Steve Gillman - Born in 1964

 

Writer - Entrepreneur - Thinker

 

This is where you can find out what book I'm working on, my opinions on current events, ramblings on a variety of topics, and announcements of all of my latest websites, e-books, videos, newsletters and other works.

Mind Puppet is Ready!

May 17th, 2012 by Steve Gillman No comments »

Are you a Mind Puppet? Perhaps we all are. That’s one of the ideas covered in the latest book in my “At Your Own Risk Series.” Like the other books in the series it’s available for Kindle readers (and probably Barnes and Noble’s Nook by the time you read this). If you do not own a Kindle, you can get a free desktop reader on the sales page for the book, which is here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0083IWDWE

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

Mind Puppet

“If you have ever felt compelled to do something which felt wrong, you will understand the basic premise of the first essay here. We are certainly led around by things going on below consciousness. But our conscious beliefs about things can mislead us just as much, as I point out with several true stories. If we believe that all laws should be respected, for example, and further believe in logic as the arbiter of truth, we will at some point be compelled to participate in atrocities merely because they are legislated. A mind puppet is a person who is led about by his or her mind, both consciously and unconsciously, especially in ways that do not result in good outcomes. We all fit that description at times.”

In other essays (there are ten total), I challenge the idea of retirement, argue that there is no corporate crime, and call the so-called “war on terror” a farce. I also look at the American Dream and ask at what point it becomes a nightmare (and whether living for a dream makes sense in any case).

The essay titled, “Sand Castles and Property Rights” explores the nature of property by starting with something we all can understand; a child’s right to have his sand castle left alone. I explain why we need to own things, why we need to respect other people’s ownership of their property, and why in practice we need to set limits on ownership. As with all my writing, I try to make my points very clear by using simple examples.

The sixth essay in the book has a title I will not repeat here, since doing so might get me on an FBI watch list. In it, I challenge » Read more: Mind Puppet is Ready!

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Do I Love This Country?

May 14th, 2012 by Steve Gillman No comments »

It makes me uncomfortable to say I love this country, but I do not hate it. In my book, Blue Snake, I have an essay titled, “Why Do They Hate Us?” It looks at why the United States is viewed so negatively in much of the world, using a fictional story and real examples of what the government has done to people in other countries over the years. Another essay is titled “I Have No Duty to My Country.” (In case you have not read the book, I should mention that it’s not all political; there are essays on guilt, how to quit a job, and how much evil lurks in good people, for example.) These, and other things I’ve written, may cause some people to think I hate America.

Blue Snake

I do not hate this county. It is true that I refuse to stand up for the national anthem, and that I think patriotism is a sickness. But that does not mean I hate the country. I just don’t pledge allegiance to strangers (I don’t know most of the people in the United States) or flags or governments. In my book “Mind Puppet” (coming soon), I explain it like this:

“I love this country in some sense; just not for reasons of patriotism. It feels more like home than other countries, probably because I was born and raised here. The mountains in the west are beautiful, as are the lakes and forests of the northeast. Some parts of the culture here are wonderful, and there are elements of what is called the “American spirit” that I identify with. I love some of the ideas which led to the creation of this nation. I think that respect for individual rights is a great ideal. The concepts of property rights that are part of the law here really benefit people. I appreciate that I can say what I like in this essay, on a website, or on the street.”

I feel that people are brainwashed from a young age about patriotism. First, they are convinced that » Read more: Do I Love This Country?

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Blue Snake is Published!

May 10th, 2012 by Steve Gillman No comments »

Blue Snake, the second of the books in my “At Your Own Risk Series,” is available (on Kindle for now, and on the Nook reader soon). I have received a couple negative emails about Gay Jesus, the first in the series, which was published last week, and as expected they were from people who had not read it. I would love to hear from those who have actually read those essays.

Blue Snake

Blue Snake is even more likely to upset some people, but this is not my intent. I feel there are good reasons to get these ideas out there. I really do think patriotism is a sickness, for example, so why wouldn’t I speak out? In the sixth essay of Blue Snake, titled, “I Have No Duty to My Country” I have this to say:

“I am not an American politically. I honestly don’t know how anyone can worship flags—this is a root of war and of death and injustice. And why would I feel an automatic commonality of identity or purpose with another person simply because somewhere on a map in the mists of history a line was drawn which today encircles us both?”

Yes, that will offend some readers, but then I find it offensive when people claim that myself or others owe them something in order to be free and have our rights respected (an obligation to a “country” logically is just an obligation to some particular people, so when people say you have a duty to their country, they generally mean to them–whether they know it or not). Here is a list of the essays in the book:

1. The Blue Snake – My “serpentine mother” rules the world, and after reading my “proof” see if you can offer better evidence for your own gods.

2. The Monsters Among Us – Even the most loving people you know are capable of monstrous acts.

3. How to Quit Your Job – One of my few areas of expertise.

4. Why Do They Hate Us? – Here is a story and » Read more: Blue Snake is Published!

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What About Marriage and Immigration?

May 7th, 2012 by Steve Gillman No comments »

In Gay Jesus, my book of essays, I proposed that we eliminate the legal institution of marriage. The whole idea that we need to seek approval or permission of a government to marry has always struck me as silly at best. In addition to arguing against this bad habit of allowing laws to dictate the terms of marriage, I also suggested some changes that would be necessary if we eliminated government involvement.

Gay Jesus

For example, since there are tax consequences to marriage at the moment (potentially good or bad depending on your circumstances), the law would have to be changed to simply tax our income as individuals. Also, the Social Security system currently gives a benefit to a spouse when a contributor dies–a benefit single people don’t get even though they may pay just as much into the system. This injustice is resolved when marriage is gone, but we might want to allow each contributor to designate a beneficiary regardless of relationship. Divorce and child custody would not change as much as you might think. As I explained in the essay, unmarried people who mix assets and then separate often already need the help of the courts to resolve who gets what, and judges can just arrange custody for the benefit of the children. I looked at issues regarding insurance as well.

What I forgot to address was the issue of marriage and immigration, which is somewhat ironic, since my wife is from Ecuador and only became a citizen because we are married. Without marriage as a legally-defined institution what do we do when people want to join their lives together and one of them lives in another country? How could immigration law be changed?

One way would be to simply have a » Read more: What About Marriage and Immigration?

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Gay Jesus Has Been Published!

May 3rd, 2012 by Steve Gillman No comments »

Since this is the National Day of Reason (a secular alternative to the federally-proclaimed National Day of Prayer), it is a good day for the release of the first of my books in the “At Your Own Risk Series.” It has just been published for Amazon Kindle here:

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Your-Risk-Series-ebook/dp/B007ZCRY9Q

Gay Jesus

If you don’t have one of these devices, you can download a free Kindle reader for your computer there as well.

Gay Jesus is a collection of ten essays on a variety of subjects. There is no paper version, but it will also be published on the Barnes and Noble Nook reader by this weekend. At the moment the price is just $2.99 (that’s less than 30 cents per essay!).

Now, I know some people will be upset by what I’ve written, but all I can really say to that is don’t buy the book if you are easily offended. I might even lose some friends over this, but so be it. I am not offending for the sake of offense. The things I write I believe, and if the people who think they know me are surprised or shocked, it is only because they have not asked my opinion on these subjects or they just haven’t listened very well.

No, I do not believe Jesus was gay, but in the first essay I do look at what it would mean if he was, and how asking “what if” questions like these can reveal our hidden prejudices.

In my second essay I relate how a plane I was on erupted in cheers for the soldiers on board. It truly sickened me to see such mindless worshiping of military service. The thought ran through my mind: Don’t encourage these young people to keep throwing away their lives (they were on their way to Iraq on this particular flight). You can read the essay to understand the rest of my reasoning, but here’s a question that gets at the heart of the matter: How were they “defending our freedom” (the pilot’s words–which the passengers seemed to agree with wholeheartedly) by » Read more: Gay Jesus Has Been Published!

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Google Gave Up

April 30th, 2012 by Steve Gillman No comments »

Google has given up trying to deliver the most relevant and highest quality results for searchers, at least for now. I can say this with some confidence from the evidence I have gathered. Like many others, my own sites saw a severe drop in traffic on April 25 (most lost over 50%), from which they have not recovered. This is thanks to the “Penguin” update. Thousands of website owners like myself have lost most of their income overnight, and it is especially discouraging to see obviously spammy websites and non-relevant results get higher placement in SERPs (search engine result pages) now.

But this is not just about our loss of website visibility and income. Once you understand what is happening, you will conclude like I have, that Google is giving up on their goal to provide the most relevant results for searchers. Instead they are offering up “good enough” results from among the sites which they favor for various reasons. Let me explain…

It used to be that incoming links could not hurt a website in the SERPs. This was always considered the only ethical way to have a search algorithm work, since as an owner of a site you cannot possibly stop spammy sites from linking to you, particularly if you do not have the budget to hire a team of lawyers. It wouldn’t be fair to set the system up in a way that enabled competitors (or enemies) to destroy your ranking in the search engines. For this reason (in part), Google used to have a policy (as far as we know) that if they identified spammy links, whether the owner of the site bought them or just got linked to for reasons beyond his control, they would take away any weight these links might have in their search algorithm, but they would not actively penalize a site for them.

More than being a matter of fairness, though, if you stop to think about it for only a moment, you realize that if a website is actively penalized for anything off-site, the search results must suffer. Consider, for example, if you have the best website online for golf tips. Now imagine a golfer searching “golf tips” in Google, and he sees other less-relevant websites covering the first two pages of results (few people look further than that), because Google has penalized your site for incoming links it doesn’t like. They would have consciously delivered non-ideal results (that’s their term) because they wanted to punish you for what they think you did wrong. After all, the ideal result would be the best site, and links which happened to point to it could not in any way » Read more: Google Gave Up

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Posted in internet, money, personal

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A Book of Secrets

April 24th, 2012 by Steve Gillman No comments »

I just published You Aren’t Supposed to Know – A Book of Secrets on Kindle (and probably on Nook by the time you read this). It has always been a part of The Secrets Package, which is still perhaps the best way to get it. You get six PDF e-books with the package, with all sorts of cool information (one is on how to detect lying in others, another covers how to beat a lie detector test, and the others cover many little-known bits of knowledge). But if you really just like to read on your Kindle device now (they are very convenient), here is where you can get You Aren’t Supposed to Know:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WN3C30

Here’s a look at some of what’s in the book (over 300 ages and 96,000 words, by the way; this is not a pamphlet)…

Subliminal Persuasion Techniques – These are covered in the first chapter, and although you might feel a bit uncomfortable using some of the methods explained here (I wouldn’t use a few of these), you will want to read this to protect yourself from having them used on you. The same can be said for the chapter on hypnotic sales writing techniques (I did use a few of these to quadruple the subscription rate for » Read more: A Book of Secrets

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My Survival Guide

March 23rd, 2012 by Steve Gillman No comments »

I wrote a book a few years ago (just after the financial crisis of late 2008), and made it part of my Secrets Package (it still is part of that collection, which is available at http://www.thesecretinformationsite.com). It is called The Survival Guide for Interesting Times. Just recently I updated it and published it separately as a Kindle book here:

The Survival Guide for Interesting Times

If you don’t have a Kindle reader, you can download a desktop version for free here:

Kindle for PC

It looks at survival from a broad perspective, to say the least. I start with basic financial matters like how to get out of debt fast, live on less, develop streams of income, and prepare for unexpected events. I move on to what to do when “interesting times” arrive, including how to raise cash fast, find survival jobs and start low-investment businesses.

As the book moves along it gets into more and more extreme scenarios, and the preparation you can make for them. Epidemics, wars, and “Mad Max” futures are » Read more: My Survival Guide

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Is It Arrogant to Think for Yourself?

February 20th, 2012 by Steve Gillman No comments »

When you are intellectually independent, there is an unspoken sense among many of those who hear you that you are arrogant. People have some fear of the true thinker, as though he or she is somehow a threat because he won’t “go along” with the group or with cultural ideas and expectations. But the arrogant man or woman is not the one who thinks; he is the one who imagines he has found the absolute right system of beliefs or guru to follow; the one who has abdicated his thinking to others.

Consider for a moment what it means to stop deciding what is true using your own mind. There will still be things you hold as true, but for what reason? Most likely for this reason: some important authority on Earth, present or past, has claimed certain things to be true, and you accept that authority as your guide. Now, since it is clear to all who pay attention that there are “authorities” of all types who will say all kinds of things, isn’t it also clear that it is YOU who decide which one to follow? You decide that this » Read more: Is It Arrogant to Think for Yourself?

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Discrimination Against Atheists

February 13th, 2012 by Steve Gillman No comments »

Is there discrimination against atheists? Certainly there is in many Islamic countries, where those who do not believe in a god can have almost no legal status, preventing them from voting or even attending a college. Worse, if a Muslim becomes an atheist, which is apostasy, he or she can be sentenced to death in at least three countries. That’s some pretty sever discrimination, to say the least.

It is assumed there there is little discrimination against non-believers in western democracies, but is that true? Consider this recent quote from presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (during a televised debate in Las Vegas): “How can you have judgment if you have no faith? How can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?” Gingrich is essentially proposing a religious test for public office, something expressly forbidden by the Constitution (at least if done on more than an individual level).

According to a Wikipedia entry on the subject of discrimination against atheists, there are seven state constitutions which officially » Read more: Discrimination Against Atheists

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