"O" told you not to pick your nose while driving!

In Harry Potter, there is a certain very bad man who cannot be called by his name. He is called "He who cannot be named."
We have the same sort of "he who cannot be named" in the Oval Office of the White House. And he is NOT happy with American drivers and what they are costing his insurance extravaganza.
Let's call him "O".
O led the light brigade many years ago on banning texting while driving and has successfully killed more Americans with such laws because those Americans were (surprise) holding their phones down while texting (so police wouldn't see them) and couldn't see the road. Result? More crashes. More deaths. Fewer people needing insurance because they were dead. O's many other edicts have been just as successful, such as forcing Americans to buy his health insurance so Americans could pay a lot more for fixing their bodies. Very successful.
O also decided it was time for America to be the Sesame Street of the world and make everyone, including very bad countries, have fun and be happy with us in the new Sesame world. Result? More terrorism. Russia invades another country. Iran builds nuclear weapons. Afghanistan falls. Iraq devolves into chaos. Israel is all alone against the murderers. Syria slaughters at whim. North Korea threatens Japan and even America.
Again, O has been highly successful in his foreign policy. Fewer people in the world means lower insurance costs.
So, with so many successes behind him, O is considering new bans while you are driving. You will soon not be able to do the following:
1) Sneeze (you have to close your eyes)
2) Adjust your radio (music makes you too happy anyway)
3) Fart (you usually lift one butt cheek to allow proper expunging, and THAT is dangerous)
4) Pick your nose (remember, TWO CLEAN HANDS on the wheel)
5) Look at a pretty woman or handsome man on side of road (first of all, that is simply OBJECTIFYING the opposite sex, and second of all, EYES ON THE ROAD)
6) Blinking (see EYES ON THE ROAD above)
7) Talking (talking means you are not PAYING ATTENTION, and, plus, you may be talking about how much more you're having to pay for health insurance)
8) Singing (what, you think you're WHITNEY FUCKING HOUSTON?!)
9) Yelling at kids (even though O thinks this is generally a good thing, yelling means your mouth is open, and when your mouth is open, your eyes squint, and THAT IS DANGEROUS)
10) Smoking (though O is a smoker and smokes in his taxpayer-provided, bullet-proof limo, your smoking will cost his health-insurance plan shit-tons, and the smoke could make you sneeze, and THAT is not acceptable)
11) Eating (obviously, this will make you fat and cost the health insurance plan MORE money, and that greasy drumstick could cause your hands to slip off the steering wheel and your car may hit a squinty-eyed liberal who votes for him)
12) Everything else (O couldn't think of anything else right now, so he invoked an alteration on the 10th Amendment to the Constitution)
Happy trails!

No news is good news

Planes crash, bridges collapse, thieves steal, Jesse Jackson drools, murderers murder, schools enslave children who feed on each other, unions sleep, presidents rob and smile, natural disasters wipe out villages and take down electricity, the earth warms and cools, fat people don't like to be called fat people, news "anchors" (readers) look VERY serious, weather happens, houses burn down, people text while driving, teenagers have sex (lots of it, sacre bleu!), some businessmen are crooks, terrorists terrorize, Russia invades, liberals confiscate and smile, conservatives secretly watch porn because they've banned it and hate it, politicians lie and smile.
It's called the news. Been happening this way, in one form or another (Caesar didn't have planes, but Jesse Jackson was drooling 2,000 years ago), for thousands of years. The chaos didn't begin when news readers took to the TV with 4.6 pounds of makeup.
I haven't watched the news for over 10 years. I would, if the lovely reader ladies went topless, but then I wouldn't be watching the NEWS.
The news takes away from the good life, from living. Doesn't teach us much of anything -- not the way it is done nowadays. As Don Henley says, "Get the widow on the set, we've got dirty laundry." Dirty laundry ain't fun to watch.
I'd rather be watching a good movie or TV series, or talking with someone, or drinking wine and reading, or playing with my daughter, or planning out some business strategy, or, frankly, watching grass grow.
If you already know what's right and wrong (morality, politics, liberty, productivity, thinking), then the news is a parade of dunces and denizens in real time -- the same ones they had 2,000 years ago, except with different names and bodies.
No news is good news.

Three pounds of "spirituality"

The religious folks like to talk about faith (not thinking) and grace (getting something for being bad) and hope (something bad happens and you hope like hell it stops happening) and prayer (talking to themselves and sometimes, unfortunately, out loud, because we are all, um, bad).

But today's topic is "spirituality."

Ask 10,000 religionists what that is and you'll get 10,000 different answers, but they'll all pretty much agree it's about this (pointing at themselves): being alive and awake and some sort of shit (they don't say "shit") is happening on a major scale in some sort of way that is beyond understanding and it exudes from you and MUST be derived from elsewhere.

We humanists/objectivists call that shit that's happening "the brain" -- which weighs about three pounds in adults. We don't call it spirituality; we call it "that shit that's happening."

It's happening because we THINK. We don't know exactly how that whole neuron network works yet, but we know that if somebody gets Alzheimer's or has a bad seizure or is a liberal that that "shit that happens" pretty much stops happening, pointing to the fact that "spirituality" is physical and not "derived from elsewhere."

The religionists' caveman belief in "spirituality" and its separation from this world and our bodies is called dualism: there's one physical world and then there's that "other world" elsewhere, somewhere, out there, in there, over there. They can't, of course, prove that other world, and they can get downright sniffy if you ask them to, but they KNOW it exists and that when babies are born -- BAM, a spirituality transports in and shit starts happening.

Now, it's pretty damned awesome that that three pounds of meat in your head with trillions of neurons can grasp the extent of the universe, plan 10 years ahead, grab a Frisbee at a dead run, build a supercomputer, paint the Mona Lisa, compose a Ninth Symphony, articulate morality, put a bullet through a quarter at a thousand yards, speak 10 languages, and express love in a sonnet of overpowering eloquence.

But that's what it is, isn't it? That's WHO we are! We are that three pounds, in bodies ranging from 80 pounds to 580 pounds. No matter what we weigh, we are all three pounds. Three pounds of "spirituality," of thinking and doing.

I was thinking of trying to prove the religionists wrong in this post, but have you ever tried to convince the man in the insane asylum that the birds he's talking to AREN'T really talking back? Don't work, and he can get downright sniffy.