The Essence of My Minimalist Religion

Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law

In order to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom, I believe humanity needs a socio-ethical contract. For most people, such a contract is one of the major organized religions, which people traditionally inherit at birth from one or both of their parents. Mine was Judaism. But Judaism, as most other religions, comprises much more than a socio-ethical contract. It demands, as is the case with other major world religions: the worship of a singular deity; the adherence to an intricate set of behavioral rules; and, the observance of obligations that can be obscure and confusing.

Over the years, I have concluded that my own version of a socio-ethical contract serves me well without mention of a demanding all-powerful God and all the intricacies that this entails. My minimalist belief doesn't, however, rule out some sort of organizing principal. It simply de-emphasizes it, making it an optional feature.

Thus, my religion is a drastically scaled-down version of Judaism. More to the point, it is a scaled-down version of the Decalogue. It encompasses two broad guidelines: one proactive rule and one rule of prohibition.

Here is how I arrived at my religion.

When Moses "transcribed" the Decalogue, he realized he was dealing with a mob of former slaves who were largely undifferentiated from wild animals. So he knew they required stern pronouncements and lots of repetition. Hence, he presented them with Ten Commandments, and the rabbis followed up in the ensuing millennia with much more repetition and elaboration.

The first thing I did was to eliminate the leading stern Commandments having to do with scaring the bejeezus out of the ignorant: "If you do not worship Me like I tell you, I will pulverize you!" Personally, I do not need that sort of coercion. My next step was to recognize that all those trailing Commandments, namely the obvious (to any sane person) "Don'ts" — murder, steal, "covet" your neighbor's wife, etc. — are subsumed by Judaism's version of the Golden Rule: "Do not do to others that which you wouldn't want others to do to you". This then is my prohibition guideline.

That leaves me with choosing an appropriate proactive guideline. As luck would have it, that is the only Commandment left after my distillation of the Decalogue. It is the one that reminds you that you haven't made this journey on your own. In order to be a decent human being, not just another wild animal, you need to acknowledge other humans who have helped you, especially the two who gave you life: "Honor your mother and your father." And by extension, acknowledge any help received from other individuals.

So the essence of my minimalist religion is, "Try not to be a schmuck."

Post 3,767 “The Essence of My Minimalist Religion”

The Metric of Our Universe

Entropy: The Metric of Our Universe

Credit: Wikipedia

In the beginning was the event known as the Big Bang. At that initial event of infinitesimal spacetime, the entropy of our universe was at its minimum, corresponding to its maximum organization — at a point in space and at the beginning of time.

Ever since that initial event, our evolving universe (or its current cycle of evolution) has had its overall entropy increasing monotonically, albeit its rate of increase has been nonmonotonic. The nonmonotonic rate of increase has been due to the counter effects of gravity, the emergence (and evolution) of organizational phenomena that create pockets of decreasing entropy in spacetime, as well as the observed (though not yet understood) effects of dark energy.

Thus, we have traversed a chronology of cosmic spacetime-epochs, including the Planck epoch, the cosmic inflation, the Quark epoch, the Photon epoch, the "Dark Ages" (during which the universe was transparent but no large-scale structures had yet formed). Then followed the period of large-scale structure formation, including stellar evolution, galaxy formation (and evolution) and the formation of galaxy clusters and superclusters. The latter period has been characterized by local reductions of entropy corresponding to all the large-scale structure formation, all of which qualified as reductions in the disarray of matter.

The thin disk of our galaxy began to form at about 5 billion years ago. The solar system formed at about 4.6 billion years ago, with the earliest traces of life on Earth emerging by about 3.5 billion years ago. These epochs, up to and including the present time have been characterized by the emergence and evolution of (self) organizations with the concomitant localized decreases of entropy.

That universal metric, entropy, or, what is more nearly correct, its local decrease (called "negentropy" by Erwin Schrödinger), may be viewed as the lifeblood of our existence. As this lifeblood waxes, our existence flourishes. As it wanes, we hurtle towards heat death.

Nevertheless, there may be an ultimate reversal to the expansion of the universe (the "Big 180"), in which the universe (at least its current cycle) will end in a Big Crunch, after which a Big Bounce might initiate another new cycle, in endless repetition ...

It could happen.

Post 3,758 “The Metric of Our Universe”

Service Notice

Dear Readers,

Until further notice, my online activity will be devoted mostly to competition for ACBL Masterpoints at Bridge Base Online (BBO).

Thanks for stopping by.

Best wishes,
TheBigHenry

Post 2,684 “Service Notice”

Magna Carta DCCC

800 years and counting …

Magna Carta signed by King John of England
at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215

Post 2,669 “Magna Carta DCCC”

It pains me to say this, but …

You're busted!

Pepper spray training in Guantanamo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related source » Ohio assault suspect given choice: Jail or be pepper-sprayed by victim - CBS News: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“PAINESVILLE, Ohio -- An assault suspect who pepper-sprayed someone in the face has received similar treatment in court as punishment from a Cleveland-area judge embracing the principle of "an eye for an eye."

Painesville Municipal Court Judge Michael Cicconetti said 20-year-old Diamond Gaston could serve 30 days in jail or be pepper-sprayed by her victim, and she chose that Thursday. Cicconetti says he couldn't really allow pepper spray, so harmless saline spray was substituted without Gaston knowing.

Gaston says she learned her lesson.”
— CBS/AP, May 29, 2015 (cbsnews.com)

---

I dunno. Is this broaching mock execution? Feel free to comment (comments will be moderated).

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• VIDEO: Judge sentences woman to 'pepper-spray' (newsnet5.com)

Post 2,646 “It pains me to say this, but …”

It's not your father's PR war

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (photo credit:REUTERS)

Related source » As I See It: Netanyahu’s missed opportunity - Opinion - Jerusalem Post: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“If even the prime minister with his fabled presentational skills doesn’t get it, small wonder that Israel has lost the PR war so badly.”
— By MELANIE PHILLIPS, 12/25/2014 (jpost.com)

---

I don't know who the author of the above op-ed article is. More importantly, I don't know what she is talking about. Most importantly, neither does she.

The war that Israel has been engaged in for the past 66 years (and counting) is not a PR war. There have been many misnomered "wars" since media hacks have begun styling themselves "warriors" of words: media wars; political wars; war against cigarettes; war against poverty; war against hunger; war against women; war against old white men; war against whatever ailes you. None of these describe's Israel's war.

Israel and its people are engaged in — and its people have been engaged in since time immemorial — existential war. Existential war is a war that nobody can afford to lose. The losers cease to exist.

L'Chaim (to life)!

Post 2,516 “It's not your father's PR war”

Old Dogs, New Tricks

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
← William Wordsworth

Related source » Maverick Philosopher: Old Man, Happy Man: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“You are free to be yourself and live beyond comparisons with others. You can enjoy the social without being oppressed by it. You understand the child's fathership of the man, and in some measure are able to undo it. You have survived those who would define you, and now you define yourself. And all of this without rancour or resentment. Defiant self-assertion gives way to benign indifference, Angst to Gelassenheit [fear to serenity].” [emphasis added]
— Bill Vallicella, December 13, 2014 (maverickphilosopher.typepad.com)

---

Perhaps Bill (Vallicella) is right — so long as you are long enough in the tooth, and marooned on Selkirk's island. If, however, either condition does not (yet) apply, it seems to me one must rely on "[sufficient] measure [of ability] to undo [the child's fathership of the man]".

To be marooned, and old to boot, is a dreadful scenario to entertain.

Post 2,495 “Old Dogs, New Tricks”

On the perfectibility of human nature

“It is time, on this view, that envelops everything else. It is the only feature of nature that enjoys absolutely the attribute of non-emergence.”

Image via ideas.time.com

Everything about the universe changes, evolves or emerges in time. Even the characteristics of changes change in time. And so do constructs of the mind (such as mathematics), as well as the laws of nature (as we presently intuit and deduce them). The single exception to universal change in time — is time itself.

Hence, "perfectibility" as a goal can be approached in principle to arbitrary precision — in time. But depending on the target of our ambition, the approach to its perfection may take any amount of time, from one Planck time up to the entire lifetime of the universe at its heat death, or in the event it changes into another form of universe in time.

Let's consider a thought experiment. Suppose we had an acceptable measure for the "purity of human kindness" (PHK), and the means to assess the appropriate PHK value for each individual now living and for all those who have lived during the past century. I assume that such a multitude of individuals (let's say ten billion humans) would display a range of PHK values. At one extreme we would group the likes of Mother Teresa. The opposite extreme would harbor monsters like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam, and others equally grotesque.

If we plotted this population of PHK values with respect to coordinate axes for the number of humans as a function of their PHK value-interval, we would visualize some form of a bell-shaped histogram, with Mother Teresa at the extreme tail of saintly beings, and at the opposite tail the monsters of humanity. The average Joe Sixpack would appear somewhere within the centrally located broad peak of the distribution.

With this lengthy introduction, I now turn to my main point of this post: How likely is it that human nature, which we both love and abhor, can be perfected within the lifetime of any organized society? Based on the available historical record, I don't believe there has ever been (to date, of course) an observable change in human nature, let alone a change for the better, which latter would be displayed as a skewing of our above-described plot in the direction of Mother Teresa.

So what can we surmise about the chances that any group of self-appointed individuals (even if all of them were on par with the likes of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, et al.) could establish some form of utopia via centrally devised and promulgated policies (with the understanding that any such worldview relies unambiguously on the perfectibility of human nature)? I assert the chances are slim to vanishingly small.

Alternatively, we have in America a framework for societal organization that comprises: the rule of laws (stemming from a Constitutional social contract, which is amendable but not whimsically so); a tripartite representative government; the concept of personal property; and a free market economy. This framing was accomplished by a group of geniuses who by and large must have known implicitly that a utopia based on the hoped for perfectibility of human nature was a non-starter. There has been much historical evidence that the Framers were right. And there has been much more evidence that the so-called "perfectibility utopians" ushered in hellish monstrosities, without exception.

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• Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (Vintage International) [Kindle Edition] Martin Amis (Author) (amazon.com)

Post 2,490 “On the perfectibility of human nature”

Continuation of politics …

… by other means.

Clausewitz

Related source » Maverick Philosopher: The Narrative: The Origins of Political Correctness: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“Here are two points that need to be made again and again in opposition to the willful moral and intellectual obtuseness of liberals and leftists:

1. Dissent is not hate. To dissent from a person's ideas and policies is not to hate the person.

2. As a corollary to #1, to dissent from the ideas and policies of a black man is not to hate the man. A fortiori, it is not to hate the man because he is black.”

— Bill Vallicella, October 07, 2014 (maverickphilosopher.typepad.com)

---

I agree with Vallicella that that need exists. But I no longer feel compelled to take an active role in its support. It's a cost/benefit analysis, wherein the currency is one's energy of exertion.

I have learned the hard way that it takes an order of magnitude more energy to oppose "the willful moral and intellectual obtuseness of liberals and leftists" than it takes for them to be obtuse. And they will never give in, because to give in is to lose what little self respect they had to begin with.

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that one's energy would be exerted most efficiently in "continuation of politics by other means".

Post 2,419 “Continuation of politics …”

Might does not make right …

Neither does weakness!

Weakness of attitude becomes
weakness of character
(Photo credit: purplechalk)

Related source » Maverick Philosopher: Weakness is No Justification: The Converse Callicles Principle: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“Might does not make right, but neither does impotence or relative weakness. That weakness does not justify strikes me as an important principle, but I have never seen it articulated. The Left tends to assume the opposite. […] The power I have to kill you does not morally justify my killing you. In a slogan: Ability does not imply permissibility. My ability to kill, rape, pillage and plunder does not confer moral justification on my doing these things. But if you attack me with deadly force and I reply with deadly force of greater magnitude, your relative weakness does not supply one iota of moral justification for your attack, nor does it subtract one iota of moral justification from my defensive response. If I am justified in using deadly force against you as aggressor, then the fact that my deadly force is greater than yours does not (a) diminish my justification in employing deadly force, nor does it (b) confer any justification on your aggression.”
— Maverick Philosopher, July 24, 2014, (maverickphilosopher.typepad.com)

---

I would have thought it goes without saying that neither might nor relative weakness justify agression morally. Sadly, there is nothing that goes without saying to the sinister Left.

The sinister Left is devoid of any principles that would contradict their worldview. That worldview, of course, is replete with a repugnant attitude for self destruction.

Post 2,343 “Might does not make right …”

TheBigHenry Discovers Television

Rule #4: "Easy greasy — there's a fungus among us!"
[Junior-high catch-phrase, back in the day. Everybody said it; nobody knew what it meant.]

Boy watching TV for the first time
in an appliance store window, 1948
via @HistoryInPics

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Post 2,277 “TheBigHenry Discovers Television?”

The High-Tech Stultification of Our Teens

Consider learning something that is worthy of sharing, first.

(Image via Oxford Advanced American Dictionary)
A surface with one continuous side,
formed by joining the ends of a strip of material
after twisting one end through 180 degrees.

Related source » How to Use Tech Like a Teenager: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“Enough with complaining that young people these days are addicted to their phones. The question you should be asking is: What do they know that you don't?

Believe it or not, there are advantages to using technology like a teen. I asked a handful of 11- to 17-year-olds to tell me what apps and gear they couldn't live without. They taught me to question my own habits: Why do I use email to talk with friends? Why do I only share my best photos?

Teens are among the most creative users of technology, in part because they don't have adults' assumptions about how things are supposed to work.

'I will just throw away the directions and see what I can make of it', Kapp Singer, a 14-year-old from San Francisco, told me.

Owning a smartphone, often a hand-me-down, means many teens can be pretty much always online, changing how they stay in touch with friends and express themselves.”
— Personal Technology Columnist Geoffrey Fowler, Updated June 10, 2014 (WSJ)

---

Today's teens are masters of utilizing high tech for communicating with their peers. So what is the problem?

The problem is they spend all their time communicating with their peers. It would be far better, instead, if they spent some time learning something of interest to communicate, besides how to utilize the latest high tech for communication. Our teens have been captured by a stultifying Mobius strip of high-tec communication.

Once these high-tech-savvy communicators "grow up", they will be poised to become the great mass of high-tech consumers. Their only problem then will be to market their own skill set, the same one they share with all their peers, in order to make a living. Unfortunately for them, only their grandma gives a Shinola when they express themselves.

Related articles

• How to Use Tech Like a Teenager (online.wsj.com)
• What Teens Can Teach Us About Tech (live.wsj.com)

Post 2,256 “The High-Tech Stultification of Our Teens”

Life is not just a bowl of cherries …

Some say life is just a bowl of cherries. Others warn that nobody promised you a rose garden. I say life is a game, arguably the most important game any of us get to play.

You need a game plan.

Life in the developed world has three stages and two main objectives. The stages are youth, middle age, and seniority. The main objectives are: enjoy your current stage and survive to your next stage. The latter objective is somewhat moot in your seniority unless you have a preference for either heaven or hell.

Before you can begin to assemble a game plan, you need to do some self-analysis. "Know thyself" said Big Bill the Bard. Are you the "devil may care" type or are you hell-bent on making it to your next stage of life? Do you enjoy living on the edge of extinction or do you enjoy watching X games on TV? Are you a speed freak or are you risk averse? Do you want to climb Everest or do you make sure your shoes will remain tied during a nuclear attack? It all depends on which aspect of life is more important for you -- thrills and chills or staying warm and dry (the latter being my personal preference).

If you yearn for excitement, you are likely to be risk prone; if not, you are risk averse. In between, you are what might be labeled "risk neutral". Moreover, your risk inclination may vary as you traverse life's stages. You might be risk prone in youth, risk averse in middle age (assuming you are not having your mid-life crisis), and risk neutral as a senior. Or not.

The following is an outline of an example game plan for life. Assuming you know thyself, and you are risk prone in youth, you might venture to do some stupid things young people are inclined to do because "everybody is doing it, yo"! That's cool, but do not forget you have an important obligation that may put a bit of a damper on the exciting stupidity -- you want to survive to middle age. Upon reaching middle age, you re-evaluate your risk tolerance and shift gears into achieving a modicum of security for the future. You filter toward risk-averse mode and learn how to manage your personal finances, so as not to become a homeless 65-year-old hippy with one of those greasy ponytails. Finally, you become a senior citizen, and, having acquired the necessary resources, along with Medicare, you embark on spending (with risk-neutral abandon) what is colloquially termed your grandchildren's money, milking those golden years for as long as possible.

It works for me, yo.

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Post 2,203 “Life is not just a bowl of cherries …”

Bridge: The Incredible Competitive Sport

Related source » ACBL Hall of Fame - Robert (Bobby) Hamman: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“Interview with bridge great, Bobby Hamman”


— Uploaded by American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), Oct 27, 2009

[I became an ACBL Life Master in October, 1999.]

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Post 2,126 “Bridge: The Incredible Competitive Sport”

A Handbasket Named 'Whatever'

The Shredding of Society's Moral Fiber One Ligament at a Time

Related source » Teens' 'Knockout Game' a growing danger with deadly results 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“A recent string of attacks tied to a dangerous game called 'Knockout' -- where unsuspecting residents are targeted and sucker-punched – is being investigated as possible hate crimes.

New York police are looking into the growing trend, WPIX reports, after attacks in predominately Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn.”
— Published November 17, 2013 (FoxNews.com)

---

  

   Матушка Россия                         Liberty                       Captain Hopey-Dopey

As a toddler, my mind's eye saw the glory of a people's indomitable spirit in vanquishing the Nazi invaders of Mother Russia. The sheer magnitude of the Russians' sacrifice and their magnificent determination to survive is virtually incomprehensible today.

Several years later, my child's eyes saw the glory of Anglo-American victory in General Eisenhower's American Occupation Zone. 'With malice toward none, with charity for all', the Lincolnian spirit permeated Western Europe.

A couple of years later, my young eyes saw the glory of American Liberty. With the clothes on our backs and indelible memories of the Allies' victory over Nazi Germany's depravity, our American dream had begun.

During the following decade, my eyes saw the glory of the American pursuit of happiness. Life was good. Truly. Even dreaded polio had been conquered.

And then it began to unravel. The flower children got bored. The greatest expansion of general well-being in recorded history was no longer good enough. The pursuit of happiness became a drag, man. Sex, drugs and rock and roll were where it's at, man. But they had to be free, man. Like, we're not into pursuit, man. That's too much like work, man.

And that ignorant beat goes on to this day. The poster child for that dope-smoking generation of no-accounts is now the putative leader of Western civilization! Lord have mercy.

My eyes have seen depravity. My eyes have seen the magnificent will to survive. My eyes have seen the worst of humanity. My eyes have seen the best of the human spirit.

Alas, I have now witnessed the seemingly inevitable stupidity that Big Al had predicted all along.

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Post 2,078 “A Handbasket Named 'Whatever'”

Green Sex

University of Maryland, College Park. (Photo credit: carmichaellibrary)

Just when you thought it couldn't get much crazier, along comes … wait for it … eco-friendly sex on campus!

Related source » ‘Sex Week’ at University of Maryland billed as ‘exploration’ opportunity - Washington Times: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“University of Maryland is featuring a “Sex Week,” aimed at teaching college students how to properly select sex toys in an eco-friendly manner. […] Also scheduled is a presentation from Jessica VonDyke, billed as a 'poly, queer femme whose mission in life is to help folks have better sex and is an advocate for gender inclusiveness, sexy safer sex and queer positive spaces in everything that she does,' Newsbusters reported.”
— By Cheryl K. Chumley, October 14, 2013 (washingtontimes.com)

---

The total cost for the academic year at the University of Maryland is: $38,628.

Oh yeah; it's worth it.

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• Pole dancers and fetish sex workshops -- NOT shutdown. (minx.cc)
• Getting into the University of Maryland (college.answers.com)

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Post 2,054 “Green Sex”

The over/under death-trap of seniority-based organizations

Just because you are an expert in the field does not automatically qualify you for a management position.

Oppenheimer and Groves
at remains of Trinity test
in September 1945.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant theoretical nuclear physicist. But the management of the Manhattan Project succeeded because General Leslie Groves was a great leader of men, albeit one who knew next to nothing about nuclear physics.

Many large organizations "promote" their best experts to management positions. This is actually a prescription for long-term failure of the organization. This might be counter intuitive, but it need not be so.

Management often gets higher pay. That is an implicit prescription for the organization's ultimate failure in accompishing its organization's goals. It's a lose-lose proposition: The organization gets a less than optimum manager in return for a loss of expertise in the accomplishment of the organization's principal product or service.

The false equivalence of specific technical expertise with general management skills leads to having under-qualified managers, who more often than not are over-compensated, micromanaging subordinates who are much better positioned, albeit under-compensated, to accomplish the technical tasks, including the coordination of the technical efforts.

Woody Allen once quipped, “Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym.” I would take Woody's dictum one step further: "Those who can't teach gym, manage."

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• Johnny and Oppie (lastwordonnothing.com)

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Post 2,044 “The over/under failure of seniority-based organizations”

TheBigHenry's Truths (Reprised)

P.S.: You can't fix stupid.                        (Image via Theo Spark)

TheBigHenry's Truths:

My Personal Truth —

“Honor and good sense can only be lost. What you must fight for is Liberty.”

My Truth Predicate —

“Truth is not assertion, and assertion is not proof.”

My Truth Axiom —

“Entitlementalia is the audacity of dopes.”

My Truth Serum —

“An unfalsifiable truth is not worth examining.”

My Truth Corollary —

“Happiness is the pursuit.”

My Time Rule —

“A typical watch rarely shows the correct time. But any broken watch shows the exact time twice daily.”

My Law of Chaos —

“Any sufficiently advanced chaotic behavior is indistinguishable from free will.”

My Dad (The Perfectionist) —

“'Good enough' is not good enough.”

My 10% Rule —

“10% of life is getting directions.”

My Law of Nature —

“Nature abhors everything, with the single exception of perfect symmetry.”

My Law of Possibility —

“Anything is possible, except certainty.”

My Pleasant Schedule —

“I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Thursday's not good for me either. How about never? Does never work for you?”

My Law of Worry Conservation —

“You must worry all the time to become worry free.”

My Law of Restricted Choice —

“You can't choose not to worry, but you can choose what you worry about. Choose wisely.”

My Maxim №1 —

“Moral relativism is all the rage. Anti-Semitism is a statistic.”

My Maxim №2 —

“Waterboarding a couple of terrorists is a travesty. Murdering thousands of civilians is a statistic.”

My Law of Balance —

“I'm suggesting that your outrage is unbalanced; as is your psyche.”

My Law of Mechanics —

“Some inconsistency is the requisite lubricant for a functioning compromise.”

My Law of Expertise —

“There are no shortcuts to expertise. The only known exceptions were Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Rain Man, and Barry Bonds.”

My Law of Special Relativity —

“You're never ‘completely lost’; you're always ‘here’.”

My Handbasket Rule —

“Narcissism is the purgatory of evil.”

My Inconvenient Truth —

“Truth itself doesn’t change; only its degree of inconvenience.”

My Cracked Wisdom —

“If we cannot put solar-power plants in the Mojave desert, I don't know where the hell we can put them,” said Schwarzenegger at Yale. “Put solar-power plants where the sun don't shine,” cracked TheBigHenry at Remembrance in Spacetime.

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Post 2,016 “TheBigHenry's Truths (Reprised)”

Just for the fun of it!

Let's make life less boring for our precious ones.

 

Victim (left): Christopher Lane (Photo: Gina Smith via AP)
Alleged shooters (right): Bored Teens (Photo via Theo Spark)

[BTW, any unbiased remarks from Barack, Jesse or Al?]

Related source » Police: College baseball player victim of random killing: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An Australian man attending an Oklahoma college on a baseball scholarship was shot and killed in what police described Monday as a random act of violence by three "bored" teenagers who decided to kill someone "for the fun of it".”
— AP, August 19, 2013 (usatoday.com)

---

In the spirit of our progressively permissive society, where no one is left behind, everyone is above average, no one can be faulted for anything, everyone gets a trophy, and where personal accountability is a joke, these three bored teens should be given a fair trial before a jury of their bored peers.

Then, regardless of the verdict, and to be as fair as possible, one of the three shooters should be picked at random to get his brains blown out by some other bored teen (picked at random, of course).

Just for the fun of it.

Related articles

• Murdered white guy in Oklahoma: Obama? Jesse? Al? Crickets! (politicsandfinance.blogspot.com)
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• Teenagers allegedly murder college baseball player out of boredom (nydailynews.com)

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Post 2,004 “Just for the fun of it!”

Regression to the Mean-spirited Left

Sir Winston Churchill
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Joe Biden
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” — Winston Churchill

“We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.” — Joe Biden

Related source » The Age of Negation, or How Progressives Regressed: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.] h/t Craig Newmark

“We live in extraordinarily negative times. I don’t mean by this that we are materially worse off than, say, during the Great Depression, or that we have become grumpier than ever before. I mean that we now define ourselves by what we are against.

This isn't just an American condition. The great global educated class, a mostly affluent group weighed down by iPhones, tablets, and other necessities, has risen firmly against the status quo. One can find them protesting by the thousands at Puerta del Sol or Rothschild Boulevard or Tahrir Square or Zuccotti Park. Polls show trust in established institutions crashing to all-time lows.

[…]

Rosanvallon, author of Counter-Democracy, maintains that the people he calls “radicals” have contracted an extreme case of myopia. Unable to perceive politics globally, as the field of revolutionary activity, they must focus their feeble eyesight on a single obtruding issue, some “crisis” or “problem” or injustice for which they demand a solution. The radical impulse, according to Rosanvallon, has become reactive rather than revolutionary, and seeks to browbeat the government into action, rather than overthrow it.”
— Martin Gurri, July 9, 2013 (theumlaut.com)

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Make no mistake, my friends, we live in an upside-down world. Read it and weep:

• Weep for the perversion of traditional idealism into Leftist negativism.
• Weep for the perversion of meritocracy into Leftist idiocracy.
• Weep for the perversion of self esteem into Leftist self loathing.
• Weep for the cooling of personal accountability and the warming of Leftist government dependency.
• Weep for the vanishing of excellence and the ubiquity of Leftist diversity.
• Weep for the absence of logic and the ubiquity of Leftist propaganda.
• Weep for the loss of tolerance and the spiking of reverse racism.
• Weep for the morphing of Truman's "The buck stops here!" into Obama's "It's all Bush's fault."

And apropos President Trumen, consider the following from non-other than Leftist shill Maureen Dowd:
[h/t Malcolm Pollack]

As George Packer wrote in The New Yorker, Bill Clinton earned $17 million last year giving speeches, including one to a Lagos company for $700,000. Hillary gets $200,000 a speech.

Until Harry Truman wrote his memoirs, the ex-president struggled on an Army pension of $112.56 a month. “I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable,” he said, “that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency.”

Weep, my friends, for the corruption of national dignity trickling down from the pinnacle of power to the asses who give their souls in exchange for Obama phones.

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Post 2,002 “Regression to the Mean-spirited Left”