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The American Book of the Dead by Ash Tree

For many months, Republicans have been accusing Obama with “Where are the jobs?” Now, apparently, it’s not Obama’s fault, it’s the fault of the unemployed. The jobs are there, they’re just too lazy. I very much doubt there are many in the Tea Party who believe this – because they don’t want to: they want to believe this is Obama’s fault. Cain’s rhetoric is puzzling, and mostly the people are applauding because he’s standing by what he said, rather than applauding the idea. He’s the anti-Romney.

Similarly, they’ve spent years talking about how our government is soshilist. Now everything is working fine, and there’s no reason to protest. Either the system works or it doesn’t. It’s hard to argue that we’re in the midst of a socialist government takeover when OWS is arguing for less corporate influence in government. Even the Tea Party hates the bailouts.

Reminds me of when Glenn Beck was attacking the Arab Spring for overthrowing dictators – which is a confusing message to TPers who think Obama’s a dictator, and probably sympathized with the protesters. Tea Partiers want to revolt against the system, and the criticism of OWS seems transparently like spin – like Fox is carrying Wall St.’s water – which, of course, it is. Glenn Beck went off the air soon afterwards.

I know the Tea Party are kings of cognitive dissonance, but this could backfire, at least with some people. The reason that OWS will last is because they’re right, and just enough of the Tea Party will come on board to sustain it.

Here’s how the debate goes: If the whole of creation includes 125 billion galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each, as astronomers think, then what if some of these stars have planets with advanced civilizations, too? Why would Jesus Christ have come to Earth, of all the inhabited planets in the universe, to save Earthlings and abandon the rest of God’s creatures?

Weidemann, a self-described protestant Christian, suggested some possible solutions. Perhaps extraterrestrials aren’t sinners, like humans, and therefore aren’t in need of saving. However, the principle of mediocrity — the idea that your own example is most likely typical unless you have evidence to the contrary — casts doubt on this, he pointed out.

“If there are extraterrestrial intelligent beings at all, it is safe to assume that most of them are sinners too,” Weidemann said. “If so, did Jesus save them too? My position is no. If so, our position among intelligent beings in the universe would be very exceptional.”

Another possibility is that God incarnated multiple times, sending a version of himself down to save each inhabited planet separately.

However, based on the best guesses of how many civilizations we might expect to exist in the universe, and how long planets and civilizations are expected to survive, God’s incarnations would have had to be in about 250 places simultaneously at any given time, assuming each incarnation took about 30 years, Weidemann calculated.

If God truly became corporeal and took human form when Jesus Christ was born, this wouldn’t have been possible, Weidemann said.

Pretty silly. For the sake of argument, if God exists and can take human form, it’s pretty likely that God can multitask.

In new research that will almost certainly create controversy, scientists working with the hallucinogen psilocybin — the active ingredient found in “magic mushrooms” — have found that a single dose of the drug prompted an enduring but positive personality change in almost 60 percent of patients.

Specifically, tests involving a small group of patients in a strictly controlled and monitored clinical setting revealed that, more often than not, one round of psilocybin exposure successfully boosted an individual’s sense of “openness.” What’s more, the apparent shift in what is deemed to be a key aspect of personality did not dissipate after exposure, lasting at least a year and sometimes longer.

Her work has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Elle, Self, New York Observer, VanityFair.com, Esquire.com, and McSweeney’s among other publications.

Trouble is, the article only talks about how the experience is positive, without mentioning any of the possible negatives.

That’s when it occurred to me that not everyone is doing his or her part for the common good. Many of us watch porn online—perhaps all of us, at one time or another—but only a noble few make contributions commensurate with our viewing habits. Suddenly, sharing a homemade porn with the cyber world seemed as important a societal contribution as recycling.

It’s pretty amazing that an article in the mainstream media could make online porn seem perfectly normal. It’s fine to think it can be part of a healthy sex life, but to offer no commentary about how things can go wrong is only half the story. It’s sort of like saying, “Hey, heroin is great!” Yeah, some people can create “The White Album,” but some people die.  Something so powerful as sex can’t possibly be this simplistic.

More of my thoughts on porn here.

Source:LiveScience

VAN SUSTEREN: Here’s the thing, though, that makes me so, you know, I don’t know, enraged about it, is that the ones who are the rich people — a large portion of the rich people actually are in the government.

BOLTON: Well, this is…

VAN SUSTEREN: And so they — they pass their own laws to shield themselves…it’s just so appalling that the rich in their own country don’t give a damn about the people in their own country.

Right on! Only problem: they’re talking about Pakistan. Somehow this isn’t a problem when it’s done by American politicians.

Well, I must say that politics in this country now is in a state that I think has no analogue in American history and maybe nowhere in any parliamentary system. It’s astonishing. I mean, I’m not a great enthusiast for Obama, as you know, from way back, but at least he’s somewhere in the real world. Perry, who’s very likely—very likely to get the—to win the primary and win the nomination, and maybe to win the election, he’s often in outer space. I mean, his views are unbelievable. Bachmann is the same. Romney is kind of more or less toward the center. These are—the positions that they are taking are utterly outlandish.

I mean, as you mentioned before, I just came back from Europe, where people just can’t believe what they’re seeing here, what people are saying. I mean, take one of the really crucial issues for the human species: doing something about environmental catastrophe. Well, you know, every single one of the Republican candidates—maybe not Huntsman, but every major one—is a climate change denier. It’s kind of ironic in the case of Perry. He says there’s no global warming, while Texas is burning up with the highest temperatures on record, fire all over the place, and so on. But it doesn’t matter, it’s just not happening. In fact, the one who has conceded that maybe global warming has taken place is Michele Bachmann. I heard a statement of hers in which she said, “Well, yes, maybe it’s happening. It’s God’s punishment for allowing gay marriage,” or some comment like that. I mean, this—what’s going on there is just off the international spectrum of sane behavior.