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Short Stack #25

Maple Syrup on Pancakes[ Could be some duplicates in here. I’m sorting through an archive of old stuff.  ]

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Yesterday, hackers uncovered a stash of nude pictures of a prominent American political figure. After viewing them, they quietly apologized to Dick Cheney and returned the photos with detailed advice on how to beef up his firewall.

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One day we will be able to upload human consciousness to computers, and achieve virtual immortality. Well, when I say “we,” I mean rich people, corporate CEOs and elected officials. Not you. You get to die. Loser.

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I don’t get why those Nice Christians decided Harry Potter was satanic, but they completely missed Mary Poppins. She was a witch, after all. When she wasn’t entertaining the kids, she probably cavorted naked with demons.

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If Mary Poppins married Poppin Fresh … It’s a damned shame, but she’d be Mary Fresh.

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Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” would be a lot less noteworthy if he’d gone with his first choice of title — “The Yawn.”

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If Kryptonians were giant carnivorous insects, we’d probably feel a lot different about Superman.

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Economy cars should come in the civilian version and the military version. Because I would totally buy a military-grade Smart Car. Vroom, vroom! Pew-pew-pew!

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I think it would be fun to see a TV show called “History’s Assholes.” Dear History Channel …

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If you’re not willing to try Brain Piercing, you’re not hard core.

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Flasher Philosophy: “I’ll show you mine if … Aw, screw it, I’ll just show you mine.”

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Back when the guillotine was so busy during the French Revolution … do you suppose they washed and disinfected the blade after each use?

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Aw, come on. If I was REALLY living in a Fool’s Paradise, there would be a lot more Batman T-shirts, ice cream, water slides and big funny hats. And giggling. A whole lot more giggling.

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Isn’t it funny how much we breed dogs for cuteness, and how little we breed them for intelligence, health or longevity? You’d almost think we were rotten, insensitive sonsofbitches.

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Another great day when, once again, you didn’t wake up with the police pounding on your door. They’re probably still collecting evidence.

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If we had evolved from deer, we’d all get out of school and work for several weeks in the fall, so the guys could scratch their horns against trees, and get in fights.

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In Hell, every meal is gluten-free pizza topped with tofu and quorn.

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I think a baby raccoon would make a very cool pet. If you had time for it. Otherwise it would be a bundle of destruction and mayhem. Almost like a human child.

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Lego porn movies! What? No, it’s not MY idea. It was some other guy. I swear. I still haven’t seen Lego Batman.

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If I ever write my autobiography, I think the title will be “Human As a Second Language.”

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Civilization right now: It’s sort of like we’ve gone camping and woke up in the middle of a mine field. But for the moment, we can’t help but think about how it’s a beautiful sunny day.

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I’ll bet the phrase “the crack of dawn” has an entirely different meaning in drug culture.

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The Canadian surname “Bieber” is taken from an Indian word that translates loosely as “Wait up, guys! I just stepped in something. Oh, jeez, what IS that? It’s all over my moccasin!”

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The Jupiter landings were faked.

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Hints for Future Living #325: If a time traveler asks you the date, remember: Give him the day, month and year, but also be sure to add “A.D.” Then, just to fuck with him, say “A.D. means ‘Alpha Draconis.’ You knew we Dracs took over and killed off all the humans, right?”

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Women on the Klingon homeworld, Qo’noS, are much the same as women on Earth. The one noteworthy difference is, when they fight over shoes at the Bargain Table, there’s a lot more blood.

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Oh. My. God. There are people out there named “Jedidiah Knight.”

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I was about 6 the first time I heard of someone escaping from prison. I remember thinking “How hard is it to keep a human in a cage??” To this day, I’m still sort of boggled by the idea of prison escape. I mean, prison guards have ONE job, and this entire ultra-high-security facility to help them, and they still manage to somehow fuck it up.

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In Heaven, there is a restaurant called “All Your Favorite Foods Ever.” But there’ s a 2 billion year wait.

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A solar eclipse is just a really big animated Venn Diagram. Jeez, I wish you people would just GET OVER IT.

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Wait … Casper, Wyoming doesn’t offer ghost tours?

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When you travel to the Evil Mirror Universe and discover the “you” over there is a truly good human being, it really makes you think.

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Things to say to White People to prove you’re not a bigot:  I love White People’s art! My friend’s grandfather taught me some of your medicine secrets, and now I’m an honorary White Man. I saw that movie where they used White Language in WWII. That was so cool. Were any of your people in that war? Does anybody in your family still speak White?

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I’m imagining a scenario where I’m walking on the street and I see two people approaching with automatic weapons hanging from their shoulders. I quickly realize they’re pro-gun advocates with their rights on full display. With a big cheesy grin, I raise both arms in a triumphant gesture and shout “Second Amendment, meet First Amendment!” as I shoot them the bird from both hands. Would I live?

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I wonder how long it will be until all the mom-and-pop tattoo shops are overtaken by a corporate chain using digitized art and computer-controlled needles? I’m picturing a little side-shop in Wal-Mart, between the nail parlor and the eyeglass place. Five years, tops.

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Children are creepy! They look ALMOST like humans, but they’re small, and they have those big heads.

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I wonder if racehorses feel all smug about how fast they are, and then one day ride in a horse trailer on the highway and look out the window and go “Well, shit.”

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According to TV westerns and action-adventure movies, there is a place on the human chest, somewhere in the vicinity of either shoulder, where a bullet can go through you and you can walk around and talk and even make jokes after. The entrance and exit holes collectively are known as a “flesh wound,” and can be patched with a simple field dressing which, in a pinch, you yourself can hold in place. There are no bones, vital organs, arteries, muscles or major nerves that are seriously injured in such a shooting, and later you have full physical function and live to have other exciting adventures. I think this is probably true. It’s on TV, after all.

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I got a tentative offer from someone who wants to GIVE me a hot air balloon. But it’s still up in the air.

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I hope you atheists weren’t getting all lovey-dovey on Feb. 15. That was SAINT Valentine’s Day, you know, and that makes it a Christian holiday. This was not your day to celebrate. Drop the candy hearts and back away.

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Gift idea for your arachnophobe friends: The Big Pop-Up Fun Book of Giant Venomous Spiders.

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I just hope the food replicators on the Enterprise aren’t hooked up to human waste disintegrators.

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Idea Book: Walking Dead Laser Tag. You field 20 or so zombie players, and they pursue you through 100 acres of hilly, wooded ground, or maybe an abandoned factory. If they touch you, you’re out, and the only way you can take THEM out is with a really precise head shot. The Master Class version that takes place on the Koch Brothers’ estate uses homeless people and real bullets.

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A tattoo is a lot like a baby. Nobody will admit having one is anything but endless joy. Not because they ARE endless joy, but because once you get one, you pretty much have to love it. You can’t take it back. Besides which, nobody will tell you, “Damn, that’s an ugly baby there. You must feel just awful about it.”

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It would be funny if every clown you ever saw in your life was actually in the Witness Protection program. If one of the secrets of Witness Protection was that there was only one profession available — birthday clown. You turn evidence on your mafia boss, and next thing you know, you’re living in Alamogordo, New Mexico, honking a horn and throwing confetti at 5-year-olds. Now you know why there are so many sad clowns.

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But really, how did that jolly swagman get an entire jumbuck in his tucker bag? I say those Australians have to stop relying on faith and admit it never happened.

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Man, the lesbians in Netherlands must just get SICK of the jokes.

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I knew Plato back when he was doing great MONOlogues.

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Lesser-Known Facts #314: If you warm up a penguin to regular room temperature, they explode violently. This is actually how the Tierra del Fuegans held off the Japanese during WWII.

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Sorry, Donald, “But I’m a duck!” just doesn’t cut it. You came here for the benefits of civilization, you wear the goddam pants.

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Yeah, they set off explosives in the Twin Towers. Because just having a jet full of fuel crash into a building is iffy.

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I suppose the main reason I think horses are just about the most visually appealing animal on earth is that I grew up with them. But I still have a hard time imagining that anyone thinks warthogs are beautiful, or hyenas, compared to horses. I suspect squidlike aliens would come to earth and see horses for the first time and go “Ooooh. Those are NICE! Glodnax, take a picture of me with the hor-seez! I want to show Bremzorf when we get back.”

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I think there should be Screen Actors GUILT Awards, where actors self-nominate for various films they’ve been in. For instance, George Clooney might say “I really just feel terrible for doing Batman & Robin. It was totally ludicrous, and I think it shames the entire genre.”

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They taper to a point at the front end. That’s why they’re called “tapirs.”

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If a guy named Bob Smith marries a woman named Becky Smith, how can he be sure she takes his last name? I mean, what if she’s only halfway committed to the marriage, and keeps her own name? I’ll bet the rest of you never even think about this stuff. But somebody has to. For the sake of Bob.

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It would be weird to be a herald. You’d go everywhere with this guy and anytime he was about to walk into an office or store or something, you’d jump out in front of him and yell “Here comes Bob! Bob is about to enter the room! Look everybody, it’s Bob!”

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So it’s Cardinals that choose each new pope, huh? I mean, I knew they were PRETTY birds, but I had no idea they were so smart!

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In other news, Eeyore is now taking anti-depressants, and has been seen dancing and flying kites. He’s also turned out to be quite the jokester among the stuffed animal set, and his braying “Haw! Haw! Haw!” is now frequently heard echoing through the Hundred Acre Wood.

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Wow. There was an advertisement on TV for a show that seemed to be about a sport involving men hitting each other. Who would have thought there would be a sport form of people hitting each other? I wonder what they call it? Maybe it’s just Men Hitting Each Other.

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Few children today are aware there was a much earlier version of Transformers. But you had to climb up an electric company tower to play with them. (Usually there was just that one kid, then nobody tried it again for a few years.)

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I wanted to try the Paleo Diet, but the book I mistakenly picked up was the Palin Diet. Now I feel like going to a pizza place and getting into a brawl.

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If we ever do get World Peace, all those poor beauty contestants will have nothing to wish for.

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Space People, I’m ready to go now. Come get me.

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“Histrionic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people act in a very emotional and dramatic way that draws attention to themselves.” OH MY GOD, WHY WOULD ANYBODY EVEN SAY SUCH A THING!!? IT’S LIKE THEY’RE TARGETING ME!!!!! NOW I FEEL LIKE KILLING MYSELF!!!

I’ve known a few of them.

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To those of us in the US who hear our British friends using the term “Boxing Day” to refer to the day after Christmas: Boxing Day is the traditional event where the entire nation of Great Britain dons boxing gloves and vents the year’s frustrations with their fellow citizens by freely pummeling each other at bus stops, coffee shops, offices and even churches. Queen Elizabeth herself got in some good licks last year on members of Parliament and, it is suspected, the Royal Family. Prince Philip and Prince Charles both showed up at a post-Christmas dinner with split lips and matching shiners, while Her Highness wore a demure, self-satisfied smile.

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Boy, wings were a good idea, weren’t they? Birds have them, insects have them, mammals have them, fish have them, even trees have them (to help seeds spread). There are even reptiles and amphibians with airfoils.

There’s a lesson there somewhere. Probably a physics lesson.

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When Godzillah stomps down the pedestrian-filled streets of Tokyo, it probably feels like walking on bubble wrap.

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I heard Mexico is so angry at Obama for normalizing relations with Cuba that they’re taking back Taco Bell.

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Places I have been: 1) Trantor 2) Middle Earth 3) Krypton 4) Dragon’s Egg 5) The On-Off Star 6) Pandora 7) Arrakis 8) Zarathustra (Little Fuzzy’s world) 9) Jupiter 10) Vulcan 11) Tralfamadore 12) Pern 13) Oz 14) Planet Bob 15) Narnia 16) Riverworld 17) Valdemar 18) Discworld (!) 19) Landover 20) Barsoom 21) Ringworld 22) The Smoke Ring 23) The Fleet of Worlds 24) Xanth 25) Phaze/Proton

Earth has some cool things to recommend it, but there’s no way I’m staying here permanently.

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Did you know novelists just MAKE SHIT UP?? I don’t know how anybody could think that was a good thing. And it’s like they DON’T EVEN CARE that people know.

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It’s not shepherd’s pie if you don’t use real German shepherds.

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At the Open Carry convention, “He walked out on stage and blew everyone away” has a slightly different meaning.

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Lamb chops, ugh! I had lamb ONCE and my stomach said Never Again. In Texas where I grew up, I think you can actually get arrested for eating sheep. The only way we Texans eat sheep is to let the coyotes eat them first, and then eat the coyotes, skin on, in a sauce made out of grizzly testicles cooked with a flamethrower.

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It’s not RE-venge if you only do it the one time.

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I still can’t decide between being a cowboy and a karate expert. I mean, on the one hand, you get to go Yee-HAA! But on the other, you can go Hee-YAA!

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Interesting. I just looked up the word “denigrate.” Turns out the word does actually spring from a Latin root that means “to blacken.” Now all us liberals can cringe and look around every time we use it.

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Technically, nobody gets hurt when you flip the bird at a blind person. But it’s still probably a bad idea.

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There’s a new diet out that’s so easy, it will take the fat away whether you like it or not. In fact, you will have to fight to stay heavy. You will have to run and hide so the diet doesn’t find you and suck you down to nothing. You will have to take out a restraining order and hire a bodyguard to keep this diet from taking off the weight. If you even THINK about using this diet, the neighbors three houses over will look like death camp survivors. This diet is so effective it will suck the donuts out of a cop’s mouth as you drive past on the freeway. This diet is so powerful that when they tested it on a hippo, he ended up looking like a thoroughbred race horse. Okay, I’m stopping now. But you should probably send me $9.95 anyway.

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Antikythera. I say it was the targeting mechanism for a time-travel device. And somebody didn’t make it home.

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I’m surprised piercing fans haven’t explored the body mod possibilities of the nail gun. It’s practically a no-brainer.

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I don’t know why Thor’s hammer is made of Uru rather than thorium. I mean, come on.

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Just remember you’re not the only one who’s survived a severe accident and gone on to do stuff. I broke my neck when I was 15 and I’ve never looked back!

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If you ever find yourself in a horror movie: 1) Don’t back through any doorways. 2) If the monster is out there somewhere, don’t pause to make out. 3) Next time, get a better flashlight. 4) After the monster is dead, don’t turn your back on it.

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If iPhones exist, why is there still Radio Shack?

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On Coyote Planet, when you go to the fast food drive-thru, they release a rabbit into the driveway as you pull up. You run over it, then get out and eat it off the pavement. Extra napkins, please.

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When I was a kid, I was so sensitive to bullying I didn’t like referring to those specialty pliers as “needle-nose.”

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If the poles shift, I say we cut off all aid to Poland. We shouldn’t encourage all this moving around.

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When they know nobody can overhear them, the superheroes who can fly make fun of those who can’t.

FLIGHT-SHAMING. It’s the ugly little secret of the superhero business.

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Idea Book: Novel: “Worst Contact”

A previously undiscovered tribe is located by aerial surveys of the Amazon. Anthropologists make plans to carefully contact them. But a Madison Avenue PR firm decides to jump in and contact them first, taking bids from companies for which products to introduce them to, and to film their reactions to.

The first two products are Milky Way candy bars and Budweiser beer. The civilized world is captivated by the Amazonians’ filmed astonishment at the irresistibly sweet taste of the candy, and the hilarious effects of the beer. Sales skyrocket, and more companies vie for product placement opportunities. The Amazonians are quickly introduced to such foods as Ranch Style Beans, Armour Vienna Sausage, to Wrigley’s Hubba Bubba bubble gum, and even Marlboro cigarettes.

Soon a reality TV show features an extended Amazonian family, showing family members experimenting with clothes, shoes, modern firearms, fast food. Christian missionaries arrive from the Vatican, and episodes feature the reaction of the Stone Age primitives to the revelations of God and Heaven. iPhones are handed out, and the men of the tribe are directed to first person shooter games, and YouTube videos of twerking. A staffer on the film crew begins distributing heroin to tribal friends, and they begin sneaking off to shoot up, all captured on hidden cameras.

But I think it would all have a happy ending. Probably include a lesson on the Indomitable Spirit of Man or some shit like that.

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Dick Cheney has had five heart attacks and a heart transplant. The way I figure it, he has one Horcrux left, and then he becomes mortal.

Anyone in his neighborhood, look for a large snake that always seems to be close to him.

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If a product is “tainted,” does that mean it has actually come into contact with someone’s taint?

Because I can see why you wouldn’t want something like that.

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Idea Book: Create a puppeteering rig that fits on toddlers, so that you’d have the control yoke in hand above, and the suspended toddler, below, would move as you directed.You could stage entire Shakespearean plays with baby-puppets. Well, sure it’s horrible —to you Earthlings. But galactically, this would be hilarious.

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New Horizons fly-by of Pluto. Great, now the Plutonians know where we are.

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Things Spider-Man hates to hear: “Hey, Spidey! I saw you on the Web the other day! Ha! Get it? I saw you on the WEB! Hahahahaha!!”

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Birthday tip for those of you with werewolf friends: Don’t buy them a squeaky bone chew toy. Apparently that’s insulting or something.

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Anyone going to be executed should be given a massive dose of hallucinogens an hour or so before. Because if you’re going to die, you might as well do it defending the gentle residents of the planet Zeenot from the Tark4eaan bloodmonkeys.

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Think about it: If we ever worked out direct brain-to-brain communication, we could have books written by and for babies who can’t talk yet. I think “Mommy’s Ta-tas” would be a best seller. There’s even some crossover potential in the older male demographic.

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I wonder how the Sound Technicians feel when you really do drop the mike.

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Beta Culture: Legacy

Beta-Culture-JPG[I’m afraid I’m not going to explain this very well. I have the idea in my head in a way that makes sense to me, but this post runs long because I’m having a problem getting the concept into words. I’m hoping readers can help me refine the idea into some simpler form that will be more easily understandable. Collaborative comments are welcome!]

As I think I’ve said here in the past, I believe atheism is, in some ways, rather fragile. Give us one good civilization-wide scare and I fear we’d jettison it like a broken anchor, leaping for the illusion of safety with churches and fascistic leaders. (No, it wouldn’t be you and I giving in and joining up. But if a majority of others did so, and saw atheism as a danger to their safety, you can bet we’d be back in the shadows, keeping our mouths safely shut, pretty much instantly.)

This is the main reason I continue to think we need a little something more than atheism. We need a durable permanent vehicle for atheism, a cultural container within which it can flourish.

But that cultural container can’t contain JUST atheism. In order to be a complete self-perpetuating culture, it has to have a great deal more — traditions and ceremonies, holidays and ways of living that go beyond the mere rejection of religion.

Speaking of which …

Say there’s this thing called Legacy.

And say we define it as something like “cultural wisdom that helps you live better.”

The “live better” part might include things like coexisting more comfortably with others, being better within yourself FOR yourself — stronger, more productive, more confident, more loving — and, oh, living on the planet without consuming too much of it.

The “wisdom” part implies useful lessons that can only be acquired as a result of 1) being passed down by a thoughtful elder, or 2) you yourself living a long time, having a great variety of learning experiences — including lots of painful mistakes — and thinking deeply about life and how to live it.

The “cultural” part includes that material maintained and handed on to you by your People.

So:

Your father teaches you how to treat a woman in order to create and maintain a strong, lasting relationship. That would be Legacy.

A rap song teaches you to Fuck Dat Bitch. That would not.

You learn in school how to read and do geometry, how to have a scientific mindset and conduct a debate. That would be Legacy.

You learn on TV to buy lottery tickets and to “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin.” That would not.

You develop an intense love of ham radio with the help of a retired music teacher who lives in your neighborhood. That would probably be Legacy.

You develop immense expertise in Pokemon from watching episodes on YouTube. That would not.

Hopefully you have Legacy in your own family. If your grandfather tells you “My grandaddy told me this when I was a boy. ‘Horace, you stick up for family. Don’t matter what they done, you stick up for ’em.’ ” you have a Legacy lesson four generations deep about family solidarity.

On a larger scale, Culture, when you think about it, is all about Legacy. Most of the time it operates without conscious direction, but it is nevertheless a body of deliberately-taught lessons about The Way Our People Do Things. You might learn to build a waterproof hut out of banana leaves or birch bark, the safe way to gather and shuck oysters, or how to bargain sharply so as not to be cheated.

Not all Legacy is good. People might intend for it to be good, they might think it’s good, but there are cultural practices handed down that are useless or even harmful. I’d consider circumcision to be a harmful Legacy. Ditto for the mandatory wearing of burkhas.

Culture and Religion and Legacy, Oh My

Religions are all about Legacy. As I think I’ve also said here in the past, religion itself is a subset of culture, which means the larger container is culture, and religion exists within it. Thus all religious acts and rituals are culture, but there is quite a lot of culture which is not religion.

There is even a great deal of what we consider religion which is actually culture. For instance, Christmas, which is technically a religious celebration, is in large part merely cultural. For most Americans, I would wager, the religious part of Christmas takes a distant second place to the secular, cultural part of it. We might pray with the family at dinner, go to church on Christmas morning, delight in each year’s Nativity, but mostly we enjoy the gift-giving, the music, the decorating and shopping. And of course all of this gets passed on as Legacy.

How important is Legacy? I’d consider it the true core of human civilization. Legacy is the civilized part of civilization. If you’ve ever read the book (or seen the movie) Lord of the Flies by William Golding — in which a group of British boys stranded on an island without adults descend into savagery — you’ve witnessed a scenario of people deprived of Legacy. Lacking any better ideas on how to survive as a group, they form a primitive, violent, superstitious tribe, and the results are not very pretty.

Atheism and Legacy

I bring up Legacy mainly to relate it to atheism.

Atheism has almost no Legacy. It’s been passed on either in a somewhat surreptitious fashion, or learned from books. A few of us figure it out completely on our own, which becomes Legacy only when and if we pass it on.

Think of the civilization around us. It contains ways to live and die and everything in between — celebrations, holidays, cultural costumes, foods to eat and not eat, the details of how to pursue and acquire a mate, a great deal more.

Civilization is a complex web of all sorts of Legacy. Historically, the people within each culture inherited the Legacy of their own culture and very little else, but today, in the mixed bag which is western overculture, we’re now exposed to a big Chinese menu of cultures, and can take from one or the other at will. But we’re also exposed to a great deal of other stuff which is neither culture nor Legacy, but is instead … marketing. The tidal wave of sales pitches and suasions, propaganda and lies washing over us daily leaves in the dust whatever lessons we might learn from our parents or teachers.

(For some of us, say city kids raised in single-parent-with-two-jobs homes and immersed in street culture, life can be almost devoid of Legacy. One’s entire view of life and how to live it could be shaped by advertising, song lyrics and whatever you picked up on the street today. There are young people in New York City — I’m pretty sure I’ve met some of them — who really believe beating and robbing elderly people, as long as you can get away with it, is a GOOD thing.)

Again, atheism by itself has almost no Legacy. We atheists have no holidays, no ceremonies, no meeting houses, no characteristic clothing or foods, no ways of dating and marrying and family-making. We have no atheist-inspired life GUIDANCE.

And, mostly — immersed in the near-infinity of western overculture — we don’t yet have any feeling that we might need something like that. After all, we seem fully able to conduct our lives, right? We live, we go to school, we get jobs, we marry, have kids, go on vacations, all the stuff of day-to-day life. And we still get to be atheists.

Atheism vs Predators

But the fact is, we live inside cultural conditions just about 100 percent borrowed from others. Some of it is religious, and we make an effort to avoid that part, but a great deal of it is irrational without being religious, and goes unnoticed. As I said, when I talk about “western overculture” I’m also talking about all that non-Legacy stuff, the churning mix of in-the-moment messages and ideas that come from mass media and business marketing.

Who among us doesn’t know “A Diamond is Forever”? Picture generations of young men and women absorbing that assertion, spending thousands of dollars on little clear rocks as a way to express true love. Considering that we defined Legacy as “cultural wisdom that helps you live better,” what is there in “A Diamond is Forever” that does that? Nothing. “A Diamond is Forever” is, in fact, not only non-rational but almost purely predatory. Rather than adding to the lives of those who accept it, it takes from them. It’s a statement deliberately engineered to benefit diamond merchants, a way to suck money out of hopeful youngsters seeking a way to express love and permanency, youngsters who lack Legacy to assist them and who are thus helpless against the clever marketing.

The difference between Legacy and marketing is that the one is a body of ideas worked out over centuries as a way to (mostly) help people, while the goal of marketing is to USE people. If I work for Del Monte and I put an ad on TV about green beans, I’m not there to tell you to eat green beans, any green beans, for the sake of your health. I’m there to tell you to eat DEL MONTE green beans. I might accompany the message with a rhyming jingle to help it stick in your head, or a Mr. Whipple-like character to make it fun and memorable, but the amount of help I give you in the living of YOUR life is close to zero. And there is nothing in my advertising that lends itself to passing on to help any future generations you produce.

Whereas a strong home culture might give you tools for protecting yourself from the predatory parts of overculture — picture the Amish or Hasidic Jews as extreme examples — we atheists have nothing like that. Having rebelled against the brainwashing of religion, we feel all safe and free and smart. Yet we are still subject to the great  mass of other non-rational, sometimes even anti-rational, influences that permeate overculture.

How many atheist men buy diamonds for their wives-to-be, and how many atheist women happily accept them? I’ll bet the number is lower than the general population, but still unfortunately high.

And just how free are we on a holiday like Easter? Free to celebrate it in private as we ourselves choose, but given a traditional family event, there many of us are, joining hands around the table for the family prayer. Given a Christian funeral with a minister, goddy eulogy and prayerful observance, few of us are going to raise our voices in rejection.

The point is, we fancy ourselves outside “it” all, but we’re often on the edges of it, and sometimes even in the heart of it. Because we have nothing of our own, other than individual atheism, to protect and guide us.

But we COULD have something of our own.

Yes, some will say atheism speaks to this ONE point — a lack of belief in gods. But the PEOPLE who espouse atheism, the atheists themselves, are free to create any sort of social structure they want. Something distinct from western overculture. Something that self-regenerates. Something that defends and maintains itself even in the face of extreme social pressures. Something that provides a home, a safe place, for both the people and the philosophy. Something — a Legacy — that can be passed on to following generations.

I continue to believe we must.

 

 

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LaVoy Finicum: Folk Hero Patriot, or Suicide By Cop?

Ha — finicumIf you root for neither team, both sets of fans will hate you.

I said some time back I no longer consider myself a liberal, but rather a Rational Centrist. Certainly I’ve managed to piss off an ample number of liberal-trending people with my jaundiced view of modern feminism, and rejection of those liberal-heartstring-plucking outrage stories (Fort Lauderdale hates the homeless!, etc.) and memes constantly projected at us.

But lately I seem to be equally good at pissing off certain conservative-trending people with my views regarding LaVoy Finicum, the “militia” member involved in the wildlife refuge takeover in Oregon.

My response to the picture-meme above:

Yeah, two more miracles and he becomes a saint.

When you arm up and take over a public building, vowing repeatedly to go down shooting, and then almost hit an officer with your vehicle, your “Honest Law-Abiding Citizen” card is voided. After that, any action but peaceful surrender MUST be considered an active threat to officers and bystanders. Sitting under a tarp with a rifle didn’t do his “sane, peaceful citizen” image any good either. To the officers involved, he must have looked loony and dangerous, and I can’t blame them even a little bit for taking him down in that tense situation.

Seems to me the people in that vehicle ALREADY KNEW the cops weren’t aiming to kill them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been out driving around so casually. If you know you’re only going to be arrested, and you deliberately do something that gets you killed — say charging out angrily and reaching into your coat — it’s hard to see that as anything but Suicide By Cop.

Probably every one of the officers involved have families who hoped for their safe return that day. I can’t help but remember that. It will be interesting, in the days to come, to find out who those officers are, and what sort of service histories they have. I’ll bet we’ll see records of cool-headedness and restraint.

It seems to me that trying to make this guy into some sort of patriotic folk hero is not simply a mistake, but an insult to real heroes — many of which serve in “the American Government.”

The police roadblock at which Finicum managed to get himself killed is being characterized in conservative circles as an “ambush.” One of the mildest comments I saw criticized the police with “Diplomacy in resolving conflict, no matter how long it takes, is the wiser course.” I responded:

This WAS diplomacy. If these were heavily-armed black gangstas holed up in a building in NYC, they’d all be dead and the building burned down ON THE FIRST DAY. But even in diplomacy, I don’t expect officers to let themselves get shot.

I dismissed the hero-worship elsewhere with:

The thing about Finicum is that he was ON RECORD that he wouldn’t be taken alive, that he would fight to the death. That he came close to killing an officer with his vehicle adds on. The question isn’t “Did he have his hands up?”, the question is “Did he act in such a way as to make it obvious he was no threat? Did he act to guarantee his safety and the safety of the officers involved?” And the answer is, no, he ratcheted up the danger by failing to surrender instantly and peacefully.

His obituary was interesting, in that it baldly asserts he was “murdered.”

Robert LaVoy Finicum was born on January 27, 1961 in Kanab, UT and was murdered the day before his 55th birthday on January 26, 2016. […] LaVoy loved God, his family, and his country. He believed that the Constitution of the United States was inspired by God and he was willing to, and did, die while defending our freedoms stated within.

The guest book attached is filled with glowing tributes, a LOT of them. (By the way, do NOT go over there and add comments. I realize the thing is public, being on the Internet, but this is not the time or place to set anyone straight.)

They’ve already got the makings of a shrine. I can’t help but imagine a statue in a year or two.

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Warriors Against Tyranny … or Not

__ranchersI’ve thought many times that there should be a Handbook of Sudden Fame and Riches, a little something that would provide needed guidance to child actors, lottery winners and overnight-sensation rock stars. The basic idea of the thing would be “Yeah, this is all great and stuff, but how do you handle it all so as to survive and be sane and successful LATER?”

For child actors, one of the lessons would be “This isn’t forever. Eventually you’ll be less cute, less appealing to that fickle audience, and they’ll stop paying to see you. The number of child actors who transition to successful adult acting careers is vanishingly small, and there’s a good chance you won’t be one of them. Invest the money rather than spend it. Also, get an education. And maybe take some real acting lessons.”

For lottery winners, the lesson might be “Your life is undergoing as drastic a change as if someone you love had died. It looks like a positive change to you, but you’ll later find it’s not all positive. The foundation of your earlier life — your values, your real friends and family, your home and neighborhood — is gone, and you’re going to have to find a way to live with the situation until you build a new one. There are people out there who can spend a million dollars in a month. If you become one of them, the money won’t last. And then you’ll be without your old home and friends and neighbors AND without the money. Feel your way into this gradually; don’t make any drastic changes in the way you spend, the way you treat people, etc.”

For rebels like Ryan and Ammon Bundy, I think the lesson might be “Don’t believe your own press.”

Here’s the latest on the “militia” members captured in Oregon:

Oregon Militants Denied Bail As Prosecutors Use Their Own Words Against Them

During the occupation, the militants frequently used social media to threaten and intimidate. They warned they would stay for years if necessary, and would use their guns if law enforcement tried to arrest them. They said they were willing to fight to the death.

__mugsBut … they didn’t, did they? Only Lavoy Finicum stuck to his guns, dying in the snow next to a remote road. The rest surrendered to law enforcement.

After reviewing the lengthy list of the occupiers’ boasts and threats, Judge Beckerman denied all the men bail, saying they pose a danger to the community, and that she is concerned they would not obey the court’s order to return to Oregon for criminal proceedings.

Ironic. Denied bail because the judge is concerned they won’t obey the court order to return to Oregon for trial. In the act of rebelling against government itself, they’ve convinced a government official they can’t be trusted to cooperate.

When I picture them going back home and forting up again, in a place where they can draw supporters for ANOTHER armed standoff, I have to agree.

As to the remaining four occupiers of the federal wildlife refuge, it’s hard to tell if they’re still believing their press or if they’re hoping for some fairy-godmother-like event that will set them free.

Four remaining occupiers of wildlife refuge remain watchful

We’re not dead yet,” he said, repeating a theme that he and others have expressed through the weeks of the occupation. They’ve said they will only leave if given immunity from prosecution and are ready to die defending their position.

Oh yeah, they’ll TOTALLY get immunity. Probably get a ride home in a chauffeured limo too, with champagne and snacks.

It will be interesting to see what sort of arguments they all make in their defense. I don’t guess an impassioned faux-patriotic stand will play well with the court.

Interesting too to think that this ultimately SILLY sideshow has lost their father Cliven Bundy a handful of pawns and two of his knights, making him freshly vulnerable. You can bet nobody has forgotten him and his grazing fees, or the fact that his defenders were aiming rifles at law enforcement officers not long back.

Now for some long and, for these guys at least, dreary trials. I imagine them seeing themselves all this time in a heroic fantasy as valiant defenders of The Constitution, and now facing the dull, real-world fact that they will never sleep in their own beds again, never again wear their own clothes, never again eat home-cooked food. The drab machinery of government has swallowed them, and they will never come out of it.

They probably swore to each other, over and over in recent weeks, that they were willing to give their lives for their cause. The thing is, as they’re realizing now, they HAVE given their lives for it.

I’ll bet it will come to them many times over the decades ahead, sitting lonely and forgotten in federal prisons while the world outside moves on, that Finicum got off easy.

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I’ll tell you something. There’s a part of me that sees this as part of a larger whole, in which great numbers of people are being lied to and frightened and incited daily — rather than, say, INFORMED — by the likes of Fox News and the Limbaughs and Becks of the world. In that view, these “militants” are children who have believed the fairy tales, but then taken up adult weapons and stood out in Grownup Land brandishing them.

They will now receive grownup punishments, and there can be no doubt that they should. But really, some large part of the responsibility for what they’ve done lies elsewhere.

I only wish there was some legal mechanism for punishing those others.

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Gender Asymmetry, Again

I had a post a bit more than a year ago titled A Third Approach to Gender Equality.

The heart of the post was the assertion that male and female humans have certain distinct characteristics separate from each other, and that taking those differences into account — through an overview that admits of something I call “gender asymmetry” — is necessary to develop approaches to equality.

Men have advantages over women. For instance, men’s naturally greater strength and athletic ability. Which means, yes, women are disadvantaged in relation to men, IN SOME WAYS.

Women have advantages over men. For instance, women’s greater social and emotional intelligence, and the protection afforded by having two X chromosomes (helping women avoid hereditary diseases such as color blindness, hemophilia, etc.). Which means, yes, men are disadvantaged in relation to men, IN SOME WAYS.

Here’s a video from PragerU that makes a point about the powerful visual link to men’s sexuality.

Some significant number of people reading this will instantly leap to think I’m suggesting that women need to dress more modestly in order to avoid being sexually assaulted by horny men (which will be quickly followed by that annoyingly common oh-my-god-why-do-you-hate-women thing).

But in fact, there’s another conclusion possible: That in designing a future culture fair to both female and male humans, the real facts of male and female nature — their real advantages, disadvantages and innate traits, must be taken into account.

If we leap to the victim-feminist conclusions at every point being made, or attempted to be made, we can never have the necessary discussions that will lead to lasting fairness.

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Four Reasons I’m Voting for Hillary Clinton

Hillary SandersSomething interesting happened today and it opened my eyes to something I didn’t know I didn’t know.

I was reading news headlines and came across one that said, basically, that Bernie Sanders was gaining on Hillary and might present a serious challenge. There’s been a steady flow of these stories since Bernie entered the race. For sensationalistic reasons — a tight race is more exciting to the yahoos — the news media insists on framing the competing campaigns as a neck-and-neck run, with the winner wholly up in the air.

But it hasn’t been. Clinton has had a huge advantage over Sanders, and probably still does have a huge advantage. But he IS gaining ground, it seems, and today I had an uncomfortable moment of thinking he might actually beat Clinton.

For that moment, it disturbed me greatly. But then I thought “What am I worrying about? If it’s not Hillary, I’ll be overjoyed to have it be Bernie.” He’s still one of my preferred candidates, about ten thousand times more than anyone in the GOP stable.

But that led me to thinking about why I actually do prefer Hillary.

1) I want a Democratic President.

It’s imperative the presidency stay in Democratic hands until the GOP is over its teabagger insanity. I think Hillary is the best bet for achieving that. The GOP thinks that too — it’s obvious to me some large fraction of the pro-Bernie-anti-Hillary rhetoric comes with conservative backing. The GOP thinks Bernie is beatable — What? A SOCIALIST president?? — but they are shit-scared of Hillary.

2) I want the Hate Machine to lose.

There have been near-ceaseless attacks against Hillary Clinton since 1992 — 24 years! Fox News seamlessly picked up the hate at their inception in 1996, but the GOP started Hillary bashing even before Bill Clinton was elected. Here was this successful career woman, relatively unknown to national politics, who became the target of a flowing river of slime that continues to this day.

I have to imagine some large part of it is purely sexist. Conservatives don’t like women in positions of power.  When those women simply keep on with what they’re doing, handily ignoring the GOP hatefest, it sends conservatives into spitting rage. I love to think of them conducting this hate campaign for decades, and losing anyway.

3) Hillary is not only qualified, she’ll make a great president. Not only does she possess an admirable personal and professional history, her current candidacy is nicely encapsulated by a non-fan, Dan Holliday:

  • Experience.  However you slice it and dice it, her 20-ish years as first lady (to a pretty spectacular Governor cum President), 8 years in the US Senate and 4 years as Secretary of State are nothing to turn your nose up at when it comes to exposure to our political system, how it works, how to make it work and implement its power around the globe.
  • Specifically, her time as Secretary of State, demonstrates her presidential behavior. Beyond her combativeness in addressing the Congress over the Benghazi affair, she had a reputation for stately behavior.  As my very conservative friend at State told me:  nobody fucked with Clinton and she never let anybody in Congress push her around; when she went to the Hill, she always came back with everything she asked for — they denied her nothing because she was a stateswoman, a savvy politician and knew how to sell herself and the department. He had a very good respect for her as SecStat despite hating her political positions because she basically carried the Obama Admin’s foreign policy on her shoulders and ran circles around anybody doubting she couldn’t hold her own.
  • Less specifically, her time in the Senate, while not revolutionary in terms of legislation she championed and committees she headed, was nevertheless 8 years in the most powerful chamber of Congress.  She acted with grace and intelligence while in that body.
  • She was a highly regarded attorney working for a very powerful firm. She was known for her thoroughness and intelligence.  This career gave her a foundation for understanding American law.
  • Personal abilities: Intelligence, Drive, Character.  An interesting anecdote communicated to me was in how she rarely needed State Department briefs on the internal details when visiting a country.  A passionate student, she retained information from one visit to the next and typically knew the political details long before arriving.  She got on very well with foreign leaders and worked tirelessly around the world building and rebuilding our relationships.  She saw amazing results in places like Myanmar and in our now improved relationships with our key European leaders.

4) I want a woman president. Not only do I want the world to see Americans electing their first female president, I want to see a woman in the office because … well, because it’s time. Isn’t it? We’ve had an unbroken string of 44 male presidents, some of them unqualified dullards (coughGeorgeWBushcough). Surely there are female candidates fully qualified to hold the office? Yes, there are. Hillary Clinton is one of them.

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Annoying Thoughts on the Verge of Christmas

The world around us – through holiday stories, songs, animated movies, TV shows, sweet little homilies delivered to us daily in every medium — teaches us about automatic happy endings, happily-ever-afters, free gifts delivered for the price of being “good,” all sorts of magical happy inevitabilities, all of which will come to us as we relax and live our lives.

But it never teaches us those things AREN’T automatically true. We’re left to figure out on our own that there’s no Santa, no Care Bears, no Tooth Fairy.

So we’re ACTIVELY programmed to believe in magic and happy accidents, but at no point ACTIVELY taught to stop believing in it. With our untrained young minds, we have to muddle through that lesson on our own.

The result being that many of us never really figure it out. Sure, we stop believing in the actual existence of Santa, but few of us can resist continuing to believe “something good will happen if I just think happy thoughts and Be Good.” If we all just love, and smile, and treat each other with compassion and understanding.

I suspect the reason immigrants excel in America is not specifically because they’re willing to work hard and save money and expect their kids to do well in school. They do well because they come out of a different culture. They don’t believe, as we do — they were never taught, as we are — that good things automatically happen. They don’t have our cultural tsunami of friendly talking teddy bears and magical wishes. They know the truth – that success of any sort comes only with unrelenting, hard-ass work.

And they’re HAPPY to do that work, because it DOES bring success. They can see it working around them and, unblinded by messages that say you don’t have to try very hard, you just have to wish and believe, they work, and think, and plan, and never stop.

I’ve wondered many times if anything good really came out of the 60s, and the only thing I can think of is that all that “Give Peace A Chance” business MIGHT have had something to do with stopping the Vietnam War. But following that … nothing. No peace. No better vision of the future. No new direction. A legacy of drug use, sexually transmitted diseases, and the eventual social idiocy of tattooing, piercing and sagging pants.

(Yes, some good music came out of that era’s musical experimentation. But there was also a HUGE amount of musical garbage, and a great deal of sloppy, crappy, talentless art, both of which continue to this day.)

(Another MIGHT be: The environmental movement MIGHT BE related, remotely, to the 60s “revolution.”)

Worse, we ended up with a disdain for older cultural beliefs, such as the value — the necessity! — of education and hard work.

Worse again, the “good things will happen” mindset – which certainly led into both the Vietnam and Iraq wars, both of which disappointed us with failure – made us draw in and indulge in even more fantasy thinking. Hey, we didn’t lose those wars, we WON them. Those were great VICTORIES. We kept the world SAFE. Our brave warriors were triumphant HEROES. We SUPPORT the troops! Anybody who disagrees is a TRAITOR. (And of course George W. Bush was a GREAT LEADER.)

Worse again AGAIN, it made us even more susceptible to mass manipulation, paving the way for the lies of FOX News and company. Hey, if people refuse to see the real world, why not make some money off their fantasies? Don’t stop believing, people! Just tune in and we’ll keep feeding you!

So here we are in the years 2000, facing a great mess of challenges. Such as the fact that there are 7.4 billion humans out there, eating and burning their way through Earth’s remaining wealth. Ocean ecosystems are collapsing. Species are vanishing at an accelerating rate. The very atmosphere is changing for the worse.

And we’re thinking our happy, hopeful, magical thoughts. Something Good will happen, if we just earnestly and fervently WISH and PRAY for it. Frosty the Snowman will appear under that magical top hat, Santa will fly in on his sleigh, and wrapped presents — Labor Saving Robots! Immortality! Artificial Intelligence! Saved Ecosystems! A World Full of Fat, Happy Babies! Infinite Free Energy! — will fall down the chimney and land under the tree.

Yeah.

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The Sly Accusation of Islamophobia

COE SquareI think we’re all making a big mistake in defining “Islamophobia” as “hates Muslims.”

OF COURSE it’s wrong to hate people. But it’s not wrong to have serious reservations about a religion, a philosophy or a culture. It’s not wrong to judge IDEAS, and to find them wanting.

Because there really are inferior cultures and beliefs, cultures that deserve to be hated and stamped out. I grew up in one of them — a racist Southern culture which insisted that skin color should be the decider for acceptability, and which wasn’t above using extreme violence and terroristic threats to make the point.

Islam, in my view, is an inferior culture. For the way it treats its women. For the way it creates a one-way door — you can step into Islam, but you can’t leave it. For the way it brainwashes its people, stifling creativity and innovation. For the way it reacts violently to harmless humor.

Muslims themselves are victims of that culture. Most of them are trapped permanently within it — lacking the freedom to marry whom they want, to wear what they want, to observe or not observe their traditions. Lacking the freedom to LEAVE.
Having reservations about Islam — even hating it — is not the same thing as stomping down on some group of poor, downtrodden people who only want to live and love like everybody else.

And yet we’re being taught, every darned day, that it is. On some level, I’m pretty sure this is deliberate. To the extent that we unquestioningly accept this, I think we’re losing an important argument — allowing our natural compassion to be used against us. In an avid desire not to be seen as haters, we back away from inspecting Islam with open eyes, fairly judging it, and we end up welcoming it in, allowing it to invade our own culture with its lesser ideas and philosophies.

As for myself, I’m actually in favor of accepting — of WELCOMING — the Syrian refugees. Aside from anything else, the United States helped destabilize the Middle East.

But I’m not going to blindly assume that everything they’re bringing over with them is good. If they’re coming here, I expect them to have first allegiance to America, and not to Islam, or to Syria. I expect them to fit in with US, rather than insisting that we have to adapt to THEIR beliefs and traditions, or that they can permanently maintain a separate culture. And yes, I expect them and their children to learn English.

For the rest of us, you wouldn’t buy a horse or a car without the chance to look at it, to judge for yourself whether it was something you wanted to welcome into your life. And you definitely would judge it. Treat Islam — which is not a group of downtrodden, helpless victims but an IDEA, a philosophy, a religion and culture fully equipped to defend itself — with the same clear-eyed honesty.

Finally, it’s not enough to say, as some are, that the extremists in Islam are no different than Christianity’s KKK. When’s the last time the KKK openly rioted and burned and shot people? If the KKK burns down a black church here in the U.S., we have no doubt that the people who do it are criminals and racists who deserve to be caught, prosecuted, and treated harshly. Not one honest Christian would celebrate the burning of a black church. Our extremists are on their own – with no support from moderates.

On the other hand, the Islamic murder of staffers at Charlie Hebdo, the French humor magazine, came in the midst of violent demonstrations all over the Muslim world. People were assaulted and killed, churches and schools were looted and burned, death threats were made. All out in the open – as if the people involved had every right to be doing it – with no white hoods or secrecy in sight. And eventually, a couple of guys walked into the Charlie Hebdo offices and shot 11 people dead. Because of cartoons.

Never let anyone make that comparison. The KKK and Islamic extremists are in no way equivalent. Even if they were, we stopped tolerating the KKK more than 50 years ago. They wear those hoods because even their own neighbors would reject them if they showed their faces.

We should no more tolerate the threats of Islamic extremists than we do violence – or the threat of it – by anybody.

And we should JUDGE Islam for its content, for the acts carried out in its name, and for the effect it has both on the people caught within it and those forced to live with it in the larger world.

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Reason Riders Barbecue

Reason Riders 2Press Release from Reason Riders Chapter President Brian “Bishop” Christian:

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The Reason Riders Atheist Motorcycle Group Chapter 1 in Buckeye, Arizona is holding their first Rally on Sunday, November 15. It’s a BBQ Meet and Greet to introduce the sitting Officers to prospective new members and to honor the group’s special guest The Green Knights MMC Chapter 28 out of Luke AFB.

The Reason Riders will be providing free BBQ hamburgers and hotdogs cooked by “Pit-Master Don” to all in attendance and will be holding a low speed rodeo for riders.

Reason Riders Chapter 1 has been gathering new members and solidifying their place in the motorcycling community in Arizona this past year, and has been gaining real momentum in the Atheist community.  They have joined hundreds of riders in their mission to raise funds for Phoenix Children’s Hospital through the “I Ride 4 PCH” campaign! They also met with many Motorcycle Clubs at Bob’s Biker Blast in Scottsdale AZ. Chapter President “Bishop” made great connections with other groups and clubs and has pledged the Reason Riders’ help in many upcoming holiday events. The upcoming “Birds on Bikes” hosted by the Modified Motorcycle Association (which the Reason Riders are now members) that benefits the less fortunate by supplying a local charity with turkeys and sides for full Thanksgiving meals will be the start-off point for the Holiday season.

Also coming up is the “Frozen Hands and Asses Ride” just following the New Year.

All events will be reflected on the Reason Riders Website at www.reasonriders.com

Anyone wishing to contact the Arizona Chapter please use rrprezaz@gmail.com

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Bishop tells me they have more than 40 RSVPs at this time. Reason Riders is gaining momentum. If you’re up for it, now’s the time to get aboard.

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Paris.

Mona Lisa tearsThere’s a storm of media coverage happening, lots of talking heads talking. I’m waiting for information to accumulate, hoping to get some sense of the big picture.

I do see the assholes are already blaming Obama for … whatever. I’m sure there’ll be plenty more of that tomorrow.

But my initial reaction is … Damn. Just damn.