Redirect: Book Review: Fighting the Promise by F. Allan Roth

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Book Review: Fighting the Promise by F. Allan Roth

I've had to cut way back in my participation in the LDS Beta Readers group because of work, but F. Allan Roth was looking for someone to review his recent release, Fighting the Promise, and I had this feeling in my stomach that I should read it.

If you read the synopsis currently on Amazon, it sounds like end-times young adult action for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but it really isn't.

It's a thought exercise or experiment:

What if one of the enemies of the USA found a way to bring the country to its knees, and the leader of your religious community, in a religious address before the fact, told members of your religious community not to fight it -- not because war is wrong, but because it was the righteous judgments of God being poured out on a sinful nation?

But if he writes that as the synopsis, who is going to want to read almost 300 pages of preaching about how evil the USA has become in XYZ religion's point of view? (That's not what it is, but isn't that what you'd think?)

On the other hand, the way the synopsis stands, it kind-of sounds like Mormon end-times paramilitary fantasy. And I definitely do not think that is what it is.

Conundrum.

Yes, he is preaching -- a little bit -- through a story that doesn't quite fit in any genre, although it brushes with end-times fantasy and paramilitary thriller. But, no, he isn't really preaching that way. No Nostradamus. No picking Isaiah's prophecies apart. No predictions of dates and such. No dystopian views of depraved society.

I think he wants the reader to think about a couple of things, and he buries his premise and hypothesis in a novel that brushes with and ignores all those genre and more.

There is preaching by allegory, but I think it is skillfully done. He doesn't waste the reader's time trying to tell us every little thing we should not be doing.

I think, if I were Roth, I'd have put in a preface, something to the intent that it's just a story, not trying to predict anything, especially not dates or specifics about which ally-enemy of the USA everyone should be watching. But such disclaimers tend to be read as irony in some circles, so maybe it's just as well he didn't.

The writing is still a little rough, but you should know I am not a fan of polished saccharine sweetness. (Should we call that Aspartame™ sweetness these days?)

The first three chapters made me roll my eyes. Thoughts on my mind as I read them:

That sounds strangely like something the president of the Church said recently. (Russel M. Nelson, at a temple dedication in Chile. But the message was not about the kind of war you fight with guns. It was about the better kind of war, where you struggle with your own tendencies to do the lesser things.)

No! Stop! Someone researching devices to detect the portable nuclear bombs that are the holy grail of terrorists everywhere would not let the border patrol agents demand that trunk to be opened!

No! The president of the US would not just roll over like that. And I don't want to sit through another top-secret action thriller tracking all the bombs down and kicking the enemy out.

Wait! When are we going to track all the bombs down and start kicking the enemy out? (Heh.)

After that, the delivery is something like what you'd expect from an old warhorse with war stories to tell. Parts of it even sound like war stories, how deep the snow was, how they got through the underbrush, how they took the helicopter down, ..., but now I'm treading on spoilers.

(If you can stand a little testimonial kind of thing, I find the portrayal of the main character and his wife encouraging and sort-of-applicable to my personal situation.)

I were the editor-in-charge, maybe I'd give it a preface, disclaiming intent to predict future events, etc., especially disclaiming intent to pick which of the ally-enemies of the US are most to be concerned about.

The story is a good story, there are memorable moments and gripping sequences. It's not a fun read, although it has fun moments and ends at an upbeat point.

And the thought experiment is a very useful one. Worth reading.

How many stars? Somewhere between 3 1/2 and 4 1/2, I'd say. YMMV.

Riding a Meme: Fairy Tale Accounting

Heh. Some finger pointing at fantasy budgets showed up on Basshook:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/20/budget-breakdown-of-a-25-year-old-who-makes-100000-dollars-a-year.html

(Thank you, Carlos.)

Yeah, it struck a harsh chord. Lots of posts ridiculing CNBC for publishing that as a budget of a young person who is "Excellent with Money". (Ahem.)

But I think I've learned my lesson about just sharing without thinking. So I went searching for and read the actual article. And now I realize just how ridiculous most financial advice is. And how truly ridiculous CNBC is for posting this kind of garbage. (The information is not ridiculous. The analysis and conclusion are pure fluff -- not even decent fantasy.)

The chord it struck was harsh enough for me to not just share, but to write this webrant.

This guy is doing what they tell you to do. Charge what the market will bear. Spend less than you earn. Save as much as is comfortable. Give some to charity.

He estimates his income this year at USD 100,000. Thats 8 1/3 K average a month, calculated naively. (The naive calculation is a necessary first step when you don't have a company and management to shield you from the vicissitudes.)

Last year was $80,000. The year before, he doesn't say.

Item	:	Amt (USD)	Notes
Rent	:	825	Four roommates
Groceries	:	400	Trader Joes, etc.
Health insurance	:	270	No explanation
Utilities	:	195	Shared
Transportation	:	130	Public and Lyft
House cleaner	:	30	Shared
Internet	:	20	Shared
Cell phone	:	40	Family plan
Dining out	:	250	Girl friend (No movies?)
Donations	:	615	Good for him.

Let's look at some of the things not mentioned in the pie chart:

Item	:	Amt (USD)	Notes
Coworking space	:	350	Sometimes he needs an office ...
Office (irreg.)	:	1000~2000	... only when he's really busy.
Google Sheet	:	???	A "financial app he's developing.
MCAT studies	:	????	What comes around goes around.
Video games	:	???	"Sometimes."
Roth	:	(400?)	(My estimate.) Good thinking.
Savings	:	(400?)	(My estimate.) Good thinking.
Other dating	:	???	I doubt they just dine out. Maybe Netflix? That might be a shared expense. Video games? That's their business, but he hasn't really budgeted it. (And is not budgeting it a bad thing?) Actually, I approve of not telling how much. That's between the two of them, really. Heh. Never mind.
Miscellaneous business	:	????	Some of these were mentioned in the article, but if you add up the math there were likely quite a few.

He mentioned having "about $43,000" in savings, part in Roth, about $20,000 of it "liquid".

Uhm, liquid is not really savings. It's business capital and emergency funds. Necessary to have, but not really savings.

Okay, for doing what he's doing, he's on a fairly decent course. All the finger-pointing and general gossip on FB tends to miss a lot of important stuff.

(Well, CNBC could clean up their analysis significantly. This topic is not perfectly justifiable, but it really shouldn't be so criticized, either. Just, CNBC bloggers, clean up the analysis in your webrants!

Other news linked from that page is the sort of thing that can really suck people's productive time and thinking energy down the drain. It shouldn't be suppressed, but it shouldn't be so actively promoted.)

Back to this guy's budget.

I would have trouble doing things his way. Why? I am not fond of teaching the test. (I need to put up a better rant on that subject, but not today.)

One of the reasons I haven't started "teaching English" independently here in Japan is that the parts of that I think are valuable have nothing to do with tests, and the parents who want their children to "study English", and the individuals who want to "study English", aren't really interested in learning English. They are interested in test scores. "Better schools." "Better jobs." More pay.

I am, however, interested in teaching people how to communicate in English.

My wife would laugh at this. She says I don't know how to communicate. She sort-of has a point. I haven't bothered learning how to sell my opinions so that people will be interested in paying me money for them. Like this webrant, too long, and too much time thinking about things no one seems to want to think about.

Part of communication is, in fact, raising the signal that something needs to be communicated, showing that the message has value. Part of it is communicating things others need to talk about. These are things I need to work on.

But teaching the tests, themselves, No!

Tests are necessarily performed only in a single dimension, or, at best, in unit vectors of two or three dimensions.

Linear.

Linear.

Linear!

(Yes, whoever uses "random" as an epithet, I'm answering you: Linear!)

Focusing on tests gets in the way of real communication. The tests themselves become the reason the average graduate of the Japanese school system studies English for six years and then feels like he or she can't actually "speak English".

They cannot tell us if the test taker knows the subject or does not. They can't even tell us whether the student studied for the test, because the test is supposed to be devised so that it can't be specifically studied for.

(Supposed to be. If the guy whose attempts at budgeting inspired this rant is not aware that he has essentially embarked on a game of strategy where his opponents are the testing companies, he needs to get his head around that. Studying for, and taking, the advanced tests is not just for a degree for him, it's a necessary business expense for him. And it may not be good enough -- unless he is already planning to retire from this game within a few years.)
And they do not teach how to communicate.

The only good thing about standardized tests is when the student lets the test motivate him or her to actually study the whole messy package. And doesn't get tangled up in the grade, as long as it's good enough to allow moving forward in school or the profession.

Please, can't we, as a society, graduate from one-dimensional views of knowledge, of the market, of politics, of economics, of life itself?

(Well, I should try to make my point here, but I really didn't have time to sit down and write this. Lots of other, more important projects waiting for me to work on. On the other hand, thinking about it might help me get the inspiration I need to solve my own problems, so ... . Well, I hope reading it wasn't wasting your time.)

Basshook Just Loves to Mess with You

On the train to work the other morning, I was scrolling through FB and noticed a message from FB themselves.

We decided to help you by changing all your groups to highlight-only.

We've Updated Default Group Notifications

We're working to connect you with the notifications you find relevant. You were receiving all notifications from these groups by default, but we've updated this to only show highlights. You can change this anytime.

Updated Groups

And then it listed all of my groups.

All of my groups. Every last one. 

So I hunted for the way to switch them back. I had to scroll to the bottom and click

"See all groups"

And then it gave me the full list, and I could click one at a time and restore to all posts, then save. Managed to restore about five before my station came up.

(Someone told me that there is a way to do this en-masse if you're on FB in a regular web browser. But I couldn't find it in either of the Android FB apps. And the only web browser I own, FB brings it to its knees.)

Then I read a post by a friend who was complaining that he wasn't getting posts. All he was getting was ads.

Cometh the dawn.

The ads weren't getting through, and they thought they had to get our attention.

So ... somebody give me a cool ten million dollars so I can build the start of a real social networking system that won't be just an excuse to shove ads down everyone's throats to get money from advertisers.

[Pre-translation] What Happened When Door Met Handlebar〜ドアとハンドルが当たった出来事

[Actually, a copy from 1st December 2018, when I had just started translating.] 

About this time last year, I was in the hospital, nearing the end of a month-long stay. This is how I got there.
去年の今頃は１ヶ月入院期間が終わろうとしてたところ。入院の由来を話そうと思いました。

Towards the end of October, on a night when I had planned on joining the ping-pong night at church, I was at home working on a distributor box for the receiver in a wireless mike system we use when someone translates at church meetings. Several of the solder joints were cold and needed re-flowing.
１０月の下旬、教会の卓球ナイトに参加する予定だったある夜、まだ家にいました。教会の集会のために通訳するときに使っている無線マイクシステムの受信機の配線箱を修理する作業にかかっていました。数カ所の目玉半田があって、付け直しが必要だった。

The job search that week had not gone well, neither had my writing, and I was late and frustrated.
その一週間の就職活動は巧く行かず、作歌のでき具合が悪く、予定に間に合わず挫折感が苦かったのです。

Finishing the repair work, I threw the box in my bag, threw on a hoodie and another jacket, put my shoes on in the genkan, and headed out the door in a minor heat.
修理の作業を終え配線箱をバッグに掘り込み、フードづきやジャケット２層を投げまとい、玄関で靴を履き、熱気を感じて急いで玄関から出ました。

We got rid of our car after moving to the city because we really don't need one. I dumped my bag in the basket of my bicycle and headed out of the bike parking area. I turned right out of the parking lot on into the chilly dark, but it isn't really all that dark around here. The roads are fairly well lit most of the way to church.都会へ引っ越してからしばらくw


About this time last year, I was in the hospital, nearing the end of a month-long stay. This is how I got there.

(I would have written this down earlier, but I've been busy, and it's been a little painful to write.)

Towards the end of October last year, on a night when I had planned on going to the ping-pong night at church, I was instead at home working on a distributor box for the receiver in a wireless mike system we use when someone translates at church meetings. Several of the solder joints were cold and needed re-flowing.

The job search that week had not gone well, and neither had my writing. I was late and frustrated.

Finishing the repair work, I threw the box in my bag, threw on a hoodie and another jacket, put my shoes on in the genkan, and headed out the door in a minor heat.

We got rid of our car after moving to the city because we really don't need one. It's often easier to get where you need on a bicycle.

I dumped my bag in the basket of my bicycle and headed out of the bike parking area. I turned right out of the car parking lot into the chill of the early autumn night, but it isn't really all that dark around here. The roads are fairly well lit most of the way to church.

I generally used to have a habit of accelerate hard on the bike. I just don't like wasting time. I think you can understand why I haven't been able to do that much accelerating hard lately, and maybe I don't want to any more.

I turned left at the intersection at the northwest corner of the elementary school campus. (There was a kindergarten there last year that the city has regrettably since torn down.) I think I remember a small van arriving at the intersection at about the same time. Anyway, I stayed on the sidewalk on the left side of that street, to let any traffic pass unimpeded, building speed. Apartments, and then houses, abut almost against the sidewalk to the north (my left as I went), and there are schoolgrounds with trees hanging over the sidewalk on the south, across the street.

As I approached the intersection at the northeast corner of the school grounds, near the pool, I eased back to check traffic. The stop sign is on the intersecting street there, but I didn't want to take chances.

When I was sure the intersection was clear, I accelerated again, and I was probably doing 30 Kilometers per hour (about 20 Mph) as I left the sidewalk into the intersection, probably over 40 Kph (25 Mph) as I entered the shoulder safety strip that replaced the sidewalk on the other side of the intersection.

I think I became aware of the car parked (quasi-illegally) in the safety strip in front of me as I crossed the intersection, but I'm human and react slow, so I didn't quit accelerating until after I had entered the safety strip.

I started moving right, toward the center of the road, but I was fighting momentum, moving too fast to swerve hard. There was plenty of time to avoid the car itself.

This is a fairly wide residential road for a Japanese city, but it is barely wide enough for two ordinary sized cars to pass, carefully. (Ordinary size cars in Japan are still compact in the US, if you are wondering.) On the north side of the street there (my left that night) is a rice paddy, and the south side has, in sequence heading east, a parking lot, an apartment complex, a couple of houses, and another apartment complex.

Not a lot of room to dodge a door if it opens at the wrong time, but the road is well lit, and what are the odds?

I was moving to the center of the road anyway. Just didn't have time to move all the way to the right.

Also, I was a little too close to brake hard. Even if the door had already been opening, braking hard there would not have allowed me to swerve, and I would have smashed myself and the bike into the door had I done so. But it wasn't opening. Not yet.

The police asked me later whether I was worried about possible vehicular traffic from behind. Of course I was. But trying, at between 40 and 30 Kph, to move out of the way of a door that could reach at least the middle of the street if it opens is not exactly easy, either.

You might say bicycles shouldn't go that fast. A lot of people I know will raise their eyebrows at such a suggestion.

Maybe I could've-should've braked anyway, but you don't get far down the street with your brakes engaged all the time. Anyway, I did try to move away from that car.

And the door opened just at the wrong time, just in time for the edge to catch my ring finger as I passed.

Well, I did get past the door, but my handlebar was jerked left. The door was swinging a bit, and I had to work to avoid putting the edge of it between my legs.

I put my feet down to try to balance the bike, but I was still doing at least 15 Kph, I think still over 20 (over 13 Mph).

My feet stuck on the pavement, then came unstuck, and then I was flying over the handlebars.

I thought I was dead. No surprise.

But then I felt like I should just relax, and leave myself in God's hands.

Angels stretched me out flat by the time I hit the pavement, and my hood flew up to cover my face. Probably an angel had a hand in that, too.

I didn't end up sliding very far. But I took most of the impact on one elbow.

There's still some blank space there, but bits of my memory of this have come back a little at a time.

I think I was screaming while I was flying, but I still don't remember. When I came back to myself, I was face-down on the asphalt, with my hood between the asphalt and my face, screaming. Maybe I screamed for fifteen seconds or so, but it seemed like a foolishly long time. It wasn't pain so much as frustration.

I know how to handle pain, and I had automatically began what I do to handle it.

I recovered my breath and started assessing the damage. The arm that had taken the impact was under me, and did not move without pain, but the other arm was free and useable.

There was sharp pain in my back, but I could feel my legs and move them.

I was worried about my neck and spine, but I was also worried about being in the middle of the road, unable to see around me. So I braced the arm that was hurt worst and rolled myself on my back.

And I was happy to be alive.

The driver who doored me came into my visual range, and I relatvely calmly asked him to call an ambulance. I might have grimaced or I might have been grinning ironically.

[A note here: Laughter is good medicine, but it can unnerve the people around you, and cause them to be suspicious. I don't think I actually laughed, but I was not really frowning most of the time, and I didn't scream or holler any more after the first scream.

Frowning makes you hurt worse. I hate that.

But smiling makes the insurance agent think you're cheating. End note.]

The daughter of one of the families who live near there is friends with my daughter, and she happened to be home. She ran and got my family, and the ambulance came, and the police came, and they were careful when they moved me, and I ended up in the hospital for a month.

Damage:

Hairline fractures in the toes in one foot, from when I tried to balance myself.

Severe strain in the inner thigh of the other leg, from the same stress. I didn't really recover from that strain until about a week after I was allowed to start walking again. Had to use the leg to work it out. Stretching it out in the air while I was lying in bed helped with the pain, and helped loosen things up so I could walk again. I think it was six months before I could sort-of run again.

Sprained fingers in the hand that took the edge of the door, strains in both hands and arms. Strains all over, really. Most of those, and the hairline fractures in the toes, healed during the first two weeks in the hospital.

My wedding band ended up squashed into a heart shape, and they had to cut it off at the hospital. But my finger was not broken. I guess it was supported during the impact by the handlebar, and protected by the ring.

Two cleanly sheared ribs and a greenstick fracture in my back, all near my spine. Those breaks probably protected my spine when my feet stuck and sent me flying, and again when I hit the street.

The elbow that took the impact was shattered. The doc described it as gravel, but she may have been slightly exaggerating.

I should get the x-rays from the hospital and post them. Heh.

Scrapes here and there, but my clothes took most of the abrasion.

And that was pretty much it.

X-rays and MRI both showed no damage to spine or neck, which is a great blessing.

And from there things got complicated.

There are many medicines that just don't work for me.

I don't handle anesthesia well. Don't ask. I just don't. It should be enough to say that I'd rather have a root canal worked on without pain-killers. (Literally. Did that three years ago. Would have had to take time off work if I'd let them use anesthesia.) It's that bad. That's part of the reason I've learned to handle pain without pain-killers.

And I don't handle antibiotics well either. They do things to me that go way beyond funny. Make it hard for me to work. Solve one problem, make three more.

The docs did not want me awake when they stabilized my elbow. Too much risk if I had spasms or something. No anesthetic, no operation.

Likewise antibiotics. Insurance problems there.

So I begged them to give me the bare minimum, and to let me choose whether I needed them afterwards, unless I developed high fever or something. They were kind enough to let it go at that.

Here's the brace in the elbow, just after the operation. It's faded and out of focus, so you can't see the breaks in the bone, only the shadows of the screws. I should get the electronic copies.

The screws, by the way, were not in there to hold the bracket in place so much as to be there for the bone to grow back around, and then hold things in place. At first, the bone wasn't solid enough for the screws to take hold of much. At least, that's what the docs said. Shattered.

I had my arm in a cast all the time I was in the hospital, and I wasn't permitted to use the arm until the X-rays showed the bone successfully growing back together solidly enough.

Below is the brace they took out after six months, with the screws, cleaned up and packaged for me as a souvenir:

I was beginning to have reactions to the metal -- cramps and sore muscles in my arm, neck, and back, and all the exercise I was doing wasn't loosening the shoulder up any further.

You wanted to see the hardware didn't you?

Fortunately, the other guy's insurance paid 100% of the hospital, so I had a nice month to recover from the accident, the operation, and the medicine. And they covered getting the brace back out. (In on a Friday morning, out Monday afternoon, just long enough to be sure there wouldn't be any complications. And I taught lessons that Monday evening. No big deal.)

I have to admit, I had hoped the insurance would also pay enough for time I couldn't be working, but, because I was in job-search mode at the time of the accident, they didn't want to give me any work compensation at all. The fact that I had to postpone a job interview because I was in the hospital, plus the fact that I had been working (and paying insurance) at the beginning of the year, did persuade them a little.

(I was ultimately turned down for that job. Something more than 40 other applicants, most of them half my age, higher level of education, not recovering from an accident. I have more experience, but at my age experience gets discounted a lot. And I really was still not at my best for the interview, two weeks after getting out of the hospital.)

Ultimately, they gave me 160,000 yen a month for a total of three months. That's roughly USD 1,600 a month at exchange rates, and just barely enough to cover rent, utilities and maybe a half-month's groceries.

So I didn't really get enough protein, calcium, and proto-vitamin Bs in my diet while my body was rebuilding the joint.

Partly because of that, I'm 15 degrees short of full extension in that elbow. Sure, I can use the arm, but I can't get the full range when I'm exercising, so I can't afford to cut the exercises short. That makes it really hard to put together a forty-hour week on two part-time jobs, with an hour commute each way.

Why didn't I get a temporary job as soon as I got out of the hospital? The insurance company wants to know.

I did get back to the job search immediately -- before I was officially out of the hospital in fact. The hospital is conveniently close to the employment center.

Some people thought standing out on the street eight hours a day with a traffic wand shouldn't be too hard, but I don't think they understand that, physically, it's just as demanding to stand in the middle of the street as in a store at a cash register. Some people thuought I should be back in the classroom. I don't think they realize that there is competition for those jobs.

It's also hard to describe how the medicine affects me. Sure, I was weak from the accident and the operation. And rebuilding takes energy.

But anesthesia and antibiotics just take it out of me, make it hard for me to think or move. Kill my immunities. And it doesn't just eventually go away. It was better during summer, but, winter, no, I'm still down as much as up. My sister brought me some stuff that seems to be helping me, but it's kind of rough on my, too.

And one of the part-time jobs I was able to get required me to be close-quarters with children four or more hours a day. I like kids, I love to teach. But without physical defences I tend to catch whatever they have.

I have to have sleep. I cannot get by on less than five hours. Not if I've got to be productive enough to keep a job. And the teaching job asked for "service overtime" -- reports and planning done off the clock, and only the most obvious (and least time-consuming) prep work would be paid for.

(The boss said, No! That's not service overtime! I'm supposed to have a habit of browsing through Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube, etc., two hours a day anyway, looking for stuff for kids to do, just because. Even though I have another job. And I should have the persistent store in my tablet necessary to hold all those apps and their caches and databases. Just Because. I note that it's a trend these days for employers to demand personal time be dedicated to the job. Just Because. Even though it sucks the creativity out of both the personal time and the job. Even though the value of the work is in what you bring in from outside more than in what you pick up by staying effectively on-the-job unpaid too long.)

I still have to put in an hour of exercise for the elbow and the muscles in my arm and back, six days a week. I take a break more than one day a week and my back, shoulders, and sinuses get all tied up in knots. That makes it hard to work.

A year really hasn't been enough time to recover completely. What were they thinking when they claimed I should be recovered in three months -- because I wasn't working and making 6,000,000 yen a year at the time of the accident?

What, really, is insurance for?

Well, that's the short version of what happened. If you made it through this this much bellyaching, well, thanks for your time. I hope it doesn't depress you.

(My former boss at the one job tells me I'm being too negative. I think I'm being quite optimistic, all things considered.)