Recent Posts

2012 09 19

Natural Selection or Divine Intervention?

 2011 09 25

Why are humans inclined to take drugs or drink alcohol? The obvious answer is that they do so to mitigate and anesthetize the pain of existence. The more profound question is, why is existence painful? Instead of a “War on Drugs” why don't we we have a “War on Unhappiness”? I suppose that the argument can be made that the irritation of discontent instigates ambition but it seems to me that an awful lot of misery is minted as the coin of such ambition.

Psychology

 2012 06 07

To those Americans who say it matters not who gets elected I reply:

It does matter to every family whose child came home in box from Iraq; to every surviving veteran who will spend the rest of his life missing an arm or a leg or his sanity; to every COPD sufferer whose breathing is that much further labored as a result of the evisceration of the EPA; to every small investor whose future has been shattered by the rapaciousness of de-regulated Wall St.; all of these and more would have been spared had Bush not stolen the election in 2000.

 2012 07 28

     The Feckless Innocent: "I consider it a national embarrassment that the United States failed to pass the ERA.”

     Tom Doubter: "Well, I consider it a human embarrassment that such an amendment was found to be necessary."

 2012 05 09

The New Stock Exchange:

1% of every stock issue to go into a general welfare fund to be administered by The Secular Humanities Department.

2012 09 16

musing on the concept of love - go to: Love

 2012 09 12

Politicians toss around the term “not enough jobs” or “we must create more jobs” as if “more jobs” was some was some sort of magical, discretionary substance that could be applied as a salve to the ills of an economy. “Not enough Jobs” equals “too many applicants” (i.e., people). As the population increases and technology grows more sophisticated the availability of “jobs” in any traditional sense of the word can only become more and more constricted. (And a message to the “quick fix” happy-talkers: the only jobs that can be “created” immediately are those funded by the government to establish and bulwark the social and physical infrastructure of society.)

 2012 01 01

Nasrudin approached his Uncle rather self-importantly.

"Uncle Albert, your calculation cannot be correct. Since you stipulate that nothing can exceed the speed of light, the energetic dynamics of the universe cannot be expressed as, E=MC squared. That equation depends upon the speed of light being exceeded by 186,000 orders of magnitude."

Uncle Albert replied, "If you believe that we live in a universe where a speck of matter tinier than the turd of a flea can instantaneously blossom into billions of galaxies, I should think that a mathematical conundrum such as the one you have concocted will pose no more than a minor obstacle for your intellect to rationalize its way around."

                                                       -------unearthed by Tom Doubter

 2012 06 26

Another paradigm shift: conscriptive service in warfare to have a minimum draft age of 50 years. No longer will we send the flower of our youth to die defending what they cannot possibly comprehend.

 2012 03 23

I don't fear death (except on the deep, lizard-brain reactive level that all living entities instinctually exhibit). I can date and place the moment when it shifted for me. In my apartment on Leavenworth, August 1974. I was in the doorway between my kitchen and the "bedroom", facing west into a setting sun when I was overcome with the certain and sure knowledge that one day the sun would rise and I wouldn't be here to see it. Words will never serve to extract from my mind and experience the completeness of the moment, the implacability of its so-ness. It was neither terrifying or sad, just pervasive and ineluctable.

 2012 04 25

it is interesting to note that mankind has not really figured out how to employ nuclear energy. There is a common misconception that nuclear power plants supply us with “atomic energy” when in fact they only serve to boil water that turns turbines to generate electricity.

 2012 04 09

A couple of poignant observations about America, the self-nominated "Greatest Nation in the History of the World". First, America still condones the institution of state-sanctioned murder long after the rest of the civilized world has eschewed this atavistic practice. And second, America steadfastly refuses to provide its citizens basic health care and access to minimum sustenance. Both of these obvious facts exist in contravention of its own founding document which asserts that, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are unalienable rights. It is axiomatic that a state organized along such principles can lay claim to no moral authority for the implementation of capital punishment. Further, there can be no life without health, and happiness is difficult if not impossible to pursue on an empty stomach. I do not condemn America, I merely remind her of her promise.

 2012 05 15

There exists minimal liberal talk radio because liberalism is challenging and people don't want to hear the challenging. They prefer to listen to demagogues fulminating about the present while rapturizing misapprehended halcyon yesterdays.