Comp Time vs. Overtime Pay

Reading up on HR 1406, called the Working Families Flexibility Act.

The bill gives the employees of taking comp time instead of overtime pay for overtime hours worked, at the rate of 1.5 comp hours per hour worked. Those hours go into a pool (that cannot exceed 160 hrs), from which the employee can draw with advance notice with employer agreement--an employer can refuse if taking that paid leave would unduly disrupt business operation (uncertain how this degree of freedom compares to existing comp time policies). Unused hours must be paid back at the end of the year. Companies are forbidden from coercing employees to choose one overtime option or the other (enforcement of this could be difficult if influence is exercised indirectly).

Supporters of the bill argue that it gives working families more flexibility, similar to what is available to government employees (I was unable to find policies on government employee overtime for comparison). They argue that additional paid leave can often be more valuable to an employee than the overtime pay would be, and that the employee is not unduly restricted from taking that time.

Opponents of the bill worry about how it will be used, calling it an attack on the 40-hour work week. They say that corporations would choose to give overtime hours to employees that chose comp time so as to avoid immediate expenses (comp time amounts to an interest-free loan of one's overtime pay to the company), to the detriment of employees that chose overtime pay because they need it. They wonder if employee comp time can really be used at employee discretion in practice. And they argue that companies would pressure employees to work overtime for comp time in lieu of hiring more workers in times when more hours need to be worked.

Versions of this bill have been presented several times in the past, without success. This time the bill has passed the House and is expected to fail in the Senate. These points raise the question of whether it's just a political football being tossed back and forth for talking points before being inevitably kicked down the road.

First, is this an objective assessment, and is it missing anything? Second, do you think the bill is good for workers, companies, and/or the economy?

Gun control in the wake of Sandy

Gun control debates frustrate me for the same reason 'size-of-government' debates frustrate me: binary perspectives. One side chalks gun violence up to guns, the other side chalks it up to 'cultural differences' (or at least 'not guns'), and neither position really leads to problem-solving action.

On the one hand, I'm quite reluctant to draw an explicit relationship between gun ownership and violence, since the US is relatively more violent in some metrics (intentional homicide), less violent in others (assault), and differs significantly from other countries with both low and high gun ownership. I'm far from convinced that fighting gun ownership is a good way to fight the use of guns in violent crimes, and doing so in any meaningful way would require the abrogation of the 4th Amendment, among others, as well as major additional bureaucracy.

On the other hand, the explanations offered by conservatives sound suspiciously like excuses for inaction, rather than concrete explanations that suggest policy or community solutions. Dig a little bit, and it always comes back to 'I have a right to bear arms, and that means you don't get to try to take my gun away from me.' And fine, maybe your average gun owner is a peace-loving American citizen, but acknowledging that does little to deal with the people who all too frequently misuse guns in horrific ways.

So, our country has:
-Moderate gun ownership, but high quantities of gun frenzy
-High gun violence, especially with handguns, and especially urban and inner-city violence
-Regulations that vary widely by state, and state law enforcement not obliged to police federal regulations
-High quantity of unregistered guns and ammo
-Relatively high prevalence of poverty and mental disorders

Given these initial conditions, what are some things our country can do to improve the state of affairs? Some tentative suggestions--not policies per se, but guidelines that can be engineered into policies:
-Better access to mental healthcare, marital counseling, and birth control
-More paths to success for minority urban youth besides sports, the army, or the gang
-Less indiscriminate use of prison sentencing, to cut the youth-to-prison pipelines

No, none of those solutions involve guns in any way. That's primarily because I'm not sure what kind of policies would impact gun ownership in any meaningful way. Register newly bought firearms? You create a bureau of registers, and you still have to deal with the massive existing pool of unlicensed arms. Voluntary registration? Who exactly would you catch volunteering to register with a gun and then using it in a crime? Proscription of certain types of guns? The ones that initially seem the most dangerous are responsible for the least violence, and besides, a War on Assault Weapons seems no more likely to be effective than the War on Drugs. Make like Switzerland and issue people military arms after a mandatory draft? Somehow I don't think the citizenry would take kindly to that, and we don't have the facilities to handle 150 million or more draftees anyway.

So, naturally, I leave it as an exercise for the alert reader.

Robert Reich: Taxing the Wealthy Essential to Growing Economy

Robert Reich attacks the perceived tradeoff between increasing the progressiveness of the income tax and economic growth. tax and economic growth. I would nitpick that he fails to note the difference in real income between the lower end of the top marginal tax rate in the post-WWII era and now (~$2 million vs. ~$400,000 in today's money). I also wonder whether the comparison with Germany is truly apt, given the broader state of the Eurozone. However, I can't help but agree with the basic point: progressive taxation used to provide public goods and stimulate the middle class will benefit the economy more than having surplus wealth concentrated in the hands of a few speculators and investors.

Another Day, Another Bull in Our Online China Shop

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is the latest attempt by government to protect the online community from cyberattacks, and it's beginning to receive attention on par with the previous Net frenzy about SOPA. But as with SOPA, CISPA goes way WAY overboard. In order to create a system of corporate cooperation against cybersecurity threats, the bill gives companies broad authority to track your Internet usage and share that information in black envelopes with other public and even private entities. There's little in the way of oversight, and as 'piracy' is listed as one of the legitimate cybersecurity concerns, this has broad implications even before considering possible abuses of the law.

A list of the bill's Congressional co-sponsors is a short way down in the comments here; I just sent an email to my representative, who co-sponsored the bill. I encourage you to check if your representative is a co-sponsor, and if so, to contact him or her about this issue. I'll provide my letter as a template.

Dear *Representative*,

I write to you as a member of *District*, after learning of your cosponsorship of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. I am one of many citizens who are concerned about the broad authority given to corporations and the government to collect and share proprietary information about their users in the name of 'cybersecurity', with little oversight or transparency to ensure that these tools are not misused. While I recognize the challenges posed by our open networks, this is a clumsy and overreaching method of developing cybersecurity. I would like to request that you withdraw your support of this bill.

Thank you for your time,
*Name*

Grade Averaging as an Allegory for Liberal Politics? Think Again

This is an oft-repeated story, and I'd like to take some time to cut it down to size.

‘The Obama Experiment’ Causes Economics Professor to Fail Entire Class
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A…. (substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little..
The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that.

First, let's address the central fallacy of the allegory: the dichotomy between equal opportunity and equal outcomes. Do you believe that the current state of income inequality is a problem in the United States? I'm guessing most people answer in the affirmative. Now, do you believe that NO ONE should be poor and NO ONE should be rich? Far fewer hands raised. Do you believe that everyone should receive the same income regardless of work done and value added? Nary a "yes" to be found. Yet this is the premise of the allegory. A false premise: that "Obama socialism" implies entirely equal outcomes.

Let's look at the lessons we're supposed to draw from this allegory.

"1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity." Fortunately for everyone, we're not trying to do either.

"2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving." Blatantly false. If one person is taxed and two people use the resulting road, both benefit.

"3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else." But that’s certainly not a reason to never take anything from anybody. Sometimes, “He needs it more” is a valid argument. Then, too, the government is also capable of creating value. From research funding to education to infrastructure, society is littered with examples of this.

“4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!” Disregarding the technical innumeracy of regarding division and multiplication as fundamentally different, I would counter by saying that multiplying the wealth of the wealthy alone is not the best solution.

“5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they worked for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.” There’s rather a gap between eliminating all incentives to work and eliminating all stopgap measures for those who cannot work, or cannot feed themselves, or can’t receive adequate medical treatment (the factors that contribute to absurd American healthcare costs are a subject I’ll discuss another time). I’d like to think we should fall somewhere in between.

I don’t agree with everything Obama does. Hell, I don’t even agree with most of what he does. But that’s all the more reason not to make up nonsensical stories upon which to base my disagreement. No?

Education and Progress

Progress has high marginal educational costs. As a society becomes more dependent on scientific, technical, and technological developments, people within that society must shoulder a greater burden of prerequisite knowledge to be informed citizens and skilled workers. The educational phase of life is correspondingly lengthened, which cuts into productive work life and increases the financial barrier to educational qualifications (especially since the added phases of education are more likely to require expensive facilities).

Counterbalancing this, of course, is that more developed societies have more money to spend on this kind of thing. Technological development also extends productive work life at the other end. And technology may give us tools to accelerate educational development--to pull a random example from thin air, with global interconnectivity it's much easier to get exposure to a foreign language, and with online learning it's incredibly easy to find and study material up to and including college-level coursework in technical fields. I feel that the latter point in particular is something that our society hasn't taken advantage of to nearly the degree that is possible. Indeed, it seems that rather than accelerating, education is more and more about not falling behind. That's rather unfortunate.

As always, spoken with little experiential context, and I welcome--indeed, I hope for--comments from people who know more.

Rage Against the Machine

Thank you, sir. More like this, please.

Get the money out of politics. Limit corporate personhood. Stop the insider trading bullshit. Quit lending trillions of dollars of undisclosed cash to unscrupulous financiers. Kill the policies that put lobbyists in control of the political agenda, that make it impossible to have a rational discussion of substantive issues like healthcare, immigration, military matters, civil rights, criminal justice, fixing the financial system, fixing the entitlement system, and balancing the taxes that pay for it all (except for what we borrow...).

There is no interpretation of the Free Speech clause that allows our representatives in government to be bought out and corrupted. There is no interpretation of executive/bureaucratic power that allows our administration to sell us out. There is no interpretation of public welfare that makes it acceptable to ruin our future by kicking present problems down the road like the trash snowballs from Katamari Damacy.

This is our country. And we want it back.

(Edited: This post initially accused the government of spending trillions to bail out banks. That's not what actually happened. Rather, the government loaned trillions to the banks at ridiculously low interest rates. As far as I can tell, that didn't last, and the Fed got their money back. I'm honestly not sure how to feel about this, because it seems to have worked somehow. But egads, what a mind-bogglingly risky, cockamamie, STUPID plan of action. And the banks ended up making $13 billion off of it, if you believe the marginal rate calculations Bloomberg does here.

A Voter's Declaration of Illness

I'm sick of party politics.

I'm sick of two-second soundbytes and two-year election campaigns. I don't want political theater, I want public policy.

I'm sick of political expediency. I don't want to see an environment where facing up to difficult issues is political suicide, and kicking the can down the road means reelection.

I'm sick of having twenty hot-button issues with two sides each, boiling down complex problems into simplistic ideologies and blowing up simple legislation into incomprehensible gibberish. I don't want a skinny government or a fat government, I want a fit government.

I'm sick of tribalism. I don't want politicians to oppose ideas just because 'the enemy' supports them, or vice versa. I don't want politicians to appeal to groupthink--the rich, the poor, the white, the black, the unions, the employers, the war hawks, the peaceniks, the youth, the elderly. Left or right or upside down, I don't give a damn.

I want an informed populace to elect serious representatives. I want sober public discussion of policies that will impact the nation's welfare. I want complications to be explored rather than ignored. I want disagreements to encourage engagement rather than divisiveness.

I am a member of the militant middle, and I'm sick of letting the fringes wrestle for control over our country, with their efforts combining to steer towards disaster. It's Pepsi against Coke to me, and I drink water.

The National Defense Authorization Act--Indefinite Detention and Wartime Executive Power

I've spent the better part of the last week looking into this issue. It's a complicated subject that's being massacred by media sensationalism. They paint with broad strokes of black and white, and invoke the specter of totalitarianism. And that's when they don't outright print falsehoods; the latter article makes scare talk out of an amendment that never made it into the bill, for example.

They're not wrong to be disturbed, though. Here's what I've found in my checking:

The disputed section is Section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (henceforth NDAA). Section 1031 allows the military to detain:
-Anyone involved in any way with the people who orchestrated 9/11;
-Any member of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or 'associated forces';
-Anyone who has offered 'substantial support' to the above;
-Anyone who has 'committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of' the above.

Detainment is pending disposition under law of war, which can be:
-Held until the end of "hostilities" (as defined in the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in 2001);
-Trial under Uniform Code of Martial Justice or other competent court/tribunal;
-Transfer to custody of a foreign country or entity

People will tell you that this section exempts US citizens and lawful resident aliens. They are wrong. The section with that exemption is 1032, which requires the military to detain certain people who have been captured in the course of hostilities. Nothing in 1032 removes the military's authority to detain citizens or resident aliens.

The first important aspect to consider is that the authority for this provision comes from the Authorization for Use of Military Force signed in 2001 (AUMF). You'll notice that the AUMF doesn't exempt US citizens either. In truth, the NDAA isn't granting the executive any special new authority; it is actually clarifying the extent of the wartime powers granted to the executive and the military by the AUMF. This was particularly made explicit by a last-minute compromise amendment from Senator Feinstein, which inserted a clause saying "Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force."

The executive gaining more power in wartime--even beyond the bounds of the Constitution--is nothing new. Practically every conflict in the last century has involved something of the sort--the most famous example that comes to mind is Executive Order 9066 and the Japanese-American internment during WWII. One difference between that time and this one is that WWII was the last time the US was legally in a state of war; the Authorization for Use of Military Force is a watered-down state of affairs that we've used for pretty much every military action since then.

The more troubling difference is the amorphous nature of the enemy identified in the AUMF. Not only nations, but organizations and even people are targeted. And the victory condition--making it so that none of these nations/organizations/people can orchestrate any more terrorist attacks on the US--is incredibly vague. It's not like Al Qaeda is going to strike their colors and let us know we've won.

In the immediate term, the concern is that anyone, even a US citizen, can be detained on suspicion of supporting terrorists and held indefinitely, even turned over to another country and squeezed--ahem, tortured--for information. Legally speaking, most people who are detained in this manner can apply for habeas corpus review of their detainment...but tell that to Maher Arar, a Canadian/Syrian citizen who was detained at JFK Airport in NYC; rendered to Syria for the better part of a year, during which time he was tortured; and remains on US watchlists to this day, despite being publicly exonerated of any connections to terrorists by both Canada and Syria.

In the long term, there is the broader concern of how much wartime power we can afford the executive branch, and for how long. With no clearly defined achievable end goal, there is the real possibility of indefinitely maintaining this state of pseudo-war, and thus the extraconstitutional authority of the executive. Obama's response has been instructive: in the White House statement threatening to veto the NDAA, he called the provisions "unnecessary, untested, and legally controversial restriction of the President’s authority to defend the Nation from terrorist threats." (emphasis mine) And the White House was responsible for removing language from Section 1031 that would exempt American citizens and lawful residents from the authorization to detain. See the Senate session video record, at 4:43:29; Senator Levin explains.

On the other hand, Obama's statement also refers to "...the fundamental American principle that our military does not patrol our streets," and how the current bill "would tie the hands of our intelligence and law enforcement professionals." He is simultaneously objecting to the restriction of executive authority, the required use of military custody under 1032 rather than other forms of custody, and the disruption of existing executive/judicial doctrine on who the AUMF applies to. So from a rights perspective, it would depend on what the existing doctrine is; unfortunately, I haven't been able to find out. In the executive authority column, Obama is solidly 'for'...but that may only be because Congress is usurping his role as Commander-in-Chief by mandating who the military must detain. After all, that's just another way of saying "who must be detained by the military"...as opposed to detainment by law enforcement or intelligence.

Basically, there are a whole host of reasons why this bill is bad legislation, even beyond the human rights perspective. But it got through the Senate 93-7, and now the House gets to take a look.

Let's be clear, I'm not worried that the military is going to go out and start locking up random American citizens on fabricated charges of terrorist conspiracies. I'm worried that the military is going to approach these detentions with sober well-intentioned consideration...and still get them wrong. And I'm worried that 'wartime executive authority' will eventually become just 'executive authority', an extraordinary measure maintained long past all justifiable cause, until it becomes the ordinary state of affairs.

The Internet And How We Consume Information

Okay, moving on from League of Legends to a more substantial topic. A few years back, the Atlantic writes about how the Internet affects our behavior patterns in an article titled Is Google Making Us Stupid?. The author, Nicholas Carr, argues that the flitting browsing pattern of most Internet users suggests a deterioration of deep reading and deep thinking; as people rely on machines to bring them relevant and interesting content, Carr writes, they lose the ability to penetrate dense information to find that content themselves.

I disagree with a number of points, and writing about it was interesting enough to make a blog post of it, so here goes...

First, I think the idea of Internet-induced ADD is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a scapegoat. Maintaining concentration is not an inherently easy thing to do; it's not like people didn't have trouble with that before the Internet came along. But it's easy to blame one's concentration issues on Internet usage affecting one's brain, so people do it. This issue is only exacerbated by misuse of research like the cited study of online research habits, which looks at how people browse a research site; when the author suggests that this study evidences a broader change in reading and thinking patterns as a result of Internet usage, he's speculating without basis, because the study examines Internet usage rather than broader reading and thinking patterns. Indeed, the researchers themselves are doing nothing but speculating in the quotation the author chose, when they conjecture that Internet users "go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense." Did they study how Internet users' offline reading behavior changed? No. They just looked at the common-sense skimming approach one uses on an online research site, and jumped to a wild conclusion about reading in general. This sort of confirmation bias is poor scholarship, but I would bet it's typical of research done on this topic.

Second, I find it misleading to examine Internet usage only through the lens of comparison to a bookworm. As Cracked pointed out in its article about proscribed student behaviors that are good for studying, the dichotomy in many cases is not between texting and essay writing, but between texting and nothing; in our case, the alternative to the Internet is not necessarily the library. The Internet caters to a wide audience, so online material is perforce required to be available in a form that is comprehensible to the lowest common denominator, but that does not preclude greater depth for those who seek it. That's why, in addition to Google, we have tools for deep search and exploration of the 'invisible Web' of private databases and dynamically generated pages.

Third, a brief diversion: I disagree with the suggestion that there is a clear financial incentive to promote shallow online browsing. For example, just recently my mother and I were discussing a customer intelligence company that is using the information it collects about people online to, among other things, promote prolonged browsing on particular websites for greater ad revenues per viewer. That seems to be a direct contradiction of the author's point. The Internet is moving past the era of page views and click-throughs; in order to attract continued consumer attention, content has reclaimed its rightful place as the driver of revenue.

Finally, the author's warnings about how Brin/Page's blithe assumptions about the benefits of AI characterize intelligence as reducible to a series of mechanical steps miss the mark by a long way. Intelligence can harness mechanized processes without itself being purely mechanical. Consider the analogy of a programmer with many languages at his disposal, at various levels of abstraction, with work below the level of abstraction in each case being done by a machine. Is the Python programmer more mechanical or less natively intelligent than the C programmer because his language relies more on interpretation by the compiler? Nonsense. And if you desire functionality from C that's not natively available in Python, you can always wrap a C library and bring it up to the appropriate level of abstraction. Similarly, harnessing artificial intelligence to manage the presentation of information for consumption does not inhibit reading, even if in some sense we are delegating the task of reading to the machine. Rather, it allows us to get more out of our reading at every level of engagement. Machine intelligence enables human intelligence, rather than replacing it.

Ranked Bill of Rights

Okay, so it's been a while since I wrote the Ranked Bill of Rights. The thread received a lot of initial interest, but eventually it died off, as happens with all threads.

Now it's back. At 4 this morning, one xoxo pLexxy signed the thread, and that triggered a veritable flood of signatures--over 120 in the last 16 hours. Simply cataloguing the signers took the better part of an hour. So I feel it's a good time to bring that post to Mage's Plane. Here it is, in all its uncensored glory.

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Disclaimer: All statements apply only weakly to normal games, and can be waived by 5-man consensus at any time.

1. The summoner has the right to a team that plays to win.
If you queue up for a game, you are making a contract with four other guys that you will break the enemy's Nexus before they break yours, or at least give it a damn good shot. If you queue up with no expectation of contributing to that goal, you're pissing on your teammates. That means you, intentional feeders. That means you, first-time Shaco player who doesn't know why a second Shaco appeared when you pressed R, or why you suddenly started attacking Rammus in tower range, or why Thornmail-stacking Ashe is a bad idea. That means you, Mr. "I'm 7/1/2 with 200 CS and 10k gold, who gives a shit about towers or teamfights?" We give a shit, because that's the point of the game, and if you don't, why the hell are you here?

2. The summoner has the right to a team that plays together.
Riot decided to make it impossible to win the game on your own, God knows why--thought it'd make the game more interesting or something. Whatever the reason, the fact is that you can't break that Nexus by being the better player--you have to be the better team. You gotta talk to each other, listen to each other, work with each other. Sometimes that means you gotta man up and play the fucking tank, take the duo lane, and screw your KDR. No, you can't play Squishy Carry #4. No, you can't insist on solo mid Eve. No, you can't just farm top for 40 minutes and ignore the calls to group. I don't give a shit if you speak English or Swahili, but if you can't or won't respond to "karth mia," "focus ashe," "baron," or well-placed pings, then get the fuck out of my game. And so help me, I will hunt you down if you leave or AFK.

3. The summoner has the right to civility.
This is a goddam game. You may have all the killer instinct of Mike Tyson (or Jack the Ripper), but if you suck the fun out of playing, the whole exercise is worthless. Plus, you'll lose. The chatbox is not for revealing to your teammate what a fucking ghey n00b excuse for dog food he is because he gave up first blood or stole your pentakill or built double Infinity Edge on Karthus. The chatbox is for helping your team win the goddam game. Anything you put in the chatbox that doesn't do that is a waste of time and emotional energy. Get as mad as you like--scream, stamp, break things, whatever--but don't you hit that enter key and try to make your teammates feel as shitty as you do. That's the mark of a loser, and if you're a loser, who the fuck cares if you're losing?

Play to win, play together, play nice. It's that simple. If you can't deal with it, take your two remaining brain cells and go farm bots.

[I]Inspired by condon's Thou Shalt Read This MFing Thread and OmegaHorizon's own Bill of Rights. See also EncasedShadow's I pledge to follow the code.

Attention all: I will be going to a private chat named "BillOfRights" (suggestions for a better name are welcome!). I'm not on all day, but I'm on almost every day. Besides, I'm not the main attraction--you are! This is an opportunity for serious players to find each other, discuss LoL, and set up premades. Have at it, and have fun queuing--something that's certainly difficult without a like-minded team!

Empty Ladders, Empty Queues: The Dearth of Premade Play

I wrote this post a couple months back, but I feel it's worth compiling these posts here for future reference. My last blog post was about how to make solo queue more worthwhile, but ultimately solo queue is an inferior experience. League of Legends is a team game, but teams are few and far between, and so it suffers. Here are some thoughts on that. There's more at the link; this is just the original message.

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The biggest problem with League of Legends isn't the lack of Leona. It isn't "Soon." It isn't the price of runes, the patch day downtimes, or even the troll-happy playerbase.

No, the problem is this: League of Legends is a competition between teams of five...where the primary mode of play is solo queue.

Solo queue forces the system to estimate your individual skill from the result of a team game. It creates opportunities for trolls to inflict themselves on others, and provides sparks aplenty to kindle ragers' ire. It marginalizes team strategy and rewards the most rudimentary low-risk high-reward tactics, because anything more sophisticated is too difficult to coordinate with four random teammates. It's a stagnant system with too much luck, too little team play, and rampant frustration.

The premade ladders obviously do not suffer from these problems; they are a superior way to play LoL. So what's holding them back? Answer: there simply aren't enough people queuing up. Those ladders haven't reached the critical mass necessary to sustain themselves. Queue times for top players can be hours, so they don't queue; but then the second-tier players become the top players in the ladder, and face hour-long queue times, so they desert.

Premade play is much more common on the EU server--we know it can work. It's no coincidence that Europe's metagame is often leaps and bounds ahead of ours (split push, tankless comps, dual-burst, Tele-ganks, AD-support bot lane)--it's not that the Europeans are inherently better at LoL, but rather that they have a popular teamplay environment where strategies are developed and refined.

So how can we reinvigorate premade play on the NA server? I have a few suggestions.
-IP bonuses for premade queues. Simple, clean, effective. Put greed to use! If people earn 4/3rds the IP for finding 4 friends and queuing for 5's Ranked, they'll do it. Heck--right now, it's only fair that they earn more considering that they're waiting an extra 15-30 minutes in queue.
-Open challenges from top teams. Ask a favor from CLG or TSM or EG, or from other popular streamers with high-Elo friends. See if the Runeterra In-House League will lend a hand. Get some top Rioters together--Eski, Phreak, Classick, Pendragon, etc. Get people to issue open challenges on the premade ladder, and stream matches from 5's queue. The failure of the premade ladders was a trickle-down problem--so let's trickle down success.
-Clans clans clans. Okay, this one's obvious. Get people to group up, and they'll queue together. One of those Beta promises that fell through, and I think it's the most important one. Independently organized clan platforms will never have the momentum of a Riot-supported clan system. It doesn't even have to be clans, specifically--any general networking tool to get teammates together will do. Friend lists and chat rooms are not enough.
-Hard reset on the premade ladder. Solo queue should be soft-reset to avoid the chaos that reigned at the beginning of Season 1--sure, I get that. But the premade ladders were a failure this season. They need the reboot. Cut queue times with a reset and you make an opportunity for people to get back into 5's.
-Rate teams, not players. Solo queue forces you to rank the individual because the individual is the one who queues--but here we're dealing with teams. Individual skill ratings have no meaning at all in this setting, and cobbling five such to compose a team rating has even less. This will be tricky to implement, but absolutely worth the effort. I remember when red posters downplayed the importance of clans because it was more important to have permanent teams--well, why don't we have permanent teams, then? Make it so players get together and register a team name for Ranked, with those players individually registered for that team (allow more than 5 so people can sub in). The ladder should be comprised of those team names, rather than summoner names.

Solo queue is a pathetic shadow of how League of Legends is meant to be played. In order to bring strategic depth to the general population, combat the effects of leavers/griefers, and expand the competitive scene, it is absolutely critical that we make the premade ladders into a real option for competitive play.

Turning Skill Into Elo: Solo Queue Mindset and Methodology

I've written once before about climbing the Elo ladder. That was nearly 10 months ago, and I wince on rereading that guide. I got some basics right--keep calm, communicate, comp well, and so on--but I had the perspective of a new-to-Ranked, barely-1300 player, and it shows. It shows most in my emphasis on picking a champion that can carry you out of Elo Hell. Since then, I've had it ground into my bones that the champion doesn't carry; the player does.

As before, this guide is directed at people who feel their skill level is above their Elo. I'm at the low end of gold, so I can't exactly advise 1800 players on getting better. But an 1800 player who thinks he should be 2100 is really in the same boat as the 1300 player who thinks he should be 1600, or the 900 player who thinks he should be 1200. In each case, the player perceives that he is not held back by his skill, but rather that his Elo perversely holds him back from rising, in the form of uncarriable teammates. Here I will lay down some principles that help you turn your team from a hindrance into an asset that helps you carry your way up the ladder.

(Some games can't be carried. Accept it and move on. You don't have to win every game to go up; you just have to win more than you lose. Finding ways to blame your feeder teammates for the last game you lost isn't going to help you do that.)

You aren't communicating enough. Yes, you. If that chat box isn't being used within the first 3 seconds of champ select, and isn't full within the first 15 seconds, you're not doing your job, which is coordinating with your teammates to find a comp that works for everyone. One thing that tremendously frustrated me in the 12-1300 brackets was when people would keep quiet until the end and then say "Oh by the way I can't jungle." The earlier you can get that person to own up, the easier life will be. Inversely, if someone has a main, getting them to say so can prevent role redundancy.

Speaking of mains: Have a few. Don't have just one--then you can get banned/picked out, or someone might fill your role before you can talk (see above about communicating), or you might get counterpicked, or whatever. But don't try to have two dozen--then you won't have sufficient mastery of each champion. The ability to play all champions to your Elo is not going to raise your Elo; being consistently better than your opponents with the champion/s you choose is what will do that. You should be comfortable with as many champions as possible, especially in key-but-unpopular roles like jungler/support, but focus your efforts on a smaller group. If your main is someone common, you need at least one more in the same role. Don't count on getting Singed every game.

Understand matchups. Part of mastering a champion is knowing when not to use it--so even if you're a pro Teemo, don't pick him against Mordekaiser solo top. Recognize what your goals are in your particular matchup. Don't focus on trading harass with Morgana at level 5--keep the lane off your tower and kill her with burst later. Don't fight Mordekaiser in your creeps--burst him from a distance. Don't let your team enter game against Tryndamere without Exhaust, against Twisted Fate without Teleport, against Shaco without CV.

Realize who has to die and who has to live. If you're jungling and the enemy has a Kog'maw, you gank his ass and shut him down. If your team's Tristana is 6/1 with IE-PD at 20 minutes, you protect her in teamfights even at the cost of your ass, because she will win the fight as long as she's alive to DPS.

Realize the point of winning fights. No, it's not your KDA. It's the ability to take objectives unopposed after fights. With that in mind, don't chase 3v1 just because he's not dead yet if you can take two towers instead. And don't go looking for a fight when there's no objective at stake. You should never get caught at dragon cave when dragon's not up, and neither should your teammates, so spam that Ctrl-click when necessary. The corollary to this is that if you can take the objective without a fight, that's better than fighting, so don't towerdive when you can slow-push and poke a tower down.

Maphacking wins games. Buy a ward every time you go back. If you're the support, buy three. Learn the good ward spots--next to enemy wraiths, between the river bushes, in front of dragon, behind baron, and so on. Realize what the threats/opportunities are at different points in the game and ward accordingly--don't just drop it in the nearest brush.

And back to the original point: it's all very well for you to do these things, but you'll win far more if you can get your team doing them too. That means telling them what to do in a way that makes them feel good about doing it. "Tristana, you're our carry this game, we need to keep you alive, and you need to stay alive." "Their only chance of coming back is getting picks or BDing, so push lanes and force Baron." "We can come back as long as we don't get caught in bad fights, ward baron and turtle." Pings are your friend. Ping the next objective. Ping where you think the enemy is. Ping to back off, ping to go in. Having a second type of ping is the best thing Riot has done for solo queue in a long long time. Make use of it. Carries not following you in? You're not pinging enough. Support getting caught out of position? You're not pinging enough. The more you can flood the chat box with GOOD communication, the harder it is for Negative Nidalee to start the blame game. And the more you give your teammates good direction, the less time they have to do something stupid.

The corollary to the above, of course, is that you absolutely cannot start the blame game yourself. Especially late game, anything bad that happens is the whole team's fault, because the team has to function as a unit to win. Raging is the surest way to break down team coordination, which is the surest way to lose. Don't do it if you value your Elo (or your account, for that matter).

Finally, realize that your skill level isn't high enough. If you aren't on the front page of the ladder, you have no reason to sit back and say "I'm good enough, it's up to my teammates to get carried." And if you're good enough to be on the front page, there are other concerns. I will hazard to say that nobody has plumbed the depths that League of Legends has to offer. Rock Solid gave us a glimpse when they shocked the world this past weekend by knocking off CLG and TSM in quick succession at the IEM NYC qualifiers with comps that defied the established metagame. We can't all hope to imitate RS' success--nor should we attempt to imitate a team that prides itself on being inimitable and innovative--but we can surely improve ourselves, elevate our games, and play better than we ever did before. At the end of the day, that's what rising in Elo is all about.

The New IP System--How Did it Really Affect You?

By now it's common knowledge that Riot is a soulless, greedy corporation intent on sucking our wallets dry. The most obvious evidence for this is that Riot continually releases 6300-IP champions, and nerfed our IP gains to boot, so that the poor playerbase is forced to spend their hard-earned money on overpriced champions just so they don't fall behind.

Have I accurately captured the QQer's mindset? All right, moving on.

I see this complaint over and over and over again. It's tremendously frustrating. Today I'm going to focus on one aspect of this: the change to the IP system. Players lament the loss of 120 IP for 25 minutes of game time. They claim to have lost the ability to earn 6300 IP in two weeks, which puts them hopelessly behind in buying the latest 6300 champion.

But is that really what happened?


Boring Numbers Time

Average game time under old system: 35 minutes. The source for this, a TREMENDOUS number of games archived in Lolbase, has unfortunately been lost, as Lolbase has become defunct. So you'll have to take my word for it.

[W/L]
IP at 25 minutes: 118/62, avg. 3.6 IP/min
IP at 35 minutes: 110/68, avg. 2.55 IP/min
IP at 45 minutes or longer: 102/72, avg. 1.93 IP/min (or less)

Average game time under new system: ??? (I conjecture 30 minutes due to 20 minute surrender change)

IP at 20 minutes: 71/46, avg. 2.92 IP/min (this needs to be checked, I don't have the numbers)
IP at 25 minutes: 76/51, avg. 2.55 IP/min
IP at 30 minutes: 88/58, avg. 2.43 IP/min
IP at 35 minutes: 98/65, avg. 2.33 IP/min
IP at 45 minutes: 121/80, avg. 2.23 IP/min
IP at 55 minutes or longer: 145/93, avg. 2.16 IP/min (or less)



Explanation of Boring Numbers

The IP/minute is much, much flatter under the new system. At the old average of 35 minutes, IP/minute has declined; however, shorter game times due to 20-minute surrender imply IP/min is higher than the 35-minute number under the new system. So the nerf is at most 7% in terms of pure game time, and is almost certainly less. It could be argued that out-of-game time reduces the benefit of playing many shorter games for IP, but this argument is coming from the same people who lament the loss of 118 IP for 25-minute games under the old system, so I'm not sure how to respond.

Now consider the addition of guaranteed FWotD through Co-op. So a casual player who plays a couple of games a day can get FWotD in 15 minutes despite losing his PvP games. The gain from this depends on how many games you play per day, but anyone who's playing enough for this not to balance out the losses in IP/min doesn't have to worry about having enough IP.

An example game is provided below to show that the graph I'm basing these numbers on accurately represents actual game results. Additional examples can be provided on request. If you have an example of your own, feel free to post the screenshot. If you have a counterexample, feel free to post the screenshot. Merely posting "I only got 40 IP for my last 60-minute win!!!" does not count as a counterexample.



Conclusion

I have never taken the complaints about IP seriously. IP does its job: it introduces new players to the game for free (even more so with the price reductions), allows serious players to get competitive without paying money--but does not allow players to acquire the entire game for free. But even were IP QQers to have a legitimate argument, innumerate arguments like "Riot nerfed our IP gains, I can't afford this game anymore!" would cause me to dismiss them out of hand.

If I have a complaint about the store, it's the price of RP. I might have spent money on this game long ago, except I'm not willing to buy $10 in RP, buy only one 6300 champion (two if they're on sale), and have RP left over that I paid for but can't use. The game makes me want to buy from Riot, but the store stops me every time. This is bad for business, Riot. Fix it.


Caveat

After getting multiple responses on this subject, I have to add one thing: Because long games can stretch up to an hour, players need to budget an hour of free time for their last game, no matter how long it actually takes. What matters in that case is the IP/game rather than the IP/minute, so the nerf actually shows here. However, the people to whom this most apply are the people who are squeezing in 1-2 games per day, and those are the people who benefit most from guaranteed FWotD through Co-op v. AI, so in my opinion it balances out.

Not Quite a Sonnet

Randomly inspired by a friend's Facebook status, which contained the first line of this poem.

---

Life Waits Not For You

Hot enough to take a cold shower.
Bored enough to waste a night hour.
The rain falls, the clouds tower
Death arrives with a pretty pink flower.

"Who are you?" I ask with an angry glower,
But even afore he speaks, I shudder.
This is he who has an eternal bower...
He says: "I bring your endless slumber."

Indignant, I cry, "My bill's not due!
There's nothing tying me to you.
I'm healthy, clean-living, enemy-free
What sort of death can you pin on me?"

The implacable reaper raises his voice:
"Your death's one of spirit, this end is your choice.
You've spent your life in search of escape
Why stay in a world you seem to so hate?"

Deaf to my pleas, his scythe makes my end.
All my life I killed time; now time takes revenge.

The Ranks of Elo Hell

I never got any voice training, but I still like to sing. I drive my parents crazy singing songs over and over again trying to get the right voice for the tune. So I might as well combine my longtime obsession with my latest obsession, right?

The result is a parody video of the Eagles' "Hotel California", describing the misery of those stuck in "Elo Hell"--trapped below their skill level by terrible teammates and griefers. I named it "The Ranks of Elo Hell", found the Hotel California instrumentals online, bought myself a decent USB mic, and made this:


Amateurish production values, but I had fun doing it. Hope you like it.

But I'm not a noob!

Sorry, these are much more 'inside joke'-intensive than the 'you might be a nerd' list. If you want to know why I haven't been posting recently...well, here are some places to start. Yeah, new year, new unhealthy obsession. I know.

You might be a noob...if the post-game screen runs out of digits to display your number of deaths.

You might be a noob...if you're still playing four-bar Ashe forty minutes into the game.

You might be a noob...if you see everyone hit 18 while you're still in the single digits.

You might be a noob...if you think "map control" means the ability to unlock your camera with Y.

You might be a noob...if you have never bought anything from the Consumables section. Except health pots. So many health pots. Four hundred health pots.

You might be a noob...if you have 6 Doran's Blades because you heard that Blade stacking was OP.

You might be a noob...if you have recently abandoned Christianity to join the Church of Elementz' Tier Lists.

You might be a noob...if someone advises you to "smartcast" and you reply "So, aim my skillshots this time?"

You might be a noob...if you think you will surprise them with your decision, but fail because even stupid bird is here.

You might be a noob...if you think King Arthur's assault on the Rabbit of Caerbannog is a sterling example of how teamfights should work, so your battle cry is "Run away!"

You might be a noob...if you cannot find a hint of green anywhere on your 'Recent Matches' page.

You might be a noob...if you think Jungle Yi is the answer to any team comp dilemma. Even if there's a Warwick involved.

You might be a noob...if, when you see someone ping dragon, you think they're just trying to get the dragon to ping back.

You might be a noob...if someone types "mia" and you type back "yes, manliness is awesome."

You might be a noob...if you get killed by a Xin Zhao and think, "But my Phantom Dancers gave me 100% dodge chance!"

You might be a noob...if you think rage is part of this complete breakfast.

You might be a noob...if you get lost in the jungle.

You might be a noob...if the answer in every situation is "Push mid!"

You might be a noob...if you decide that Smite is a good summoner spell because it helps you last-hit uninhibited minions.

You might be a noob...if you wonder why anybody would use a 'minimap' when the big version is right there in front of your face.

You might be a noob...if you think hotkeys are for Koreans.

You might be a noob...if you think your teammates' roles are all the same: Cheer you on from the sidelines while you honorably defeat the enemy in single combat.

You might be a noob...if you think their Nexus can't be killed until you destroy the fountain turret.

You might be a noob...if you blue-pill by gray-screening and win by blue-screening.

Backstory; or, what's your character doing in this dungeon when he could be farming for a living?

Writing character backstories is great practice for writing in general. The character sheet is background research, which you use to answer a few prompts:
1) How did your character acquire his skills?
2) How does your character behave under ordinary circumstances?
3) Why is your character adventuring, given the high mortality rate?

As long as those questions are answered, getting the backstory to the DM before the campaign begins is more important than writing a high-quality backstory--another reason why it's good practice for me. You can go into as much depth as you like on any of the prompts, and naturally backstory length varies widely. A good one can be a paragraph or twenty pages, but the shortest are more likely to be uninformative, the longest unreadable. The DM's got enough work; saddling him with a novel-length character description, or forcing him to build your character's identity himself, is inconsiderate.

Here are a couple of backstories that I've written in the last week. The first is a work in progress, both because I want to make it longer and because the character is in an ongoing campaign. The second was a thought experiment.

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Sharran was born the scion of a noble family, descended from celestials in the service of Heironeous, and thus naturally devout followers of that god. The lion's share of the familly served in the capacity of Heironeus' clerics and paladins, and it was expected that Sharran would follow the same route. But Sharran was quite unlike his relatives. His short, wiry frame and scrambling approach to life contrasted sharply with the contemplative and courtly habits of his tall, graceful siblings. Rumors that Sharran was illegitimate added to a general atmosphere of unease concerning the young heir, which served to isolate him.

Sharran objected to the righteous fervor and militaristic demeanor of the Tarciels, which he believed insulated them from the rest of the world and subjected them to an unhealthy stasis. When it came time for him to choose his path, he wanted nothing more than to shake things up. As he was presented with the ceremonial sword and shield that represented the choice between clergy and the knighthood, inspiration descended upon Sharran. Taking an ordinary stick that laid nearby, he dealt a mighty blow that broke the sword and shattered the shield. Then he strode out the door and out of the city, for good.

It has been many years since that day. Sharran has come to the understanding that Fharlanghn the Dweller, god of roads, is the source of his powers. But he still does not fully understand how he came to be a druid of the traveling deity. For one thing, he cannot find companionship with animals, a central tenet of druidic teachings. Perhaps it's a parting shot from his family and their Outsider blood; but then, how is he to progress towards enlightenment? (How ironic that the blood of angels should be such an impediment.) How can he reconcile his philosophy of change with the druid's focus on balance? Sharran travels in search of answers. But he may have to put his personal dilemmas on hold in the face of a plague that threatens all.

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Jenaya grew up on the streets of Skyfane City, carving out a life for herself outside the law. And she was good...very good. She came to view crime as an art form, from the skillful choice of mark to the evasion of the Man afterwards. Her devotion to the art form soon exceeded her devotion to crime--though she was hardly averse to breaking the law. She began to take on higher-profile targets, letting her whimsy dictate her choices. The day after breaking up a crime ring before the law arrived, she would thieve a priceless treasure from a well-guarded aristocrat. The only constant was the fox mask she left wherever she did her daring work. Rumors spread about the Fox--a man with mastery of illusion magic, a sorceress with great powers of seduction, a quickling with an uncommon interest in human affairs. Jenaya let the rumors take hold, even added some of her own--and quietly laughed whenever she heard them on the street.

Even so, someone had the wherewithal to track her down. She woke up one night to find herself surrounded by hard-looking folk. A man, their apparent leader, sat at the foot of her bed. He introduced himself as an enforcer of the Nightsong Guild, a powerful player wherever there was play to be had. Jenaya had been stepping on more than a few toes, and so come to the enforcers' attention. The man offered her a mutually beneficial arrangement. Membership in the Nightsong Guild would give Jenaya greater resources with which to pursue her antics, and legitimacy in the underworld of civilization. In return, the guild would benefit from the notoriety of the Fox, and occasionally ask her services for particular tasks--and take a cut of the Fox's prizes, as well. She could refuse, of course, but then she would risk making the guild her enemy--and they had amply demonstrated their ability to track her down.

Jenaya accepted. Privately, though, she saw an opportunity to outdo all her previous work. How would it do to trick the underworld's most famous tricksters? As she trained in the team tactics that characterized the Nightsong Guild, she also began her preparations. She gathered information about the guild's leaders, its network of operations, its allies and enemies and triply turncoat traitors. And she began scheming to take down the guild from the inside.

But she was found out before she could set her plans in motion, and the entire guild was mobilized against her. She escaped by the skin of her teeth, and now she's on the run. The Nightsong Guild even took the unprecedented step of releasing information on the Fox to the law--betraying the underworld's cardinal rule. With nothing left to Jenaya but her devotion to trickery, she constantly heightens her skills in order to avoid the authorities by day and the assassins by night.

--------------------

Critiques welcome.

Religion: For or Against?

Well, crap. I will be eternally apologizing for late posting, it seems. Well, that's why I imposed a regular posting schedule--to deal with the issues that prevent me from meeting regular schedules.

Anyway, this is another miniature essay developed in response to a query. I did one on atheism, so I suppose it's only fair I do one for religion as well.

Religion is an important element of culture, and an efficient instrument for disseminating values and ideas. It is a powerful group identity, like ethnicity or nationality. Like those, it is capable of great good (consider the statistics for Christian charity, for example) or great evil (the Inquisition, suicide bombing, sectarian violence). It is capable of smaller goods (e.g. whether or not prayer 'works', it's an extremely effective way to unload stress and negative feelings) and smaller evils (interference with the lives of homosexuals because of ancient proscriptions, or interference with scientific disciplines). Religion was a primary enabler of slavery and abolition both--and the same religion, at that.

Ideally, how we live our lives should have very little to do with whether there is or isn't a God. Is the Golden Rule less valid if its source is not divine? If it is divine? But in practice, anyone can see that belief in God matters very much to people. So the best I can hope for is a marketplace of ideas, where one can practice kindness and exercise reason according to his own doctrine.

And this is the sticking point I have with religion. When it comes to the marketplace of ideas, religion is often static, if not incarcerating. The most extreme example of this is the death penalty for apostasy in Islam, still practiced in some places; that tends to discourage independent thinking. The reliance on absolute truth as the foundation of doctrine hampers the evolution of doctrine in the marketplace. Once someone has taken up fundamentalist Christianity, it's nearly impossible to budge that position for ethics or practicality or what have you.

But then...that's true of many group identities, isn't it? At the end of the day, so many choices come down to my party, my ethnicity, my country, my leader, my faith right or wrong--and how could a population of six billion people avoid grouping up? How could we get anywhere if nobody ever banded together in common cause? It's simply how civilization works. And I cannot uniquely condemn religion for the problems inherent to any large group. So I must allow it, warts and all, and try to mitigate the associated problems. Society is damage control for humanity.

Begin!

While Stumbling through the Intertubes a while back, I came upon a little website called WeBook, and was intrigued. The premise is simple: someone pays a little money to put up the first page of his story, other people (and editors) rate the story, and if they like it, they ask for more—first a chapter, then the whole book. The website makes a game out of this process, by letting raters know afterwards what other raters and editors thought of the book. This system encourages people to try for the ‘right’ rating, the one other people and editors gave, to demonstrate their knowledge of literature—though undoubtedly some take pride in idiosyncratic ratings, a display of unusual taste. Occasionally, the website will mix things up a little: they’ll add the first page of one published work, to see if readers can spot the black sheep. The first time this happened to me, the Verne entry was obvious. It’s unfair to the authors, since published works usually undergo extensive editing, but the difference is plain to see.

All this got me to thinking about how writers begin stories. To some extent, it’s obvious—hook the reader, hook the reader, what every writing instructor has told his students for centuries. And some authors make this objective crassly obvious. Take, for example, the systematic opening murders of Dan Brown and Lee Child novels, the Law & Order style of starting with a dead body; or another staple, the birth of a child on a dark and stormy night intruded on by mysterious forces.

But many good books aren’t so blatant about it. A Navy commander is interrupted in post-battle repair work to report to his superior (all right, so he’s on a spaceship, but still). Another man waits in prison to return to his ordinary life. Two witches have a trivial squabble, a ranch manager is briefly mistaken for a stable boy, and an old man visits his wife’s grave. These books have clearly defined opening scenes, but identifying what draws the reader in isn’t easy. This is popular literature, mind—I’m not even going to try applying this paradigm to something like The Sound and the Fury or The Silmarillion or other books that plainly weren’t written to appeal to readers.

(I can hear the Tolkien fans screaming bloody murder right now. Relax, I’m one of you. I loved Silmarillion. But it wasn’t written to sell. It’s essentially a snapshot of Middle-Earth’s history—something that continuously evolved throughout Tolkien’s lifetime. I can guarantee you that J.R.R. didn’t write the Old Testament-style opening to win readers over; in fact, reading his son Christopher’s notes in Unfinished Tales, readers are turned off by the intro. And, really—d’you think any diehard Tolkien fan would put down the book because of the beginning?)

One common element lingers, though: depth. Why did WeBook’s Verne entry stick out like the Mona Lisa on a wall of graffiti? Okay, the use of archaisms like “compeers” and “nation of shopkeepers” did most of the work. But in a book about three men deciding to launch themselves to the Moon, Verne starts out describing the American post-Revolutionary state of military affairs, and particularly artillery affairs, in loving detail. You can tell where he’s going with this, of course. However, the introduction leaves the impression of a larger world working behind the scenes of the story.

Each of the books I looked at did much the same thing. Events occur against a backdrop. The job of the introduction is to place the story within that framework. This is where the formula of Dan Brown fails: for all the gruesome shock value of his introductions, they don’t connect the reader to the story’s world in any way. Some novels go to the other extreme and end up making text of context. It’s hard to find an example to condemn, though: the dystopia Brave New World is direct in its worldbuilding, and Asimov certainly takes every opportunity to return to psychohistorical reasoning in Foundation, but this is entirely justifiable.

The best way to create an impression of depth is probably just to write a deep story. There’s a reason why the first words the author writes aren’t usually the first words of the book, and essay writers often leave the intro for last. My recommendation to WeBook authors: though you only need to submit a page, it should be just the tip of the iceberg.