A Ponzi Scheme

Does anyone really think that Social Security is not a Ponzi Scheme? It relies on current contributions to make its payout. How is that any different? The only thing it has in its favor is that the government is a legal counterfeiter, unlike Ponzi and Madoff, the poster children of this same scheme. We simply don't have the money. How will we magically get it?

Problems with the Death Penalty

I just listened to a news story about someone in Georgia who has had significant doubts raised about his guilt. The only person speaking on camera in favor of carrying through the death penalty was the mother of the slain officer. She said that it should proceed and she wanted to ask those who questioned it how many of them had their sons shot. What difference does that make? Likely kill an innocent man because your son was shot? Are people really this stupid? I am in favor of the death penalty when it is properly applied, but I find that our modern legal system allows the rich to buy their way out of it and the poor to get railroaded. That is flawed. We must protect society, from cruel predators in society and inside prosecuting offices.

Wishing Scary People Were Far Away

A recent Economist article noted that a lot of the responses to the riots in England were merely "wishing scary people far away." What exactly is wrong with that? I certainly want scary people to be far from me!

It can be dangerous when this is merely a method to close our eyes to danger, but it is completely valid when legitimate things are done to protect ourselves. You must protect yourself, your family and your neighborhood first. Not doing so is far more immoral than anything else.

Hopefully people learn this before society completely falls apart.

NCAA

I grew up in Columbus, so I have a soft spot for Ohio State even though I went to another Big Ten school, Illinois for my degrees.

I don't watch a lot of football, but I happened to pick up their game today against Akron and some of the talk was on the penalties they faced for past actions.

I know that many, especially in the NCAA, want to pretend that college football is purely amateur, but they are total idiots. I have not delved deeply into the issues, but the things that happened seemed to be pretty minor compared to the penalties, and potential future penalties, that were put on the team. I would say the same whatever school it was, I just noticed it because it was Ohio State.

Have some consequences, but require flagrant violation of rules for such penalties, not the things most schools are certainly getting away with.

Controlling Our Lives

We live in an era of the freedom to do whatever you want, unless it is on the list of "incorrect" things that are OK to control. Eat some food that is not healthy for you? Hold some beliefs that others strongly oppose? You can be freely opposed in many cases.

This is the hypocrisy that gets to me. You are horrible if you are a certain way, but you are fine if you fit in their box. I never liked being stuffed in a box.

Are we really that different than the rest of history or do we just favor different things? People always want to control others. Stop it!

Everything is a Trade-Off

I am going to write a few blog posts on the trade-offs inherent in life. Some of these may touch on what we see as given rights and even discussing them ends up causing a bunch of people to get uptight unless you repeatedly stress what "should be."

What "should be" is completely irrelevant. I may think I "should be" able to walk off a tall building and float through the air, but we still know this is not possible.

Unfortunately, we do not know this for many of our choices in life. The best choice may still be to jump off that building and into a nearby lake to escape the building fire, but the jump will still impact us.

We want to "have it all" today and that never works. Everything comes at a price. There is no such thing as a free lunch. This is a message we need to drill in our heads: "No free lunches!" Everything comes at a price.

What prices are you paying today for your past choices and those of others?

Who is the Crazy One?

Many people believe:

- Life spontaneously organized itself. Experiments show life doesn't proceed from non-life, but they believe it happened anyway.

- This belief is sometimes based on an experiment where heavy human interaction (outside intelligence) was needed to get the "right" ingredients separated. Though the right ingredients may not all have really been right since the had both right- and left-handed ingredients, one being the building block of life and one being fatal to it.

- Little things change (cats changing to different cats) so big things must change (dogs changing to cats). No clear cut examples of this shift exist, but science channels can make up shows that show it with lots of "and then a miracle happened" steps in between.

- In a related manner, lots of time produces order out of randomness. This doesn't work anywhere in real life without external intelligence, but hey, the theory is true so it MUST happen.

- Sometimes "outside energy" (unorganized) is brought in to produce that order. So that's why my lawn dies off (or at least turns quite brown) in the heat of the summer. It is really organizing more with all that energy.

- Organization and brilliant design imply randomness. Except that is when such came in a signal from outer space. Then it would imply a really smart civilization.

- Those who find their views stupid are afraid of them. It couldn't be that they find their views completely ridiculous, could it?

- It is science because they say it is science. They don't have to perform falsifiable experiments like are required for all other areas of science. If something fails, make up a new explanation for how it is still true.

We have a modern high priest cast. They are called "scientists" and we are supposed to bow down at their proclamations. They can sometimes argue amongst themselves on the really weird things (string theory, multiple universes, etc.), but we have to believe their ultimate proclamations of how it happened because that is "science" and it is the way it is.

How is this any different than ancient civilizations when they believed some really odd things and insisted they were true because that is what their high priests said?

Lots of faith in all of them, even while claim not to have faith.

Those of you who stumble on this while investigating me may not agree with my views, but they are built on a whole lot more logic than I see exhibited in the "science" high priesthood.

More to come....