Dec	Book 3 of 5 (planned
35	Robert David Steele Dr. Cynthia McKinney	#Unrig Election Reform Act	30 Dec	https://phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-UNRIG-Guide-1.2.pdf 5 stars. More of a white paper than a book, but is a comprehensive reform badly needed in US laws. We need to destroy the bifactional ruling party tyranny. I disagree with the section on unions because I view them as corrupt as any other method of Cabal’s control over us. Nice theory; terrible implementation. Hitler had a proposal in Mein Kampf for state unions that in theory were supposed to bring businesses and employees together as citizens. I like that particular idea better than I do the Teamsters and the rest of the system we have.

The Qualifications For Selling Insurance Must Be The Same As MLM

Last month, I got an email from Monster that my resume was going to expire. Looking back, I should have just let it expire. I don’t get the point to Monster.com anymore. I still have some resumes out there, just in case a good opportunity comes along. That has never happened.

Monster is still living in the 90’s. Unlike some other sites, you can’t edit your resume online. I had to pull together my updated resume in Microsoft Word and upload the document.

Then I sat back. And sure enough, I start getting calls and emails about selling insurance.

I was a Realtor for about 6 months, but everything else in my resume, going back to 1992, is for technical work. Nothing about sales, nothing in the insurance industry.

And yet, a whole bunch of insurance companies start calling and emailing me.

Now, back in 2014, I went to a meeting at one of these insurance companies just to see what it was about. It wasn’t one-on-one. There were a bunch of us in the room. Then a guy in a suit came in, told us about the company, and how much money you can make in it. They had us introduce ourselves and talk about where were work now. I don’t mention the name of the company, but their mascot rhymes with the F-word.

Somebody from that same company sent me an email a couple weeks ago. I deleted it. Yesterday, I got a “follow-up”. In my response, I told the guy I have no interest in sales or insurance. I might be interested in selling technical products and services. Strangely, none of those recruiters ever contact me.

I once did look up technical sales, and you can’t get those jobs with technical experience. A tech sales job with a salary comparable to what I now make requires more years of sales experience than I could probably get in the next 15 years. I’m not going back to “entry-level” just to do it.

As the closing to my two paragraph response to “mascot rhymes with F-word” recruiter, I asked what part of my resume indicates I have ANY interest in sales or insurance or selling insurance. How can any honest recruiter look at a resume with 25 years of experience that goes like this: “Navy technician, technician, engineer, IT Project Manager, IT Policy”, and think “This guy would be a perfect match for selling insurance!”

Selling this type of insurance must require the exact same qualification as selling multi-level marketing: you have to fog a mirror. It’s the same thing if you find yourself in the target of an Amway representative: “You’re such a go-getter! I’m with an international business that’s looking for people like you! We’re meeting at a hotel tonight. You should come! Here’s a motivational tape that tells you how much money you can make in this business. But it tells you absolutely NOTHING about the business!” (Hopefully, they’ve progressed beyond tapes by now. Even CDs are getting archaic.)

Wearable Tech, AI, and the Dark Triad

I’ve been reading about the “Dark Triad”. This consists of Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Machiavelianism. Ivan Throne’s book, The Nine Laws, talks about how to incorporate positive aspects of these into your life and response to the world.

There are also AIs that can look at a picture and tell, with a high rate of accuracy, whether the person is gay or not.

Anonymous Conservative put up a blog post today about how a similar AI could be used to detect real Dark Triad traits in people.

Imagine when we are all wearing the future equivalent of Google Glass glasses, it is filming everyone we meet, and you can upload an app to it which can detect Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Machiavellianism on the faces of people we meet in real time. Like a Terminator robot, you meet someone, shake their hand, and down the side of your view of them scrolls their psychological scores for all of those traits, as below them flashes in big red letters, “Alert! Alert! Major League Asshole!” (I assume the programmer will have a sense of humor – and experience with those personalities.)

I’ve read quite a bit about physiognomy, and facial bifurcation. People like Anonymous Conservative and Heartiste often perform this kind of analysis after a shooting. They sometimes perform them on politicians. There is a difference to the faces of psychopaths and narcissists that the rest of us don’t reflect. I’m not an expert on this by any means, but I’m getting a little better.

The trick is to look at a face for symmetry. Is the face symmetrical, or does one side look out of place?

A/C uses the following image in his blog post:

This kind of technology could be very useful. I have experienced a few people that, looking back, probably were narcissists and psychopaths.

Personal Security in the Current World

I don’t know if I really am heartless, or if I’m just desensitized. Tragedies in the world seem to accelerate and get worse, and it doesn’t affect me all that much anymore.

Last night at a country music festival in Las Vegas, somebody with an automatic rifle managed to kill approximately 60 people and wound 500 (last estimates I saw.) I’m not going to provide a link because I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about.

I’m not going to bother going into the politics of the situation. I’m sure the media is PRAYING it was a white, Christian, conservative man. I’m assuming it was either a representative of the “Religion of Peace” or a deranged leftist. One report I saw indicated it was both.

But that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. If you put yourself in a situation where bullets start flying, does it really matter in the moment if it’s a Southern Baptist, a Sunni Muslim, or a Bernie Bro? Save that for the talking heads and keyboard pounders after it’s over.

What really matters is, when the bullets start flying, don’t be there.

We’re at the point where, until some serious changes happen in the world, you are not safe in large gatherings. Hell, you’re barely safe in church anymore (although my church will put up a wall of lead to anybody entering with the intent to do harm.) A church shouldn’t have to have a security plan, (in a perfect world), but smart ones do. This can range from doing background checks on people who work with children to actually having a security force. A friend of mine is on his church’s security force. They’re armed. I know of other churches that have similar programs.

I suppose that’s one thing, in general, that I won’t give up. For me, the rest is easy. I can’t stand crowds and traffic, so I avoid them as much as possible. I don’t go to movie theaters. They cost too damned much anyway, and most of the previews don’t interest me. Plus, they play commercials. I live a commercial-free lifestyle. I avoid them as much as possible. I’m not going to PAY to watch them at a movie theater. I rarely watch movies anyway, but when I do, I like to stream them at home where I can hit the pause button to take a leak or get another beer.

Hating crowds and traffic keeps me out of city centers where “vans of peace” can plow through a crowd. I’ve told my wife not to bother going to the mall anymore. Nothing has happened at ours, but it’s only a matter of time.

I don’t like loud noise and I want my ears to work when I’m old, so I’ve never had a problem avoiding music festivals because I don’t go to them. Same for sporting events because sports bore the hell out of me. Plus, both have crowds and traffic so I wouldn’t be there anyway.

The rest of you might have a problem with my natural immunity to the current threat environment.

You can’t eliminate all risk from life, but you can take some reasonable steps.

Avoid large crowds and gatherings. Don’t be shot like a proverbial fish in a barrel.
If at all possible where you live, carry a weapon. When you’re not even safe in church, make sure you’re packing.
Learn how to be aware of your situation and what is going on around you. (Situational Awareness.) You can find tons of material about this online. Who is walking in front of you? Who is walking behind you? Who is on an intercept course? What cars are around you? What are they doing? Are they looking down playing with their phone while tailgating you?

I don’t think things are likely to get better anytime soon. Maybe we’re entering “The Apocalypse.” We’re most likely in “The Fourth Turning” crisis.

What I worry about are people looking for bigger game. If some guy can knock a couple windows out of a hotel and hose down a crowd of country music fans, how long until somebody else knocks out a window of a hotel along a highway with malicious intent?

I don’t live very far from a bridge where if somebody knocked it out of commission, it could shut down traffic along the east coast.

There is some scary shit still to come in this world. Take some reasonable steps to keep yourself out of some of it.

Goolag: Think Different Somewhere Else

Thinking different is for Apple fanbois or something. It shall not be tolerated at the Goolag.

Mentoring

A friend of mine recently told me I should consider mentoring younger men. I’m almost in my mid-40’s and have made plenty of screw-ups and learned lessons from them.

Mentoring can be tricky though. I firmly believe in mentoring, and I have done it a few times. It doesn’t always work. I had to cut one guy off completely. I was trying to mentor a former teen from a church I used to go to, because he was going into IT, which is one of my fields. But then, he’d ask me for advice, then argue with me. I guess he wanted me to tell him what he wanted to hear, and I don’t roll that way. I finally blocked him since it was unproductive for both of us. It took me several years to reach that point.

A mentor is not there to help you bullshit yourself. A mentor is there to somewhat guide you and offer advice and lessons from his own experience.

A mentor is not there to do the work for you. It’s better if you do the lifting yourself. The mentor acts as a spotter in this metaphor. So when somebody asks me for advice, and I know just the book he should read, and he doesn’t read it, I don’t think he’s serious. I will, on occasion, distill what I consider the finer points of the book, but for the most part, a book is something you need to read yourself. Hopefully, a mentor can save you from wasting time on unproductive books.

A mentor can offer perspective. A younger man will hit a life-altering event and think it is the end of the world. Even something like being fired, or a divorce, or even an illness. A mentor has typically been through it and can tell you “It’s not that big of a deal. You will survive it. There is life on the other side. Sometimes better life.” My firing and my divorce, in perspective, were actually good things for my life. They both got me out of a really bad situation that I wouldn’t have left due to a misplaced sense of loyalty, duty, or honor. I should have quit that fucking job and divorced that woman long before I got ejected against my will. Sometimes a mentor has the perspective to see that the best way to deal with your situation is to leave it.

I firmly believe in mentoring, and make myself available when it’s beneficial for both of us. My friend thinks I should write more on this blog about advice for younger guys. Of course, it’s a crowded field, and it’s hard to stand out. Other men are doing a great job at it, like Aaron Cleary. He even runs his own consulting company “Asshole Consulting”. He was getting so many emails, he figured he would start charging for his services. And many young men are so thirsty for wisdom, they don’t mind. I think he charges $100 an hour, but most questions can be answered in under 20 minutes. I guess if I ever reach the point where people are willing to pay me $50 for a 30 minute YouTube video answering a question, I’ll do it too.

We’ll see what happens. I’ve never been able to write consistently (I have a day job and a family), but I may have some things to offer of value. I can point you to some resources I follow that explain how the world really works. A tenet of my philosophy is that you can whine and cry about how the world isn’t what you want it to be, or you can figure out how it works and interact with and manipulate it as it is.

I know a lot of men in the younger generation are “religious” ( I hate that word as it is often misapplied), but the current version of what we call “cucktianity” does not help them at all. And some of us older guys (like Cleary) are not. I am a Christian. But I don’t follow the standard theology of “cucktianity”. I consider myself to hold orthodox Christian beliefs. I do not believe Jesus was the pussified version we have been presented with by any means. He was a carpenter and not the sanding chairs type we think of. He was the type that would cut down trees and build a house. He would probably drive an F-250 diesel if he lived today. Or a Ram. (Not a Chevy). Some say the word can be translated as a stonemason. In any case, this type of work requires a really strong and tough man. The kind of many who would build his own whip and drive the moneychangers out of the temple, beating their asses the entire time because they pissed him off. And I firmly believe that in the true service of God, some people really do need their asses beaten. Just like Jesus did. Goldman Sachs, anyone?

So, I’ll see what I can do to help you guys starting out in the world from wasting your time believing lies about how the world works, how men and women are, and so on. I’m not really the guy to teach you how to get laid every night, but I went from a divorce from a bad marriage into meeting a much better woman and a happy marriage in a short period of time, so I’ve got some game. (Actually, I wonder if learning game is what hastened my divorce, as my ex-wife lost her ability to control me during that time period…)

Are You So Stupid That You Need An App To Keep You From Screwing With Your Phone While Driving?

Samsung is going to release a new app for idiots who can’t just pull the damn car over to check a text. Or wait until they’re stopped.

Samsung Netherlands has created a new app called In-Traffic Reply which is going to help drivers keep their attention on the road and not on their phones. Using your phone while you’re behind the wheel can be very dangerous. You might think that it’ll only take a few seconds to check that message or read what your friend just tweeted, but those few seconds can quickly prove to be fatal if you take your eyes off the road.

PanelWizard conducted a survey which found that one-third of the road users in the Netherlands have used their smartphone behind the wheel. In most situations, they felt social pressure to answer calls and reply to messages immediately. Samsung wants to bring down this statistic.

And it’s fine that this exists, and people want to download it and use it. I’m sure that’ll make us all safer. I don’t know what to make of people who lack both the common sense and discipline not to use their phones when driving. And I don’t want to live in a world where an app like this is mandatory.

I’m not saying I never use mine, but I have a few rules. First, since my truck doesn’t have a fancy BlueTooth system, I got a Go Groove BlueGate CTR. This thing is great. It’s a BlueTooth receiver with a microphone. It plugs into my aux port. I have the receiver mounted on my dashboard near my steering wheel. If I get a call, I just press the button and I can talk to the caller. I ignore most calls though unless it’s my wife or somebody from work. Otherwise, that’s why God gave me Google Voice. My Go Groove also has buttons for forward and back, so I can skip commercials on a podcast or skip to the next song. I never listen to the radio. Only content on my phone.

Second, I keep my phone on a windshield mount. It’s right there in my field of vision. I use Waze most of the time when I’m driving. I can see what’s ahead of me, and send reports for cops and hazards.

Third, other than minor interaction with Waze, I do not touch my freaking phone at highway speeds. I have never gotten a text or Facebook comment that was worth my life. Even if I got a notification that @realdonaldtrump followed me on Twitter, I’d wait until I’m stopped to make sure it’s not a joke.

OK, if traffic is below about 20 MPH, maybe I’ll clear notifications, but I don’t read anything unless I’m at a complete stop. And with my phone in the windshield mount, I know when the light turns green or when traffic is moving. Here in Northern Virginia, traffic gets so bad, I’ve read books in my Kindle app while sitting on the highway, not moving.

If you get a notification that you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO READ RIGHT THE HELL NOW!, you won’t hit a SINGLE traffic light. It’s the best condition to be in. As soon as you check it, they’re all going to turn red, and you’ll hit every last one.

This goes back to something I said all the time several years ago when I read blog posts about families going to extremes, like burying their phones in the yard during dinner so nobody used them. Do you own your phone, or does your phone own you? Who is the boss? In my case, if I don’t want my phone bothering me, I’ll shut it off or put it in Do Not Disturb.

I’ve never understood why other people have so much trouble with that.

United’s Customer Service

I’ve been hearing about the United incident over the last couple of days. The details I got came in slowly, until I finally had enough of a picture to come to a conclusion.

I’ll leave the actual analysis to Davis Aurini. He did a great job.

There’s the “way the world ought to be”, and the world we actually live in. We’ll never get to the way the world ought to be, and most of us have different definitions of what it should be. My ideal world involves no commercials, and violent beatings for people who drive too slow, and are screwing with their phones when the light turns green. I doubt I’d ever get that approved on a ballot, and even if we did vote on it, some court would overturn it.

Another focus of my ideal world is, the hospitality industry would have to charge the same price to everybody. Sure, they can factor in the market. But they won’t be selling one plane ticket to somebody for $1000, and the person sitting next to them gets to buy a ticket for $100.

(A great meme I saw yesterday goes “United: we put the hospital in hospitality!”)

For the most part, we do not have the rights we think we do. Apparently, if a cop pulls you over for speeding, you are legally and constitutionally correct by refusing to provide your license and registration under the 5th amendment, because the information you provide can and will be used against you in a court of law. But go ahead and give it a try. Let me know in the comments how well it worked for you.

In real life, the cop will probably yank you out of your car and charge you with some form of obstruction. You’ll be dragged to jail. Sure, if you can afford a lawyer, and all the money and time, you’ll probably win the lawsuit. But do you really have the money for that? Better to just hand the documents over, be polite and cooperative, and hope the officer lets you off with a warning for being so nice. (It actually has worked for me a couple of times. One cop was so surprised I didn’t try to bullshit him that he got a blank stare for a few seconds).

Besides, do you honestly believe you can come up with an excuse the cop hasn’t heard? Everybody lies to him. Everybody has to take a leak. The cop knows you just passed a rest stop. Everybody yells at him “You work for me, asshole! Aren’t there pedophiles and Wall Street Bankers you should be going after? I’m just trying to get to work!” They hear that from everybody; what makes you think YOU can actually pull it off?

Same thing at the airport. The TSA screeners don’t give a shit that I’m a veteran. There’s no sense in bringing it up. I just do what I have to do to get through screening and not do anything to make myself memorable to them. They don’t want to hear about radiation from the naked body scanners. They always examine my laptop like it’s an alien artifact even though they encounter thousands of them a day; they probably don’t know what radiation is.

So with the United thing, we ended up with a very bad confluence of several factors that boiled over. Everybody was right and everybody was wrong, and nobody won. Maybe United won, at least in this round. But the hit to their PR will last forever. “Fly United and get your ass beat!” I’m sure people will be saying that for a while. But all airlines suck. Name one that doesn’t.

Also, don’t count on the r selected animals around you to do anything to help you. They’ll be glad to take out their phones and record the whole thing, then post it on Twitter. But they don’t give any more of a crap about you than United does.

United overbooked, as they always do. Except this time, they ran out of no-shows. Then they had to transport some mechanics to the next airport at the last minute, so they had to kick people off the plane. Of the four, three took the vouchers. Hell, Louisville isn’t that far from Chicago. For $800, I’d rent a luxury car and drive it. This Doctor Dao said he had to be at his next destination. But why would United care? Everybody has to be at their next destination. He won the anti-lottery; get off my plane. (There are reports that Dr. Dao is into some serious deviancy, but I don’t see how any of it is relevant to his ass beating by United and the cops they called in).

If it happens to you, the best thing you can do is roll with it. Take what they’re offering. Milk them for all you can get: money, hotel, rental car, whatever. Don’t fly on a tight deadline. Better yet, don’t fly. The airlines hate you and want to ruin your personal life. I only fly for work, when they’re paying for it and have no choice but to live with schedule delays. And I always fly first thing in the morning the day before, to allow for delays. Or to get checked into my hotel early and relax, or go out and get the lay of the land.

Looking at it again, I think the only winners in this United scuffle were the people that weren’t involved. And our prize is memes. Here are a couple I came across:

Why Do We Act So Surprised At Human Failure?

This is a repost from my old blog on Blogger. I have another post I’m thinking about writing, and wanted to reference it. But I figured I might as well redirect the traffic here. I’ll provide comments at the end. This was originally written on 15 December, 2008:

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A couple of years ago, I showed up at church on Wednesday night ready to teach the final class in my series on Judges. I worked hard to prepare for that class. It was on Judges 20 and 21, the aftermath of the slaughter of the tribe of Benjamin. I thought it was going to be very interesting, and I got, well, angry when I found out that we would instead be assembling in the auditorium (in the churches of Christ, we’re forbidden to call it the sanctuary; we are the sanctuaries) for some kind of “family meeting.” I am almost ashamed to say that I normally don’t think too highly of those things. I don’t like it when we break our normal routine for these gatherings. I don’t like it when missionaries visit and we cancel classes so they can talk. I said I’m almost ashamed because I really don’t surprise myself much anymore.

That night, when I found out that the class I worked hard to prepare for was replaced, my thoughts immediately went to the cynical. I had thoughts like “Oh, great, somebody stubbed her toe and we have to get together and pray for her”. The 4 elders we had at the time (we added 2 more a few weeks after this account occurred) gathered at the podium. I don’t recall the exact words used, but apparently somebody in the congregation did something really bad. I tried to imagine who it was. For a second I worried it might have been me although that was groundless. It’s just human nature. It turned out that the youth minister that we had at the time did something very bad; so bad that we may never again have a youth minister. I’ll leave out the details here on my blog. When the thing he did was mentioned, very straightforwardly, some people gasped in horror. Some started crying. Some started shrieking. Some had to run outside to cry, others just numbly walked up and down the aisles holding their head saying something to the effect of “Oh, no, oh no, this can’t be happening!” The funny thing is, although I was shocked, I was not surprised. I don’t remember being surprised at all. If anything, considering what was done, I was almost glad I didn’t find myself in similar circumstances to fall in the exact same way.

I don’t understand why we always act so surprised when people do bad things. The governor of Illinois thing has me wondering this. A corrupt politician from a state known for it’s corrupt machine politics gets caught being corrupt. Where is the news in this? Why does everybody act so surprised? What’s the point? He screwed up and acted corrupt too far in the open, so he’ll get impeached and his power to replace the Senator who didn’t do a darn thing as Senator but run for President to the highest bidder will go away for this time, and he’ll be replaced by another corrupt Illinois machine politician, and life will go on until another one steps out of line and discusses corrupt things on a tapped line. The corruption won’t go away, but the corrupt politician who screwed up will for now.

This is why the “messianic theory” of politics has me so scared. It seems to me that when you ask people who voted for either McCain or Obama why they did so, the most common answer is some variation of “I hope he’ll deliver me from…” It doesn’t matter what. “I hope he’ll save me from health care.” “I hope he’ll save me from taxes.” “I hope he’ll save me from Global Warming.” “I hope he’ll save me from McCain.” “I hope he’ll save me from Palin.” “I hope he’ll save me from Obama.” “I hope he’ll save me from liberals.” “I hope he’ll save me from fundamentalist Christians.” The list goes on and one. Of course, most of the promises made by these candidates and most of the reasons people voted for them have NOTHING to do with the job description of the President of the United States found in the Constitution of such United States. It’s just that people are afraid and somehow believe one of these men might be the Messiah and save them from whatever they fear, no matter what else the man might screw up in his attempt to, if he actually kept that particular promise, which is not something that politicians are known for anyway. Then, when President Obama doesn’t keep his promises, or screws something up, people will act surprised! “How could he have done this? Oprah told us that he might be THE ONE!”

Knowing the capacity for human failure, I have to ask: why do you act so surprised when people fail horribly, and why do you look to other humans to somehow deliver you from whatever has you scared this election or the next? I’m asking this question in the “you” context because I’m honestly not surprised in the majority of cases, and I honestly don’t believe politicians can deliver me, nor do I trust them to. I’m happier if they just leave me alone and I vote for the one who will just leave me alone. At least, I do now. I once subscribed to the “Messianic” theory of politics, although I didn’t realize it at the time.

Additional commentary:

I no longer go to a Church of Christ. I have nothing against them. I just moved on. I currently attened what is described as a non-denominational church, where our pastor has a Pentacostal background. I’d never been in a charismatic leaning church before, although that is not emphasized.

The “youth pastor” thing I was referring to is far enough in the past to explain. I kept it vague for a reason, but like I said, it’s in the past and I’m divorced from the wife I’ll be referencing.

That church brought on a youth pastor shortly before I joined it in 2002. He was approximately my age. Him and his wife had two daughters who were both born within months of my two sons. His wife had to work. I was able to structure things so that my ex-wife was able to quit working and become a full-time stay at home mom when my first born was about 7 months old and she was pregnant with my second. My ex did not love or respect me one bit, so let’s just say even with her NOT working, things were not good. I had needs that were not being met, and had somebody come along to meet those needs, I would have easily fallen for her.

The night I was referring to, it came out that the youth pastor had a two-year affair with one of the teen girls. She was 17 at the time. You do the math as to when it started. What did NOT come out in church (which we found out through the family involved) is that he’d gotten her pregnant, gave her money and sent her to get an abortion. Yeah, very youth-pastorly.

He was convicted, served five years in county jail. His wife forgave him, and last I heard they were still married and he is working as a youth pastor. Far away, praise the Lord. That church apparently knows about his past. They get what they get, I guess.

But it goes back to the question: why do we act so surprised when people fail? I could have failed in a similar way had the temptation presented itself, although I’d like to think I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to end up alone with a 15 year old with daddy issues. But even a woman my own age at the time would have caused enough trouble.

I deal with this kind of temptation in a couple of ways. One is accountability. I have a few really good friends I firmly trust to throw the bullshit flag on me. And I have permission to throw it on them. A good friend will not let you get away with bullshitting yourself.

Another is to not let it happen in the first place. If you’re married and committed to being faithful to your wife, NEVER let yourself be alone with another woman. Women, never let yourself be alone with another man. Even when I travel, I make sure to go out in groups if there are women present.

I also deal with temptation by operating under the assumption that I will get caught.

The Life Cycle of a Blogging “Guru”

30 Days To X recently published a post on reasons not to join a master-mind group. It got me thinking about a pattern I’ve seen among other blogs several times. I left a comment on his post, and figured I’d put it on my own blog:

1) You come across an interesting blog. The blogger has a unique perspective on life or some aspect of it, or some career field. You can learn a lot from them, and enjoy their posts.
2) The blogger starts to grow an audience.
3) Rather than continue to grow personally, (and you grow along with him), the blogger resorts to writing content to the new audience, that keeps growing. New readers comment as if this is the most insightful thing they’ve ever heard; you consider the content about a skill level between tying your shoes and not getting your dick caught in your zipper.
4) The blogger publishes a book (self or traditional; doesn’t matter)
5) The blogger starts a podcast, which is usually a rehash of old blog posts.
6) The blogger then starts selling multi-hundred dollar to thousand some dollar “courses” and $45 a month or more “master mind” groups.
7) Every blog post is either a kindergarten level overview of the blogger’s content written to a new audience, a sales pitch for said “master mind” group or “courses”, testimonials from group or courses, or teases for group or courses. Or “I so LOVE writing this blog post from a Starbucks in Bangkok! You should too!”
8) After getting several “<your name>, I can’t BELIVE YOU HAVEN’T JOINED MY $45,000 <how not to get your dick caught in your zipper> course!” emails, you move on. Nothing left to see here.

I’ve seen this pattern repeat several times on blogs I’ve read over the years. You might call it “jumping the shark”. I’m happy for the blogger for finding success, but as a reader, I’m no longer the target audience and it’s time to move on by step 8.

This cycle can take a blogger up to a decade. In a recent case, the guy released a book just last year, and already is selling spots in his “Master Mind” group.

I can think of one blogger in particular, whom I have followed for about 10 years, that only in the last few months has grown almost intolerable with trying to sell his “courses”. Even after 10 years, he was still posting good content just a few months ago, until he entirely converted to rehashing old ideas and trying to sell his “courses”. He used to say he gave “98%” of his material away for free, but now he seems to do nothing but rehash old content, sell courses, or post testimonials.

One example I used on my old blog is Michael Hyatt. (You may have to scroll to the bottom of the landing page to click “Blog”). I first came across him in 2004 when he was with Thomas Nelson. I think by that time, he was President and CEO. At that point, he was posting VERY useful content. I thought “Great! Here is a Christian man who is a successful businessman, posting content that is very helpful to me!”. I read his blog for years. Then, suddenly, the cycle I documented above began to happen. He grew an audience. Then he quit Thomas Nelson for a speaking career. Then it was all about recycling old blog content, or writing at about a Kindergarten level. He started a podcast, which I listened to at first, but it was only a rehash of old blog posts. Plus TONS of commercials, which I’d heard before.

(NOTE: It drives me nuts in podcasts to have to listen to the same thing over and over again. “Boilerplate” is for the newbies, but if you want me to stick around, CUT IT THE HECK OUT!).

I still check his blog from time to time, because he occasionally posts something useful. But I long since cut off his RSS feed and unsubscribed from his emails, although every time he launches a new “course”, I get several emails over 3-5 days trying to get me to buy.

He’s not the only case.

But there are bloggers I’ve followed relentlessly over the years. Vox Day is one example. He’s very successful and intelligent (151 IQ), but he continues to grow and doesn’t try to sell the hell out of you. Sure, he runs Castalia House, and I’ve bought tons of their books, but he keeps growing and I learn from that growth, and I grow along with him. And the majority of the commenters on his blog are people I can learn from and grow with. He mercilessly takes care of the trolls and gammas. His growth challenges me. I bought his book “Return of the Great Depression” when it was first released in 2009. For the most part, the book was over my head, but I learned and put pieces together as I went along. Then, when he started writing about “game”, little of it made sense, but I learned from it. I’m convinced that what I learned about game from Vox and branched out into was instrumental in getting through my divorce, meeting my current wife, and having a much better marriage.

But so many others seem too tempted to the great riches. They stop feeding the audience that made them big in the first place. And that audience moves on. I guess if I could find an audience that would pay me for nuggets of wisdom that amount to “A,B,C,D,E,F,G…” my life would be better.

Hell, even John Maxwell has turned into a Mastermind Group selling troll.

Someday, I probably will start collecting email addresses. But I promise, I’ll provide value for it. That’s who I am. I’ve been blogging since 2004, and haven’t yet figured out a topic I should stick to,