More nous, less nows

procrastinationdemotivator

A friend gave me this excellent DEMOTIVATOR® from Despair.com several Christmases ago. And, recently, I finally got a round tuit. I put the damn thing up on the wall of my home office!

The poster represents an ever timely life lesson.

Perhaps life’s greatest lesson is that life itself is a lesson. That was my ex-wife’s sort of New Age spiritual viewpoint, in a nutshell, anyway. She had a firm intuition that we are each thrown into this mortal sphere of existence for a reason or reasons—to learn our spiritual life lesson(s). Of course, being a committed atheist and moral nihilist at the time, I mocked the idea. It’s only now, a repentant worldview and a decade of divorce later, that I’m wondering if she was right, after all. (And kicking myself for not asking the obvious question at the time. If life is a lesson, who sets the curriculum?)

Or, perhaps, life’s a Stanley Milgram experiment.

A test of your Moral character and conviction.
The decisions you make throughout your life are all being observed and recorded.
One day you will be asked to give account.

God as teacher and/or God as experimenter? I don’t think that Tim’s suggesting that life on Earth is, quite literally, an experiment. So I will! (A misbegotten experiment, perhaps? No, I’ll leave it to a detractor to suggest that. Also, I’ll leave it to the apologists for God’s supposed omniscience to explain this.)

How did you do? If life’s a classroom and every day’s a school day, did you study hard? Or did you just fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way? If life’s a Stanley Milgram experiment, did you go with the Word or go with the crowd?

One day you will be asked to give account. If life’s a lab running a Stanley Milgram experiment, you will be judged on how you used your God-given faculty of free will. Did you make the right decisions, and evince moral character and conviction? (The decisions you make throughout your life are all being observed and recorded.) Whereas, if life’s a classroom, you will be judged on how you used your God-given learning ability. Were you a willing, conscientious, hard-working student of life? Did you learn and practise the right things? (Everything you learn and practise goes down on your academic record.)

Classroom or lab? Are we God’s students, or are we his experimental test subjects? I suggest that life’s more lesson than lab, for the simple reason that we do not have a faculty of so-called free will, God-given or otherwise. The concept itself is a nonsense. What we do have is the God-given ability to learn and to change our behaviour. We also have the curriculum and the learning objectives. You’ll find it all in the prescribed text.

(Is Christianity complicated? Please don’t protest that God didn’t make it clear what are the right things to learn and practise. He did. The Bible contains massive redundancy. You know, like how the Ten Commandments are repeated in Deuteronomy, just in case you missed them in Exodus.)

Now, back to the DEMOTIVATOR® at the top.

(Did you see what Despair.com did there with the wee ®? They threatened to send their statist cronies around to your place to sort you out good and hard should you ever decide to go into business selling your own DEMOTIVATOR posters!)

The poster represents an ever timely life lesson. And the life lesson is, learn the power of delaying gratification. Rejoice and be glad!

the children who were best able to delay gratification subsequently did better in school and had fewer behavioral problems than the children who could only resist eating the cookie for a few minutes—and, further, ended up on average with SAT scores that were 210 points higher. As adults, the high-delay children completed college at higher rates than the other children and then went on to earn higher incomes. In contrast, the children who had the most trouble delaying gratification had higher rates of incarceration as adults and were more likely to struggle with drug and alcohol addiction.

How to learn delayed gratification?

Rather than resist the urge to eat the cookie, these children distracted themselves from the urge itself. They played with toys in the room, sang songs to themselves, and looked everywhere but at the cookie. In short, they did everything they could to put the cookie out of their minds.

So, learning to delay gratification is not at all the same thing as learning to resist temptation. The results even suggest that any direct attempt to resist the urge to eat the cookie is worse than futile, it’s counter-productive. And, note, we’re talking about a non-starving child and a cookie. We’re not talking about a methamphetamine addict and a bag of P. And we’re certainly not talking about being offered all that you could ever want in the whole world and having it right now.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” (NIV)

Nope. Staring down temptation and simply commanding it to go away is way too hardcore for mere images of God! We can but pray, “Lead us not into temptation” in the first place. Give us this day our daily distraction!

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (NIV)

The poster represents an ever timely life lesson. Delay gratification, do some work, and get your shit sorted. (Thanks for the round tuit.)

No sex in Heaven

Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” (NIV)

What is Heaven? What is eternal life? Although the Bible tells us little, at least Heaven and eternal life rate a mention. (Not so with that other place, Hell, which isn’t mentioned once in literal translations of the Bible, such as Young’s Literal Translation.)

How do you think you’re going to spend the rest of eternity?

The Sanctity of Life

It’s not wrong to kill people if the killing is justified (this is a necessarily true statement).

Killing people in war is justified, killing people in self defense is justified… even killing people that deserve death is justified. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life principle is not obsolete.

When considering euthanasia a killing can be justified by mercy – the principle being do to others as you would have them do to you. In a situation where a person wants to die and a person kills them compassionately the killer has not wronged anyone.

Some appeal to the Sanctity of Life to oppose euthanasia but if the Sanctity of Life doctrine were true it would condemn the other justified killings mentioned above.

A holy cow - as seen at a restaurant in Goa.
Holy cow! Seen at a restaurant in Goa.

 

The Sanctity of Life doctrine is false – it’s a sacred cow that needs killing.

One does not simply brand cigarettes

one_does_not_simply_brand_cigarettes

I read this in the news last week.

Cigarette plain packaging closer

New Zealand has the “sovereign right” to protect its citizens and will not be told what to do by tobacco companies, Tariana Turia says, as plain packaging of cigarettes passed its first hurdle.

Last night Turia, Associate Minister of Health, introduced the Smokefree Environments (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Amendment Bill into Parliament, and it passed its first vote by 118 votes to one.

It has now been referred to the Health Select Committee for public consultation. National, Labour, the Greens are all supporting it, while New Zealand First was expected to support it at least through to select committee.

Eventually the legislation would see all branding removed from all tobacco products, aside from the name of the variation in small plain type, with large warnings about the risks posed by smoking.

Turia said that despite legal challenges to similar measures across the Tasman, she was confident it met New Zealand’s international obligations.

Mandatory plain packaging is the latest government intervention to stop people smoking.

I’m against it. It’s creeping totalitarianism!

The tobacco industry is against it. British American Tobacco spokeswoman Susan Jones says

Plain packaging constitutes a severe restriction on the use of our intellectual property, including trademarks. This is a huge concern to us, as it would be to any business, because the effect is to render our trademarks unusable.

John Banks is against it. He says

I don’t believe the State should seize property rights from legitimate companies selling legitimate products

What I find particularly interesting is that Jones and Banks both make their argument against plain packaging on the basis of intellectual property rights, specifically trademarks. But there are no intellectual property rights! Or, there shouldn’t be!

There’s no doubt that the introduction of private property was hugely civilising. Property rights in the tangible fruits of one’s labours means that one’s possessions are legally secure. Whereas, before the invention of private property, one could walk into stores and just take things, now it’s theft!

Privatisation of land also seems to me to have been a good idea. (Not according to the geolibertarians.) But should we privatise everything? Should we privatise the whales? Should we privatise business names and logos? Should we privatise inventions? Should we privatise stories? Should we privatise air? Should we privatise the Moon?

camel-cigarettes-pack

Please understand that what constitutes private property is a system of restrictions, authorised and enforced by government, on who may do what with certain things. For example, making it illegal for anyone except the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to use the word ‘camel’ and a picture of a camel in certain contexts is what constitutes the company’s intellectual property in the Camel trademark. To own a trademark is to restrict everyone else’s freedoms, e.g., to restrict their freedoms to talk about and draw camels.

Getting the government to restrict other people’s freedoms to use words, images and ideas is tantamount to theft and anathema to this libertarian.

Jones complains that plain packaging constitutes a severe restriction on the use of British American Tobacco’s intellectual property. Of course, it does. But here’s the irony. The very existence of a British American Tobacco trademark is constituted by severe restrictions on everyone else’s use of what previously they could freely use. Now it’s not simply everyone else whose freedoms are restricted. It’s everyone whose freedoms are restricted, including British American Tobacco. It’s now illegal for anyone to use the word ‘camel’ and a picture of a camel in certain contexts. One law for all!

I don’t think much of the trademarks argument put forward by Jones and Banks. The government giveth and the government taketh away. Problem?

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

What is this that stands before me?

Still falls the rain,
the veils of darkness shroud
the blackened trees, which,
contorted by some unseen
violence, shed their tired
leaves, and bend their boughs
toward a grey earth of severed
bird wings. among the grasses,
poppies bleed before a
gesticulating death, and young
rabbits, born dead in traps,
stand motionless, as though
guarding the silence that
surrounds and threatens to engulf
all those that would listen.

Mute birds, tired of repeating
yesterdays terrors, huddle together
in the recesses of dark corners,
heads turned from the dead, black
swan that floats upturned in a
small pool in the hollow.

there emerges from this pool
a faint sensual mist, that
traces its way upwards to
caress the chipped feet of
the headless martyr’s statue, whose
only achievement was to die to
soon, and who couldn’t wait to
lose.

the cataract of darkness form
fully, the long black night begins,
yet still, by the lake a young girl waits,
unseeing she believes herself unseen,
she smiles, faintly at the distant
tolling bell, and the still falling rain.

On Friday 13 February 1970 Black Sabbath released their eponymous debut album.

Heavy metal is 44 years old today! 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4m79oGDT_I

It’s an administrative violation, not a crime

administrative_violation

I was contemplating reading a white paper on Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies by Glenn Greenwald of the Cato Institute.

On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were “decriminalized,” not “legalized.” Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense.

Perhaps the Green Party could learn some Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies. Because, let’s face it. Their drug policies so far have been neither fair nor successful.

Machine Gun Preacher.

machine gun preacher

A man known internationally as the “Machine Gun Preacher” said Friday that federal agents interrupted his charity work in Africa when they raided his Pennsylvania home, business and warehouse Wednesday.

“They went into a container that was packed and ready to come to the orphanage and totally destroyed it,” Sam Childers, currently in Africa, told WJAC-TV over the phone. “I mean, destroyed it, and what’s so sad is that it was all children’s clothes.”

According to WJAC-TV, the FBI said they couldn’t elaborate on why they conducted the raid or comment on a pending investigation.

Read more >>>Here<<<

Could you be a non person?

Abortion is legal becuase a fetus is a non person.

Men who use prostitutes are making these women objects, and therefore non persons.

You dispose of a relationship because your partner no longer satisfys you, your partner becomes a non person.

You befriend someone, but only becuase you want something from him/her. This is a non person.

You don’t understand the concept of two way relationship. Everyone you know is a non person.

You pray for a miracle, but you forget to invite God over for beer and pizza with your mates. God is a non person.

We exist as a collective society, but not as individuals. We are all non persons.

I’m only Human

Give me Liberty, or give me Death!