Pew Research Center just published the results of a national study surveying reader habits. It answers questions like:
Lots of great stuff. You can read the full survey here: http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/10/23/younger-americans-reading-and-library-habits/
Do you see this picture? This is Jeff Bezos laughing at John Brown. Because John Brown was a fool.
Let me explain.
When I sell my ebooks on Amazon for $2.99 to $9.99, Amazon charges me 30% of the price. I keep 70%. That’s a decent deal. I’m happy to do business with them as a partner with my ebooks.
But Amazon’s got some alter ego going when dealing with folks selling used books. When I sell used books, Amazon somehow thinks it’s a swell deal for all of us little guys if they take a huge chunk of the pie. Look at the numbers below.
Order date: 04/08/2017
Price: $3.98
Shipping: $3.99
Amazon fees: -$3.99 (100% of sale price)
Your earnings: $3.98
Order date: 04/05/2017
Price: $5.50
Shipping: $3.99
Amazon fees: -$4.21 (77% of sale price)
Your earnings: $5.28
Order date: 03/23/2017
Price: $3.50
Shipping: $3.99
Amazon fees: -$3.91 (112% of sale price)
Your earnings: $3.58
Order date: 03/15/2017
Price: $1.49
Shipping: $3.99
Amazon fees: -$3.61 (242% of sale price)
Your earnings: $1.87
You might think, hey, John, you’re making a few bucks on each. But no, what you see above is what I get from Amazon. I still have to ship the product. And if I purchased the book somewhere, I have to cover those costs as well.
For example, look at the last one. Amazon feels that not only do they need to charge me the total sale price of the book, they also need more than half of the shipping costs. That book cost over three dollars to ship plus a little for a bubble mailer because I actually care that the book is in great shape when the buyer opens the package. So I lost money. But Amazon did just fine.
And Bezos was laughing because John Brown, the fool, was paying Amazon for the pleasure of taking time to list the book, shelve the book at his house, package it, and then post it. It was as good as going to Disneyland!
The fees used to be lower.
Order date: 06/26/2014
Price: $3.59
Amazon fees: -$2.88 (a mere 80% of the sale price)
Shipping: $3.99
Your earnings: $4.70
I hated the fees they were charging then, but after postage, we could still make a buck or so on books priced at this level. Not anymore.
So adios Amazon. I’m done being your fool. And shame on me for taking so long to recognize it. I’m moving all my used book stock to Half.com because they actually have a good thing going. Look at what they charge for their services.
$0.75 – $50.00: 25.0%
$50.01 – $100.00: 22.5%
$100.01 – $250.00: 20.0%
$250.01 – $500.00: 17.5%
> $500.00: 15.0%
That means on that $1.49 book, they would have charged me a whopping 37 cents.
Hey, profit for them AND me. And a great price for the buyer. Win-win-win.
How nice.
It’s interesting how many things we’ve added to the accounts we have in the Bible.
For example, nowhere does the Bible say that Mary rode a donkey. Mary might have walked. Or rode in a cart. Or gotten piggy back rides. We don’t know. We do know that there is no donkey mentioned in the record.
It also doesn’t say she had the child the night they arrived.
It only says she was “great with child” when they made the roughly 80-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And that “while they were there” in Bethlehem “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.”
So she had the baby sometime while they were there. That could have been during the first hour. But it could have also been a week or month later. We just don’t know.
It doesn’t mention anywhere the word stable.
Christ might have been born in a stable, or he might have been born in a cave, or inside the house, or out on the porch, or on the roof (lots of those places had flat roofs where they hung out). We just don’t know. What we do know is that he wasn’t born in a palace. And that they laid him in a manger because there wasn’t any room in the inn. An odd circumstance for a king.
Notice as well that there weren’t multiple inns.
It just says “the inn.” And if you look up that word in the Greek, it’s translated as “guest chamber” in the other spots where it’s used in Luke. So they could have been talking about the one guest room in the house where they were staying. Either way, we don’t have anything that says there was a mean innkeeper who later regretted turning the couple away or that Joseph went door-to-door looking for a place.
We have no record in the account of three wisemen.
It just says “wisemen.” So there might have been two of them. Or twelve. We don’t know. And it appears they came sometime after Jesus had been born because they first saw the star of his birth in the east and only then set out to find him. They might have been coming from Persia, hundreds of miles away. Or they could have been living in Bethphage, a mile to the east of Jerusalem. Either way, they didn’t know they should travel to Bethlehem because it says they went and talked to Herod first, in Jerusalem, and asked “where is he that is born King of the Jews?”
The question freaked Herod out (if you’re the current king, you kind of want to know who else is claiming your throne), and so he gathered all the chief priests and scribes to discuss it, and those guys said the prophecies said it would be Bethlehem. And so Herod met with the wisemen again and told them to go there. And only then did they go down to Bethlehem. So it doesn’t appear the wisemen were there the night of the birth.
There’s no record of camels hanging out with the baby either. Or sheep. Or goats. There’s not a lot there. But what is there is interesting.
Now, I want to go on record stating I have no problem speculating about the event and imagining what it might have been like. I love to do it. Good grief, I write fiction.
In fact, for many years I figured I needed to get in on the Christmas noun gig. You know what I mean. Every year we get heart-warming books about new Christmas nouns. We’ve had Christmas sweaters, Christmas jars, Christmas boxes, Christmas candles, Christmas carols. This year I see there’s one about Christmas fudge and other about a Christmas train. So I figured I’d do one. Mine would be about the Christmas rat. A little fellow who decided to snuggle up with the babe instead of giving him a nibble. One of these days I will get that hungry rat story written.
In the meantime, while there’s a lot of good stuff we’ve added to make the event special, it’s also nice to know what the record actually does say. Whether you’re Christian or not, it’s helpful when dealing with others to know what was recorded about this event that is so significant to the largest religion in the world.
And so the last bit of good stuff I recommend this month are the two brief accounts we have. The first one is in Matthew 2:1-16 and tells the story of the wisemen. The other is in Luke 2:1-20 and features some shepherds.
Merry Christmas!
Brandon asked me to come in and teach about indie writing. Here are the slides of my lecture and a document for notes.
Take a runty warrior and a slow-witted wizard who have been contracted by a veiled bride willing to pay diamonds to anyone who would fetch an oh so precious box from the castle of a dead wizard. A castle from which no adventurers have returned. Well, except for Thogar the Mighty. Of course, he’s now Thogar the One-Armed Madman. But let’s not quibble.
At first blush you might think, whopee, another fantasy quest. But this isn’t another quest. This is an Eric James Stone quest, and it’s full of surprises.
I was fortunate enough to hear Stone read his story at CONduit this May. He takes his listener on a ride full of humor and adventure. Then, if you’re like me, he will make your heart lurch. I loved this story down to the last line which is pure poetry.
You can find it in issue 13 of Orson Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.
After this year’s presidential election I emailed my sister, a smart, super-competent, true-blue, bleeding-heart, save the weeds and snails liberal, who volunteered to do campaign work for Hilary Clinton in Colorado during the 2008 Democratic primaries and, of course, voted loudly for Obama in this last election.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “How can anyone who doesn’t have a carrot for a brain want more of the same? I don’t get it. Obama? How can so many Americans be that gullible? I’m totally baffled.” And that puzzlement wasn’t rhetorical. I was seriously baffled.
“Are you kidding me?” she replied. “Mitt Romney? How could anyone vote for Mitt Romney? Talk about baffled.” She went on a rant listing all of Romney’s supposed deeds and positions of sooper evil and stupidity. Then she questioned how anyone could support that Hitler in his Mormon clothes.
Okay, she didn’t say “Hitler,” but she did claim he was “evil” and “despicable.” And when I think of evil, my first thought is always of folks like Mitt Romney.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, leader of the Juarez drug cartel, which is responsible for hundreds of gruesome murders each year and . . . Mitt Romney. Oh, yeah. They’re like brothers. In fact, wasn’t Romney’s dad born in Mexico? And, hey, one of Romney’s sons even knows Spanish. That boy wasn’t on a church mission there. No, he was making connections with the jefe!
Sonia Montoya-Cadena, the one who ran a human trafficking ring in Denver exploiting young girls for sex and . . . Mitt Romney. Yeah, Romney’s just like that. If he could run slave brothels, he’d do it in a minute to make a buck. In fact, doesn’t Bain Capital own a couple of slave brothels in Greenland?
I wanted to unload. I was prepared to destroy her with fiery analysis of the first order.
Thundering analysis.
Mountain crushing logic.
She was so freaking blind.
Except,
She had never actually considered what I had to say in any of my previous emails. It never mattered how powerfully vast my brilliant logic was. She’d demonstrated wax ear time and again. All of my intellectual might never made a dent in her liberal force field. I brought blood and thunder, and it always seemed to bounce off her like bullets made of styrofoam.
Nevertheless! Clinton? Obama? Save the gerbils?
I made a comment that sent Smart Sister into DEFCON 5. Foolish me. Eventually, her liberal ire cooled and she decided to order comrade Putin to stand down and not push the big red button.
Meanwhile, I started to think.
I noted that if things didn’t change, the Republicans wouldn’t be winning the presidency any time soon. If they couldn’t beat Obama when the economy was in the tank, then there really was no hope. Which meant we are going to end up like Greece, with continuing inflation (which is not only an intentional, government-led annual pay cut on the disgustingly rich, filthy rich, and annoyingly rich, but also on the middle class, poor, destitute, and various and sundry hoboes everywhere), huge debt, stupid taxes, ridiculous health care, Soviet-style redistribution, blah, blah, blah.
I asked myself, like all Republicans did, what could we conservatives do differently? Follow Obama’s example and improve our operations to get the vote out? Build up a conservative La Raza? Do the right thing with the children of illegals? Get someone willing to land more blows on the opposition (Romney could have decimated Obama in debates two and three, but he didn’t; he totally failed to define his opponent).
Maybe it was in the messaging. Maybe what we needed to do was develop something that actually changed minds.
At this point a faint ding sounded in the distance in my mind. A small light bulb suddenly flipped on and illuminated a dark cubby of my mind.
Hadn’t I just read about studies showing how a soap opera in Mexico, a radio play in Tanzania, and sitcoms in America actually changed viewer attitudes and behaviors about literacy, HIV, and abortion? Didn’t I already know about the power of concrete and vivid storytelling? Not sermon-telling, but storytelling.
Why, yes. Yes, I did.
Had I not witnessed the use of storytelling on U.S. television for, what, fifteen years by those wanting to build sympathy for homosexuals? (A good thing, even if I disagree with some of the gay agenda.) And the cheapening of sex by others? (A bad thing.) And the clearly conscious promotion of many other attitudes and beliefs via various media programs?
I determined there was something to this.
If people were going to vote for fiscal responsibility in Washington, something like this was going to have to be done. It wasn’t going to happen in flame wars.
About this same time I was browsing through the recent Radio West programs. I saw one called “The Righteous Mind.” It was an interview of Jonathon Haidt about his new book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.
Hey, wasn’t that addressing my question?
The program blurb states: “Monday, our guest is the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose latest book sets out to explain the root causes of the divisions in our society. At the heart of his argument is the idea that the human mind is designed to “do” morality. But when we separate into tribes – say political affiliations or religious denominations – we focus on different moral foundations. Haidt joins us to explain why he says we need the insights of liberals and conservatives to flourish as a nation.”
I listened. And loved the program.
Haidt shared a number of deliciously insightful things about how our mind works and how we choose our affiliations. He shared so many insights that I immediately requested his book at my library. The library ordered a copy for their collection. I, of course, was first in line to read it. I just finished the book.
It’s one of the best books I’ve read all year.
Haidt explains why my sister and I were both baffled by people who voted for the opposition candidate. He explains how human morality works. How our reason does not lead us to make the judgments we do, but instead more often acts like a lawyer to justify our positions to others.
As soon as he explained that I saw how I had done that time and time again. For example, in this election cycle I blamed Obama for the economy. In the Bill Clinton re-election I vigorously argued that the President doesn’t have any effect on the economy and is lying if he takes credit for it. I’m not saying that Obama didn’t do things that might have hampered the recovery, but how did I know his actions exacerbated our problems? What evidence did I really have?
Haidt explains that there are six basic moral bases then points out which ones drive liberals, conservatives, and libertarians, and how we can use that knowledge to disagree more constructively. He provides strong insights into how our reason and intuitions and judgments work, the evolutionary function of our morality, and how our wiring for group affiliation affects it.
I didn’t agree with some of his conclusions. He sometimes takes his points too far. For example, he seems to suggest that people in cities are pre-disposed to be liberal. And that’s why they live there. Um, no. That’s not why they live there. They live in cities because that’s where the jobs are. The agricultural revolution made sure of that, remember? In his effort to explain the smaller biological basis of our beliefs, he also downplays the larger effect our families and groups have. But despite these excesses, he shares so many fresh and exciting ideas that they don’t matter. And he shares them all in such a fun and clear way that I couldn’t help but stay up late a number of nights reading this book.
Do you know how much I wanted to trash Obama to my sister? That Soviet-style central planner. That drunken sailor spender. That choom wagon pot head.
And yet, you and I also know that will never work. I now know better why. Because of Haidt, I think I see a better way. I certainly see how I have done exactly what drives me mad about those who have drunk the opposition candidate’s Kool-aide. I see that I have my own conservative force field that deflects liberal bullets (and perhaps even blinds me to the truth sometimes). And why I need to watch my reason, that cunning lawyer part of my brain, as well as my intuition.
Haidt, a liberal, has given me, a conservative, a great gift. I intend to use it. If you are interested in the two taboo topics of politics or religion, if you enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink or the Heath brother’s Made to Stick, if you want to find a better way to influence than flame wars (as fun as they can sometimes be), then I think you will enjoy the wonders Haidt shares in his fine book.
Don’t just take my word for it. Listen to the Radio West program http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/righteous-mind for a taste of what awaits you.
I’ve come to realize I didn’t understand the process of impeachment and the standards by which it is conducted. Here are a few key things I’m betting most of us didn’t know. Some of them will surprise you.
First, the process has three steps:
There are two big questions in all of this. First, what standard of proof is used for passing the articles and then convicting the person of the allegations?
It appears that the standard of proof required for impeachment and conviction is left to the discretion of each individual representative and senator. There is no standard defined. So while some may use the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, others may not.
Second, what can someone be impeached for?
According to the constitution they can be impeached for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” However, the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” is not defined in the Constitution itself.
The most authoritative explanation of what “high crimes and misdemeanors” are appears to be a document written by the staff of the House Judiciary Committee. The latest version of this was written in 2015 and is called “Impeachment and Removal.”
According to the Wikipedia article on impeachment, “While this document is only staff recommendation, as a practical matter, today it is probably the single most influential definition of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.””
A key take away from that house committee report is that not all crimes are impeachable offenses and not all impeachable offenses are crimes. So what are grounds for impeachment? Well, it’s a bit vague.
In 1788, Alexander Hamilton argued in the Federalist Paper 65 that impeachment was for “the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” The House Committee report expounds on that, including the following general grounds:
The report goes on to say the following.
“Congressional materials have cautioned that the grounds for impeachment “do not all fit neatly and logically into categories” because the remedy of impeachment is intended to “reach a broad variety of conduct by officers that is both serious and incompatible with the duties of the office.” Nonetheless, congressional precedents reflect three broad types of conduct thought to constitute grounds for impeachment, although they should not be understood as exhaustive or binding: (1) improperly exceeding or abusing the powers of the office; (2) behavior incompatible with the function and purpose of the office; and (3) misusing the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain.”
But the report doesn’t give much definition beyond this, just a few examples of what individuals have been impeached for since the founding of the country. What does all of this mean?
I think the Wikipedia article sums it up well.
“Several commentators have suggested that Congress alone may decide for itself what constitutes a “high Crime or Misdemeanor”, especially since the Supreme Court decided in Nixon v. United States that it did not have the authority to determine whether the Senate properly “tried” a defendant. In 1970, then-House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford defined the criterion as he saw it: “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.””
Impeachment is a political remedy, not a criminal justice or civil justice one. And given the vague definition of grounds for impeachment and the lack of any required standard of proof, what this all means, unfortunately, is that the process, especially in our current climate, is going to be rife, not with objectivity, but partisan politics. On both sides.
Here’s more for the curious.
