❝❝Because I lost a wager, I spent some time looking at Laci Green videos a while back. The stuff on sex is pretty good, the stuff on relationships is so-so, and the SJW stuff is just destructive. Although in her defense, I don't think she has thought through the implications.

Anyway, the chances of someone under 25 knowing very much about relationships are pretty slim. Particularly when their solution is for at least half of humanity to submit to their wisdom and change their ways.❞ class="ghoster">❞

❝❝

Tags: Laci Green ∙ sex ∙ relationships ∙ SJW ∙ short

Comments

❝A century ago in the U.S., government at all levels took up about 8 percent of the economy. Now it takes up about 40 percent. It regulates everything from the size of beverage containers to what questions must not be asked in job interviews.

How can people be expected to keep up with it all?

Seavey points out that it's backward to expect them to try. Instead of just looking at the complicated mess government makes, we need to review the basic rules that got us here.

Instead of the rule being "government knows best" or "vote for the best leader," says Seavey, what if the basic legal rules were just: no assault, no theft, no fraud? Then most waste and bureaucracy that we fight about year after year wouldn't exist in the first place.

To most people, it sounds easier to leave big policy decisions—about complex things like wages, food production and roads—to government. Having to make our own decisions about everything and trade for everything in the marketplace sounds complicated.❞

Both the review and the book are worth your time.

Tags: skimmed ∙ liberty argument ∙ clipping ∙ John Stossel

Originally published at www.paganvigil.com/C1874472463/E20061225074356

BMOC - A book review

Novel by libertarian blogger and fellow Arizonian Warren Meyer is not as good as I hoped, but still plenty of fun.

BMOC
Warren Meyer
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When I was reading Warren Myer's Coyote Blog, I saw that he had written a mystery, BMOC. Intriguing, Arizona libertarian and businessman, now novelist. That justified ordering it from Amazon.

This book does a fantastic job showing some actual extreme abuses from tort law, and a pretty good job revealing the incestuous relationship that can happen between tort lawyers, legislators, and the media. That alone will bring it kudos from the libertarian crowd, including me.

I loved two of the characters, Susan Hunter and Preston March. I'm a sucker for strong women, so I am always pleased to see a confident female character. And for Preston March, anyone who thinks outside the box gets my attention, especially if he is successful.

I was less enthusiastic about the LA cop. I've got nothing against smart characters, and I think the old Columbo-type routine of pretending to dumb to put the criminals off guard can be very effective. I know it works in business. My problem was that once he dropped the act, he came across as too perfect, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I'm also not quite sure why he started trusting Susan well enough to be himself around her, especially when he was investigating a murder.

The Mafia types came off as clichés.

The first thing that bothered me was some of the language. Not that it was offensive, just unusual. “Eschew” popped up twice in one chapter. That is a word I have seen maybe three times before in the last ten years, and never in a novel. I got the feeling that the old thesaurus program was working overtime. Some of the phrasing was a bit odd too.

But what really got me was the improbable situations that seemed like deus ex machina. Once or twice, maybe. It's bad though when one of the characters actually cites the Improbability Drive from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as a way to describe the story's events in LA. Things just seemed contrived. I kept wanting to feed the story into Dramatica Pro to fix it.

It was a fast read and an exciting read, at least until the first run on the beach. Some of Preston March's ideas aren't so far out, there could be money there.

If you overlook a couple of rough edges, BMOC is worth it.

Posted: Sun - December 24, 2006 at 08:11 PM

Tags: Original Vigil