Objectives are the criteria for the decision—the specific details of what the decision is to accomplish. We establish these objectives once we state the purpose of the decision and agree upon the level at which it is to be made. We do this before discussing alternatives, sometimes even before identifying alternatives. Decision analysis is the antithesis of identifying a course of action and then building a case to support it. Instead we are moving from what needs to be accomplished toward the alternative that can best accomplish it. For example, if we want to hire a new executive, we are more likely to make a good choice if we first identify the qualities of an ideal candidate and then begin the interviewing process. No experienced manager needs to have this reasoning spelled out. Objectives are clear measures of the ends we want to achieve, for only with clear measures can we make reasoned choices.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Website – www.musicproducerpro.net

When you’re just starting out how to make beats it can be fun and frustrating at the same time. Trust me I was there. But it really is easier then you think. If you’re making a beat here are 10 tips that will get yo stated.

1. Pick a style- Know the style of beat you want to make before you start making it. Like rnb,rap,pop, etc. There have been plenty of beats that I made and could not figure out what style it was.

2. Pick A Major Artist- Think of a known artist that you would want to make the beat for. Like if you chose a style a rap, think now what rap artist do you want to make the beat for. Try to imagine that artist on your beat. This will make your hip hop beat-making experience a whole lot easier.

3. Listen To Their Song- Take a listen to the rap artist you are making the beat for songs. See the style. Get a feel for the kind of hip hop beats the artist raps over.

4. Formatting The Song- Very important. formatting is, the intro, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, etc. That’s all it is but basically you just change the order around however you feel like it. Turn on the radio and see how your favorite artist formats there song. When instruments come in, when they drop out. The most basic form to start with is, 2 or 4 bar intro, 16 bar verse, 8 bar chorus, 16 bar verse, 8bar chorus, 16 bar verse, 8 bars chorus. This is the most basic beat-making song format. This is very common in rap. If you want an even simpler way, you can create an 8 bar loop and keep it the same throughout the whole song. I have seen this done a lot.

5. Laying down the beat- I have learned that for starters, it’s easier to start with the drums. Kick, Snare, Hi hat, are always a good start. Record a pattern for four bars with those first. Then layer that with maybe some toms, cow-bell, symbols, etc. Whatever you want to use. THE DRUMS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT IN MAKING HIP HOP BEATS! Your drums must hit and hit HARD. The best way to get your drums hitting hard is by not using “pitty pat” free kits you downloaded from the internet for free. If your drums are weak, then your beat is going to be weak.

6. Laying Down A Melody- This is where most hip hop beat-makers have the most trouble. Because most eat makers can’t play the keys. For starters, you might want to learn basic keyboard skills. The major thing you need to learn are, major and minor scales. After you learn that, try and do different combinations and patterns with the drum beat you have made. Use an instrument like, a lead guitar, horns, clav, something that will stand out. Your melody can be however you want it, but for starters, you could do a 4 bar melody, or an 8 bar melody.

7. Layering The Beat- What is done a lot in beat making is layering. If you have your whole beat finished. You can go and make it sound bigger by layering. All you do is fill in some gaps, do the same pattern you did with one instrument with another instrument. Do this throughout your beat. This will make you beat sound a lot fatter.

8. Pan- Panning is basically having an instrument all the way to the right, all the way to the left, and anywhere in between. You pan for all kinds of different reasons. It gives each track its own little space in the stereo field. There are no rules for panning, put you have to do it. So just try it out and see what you like best.

9. The Mixdown- Very important! Very Important! Very Important! If you have a poor mix on your beat, then you have pretty much wasted your time. When mixing a beat, start with each track individually. Solo each track and make sure it sounds good by itself. EQ it if you have to, but if each track sounds good by itself, the whole beat will sound that much better. DO NOT DISTORT! If your master levels are in the red before you bounce to disc or .mp3, your distorting. Don’t worry about if its not loud enough. You never ever ever want to distort. If you are distorting, check any instrument that has boom or low end, Like a kick, bass, sub, etc. these tend to distort more often.

10. The Bounce- Now that you made you’re beat, Its the hottest hip hop beat ever, you want to put it on cd or upload it to the internet. When you’re exporting a beat for cd, Use .wav file. 44.1 16bit. If you want to upload to the internet use, 320kbps (the highest .mp3 quality) or 128kbps. Most websites wont accept 320kbps because the file size is too big. So go with 128kbps.

These are all just guidelines to help you get started. There are millions of ways to make a beat, But this is just to help you get your feet wet if you don’t know where to start.

For more information on music production please visit – www.musicproducerpro.net

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A transcript of my YouTube video of the same name.

Introduction

So what is determinism? Put simply, determinism is the idea that every action is ultimately caused by previous actions – cause & effect. From what you decide to eat for dinner, to the position of every speck of dust in your house, to the temperature outside at this very second, these things were all determined by the physics of the Big Bang. An endless chain of cause and effect where everything happens because of the laws of nature.

With this in mind, it then becomes necessary to consider the idea of Free Will. The idea that we have the ability make choices independent of outside influences, and more specifically, regardless of those outside influences. Essentially, defying the cause and effect chain that lead up to you making the choice you made.

Analogies

Now, I personally have a naturalistic worldview, which basically means that I believe the world is essentially made up of mass and energy, or the physical Universe and nothing else. I don’t believe in a God, spirits or souls, or any type of supernatural energy. From this standpoint, it becomes very difficult to get away from a strictly deterministic view of the Universe.

To get an idea of what I mean, think of the game of Chess. There are a seemingly endless combination of possible games that could be played. The number of possible positions that could be played have been calculated by information theorist Claude Shannon at approximately 10⁴³, and by Dutch computer scientist Victor Allis at approximately 10⁵²! With a number that large, it is, for all intents and purposes, infinite.

Even though that number is so astronomically large, so beyond our comprehension, the fact remains that the number of possible Chess positions is set in stone. Taking the rules of the game into account, there is not a single position in Chess that can be played in addition to that set number. There isn’t a move imaginable or conceivable that can violate that number. Every game that will ever be played, or has been played, falls into that set of possible positions.

In this same way, the laws of our Universe only allow for certain phenomena, or for atoms to behave in very specific ways. When the Big Bang occurred and the fundamental forces were formed, the weak, strong, electromagnetic and gravitational forces – these forces, their specific values or magnitudes and how they interact have determined the precise future of every action that will ever take place. When the first hydrogen atoms were formed, and the first stars came into being, it was all mathematically certain from the beginning.

Take another analogy. Let’s suppose that you have a ball in your hand and you’re going to drop it on the floor. Through the use of a hypothetical computer, you use it to know the exact weight of the ball, the position of every molecule of air around you, the wind speed, the elasticity of the ball and how it will bounce, the atmospheric pressure, etc. Basically, you know everything there is to know about the initial condition of the ball before you drop it from a specific height. From this perspective, you can see that when letting go of the ball, with sophisticated enough mathematics, we could calculate the precise position of the ball when it stops bouncing.

There’s also the coin flip analogy. When you flip a coin, because of the vast degree of uncertainty, there is, practically speaking, a 50/50 chance of getting heads or tails. But, in reality, there isn’t a 50/50 chance. As soon as the coin leaves your thumb, what the coin lands on has already been determined. It is 100% certain that it will land on heads or tails because of the force exerted by your thumb, wind resistance, rate of spin versus height. And this is true for every coin flip that has ever been done, and every coin flip that will ever take place… or roll of dice for that matter. We simply don’t have mathematics or equipment sophisticated enough to analyze coin flips or rolls of dice.

Think of it this way. It is theoretically possible to design a machine which flips coins, and exerts the exact same degree of upward force on the coin. In this way, you can use this machine to flip a coin and get heads on every single throw based entirely on the laws of physics.

Free Will?

Now, with these physics analogies as our foundation, consider the difference between the physics of flipping a coin and the make-up of the human brain. Essentially, in both cases, there is really no difference other than complexity. Neurons, coins, cellular life, machines… they are all made of atoms and all have to behave by the same laws.

The problem with this arises when considering Free Will. In order to really make a case for Free Will, one would have to show that at some point atoms and molecules stop obeying natural laws. I say this because to really have “Free Will,” you would have to be able to make a decision that was completely independent of, and potentially in opposition to, previous influences on the mind. Basically, “Free Will” is the capacity to intentionally escape that cause & effect loop through our ability to make independent choices.

From a naturalistic point of view, I don’t see any escape from strict determinism. It seems to me that the only real way of escaping determinism is to posit some form of supernatural agent, such as a soul – something outside of our physical laws which can act independently. And the reason I say this is because there really is no point that one could point to where you could say that at “this specific point,” matter stops behaving according to natural law, and “from this specific point,” we can begin to see the mechanism upon which Free Will hinges.

Some people attempt use quantum mechanics to explain away this strict determinism, but I’m not sure that I accept that explanation. But, then again, I don’t know enough about it to really say anything meaningful about it.

So, my question for you is: from a naturalistic point of view, is it possible for human beings, or any species for that matter, to have a Free Will?

It’s amusing how we Christians are often accused of being intolerant.  We keep insisting that there is right and wrong, that there is one way,  and one way only, to “come to the Father”, and that Jesus is that way.  Many people who are not Christian want us to accept their belief that many paths lead to salvation, and label us as intolerant that we don’t believe that.

But who’s really the intolerant one?  Those who insist that some things are mutually exclusive, or those who insist that all things can coexist, and anyone who doesn’t agree with that is intolerant?

The term “mutually exclusive”, of course, means that if one thing is true the other must be false, and that’s true regardless of whether A or B is the one that is true.  So we believe that Jesus actually said that He was (is) the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).  We believe He believed that to be true.  And we believe He was speaking not as a man, but as God Himself.  Scripture testifies to that.  (Luke 24:25-27 says “He said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! ²⁶Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.’”).   So if He said it, and if He was who He claimed to be (I and the Father are one – John 10:10), then it would be folly not to take Him at His Word.  So, yes, that’s intolerant.  We do not tolerate the idea that we should accept a lie as the truth.

Ironically, those who call us intolerant don’t see themselves as being intolerant.  Yet they are.  They say ‘Hey, we should all just get along, and anyone who tells me I am wrong about such an important idea is doing me wrong by being intolerant of me’.  And they’re right in a sense.  But importantly, there is a distinction.  We tolerate the person, but we don’t accept as true something we believe to be untrue.  So they misinterpret our intolerance of their belief as intolerance of them.  They take it personally.

But here’s the thing.  If you were driving along at 60 miles an hour, and I was right behind you and you made a turn onto a road that I knew led to a collapsed bridge, what would you have me do?  Should I be tolerant, and let you continue on as if nothing was wrong, or should I do whatever I could to get you to pull over so I could explain the situation?  You might say, sure, keep me from going over the cliff.  But what if I told you that I wasn’t really sure the bridge was down?  What if I only believed it was down, because I read it on a blog earlier in the day?  I might believe the source to be completely reliable, and believing that, would feel that my failure to act would send you to your death.

So I honk my horn, wave and yell from behind, but you pay no attention.  Then I get up real close and yell and wave.  Then I pull alongside and yell and wave.  You go ‘What is this, a crazy person?’  So I try to cut you off, but fail to do so.  Now road rage kicks in and you start trying to cut me off.

At that point, I’d probably give up, not being willing to die trying to protect your life.  And as I fade into your rear view mirror, you mutter something like ‘What a jerk!’, and continue in your anger toward me and your intolerance of me right up to the point when you crash through the barricades and plummet to your death.

Sometimes it pays to be tolerant of intolerance.

Tomorrow is December 1 and you have probably noticed Christmas decorations springing up. A friend of mine once said that you can tell it is Christmas time when Tim Hortons starts using their Christmas cups.

I have started noticing the decorations in the various retail stores. At work the other day we set up our Christmas tree. Of course there are also the decorations inside and outside of people’s houses.

At the place where my boyfriend stays, the family has set up their Christmas decorations. For the first day when the decorating started it was boxes and decorations everwhere, like Christmas literally exploded in the living room.

I just love Christmas decorations, and of course putting up the decorations. I remember growing up we would set up our Christmas tree and decorations in early November. So many good memories of decorating our house. My grandma lived upstairs so the cousins would get together to decorate the tree. We would turn on the Christmas music, sip hot chocolate, and sort through all of my grandma’s multiple ornaments.

Oh, and of course, I remember hanging up my stocking and imagining what Santa was going to bring that year. I also had one of those Christmas countdowns, where you pulled a candy cane out of one of Santa’s pockets everyday that it got closer to Christmas.

Whether or not you have your Christmas tree all decorated already or not. I hope you will take some time to enjoy the decorations around where you live and smile.  : )

Friendship is Love MINUS SEX and PLUS REASON.

Love is Friendship PLUS SEX and MINUS REASON.

มิตรภาพ คิอ ความรัก ลบด้วย เซ็กส์ แลบวกเหตุผลเพิ่มเข้าไป

ส่วน รัก คือ มิตรภาพ บวกด้วยเซ็กส์ และลบเอาเหตุผออก

คำว่ามิตรภาพคืออะไรกันนะ…..เคยสงสัยกันบ้างไหมคะ?

มิตรภาพเหรอ??    เป็นได้หลายแบบนะ

…แบบ  เจ้านาย กะ ลูกน้อง

…แบบ  เพื่อน

…แบบ  เพื่อนสนิท คุยกันได้ทุกเรื่องทั้งบนเตียง นอกเตียง  ใต้โต๊ะ ฯลฯ

…แบบ  มากกว่าเพื่อนแต่ไม่มากกว่านั้น

…แบบ  คนรู้จัก

…แบบ  คนเคยรู้จัก

อืมมมม….พูดถึงเรื่อง  เซ็กส์

มิตรภาพแบบSex Partner  ถ้าถามเราก็ว่าดีไปอีกแบบนะ คือ ไม่ต้องสนใจฝ่ายตรงข้ามว่าต้องการอะไร จะพูดยังไงดีนะ มันก็เป็นสิ่งที่มนุษย์หรือสัตว์ต้องการคือ Physical Need

ควบไป…สั่งด้าย สนองอะไรในตัวที่เรียกว่า Physical Needนั่นแหละ

ท่าไหนที่ชอบ กัดตรงนี้สิคะ เบาๆหน่อยซี้…  ตรงนี้ด้วย…จุดกระสันทั้งหลายแหล่ซึ่งมันแล้วแต่ของใครว่าจะอยู่ตรงไหน  แต่ที่แน่ๆมันมีไม่กี่จุด น่าจะรู้กันอยู่

เสนอ….และ….สนองกันไป

เสร็จสมแล้วก็จบกัน

อ๊ะๆๆๆ   อีกอย่างไม่มีการถามด้วยนะว่าพรุ่งนี้คุณจะทำอะไร?  มีโปรแกรมทำอะไรบ้าง? 

หลังเสร็จงานจะไปไหน?  โทรหาได้มั้ย?

ถือเป็นประกาศิท   ไม่มีสิทธิรู้  และ แน่นอน ห้ามถาม  อยากบอกจะบอกเอง  ถ้าชั้นว่างจะโทรหาเอง บางทีอาจมีโทรมาตอนดึกๆใกล้นอนประมาณว่า  “นอนหรือยังครับ/คะ ไปหาได้มั้ย?”

บางคู่อาจจะเจอกันในที่เที่ยวหรือเพื่อนแนะนำ เลยเถิดข้ามขั้นstepจากเรียนรู้นิสัยกันจนกลายเป็นแฟน หรือวันแรกก็โป๊ะเชะ  ยังไม่ทันได้เรียนรู้อะไรกันก็มีอะไรกันซะแระ ทำไงได้ก็ต้องโทษPhysical Need

ไอ้ความสัมพันธ์แบบนี้มันก็จบได้ สอง อย่างคือ

หนึ่ง…ต่างฝ่ายก็เบื่อกันไป ห่างหายตามกาลและเวลา

สอง…เป็นแฟนกันในที่สุด

ซึ่งไม่มีใครรู้ค่ะ บอกได้อย่างเดียวคือ Times Will Tell เหมือนที่เราเคยบอกหรือพูดเสมอกับคนรอบตัวเราว่า…คำตอบมักจะมาสุดท้ายเสมอ…

ส่วนมิตรภาพแบบLove Partner คือมันไม่ใช่แค่สนองความต้องการของตัวเราเองเท่านั้น เรายังต้องแคร์ฝ่ายตรงข้ามด้วยว่า  เค้าชอบแบบนี้มั้ย?  ลองท่าใหม่กันมั้ย?  มีออฟชั่นเพิ่มเช่น วิปปิ้งครีม น้ำผึ้ง และอื่นๆ  จดจำรายละเอียดเล็กๆน้อยๆของกันและกัน เรียนรู้กันไป เพื่อไม่ใช่แค่คำว่า Physical Need

บางคู่กับ…ครั้งแรก  อาจจะไม่ค่อยประทับใจสักเท่าไหร่ พอนานวันเข้าอะไรเข้าที่เข้าทาง

สวรรค์ก็เพียงแค่เอื้อม….เอ้าจริงๆเห็นมาหลายคู่ระ

Love Partner…มีหลายอย่างที่แชร์กันได้ เล่าให้กันฟัง  แนะนำกันไป  ไม่ว่าจะเรื่องงาน เพื่อน ชีวิต

มีความผูกพันกันเกิดขึ้นนอกจากเรื่อง เซ็กส์  มากกว่านั้นจริงๆ เคยได้ยินหรือได้ฟังเพลงบางเพลงบ้างไหมที่บอกว่า

YOU  ARE  MY  MIRACLE

คงจะดีเนอะถ้ามีใครสักคนพูดกับเราแบบนี้บ้าง…

 แต่ก็อย่างว่า เราก็ไม่รู้อีกแหละว่าคนที่เราคิดว่าเราสามารถแชร์อะไรหลายๆอย่างด้วยกัน  เค้าจะแชร์เรื่องพวกนี้กับเราคนเดียวหรือเปล่า 

บางคนไม่กล้าถาม  เพราะไม่อยากรู้ รู้แค่ว่าวันนี้เค้าอยู่กับเราก็พอ   หรือ  กลัวจะรู้ความจริง

พล่ามมาซะเยอะ…ยากที่สุดคืออ่านใจคนนี่แหละ

มีverseมาฝากค่ะ

Friendship  is LOVE  minus  SEX  and  plus  reason.

 LOVE is Friendship plus SEX  and  minus reason.

“It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision for which the nature of the subject admits, rather than to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible.”

Aristotle 384-322 BC

Aristotle wasn’t a follower of Jesus.  He lived 300+ years before Jesus was born.  But he was a pretty smart guy.  Since the above quote is a mouthful and wasn’t written with Bible Study in mind, I would like to rephrase it and make a point that will help us in our daily Bible study.

How about:

“Speak where the Bible Speaks and Be Silent where the Bible is Silent.”

Or, “Don’t make the Bible say what it doesn’t say!”

Many of the teachings that have divided God’s church originate from someone’s interpretation or opinion of a Bible doctrine that they forced on others.  God has revealed a lot but only a certain amount.  When we go past that revelation and then tell others they are going to Hell for not arriving at our same conclusions, we are in trouble.

For the sake of having a consistent systematic theology, or sometimes to win arguments and debates, we arrive at dubious conclusions.  We often make the Bible be specific about something for our sake, when God has left it vague.

Whether it’s human nature or our western Greek heritage, we like everything neatly organized in lists, charts, and categories.  But sadly, we crave that so much, that we often abuse the Word of God to make things fit.

I am not totally against a systematic view of Scripture.  There is a great benefit in that.  But too often, it comes down to spending a lot of time and focusing on things that God either didn’t say explicity or didn’t say at all.

We need, like Aristotle, to be satisfied with the “degree of precision” of God’s revelation on any given subject, and not try to force some precision for precision’s sake.

I am not saying we should give up short of an exhaustive and comprehensive study to make sure we know what God has revealed, but I suggest caution in our conclusions.

Undiscovering

Disappearing lines of reason,
Dissolving windows of thought,
I am, but the price of treason,
And battles inside they fought.

Like a heart that ceased to touch,
Or an ocean that silently cowers,
I am, but the words off the shelf,
And their promises of ancient showers.

Curses of lands unknown,
Or the quaint feel of a song,
I am, but the light for the poet,
Sounds for which they long.

Like the smile of wind kissed waters,
Or the distorted string of signs,
I am, but the Tuesday that passed,
And the life within their lines.

Of showers, shelves and strings,
Of treason, thoughts and Tuesdays,
I am, but giver and the taken,
And words that never were.

And favorably!

Shermer thought I had offered an amusing blog post retort to Jerry Coyne’s charge that he (Shermer) had gone soft on theism and now deserved the label “faitheist”. See Shermer’s Huffington Post piece here, and my blog post that Shermer quotes from here.

At first we thought the vague, nagging feeling was caused by that thing that we lifted that we shouldn’t have lifted. Then we realized, no, it’s Oprah Winfrey. She’s the problem.

She’s holding out on us. Has to be. What savvy businesswoman would up and quit a money-making operation?

Unless…

Unless the savvy businesswoman stumbled onto a potentially bigger money-making operation. With a potentially bigger star than her own Oprah self.

Would we dare suggest Oprah’s departure from Oprah has nothing to do with literary metaphors (closing a chapter, writing a new story, blah blah blah), and everything to do with none other than Sarah Palin? Oh, yes, we would.

Now, we’d like to note we cannot take full credit for our latest crackpot idea.

On Friday, we were minding our own business, digesting Oprah’s exit announcement and mourning the fact that, given likely high ticket demand for her final shows, we’d probably never sit in her audience when she gives out airplanes and stuff.

Then an associate drew our attention to an exchange on NPR in which commentators David Brooks and E.J. Dionne “joked” Oprah was getting out of the Oprah business—and into the Sarah Palin business.

Dionne noted how Palin’s appearance on Oprah had goosed the talk show’s ratings. Chimed in Brooks: “Oprah is giving her [Palin] a show—that was the secret conspiracy. She is retiring. Sarah will take over.”

Much laughter, according to the transcript, ensued.

Funny, we’re not chortling along.

We don’t know if the NPR guys accidentally nailed it, or if they were working with inside information, but we know what we think: They’re right.

Look, one day we see Palin sitting on Oprah’s stage. The next, we learn Palin helped Oprah to her best Nielsens since she hosted an Osmond family reunion in 2007. The next day or so after that, we watch Oprah say, thanks, gotta go.

Where we come from (a neighborhood west of the Bermuda Triangle and north of the Grassy Knoll), this sequence of events is as coincidental as Oprah booking Palin during November sweeps, Palin releasing a book in time for holiday shopping season, and John McCain holding his tongue with duct tape and whatever other adhesive materials he can get his hands on.

Think about it. People love to talk about Palin’s star power; Oprah sat right across from it. She knows the woman can deliver—bigger than the Osmonds! All of them! She knows the woman has a life and lifestyle that speak to the daytime viewer—motherhood! Teen pregnancy! Glasses! And she knows the woman can talk in completerish sentences than Katie Couric would lead you to believe.

If Oprah’s bones are telling her it’s time to leave her talk show, then we suggest her mouth’s telling her staff to get the former governor of Alaska on the phone—pronto!

Think about it. Oprah gets to move behind the camera, where 10 pounds are not added. She gets to attach her star to Palin’s rising one. And given the fact that Palin’s only 45 (a decade younger than Oprah), she gets to rule daytime TV for another 25 years.

As an added bonus, an Oprah-produced Palin show would keep Palin too busy to run against Oprah-endorsed Barack Obama in 2012.

Oh, we feel it in our bones! This time, we’re right!

Then again…

The Oprah’s-leaving-Oprah story was around weeks before the Palin episode ran—and rated high—last week.

Our bones just got that achy feeling again.

Most men may not complain when young women these days wear their pants lower than where their mother’s pockets used to be, but it can be somewhat nauseating to see older females trying to keep up with their daughter and even granddaughter’s peer group. It reminds one of the sixties, when in order to be cool, boys had to wear Levi’s brand jeans, even though JC Penny sold a perfectly functional pair for half the price.

A Bob Dylan song back then touched on this “Mr. Jones” mentality of modern society and, what with large gas-guzzling SUV’s being purchased by American middle-class “McMansion” families in the midst of Middle East wars, oil shortages and looming planetary disaster, certainly nothing much has changed.

Liberal authors tend to blame corporate branding, but such a “keeping up with the Joneses” reality has existed since ancient Babylon and, traces back into the mists of prehistoric time. Tribal cultures on a global basis display culturally dictated rings, beads, feathers and other ornaments, paint faces and bodies in peer-pressure proscribed ways and, mimic each other in dress, speech and custom.

Ancient warriors often trimmed beards and hair in certain proscribed fashion and displayed specific tattoos and other body markings. Cultures throughout history display their own unique concepts of beauty, manliness and femininity, often directly contradicting what other cultures dictate. Heterosexual men in many societies have worn clothing that even the most overt homosexual male wouldn’t wear in our own.

Today, tattoos and body piercings are all the modern rage and women deliberately reveal bra straps they worked diligently to keep hidden not long ago. And, we are inundated with harmful food and “must have” gizmos and gadgets that no one in their right mind would consider purchasing for logical survival or any other purpose.

Are designs carved on ancient pottery and inlaid jewels on swords functionally necessary at all? And, was expensive architecture, art and sculpture purchased by kings and popes in the midst of massive poverty and famine during the Middle Ages, any less moral than modern Wall Street paper-shufflers earning 10,000 and more times as much as those who pick their fruit, cook their food, cut their lawns and pick up their garbage?

Does a wise society reward athletes with enormous sums to play games in the midst of rising poverty, homelessness and human suffering? Do wise people stand in long lines to see the latest film or to meet celebrities who really haven’t accomplished much of anything at all? How many Americans blindly believe we represent the greatest society in history, without even bothering to actually study much of human civilization, if any?

Culturally induced conformity might appear harmless, but it extends into endorsing the amassing of private wealth and consequent enslavement of the masses, supporting wars in a guise of false patriotism’ and, endorsing racism and classicism in order to “belong”.

Is it really true that “all we like sheep have gone astray”? You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article

I consider myself a very open minded person. If someone is able to present me with enough evidence in favor of their position I will believe them, even if it means I must admit the position I previously held was wrong. I get the feeling very few people are actually willing to do this.

So what about god(s)? Well, yes, if you present to me enough evidence to prove that you’re particular god is true, and not just a fairy tale like you claim everybody else’s god to be, then I will believe you and convert. The problem is, no religion is able to do this. You see, for every “proof” put forth, there is a much simpler natural explanation. Occam’s razor.

The idea of an all powerful being that magically existed before everything and created everything out of nothing is infinitely less probable than all other natural explanations.

For example, the “Devil’s Bible” or Codex Gigas has a famous page with a drawing of the devil. The drawing stands out in that the pages upon which it is drawn are much  darker than all the other pages, almost like they were burnt.

Believers were convinced for ages that the mysterious darkness on this page was a sign of demonic possession, proof of the existence of the devil, and by extension, god.  It was only discovered recently, though scientific means, that the reason for the darkness on these 2 pages was no demonic possession, but excess exposure to UV rays, sunlight.

You see, the pages are made of animal skin, parchment, and parchment darkens naturally over time. UV rays speed up this process. People have always been fascinated with the drawing of the devil, and so they kept turning to those two pages more than others. Over time the extra UV light that those exposed pages were subjected to darkened them more than others. Simple and natural. No demons, no gods, nothing out of the ordinary.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

~ Arthur C. Clarke

Here is another problem. Say you tried to prove the existence of your particular god by some demonstration. It could be anything, lets say you manage to get your god to show their face to the entire world, say projected on the moon. This would truly be amazing and hard to explain. However, what is more likely: A) your god does exist some how, magically and outside the bounds of logic and everything else in the universe to show their face on the moon, or B) there is some technology at play that the rest of us are not privy to, but none the less has a natural explanation?

Obviously B. One of my favorite TV shows plays with this idea a lot. Stargate SG-1 in the show an evil race of aliens, the Goa’uld, use their advance technology level to trick less advanced civilizations into believing that they are gods, and should worship them as such.

The example of the projection of your god’s face on the moon is no different than any other parlor trick played by the Goa’uld. It’s infinitely more likely that there are unseen, but ultimately understandable, natural forces at work.

So in the end, it is possible that your god exists and all the others are fakes as you claim, but it is infinitely more probable that natural explanations exist, even if we do not know them at the moment, there is no reason that we will never know them.

Shaykh Muhammad Salih Al-Munajjid | Language: English | Format: PDF | Pages: 06 | Size: 1 MB
Superiority Of Islam Over Infidelity: There can be no convergence between Islaam and infidelity. This book is an adaption of a friday khutbah given by Shaykh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid dealing with the reason as to why Allah (swt) sent his Prophets (may Allah be pleased with them) and superiority status of Islam over kufr (disbelief).

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I was surfing the ‘net and found this incredibly sad blog. I don’t know if she’s alright. My gut says no since she was on hospice care at that writing, but her tale about her life at home with her husband and her childhood sweetheart and her children made me think about how we waste so much of our time doing things we wish we didn’t have to do and not doing things that will make  us happy.  We make choices, we make mistakes, we hopefully learn, and move on. I hope she has found blessed peace at the end of her days. We all deserve that.

Another Thanksgiving has passed and I am most thankful for being alive– here today– exactly where I am. I’m thankful I got my kids raised without serious incident for them or for me. I really can’t say I’d do anything different than what I have done. Despite going through a divorce (it’s incredible how many women are also going through this right now), I am happy, happier than I’ve been in a long time. After years of trying to please others in my marriage and at work, I decided not to do that anymore. What I thought I wanted 30 years ago turned out as well as it could have, but it has not led to what I want now.  I must say that now, I’ve grown closer to my kids, closer to my husband (yeah it took separation and divorce for this to happen) and I’ve found that I can take care of myself. The fearless woman I used to be 30 years ago is slowly coming back.  My husband (divorce not final yet) is happier and can tell me so without fear. I was a bad wife. I was bossy and pushy and I lacked respect for the man my husband is. But he can also admit that he was a bad husband when it came to giving me what I needed in a relationship. He refused to truly know me, converse on an intimate level, and felt that being a good provider was all he had to do.  I’m glad we can both admit our failings. Sooner or later, it would have come to an end. Now, just happens to be the time.  He’s gained new confidence without me and rather than hurt me, that makes me feel  that we are both on the right track.

The blogs I have read and in which I write, the meds I now take, the counselor I now see, and the new love of my life have all taught me invaluable lessons about myself that I would have never dreamed about 10, even 5 years ago.  Change can’t help but come with some pain.  I’m not responsible for the decisions others make, only the decisions I make.  How we handle those decisions is entirely up to us.

Some blogs on change:

The Change Blog

Love Appetite Lost

Rumination on Ending a Marriage

This morning I woke up feeling not 100% so I put off writing a reason to smile this morning because I was having ‘troubles’ thinking of something.

So, I went on to YouTube and searched laughing babies. It is very hard not to smile, if not laugh, at cute, smiling, laughing babies.

I found multiple videos that gave me a good smile and made me laugh and will post the links at the end of this post.

I have yet to have children, but I love being around my older cousin’s four children. I remember when her oldest was born, as she grew up she had this very distinctive laugh. And it was not just a chuckle, it was a full on contagious laugh. I am sure it also helped that she had the cutest, baby cheeks to go along with it.

Anytime she cracked up laughing, everyone else smiled and laughed along with her. As she is growing up, now seven years old, she still has that laugh.

Maybe you have had the experience of being around the cutest child who has the funniest laugh. Or maybe that is your own child.

Nothing else can add a little perk to your day like a good laugh. So if you need a little boost check out this links below and laugh and smile with them. : )

Baby Video #1

Baby Video #2

Baby Video #3

Baby Video #4

One of the most irritating things about blogging, news, and internet is the sneering, near slanderous trashing of political figures, particularly conservative ones. To be perfectly honest, I’ve never had a beef with George Bush and I kind of admire Sarah Palin. Those words I just uttered will surely bring my credibility down in some circles. But my reasons are simple; I do not believe everything written about them because I know all news is slanted to further a particular agenda. I admire those in the public spotlight who, while being verbally attacked again and again, keep their cool and are confident in themselves. I believe Bush and Palin have done both quite admirably. I believe the rhetoric of hate directed at them has only been rivaled by the hate Bill Clinton inspired among conservatives. I didn’t dislike him either. Again, I refused to listen to the slander.

But I digress. Back to what I find most annoying. What’s most annoying is this idea that conservatives are somehow less intelligent than liberals; that conservative knuckles barely get off the ground when walking and that their ideas should automatically be dismissed. Having been a conservative (which does not imply that I am now a liberal) I know what I’m talking about. Perhaps the reason most liberals and conservatives hate each other is because each side knows so very little about the other and each side refuses to find out. They take news and sound bytes at face value when 85% are probably taken out of context in order to make news and to make people angry.

Today I came across this article. Jason Richwine takes on the notion that so many seem to believe: that liberals are indeed smarter than conservatives. But he also tempers it with reality.  This bit in particular encapsulates why I think neither side will listen to the other:

To reiterate, people who subscribe to non-traditional ideas probably have above-average intellects, but that does not mean other smart people will like those ideas. This is a point often lost on liberals who work in universities or in the news media. They observe, usually correctly, that friends and acquaintances in their social circle are smarter than the average (and likely more conservative) people they encounter on the street. But too many elites see this correlation between smartness and liberalism as somehow a validation of their political views. They seem unaware that the wider world features plenty of intelligent people who are not professors or movie critics or government bureaucrats. Even among the nation’s smartest people, liberal elites could easily be in the minority politically, but different social circles keep them insulated from finding that out. The result is a convenient but damaging political meme that circulates among some people on the Left—the belief that their opponents simply can’t understand what makes for good policy.

Both sides of the political debate surround themselves with “yes men” and rarely venture out of their comfort zones. Academic liberals especially do this (at least the ones I’ve seen at my university). When they want to do a story on conservatives in their “natural habitat” you’d think they were John Cameron Swayze checking his Timex in the wilds of Africa!  Armed with their research, they gleefully run back to their liberal bastions and write about what they discovered and comfort themselves that they are not like those other people. They automatically equate Conservative with Republican without any discrimination. I know plenty of conservative Democrats who would take issue with this idea.

Conservatives also have this bunker mentality. Some of them, armed with frightening religious ideas, seem to get the most press precisely because they will stir up the most controversy and “scare” the public into voting for certain ideas. Both sides use the most egregious examples to fan the hate flames. Left and right wings aside, there are vast swaths of politically middle of the road folks — those derided by Rush Limbaugh as too timid to take a stand– who take issue with both sides of the fence. Choosing to stand aloof, however, these moderates can’t seem to enter the debate at all. We are accused of not being Patriotic enough on the right, and being too stupid to have an opinion on the left. What else to do but keep silent?

Personally I’m tired of both camps. The idea that one can’t be discerning enough to like parts of one philosophy and ideology and not like other parts is a harmful idea.  Politicians have their creeds just like religions do. Ideologies do as well. Despite saying otherwise, ideologists hate to be disagreed with on one or two issues. Your loyalty is therefore questioned. Think of the myriads of assumptions out there: You can’t possibly be a liberal if you like George Bush or Sarah Palin. You can’t possibly be a conservative and wish countries would give up their xenophobic immigration laws. You can’t possibly be a feminist if you think kids are better cared for at home with two parents. You can’t possibly be an American and believe that Health Care Reform, like the Welfare system and Medicare, could be just what this country needs.  You can’t possibly be a Christian and believe that gays should have the right to be married like other couples. You can’t possibly be a Socialist if you believe in corporate competition. You can’t possibly be a liberal if you believe in the use of military force in certain circumstances. You can’t possibly be a liberal and dislike Obama. What? Are you stupid?

I say you can’t possibly be pigeon-holed for your beliefs if you think for yourself rather than believe what everyone tells you. More education doesn’t equal a sound mind and ignorance of some things doesn’t equal misinformed opinions.  I think we’d all do well to remember that.

Remember, we are now in an age of superstition, not rationalism, in which utopian ends justify unscientific means.