Personal Freedom

If freedom is freedom of choice, then we are more free in a huge mega super market on the aisle with hundreds of different types of cereal, or tampons, or whatever.

If freedom is freedom of time to our selves, then we are more free in Trader Joes or the corner 7-eleven with one type of toilet paper and one type of cat litter.

Your freedom to swing your arm stops where my nose begins but my freedom to kill you depends on my countries leaders deciding what evil you are up to, and our incompetence at finding any better way of stopping you from doing harm to us and ours. The lines are not always clear, but they are crystalline in a time of action, following orders, executing the protocol, performing the function we have practiced for again and again. Persons defending personal freedom.

When I joined the Navy, my father asked me how I could give up my freedom. I said I was happy to give up my freedom to go hungry, to be without medical care, and my freedom to find a way to support my fiancé… which I had not found any way to do before I talked to a recruiter. She was free to leave me after I joined.

When I was in the Navy, I knew when I was free (on leave) and when I was not (on duty) and I could manage both; enjoy either. Now, as a “bread winner” I am never free of the drive to earn more, and guilt follows every moment away from my pursuit of the dollar. Abuse victims find freedom from the abuse in their minds, but there is no freedom from our own tyranny.

It’s been said that a King has more freedom than a slave and then it’s been said that a slave has more freedom than a king.

It’s a silly little word, with no apparent meaning. And yet I’ve fought for it, without understanding; and comprehend it less with each passing day. It eludes me as I age. Will I eventually loose my freedom to live? Or find freedom some day in death?

Am I free to stop thinking about this non-sense and get back to work?

How can we regulate companies when we can't regulate ourselves?

I completely fail to understand how anyone can say that corporations are not accountable to us… Every single dime they have, every bit of power they exert is given them by the sale of their products. We have complete control over corporations based on what products we choose to purchase. The only exception to that, corporate welfare, is a relatively minor source of income for them, but one that I agree should be cut off, if possible. Read about Farmer Percy to see how hard that will be.

The problem is one of educating the people, not of regulating the companies. WE need to be reformed… the companies will follow our dollars like puppies after mothers’ milk. If you want to talk about how to effectively re-train the poor spending habits Americans are exhibiting, I will be right there with you, but regulating the corporations is shifting the blame; unnecessary and ineffective.

The stated and obvious goal of every corporation is to turn a profit. As long as they can do that though immoral means, they will continue to do it. We have no hope of regulating morals in corporate actions except though our purchasing decisions. "As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it." Dick Cavett.

The cigarette companies ran wild until the public was educated effectively on the cost of smoking. Not by a little warning label introduced by regulation, but by a series of TV and billboard ads paid for by health care organizations that were being financially damaged by the costs of treating lung cancer. Remember those? The woman talking through her throat? The guy who killed his wife with second hand smoke? "Mind if I smoke? Care if I die?"

Those ads, and the backlash to Joe Camel, shifted public opinion and vastly reduced the power and influence of those companies. The more recent ads, paid for by the companies themselves due to regulation, have been FAR less effective; less hard hitting. If people stopped buying cigarettes, they would be gone, but as long as people want to use nicotine as a drug, and damage their lungs, who are we to tell them they can’t? Or to prevent a company from supplying them what they ask for?

In the same way, if people accept food grown NOT locally and organically but instead GMO, insecticide soaked, in factory farms, who are we to outlaw that?

If people want to purchase cheap shoes or clothing made by exploited workers under inhuman conditions, how can we change the morals of the producer, if we can’t even change the morals of the purchaser? Get people to watch this show:
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/blood-sweat-tshirts/ if you want to make a difference.

A population of sheep must begat a government of wolves; and so too idiot consumers fuel exploitive corporations.

Best advice I've heard in a long time...

If you hear that the world is ending and the Messiah has arrived, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true.

What stops population growth?

What stops population growth? from Gapminder Foundation on Vimeo.

What HAVE seniors done for the new generation?

I got this email from the stogies about a young man complaining to a senior that old folks can't understand because they grew up in a world without all the modern tech that has shaped our new generation; and how the old guy says (in less pleasant words) "yeah, we didn't have those things, so we invented them; what are you going to do for the next generation?"

That is only half of the story...

Young people today are:
- Dying in wars our senior citizens started in countries that have never lifted a finger against us. How did you vote? When did you last attend an anti war rally?
- Dealing with the environmental, health, and economic impact of the “I care for nothing but profit” industries our seniors have left behind. Do you have solar panels on your home? Planted a fruit tree? Feed your kids organic foods? Taken a bus or train instead of driving?
- Going to jail in numbers unmatched by any country in the world, which I blame to a large degree on the selfish lack of involvement of seniors with needy kids in our neighborhoods. How many kids have you tutored after school? Donated to your local library? Boys and girls club? Anything?
- Trying to figure out what hope they have of paying off the mind-numbing national debt all of those issues have caused. Add up the minutes you've spent thinking about your retirement and compare it to the minutes you've spent thinking about what kind of life is left for your children.

I personally will be amazed if our young people are able to even sustain what we currently have for the next generation. I will be proud of my kids if they survive.

Women shave legs and appear to be little girls.

When children grow, at a certain age, they start to grow more hair all over. We always have hair all over, but at some age, we grow thicker, stronger, more noticeable hair. This age is the age of puberty, when our bodies change. In the USA, the normal age for puberty is between 8 and 13^. At that age, girls and boys start to grow more noticeable hair on their legs. It is almost always before the age of 18.

So, when a women of 20 or 30 or so on, in order to appear more attractive, as our society defines attractiveness^, shaves her legs, what age is she attempting to appear to be? She is NOT attempting to appear to be 18. She is not thinking about what age she is attempting to appear to be at all, but she is attempting to appear to be 13 or so.

Why does our society, here in the USA, want women to appear to be 13?

My first thought was that it must be a marketing campaign designed to sell razors. And there does seem to be some proof of that. The first mention I can find of women removing hair for any reason started in May, 1915 with a fashion spread in Harpers Baazar showing a women in a sleeveless gown with bare armpits. Under it is an ad for a hair removal powder.

Razors for women didn't appear anywhere until 1917 and in the Sears and Roebuck catalog until 1922.^

Leg shaving seems to have started soon after that, but really became popular around WWII with rising hemlines and pinup girls "to inspire our boys."

At the start of the war, nylon stockings were popular, but the nylon was needed for the war effort, so believe it or not, some women would shave their legs, then draw a line up the back of the leg to imitate the seam that was always present in stockings of that time. This does not, however, seem to be the start of leg shaving; hair under stocking is uncomfortable and shows so the shaving of legs started first, nylons came after.

It has been said that leg shaving was promoted by a razor company reeling from the lack of men buying razors since so many where "over there" fighting WWI^

Women in europe didn't start shaving until years later. After WWII one woman I spoke to came to the USA from Holland. She first noticed that American women had "weak" legs. They looked thin and frail to her. It was pointed out to her that her legs looked "stronger" because they were hairy and the women here were shaving. Her friend said she shaved because if she didn't, she would "look like an ape." My friend from Holland wasn't going to be a slave to fasion, but while at the denstist office, in the chair, she noticed that he kept lookin at her legs, and she thought: "He thinks I look like an Ape!" That's all it took; she started shaving her legs that night.

Leg shaving happens in Brazil, North America, Australia, Middle East, and Europe. Women in Europe, while they do shave their legs (even in France!) are not as religious about it as they are in the USA. It does not happen in Asia

Could it be simply related to the age old desire for women to look different from men? Since women generally have less hair than men, making a women have less hair, makes her less like a man and, supposedly, more womanly. There are certainly many examples of this, and not just since breast implants and high heels took hold; ancient peoples did everything from lopping off little girls toes (women have smaller feet) to stretching out necks (women have thinner necks). This tendancy for each sex to try to look less like the other is called artifical sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism is very common, and there isn't anything wrong with helping it along. The problem is that in leg shaving, we have picked something that is not only makes women look less like men, it makes them look more like little girls.

As shaved legs became the standard of beauty in the USA, men became trained to find them attractive. As a result, men are no longer sexually attracted to the naturally hairly legs of mature women, but instead are attracted to a version of legs that are naturally found on underage girls. This doesn't excuse the actions of molesters, but it is one more small step in the wrong direction.

See also:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1280795/origin_of_pantyhose_why_women_shave_their_legs/ the video shows some of the pictures of the original ads and photos.

Thich Nhat Hanh says:

“My right hand has written all the poems that I have composed. My left hand has not written a single poem. But my right hand does not think, ‘Left Hand, you are good for nothing.’ My right hand does not have a superiority complex. That is why it is very happy. My left hand does not have any complex at all. In my two hands there is the kind of wisdom called the wisdom of nondiscrimination. One day I was hammering a nail and my right hand was not very accurate and instead of pounding on the nail it pounded on my finger. It put the hammer down and took care of my left hand in a very tender way, as if it were taking care of itself. It did not say, ‘Left Hand, you have to remember that I have taken good care of you and you have to pay me back in the future.’ There was no such thinking. And my left hand did not say, “Right Hand, you have done me a lot of harm — give me that hammer, I want justice.’ My two hands know that they are members of one body; they are in each other.”

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.”

“In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.”

“We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. “

“Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.”

Bail out the WORKERS, not the companies.

All I want to ask the people who are crying about the loss of jobs in Detroit is this ONE question: How many mortgate payments, full tuition college educations, free health care insurance policies, and meals could that same bailout money provide to those workers?

Let the crappy car companies FAIL. Do not reward failure. Reward the companies who make good cars by providing them with a better trained, happy work force.

How much are your kids worth?

Thanks to my friend Bill for sending me this in an email. This is a “nice” little wakeup call for civilians who don’t understand the point of Military R&D funding. Yes, it would be better to not go to war at all, but that isn’t the reality of life is it? As longs as we DO go to war (no matter how stupid and wrong the reasons are) I want MY kids and YOUR kids to have the best possible weapons technology on our side. This video shows a man firing mortar’s at our troops. Watch what happens.




I never like to see anyone die, but when it’s a choice between us or them, I pick them. There is no way to know how many Americans his mortars killed, but it’s good to know it won’t be any more. Of all the weapons systems I've seen, this has to be one of my favorites. It's morally ideal in that it is totally harmless except to the guy who starts shooting at you. "...if it shoots, shoot back."

http://www.syrres.com/stc/products_lcmr.htm The technology that stopped him is called the LCMR: Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar-Enhancement and is made by Syracuse Research Corporation, a non-profit whose mission is to “keep America safe and strong by protecting its people, environment, and way of life.” The Lightweight Counter-Mortar Radar (LCMR) detects and locates mortar firing positions automatically by detecting and tracking the mortar shell and then backtracking to the weapon position.

http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=249992 Hillary got them $5M to improve that system for use inside the USA. It is being updated to track not only mortar shells but also small arms fire. So the local police will know in an instant when a gun is fired, and in a few shots, know exactly where.

$5 million of the federal funding will go to the Syracuse Research Corporation for the development of Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar-Enhancement (LCMR). The
funding will create new opportunities to improve and enhance national security. The radar, developed for the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and currently in theater, provides the capability to automatically locate mortar-firing positions by detecting and tracking the mortar shell, then backtracking to the weapon position. Accordingly, this technology will allow soldiers in combat to more effectively take cover from mortar fire, locate its origin, and respond. LCMR systems have already been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Funding in this legislation would upgrade these systems. SRC received $2.5 million of federal funding for the LCMR in FY 05.

Support our troops: First, BRING THEM HOME, but failing that, give them the best possible tools to keep them alive while they are in harms way.

Half Baked Idea: Cleaning the Homeless

I'm proud to say that my Half Baked Idea:
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Cleaning_20the_20homeless for Cleaning the Homeless: "Offer secure, private, single person showers at low or no cost." has made it to the second page on the list of all time best ideas at the Half Bakery. It's one of the few somewhat political ideas that have been allowed to stay on the site (the owner doesn't allow politics). Other best ideas on the site from other authors include "Preformed Cream Cheese Rings for Bagels " and a "Tumbleweed Dispenser: For when idiots talk" so you can see that it's one of the few "best" ideas that isn't sort of tongue in cheek. There are serious ideas on the best list, such as "A Google 'minus' button for each listed result. " so humor isn't a requirement, but funny ideas usually do better in the voting results.

A word of warning about the Half Bakery: You can loose hours of your life, reading and laughing and thinking about the great ideas posted here.

Everyone...

I truly believe this:

Sick, sad, world. Shaved legs molest girls.

Women abhor pedophiles, and rightfully so, yet they continue to shave their legs and wear lipstick, blush, and false eyelashes.

*pause for a moment to let the apparent disconnect in that statement settle in with the confused reader*

The average age where a young woman's leg hair becomes visible is between 12 and 18 depending on hair color, genetics, etc...

What other reason is there for shaving ones legs, besides wanting to appear to be jail bait?

*pause to really allow the increasingly shocked reader to think hard about that*

Take your average 13 year old girl and stand her next to a 30 year old women while neither is wearing makeup. Notice that the 13 year old has ruby red lips, blushed cheeks, and strong dark eyelashes. The 30 year old has pale lips, sallow cheeks and thinning eyelashes. Now ask the 30 year old to go put on her make up. Compare again and feel slightly sick to your stomach. Don't take my word for it. Go see for yourself. 

*hurries on to reassure the now outraged reader of the limits of my insanity* 

Please note, I am not blaming women for this, I am trying to point out how sick our society is. I am not saying that women are knowingly encouraging men to look at jail bait, nor am I saying that men are knowingly pressuring women to look like jail bait in order to be attractive. I am also not attempting to excuse the actions of your local neighborhood child molester. We are all responsible for our actions, and must pay the consequences, no matter to what bad influences we are exposed. I am also NOT saying that I am sexually attracted to girls, just on the off chance that someone is getting worried here... I'm all about the MILF and specifically, my wife.

But something is wrong here. Very, very wrong. In Europe, or at least in the non-westernized parts of Europe, women do not feel a compulsion to do these things.

It may be that the problem is an unintended consequence of the advertising engine that must needs accompany each industry in our consumer driven economy. I once saw an interview where an experienced older man who had lived through the 60's and remembered it was asked why "blonds have more fun?" His answer was surprising to me: He said "Well, originally it was to sell hair care products." Apparently that saying was started by ads placed for a company that had come up with a new non-bleach hair coloring product and who wanted to create a greater demand. By convincing women that they would have more fun as a blond, they created a feedback loop where the women who wanted more fun, perhaps unknowingly advertised the fact by dying their hair. Men then saw dark eyebrows and blond hair, knew that the woman wanted to have "more fun" and so were more likely to ask her out. It was a self fulfilling prophecy.

I think the same sort of thing may have happened in the makeup industry. Makeup has several functions, including accentuating the difference between men and women, or sending that same "I want to have fun" signal, but mostly it is designed to mask the effects of aging. When an older lady caked on the powder to hid a few wrinkles or age spots, she was perhaps returning her appearance to that of a healthy 30 year old. No problem there. But how to sell lipstick, for instance, when the lips of a 30 year old are really no more red than those of a 50 year old? And why sell only to 50 year olds? 

By presenting the women of the USA with an idealized, sexuallized, version of a younger than legal Brooke Shields or Kate Moss, companies could then push the sale of more lipstick. And so enlist the women who buy it in the consequence of training the men to be pedophiles. Please note that I am in NO way attempting to excuse men who molest children. This idea that men have no control over their actions is insulting and disempowering. Men (everyone) are responsible for their actions, in any case. 

Face it, or tell my why I'm wrong in an unemotional, rational, and logical argument backed up with references and facts. Hysterical rants, unsupported denials, and blame deflecting accusations will be deleted. 

I'm tired of just accepting the sickness.

Bail-out WHO?

So let me get this straight: The banks wrongly loaned money to people who purchased houses and could just barely make their house payment... When the economy sagged a bit (due to high fuel prices?) they suddenly couldn't make those mortgage payments and defaulted on their loans. 

Now the banks are in trouble because so many people stoped paying their mortgage payments. 

So... Gee Whiz... the solution is to forgive the bankers the bad debt and forget about the home owners.

Why not pay off part of the mortgage of those home owners so that they can continue to make their (now lower) payments and move back into those abandoned houses?

What I asked my representatives is this: "Why is welfare for people wrong, while welfare for the banking industry is right?"

choices and motivation reduce happiness.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html
This talk is based on clinical research which pretty clearly shows the following (summerized in my own words):

• Choice opens the door for doubt regarding the choices you make
  
• Being highly motivated to make the best possible choices and reach the highest possible levels of attainment increases the chances that you will take risks and make sacrifices that will decrease your happiness.
  
• In a few months or a year, at most, you will be just as happy as you were before, no matter what actually happens to you.