tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-169997782024-03-07T04:22:32.901-05:00My PlaygroundBeer is good and people are crazyDavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.comBlogger531125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-85138821807328410092017-03-03T11:16:00.001-05:002017-03-03T11:39:18.181-05:00Scribbling predators of individual rightsThe political media have only one vital role to play in any nation: protect individual rights.<br />
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That's it. Nothing else they do is absolutely necessary. Every single important story they report should explicitly or implicitly be connected to individual rights -- the protection of those rights. Any report on global warming or racism or trade or regulations or taxes or anything else should have individual rights as its foundation, its cohesion, its starting point and endpoint.<br />
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That is never the case.<br />
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Ironically, the media have absolutely no idea what individual rights are. It's like a baker not understanding baking, or a seamstress who's never worked with thread, or a composer who is clueless about what a chord or melody is. The media enjoy mentioning "civil rights" but not individual rights.<br />
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As Ayn Rand correctly identified, "rights" are the link between individuals and groups, between one's own life and life in a crowd (society), between morality and action among others.<br />
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A right, she said, is "a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in society". She clarified this concept further: "It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men".<br />
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Rights are the <i>only</i> proper reason for governments to have any existence at all. Without rights, there could be no good reason for government. Government's <i>only</i> job is to protect individual rights -- to one's body, property and freedom of pursuit, to prevent compulsion and coercion.<br />
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Properly speaking, governments are granted the conditional privilege to protect individual rights. The "condition" is that if they don't do their job, then they are rightly overthrown or run out of office by the very people they were allowed to protect with physical force, if necessary.<br />
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While governments are granted the privilege to use physical force to protect their citizens from those wishing to violate their rights, there is one private institution that should also have as its <i>raison d'être</i> the protection of rights, as I said in my opening paragraph: the political media.<br />
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While government has the power of the sword to protect us citizens, the media have the power of the pen, the power of information -- which is, as they say, mightier than the sword. It is information that moves people and governments to do great good or to commit horrible deeds (rights violations).<br />
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The media should find and use political information for only one end: to protect rights. "Political information" relates to human action in relation to potential government oversight, such as whether pollution rises to the level of violating property rights or whether racism rises to the level of coercive action against others.<br />
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When the media are in the process of protecting rights and are assessing the actions of citizens and governments, they should have in their minds a singular standard: "does this action violate individual rights?"<br />
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If they don't have this very clear and objective standard integrated and prominent in their minds, then foul play will be boundless -- resulting in the enormity of rights violations that we now see in modern America and around the world.<br />
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Not only does government violate rights openly and egregiously in modern society, but the media are complicit in the violations, often stoking the violations or complaining that the violations are not severe enough (regulations, taxes, minimum wages, entitlements, speech restrictions, gun restrictions, passive diplomacy, redistribution of income, taking of property, etc.).<br />
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The pen swings the sword.<br />
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The media have become the scribbling predators of individual rights.<br />
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They do not understand rights, as is shown in all of their articles in which human action is potentially under the purview of government action. They simply don't understand the rights standard. They are anti-conceptual, anti-objectivity, anti-rights.<br />
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They turn private racism (not baking cakes, biased company hiring, screaming obscenities, "hate groups") into an alleged political action under government purview, thereby violating the rights of property and speech. Instead of simply and properly condemning such private action as immoral, the media raise it to coercive action and repeatedly pens material to get the sword swinging, in violation of rights.<br />
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They state that CO2 emissions by businesses, ipso facto, are primarily a violation of "the Earth" and secondarily a violation of "civil rights", instead of recognizing that any alleged emissions pertain only to property rights, if at all. If a property owner in America believes his property rights are being violated by alleged "climate change" or pollution, then that property owner already has recourse in a court of law to make his case (which, of course, he cannot, on "climate change").<br />
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For the media, poverty is not self-induced. It is <i>caused</i> by capitalism, allegedly making the impoverished qualified to receive "give-backs" by the "privileged" and "greedy" and "one-percent" -- thereby violating the right to property (money) of millions of hard-working Americans.<br />
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The media are tinpot intellectual dictators.<br />
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They are, of course, people. They are people with a lot of education and very little conceptual integration of objective reality. To call them "intellectuals" is like calling beatniks "responsible". The media are anti-intellectuals, the dilettantes of whimsy and irrationality. What they learned in secondary schooling was how to rationalize their irrationality, their elitism, their desire to control.<br />
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They laugh when you tell them that the smallest minority is the individual. They don't recognize individuals. There is only the "social" in their social engineering. There's no room for individual rights; there are only "social rights", what's allegedly the "greater good" -- which means no rights at all.<br />
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So instead of being vaunted protectors of individual rights, they have become predators of individual rights, scribbling their diatribes against capitalists and gun owners and constitutionalists. They are Plato's philosopher kings run amuck. They won't leave you alone -- because YOU don't exist. You're just part of the social, of the "greater".<br />
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And, as they like to say, there is no "I" in "we".<br />
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<br />Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-87423617530830857382017-02-27T14:05:00.000-05:002017-02-27T14:05:04.274-05:00There's fake news and FAKE news (SubNews)There are two distinct types of fake people in life: the consciously fake and the subconsciously fake, though the former has the latter as well.<br />
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The former purposely (consciously) deceives others. They're outright liars.<br />
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The latter deceives himself -- and then others, unwittingly -- making of his life a lie.<br />
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They are both dishonest, either willfully or unwittingly. One knows the damage he's doing, and the other doesn't really, but has cowardly accepted ideas that are wrong in his mind and then acts on the misconceptions, creating deceptions he's not even aware of.<br />
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The former are people like Bernie Madoff and Hitler and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and lying salespeople, using verbal legerdemain (outright lying) to achieve their ends. These people are eventually discovered and "outed", because their violation of reality is a house of unreal cards blown over by fact-checkers down the road.<br />
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The latter are intellectual bullies, abusive parents who rationalize physical punishment, people who use white lies to avoid confrontation and judgment, and media personalities who justify stories that execute their subconscious rage against the machine.<br />
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The latter are much more difficult to "out". Their deception is more fundamental, more philosophical, more rationalized, more habitual. The facts surrounding their personal deception go deep, go way back into childhood, go way back into history.<br />
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They number the vast majority of human beings. Here are some of their fake beliefs:<br />
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1) Religion<br />
2) Altruism<br />
3) Victimhood<br />
4) Racial supremacy<br />
5) "Sparing the rod"<br />
6) Anthropomorphic global warming<br />
7) Pacifism<br />
8) Drug and alcohol "addictions"<br />
9) Redistribution of wealth<br />
10) Obedience to authority (parents, government, gods)<br />
11) Awarding participation instead of excellence<br />
12) Not judging others<br />
13) "White lies"<br />
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I say "fake" on these beliefs because they are not connected to the facts of reality; they are irrational beliefs. They lead to irrational actions and thoughts.<br />
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1) Living by "faith" instead of reason, wrecking the rational faculty<br />
2) Living for others, wrecking egoism and personal happiness and proper government<br />
3) Seeing victims in life instead of solutions in life<br />
4) Primitively assessing others by body features instead of (im)moral actions<br />
5) Advocating violence against others to achieve a desired end in actions and thoughts<br />
6) Punishing and controlling capitalism instead of honoring individual rights<br />
7) Believing nonjudgmental inaction achieves peace<br />
8) Focusing on physicality instead of irrationality on substance abuse<br />
9) Believing wealth is achieved via devious or "privileged" means and must be "given back"<br />
10) A skeptical perception of human efficacy, and therefore a need to obey to be good<br />
11) A failure to acknowledge greatness in human action<br />
12) The skepticism of human efficacy in making objective assessments<br />
13) It's OK to be dishonest; in fact it can be good<br />
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The list is endless.<br />
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Interestingly, the outright fake people (the conscious ones like Obama) are perhaps more dastardly in their open flouting of propriety, fairness and humanity, but it is the second kind of fake people (the subconscious ones) who can be more pernicious and are more pervasive -- comprising the vast majority of humanity.<br />
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And it is the extremists of this second kind of fake who have taken over academia and the Mainstream News Media (MSM). They are the ones who've drunk the entire sink of Kool-Aid on bad philosophy, bad thinking -- ideas devoid of their relationship with reality. They are the worst kind of human beings -- bent, subconsciously, on the destruction of individuality, just as they've destroyed their own mental well-being.<br />
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They are run entirely by their subconscious conceptions on the "horrible" nature of humans and the world. Their MSM news is subconscious news -- SubNews. It is almost entirely FAKE news, whose propagation is fundamentally subconsciously activated, to satisfy irrational misconceptions instead of perceiving, explicating and broadcasting objective reality -- real news.<br />
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They believe, like Thomas Hobbes, that humans are nasty and brutish, incapable of governing themselves, and in need of a dominant overlord (Leviathan government) that is itself aggrandized and monitored by the true overlords -- the <i>eminence gris</i>, the "thinkers", the media, who believe themselves to be entirely immune from their own skeptical assessment of humanity's alleged "fall".<br />
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These people are "well-educated", which means, in truth, that they are well-indoctrinated. They exit high school as nearly full-blown SJWs (Social Justice Warriors), and then seek further "education" to intellectually rationalize their subconscious misconceptions of the world.<br />
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While billions of other people leave basic schooling to "get on with their lives" and get jobs and have families or actually seek "hard" secondary education to get a real job in the marketplace, these SJWs are learning where their spot will be in the modern-day Inquisition of the MSM and academia.<br />
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The most adept at dishonesty among them rise to the "top", at places like the NYT and Washington Post and the major broadcast networks. This is the creme (scum) of the intellectual cesspool that is the modern liberal mind. They are dug in. They are the Torquemadas. They are revered.<br />
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They have never given a single thought, most of them, to what individual rights are. They deride absolutes, while dishonestly denying their own Leftist absolutes. They are contemptuous of the masses (hoi polloi). They are stridently anti-greatness, which makes them stridently anti-capitalism. ("You didn't build that.").<br />
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And so their "news" does not revolve around individual rights, glorious capitalism, freedom of speech/guns/property, greatness of individual endeavor, and government limitations -- real news.<br />
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Instead they spout subconscious-driven "news", SubNews -- FAKE news. Red-herring news (global warming), subconsciously yanking viewers and readers away from the fundamental aspects of any subject (in this case, the individual right to production). No news, subconsciously avoiding real news (ObamaCare's grotesque violation of the right to make health decisions).<br />
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SubNews is ubiquitous, insidious and nearly invisible (to anti-conceptual mentalities), like the subconscious monster in <i><a href="https://youtu.be/WKR-pePd7HU">The Forbidden Planet</a></i>. It runs thousands of "invisible" fake stories each year -- stories that would not exist if the media were objective and reality-based. SubNews pretends these are relevant stories, real news:<br />
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1) Ominous talk of leaving the terrorist-ridden United Nations, which shouldn't exist<br />
2) Black Live Matter being a legitimate "movement" instead of a terrorist organization<br />
3) Campus tantrums being called "protests" instead of threats aimed at stopping free speech<br />
4) Endlessly discussing fake "climate change" instead of dismissing it for what it is -- an attempt by Marxists to destroy capitalism and not honor property rights (the real news)<br />
5) Endlessly discussing "violent crime" (with a conscious and subconscious attempt to eradicate the right to own weapons)<br />
6) Assuming "welfare" is moral and an absolute entitlement of "victims" of "cold" capitalism<br />
7) Blathering about "unequal pay for women" instead of honestly addressing the real news -- that no such thing exists<br />
8) Droning on about "transgenders" and other "outcasts" and their "rights" instead of honoring a business's right to their own property and bathrooms<br />
9) Concocting hundreds of stories about so-called "privileged" and "underprivileged" to accentuate fake class divisions and capitalism's alleged unfairness<br />
10) Giving airtime and press space to SJWs around the world to further the SubNew's own agenda, instead of mocking and ridiculing the SJWs<br />
11) Running puff pieces, pretending that Islam and other religions have something to offer the West, which the SubNews despises but can't explain rationally<br />
12) Offering daily updates and graphics on drug crime, instead of thoughtful expositions on how humans have a right to their bodies and how drug laws violate that right (which would eventually end their fake stories)<br />
13) Glossing over, ad infinitum, Obama's claims of hope and change, without demanding details from him and holding his feet to the fire of individual rights<br />
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There are thousands upon thousands of these types of fake SubNews stories, begun and extended by bad subconscious philosophy, by media scoundrels who never did what most of us decided to do -- Get a life. Think through assumptions. Get a job. Get happy.<br />
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Most of us "regular" people don't carry Stalin-statue-size chips on our shoulders. We want to be left alone, but the SJWs won't let that happen. They will insist on calling their SubNews real news, instead of fake news, red-herring news. They insist that we must be controlled -- by them, by the very people who dishonestly absorbed bad philosophy and didn't have the courage to re-assess it.<br />
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I worked within the SubNews for 13 years after college (yes, I was a "light" version of one of them), and saw first-hand the subconscious brandishers of nihilism and skepticism. Unlike "regular" people out in the world, they are entirely incapable of discussing ideas civilly. They are thoroughly suffused in their irrationality, having not only committed to it at a young age, but also taken the extra step to "validate" their malevolent worldview in college.<br />
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They're on a mission. They will acknowledge that openly. What they can't acknowledge is the dishonesty in their childhood and early adulthood that kept them from re-evaluating their mistaken and assumed beliefs, which now run them and their endless SubNews perorations.<br />
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This is the <i>real</i> fake news -- not the silly, transparent attempts by online nut-jobs.<br />
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The real fake news begins in the addled subconscious of the lifelong, intellectual miscreants.<br />
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The real battle begins with understanding and outing the real fake news -- the SubNews.<br />
<br />Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-85147831672033116282017-02-25T14:28:00.001-05:002017-02-25T14:28:51.803-05:00"Work" and "privilege"The 1940s Nazis had a deceptive phrase plastered above the entrances to their human-extermination camps for all the poor souls to read as they marched inside to their inevitable death and misery: <i>arbeit macht frei</i>.<br />
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"Work sets you free".<br />
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As gruesomely cynical was this usage in those abysmal, wretched circumstances, the phrase itself is entirely true -- for free people. Work DOES set us free, so to speak.<br />
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It frees our spirit, making it unencumbered by the guilt of parasites and the apathetic. It makes us proud of who we are, confidently circumspective about ourselves and our lives. It connects us and grounds us to reality. It makes the moments away from work more "free-spirited", allowing us to enjoy art and music and friendship and romance more fully.<br />
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It gives us identity. Work IS identity. It is who we are. It is our primary relationship with reality, our primary creativity, our primary challenge. It solidifies our being, occupies our thoughts, bolsters our confidence, giving us an emotional euphoria.<br />
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The immense satisfaction of good, hard, creative work does, indeed, set us "free" -- in spirit. There is no personal reproach over what we should be doing, or for mooching off of others, or for being lazy, or for not pursuing happiness, or for not being productive and responsible. We have purpose, and we are fulfilling our purpose.<br />
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In a free or semi-free marketplace, like most industrialized countries, there are thousands of different jobs available -- a veritable smorgasbord -- from which we can choose to actualize our own identity, our own preference in fulfilling work.<br />
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We can start our own business for these jobs, or we can even create a whole new line of jobs, as happened with hundreds of industries in our industrial/tech/capitalism era -- automotive, computers, programming, fashion design, movies, music, space, science, chemistry, planes, yoga, fitness trainers, nutrition specialists, writers, pharmacists. The list is endless.<br />
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The poorest child in the most abusive household can pursue his favorite job and become a billionaire, if he wishes (Starbucks' Howard Schultz; TV icon Oprah Winfrey). The richest child in a constructive household can do the same -- though he may already be a billionaire (Sam Walton scion).<br />
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In a free society, rags and riches are determined by only one thing: determination -- except for a very few who start out at or near the top of the money pile.<br />
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But the terms "rags" and "riches" refer to money -- not work, and not happiness.<br />
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The one thing that all people, rich and poor, have in common is that they have to actually figure out what kind of work will fulfill their identity -- what kind of work will "complete them". No amount of money supplants this personal discovery, and money does not buy happiness. Only good, creative work "buys" happiness.<br />
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The poor girl and the billionaire boy start out with exactly the same psychological potential. Each has to decide what their creative work will be. Ironically, this discovery can actually be easier on the girl starting from nothing because there is no peer pressure or family pressure for her to go into the rich family business. The up-and-coming Oprah specifically chose broadcasting work because it excited her.<br />
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It is work's soul-completion and the determination it takes to find the right job that belies the liberal propaganda about and obsession with "privilege". Privilege cannot help you choose your best job. It can perhaps help you <i>get</i> that job in some cases, but it can't help you with your soul-searching, with your career choice of optimum satisfaction.<br />
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There is no such thing as two people born with the exact same abilities and exact same economic status. Doesn't exist. Never has. Somebody somewhere always has some advantage (privilege) over us, even among twins born in the same home.<br />
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Phil Donahue allegedly had immensely more privilege than Oprah, but she ended up smoking him in the ratings, becoming 10 times more successful.<br />
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Small-town Southern boy Sam Walton was up against retail giant K-Mart and others with "privilege", but he smoked them eventually with determination and ingenuity.<br />
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There are millions of other untold stories of less "privileged" kids beating out their "superiors" in millions of jobs and college entrances throughout the world each year.<br />
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Privilege may gain you better and/or quicker access to higher education or higher jobs or higher connections in the beginning of your young adulthood, but it doesn't eliminate the primary aspect of the identity-filled life: finding the job that completes you as a person -- and going after it.<br />
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History is, unfortunately, littered with the corpses of rich kids who committed suicide or ultimately lived in abject poverty because of poor life-desicions and squandering, or became addicted to drugs and apathy -- because they never did the hard discovery of finding out who they are, finding out specifically which job completed them.<br />
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Privilege doesn't help one to think.<br />
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Have a lot of money or being a certain race or gender may, on occasion, help you or hinder you, once you've figured out what you want to do with your life. But none of these things can make you successful if you are not being rational -- or stop you, if you are being rational.<br />
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There is NO job that any person cannot attain, if they are determined -- whether they have privileges or not. Abraham Lincoln rose from the poorest conditions in a log cabin to the presidency of the United States, and Frederick Douglass rose from slavery in a racist society to be an esteemed writer, abolitionist leader, women's rights leader -- and to confer regularly with Lincoln himself.<br />
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Leftists and others who propagandize about "privilege" fail to understand this. They resent privilege and capitalism, and so they see only victims and disadvantages, instead of heroes and hard work. They are skeptics of human ability and industry. They pretend to want to help their victims, and their victims are often blind to the condescension of such help.<br />
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And they blank out the fact that privilege is most often the result of previous hard work by previous generations of determined people -- who deserved their "privilege".<br />
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The Left use "privilege" as a means to aggrandize government to "help" so-called victims, so-called "underprivileged". They willfully refuse to see that self-fulfillment in work is not a matter of where you start or how you're helped. It is about self-discovery and self-determination.<br />
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Human beings who take pride in their own minds, in themselves, don't care about where they start. They don't care about who's rich and who isn't. They wouldn't think of demanding that the government "even the playing field". Freedom evens the playing field, for the privileged and the underprivileged.<br />
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With freedom, we have the privilege, so to speak, to undertake any endeavor, any job, any discovery. With freedom, there are no victims of the marketplace. We are the captain and commander of our own destiny, just like Oprah and Walton and Schultz and millions of others. We find the work that completes us and gives us pride.<br />
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And sets us free.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-58318041876304791292016-11-20T12:55:00.001-05:002016-11-20T12:55:22.783-05:00FreeCon ... How Free Are We?Get your scorecards out, my friends!<br />
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Let's start scoring bad political ideas and bad political actions.<br />
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With the self-righteous media in America finally surrendering to academic Marxism, and with Leftists forcefully lecturing their bankrupt moralities to the rest of us Americans, and with the Right electing a guy who says he wants to cripple free speech and free trade, I thought it might be time for a qualitative assessment of just how coercive certain political ideas and policies really are or could be -- on both the right and left.<br />
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Let's end the smugness and self-righteousness of the politicians and elitists by declaring in concrete terms, with a Number, just how dangerous they and their ideas are.<br />
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All political thought and action can be measured in the societal realm by the amount of coercion they use or seek to use against individuals and businesses. Are they freedom-oriented or are they not? Every government policy affects <b>someone</b>! A Leftist insisting on the forceful funding of the arts or a Rightist seeking to forcefully ban abortions both seek coercion against individuals.<br />
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There can be no self-righteousness on either's part for the above coercive policies -- for forcing some people to do what they don't wish to do with their own money, or for preventing others from doing what they wish to do with their own body.<br />
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But how bad are those particular policies? How coercive is each one on individual rights? How much do they violate freedoms?<br />
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Perhaps we can attempt to measure this. Perhaps we can measure the amount of coercion of these two proposals and all other political policies and political ideas on a <b>Freedom Condition</b> scale.<br />
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<b>FreeCon</b><br />
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FreeCon would give qualitative measure, on a scale of 1 to 5, to the amount of coercion being used or sought to be used against individuals via political policies and ideas -- with FreeCon 1 being total control of an individual's (or business's) action in a certain scenario, and FreeCon 5 being total freedom of action in a certain scenario.<br />
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This would give at least a general sense of just how coercive and dangerous some ideas are, so that we can carry that sense with us in conversation, judgment and political action. For example:<br />
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"Obama's executive action on punishing energy businesses via stifling pollution controls is FreeCon 3. It still honors the businesses' rights to run their own businesses somewhat, but violates property rights to a large degree and limits maximum production and other alternatives that may be essential for growth and prosperity. And it raises the price of energy for consumers."<br />
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The discussion just on the energy scenario could last for days, of course, with hundreds of facts determining a proper FreeCon number, pertaining to the violation of the right to property.<br />
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Because of the variables involved, there will not always be agreement on the FreeCon scaling on any particular political policy or idea, but the discussion helps give clarity to the concrete facts surrounding the idea, and the eventual FreeCon scaling itself.<br />
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FreeCon can also be used to give a general assessment of a country or the world, much like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEFCON">DefCon</a> does in its realm of imminent threat to the U.S.<br />
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For example, a FreeCon 4.5 might've been given to a nearly-regulation-free America (with almost no taxes) in the 1890s. But with the weight of Progressive intrusion over the last 120 years, we might now give a FreeCon 3 or FreeCon 2.5 assessment concerning loss of rights, loss of freedom.<br />
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An overall assessment would include such areas as free speech, gun ownership, unbridled capitalism, taxation, property ownership, stifling fees and permissions, immigration/emigration, etc.<br />
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We could even give FreeCons to Supreme Court decisions, to media outlets, to particular reporters, to entertainers (Dicaprio gets FreeCon 2), to businessmen (Soros gets same as Dicaprio), to family members (hmm), to other countries, to politicians, to movements, to religions, to activists, etc.<br />
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Objectivists understand that the right to one's life, body and property is absolute, based on the fact that we are rational, volitional animals who must have that right (the freedom) in society in order to act in accordance with our own minds and values to be happy and productive. Governments and their policies cannot rightfully interfere with our right.<br />
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Government's only job is to protect individual rights -- to protect freedom. Anything else is intrusive, taking it below FreeCon 5.<br />
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All assessment on FreeCon assumes this objective fact about reality, humans and freedom. It assumes that humans have a complete right to their life, body and property -- so any political idea or policy that would violate that right in any way would bring us below the ideal of FreeCon 5.<br />
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Let the assessments begin!<br />
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<br />Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-24970822092489302962016-11-19T15:34:00.000-05:002016-11-19T15:34:12.493-05:00Where's the REAL Aaron Burr When You Need Him?In case you've been on the non-planet Pluto for the last 18 hours, my friend, there's been yet another leftist protest.<br />
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This time the protestors were dressed up -- on Broadway. Yep. Yep. They consisted of boorish audience members who actually booed another audience member, who had his daughter and nephew with him to enjoy the wonderful play <i>Hamilton.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
No, it's true. It happened.<br />
<i><br /></i>
The audience member who was booed was then lectured to by the cast of the play after the play was over, as the audience member was trying to exit with his daughter and nephew.<br />
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If you've never heard of such a thing happening and find this altogether unsettling, please be patient. There's more. Yes, yes, I'll let you know who the audience member was in a moment. Yes, yes, his daughter and nephew are alright.<br />
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The <i>Hamilton</i> actor who did the lecturing -- let's call him Fake Aaron Burr -- insinuated that the audience member was a bigoted, narrow-minded, elitist, Earth-hating, rights-hating, racist pig who would hopefully be less of all those horrible things because he saw their great play.<br />
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Please stop laughing, it's true. I swear it. It's not a hoax. Yes, of course, only a leftist could call somebody despicable and then offer him hope of not being despicable because he was offered the opportunity to see the grand leftists perform. Yep, you just can't make that shit up.<br />
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I'll let you judge for yourself. Here's what Fake Aaron Burr said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We, sir, we are the diverse America, who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. ... </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.</span></blockquote>
Whoa, my friend, I don't think I've heard you use those words in a while. Please calm down. OK, you can stop throwing things now. Yes, of course I agree. Yes, of course it's condescending and insulting and pretentious and, ahem, fucking presumptuous. Yes, I know, I know, you just don't DO something like that to a person, ANY person, out for a nice relaxing evening of art and entertainment -- with his daughter and nephew, no less.<br />
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But that's what leftists do, right? They block our highways and roads and force us to listen to their tantrums and waste our time in our cars -- away from our loved ones or our jobs or the emergency room or wherever.<br />
<br />
They just can't leave us alone!<br />
<br />
They riot over elections but can't tell us why they're rioting, and they demand to be heard, even though they don't know what they want to say. They've got emotions, you know!<br />
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They tell us that we must work so they can have free college.<br />
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They tell us they must have safe spaces if we say anything back.<br />
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They and their representatives turn hard-working Americans into slaves of the welfare state.<br />
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They define people by race and class and disabilities -- and then call us the bigots and racists.<br />
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They have no understanding of what inalienable rights are -- to one's own body, property, money and time. But they will lecture about those rights to the soon-to-be second-most-powerful person in the world.<br />
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Oh, yes yes, I'm sorry. The name of the audience member was Vice President-Elect Mike Pence. No, he didn't say anything when Fake Aaron Burr lectured him. He just left with his daughter and nephew.<br />
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Yeah, me too. It's too bad that Mike Pence wasn't the REAL Aaron Burr.<br />
<br />
Now that would've been a show worth watching!<br />
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Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-3427845137502020792016-07-07T18:04:00.002-04:002016-07-07T18:04:58.999-04:00The New UntouchablesYou remember the famous group of federal agents in 1930s-America who got the nickname "The Untouchables" -- because their integrity was beyond reproach, untouched by threats or the bribes of criminals.<br />
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They refused to be influenced by anything but the facts, which they acted on with force and conviction.<br />
<br />
(Ponder incredulously on that for a moment.)<br />
<br />
They did their job -- with élan.<br />
<br />
Not so in modern America.<br />
<br />
Federal officials and judges now wear lace panties while nibbling on the crumbs of Marie Antoinette.<br />
<br />
The officials meet secretly with The Grey Eminence aboard planes. The officials pretend that years of egregious criminal misconduct was just a "golly-gee-whiz" lapse. The judges give a winking, grinning thumbs-up to unpardonable laws that force free people to buy medical insurance.<br />
<br />
American officials are no longer protectors -- no longer The Untouchables.<br />
<br />
The politicians are The New Untouchables -- in the Banana Republic formerly known as The United States of America.<br />
<br />
The once-separate beds of government are now the King's incestuous mattress, with the feds and judges lying happily at the feet of the royalty.<br />
<br />
"I will gladly meet with you aboard your private plane and be your wife's pit-bull for injustice and racism."<br />
<br />
"Meet with me and I will pretend to interrogate you and then let you go free. As a bonus, of course, I'll pretend to not remember anything you said. When you are queen, please remember your humble servant as FBI chief."<br />
<br />
"You can rely on me, Mr. President, to ensure that your legacy of forcing citizens to pony up is secure in this courtroom."<br />
<br />
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and their ilk are solely without integrity and utterly without souls. Their bidding is the demand of hoi polloi officials. It is expected.<br />
<br />
For The New Untouchables, the law is what they say it is, at best, and simply a nuisance, at worst.<br />
<br />
Executive orders come from on-high, or, when testifying before Congress, they plead the 5th while polishing their nails, rolling their eyes and planning lunch with the Trotskys or the environmentalist Jetset.<br />
<br />
The snicker is their raison d'être.<br />
<br />
They are royalty to the millennial narcissists they've fostered on the public dime through 12 years of brain-altering "education".<br />
<br />
They refuse to salute the brave security personnel who defend them daily -- though they will occasionally tell these defenders to "fuck off" and expect the defenders to be grateful to have briefly captured the eye of Caesar.<br />
<br />
The erstwhile Untouchables are now The Undesirables. Comey and Roberts, like all sycophants, are universally detested, even by their own.<br />
<br />
The politicians and "elites" whom The Undesirables get off the hook use them and despise them because, well, they are politicians and elitists -- and they love nothing but themselves. The New Untouchables respect only those who are professional gamers -- of the system.<br />
<br />
The public doesn't like The Undesirables because the one job we give them to do -- ensure justice -- is clearly unimportant to them. It is, evidently, an undesirable job, whose only benefit is its intoxicating proximity to power.<br />
<br />
Integrity is absent.<br />
<br />
One gets the sense that these two punks -- Comey and Roberts -- cross their fingers behind their backs when they promise. You know, things like "I do solemnly swear (fingers crossed) that I will protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies ... blah blah blah."<br />
<br />
"Yes, yes, yes, foreign and domestic, blah blah blah, move on, move on, move on! Let's get this overwith. I've got a luncheon with the Clintons, and Hillary does NOT like it when I'm late."<br />
<br />
The Undesirables are criminals. They intentionally undermine the constitution they yawningly swore to uphold upon entering office. They should be in prison.<br />
<br />
Sound extreme?<br />
<br />
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue."<br />
<br />
The "moderation" of Comey and Roberts isn't just a lack of virtue. It's treasonous. Roberts makes slaves of Americans, and Comey clears the path to the presidency of one of the most detestable and dangerous individuals in America. Each violated his oath, endangering our liberty. Let them cross fingers in prison.<br />
<br />
The Undesirables have mastered one thing, though -- the straight face. Both of these men and their ilk get in front of cameras and show not a speck of shame about their criminal, sycophantic behavior.<br />
<br />
What, do FBI directors and judges undergo a rigorous "straight-face" job-training program?<br />
<br />
Maybe. Or it could be that they just learn well from their heroes -- The New Untouchables.<br />
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<br />Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-5116334265390411312014-12-20T09:42:00.001-05:002014-12-20T09:42:18.475-05:00Francisco's Money Speech (Yawn)The brilliant philosopher Ayn Rand was NOT a brilliant dramatist, often using set-up scenes to elaborate on her perfect philosophy of Objectivism -- to the detriment of flow and drama.<br />
<br />
Romantic literature should move mellifluously, quickly, graphically, realistically, stylistically -- not have endless descriptions (Hugo and Faulkner) endless explanations (Dostoevsky) or endless speeches (Rand).<br />
<br />
Concocted speeches may be somewhat interesting the first time you read a novel, but the rational reader will simply skip such speeches (if not the first time they read the novel, at least upon second reading) because it is simply preaching to the choir. We don't need to be told the meaning of money because we already know it, and the speech interferes with a fictional, experiential movement of character development, drama and suspense.<br />
<br />
The Francisco D'Anconia "money speech" (brilliant for a book on capitalism) is just one example (the 70-page Galt "radio speech" being the worst example in literature of didactic drama-death).<br />
<br />
With that said, here's one example of how the money speech could've gone down to add drama and flow -- and still get the point across:<br />
<br />
(Man on stairs at party monologuing loudly on how money is allegedly the root of all evil. He is surrounded by fawners. Francisco and scores of others are on the floor below.)<br />
<br />
(As man says the phrase "money is the root of all evil" ...)<br />
<br />
<b>Francisco</b> (loudly with hilarity): Ha!<br />
<br />
(Everyone looks at Francisco smiling and now sipping his martini)<br />
<br />
<b>Man</b> (snidely): Did you have something you wanted to say?<br />
<br />
<b>F</b> (acting a bit surprised): Well, yes, I suppose so. YOU, sir, are the root of all evil.<br />
<br />
<b>M</b> (laughing and looking at those nearby): I am the root of all evil?! Ha! And how is that, pray tell?! (friends near him self-consciously laughing with him).<br />
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<b>F</b> (looking around the room with a slight smirk): How many of you burn your paychecks when you get them?<br />
<br />
(Everybody shaking heads and laughing at the rhetorical question. Room is abuzz. Even some men and women on the stairs are smiling. Francisco waits for the room to quiet down as he sips his martini with a smile again.)<br />
<br />
<b>F</b>: That paycheck. ... YOUR paycheck, my friends ... represents YOUR hard work? The company you work for traded THEIR money for YOUR hard work. That money is your life-sweat, your pride in your ability and productivity. You can now pridefully take that hard-earned money and go buy products produced by other prideful, hard-working people ... to help you and your loved ones live well. ... And this idiot (Francisco nods his head toward the Man without looking at him) tells you that that is evil. (Man's face turns serious and a shade of red)<br />
<br />
<b>M</b> (eyes glaring, almost stuttering): I'm not ...<br />
<br />
<b>F</b>: Look at him, folks. Look how he lurches at me. (men nearby hold man in place to keep him from running down the stairs)<br />
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<b>M</b>: NOBODY talks to me that way! I'll ...<br />
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<b>F</b> (looking around and nodding in the man's direction again): THAT ... is evil! Any man who says that our hard work, the thing we should be most proud of in our lives, is the root of all evil. ... His mind-hating irrationality is the root of all evil. ... There's some irony for ya, huh?"<br />
<br />
(Man breaks free and catapults down the stairs toward Francisco, who calmly turns to the beautiful lady to his right)<br />
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<b>F</b>: Would you please hold this (martini) for a moment, love?<br />
<br />
(lady, caught in whirlwind of action, absent-mindedly grabs glass and holds it exactly in place)<br />
<br />
(Down the stairs, the man charges Francisco at full speed. People near Francisco move away, except for stricken lady, in Statue of Liberty pose.)<br />
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<b>M</b>: You son of a bitch capitalist ...!<br />
<br />
(As the man nears Francisco, Francisco calmly and quickly takes a step to his left and launches a fist at the man's jaw, halting the man's momentum in mid-stride and sending him to the floor unconscious. Gasps are heard as everyone stares at the bloodied man. Francisco thanks the women to his right, takes the clear glass. He lifts the bubbling martini high, gazes at it longingly and sips again.)<br />
<br />
<b>F</b>: Yes, my friends, money is good.<br />
<br />
(People smile and laugh and raise their glasses and sip.)<br />
<br />Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-7994822363926745892014-11-29T12:27:00.004-05:002014-11-29T12:27:56.938-05:00Kids have rights, so what's a parent to do?The American writer/thinker <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand">Ayn Rand</a> was the first person in history to finally understand and explain what human rights are:<br />
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<span style="background-color: #f7e0ae; color: #442222; font-family: 'Calibri W01 Regular 904604'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.) </span><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Signet-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451163931/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&keywords=The%20Virtue%20of%20Selfishness&linkCode=ur2&qid=1389638560&s=books&sr=1-1&tag=aynrandorgweb-20">The Virtue of Selfishness</a>, page 93<br />
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When Rand says "man", she means "humans" (all people), not just men, of course. Rand correctly said that people automatically have rights upon birth on page 58 of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Voice-Reason-Objectivist-Thought-Library/dp/0452010462/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&keywords=The%20Voice%20of%20Reason&linkCode=ur2&qid=1389638946&s=books&sr=1-1&tag=aynrandorgweb-20">The Voice of Reason</a>.<br />
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And here (all people):<br />
<span style="background-color: #f7e0ae; color: #442222; font-family: 'Calibri W01 Regular 904604'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore, the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another. -- </span><br />
<a href="https://estore.aynrand.org/p/262/the-ayn-rand-column-softcover">The Ayn Rand Column</a>, page 84<br />
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She also correctly discovered that ALL humans have rights because they possess the mind's faculty of reason (unlike lower animals):<br />
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<span style="background-color: #f7e0ae; color: #442222; font-family: 'Calibri W01 Regular 904604'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.</span></div>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/New-Intellectual-Philosophy-Anniversary-Signet/dp/0451163087/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&keywords=For%20the%20New%20Intellectual&linkCode=ur2&qid=1389638497&s=books&sr=1-1&tag=aynrandorgweb-20">For the New Intellectual</a>, page 182<br />
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Her point in saying that all humans automatically have rights is that humans don't have to prove they are rational to have rights; they have rights by the simple fact that they are rational animals.<br />
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This same argument applies to infants and other children of all ages. Whether a human is capable at any given moment to exercise their rationality is of no consequence concerning rights. They STILL have those rights, whether they are comatose, an invalid, crippled, knocked out, asleep or just born.<br />
(To read my blog entry on comatose adults and children's rights, please <a href="http://beerandmind.blogspot.com/2013/12/children-have-rights.html">READ HERE</a>)<br />
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Having a caretaker to help them with their lives does not obviate their individual rights. And the caretaker does not take on any position of absolute authority in relation to the person requiring care, outside of the implied or explicit "authorization" to act for them in a way that is objectively constructive (a way that would mimic the their own objective acts if they were capable).<br />
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The parental status is ONLY the caretaker status -- the caretaker of rights and safety. The caretaker guards the child until the child becomes better at running his/her own life through "self-generated" thought and action, until the child can determine what goals (values) he or she wishes to pursue, including information (education), careers, morality, hobbies, play, etc.<br />
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It is not the job of the caretaker (parent) to decide for the child what they "should' do: education, careers, morality, hobbies, play, etc. It is not the job of the caretaker to "direct" the child towards the caretaker's values: education, careers, morality, hobbies, play, etc.<br />
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As a caretaker of rights, the parent will ensure that the baby/child understands that rights are a two-way street: that nobody can coerce them (use force agains them unless they use force first) and that they can't coerce others. Staying on top of this ALWAYS is vital for a caretaker. Children should be treated in the exact same manner as we treat other adults, with complete and utter respect always for their rights.<br />
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All of the above is fundamental to a parent/child relationship based on rights. There are other aspects of being a caretaker that are very good for children but not obligatory:<br />
<br />
1) Surrounding the child with things that are potentially interesting, so they can get to know their world better and faster, thereby making choices more easily on what they want to do.<br />
2) Being involved and interested in their lives (which you should since you HAD them) and having terrific conversations.<br />
3) Expressing yourself always, including your judgments of people.<br />
4) Being a great role model by having an exciting career, being moral always, being entirely open with your thoughts and judgments, showing your affection, being emotional when you are emotional, being properly selfish always so that they see that your life means everything to you.<br />
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When we honor our children's rights for self-determination, parenting (care taking) is a piece of cake. They run their own lives. They never have a reason to rebel (there's no "authority" to rebel against). They are astoundingly moral, creative and self-motivated because they've seen your example and they know they are in full charge of their lives.<br />
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Then our children become our great friends.<br />
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<br />Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-28812577137654024392014-06-22T14:59:00.000-04:002014-06-22T14:59:08.037-04:00School's Out FOREVERSchool is a waste of time.<br />
Oops. Let me rephrase that.<br />
School is a COMPLETE waste of time.<br />
There, that's better.<br />
I don't mean just "primary" schools and "secondary" schools. I mean ALL schools, including colleges.<br />
Rhetorical-question alert!<br />
Does it REALLY take 12 years for kids to learn the basics of life: math, reading, writing?<br />
Does it really take four or six or eight years to learn to be a surgeon or lawyer or architect or engineer or programmer or astronomer or chemist or fashion designer or journalist or WHATEVER?<br />
Kids learn to read and write and do math in less than a year. I've seen it happen with my own child and dozens of other "homeschooled" children.<br />
The rest of the crap they teach in school is just, well, CRAP.<br />
Sociology? Really? Crap.<br />
Social science? Really? Crap.<br />
History? Snooze. Really? Crap (to most all kids).<br />
Science? Really? Not necessary for those NOT going into science and a waste of time for those who can consume ten times the needed information at home in their own pink lounge chair.<br />
"High" math? Really? Please read answer immediately above.<br />
Literature? Really? A complete bore to virtually all kids for several reasons. They simply aren't interested. Or they haven't lived enough life yet to understand Shakespeare or Austin or Dumas or L.M. Montgomery or whomever -- AND they can read on their own time whatever they might want in the, yep you guessed it, the pink lounge chair.<br />
And college? Don't get me going on that! OK, I'm already going, yes, I admit it.<br />
WASTE WASTE WASTE WASTE WASTE!!!!!<br />
Most of what you learn in college is not even CONNECTED to your primary career path. (well-known fact, of course). Waste!<br />
And the stuff that IS connected you could easily learn much quicker and better in an apprenticeship -- which brings me to where we SHOULD be in this world, concerning learning.<br />
Apprenticing.<br />
All careers are essentially trades -- or "crafts," however you want to say it. All work is crafting. All work, outside of maybe a few intellectual jobs like psychologist and a few other "mental" careers, is hands-on. And the best way to learn is with your hands and your eyes and other senses.<br />
The information you need outside of this hands-on learning is so little, you can learn it at night in your free time in, you guessed it again, your pink lounge chair -- even psychology (watching tapes, studying cognitive analysis, etc.)<br />
At this point, many of you have just two words for me. ... No, not THOSE two words. These two words: Prove it!<br />
OK, here goes.<br />
<b>Journalist</b>: I got a college degree in mass communication (I know, I know, I'm embarrassed, too), with a specialty in journalism. I learned EVERYTHING I need to know about journalism by working at the college newspaper -- everything except some simple libel information, which basically boiled down to the following: you can't slander a politician because they put themselves in official "public" roles, but you better not say false things about private people or your ass is in trouble.<br />
<b>Programmer</b>: all information used to be in books and is now on the Internet (let's call this the Internet Rule). There are some 12-year-olds making millions of dollars right now after teaching THEMSELVES programming and creating programs worth, yeah, millions.<br />
(Let me stop here for a moment to say that careers could easily start at 13 or 14 years of age in a free society, unencumbered by "schooling." Kids who are homeschooled or unschooled usually learn quickly what they like to do, since they are not in a "school" wasting their time and trying to be obedient to the common core dictators.)<br />
<b>Chemistry</b>: all substances, formulas and theories. Easily understood via Internet Rule.<br />
<b>Literature</b>: all books and analyses. Easily accessible via Internet Rule.<br />
<b>History</b>: all books and analyses and opposing opinions. Easily accessible via Internet Rule (By the way, it is hogwash to say that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. George Santayana, who penned that ridiculous phrase, didn't understand that one need only know the proper role of government -- to prevent and prosecute the initiation of force against another human -- to not "repeat" history.)<br />
<b>Architect</b>: books, pictures, design, math, theories, calculus. See Internet Rule. (Google has a free starter architect computer program for beginners and intermediates that is KILLER!)<br />
<b>Surgeon</b>: information on the body and medicines, watching it done, practicing under supervision, etc. Doogie should NOT be just fiction!<br />
<b>Pilot</b>: information on air dynamics, plane makeup, watching professional in person, practicing in front of professional until proficient.<br />
Need I go on? Please say NO!<br />
The only science, the only INFORMATION, that absolutely everyone needs to be happy and have a happy and productive career can also be done in private: objective philosophy.<br />
Rational (fact-based) philosophy guides everything we do because it is the broadest science and encapsulates every thought and action and emotion we have, since it has to do with the fundamentals of life: metaphysics (nature of universe), nature of humans (rational), epistemology (how rationality works), morality (virtues necessary for achieving things on way to happiness), and politics (proper role of government in a setting where two or more people are present).<br />
My daughter is learning objective philosophy the way she taught herself to read and write and do math: by watching, listening, doing, judging, asking questions, evaluating (all outside of a "class"). She's beginning to consciously place the principals she's learned in the front of her mind, organizing thoughts and action from once-scattered ideas. That's the way it's done OUTSIDE OF CLASSES.<br />
If you learned anything from this post, you did it OUTSIDE of a classroom -- and maybe in a pink lounge chair.<br />
School's out!<br />
FOREVER!<br />
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<br />Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-88852169194339497712014-05-31T16:23:00.001-04:002014-05-31T16:23:57.755-04:00The Sound and Fury of Human ShadowsSometimes I have a month of work and personal interaction with people whom only Shakespeare can sum up:<br />
For these people, "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."<br />
Ah yes, so Shakespeare had idiots! "Sound and fury, signifying nothing." Yummy.<br />
Three weeks ago I had to fire a relative who lied to our customers and didn't do his job -- and then he yelled at ME! HE was upset! Why? Who the fuck knows. He was innocent, by damn. He went into a litany of furious charges against me (none true) in which he simply transformed reality to his own liking -- and then he BELIEVED the new reality he'd just created.<br />
It was almost like a thief, caught red-handed, saying: "Hey, dude, why are you looking at me like that. I just put my hand in your back pocket, but I didn't steal your wallet. Yeah, your wallet's in my hand, but I didn't do it. I don't know how it got there. Oh, yeah, I remember, YOU put it in my hand. Why the fuck did you put your wallet in my hand?!"<br />
Surreal. Sound. Fury. Shadows.<br />
Reading Shakespeare, I realize that altering reality to one's own purposes is nothing new, and the sound and fury are nothing new.<br />
Two weeks ago, a friend called me up and accused me of not being friendly anymore at a business meeting we were at that morning. I didn't know what he was talking about. He said that when he saw me, when we hugged, the hug wasn't real. Told him I had no idea what he was talking about. He wouldn't have it. He started yelling on the phone, out of nowhere. When I asked him for facts, he said, "Oh, facts, yeah, David, you're all about the facts. You ALWAYS have to be right!"<br />
I said bye and hung up. He tried to call back with more sound and fury and more of his reality-altering monologues. I finally answered the phone and said, "Look, if "bye" is too short of a goodbye for you, let's try this: Fuck you."<br />
He hung up. I drank a glass of wine.<br />
Four days ago, my almost-11-year-old daughter was at her friends' house. A babysitter was at the house for the 3 year old who was there, but the babysitter was not sitting for my daughter. The babysitter starts telling my daughter and two other older kids what to do and not do, out of nowhere. My daughter told the babysitter she wasn't doing anything the sitter said. Sitter got furious and told the parents of the 3 year old that if my daughter came to their house, the sitter wouldn't sit for them when that happened. (That babysitter got fired the next day by my friends.)<br />
When I called the sitter and asked for her view of the events that happened, she changed her story several times and got so furious at my calm questions that she screamed, "I don't want to talk about this anymore! If your daughter comes over, I won't be around! She makes me nervous!"<br />
The sitter is 19 years old, an idiot telling tales, full of sound and fury.<br />
Yesterday, in a big conference meeting, I had to fire my company's marketing group in New York City for lack of performance. The group's CEO denied the lack of performance, despite my laying out the facts of the nonperformance. She then went on a several-minute tirade accusing everyone in my company and outside my company for the faults that were hers. At several points, she blatantly lied in front of several people whom she should've known knew the truth, but it didn't stop her from lying anyway. Reality was what she made it. She threatened a lawsuit against our company for alleged breach of contract, while I was firing her for breach of contract. She demanded payment for nonperformance.<br />
Sound, fury, shadow, tales.<br />
All the a<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">bove reminds me of a quote by Ayn Rand in her 1974 essay, Selfishness Without the Self, in which she says that the person who has no solid sense of self "finds ... reality a meaningless term. His metaphysics consists in the chronic feeling that life, somehow, is a conspiracy of people and things against him, and he will walk over corpses -- in order to assert himself? No, in order to hide (or fill) the nagging inner vacuum left by his aborted self."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Shakespeare gives us his singular images, and Rand explains it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The popular metaphor for such people is zombies, but I like Shakespeare's shadows. They are empty, dark, even ominous in their unpredictability.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And they are loud!</span><br />
<br />Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-4208064068797301722014-04-26T19:10:00.000-04:002014-04-26T19:10:15.807-04:00The priest at his human feastOne reason I can't take most christians seriously on their "faith" is that I know they simply don't read the bible and have no real idea that it says that plants existed before the sun, that dudes surfed in whale's mouths, that their "god" drowned everybody on Earth (yes, babies, too) except for eight lucky people, and that virgins were ravaged with alacrity. It seems to cause christians no pangs to know that the "virgin" Mary was ravaged by "god" before her husband Joseph consummated their marriage with his corporeal penis.<br />
Perhaps christians know many of these "highlights" but simply don't think about them much. As the wonderfully eloquent and witty Robert Ingersoll said about 150 years ago: To read the bible is to giggle. And christians aren't giggling.<br />
Damn Ingersoll for saying that before ME!<br />
Which brings me to the people who actually READ the bible. The shamans, the magic men -- known in common parlance as "preachers."<br />
If you don't go to church, you know them by their job six days a week: thinking of cute things to put on signs in front of their churches: "If you need to talk to someone, put god on speed-dial"; "a friend in need is a friend in need of god"; "the Sermon on the Mount is for those stuck in a valley"; "the bell tolls for the belles and the beasts." Ouch!<br />
Shamans are not Shakespeares. Here, I must quote Ingersoll again, who said: I'll take Hamlet over all the religious sayings, quotes and books every written or said.<br />
Hallelujah, Bob!<br />
The life of a priest is a bazaar thing really. His life is built around a book filled with a thousand contradictions and thousands of violations of reality. Leprosy is not cured with a tough of a finger, and when we die, we decompose, and the universe is 13 billion years across, not a shell (firmament) a few miles up (as the ancient bible writers thought).<br />
The priests know all this and must commit their minds to, basically, saying, "Shit, I need to get paid, so I have to try to make sense of all this shit to my flock, who's going to be here in 10 minutes!"<br />
Those are the "honest" ones, the ones who have some sense that the bible is primitive BS. These "honest" ones try to modernize and have "gigabyte" meetings, replete with a coffee bar so the youth can have their mochas and lattes. It ain't about the bible; it's about the caffeine. But who's asking?<br />
The dishonest priests (but I repeat myself) REALLY believe the bible. When Jesus says that he has not come to change "one iota" of the previous (Moses) laws and then proceeds to change ALL those laws, the dishonest priests turn a blind eye -- and then find a clever way to explain this contradiction to their sheep.<br />
The dishonest priests are pretty damn good salesmen, if their engorged parking lots are any indication. On Easter Sunday, with a straight face, they say that jesus has risen. Their flock screams hallelujah. They smile and weep. Then they all have lunch and lattes.<br />
The priesthood is not about honesty or information. It is about power, like politics -- the power over people. It's a heady thing, I'm sure, to look out on a thousand faces and see rapture and attentiveness, while you fill their minds with giggly bile.<br />
But what does such evasion on an unimaginable scale do to a man, a priest? How does a mind deal with the thousands of contradictions of reality replete in the bible on a daily basis, while the rest of us are living real lives? What HAPPENS to such a mind?<br />
It becomes the grinning monster. The shaman of old. The personification of cognitive dissonance. A twisted, distorted, special case of insanity attempting hourly, daily to fight back the rational mind that is screaming: "Get out, get out, get out of here! Go LIVE"<br />
That's why when you see priests at the store or on TV, they have that ethereal, far-off, fake-smiley look on their face -- like they are secretly having your kittens tortured while you shop.<br />
You cannot read daily that an alleged god blithely wiped out entire villages of men, women and children for his alleged "chosen ones" without annihilating your own good judgment of the fact that that alleged god is a murderer of the highest order.<br />
You cannot read that the vast majority of human beings, according to jesus, will endure an eternity of torment and excruciating pain in "the undiscovered country" simply because they won't "worship" and "have faith in" jesus -- without, again, suspending your own better judgment as the fairness of such malevolence.<br />
Let's not even mention the fact that ANY being would wish to be worshiped. Talk about low self-esteem!<br />
These "men of the cloth" have sold their minds to a boundless ugliness, and they attempt to convince others every week to do the same. They prey on the most precious thing we humans have: the mind. They are far worse than pedophiles, who seek only the body of the young.<br />
They feast on humans, the human mind.<br />
They are the modern-day monsters.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-61888639694809895392014-03-22T18:03:00.001-04:002014-03-22T18:03:30.850-04:00"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."<br />
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.<br />
Let's call him "O".<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
Again, O has been highly successful in his foreign policy. Fewer people in the world means lower insurance costs.<br />
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:<br />
1) Sneeze (you have to close your eyes)<br />
2) Adjust your radio (music makes you too happy anyway)<br />
3) Fart (you usually lift one butt cheek to allow proper expunging, and THAT is dangerous)<br />
4) Pick your nose (remember, TWO CLEAN HANDS on the wheel)<br />
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)<br />
6) Blinking (see EYES ON THE ROAD above)<br />
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)<br />
8) Singing (what, you think you're WHITNEY FUCKING HOUSTON?!)<br />
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)<br />
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)<br />
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)<br />
12) Everything else (O couldn't think of anything else right now, so he invoked an alteration on the 10th Amendment to the Constitution)<br />
Happy trails!Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-63395313987074756422014-03-22T17:25:00.000-04:002014-03-22T17:25:20.259-04:00No news is good newsPlanes 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, <i>sacre bleu</i>!), 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.<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
No news is good news.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-21963248767078433662014-03-22T16:48:00.001-04:002014-03-22T16:55:53.920-04:00Three 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).<br />
<div>
But today's topic is "spirituality."</div>
<div>
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.</div>
<div>
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."</div>
<div>
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."</div>
<div>
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.</div>
<div>
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.</div>
<div>
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.</div>
<div>
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. </div>
Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-89013862123295417502014-01-01T11:31:00.001-05:002014-01-01T11:33:14.167-05:00BUY Insurance and DON'T BUY Light Bulbs!!You may have already heard that the 2007 law signed by the idiot savant (without the "savant") George W. Bush that bans all Americans from producing incandescent light bulbs (you remember Thomas Edison, right?) <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/energy-ban-government-rights/2013/12/31/id/544637?ns_mail_uid=64138901&ns_mail_job=1551684_01012014&promo_code=16173-1">begins today</a>.<br />
You probably already know that today marks the day when The Occupier government takes over health insurance in America and you are required to buy insurance, whether you like it or not.<br />
You MUST buy insurance. You CAN'T buy certain light bulbs.<br />
Welcome to America.<br />
You must pay taxes. You can't buy weed.<br />
You must have a "Social Security" number. You can't buy any gun.<br />
Welcome to America.<br />
You must buy car insurance. You can't drive without a government license.<br />
You must pay for losers (welfare). You can't get drugs without government approval.<br />
Welcome to America.<br />
You must be a hetero. You can't be a homo.<br />
You must school your children. You can't be naked in public.<br />
Welcome to America.<br />
You must be a racist ("affirmative action"). You can't be a racist.<br />
You must honor pets' "rights." You can't honor your children's rights to liberty.<br />
Welcome to America.<br />
You must pay property taxes. You can't own property the government "needs."<br />
You must explain large amounts of cash in your possession. You can't leave America without government approval (passport).<br />
Welcome to Occupied America.<br />
<br />Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-38488934777830862842013-12-23T09:11:00.001-05:002013-12-23T09:11:56.617-05:00Jesus Christ!!!A <a href="http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2013/12/22/US-belief-in-God-down-belief-in-theory-of-evolution-up/UPI-24081387762886/">new Harris Poll</a> indicates that the number of Americans who believe in a Big Mystical Kahuna (aka "God") is dropping at 1% a year. It is now down to 75%, from 82% in 2007.<br />
Young people are especially prone to not "believe."<br />
I'd like to think it's because the young people are doing a little beach-reading with the Bible and are dumb-struck by the <a href="http://www.evilbible.com/Murder.htm#Sabbath">God-murders</a> (for not being a virgin or cussing at your parents or being homosexual or being the child of a bad person or for not believing or for working on Sunday or for being part of the human race or for lying or for lust, etc.).<br />
But, really, I would imagine the young folks are just bored with it. It gets in the way of Twitter and Facebook and working and playing and, well, you know, LIFE. As a child, only one thing bored me more than "public schooling, and that was the pastor. He was SO serious (I guess I'd be serious, too, if I knew I'd been lusting a little and knew it could mean DEATH). When he smiled, he didn't look happy.<br />
Religion ain't fun. A philosophy of life should be fun. It should be about how to have as much fun as possible in our playground, in our sandbox. It should guide us on how to govern ourselves and treat other people properly so they can have fun in their sandbox, too.<br />
But the Bible is not about sandboxes. It's about Hell and eternal damnation and extraterrestrial whimsy that could allegedly strike you down at a moment's notice for who-knows-what!<br />
Maybe young folks are getting this. Hope so. If so, we might just be outnumbering the mystics in about 26 years.<br />
Can I get a "Jesus Christ" on that?!<br />
Hallelujah!Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-81064032122131907602013-12-22T10:01:00.001-05:002013-12-23T09:13:50.061-05:00Chase-ing my tailSo, I'm standing at the checkout counter at Barnes And Noble with my daughter, Livy, and the lady behind the counter says my debit card isn't valid (I got plenty of cash in bank). I said, please try it again. Same result. Shaking my head, I pay with cash. I figure it's gotta be a BN computer glitch.<br />
I go to Target with Livy. Same thing. I pay with cash. Now, I'm pissed.<br />
I call the number on my Chase debit card. Wait 25 minutes, cussing Chase for the last 20 minutes. POU (person of uninterest) finally says hello. After usual lengthy "verification" of my identity, POU says that 47 million Chase card users' identity may have been compromised by hackers who broke into Target's data system between Thanksgiving and mid-December.<br />
The POU then says that my card may have been one of those cards and that Chase put a limit of $100 ATM withdrawals on my card and $300 in purchases per day. When I asked why Chase didn't tell me about this, the POU says, "We did it to protect you." I said, "Bullshit, my account is insured by Chase on these kinds of issues, and I couldn't have lost one penny, no matter how much was stolen by the ID theft. You guys did it to cover your own asses, and that is fine, but why the hell didn't you notify me by text, like you do on other matters, like when you're fricking sending me advertisements." After drilling her for another minute, she finally (exasperated) said that Chase would be notifying customers "soon."<br />
When I told her I was stranded at BN and Target (had I not had cash), she just says, "Oh, we are sorry you were inconvenienced. You know, you can go to a nearby Chase branch to get a new card."<br />
So now I (more furious) go to a nearby Chase branch (instead of finishing my shopping with Livy), and I get even MORE attitude from the Chase "officer," who tries to feed me the same "protecting you" bullshit. She says I can't get a new card on the spot (though I found out later with the bank manager that I could've gotten one on the spot at another Chase down the street that is set up for just such occurrences). So the officer lied to me.<br />
I ask the "officer" if she's getting attitude with me (she's just staring furiously at me when I'm asking questions). This is what goes down:<br />
Officer: I don't have attitude. It's YOU that has attitude!<br />
Me: I have a right to have attitude here. You have attitude with me.<br />
Officer: So? What are you going to do about it? (smirk on her face)<br />
Me: (while I stand up and lean toward her) Watch.<br />
I find the bank manager, who treats me with respect and apologizes profusely and explains things well and gets me what I should've gotten at the beginning of this debacle.<br />
Then the bank manager asks: "Mr. Elmore ... what do you want me to do with Ruthie (the officer)?<br />
Me: I think you know what I want done. If she were my employee, she would have 120 seconds to gather her belongings and leave forever.<br />
Manager: I understand.<br />
Me: I know you understand. But will you do it?<br />
Manager: I will have a talk with her and ...<br />
Me: So you won't be firing her, will you?<br />
Manager: Mr. Elmore, I'm sure you understand that I can't discuss what the bank will do with Ruthie.<br />
Me. I understand that you won't be firing her. If my customer for my business got treated that way, I would tell the customer that I'd be firing the employee. In fact, I would fire the employee right in front of the customer and ask the customer if he was satisfied, and then I would give the customer a little something extra and free.<br />
Manager: I understand, Mr. Elmore.<br />
Blah blah blah blah blah.<br />
THAT is modern "customer service."<br />
Oh, and Ruthie actually said "happy holidays" to me and Livy as we were leaving the bank branch. Neither Livy nor I looked at her, but I know what I wanted to do to her. I read it once in an Inquisition history book.<br />
But as badly as I imagined some torture, it was nothing compared to what I imagined I could do to the swill-sucking cowards ("hackers") who barged into 47 million lives and stole time and money from innocent people. I have a special spot in the dank torture chambers for such pale scum.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-49394558003603110392013-12-15T13:33:00.001-05:002013-12-22T09:25:52.561-05:00Stardust and our universal playgroundJust finished watching the terrific 8-part Discovery series "How the Universe Works."<br />
And I'm currently reading <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin">Charles Darwin's</a> second great book: "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_of_Man,_and_Selection_in_Relation_to_Sex">The Descent of Man</a>" (written after the revolutionary "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species">On the Origin of Species</a>," which I read many years ago).<br />
For 22 years, I've been reading and applying the works of the objective <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand">philosopher Ayn Rand</a> (morality is discovered through reason and applied via reason).<br />
I've been studying evolution, astronomy, geology and other sciences for 30 years.<br />
Got me to thinking: Do Christians and other mystical peoples EVER watch and/or read this stuff? Do they CARE to know about reality? Do they enjoy living in the dark? Are they afraid to be human? Do they really think there is a Devil who is horny (has horns).<br />
'Cause if they did read/watch all of the above, and they were honest, they could NEVER be Christians.<br />
Our universe began with a "big bang" almost 14 billions years ago and is expanding rapidly (we have proof of this via the Doppler <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift">red shit</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_shift">blue shift</a> of galaxies and stars that were first discovered by Edwin Hubble).<br />
All early primitive people, including Christians (Jesus included) thought (without proof) the universe was just some "stars" and "planets" hanging a few miles above the Earth), and that was it. They all also thought the "heavens' were <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres">fixed</a> into place.<br />
The universe is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe">13.7 billion years old</a>. (we have proof of this number via photon red shift and exploding neutron stars at different distances in the universe)<br />
Many Christians say it's only 6,400 years old. (no proof). Some don't "believe" it's that old.<br />
Our Milky Way galaxy is 12 billion years old, and our solar system (sun and planets) are 4.6 billion years old (we have proof via <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth">elemental half-life dating</a> and samples from our Earth, the moon, other planets, asteroids, etc.)<br />
<a href="http://www.genesismission.4t.com/ye/bibleage.htm">Many Christians say it's all 6,400 years old</a>. (they say that if you count the generations in the Bible, they add up to about 6,400 years). These myopists think everything only began with some certain people being alive about 6,400 years go.<br />
There are currently trillions upon trillions of events occurring in the universe every second that humans can't possibly detect all at once, including exploding volcanoes ever second on the moon Io around Jupiter, spinning neutron stars, exploding supernovae, millions of neutrinos going through your body as I write this, hydrogen turning into helium inside stars, trillions of comets and asteroids dancing around space, dark matter pervading the universe and causing its expansion and ultimate perishing, black holes spitting out gamma rays, gold and silver being created by exploding giant stars (no, it's not Jews who make gold).<br />
Darwin and subsequent scientists have proved that evolution is real and that humanoid type individuals began separating themselves from apes <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolutionary_genetics">about five million years ago</a> (small amount of time on the cosmic scale, but a large amount of time for the 6,400ers). Modern humans (home sapiens) have only been around for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens">about 200,000 years</a>. Our paths out of Africa are now well known, via the proof of genetic testing (mitochondrial DNA, etc.).<br />
Please see "myopists" comment above for those zany little Christian beliefs in 6,400.<br />
Home sapiens have a rational faculty that was finally understood by Rand, who discovered that that faculty is capable of understanding everything in the universe, including the rational faculty itself. It is capable of hegemony, of running itself perfectly without the aid or intrusion of an outsider (an alleged greater being). It is capable of understanding its own goals, its own means of achieving those goals, of honoring others' rights to their own goals, of realizing that happiness is supposed to be the ultimate meaning for life, of understanding that all things real and good must have a basis in the facts of life (proof).<br />
Christians, et al, think humans are incapable and "fallen," that they need help, that they must surrender their rational faculty to verbiage written or spoken by an alleged being that has no physical form or proof. They believe life is a train of hopeless transgressions, instead of a series of satisfying accomplishments that were humanly and willfully designed.<br />
When supernovae explode, they create <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis">nucleosynthesis and spit out the primary elements</a> (what sane person doesn't love the Periodic Chart?) in the universe that are vital to life: hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, iron, gold, nickel, platinum, zinc, neon, silica, silver, uranium, etc. This is the "stardust" they spit out. The oxygen and hydrogen fuse together and populate the universe with water (usually ice crystals in space), huge amounts of it. These ice crystals (usually in the form of comets) bombarded the early Earth about a half-billion years after formation and gave us our oceans and fresh water.<br />
This is the genesis of life, despite the crude and primitive ejaculations of the Bible.<br />
We are the stuff of stars (carbon, water, iron, etc.). We are stardust. And, as evolved rational animals, the universe is now our playground.<br />
It is not the place of make-believe worlds of "good" and "evil." There are no gods in the machine. Our very old universe couldn't care less about what primitive Christians or any other mystics (Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc.) have "faith" in. The universe gets the last laugh.<br />
But us rational stardust-folks get to giggle a good bit along the way to the playground each morning when we arise.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-80168688017488547652013-12-13T07:48:00.003-05:002013-12-13T07:48:49.419-05:00Get to high ground immediately!I was asked to take over a <a href="http://www.freshanaorganic.com/">terrific company</a> in April 2011 and then take over another <a href="http://www.encaptechnologies.us/">terrific company</a> in January 2013. I'm running two companies.<br />
Ergo, only three blog posts in over two years.<br />
My god I miss it, and my idea banks are filled to capacity and overflowing.<br />
To relieve the memory levies, I must SPEAK. I'll be blogging a lot. The words will flow.<br />
You might want to get to high ground -- for safety's sake!Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-32235658886214711472013-12-07T13:27:00.001-05:002014-10-31T16:31:00.953-04:00Children Have RightsYou and your soulmate are walking in the woods behind your home. She's bitten by a colorful, exotic spider. One hour later, she's woozy. Two hours later, she's almost delirious.<br />
At the hospital, she falls into a coma. It takes doctors 24 hours to pinpoint the illness.<br />
She was bitten by a rare african spider. The implications are awful, say the doctors. After looking at cases in Africa, they give the husband the following prognosis:<br />
Claire will be in a coma or semi-comatose state for one year.<br />
In year two, she'll come completely out of any comatose state, but won't remember anything of her past or anything she ever learned and will have to learn all over again. Her rational mind will begin kicking in again rudimentarily. She'll be able to perceive things and make some causal connections and begin rudimentary speaking. But she'll often attempt to harm herself by arational actions.<br />
From the third to fifth year, she'll begin getting higher concepts and start talking fluently, but she'll have tantrums occasionally because of frustration and will still attempt to do some harmful things.<br />
From year 6 through 10, Claire will learn how to read, do math, wrestle with and digest high concepts, and she will get back almost entirely to where she was when she was bitten, with rare occasions of still grappling with honesty, justice, integrity and pride until about the 12th year -- at which time, she should be fully back to her vital former self.<br />
You and Claire had planned for potential catastrophic occurrences before the spider bite, but neither of you could've imagined such a state of conditions.<br />
You grapple with your values, but you decide, yes, you will care of her during those 10 years, being her caretaker, changing her diapers at first, stopping her from harmful acts, providing tutorials when asked, lengthily explaining causal and moral matters when she's ready and willing, etc.<br />
***<br />
As I'm sure you, my reader, have figured out already, the above scenario is essentially the scenario, mutatis mutandis, of a child in her first 10 years: complete incapacitation to near full mental growth.<br />
Claire would not and did not surrender her individual rights. She ascribed her protection and care taking over to someone she trusted. She would want her soulmate to keep her healthy, stop her from taking action against herself (even with temporary force if necessary), and provide a moral and robust environment for mental growth.<br />
If she chose not to go to a formalized school, she would not go. Etc.<br />
Children have the same individual rights. Their "smallness" and "babbling" and harmful value pursuits (running into street) do not make them inferior, nor do they mean a surrender of rights, and nor do they mean that they are somebody's property. They are in caretaker status. They will set their own values at an early age and pursue any knowledge related to those values. They are quite ambitious, like Claire, if left alone in value-pursuits.<br />
Children should be seen as our friends, our dear friends -- always! Seeing them as friends with full rights puts the context of the relationship in clear focus and prevents reflexive harmful attitudes and actions against them by rational parents.<br />
If they could talk at birth for a brief moment, they might say: "Hey. Howdy. Good to finally see some good lighting. Look, I'm going to need you to please take care of me for a good bit, keep me from doing harmful stuff, clean me up, give me some tasty, nutritious food (that umbilical was getting OLD), and, well, you know the rest. I hope to value you one day, and I know you wouldn't have gone through all this if you didn't think I'd be a high value to you. I'll be calling you mommy and daddy soon. Please be patient. I got a whole hell of a lot of things in this exciting world I'm gonna want to do. I hope you'll honor my right to pursue those things totally. Thanks a lot. See you around."<br />
All children are "Claire."<br />
Her husband would never think of spanking her or hitting her. He would honor her. He would honor her right of self-direction, and when she was "acting like a child," he would gently and rationally help her with explanations -- sometimes possibly for hours, until she figured it out. He would love her, and he would look forward to loving her more, and he would hope that she would love him for his gentleness, his firmness, his values, his morality, his forthrightness.<br />
As I hinted at above, there is never a case for parental/guardian coercion in child-rearing. Coercion is the initiation of force against another human and/or their concrete values (things). It is only when the child takes action against herself (harming herself and harming the parent's value) that a parent can retaliate with mild physical restraint, if necessary, to stop the destructive action. All such instances are "retaliation," not "initiation" of force. The parent is mildly retaliating (picking up the toddler heading for broken glass on the floor, etc.) against the child's unknowing harm of a value. There is never a place for punitive measures with Claire or children. (I'll expand on punitive measures in another post.)<br />
Claire's case (and the case of children) are a special case in coercion because of their caretaker status. Conscious, rational adults can, of course, commit destructive actions against themselves and destroy any value they have of themselves and any value they may be to others. But adults in caretaker status (and young children) temporarily proxy their hegemony over value protection. This does not undermine their rights, and they are not property. They simply have a rational-mind proxy until they get their own faculties fully formed.<br />
It is not, ipso facto, harmful for a child to choose not to go to school. It is not harmful for the child to eschew any learning that the parent wishes, outside of morality, but morality cannot be force-fed anyway. It has to be practiced by the parent, and it will be absorbed by the child via example and explanation, when she seeks explanation. Only a truly rational parent can become the beacon for a child.<br />
All children are "Claire."<br />
They start with nothing but a mental capacity (rationality), and they slowly learn to run it, practice with it, use it well, be happy. Any coercion by a parent, in any regard (even manipulative exhortations to do something the parent wishes), hobbles the child's own value system (I'll expand on this in another post). And, more important, it violates their rights to their own volition, their own body, their own mind.<br />
Children have rights.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-76823964742090350082012-06-02T08:13:00.000-04:002012-06-02T08:13:31.843-04:00Girl can read!There are those moments in life when you just stop for a moment and go "Wow!" Well, that happened last week.<br />
I was walking through the living room and saw my daughter, Livy, with five kids books in her hands. (I didn't think she could read. She'd been sounding out words and reading road signs a bit, but not actually sitting down and READING.)<br />
I said, "He Liv, what's you doing?"<br />
"Reading."<br />
"Oh." (pause). "Are you reading those books?"<br />
(Look of incredulity at my stupid question.) "Uh, yeah Dad. ... These are my favorite books."<br />
"Yeah, I know. Those are the ones that I used to read to you when you were, like, three and four and five. Remember?"<br />
"Yeah."<br />
"Will you read them to me sometime soon?"<br />
"Yeah." (nonchalant)<br />
I watched her read for a moment, in wonder at her ability to learn how to read virtually on her own by the age of 8.5 years old, which is what she is now. She, of course, is unschooled, which means no formal teaching and no pushing on my part to get her to read or do anything else she doesn't want to do.<br />
The human mind and volition are wonderful things to behold. And my lovely child likes to read ... sometimes.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-71365928035229367362011-03-06T11:52:00.000-05:002011-03-06T11:52:49.251-05:00C17H21NO4 and C7H8N4O2The first formula in this blog post title is for cocaine, which derives from a plant: the coca.<br />
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The second formula is for the primary alkaloid of the cocoa plant (or tree), which is the primary ingredient in chocolate.<br />
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The government tells us we cannot ingest the first formula. The government gives us permission to ingest the second formula.<br />
<br />
The Supreme Court of the United States (let's call them the "high court") is <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022805516.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions">now deliberating</a> seriously about whether some cocaine derivatives have enough C17H21NO4 to actually be illegal for human beings to ingest. I say "human beings" because certain insect larvae absolutely adore C17H21NO4 and ingest it with reckless abandon -- not doubt having unprotected sex and being altogether loopy and excited afterward, causing larvae traffic accidents and unwanted pregnancies.<br />
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The high court has no problem with larvae ingesting C17H21NO4, but not rational beings.<br />
<br />
That tell you anything about where the high court believes we humans reside in the animal kingdom?Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-74233010136032394832011-03-06T09:20:00.000-05:002011-03-06T09:20:11.788-05:00When nothing is somethingThe latest hubbub in Washington and the circle-jerk media is over a government shutdown if Republicans and Democrats can't agree on a 2011 budget. We've heard horror stories about welfare recipients not getting their checks, about regulators not getting paid to regulate, about forestry officials lacking funds to do forestry (whatever the hell that is), about highway projects coming to a halt, about stolen cash not making it by the billions to schools, etc.<br />
To which I say, "My god, let's do a shutdown NOW. Hell, let's keep the government shut down!"<br />
I have to say, I'm a bit embarrassed at having not thought of this whole shutdown thing before. Every year, the rat pack (that is, Congress) swarms around this time to figure out the right way to pick at the bones of the American cadaver.<br />
"Who can we steal more from? Who can we give that loot to so that we can get more votes? How many pats on the back can I get for stealing from people in other states for boondoggles in my state?"<br />
So, let's do a permanent shutdown, Americans. Nothing is better than something when criminals are in charge.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-80053330738104385102011-03-06T09:01:00.000-05:002011-03-06T09:01:32.073-05:00They want me BACKI filed for bankruptcy last year (2010) after two miserable years of trying to keep my booming real estate business from collapsing when the U.S. government sabotaged the economy with its altruistic housing welfare programs.<br />
In 2009, I'd called all the mortgage companies for my 10 homes and all seven credit card companies for my personal and business credit cards in an attempt to stave off bankruptcy and to readjust the terms of the loan/credit payments, so that I could get the money back to the credit holders eventually.<br />
At the time, the resounding unanimous answer from all of the above was "hit the road, Jack, and don't come back no mo', no mo', no mo'."<br />
Well, they want me BACK.<br />
Within one month of getting all my debt discharged in August 2010, my mailbox was sullied almost daily with entreaties from the same credit card companies. The message was uniformly similar: "Oh, David, you poor boy, you've been through some tough times, haven't you? Goodness gracious. Oh, um, hey! Would you like a new credit card with us now that you're making money again and all your debt is gone? Pretty please, with sugar on top? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze?!"<br />
My answer over these last several months, today, tomorrow, and until the day I lie in a pine coffin is, "hit the road, Jack, and don't come back no mo', no mo', no mo'."Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16999778.post-29765597647134682322011-02-03T10:55:00.000-05:002011-02-03T10:55:20.370-05:00Excellent ARI column on Fox News web siteARI's Alex Epstein's column on "<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/02/02/businessmen-say-happy-birthday-ayn-rand/">Why Businessmen Should Say Happy Birthday to Ayn Rand</a>" is on the Fox News web site to celebrate Rand's birthday.<br />
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It's a well-written piece explaining the morality of capitalism, so that businessmen can understand the concept and no longer feel guilty about their profound right to make profits.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01865360850631885272noreply@blogger.com0