Tidbits From The Web #94

"To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family tradition, national patriotism, and religious dogmas... The re-interpretation and eventual eradication of the concept of right and wrong which has been the basis of child training, the substitution of intelligent and rational thinking for faith in the certainties of the old people, these are the belated objectives... for charting the changes in human behavior."

--- George Brock Chisholm (1896-1971), head of the World Health Organization, Psychiatry (1946)






VOTE RON PAUL 2012!










Makes you feel kinda small and (in)significant...  (props to Andrew)
Dog digs guitars...
I'm only happy when it rains...
Umbrellas in the skies?
The untold Holocaust...
A hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy...
How long would you last during the Old Testament days?
1.21 gigawatts!
What you don't know can't hurt you...
Focusing on the real pollutants....
Gourmet gaming!
Man on a mission...
Why eat pizza...when you can wear it...
Do your own research...don't be a repeater!
A GPS app for avoiding the ghetto...
Spanning the galaxy...
Lumus...
Yahweh I know you are near...
Fishing under ice...
Google easter eggs...
How to stop obesity?
Dog digs being a ham...
Appreciate the little things in life...
Did you know fruit flies levitate?
That's one hell of a proposal!
Getting to know the Georgia Guidestones...
What is the name of the true GOD?
Turtles high five...
Homo erectus...
The asshole cat...
Astronomy pic of the day...
Clay pot refrigeration...
GOOOOOOOOOAL!
Tacos...in...space!
The Orpheus Tone...



Age of Deceit...




Aquarius...the Age of Evil...

20 Instructions for Life by The Dalai Lama:

1.Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three R’s:
- Respect for self,
- Respect for others and
- Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.

7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and
think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

19. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.

20. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

HSI eAlert

When you buy an apple or a banana or any other piece of fruit, check out that little sticker.

It has a secret to share with you.

Each sticker has a code that reveals this very useful information...

* Conventionally grown produce has a four-digit number on the sticker.

* Organic produce gets a five-digit number that begins with a 9.

* And produce items that are genetically modified also get five digits, but they begin with an 8.

Those stickers can be annoying when they're almost impossible to remove (yes, we're talking to you, stickers on thin-skinned fruit). But that's a small price to pay to avoid GM foods. 

Never Do This with Your Teeth - No Matter How "Safe" They Say It Is

Posted By Dr. Mercola | January 17 2012

Story at-a-glance

• The U.S. FDA has long been the world's number one protector of mercury fillings (amalgams), despite the evidence showing the health hazards of mercury
• Prompted by enormous public pressure and the World Health Organization calling for the phasing-out of amalgam in a new mercury report, the FDA promised to make an announcement about the safety of dental amalgam before the end of 2011. However, six minutes before the end of the last work day of 2011, an FDA spokesperson said that no announcement would be made, and a designated press person stated that no target deadline for such an announcement exists
• The agency also failed to act after an FDA panel of experts issued the recommendation, in December 2010, that the FDA promptly make sure all consumers know amalgam is mainly mercury, and to stop using amalgam in children and pregnant women
• Dental amalgam is far from an essential dental product; it’s interchangeable with many other filling materials that do not have the toxic profile amalgam has. Modern materials like resin composites and glass ionomers have rendered amalgam completely unnecessary for any clinical situation, and entire nations have already stopped using amalgam altogether

By Dr. Mercola

After enormous public pressure from scientists, dentists, health professionals, and consumers, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) promised to make an announcement about dental amalgam by the end of 2011.
Dental amalgam, of course, is composed 50% of the dreadful neurotoxin mercury.
Jeffrey Shuren, director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH, the branch of the FDA responsible for the approval and safety of all medical devises) said at a public hearing in September, in San Francisco, that FDA will make an “announcement” on a new amalgam policy  by the end of 2011. 
When questioned by a reporter at a major newspaper, FDA repeated that it would act in 2011.
As 2011 came to a close, the suspense grew as everyone speculated whether FDA would act or whether it would continue its decades of protecting the profits of pro-mercury dentists instead of protecting the health of American children.
With just six minutes left in the work year, at 4:54 pm on Friday, December 30, FDA conceded that no announcement was forthcoming – not in 2011, and maybe not at all.
In that midnight statement, one FDA press person, one Karen Jackler, said that another FDA press person, Morgan Liscinsky, would answer questions about amalgam.
So when the respected trade publication FDA Webview asked, Liscinsky said:  No announcement.
And no target date for FDA to do anything on amalgam.
Instead, FDA said what it said ten years ago: it will “continue to study the safety of amalgam.”
FDA has broken yet another promise on amalgam. 

Why Won't the FDA Act to Protect You Against Toxic Mercury?

The FDA's history of protecting dental amalgam is a long one.
For the past 32 years, the agency has refused to issue any public warning about its neurotoxic risks, and in 2009, the FDA declared it safe under Class 2 for adults and children over the age of 6 who are not allergic to mercury—despite the overwhelming evidence showing mercury to be highly toxic and easily released in the form of vapor each time you eat, drink, brush your teeth or otherwise stimulate your teeth.
These mercury vapors readily pass through cell membranes, across your blood-brain barrier, and into your central nervous system, where it can cause psychological, neurological, and immunological problems.

Children and fetuses, whose brains are still developing, are clearly most at risk, but anyone can be impacted, and the health risks get greater the longer you have your fillings.
According to Boyd Haley, retired professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky (where he headed the chemistry department), about 80 percent of the mercury vapor released from your fillings collect in your body tissues and can take months or years to eliminate. Needless to say, if your body keeps accumulating more mercury than it can eliminate, after many years of chronic exposure you may end up with quite a bit of accumulated mercury in your body. Studies on cadavers have confirmed that the more amalgam fillings a person has, the more mercury collects in their brain, for example.

World Health Organization Urges Phasing Out of Dental Amalgam

Many hoped that the FDA would reconsider this foolish stance after the World Health Organization called for the phasing-out of amalgam in their 2011 report: Future Use of Materials for Dental Restoration. In May 2011, the Council of Europe also issued a proclamation calling for restrictions and prohibitions of mercury fillings, which are already banned in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Health Canada also stopped endorsing amalgam for use in children, pregnant women, and people with impaired kidney function, all the way back in 1996!
The World Health Organization noted the following three reasons for its new position:

1. Amalgam releases a "significant amount of mercury" into the environment, including the atmosphere, surface water, groundwater, and soil. WHO reports:
   
   "When released from dental amalgam use into the environment through these pathways, mercury is transported globally and deposited. Mercury releases may then enter the human food chain especially via fish consumption."
2. WHO determines that amalgam raises "general health concerns": While the report acknowledges that a few dental trade groups still believe amalgam is safe for all, the WHO report reaches a very different conclusion: "Amalgam has been associated with general health concerns." The report observes:
   
   "According to the Norwegian Dental Biomaterials Adverse Reaction Unit, the majority of cases of side-effects of dental filling materials are linked with dental amalgam."
3. WHO concludes "materials alternative to dental amalgam are available" and cites studies indicating they are superior to amalgam. For example, WHO says "recent data suggest that RBCs [resin-based composites] perform equally well" as amalgam. And compomers have a higher survival rate, says WHO, citing a study finding that 95% of compomers and 92% of amalgams survive after 4 years.
   
   In particular, WHO explains that "Alternative restorative materials of sufficient quality are available for use in the deciduous [baby] dentition of children" – the population whose developing neurological systems are most susceptible to the neurotoxic effects of dental mercury. Perhaps more important than the survival of the filling, WHO asserts that:
   
   "Adhesive resin materials allow for less tooth destruction and, as a result, a longer survival of the tooth itself."

The report also included mention of the known toxic effects of mercury exposure, stating that:

"Mercury is highly toxic and harmful to health. Approximately 80% of inhaled mercury vapor is absorbed in the blood through the lungs, causing damages to lungs, kidneys and the nervous, digestive, respiratory and immune systems. Health effects from excessive mercury exposure include tremors, impaired vision and hearing, paralysis, insomnia, emotional instability, developmental deficits during fetal development, and attention deficit and developmental delays during childhood."

Why Does the FDA Ignore its Own Experts?

In December 2010, in response to the outrage over their 2009 ruling, the FDA asked an advisory panel to examine the latest science on amalgams. The panel recommended that the FDA promptly:

• Make sure that all consumers and all parents know that amalgam is mainly mercury
• Stop amalgam use for children and pregnant women

Still, the agency hesitated… Then, last year Shuren attended a series of town hall meetings around the US, where he heard so much criticism against the agency's amalgam policy that he eventually started saying the agency would act on the petitions to reconsider its position. As recently as November 30, the FDA confirmed to the Chicago Tribune that it did indeed intend to address amalgam in 2011, stating that:

" … in response to concerns about its [2009] ruling, the FDA convened a panel last December to re-examine the issue and expects to make a new announcement by the end of this year."

But, it didn't… According to Charlie Brown, national counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice, and President of the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry:

"At Jeff Shuren's Center for Devices, politics wins. Science loses. Thirteen months ago, FDA's own advisory panel of handpicked scientists told FDA to stop amalgam use for children and pregnant women. But Shuren fails to heed the scientists — even though, since September, he repeatedly announced that he intended to act on amalgam in 2011. Every day that Shuren fails to act, more children are subjected to this mercury product, which — FDA's own rule concedes — can have 'neurotoxic effects' on the 'developing neurological systems' of children and unborn babies."

No One NEEDS Amalgam to Remain Available...

Dental amalgam is far from an essential dental product; it's interchangeable with many other filling materials that do not have the toxic profile amalgam has. Just consider these disturbing facts:

• Amalgam is the MOST EXPENSIVE dental material when you count environmental costs and clean-up costs.
• Amalgam is the number one cause of mercury exposure for consumers, according to the Canadian government and other sources.
• Mercury from dental offices is the largest source of mercury in wastewater. According to an article by Michael Bender (co-founder of the Mercury Policy Project), at least 40 percent of mercury flowing into municipal water treatment plants begins in dentist offices. And those plants are not set up to remove it, so it ends up in your fish.
• Americans and Europeans have more mercury in their mouths than exists in all products combined—more than 1,000 tons.
• Amalgams of the dead pose a risk to the living. Emissions from the combustion of mercury fillings during cremation are a significant contaminator of air, waterways, soil, wildlife and food. Seven to nine metric tons of mercury per year escapes into the atmosphere during cremations, and it is estimated that, left unchecked, crematoria will be the largest single cause of mercury pollution by 2020.

Modern materials like resin composites and glass ionomers have rendered amalgam completely unnecessary for any clinical situation. In fact, the mercury-free alternatives are so advanced that entire nations, such as the Scandinavian countries, have stopped using amalgam altogether.
Already, about half of U.S. dentists are mercury-free and 77 percent of consumers who are told that amalgam contains mercury choose mercury-free alternatives. One of the most popular alternatives to amalgam is resin composite. Resin composites are made of a type of plastic reinforced with powdered glass. It is already common throughout the U.S. and the rest of the developed world, offering notable improvements over amalgam, as it:

• Is environmentally safe: Composite, which contains no mercury, does not pollute the environment. This saves taxpayers from paying the costs of cleaning up dental mercury pollution in our water, air, and land – and the costs of health problems associated with mercury pollution.
• Preserves healthy tooth structure, because, unlike amalgam, it does not require the removal of significant amounts of healthy tooth matter. Over the long term, composite preserves healthy tooth structure and actually strengthens teeth, leading to better oral health and less extensive dental work over the long-term.
• Is long-lasting: While some claim that amalgam fillings last longer than composite fillings, the science reveals this claim to be baseless. The latest studies show that composite not only lasts as long as amalgam, but actually has a higher overall survival rate.

A lesser-known alternative is increasingly making mercury-free dentistry possible even in the rural areas of developing countries. Atraumatic restorative treatment (also called alternative restorative treatment or ART) is a mercury-free restorative technique that has been demonstrated a success in a diverse array of countries around the world, including Tanzania, India, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Turkey, South Africa, Thailand, Canada, and a dozen others. ART relies on adhesive materials for the filling (instead of mercury) and uses only hand instruments to place the filling, making it particularly well-suited for rural areas of developing countries.

How You Can Help Protect Children Everywhere

It's high time for the FDA start acting on the science and get on the bandwagon to protect the health of children and pregnant women across the U.S.
Your voice is needed in order to bring about permanent change in the fight for mercury-free dentistry. The FDA reneged on their stated intent to address dental amalgam by the end of 2011. We now need you to urge the FDA to heed the advice of its own scientists convened in December 2010 and the World Health Organization. To voice your opinion, please contact Dr. Shuren. This time, we think it best if you telephone or fax, and make your message more direct, rather than emailing Dr. Shuren:

Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, Director
Center for Devices, U.S. Food & Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Ave.
WO66-5431, Room 5442
Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002
Phone: 301-796-5900 or 301.796-5000
Fax: 301-847-8149 or 301-847-8109

If you can't get through to Dr. Shuren via phone or fax, please write Anthony Watson, Director of the Division on Devices, anthony.watson@fda.hhs.gov.
Phone calls and faxes are especially important because Dr. Shuren cannot ignore them – keep calling and leaving messages until you get answers! Here are some recommended talking points when you call or write:

• Why is the FDA ignoring its own scientific advisory panel that told the FDA to stop the use of amalgam immediately for children, pregnant women, and hypersensitive adults (as a minimum) over a year ago? There is no excuse for endangering our children with dental mercury.
• Why is the FDA failing to warn every parent that amalgam is mercury, not silver? Every consumer should be told the truth about what's going into their mouths and their children's mouths.
• Why is the FDA so out-of-step with the World Health Organization? In its 2011 report, the World Health Organization calls on health authorities like FDA to take action against amalgam now: "Health authorities can play an active role in advocacy for use of dental materials alternative to amalgam."
  
  It is time for the FDA to act now. An announcement that the FDA's decision will be indefinitely postponed is unacceptable! We have irrefutable scientific evidence about the dangers of mercury amalgams. Your children are being subjected to harm now—they can't wait another year.

It is time for the FDA to get out of the way of progress. Please join Charlie and me in keeping the pressure on them — let's not allow them to manipulate their way into placing dental industry profiteering before of your children's health.
I also urge you to tell your family, friends, and neighbors the truth about dental amalgams, and don't let your dentist talk you into one for yourself or for your child. It's not your dentist's mouth—it's YOUR mouth. And YOUR pocket book—which holds a great deal of buying power. If your dentist insists mercury is safe, you may want to seek a mercury-free dentist.
Last but not least, please consider making a contribution to Consumers for Dental Choice. I strongly believe in their mission and their commitment to the Campaign for Mercury-Free Dentistry. They rely on public donations to complete this important mission. (Consumers for Dental Choice is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to advocating mercury-free dentistry. Contributions are tax-deductible in the U.S.)
Donations can be made online or through the mail:

• Online donations here
• Checks can be mailed to:

Consumers for Dental Choice
316 F St., N.E.,
Suite 210
Washington DC 20002

Also, for timely updates and information, please join Consumers for Dental Choice on Facebook.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

Whiskey and Gunpowder by Jeffrey Tucker January 5, 2012 Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A. Elections and the Illusion of Choice The political season has unleashed its predictable frenzy, much to delight of people who make a living off it. But to what end? There are only two types of politicians who end up holding office, wrote H.L. Mencken: "first, glorified mob-men who genuinely believe what the mob believes, and secondly, shrewd fellows who are willing to make any sacrifice of conviction and self-respect in order to hold their jobs." The about sums it up. The plus side of elections is that sometimes the debates, discussions, candidates and parties raise fundamental questions about what kind of society we want to live in. That's the best we can hope for. But there is a downside to all this hullabaloo: It gives the impression that the mere existence of the electoral process gives "we the people" a fundamental choice about the kind of state we want. This is not true. The politicians we elect are veneers or facades. They are bandits, but they do not constitute what is called the state. This goes for just about every developed state in the world for the last 200 years. The whole election process leads people to believe that the state is in embedded in leaders. Not so. In France, this system ended with the execution of Louis XVI; in Germany, with the ascent of Bismarck; and in Russia, with the Bolshevik Revolution. The personal state died in the U.S. pretty early on, as even Thomas Jefferson discovered when he became president in 1801; he felt himself powerless to do anything. The modern state lives outside the will of a particular leader or administration. Voting and elections only change the temporary managers, but do not touch the core of the problem. The first book that saw through the facade was by the great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer. It is called, appropriately, The State. It was written in 1908, just as the state had begun to entrench itself deeply into the social order -- more so than at any point in the previous thousand years. He described the state as the one class that dominates all others, obeying a different law and thriving off violence against person and property. He sums up this violence in a phrase: the "political means." He contrasts this with the "economic means," the essence of which is voluntary human association and trade. (His book came to have an amazing influence through Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy, the State.) Violence? That sounds like the opposite of elections, doesn't it? Surely, we are exercising our free will in deciding who leads us. The truth is that the people who run for office specialize mostly in what they do best: running and getting elected as an end in itself. The real state is beneath the surface of this public theater. It is the vast army of professional bureaucrats and the mandates they carry out. It is the enforcement apparatus that oversees a gargantuan tax code. It is the Federal Register that is too large to print. It is the central bankers, their staffs, their machinery, their mandate to bail out the state no matter what. It is the hundreds and thousands of agencies that purport to control every aspect of life. No voter ever approved any of this; no election puts any of this at risk. This is because the state itself is not subject to any plebiscite. Imagine if all the elected officials in the entire country and all those who work in their offices decided not to show up to work for an extended period. What would happen? New bills wouldn't pass. The media wouldn't have politics to cover. There would be a periodic scramble over superficial issues like the debt limit. But otherwise, the state would go on just as before. Nothing fundamental would change. Nor is it the case that any of the elected officials have the power to do serious damage to this system. This goes for the president, too. They can often influence the way the state grows, but they can't actually fundamentally threaten the apparatus itself. The longer they are in office, the less personal power they realize that they have. The reason is simple. The system is not structured to permit them to dismantle it, even if they wanted to. They are temporary managers of a ruling class, and the members of this class mostly scoff at these people, treating them like actors on a stage that the class itself owns. The best source to gain a full grasp of the realities of the modern state apparatus is Robert Higgs' amazing work , Against Leviathan. No contemporary author has so fully documented the vast expanse of the modern leviathan in all its permutations. He sees how welfare and warfare are not opposed to each other, but work together to form the main two activities of the modern state. He sees how central banking works to sustain the system. He understands the ways in which the state serves as a cash cow for every form of interest group, and how it works to trick the population into believing that the state is doing good for people when it is really wrecking their lives. Most of all, Higgs gets that the political system that so enraptures the public mind is not owned by us. It is owned and managed by the state itself and for a precise purpose: to perpetuate the idea that we have all chosen the regime that rules us. That is why there is so little difference between the political parties. As Higgs puts it, the U.S. has "two revolving factions of a one-party state farcically masquerade as authentic alternatives, the one specializing in crushing economic freedom and the other concentrating on crushing every other form of freedom." After the election is all over -- in a grueling 10 months! -- and our new managers take their seats, the talking heads will tell us once more: "The system worked." Yes, it did work in exactly the way they want it to work. Nothing much will change. If you don't like the results, there is something wrong with you. If you don't like the rules, taxes, human suffering, wars, inflation, intrusions, confiscations and all the rest of the apparatus, you had better run for office, give to another candidate or otherwise throw yourself into the politics full time! This is not choice. When we go to the grocery, we face a choice of what to buy. Or we can walk out without buying at all, keeping our money instead. Whatever the result, it is really in our hands. The electoral system is different. The store is the state. The products it offers are produced by the state. There is no real choice, only enough shadings of differences to keep us entertained. And we cannot really walk away. There is "no none of the above" and there is no keeping your own money. Every once in a while, someone comes along who offers a fundamental challenge to the whole racket and somehow manages to attract public attention and even use the system to urge the dismantling of the system. This is what has happened with the candidacy of Ron Paul, and it is precisely why the media strains so hard to keep from reporting on him or letting others speak out for his views. The elites are not so concerned that he can be elected. The system is fixed well enough to prevent that outcome. The real threat -- and Dr. Paul understands this better than anyone -- is the fundamental intellectual challenge that he offers. His book Liberty Defined contains enough radicalism and enough intellectual power to destabilize the entire structure that Oppenheimer and Higgs have so beautifully described. The ideas in these books are far more powerful than any ballot box. They expose the illusion of choice for what it is and unmask the violence embedded in the state-dominated society, a system that no one chose but has been imposed on the population through propaganda, wars, payoffs and every manner of trickery. If there were a way to re-channel all the human energy that people put into politics into reading and thinking, the state would have finally meet its match. Whiskey & Gunpowder by Jeffrey Tucker January 11, 2012 Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A. Capitalism or Money in Crisis  When the Financial Times started its series on "Capitalism in Crisis," I winced. Here we go yet again, an attempt to blame private enterprise for what are actually the failures of the state and paper money. And some writers -- but not all -- in the series have done exactly this, while obscuring the differences between free and unfree markets by referring only to the way "the system" has failed. And what is the evidence of this failure? It is everywhere. Household income continues to fall all over the developed world. Unemployment is persistent, and to the extent that it is being fixed, it is by dramatic reductions in living standards, one paycheck at a time. Debt is egregious. Young people face terrible prospects. Complaints about inequality resonate in this environment not because the financial sector has bred such paper wealth, but because life is such a struggle for everyone else. All of this begs the question: What exactly is this "system"? Our times are constantly being compared with the Great Depression, and plenty of people are hoping for an analogous ideological shift toward ever more state control of economic life. J.M. Keynes urged the destruction of the gold standard and the "end of laissez-faire." Strongmen all over the world complied. But back then, it was easier to bamboozle the public into believing that capitalism was the source of the problem and that the new scientific managers of the state machinery would restore prosperity. The Jazz Age was surely a time of free markets, was it not? Not entirely -- there was the important matter of Prohibition as well as the central bank and its capacity to blow bubbles, such as the one that burst in 1929. That message did not stick, because only a handful of people truly understood, and they didn't have the microphone. So the strongmen had a field day. But today? The state machinery is the lumbering leviathan that leaves no part of life untouched. It taxes and regulates all things and uses the central bank as its unlimited credit card to pass out welfare to all classes and maintain a worldwide empire rooted in military violence and executive privilege. It takes chutzpah to claim that this has anything to do with a capitalist crisis. This is a crisis of a system of state-based social and economic management This might explain why the socialist left has yet to gain much traction in the post-2008 environment. Does any living soul doubt the role of the government and its friends in generating the housing and financial bubble? It has been demonstrated 10,000 times, and this information is available to one and all in a world of digital information delivery. We are no longer hunkered down by the radio, waiting on a homily from the high priest in Washington. This guy no longer controls what we are allowed to read and think. Writing as part of the series, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers points out that a recent survey demonstrated that "among the U.S. population as a whole, 50% had a positive opinion of capitalism while 40% did not." I'm not sure what the take-away from that survey really is, however, because it presumes a shared understanding of what "capitalism" really is. Is it a system of privileged protection for the financial elite at the expense of everyone else or it is a synonym for the free economy? These are two very different things. What is especially striking about Summers' article is his admission that Keynesian-style solutions seem pointless in this environment. He writes that, concerning the crisis, "there is no obvious solution at hand." He further points out that some of the largest existing social anxieties are focused on three sectors in particular: education, health care and old-age provision. All three are run or lorded over by the state. He concludes with an honest admission: "It is not so much the most-capitalist parts of the contemporary economy but the least...that are in most need of reinvention." Another contribution to the series comes from Gideon Rachman. He presents a fascinating typology of the four ideological divides of our time. He says that public and intellectual opinion can be divided as follows: 1) right-wing populist, 2) social democrat, 3) Hayekian libertarian and 4) anti-capitalist socialist. This sounds right to me. The right-wing populist camp (alive in the U.S. and Europe) is the warmongering contingent that opposes immigration, wants war on Islam, favors restrictions on civil liberties, obsesses over demographics, clamors for its own kind of income distribution and longs for a strongman to arrive to impose some kind of order. This penchant has a long history in politics, probably dating to the ancient world. The social-democratic tendency is found in the Obama constituency, and it wants more of the same that got us into this mess: Keynesian fiscal management, union privileges, an ever-larger public sector, piecemeal planning and regulation, central bank-backed stimulus, democracy-spreading imperialism or some random combination of this list. This is the party in power here, there and nearly everywhere. The anti-capitalist/socialist element is obvious enough. It consists of a strange coalition of intellectuals and down-and-out young people leading the Occupy movement, together with media idiots always looking for a splashy and simple story to tell. It is a ridiculously simple-minded view of the world that all would be well if we could just take the income from the tiny group at the top and spread it around the population. To them, the market-based social order is little more than a scam to rob and loot the iPhone-carrying workers and peasants and benefit the financial elites. What's most interesting is the emergence of what Rachman calls the Hayekian-libertarian tendency, represented most conspicuously by Ron Paul but actually encompassing a global intellectual and popular movement that sees through the fog of propaganda. Here we find total coherence: both realistic explanations of our current plight and clear answers for what to do about it. Of the four groups, this is the only group that sees the importance of the issue of monetary reform. Keynes saw back in the 1930s that the most-important step to modifying the market system in favor of state management was the destruction of the gold standard. He hated it and dedicated himself to convincing all governments to give it up in favor of paper money. Without this step, there was no hope for Keynesian policies. In a similar way, the libertarians recognize that the most-important step toward restoring economic vitality and a free market is to repair the quality of money. The gold standard would be wonderful but unlikely, since its reinstitution requires enlightened statesman and bankers who do the right thing. A more-viable path toward the restoration of sound money is through total monetary freedom: Let the market reinvent sound money in our time through the free use of any and all monetary instruments. What's critical is that the libertarians have put the money issue on the map. We are living under a form of monetary prohibitionism today, forbidden to use any means of payment other than that maintained by the state. And it is not unlike the alcohol prohibition of old. It redistributes wealth, steers gains to the unscrupulous, strengthens the state and promotes various forms of criminality. In introducing this series, John Plender writes, "F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicled the moral vacuity of Jazz Age capitalism in The Great Gatsby." Nonsense. Fitzgerald nowhere slams capitalism in his great novel. Jay Gatsby made his fortune as a bootlegger, a profession that would not have existed in absence of state Prohibition. Our own age is filled with Gatsbys, people who have done well for themselves by manipulating a failed system. It is the system that must change, not the right to do well. Peace, love and happiness...until next time... “There is no amount of darkness that can extinguish the inner light. The important thing is not to spend our lives trying to control the environment around us. The task is to control the environment within us. ” - Joan Chittester

Tidbits From The Web #93

Insight

THE VALUE OF LAUGHTER


You struggle with money. You struggle without money. You struggle with love. You struggle without love. But it's how you manage. You have to keep laughing, you have to be fun to be with, and you have to live with style--not fancy-schmancy, but in a way which is present and meaningful and has some beauty to it.

Pierce Brosnan



A man isn't poor if he can still laugh.

Raymond Hitchcock

Buh-bye 2011!
100 years in 10 minutes...
Societal illusions...
Keep drinking that kool-aid...
How enlightening...
Big Brother is watching you...
Generation X...you know Y...U lost...
David vs. Monsanto...
Inspiring quotes for the new year...
They want to start WWIII...
Minding your mitochondria...
Hippo's got back...oh and gas too...   (props to Joselito)
Behold the meteor shower...
Mind control, Manchurian Candidates, assassins and spies oh my!
The truth about JFK's assassination...
The secret of the 33rd degree...
Sorry honey no honey for you...
Minding your matter...
With Christmas now over...remember Santa is pagan too...
Speaking of the man...how we should portray him to the kiddies going forward...
Top O' da mornin to ya!
Behold the dragonfish...
The art of forgiveness...
Virtual reality indeed...    (props to Pops)
Which stage of awakening are you in?
Top 10 healing foods...
Ahhh the power of cinnamon...
Now that is one credit card bill!
Top 10 funny church signs...
Church of snow...
Psychiatry...an industry of death...
The coming financial crisis...


Ron Paul 2012...




The all powerful mushroom...



The all powerful RAW MILK!




The good, the bad, and the ugly...TIME TO GROW AND WAKE UP!!!

via

METALLIC ‘SPIDERS’ AND GIANT ‘MOTHS’ ...

by David Icke

Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings of neuron activity confirm that the brain is very active during rapid eye movement and yet this is the period when people are most difficult to wake up. Thus, it is known as ‘paradoxical sleep’ ...

... We know so little about what happens in the deeper levels of sleep and non-conscious states in general, as in ‘sub-conscious’. Yet I contend that these are the realms of awareness that drive ‘conscious’ human perception and behaviour. These ‘non-conscious’ levels are also where humans are ‘accessed’ by the multidimensional Control System and we should remember that so-called ‘sub-conscious’ and ‘non-conscious’ levels are actually conscious – everything is. They are just not conscious to what we call the conscious mind, the one that we are aware of during awakened states...

... We operate across multiple levels of reality and we are conscious in all of them. Do we dream in sleep or do we dream when we are ‘awake’? I would say both. It is just that this dream is more vivid and ‘real’ to us at the level of the perception experience known as the conscious mind. So am I ‘dreaming’ a bird in the sky, or is the bird dreaming me? Do these ‘butterflies’ and ‘moths’ exist in the frequency range of my conscious mind, or are they something that I decode in another dimension of reality which ‘bleed’ through in my sleep-state decoding process into this reality for a few seconds before they fade and dissolve as my conscious mind kicks it and locks fully into ‘awaked’ reality?

I have often experienced a loud ‘bang’ at the end of a dream and then another loud bang a second later as I open my eyes in this reality. I have the feeling of crossing through something when this happens. The human body-mind is a potential interface or gateway between many dimensions of reality and can bring through phenomena from one reality to another. It is also the case that electromagnetic projections from another reality into the realm of the conscious mind can do the same.

Whiskey and Gunpowder
by Jeffrey Tucker
December 19, 2011
Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A.

Do You Love Commerce?

The holiday season is a marvelous opportunity for the commercial sector of life to shine. It makes possible our gift giving, decorations, parties, meals and just about everything else we associate with our traditions. For this reason, it is hard to take seriously the complaints about how the holidays have been commercialized. Without commerce, the season would barely be recognizable to us.

But do we show commerce the love it deserves? Not really. We take it all for granted, as if it were a fixed part of the universe and invulnerable to attack. This is most obvious when you see people who are downright nasty to store clerks and stores. True, it's their right: A feature of the market is that you don't have to trade with anyone in particular, much less be nice to them. Part of the job description of working in a retail environment is to put up with difficult customers. And there are plenty.

Yet it still troubles me when people are so dismissive of how the commercial marketplace is deferential to the masses of consumers and all their quirks. If you don't like something, why not refrain from buying and walk away? Why hurl invective or behave in a rude way?

In a sports store the other day, I heard customers muttering that this glove is too expensive, this tennis racket is too tightly strung, this shoe is too gaudy, this exercise equipment is not all it says and that the store should carry this not that brand of ball. Most people are happy, else the place could not be in business, but other people (again, it is their right) just assume that it is their right to dislike, refuse, cut down, put down and generally dismiss any merchant with a wave of their hand.

Compare with the scene at airport security. This same class of citizens marches in lock step as it approaches security, everyone with a bit of fear, with lots of annoyance, but with a face made as emotionless as possible. Everyone permits himself or herself to be subjected to invasive searches, relents to a full-body X-ray photograph, holds their tongue -- even when subjected to barking orders from the TSA -- and even allows property to be confiscated from personal bags.

No one dares utter a word of protest or even complaint for fear of landing in the slammer. The goal is just to get to the other side of the government barrier, where the mini utopia of airport commerce awaits to serve us in a real way. We can shop for tchotchkes, shoes or bags or have a great lunch -- and that hamburger and beer had better be served up immediately, else we will demand our rights!

We are masters of the universe as customers and as compliant as lambs when acting as citizens. And perhaps that's easy to understand. The government has a gun pointing at our heads. The merchant is trying to persuade us to part with our money in exchange for goods and services. One won't take no for an answer; the other sees no as part of daily life.

Still, we should be more conscious of the difference and appreciate what it means. The class of people who have chosen the path of persuasion over coercion are deserving of our gratitude, even when we don't buy from them. The merchant class is that which makes everything possible in our lives: our homes, our food, our medical care, our clothing, our air conditioning, our computers, our music listening -- absolutely everything that makes daily life tolerable and joyful.

We are too often tempted to think that the gas station, the drugstore, the restaurant, the fast-food franchise and the mommy-owned cupcake bakery are just given parts of the structure of our world. They are not. The decision to open a business is absolutely wrenching because the risk of failure is so high. The future is unknown in either a macroeconomic (will the economy collapse with falling incomes?) or microeconomic sense (maybe no one really wants to buy my stuff). Often, it involves cashing out retirement savings or being in hock to the banks. No matter what the business plan, it is scary.

And it's not only about money. You end up buying lots of capital equipment that is not easily converted to other uses or sold at anywhere near the price you bought it. Custom chairs, tables, signs and other decorations are all a pure waste if the business doesn't work.

Then there is the issue of people. You have to hire employees, and they must get paid long before the point of profitability arrives -- if it ever does. You are suddenly responsible for them.
You call yourself "boss," but you know the truth. You are responsible, but not really the boss. The bosses are the consumers, whose fickle ways can make or break your new livelihood. You are completely at their mercy.

Then there is the issue of marketing. You believe in your product, but you can't do it all yourself. You have to hire others to push, market and sell. It is necessarily true that these people you hire are not as strong in their belief in your good or service as you are. They must be a "salesperson" of fame -- someone hired to be excited and interested in the craft, but who is most often more interested in other things.
Never underestimate the problem of inventory, which requires daily entrepreneurial judgments. If you are selling plywood, for example, and your first month's sales are far beyond your expectations, your battles have just begun. You must make a judgment about next month's inventory. Buy too much and you squander all your profits. Buy too little and you lose customers, who never come back. Your guesses must be close to correct all the time. But you have no crystal ball. And this problem never goes away: Whether you succeed or fail, you never know whether more success or failure is around the corner.

Then there's the competition. Anyone is free to copy and replicate your successes. The more you succeed, the more you inspire imitators who are pleased to do exactly what you do but somehow manage to do it at a lower price. This means that you must constantly stay on your toes and innovate. At the same time, you have to always watch your back. A bad day of sales could mean nothing, or it could mean everything. It could be a bump on the road to glory or the foreshadowing of disaster. There's no way to know for sure.
The forces of competition in a dynamic market are constantly working to take away your future successes. For the currently successful business, the market system amounts to a giant conspiracy to reduce your profits to zero. The only way to fight back is to serve others with ever more attention to excellence. If you think it is easy, try it yourself.

No matter how much your plans work out, there is nothing you can really count on for the future. Any day, any hour, it could all dry up. The consumers could go away. Fashions could change. The tastes of the spending class could shift. You are utterly and completely dependent on the subjective whims of everyone else. No matter how much determination you have, in the end, you just can't control what others think or do. This is as true of the lemonade stand as it is of Amazon.com. No matter how big you get, no amount of money can buy a reliable fortuneteller.

Why does anyone do it? Why does anyone become a merchant or an entrepreneur? The usual rap is that people are in it for the money. But there is no bucket of money to grab. The money may or may not be there. And when it is there, it usually ends up being poured back into the business itself in order to stay on top.
So why do people do it? It has to do with the dream of success, the hope of making a difference, the living out of a vocation, the fulfillment of an ambition to serve and make a difference. This is what drives the entrepreneur.

And how do we repay them? We snarl and sneer, refuse to buy, criticize at the slightest misstep and otherwise refuse to give them credit for anything at all. We call them greedy and dismiss their pleas to buy as craven marketing. The state hectors these people with regulations, taxes, mandates and impositions far greater than the rest of us experience, yet people call ever more.
Often the merchant class is treated now as it was in the ancient world: as lowly and unfit. Yet here's the truth: The merchant class is the class that brings us all the things we love the most. We depend on them, and they depend on us.
People living in the age of the leviathan state often feel powerless to do anything about the state of the world. I would suggest that one way to fight against the takeover of society by the state and its minions is to show a greater appreciation of their opposite. We should show love to the merchant class. We should begin by intellectually appreciating what they do for us. We should go further to actually say to the merchants how highly we regard their vocation.

To be sure, not all merchants are deserving of praise. Some are living off the state, lobbying for state favors, profiting from monopolies, pushing for regulations to hurt their competitors and the like. These things are made possible by the moral hazard that the state embodies; they were not created by the institution of commerce itself.

Managing our affections is one way to fight back against the encroachments of the state. We need to show love to the things and the people doing what is best for society and providing a model for others to follow. The model and ideal of the kind of peaceful and prosperous society we want to live in might be as close as the convenience store right down the street.

The Daily Reckoning Presents

The Idea of America

Jeffrey Tucker There are occasions in American life — and they come too often these days — when you want to scream: “what the heck has happened to this country?!” Everyone encounters events that strike a particular nerve, some egregious violations of the norms for a free country that cut very deeply and personally. We wonder: do we even remember what it means to be free? If not — and I think not — The Idea of America: What It Was and How It Was Lost (hardcover and Kindle), a collection of bracing reminders from our past, as edited by William Bonner and Pierre Lemieux, is the essential book of our time. I’ll just mention two outrages that occur first to me. In the last six months, I came back to the country twice from international travel, once by plane and once by car. The car scene shocked me. The lines were ridiculously long and border control agents, clad in dark glasses and boots and wearing enough weaponry to fight an invading army, run up and down the lines with large dogs. Periodically, US border control would throw open doors of cars and vans and let the dogs run through, while the driver sits there poker faced and trying to stay calm and pretending not to object. When I finally got to the customs window, I was questioned not like a citizen of the country but like a likely terrorist. The agent wanted to know everything about me: home, work, where I had been and why, and whether I will stay somewhere before getting to my destination, family composition, and other matters that just creeped me out. I realized immediately that there was no question he could ask me that I could refuse to answer, and I had to do this politely. That’s power. The second time I entered the country was by plane, and there were two full rescans of bags on the way in, in addition to the passport check, and a long round of questioning. There were no running dogs this time; the passengers were the dogs and we were all on the agents’ leashes. Whatever they ordered us to do, we did, no matter how irrational. We moved here and there in locked step and total silence. One step out of line and you are guaranteed to be yelled at. At one point, an armed agent began to talk loudly and with a sense of ridicule about the clothes I was wearing, and went out of his way to make sure everyone else heard him. I could do nothing but smile as if I were being complimented by a friend. That’s power. Of course these cases are nothing like the reports you hear almost daily about the abuse and outrages from domestic travel, which now routinely requires everyone to submit to digital strip searches. We have come to expect this. We can hardly escape the presence of the police in our lives. I vaguely remember when I was young that I thought of the police as servants of the people. Now their presence strikes fear in the heart, and they are everywhere, always operating under the presumption that they have total power and you and I have absolutely none. You hear slogans about the “land of the free” and we still sing patriotic songs at the ballpark and even at church on Sunday, and these songs are always about our blessed liberty, the battles of our ancestors against tyranny, the special love of liberty that animates our heritage and national self identity. The contrast with reality grows starker by the day. And it isn’t just about our personal liberty and our freedom to move about with a sense that we are exercising our rights. It hits us in the economic realm, where no goods or services change hands that aren’t subject to the total control of the leviathan state. No business is really safe from being bludgeoned by legislatures, regulators, and the tax police, while objecting only makes you more of a target. Few dare say it publicly: America has become a police state. All the signs are in place, among which is the world’s largest prison population. If we are not a police state, one must ask, what are the indicators that will tell us that we’ve crossed the line? What are signs we haven’t yet seen? We can debate that all day about when, precisely, the descent began but there can be no doubt when the slide into the despotic abyss became precipitous. It was after the terrorists hit on 9/11 in 2001. The terrorists wanted to deliver a blow to freedom. Our national leaders swore the terrorists would never win, and then spent the following ten years delivering relentless and massive blows to liberty as we had known it. The decline has been fast but not fast enough for people to be as shocked as they should be. Freedom is a state of being that is difficult to recall once it is gone. We adapt to the new reality, the way people adapt to degenerative diseases, grateful for slight respites from pain and completely despairing of ever feeling healthy and well again. What’s more, all the time we spend obeying, complying, and pretending to be malleable in order to stay out of trouble ends up socializing us and even changing our outlook on life. As in the Orwell novel, we have adjusted to government control as the new normal. The loudspeakers blared that all of this is in the interest of our security and well being. These people who are stripping us, robbing us, humiliating us, impoverishing us are doing it all for our own good. We never fully believe it but the message still affects our outlook. The editors of The Idea of America are urging a serious national self assessment. They argue that freedom is the only theme that fully and truly animates the traditional American spirit. We are not united in religion, race, and creed, but we do have this wonderful history of rebellion against power in favor of human rights and freedom from tyranny. For this reason the book begins with the essential founding documents, which, if taken seriously, make a case for radical freedom not as something granted by government but as something that we possess as a matter of right. The love of liberty is rooted in our Colonial past, and it is thrilling to see Murray Rothbard’s excellent account of the pre- revolutionary past printed here, with followups to make the point by Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine. Lord Acton makes the next appearance with a clarifying essay about the whole point of the American Revolution, which was not independence as such but liberty. He forcefully argues that the right of secession, the right to annul laws, the right to say no to the tyrant, the right to leave the system, constitute great contribution of America to political history. As you read, you wonder where these voices are today, and what would happen to them if they spoke up in modern versions of the same thoughts. These revolutionaries are pushing ideas that the modern regime seeks to bury and even criminalize. The voice of the new country and its voluntaristic themes is provided by Alexis de Tocqueville, along with the writings of James Madison. As Bonner and Lemieux argue in their own contributions, the idea of anarchism, that is, living without a state, has always been just beneath the surface of American ideology. Here they bring it to the surface with an essay by proto-anarchist J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, who said of America: “we have no princes for whom we toil, starve, and bleed: we are the most perfect society now existing in the world.” The anarchist strain continues with marvelous writings by Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Volairine de Cleyre, plus some court decisions reinforcing gun rights. The book ends with another reminder that America is an open society that is welcoming to newcomers. The final choice of Rose Wilder Lane’s “Give Me Liberty” is inspired. The value of this book is dramatically heightened by the additional material from Bonner, whose clear prose and incisive intellect is on display here both in the foreword and the afterword, as well as Lemieux, whose introduction made my blood boil with all his examples of government gone mad in our time. Bonner in particular offers an intriguing possibility that the future of the true America has nothing to do with geography; it exists where the free minds and free hearts exist. The digitization of the world opens up new opportunities for just this. The contrast is stark: what America was meant to be and what it has become. It is hard to take this kind of careful look. Truly honest appraisals of this sort are rare. Adapting, going along, pretending not to notice are all easier strategies to deal with the grim situation we face. But this is not the way America’s founders dealt with their problems. This book might inspire us to think and act more like we should. We should prepare. In the words of Thomas Paine: O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. — Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

Ricky Gervais: Why I'm an Athiest

Why don’t you believe in God? I get that question all the time. I always try to give a sensitive, reasoned answer. This is usually awkward, time consuming and pointless. People who believe in God don’t need proof of his existence, and they certainly don’t want evidence to the contrary. They are happy with their belief. They even say things like “it’s true to me” and “it’s faith.” I still give my logical answer because I feel that not being honest would be patronizing and impolite. It is ironic therefore that “I don’t believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence and from what I’ve heard the very definition is a logical impossibility in this known universe,” comes across as both patronizing and impolite.

[UPDATE: For more from Gervais, go to Does God Exist? Ricky Gervais Takes Your Questions]
Arrogance is another accusation. Which seems particularly unfair. Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -­- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition. If it did, you wouldn’t get a shot of penicillin, you’d pop a leach down your trousers and pray. Whatever you “believe,” this is not as effective as medicine. Again you can say, “It works for me,” but so do placebos. My point being, I’m saying God doesn’t exist. I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist. I know faith exists. I see it all the time. But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.

Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, “Why don’t you believe I can fly?” You’d say, “Why would I?” I’d reply, “Because it’s a matter of faith.” If I then said, “Prove I can’t fly. Prove I can’t fly see, see, you can’t prove it can you?” You’d probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ‘’F—ing fly then you lunatic.”

This, is of course a spirituality issue, religion is a different matter. As an atheist, I see nothing “wrong” in believing in a god. I don’t think there is a god, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me. I would never deny your right to believe in a god. I would just rather you didn’t kill people who believe in a different god, say. Or stone someone to death because your rulebook says their sexuality is immoral. It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are. From what I can gather, pretty much the worst type of person you can be is an atheist. The first four commandments hammer this point home. There is a god, I’m him, no one else is, you’re not as good and don’t forget it. (Don’t murder anyone, doesn’t get a mention till number 6.)

When confronted with anyone who holds my lack of religious faith in such contempt, I say, “It’s the way God made me.”
But what are atheists really being accused of?

The dictionary definition of God is “a supernatural creator and overseer of the universe.” Included in this definition are all deities, goddesses and supernatural beings. Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6,000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural beings, of which 2870 can be considered deities.

So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I’ll say “Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?…” If they say “Just God. I only believe in the one God,” I’ll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don’t believe in 2,870 gods, and they don’t believe in 2,869.

I used to believe in God. The Christian one that is.

I loved Jesus. He was my hero. More than pop stars. More than footballers. More than God. God was by definition omnipotent and perfect. Jesus was a man. He had to work at it. He had temptation but defeated sin. He had integrity and courage. But He was my hero because He was kind. And He was kind to everyone. He didn’t bow to peer pressure or tyranny or cruelty. He didn’t care who you were. He loved you. What a guy. I wanted to be just like Him.

One day when I was about 8 years old, I was drawing the crucifixion as part of my Bible studies homework. I loved art too. And nature. I loved how God made all the animals. They were also perfect. Unconditionally beautiful. It was an amazing world.

I lived in a very poor, working-class estate in an urban sprawl called Reading, about 40 miles west of London. My father was a laborer and my mother was a housewife. I was never ashamed of poverty. It was almost noble. Also, everyone I knew was in the same situation, and I had everything I needed. School was free. My clothes were cheap and always clean and ironed. And mum was always cooking. She was cooking the day I was drawing on the cross.
I was sitting at the kitchen table when my brother came home. He was 11 years older than me, so he would have been 19. He was as smart as anyone I knew, but he was too cheeky. He would answer back and get into trouble. I was a good boy. I went to church and believed in God -– what a relief for a working-class mother. You see, growing up where I did, mums didn’t hope as high as their kids growing up to be doctors; they just hoped their kids didn’t go to jail. So bring them up believing in God and they’ll be good and law abiding. It’s a perfect system. Well, nearly. 75 percent of Americans are God-­‐fearing Christians; 75 percent of prisoners are God-­‐fearing Christians. 10 percent of Americans are atheists; 0.2 percent of prisoners are atheists.

But anyway, there I was happily drawing my hero when my big brother Bob asked, “Why do you believe in God?” Just a simple question. But my mum panicked. “Bob,” she said in a tone that I knew meant, “Shut up.” Why was that a bad thing to ask? If there was a God and my faith was strong it didn’t matter what people said.

Oh…hang on. There is no God. He knows it, and she knows it deep down. It was as simple as that. I started thinking about it and asking more questions, and within an hour, I was an atheist.

Wow. No God. If mum had lied to me about God, had she also lied to me about Santa? Yes, of course, but who cares? The gifts kept coming. And so did the gifts of my new found atheism. The gifts of truth, science, nature. The real beauty of this world. I learned of evolution -– a theory so simple that only England’s greatest genius could have come up with it. Evolution of plants, animals and us –- with imagination, free will, love, humor. I no longer needed a reason for my existence, just a reason to live. And imagination, free will, love, humor, fun, music, sports, beer and pizza are all good enough reasons for living.
But living an honest life -– for that you need the truth. That’s the other thing I learned that day, that the truth, however shocking or uncomfortable, in the end leads to liberation and dignity.

So what does the question “Why don’t you believe in God?” really mean. I think when someone asks that they are really questioning their own belief. In a way they are asking “what makes you so special? “How come you weren’t brainwashed with the rest of us?” “How dare you say I’m a fool and I’m not going to heaven, f— you!” Let’s be honest, if one person believed in God he would be considered pretty strange. But because it’s a very popular view it’s accepted. And why is it such a popular view? That’s obvious. It’s an attractive proposition. Believe in me and live forever. Again if it was just a case of spirituality this would be fine.

“Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that’s exactly what it is -­‐ a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”

You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.


Peace, love, and happiness...until next time...