Why Private Gun Ownership Is Generally Wrong

"The murders were the 27th and 28th this year in Toronto. Detroit, a far smaller U.S. city, had 184 murders by mid-July." Toronto's Globe and Mail, July 17, 2012

Americans can't deny that statistic. Most Americans have guns. Most Canadians do not. I happen to believe it's wrong for most people in America to have handguns in their homes.

Wait, please! Listen to what I have to say. I know what I'm talking about. I've lived in America for over thirty years, and I like it, and previously in Canada for about twenty.

Americans seem to deny any connection between the right to buy and store handguns in the house, and the larger prevalence of actual murders within their country. Other civilized countries around the world have lower crime rates than America, wherever citizens do not value gun ownership useful and desirable.

The larger issue I have against the average American's freedom to have guns, even for those who take lessons, register them, and keep them safely, is the reason behind buying them in the first place. The idea of having guns for so-called prudent self-defense is so deeply ingrained in the American psyche and supported by laws, that this post is as powerful as a soft gust of warm air, no doubt.

Most people only buy and keep possessions they use or else they store them.

Perhaps they just want to have guns to wave around and prove there is "freedom" to own them, just as they own jewelry and pictures, just to look at.

The difference is that guns are harmful if they take up space in living areas and shouldn't be. Restricting that right for others would restrict that same right for me, but I wouldn't mind that for a million personal reasons. The supposed constitutional right to bear arms was written by a few old white American men hundreds of years ago when times were different.

Here's why guns should be restricted: probably their owners will use their guns, and guns will cause harm. To whom? Kids, old people, themselves. I read about it every day. A gun in the city has no other purpose than to kill a human. Animal control officers kill nuisance animals in suburban and urban areas. If they're used for self-defense in the city, then I don't think they're useful.

Americans don't care about gun ownership as long as they're all right in every way, and yet they don't see the larger connection between being all right and not having guns. They think that personal security is assured if they have guns, or more assured than if they don't have guns. 

Every study out there disproves this. It's a bad idea. It's cowardly and uneducated to lean on guns to save you when every study in the world says that guns are certain to be used in ways harmful to owners.

If guns are used to kill predatory animals, then I can see how they're useful, but the need to kill predatory animals should account for a tiny percentage of gun sales in America. 

Americans use a gun as a status symbol, as proof of their supposed freedom. Here's a news flash: it isn't either to some of us. It's simply a symbol of the degradation of the human condition. It's just not nice to own guns. It's usually harmful, and it's certainly not necessary. So I say, guns are generally, for most prudent Americans, a waste of space, money, and time. Everyone else around the world seems to understand guns inspire crimes, yet some Americans listen to the NRA and haven't got the message.

Being against guns is not my idea of a combative stance, as some Americans insist, but a view with peace as the ultimate goal. If peacefulness doesn't interest you as a value, I believe you may find a more aggressive set of lies (for this is how you must view my points) in favor of guns at the mighty National Rifle Association (NRA), and at the same time, you're welcome to buzz off my site, as far as I'm concerned, because I won't want to read your comments. Peace is one of the values of this site, as my sidebar indicates.

UPDATE: A podcast (linked here) of a Radio Times segment on National Public Radio (NPR) gives the reason violence is under-reported and not followed through in Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware. By extension, the same problems occur throughout inner cities of America. Youths have to be kept busy and occupied or else they  resort to mischief and worse...

Justice Has To Be Shown To Be Done

 I grew up thinking the Supreme Court was the almighty arbiter of truth and justice.  I had reverential respect for the institution.

Nowadays, I can't stop thinking of how much they disappoint me.

The Supreme Court is made of humans, and at this point in time, they've been shown everywhere as a group of dysfunctional,deeply flawed (biased) partisans, mostly Republicans. I think one of the worst, possibly the most obvious example of their inefficiency was thrust into the open for all to see when one of them called the President -- 'Liar' -- in the formal setting of the State of the Union address. Still shocks me.

 Honestly, how is that a fine example of the virtues the American people expect them to possess, such as self-restraint and thoughtful consideration?

 They see a police force around the country that is fragmented and unconnected and cannot possibly be doing a good job, where a speed limit charge costs more than a week's worth of groceries, and yet murderers and rapists are set free.They know this and yet do nothing to correct it, help the police patch together their findings, and prove justice is being done.

 I pity them, and yet they anger me. They have the power to do a better job and make America a better place to live. It's not enough to do nothing as they often appear, they have to actually do the right thing, or at least do something.

One of the areas where they could take leadership is surely healthcare. Most studies show other countries do healthcare better. Doctors and nurses, the helping professions, must be protected from expensive lawsuits to begin  with, without being totally exempt from punishment. Any basic summary of healthcare systems around the world, provided consumers like the system, shows that in all cases the government made the decision that everyone should be covered in some form. In addition, patients around the world in these better countries are covered whether they contribute or not to the system simply because they are there.

It's the civilized and the right thing to do, and the Supreme Court needs to be reminded.

Other countries are aware of how many people are in the country and who they are, but why doesn't America? America lacks in this way as well. They don't know who's even here! How can the country ignore twelve million illegals, many of whom are children? From childhood, they've been invested in, their educations funded by our property taxes, so how can they possibly be expected to self-deport i.e. just go away? Defies belief.

When the country looks to the Supreme Court for leadership, I see a breakdown in leadership, justice, and the power of the government.

Every time I hear a politician say America is the biggest and best superpower in some world, I tune out their empty words. Too late for that, I'm afraid, sorry.

AFTERWORD:  I'm glad to hear the Supreme Court passed Obamacare. Not passing it would have been such a great hardship for so many. My hope is that healthcare can be unified for all, just as time zones and train track rails had to be unified by federal mandate. I used to hope business could do it, but as the auto makers proved, business cannot unify healthcare.  Healthcare for all will only become a reality by federal force, as happened earlier in England and Canada.

Here's a wordle of reader's reactions to Obamacare at Daily Beast...Relief being the most popular!

Courtesy: The Daily Beast

What is a home, anyway?

Here are a few fine quotes expounding on the idea of 'home' ~

Every one of us needs a home. The world needs a home.
There are so many young people who are homeless.
They may have a building to live in, but they are homeless in their hearts.
That is why the most important practice
of our time is to give each person a home.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

Home is any four walls that enclose the right people.
- Helen Rowland

My home…It is my retreat and resting place from wars,
I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest
outside, as I do another corner in my soul.
- Michel Eyquem De Montaigne, 1533 – 1592

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

and these gems ~

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.
- Margaret Mead

Bring love into your home for this is where our
love for each other must start.
- Mother Teresa

I found these quotes in an incredible photographer's blog by Steve McCurry, one of the world's great travelers too. This journal of a lifetime of photos (so far) from an award-winning National Geographic photographer helps picture an "important world elsewhere".

Here are a few more I have found on my own, which I hope you enjoy ~

Who has not felt how sadly sweet
The dream of home, the dream of home,
Steals o’er the heart, too soon to fleet,
When far o’er sea or land we roam?
-Thomas Moore (1779–1852),The Dream of Home.


’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there ’s no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which sought through the world is ne’er met with elsewhere.
-J. Howard Payne (1792–1852)


Peace and rest at length have come
All the day’s long toil is past,
And each heart is whispering, “Home,
Home at last.”
-Thomas Hood (1799–1845, Home at last


Ay, now am I in Arden: the more fool I. When I was at home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.
-William Shakespeare (1564–1616), As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 4.


And the star-spangled banner, oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
-Francis Scott Key (1779–1843), The Star-Spangled Banner.


From our own selves our joys must flow,
And that dear hut, our home.
-Nathaniel Cotton (1707–1788), The Fireside. Stanza 3.

A Second, More Insistent Letter to Mrs. Assad

Dear Mrs. Assad ~

My last post was a polite request to stop the fighting in Syria.

So far, fighting has only increased in your country, from all formal and informal reports I have read.

If you and your husband cannot and will not stop it, then your country is out of his control and you should acknowledge the fact. Prove that he is in control. More important: stop the bloodshed.

Today, diplomats from leading countries are joining the worldwide effort to stop massacre and bloodshed in your country, since you and your husband seem to have given up responsibility or power to do so.

On a personal level, you disappoint me with your lack of leadership in your country.

Other countries, unlike yours, are promoting and participating in an enviable worldwide march toward lasting peace and prosperity.

Sincerely,

Shelley Seymour

American Foes of Healthcare Reform Exaggerate Costs, Should Apply Perspective

Certain Republican pundits are currently discussing religion and politics in America without admitting they are pushing political agendas and want certain people elected as ulterior motives. I see that they are mixing politics and religion, saying the two have always historically been held closely together, in America.

According to them, hospitals should instill practical religious principles when caring for patients. These self-professed experts want "religious" hospitals to follow their religious faith as they see it, rather than "politics" of the day, if they see a conflict. Then they conflate politics, religion, and science and the result sounds hilariously crazy.

Yet any biblical expert with opposing points of view could find phrases in the Bible to overturn the ideas of these ridiculous, self-styled "experts"...

They perceive science is anti-religious and unhelpful without respect for non-partisan medical principles and practices. They insist on imposing (dumping) their half-baked ideas on others, calling their partisan views "religious" and prefer that medical care be withheld by guilting others, and then twisting them into a paternalistic Republican agenda point.

If a doctor doesn't think a woman should use birth control for religious reasons, for example, according to these politicos, the doctor should tell her to find another doctor and another hospital and persuade her not to use birth control - without offering her a safe and certain alternative when one already exists for her use in just such a situation.

What would happen if hospitals decided not to treat those of different colors and religious faiths? Where would these very same pundits get their medical treatments?

Let's hope they don't lead hospitals into believing their ridiculously anti-scientific attitudes.

The Importance Of Online Learning

There isn't any need to feel guilty about spending time on the internet. Our computers have become the new mecca where we can find almost unlimited resources. When we do one thing, we are not doing another, but we should try to find the best way to allocate our time. It's truly our most precious resource.

Read from new sites around the internet. Learn more about your personal interests. Become more well-read about world events. Google people you know and don't know, and discover interesting experiences others have had that can help you. Now is the time to learn everything you have always wanted to know but did not dare to ask parents, family, teachers, or anyone else by making use of the internet.

Socialize, too, of course, but allow time to grow and nurture the places within yourself in desperate need of attention. We all have areas we need to improve upon. Be humble enough to know it, and feel gratitude for all the benefits surrounding us in our daily lives.

Our minds are hungry and thirsty for knowledge. We need sound minds in sound bodies. Life isn't only about getting ahead for oneself. It's truly important to expend your efforts for others, to help at the appropriate time and in the best possible fashion.

When I awoke this morning, and noticed my familiar electronic appliances awaiting my attention, I thought of how much our lives have changed, fortunately for the better. If we control computers and use them as our slaves, we'll discover how much greater personal growth and higher learning benefits us as long as we don't allow computers to dominate us as human beings.

Passing through the day, I marveled again how much our world has changed and how important it is to keep moving ahead, and not fall behind. facebook - an online business focused on friendship and goodwill, without any visible products, funded by online advertisements - went public and made its founders fortunes. What would our great-great-great grandparents have thought of the idea as an investment?

I've been feeling very guilty about falling back on the frequency of my posts recently because of moving and all the annoying tiredness brought on my unpacking and the various employment hats I wear, as writer, and recently a real estate agent. This online newsletter is a purely voluntary effort on my part. When I look back at the over seven hundred posts in my blogs, I think of how much fun it's been to write them. If I can help one person answer a question they've had, it will all have been worth the time and effort. While I can't seem to stick to a schedule...some days I write three posts, and then am too busy for a few days to write another...I hope my readers forgive me, and use these words for personal purposes. If we all shared what we know, then we'd all know more.

Worthy Interiors

Easton Neston, Northampton, England

Architectural Digest

The venerable Architectural Digest has pictures online, and has photos of impressively-renovated Easton Neston, a former royal residence near Northampton, England.

Map of Northampton, England 

This is my idea of a beautiful interior, since it doesn't intimidate me the way some modern properties do. The entire appears comfortable and cozy. The incredible garden by itself, however, must require incredible maintenance.

The interior utilities have been been tastefully renovated, and I especially admire the kitchen. The kitchen can often be overlooked but is the most difficult in a house to refurbish. The result is a certain perfection rarely seen in the present day, when some consider carved woods a manifestation of slave labor rather than an art form.

For further interior design excitement, you might try Houzz, a new site rocking the design community with photos of thousands of home interiors. Well worth a few moments of your time, it's hard not to spend untold stolen minutes on this time-friendly site.

Will Body Scans Make Online Shopping Easier?

An interesting story has just come out on the Wall Street Journal about a technology that takes the clothes you have and predicts which of their clothes you will fit. You only have to somehow add the size, make and model of your clothes. Since clothes might not fit perfectly, and makes and models of clothes are quickly obsolete, it's automatically a difficult system to obey, but it suggests many new growth opportunities for sales.

In the comments on that article, someone said that "full-body scans" will soon be available.  I don't know whether the possibility is true, but it made me think. Online body scans are an interesting idea. Wouldn't it be great if we could have these scanned models of ourselves in our computers (privacy issues aside), and drag an article of clothing from a website onto our own personal model, and see whether it fits, and what it looks like? Maybe one could add several clothes to make up an entire outfit. Seeing brand new shoes, trousers, jackets, shirts, jewelry online on an exact replica of your body could create an imaginary complete wardrobe overhaul. 

It sounds like fun to switch variables, as long as it's not the only way to shop. Little girls would love to have the chance to have this technology for a video game, at the very least, I would think, if the technology isn't already available. They have loved to dress up their Barbie dolls for many years.

Most shopping sites would have to model their clothes differently so that each size can be available online for viewing in different sizes and from different directions. That doesn't sound so onerous an imperative if it's done with clothes direct from the factory. It would just create a different goal for photographic models of clothes.

I'm sure many sites would have to follow, because who could have predicted the Amazon would have the plethora of information about new books that it currently provides, or that Google would publish so many of them.

I think having a personal model of oneself online, and being able to try clothes on it would be a huge benefit for many shoppers.

A Letter to Mrs. Assad

Dear Mrs. Assad ~

You are involved in the making of news in Syria, and you can influence your country's leader as few in the world can.

I'm only an observer of the news, I don't make it, and I don't like to hear the trouble in your country.

I saw Barbara Walters interview Bashar. I saw a rich, privileged kid grown up, probably privately educated. I've heard you call him 'beautiful'.

Yet there is nothing 'beautiful' about the regime he heads that he denies is killing people.

He has no future with the respectable Western majority, and your name is now out in public about your involvement in the genocide and mass murders. Your emails will be exposed.

Please give yourselves up. Do it for me, for all of us who are subjected to the unnecessary violence in Syria we see on television and on the internet, everywhere we get current news.

Your husband's a tyrannical, despotic, dictatorial leader of a military machine that is doomed to failure, and you've been shown to be part of it, too!

You can help stop the mass, indiscriminate destruction we all know is happening to your country.

Thanks,

Shelley

(Updated Mar 19/12)

On the Constitutionality of Certain State Laws

Why doesn't America learn to over-ride silly, unbaked State decisions that will just have to be overturned someday anyway, whether it's yesterday's decision in Utah to ignore certain delicate gender matters, or today's focus on the constitutionality of the actions of maniacal Governors. To have the former Mississippi Governor's pardons upheld as valid by the state Supreme Court, while challenged by the state's Attorney General, shows something is not right in the States.

Haley Barbour, former Governor of Mississippi from 2004 to 2012, a lawyer-lobbyist by trade, made friends with court-convicted murderers, and officially had the power to pardon them, and free them for life. Big fail.

The mother of a victim killed by one of the criminals said on CNN, she thinks  Gov. Barbour pardoned them "because he could, and because he wanted to." 

Did the state Supreme Court blindly go along with his wishes, because it had to, legally? Where was the place of the larger legal and moral question of right and wrong? Why wasn't majority rule obeying a larger, international sense of justice?

What absolutely twisted paternalism of power put this insane, fat, white, brawny idiot of a power-happy Governor in office and supported his failed leadership?

Why can't the Federal Supreme Court or the President, or even the Mississippi State Supreme Court over-ride a Governor whose powers clearly crossed a legal line? Legal, that is, in a moral and actual sense, if his pardons happened anywhere else in the civilized world? 

This former Governor has passed beyond anyone's idea of legal propriety. He pardoned more than 200 criminals, twenty-four of whom were convicted murderers. CBS-TV says he did not spare anyone on death row, and made "pardons" to save money in state prisons. A spoiled, little boy grown old, and a crazy, powerful lunatic all at once.

The criminals the former Governor pardoned in Mississippi have been given clean personal histories. They can travel internationally, vote, own guns, get hunting licenses, and so on, as if they had never been convicted.

The families of their victims, in stark contrast, live in perpetual danger, looking over their shoulders, as their  nightmare memories of  family members being stalked, hunted, and killed, return.

It's not fair, to say the least. The remainder of the entire civilized world sympathizes with them, as we watch this unbelievably tragic perversion of justice. How can this be happening in 2012?

Time for Politicians to Learn Immigration Realities

Listening to the Republican contenders in the CNN debate the other night for ten minutes, I was amused by their naivete and sadly unrealistic attitudes toward immigration before I turned off the television in distaste.

Being from Canada, and having lived here in the U.S. since 1980, I have been interested, shall we say, in the issue for a long time. I don't vote because there hasn't been any reason to get citizenship except to be able to vote, and in return I would have to serve on jury duty. Avoiding jury duty always wins. I don't think about jury duty, I only feel it. It's visceral, and comes from that reptile part of the brain that determines the fight and flight response.

That e-verify system sounds to me like it's not going to fly with a lot of homeowners, I would bet! Just saying...

The idea that having an e-verify system to solve illegal immigration is absurd and exclusionary, at best...Here's why: all Americans would have to be distrustful of every other American. Everyone would have to keep checking a website to check whether someone else is here legally or not...That's a mighty large responsibility for the notoriously inaccurate internet to do...Since websites can't get house prices right, how is it expected to have the legal status of all citizens updated at all times?

Does the government really think that every time every homeowner, in this land of homeowners, has some desperately pressing need to fix, and has taken a few minutes off work, inconvenienced others maybe to get the work done...is that homeowner really going to stop every one of those service providers, every plumber, carpenter, electrician, Roto-rooter man, handyman or gardener, and so on, to require proof of citizenship to fix the job, and ask them to wait outside while they check their existence on  their computers on e-verify? If their computer doesn't work or they don't have one, they might not be allowed to hire a service provider because they can't check e-verify. After all, if a homeowner asks one service provider, it's only fair to ask every provider every time they enter the house, or else some service provider, at some point, is going to complain in court about being an unfairly treated citizen. 

The idea of self-deporting is absurd. No one is going to temporarily spontaneously and voluntarily remove themselves from this country unless they want to or have to.  If they want to, it won't be for some general desire on the part of The Government to  cleanse the country of illegals. The people who should self-deport are here illegally and don't have papers, and they won't self-deport because they are perhaps persecuted wherever they're from and are always caught in a network of life (and employment) here. Otherwise, they would have waited to come here legally, by the books. Common sense to me.

These political contenders seem to be dreamers  not worth following if they think a  single tall fence is going to keep out intruders from central America bound and determined, like burglars entering a locked house, to get into the sometimes unlocked country of America. The politicians obviously haven't taken the time to pay their tuition for a basic education on the most basic fundamental laws and principles of immigration, and the need for more efficient  form processing.

 If they don't know immigration --- how to open and shut the front, back, and every door into the country --- how can they possibly be trusted to understand other issues? 

Those contenders should know more about immigration, and they should care about the issue and that Department of the Government  (ICE). They should make a rudimentary effort to try to understand. Not only is it sad not to, it's not respectable. Candidates lose credibility when they don't bother to know fundamental legal basics relevant to affected segments of the population.

But then, they seem too obsessed with women's private 'health' issues to have clear  minds and policies about public deficit and immigration topics they should do something about. They're not really worth my time, respect, or trust if they mess around with inaccuracies, even if they are,  admittedly, upholding a useful and important rite of democracies in running for election.

It might be useful and surprising for all residents of America if true immigration requirements, laws, and facts find the light of day. Otherwise, it's just the blind leading the blind in everyday discussions, political, business, and personal.

We all know the maxim. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

'Chronicle' (2012), the Movie: Go See It!

'Chronicle' (2012) is an excellent movie for those of us bewildered by big budget movies whose themes seem remote from our quotidian cares and concerns. As perhaps the most original of movies I've seen lately, I would urge you to see it. Don't leave it to teenagers. I did attend with one, despite having been warned the hand-held camera scenes might make me dizzy. They did, and the beginning can be a bit slow-going for those of us who are past our teen years. Here's a minor spoiler alert, when 'Chronicle' finally revs into gear, the story unwinds faster and faster and faster into an extended Tolkien-style adventure. This is where the special effects surge into high gear. I didn't hear the audience laugh as much later in the movie as much as they did during the more comical early scenes when the boys first discovered their rare powers. It's all good fun, and worth watching.

When the main likable characters, two teenage cousins and a so-called friend - one of whom decides to film his life - find literally a hole-in-the-ground in the woods, and follow it, Alice-in-Wonderland style, down to a Harry-Potter-esque underground cave, the boys experience mysterious transformations. They are bestowed with unique, transcendent powers. To the delight of the audience, these powers grow and grow, first wowing each other, and separately, their school friends at a talent show.

These three were all new actors to me, Dane DeHaan plays Andrew, the cameraman, Alex Russell plays Matt, his cousin, and Michael B. Jordan plays Steve, their friend. They can fly with glee through the air and enlarge their powers in new ways as the story develops. Admittedly, some scenes were gory, and showed mangled, mutilated bodies, on fire, and gutted.

My favorite scenes were the flying scenes, without doubt, involving a plethora of fancy technological feats of engineering rather than the school and party settings, which nevertheless redeemed the story with a semblance of reality. With a single romance between one of the actors and a camera-toting, beautiful, blonde blogger, the story checks back into the cameraman's sorry home-life with a cancer-stricken mother where he ultimately exacts revenge on his cruel, pathetic, unemployed fireman father. His strength made this mother's heart beat harder with sympathy, and say "yes!" for under-privileged, abused teenagers out there.

The boys' new powers take them to places they (and the audience) wouldn't have dreamed of, and thrill everyone to the unexpected heights, social and otherwise, they achieve. Spectacular in vision and optimism, the good times finally turn, of course. The special effects meshed in a tightly-edited hip, mash-up style made me wonder how much of it was real, and how much possibly computer-animated. Certainly, in 'Chronicle', more than in most movies, ideas were freely lifted from other movies and from literature and blended, with good intentions, into an entirely fresh, new concept. Bravo to everyone involved in making it. Sequels might explain and enlarge on how they obtained their special powers, with kudos to the debut of Josh Trank.

'Chronicle' is well worth watching for spectacular special effects, directed by Josh Trank, and for originality of concept, written by Max Landis.

Rated: PG-13. 

Runtime: 84 min.Released: February 3, 2012.

Budget: $12M.  Opening weekend gross: $22M.

Filming Locations: Cape Town, South Africa. Vancouver, BC.

Toothless Tigers: Abortion and Homosexuality

The noisy foes of homosexuality and abortion baffle me. I live here in the northeast corner of the United States. We all constantly make choices about healthcare, vacations, home lifestyle, transportation, friendships, careers, and so on, as we go about our daily lives.

Why is there so much public hysteria about these essentially private issues?

Why do foes of those who are in favor of such issues believe they will ultimately somehow, some way, sometime pay the price for someone else's decision in favor of abortion or homosexuality?

Let's take these issues apart...I hope they decompose into smithereens on the scrap heap of triviality.

First of all, I don't want to imply these issues aren't important to individuals, perhaps of life-and-death importance. These are central issues to people deciding whether they need to have a third marriage to the same person, or whether or not to have an abortion.

My point is that those people should be able to choose and decide for themselves, just as people with money should be able to choose how to spend it (let's hope for good reasons), or any of the multitude of other lifestyle choices people make.

One theory I've heard is that the foes of abortion and homosexuality are running scared. Now, of what could they be frightened?

1. Perhaps they do not appreciate how new methods can solve old dilemmas. Homosexuality and safe, hospital abortions available for all, are age-old exceptions to the mainstream that have not been accepted by law until recently.

2. On homosexuality: perhaps people who are against homosexuality are frightened to accept them socially, even one at a time. Perhaps they have an us-them mindset, as if they were from a democratic society, and the others were Communists, so they call them different, worse, perverts, as if they were social predators. Perhaps they're worried it might spread, and society would fall apart if everyone did it, and there wouldn't be any babies. If so, they need to make themselves less frightened somehow, maybe read up on it and meet homosexuals.

3.On abortion: perhaps people are against abortion if they worry there won't be enough children like they used to be, as good as they used to be, whatever that implies, to replace themselves, spread their seed, their race, ahead of them into the future. Perhaps they are worried the cost will come out of their pockets.

Perhaps the extremists whipping up mass hysteria should confront the central question of their own immortality and sexuality. We are all humans, and we all have finite lives. Accepting the choices of others would go a long way to promoting peace if these toothless tyrants promoting mass activism would only care to listen.

The Problem With Syria

                          
SYRIA

Syria, a country about the size of North Dakota, is presenting an interesting problem to other world leaders. Interesting outside the country, but brutal and life-threatening to its own citizens.

It made me, and probably many people, wonder why the United States, or any other country, hasn't done anything effective yet to stop the bloodshed.

 Here's the written transcript of the country's leader being interviewed by Barbara Walters, and he sounds very elite and well-educated. He totally denied any wrongdoing. An article I have just read compares him to Hitler and similar genocidal leaders of the past.

The real answer, according to a reliable source who will not allow himself to be named is, it's not because of his lineage, or his beautiful, computer scientist wife (an Englishwoman with a Syrian doctor father), but because the United States is looking at Egypt. They are seeing the chaos that ensued after  the end of President Mubarak's leadership. Egypt has descended into chaos despite so-called military leadership, and hasn't made a peaceful transition to democratic leadership. American leaders believe  having a despot ruling a country works better than having chaos. How can Egypt make a peaceful transition?

Back to Syria, it's a waste on almost every imaginable level to see a civil war raging from afar. I can only hope and wish the Syrian problem will soon be over. My heart goes out to innocent victims of Syrian violence and bloodshed.

Russia is pursuing diplomatic channels...the European Union might sanction...Turkey is watching and waiting.

Will America react with force if provoked?

Princeton Study Finds Uninformed Participants Tend To Side With Majority

Here's an interesting point taken from the Princeton Bulletin today:

• "A Princeton-based research team found that uninformed individuals — as in
those with no prior knowledge or strong feelings on a situation’s outcome — can
actually be vital to achieving a democratic consensus. These individuals tend to
side with and embolden the numerical majority and dilute the influence of powerful
minority factions who would otherwise dominate everyone else. This finding
— based on group decision-making experiments on fish, as well as mathematical
models and computer simulations — challenges the common notion that
an outspoken minority can manipulate uncommitted voters and can ultimately
provide insights into humans’ political behavior. The research team was led by
Iain Couzin, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology."

The uninformed tend to side with the majority, rather than being manipulated by an outspoken minority. I find this news very reassuring and forgiving, whether it reflects another era, or today's divisive rule from Washington.

Maybe We Should Be Grateful

These last few days I have been watching the Costa Concordia ship lying submerged in the Mediterranean Sea near Giglio Island with great interest. It has not completely sunk, and for that we should be grateful.

I'm not exonerating the captain from steering the ship onto rocks and leaving it as soon as possible to save his own life, thus creating a shocking vacuum of power when it was most needed.

Perhaps the fact that the ship landed where it did, and was almost completely evacuated in two hours, is little short of miraculous. If the ship had been in open water, it might very well have sunk quickly, bringing catastrophic loss of life. As it is now, Carnival Cruises and Costa Lines will have to carry most of the financial burden.

How quickly people forget these disasters. I went on a cruise, four of us in my family, around the Greek islands in March 2007, on the Louis Cruises Sea Diamond. One week after we disembarked, the very next cruise, the Sea Diamond, carrying about 1,537 passengers, hit rocks off the island of Santorini in the afternoon. We saw photos of crew members we had spoken to only days before. She sank overnight, fortunately after passengers were evacuated through rough waves, and only two passengers died.

Here is a good photo of the Sea Diamond:

Sea Diamond 

 Here is a photo of the Sea Diamond before she sank:

Sea Diamond, April 5, 2007

The point is, these incidents are disturbing, and yet neither involved loss of life, only loss of enormous, important ships. We could have been on it, but we weren't. For that we  count our blessings.

Here were three of us posing. We had a fabulous trip.

Dignify Your Students

According to this article, a public high school, somewhere in Texas, in a town called McKinney, has denied human and civil rights to students. School administrators have removed the doors from individual stalls in the bathrooms. Administrators assert that students cannot be seen sitting on toilets from the hallways, supposedly making the situation tolerable. 

They should have their awesome power removed.

To me this horrible situation sounds like a travesty of justice for students involved, and a breakdown of civil society. The administrators sound as if they are inhuman, incompetent, and just plain rude.

Shame on these administrators. How they injure the psyches of of the precious students who have been entrusted with their care.  If they are capable of such incivility, then I wonder how else their students are suffering. 

Students of all socio-economic backgrounds are supposed to be treated with respect and dignity. They are supposed to be inspired by example, not by clumsy, heavy-handed inhumanity.

Respect deserves respect. I feel the opposite for those administrators. I have called them and left two messages to protest because this subversion makes my blue blood boil.

Be Nice

Please be nice, every day of the year.

I've been hurt..really, really, hurt. Not physically, I'm not talking about physically...emotionally is what I mean.

If you've been hurt, too, know that you will find safety and peace here.

Sometimes people have said things to me that have hurt me to the marrow of my bones, and made me wonder why I am bothering to live...they have hurt me that much.

I am talking about women here. (I'm not thinking about men)...and I'm a woman. The truth is, some women can be inhuman. They have slapped me, and said unimaginably inhuman things. They look like humans. They act like humans, too, because they eat and get sick like humans. They aren't clones from another planet. Unfortunately, they're homegrown.

If you know any so-called women like that, beware of them. Stay away from them. Hide in a safer place, even if you're the only one who knows and cares. Please know that I understand, and I feel your pain. I can't do anything about it from here at my computer, at my desk, where I sit and compose these phrases. But they are said in truth from my heart, and I know. Believe me, I've been there.

It causes me anguish that even in an era when we have so many wonderful reasons to live, some people can be unkind and hurt others. Being nice is a conscious decision, an attitude, and a responsibility we should all embrace.

Kneeling At The Sports Pedestal

Sports madness at The Ohio State University continues even after all these years, despite the "bowl ban"...How could it not?

In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky controversy at rival Pennsylvania State University, a news feature announced a new coach for the Buckeye Football Team, Urban Meyer. He was hired for a contract worth over $27 million for four years hard labor.

Okay, you might call it sour grapes. My husband used to be a mathematics professor at Ohio State, doing hard labor for peanuts, relatively, measured in the thousands of dollars, rather than millions. Yet no one in the entire world, not just America, could do the exact same academic discipline in mathematics as my husband could do because he invented it. We left. He's at a much better place at Princeton University.

Back then, Columbus, Ohio, seemed football-crazy every fall. All the traffic lights were green around the stadium after a game. Hotels filled, food sources benefited…Obviously, nothing has changed about the way the University rewards the sports program for tourism and entertainment reasons.

Which other country on the entire planet, at a major university funded primarily through taxes, had fans who agreed that a coach of a single sport deserved greater rewards of money and outside benefits than the most brilliant scholars at that same university and the President? The practice is widespread across America, I hear, and how crazy is that?

Imagine if this scenario were turned around. Supposing football became associated with the least prestige and monetary reward within the university? Suppose many of the players received life-threatening concussions from playing the sport? As a consequence, wouldn't decent citizens take pity on the players and, with a flash of decently good conscience, stop the program? But I'm dreaming of utopia.

Ohioans and the parents of Ohio State University students keep cheering for football. They pay their football to the detriment, at the cost, of the primary university function -  the teaching and researching duet, as my family can attest. They their football coaches on an ivory pedestal. Professors aren't paid much, aren't on an ivory pedestal, because the sports program needs the money, or so the rumor mill says.

And exactly what is the history of American football?

Modestly it expanded from a game history suggest was played between Harvard and McGill University in 1874, following an earlier 1859 game between Princeton and neighboring Rutgers University. That's it! It is popular, but it doesn't have the history of many venerated fields of discipline that the university is mandated to provide to students to provide a worthwhile education.

The sport of American football is new, unproven, and anti-academic. The culture is clubby, jock-strapping, and unfriendly to women except as cheerleaders. Paying astronomical rates to sports coaches at universities is also new, and completely newsworthy. Why have universities taken to rewarding sports at the expense of academic pursuits? It's insane.

Private universities do not focus on  popular football mega-events, not on the same scale. Certainly, football programs sell tickets and may fund other sports programs if that's true. But that doesn't mean they should lack oversight and authority by the university administration and boards.

I think universities are unbalanced when they reward sports more than the disciplines that they ethically, often with government funding, have the mandate to fulfill.

And exactly where are girls, women, females, children, and infants, in all this talk of football? Forgotten, irrelevant, useless, unnecessary???...

Music Relaxes More than Massage in Scientific Studies

Why not consider listening to music when you have an excess of tension and need to relax?

Many musicians have created "yawnfests"and they make wonderful lullabies. Some say they listen every evening, so this music, not surprisingly, has become popular for its therapeutic benefits.

One of them, called "Weightless" using biofeedback in laboratory studies, relieved tension by an astonishing sixty-five percent in women. That result alone makes it more effective and relaxing than a massage! Sustained tones, chimes, bring peace. The listener gets out of the way and relaxes at a deep level. Even better is to be able to listen in the bath, in bed, at the computer, wherever.

Apart from not listening while driving, how harmless can it be to listen to relaxing music with physiological effects on the brain? Better than another drink, I would assert.

Which music, of any era, do you find most relaxing---religious music, eastern, classical music, decades-old music?