Why I Don't Date

1) Better to conquer oneself than conquer a thousand men.

2) I value peace of mind by the sublimation of sexual desire through meditation.

3) The first traumatic film in Grade One that I experienced was about a child molester but showed the setting and succeeded in having me only associate wooded areas with danger. Today, kids these days have faith in all the myths about "psychos" from Hollywood.

4) Because of 1) overconsumption requires eating one meal a day, substituting diet beverage for alcohol and pop, and walk a mile 3-4 times a week each day or the equivalent at the gym.

5) Actually most people today get boring the more they drink because they don't remember any of the good things I did for them when they were sober. I can count the number of people with more exciting stories to tell me and who will never over-drink ever again on both hands. The number of people who were drinkers and led interesting lives I know is two: one of my friends and my Dad (except my Dad died of old age).

6) Women can either go lesbian, do it solo with their BOB or find someone better.

7) What a woman calls independent living means no men; what a man calls independent living means sleeping when he wants, washing when he wants, and being able to keep a beer can collection. What I call independent living means adequate rest, cleanliness and living within my means.

8) I've yet to meet a woman who could drink the same amount of booze I can without being paranoid of too much drinking. If I had no intent of acting anything other than a gentleman these past years, then I should remember being jailed for it. Since I have no such intentions drunk or sober, then frankly ladies, your paranoia about drinking with men is only emphasized by the "mistakes" you have made while drunk. Because I had no such intentions all along, I have decided being sober is a wiser choice at my age.

9) There are too many errors of judgement in dating. You rarely get a second chance when you make a mistake unless you admit that you did err and wish to correct your ways.

10) "Do you like children?" a fellow castmate asked WC Fields. Fields weaved around a bit, and then slowly slurred, "With catsup..."

I once read a book by some Irish author which proposed that children of the poor be well fed like domesticated animals and then slaughtered to end the Irish potato famine. This satire actually implied that had the poor of Ireland not been busy procreating, that the famine would not have occurred.

Well, we do not have that problem today. Children are becoming a scarce commodity these days because people are actually procreating less than they did 300 years ago.

Ah, the joys of compulsory education! Stuff your brain full of unrelated facts for 12 straight years, and the first one learned is "women no longer really need men to raise their children" and the second one learned is, "chemistry is the code word for a lot of failed experiments, some good experiences, and so much potential".

Even so, IMHO a few men and women have forgotten all about love by the time they are my age, mainly because of the propaganda from the media. Indeed, a diet of soap operas and romantic novels contributes to this myth. It goes great with the one about men only having egos, which isn't true according to my research on psychology. Women have egos, just like men do, except just like every other aspect of the female mind, they internalize it. Indeed, women tend to over-analyze using their egos in ways that no males can, and then some. Though, men are quite capable of using their egos like they don't have their manhood handy.

So that's why I don't date. I am content to maintain peace of mind through mindful practice.

Happy New Years !

All my prayers go out to everyone, regardless of religious affiliations or lack thereof.

May your new year lead to revelations that cause you to avoid basing your life on the usual lies and propaganda that you currently believe to be truth and good news.

You know who I am talking about: the news media, whose sole purpose is to edutain you with myths about this post-modern world against the background musak of post-modern pop.

In the new year I plan to talk more freely about this threat to human creativity.

For now, turn off your TV and go out Boxing Week to pick up a couple CDs on classical music, which is free, free of propaganda especially advertising and marketing of consumer products.

May we all develop critical thinking so that we may protect our hearts from ignorance!

Shin Buddhism And The Value of Humility

I've never heard of Shin Buddhists founding an order, only discussion groups.

And, I'd like to think the founder Shinran never wanted to make a name for himself, because of what he had learned by becoming associated with Honen.

Even when offered the opportunity to head a temple late in life, he refused.

Yet, for lesser men, the ego is sometimes so hard to curb.

So, because in these times ordinary people in the West have been inculcated in the public school system to fear any religious or spiritual feeling, and remain ignorant of such things in general, the awakened may decide instead on a life of poverty and obscurity over a life seeking status and wealth.

In Shin tradition, it is more about people who are very ordinary; calling attention to one's good works is like bragging about one's merits.

If a founder of a Buddhist order, whose ordination is suspected to have materialized out of his imagination, was really deserving of his yellow robes, then his works will not declare this. Instead, it'd be shown by his humility when exposed to the light of public opinion.

I suppose that I talk like this because of my culture. For humility maintains anonymity.

The Statistics of Crime Trends in BC: The facts

In BC, the popular myth is that crime is increasing dramaticly.

While crime overall has not fluctated widely over the last reported decade of 1996 to 2005, according to BC statistic on crime trends, crime rates have dropped overall with property crime dropping from 11 percent to 6.4 percent and violent crime dropping from 1.8 percent to 1.3 percent. Thus violent crime has been reduced by 0.5 percent points (28 percent) while crime against property dropped dramaticly by 4.6 percentage points (41 percent).

With overreporting in the papers, it appears that there is a crime wave of drug crime, and the statistics show that drug crime has risen from 0.5 percent to 0.6 percent, an increase of 20 percent. Quite possibly, the reason why violent crime and property crime rates fell during this period has to do with the rise in population, which supplied more potential drug addicts and even more manufacturers and traffickers, who probably rose out of poverty. As a result, drug criminals' growing affluence reduced both property crime and violence. During this same period, sangerous weapons offences increased by 35 percent from about 0.1 percent to 0.135 percent - which might indicate a rising sense of caution moderated by a 500 percent increase in gambling offences and 250 percent increase in prostitution — possibly in an effort to launder money, and more likely to show off such affluence.

Overall too, the number of youths being charges for all crime has dropped from 21 percent of all charges to 11 percent. This may reflect more the trend of the criminal population getting older rather than youth not getting into crime. The only crimes that are steadily rising are basically the moral ones, though, with petty crimes rising from 4.8 percent to 5 percent. Furthermore, in 1996, one in five persons would have been convicted of a crime while 10 years later, this decreased dramaticly to less than one person in seven. Where formerly out of 100 people, 20 would be criminals in 1996, by 2005 that dropped to about 15 people out of 100.

Over the same period of time, BC's population increased from 3,874,276 in 1996 to 4.260.246 in 2005. Quite possibly, the majority of the almost 400,000 new people in BC are too young to be committing crimes or are mainly law abiding.

Therefore, the truth is, despite — or maybe because of — the 20 percent in drug crime charges, there's been a record 25 percent reduction in overall crime.

IMHO, if the welfare rates were phased out in favour of a liberal Universal Basic Income and associated simple income tax with no caps on part-time income for UBI recipients in order to reduce poverty, then I'd bet drug crime offenses will become slightly reduced to about 0.45 percent and violent crime as well as property crime will reduce even further to just under 1 percent for the former and under 6 percent for the latter. However, I still feel that petty crime might stay level at 4.5 percent since there will always be a rising number of people falling into the underclass due to a dropout effect caused by compulsory public education and white collar predation.

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto

This is not my work. I take no credit for it. However, the two links will take you to where I found it (by clicking on the title of this post) and the original author. YMMV. - Steve

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According to Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto, the seven real lessons of compulsory public schools are:

1. Confusion: We are taught to disconnect all knowledge, divide our knowledge up in pieces so we can't relate it to our other knowledge and gain wisdom. Children are taught disconnected facts and then constantly switched to some other subject before they can put anything in perspective.
   

2. Class Position: Class is taught by assigning children to small groups consisting only of their age group, from their own neighborhood. They are constantly graded and numbered. They are taught to accept that the numbers are their proper place in the social pyramid.
   

3. Indifference: Children are taught that no matter how interested a child becomes in a topic, the bell or horn will sound and he must abandon it. Day after day his interest is interrupted. He never is allowed to have a complete experience with any thought, or interest. His world becomes little disconnected pieces. They destroy the past and the future, abstracting days and life into little segments.
   

4. Emotional Dependency: Approval comes in the form of little gold stars, smiles from the teacher, and alleged honors. Disapproval is from red checks, frowns, and reprimands. All his rights may be granted or withheld at the whim of some person in authority. The same arbitrary authority may withdraw all his privileges. He learns to be dependent.
   

5. Intellectual Dependency: Students wait for the teacher to tell them what to do, what to read, what to think. Students are not allowed to pursue study based on their individual curiosity. Instead of intellectual curiosity they become dependent on the tidbits of facts that authority gives them. "Bad" kids fight for intellectual freedom, and are routinely squashed and punished by those in authority.
   

6. Provisional Self-Esteem: Self confident people don’t do what they are told. Schools condition children to accept self confidence only when the school approves. They use grades, report cards, notes to your parents to assign you a level of self esteem. Every day you are adjudged and graded, and taught to conform to their whims to gain their approval. The student's vision of his future becomes dependent on the teacher's constant evaluations. Self evaluation is never part of the program. The masters are certified by the state to evaluate and tell him what he is worth.
   

7. One Can't Hide: One of the most insidious lessons of schools is that you can't hide from authority. Schools and prisons are designed from the "Panopticon" model of architecture, designed for constant surveillance of the inmates. There are no private spaces for children. There is no private time. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other. Parents are encouraged to report their own child's behaviors. Homework follows the student home to use up all his private time outside of school hours. Students learn that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate. We have been trained to accept and believe in constant surveillance by authority.

The Metaphor of Little Red Riding Hood

"From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition — neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Red_Riding_Hood#Pre-Perrault

Nice men are depicted as the most dangerous of men by Little Red Riding Hood because they might be a threat to innocent young women's virtue.

Thus, women are anxious of such men because they wish to "keep a reputation" i.e. have sex after marriage.

Yet, another interpretation of nice men is presented here:

Red Riding Hood has also been seen as a parable of sexual maturity. In this interpretation, the red cloak symbolizes the blood of the menstrual cycle and the entry into puberty, braving the "dark forest" of womanhood. Or the cloak could symbolize the hymen (earlier versions of the tale generally do not state that the cloak is red--the word "red" in the title may refer to the girl's hair color or a nickname). In this case, the wolf threatens the girl's virginity. The anthropomorphic wolf symbolizes a man, who could be a lover, seducer or sexual predator. This differs from the ritual explanation in that the entry into adulthood is biologically, not socially, determined. -- ibid

How can a man truly be a wolf, unless he is only after one thing? Yet, what if he never truly wants it?

Then, he is a gentleman for not getting what he wants: consensual sex with a willing woman?

So, this tale says a lot about society itself by promoting anxiety and fear of nice guys in young women to protect their goodness.

Thus Little Red Riding Hood is a story about our anxiety over increasing infertility of post-modern society in developed countries.

The Relief of Insomnia & The Chemical Joy of Rhodiola and Reactine

IMHO rhodiola and cetirizine beats diphenhydramine.

Rhodiola tweaks my opioid receptors, which are hedonism's tie in with the brain.

Cetirizine basically affects histamine receptors, but also cholinergic receptors, and consequently, the usual serotonin-dopamine-noradrenalin-adrenalin circus. it helps to have a benzhydryl head and a piperazine tail. The benzhydryl head tweaks the dopamine receptor, resulting in sleep. The piperazine tail tweaks serotonin receptors such that hypocretin is suppressed for at least 6 hours. Then it rises again, resulting in a fitful rest and no first-generation anti-histamine hangover.

However, wise users of anti-histamines should stop taking Reactine after using it for a full week to prevent the body from building tolerance.

Please note that vigorous morning exercise, not drinking caffeinated beverages and not arising from bed after retiring for the night is more effective in relieving insomnia.

A Charter of Information Rights

"...Along with citizen activism, we need legal guarantees and protections for a new set of human rights, which are essential in an IT-dominated society. Only when citizens have obtained these rights will they be able to regain control over public information resources." — D. Gutstein

The Five Information Rights

1. Right to privacy
   

   As individuals we reserve the right to privacy, to retain the right to keep private our personal information so that such rights may not be abused by the State or by corporate interests.
   
   

2. Right of access to information
   

   We reserve the right of access to information, both private (of a personal nature) and public. This being a democratic freedom, such access to public information should not be limited by protective software in such a way as to infringe on right of access to information. As for private information, this right does not include infringing on the privacy of other people but refers to the right for each individual to access his or her personal information. Furthermore, if a source of information does not specifically violate the rights of children as provided by the UN declarations, then each individual reserves the right to strike that source from the ban list, and the right to be allowed to control the editing of any such list.
   
   

3. Right of access to information services and advice
   

   We reserve the right of access to information services and advice in such a way as to not be impeded by restrictions related to business-to-end-user transactions. Private transactions between information providers and individuals should not result in any restrictions on right of access to information services and advice through filtering of information.
   
   

4. Right to benefit from intellectual and artistic works
   

   We reserve the right to benefit from intellectual and artistic works. This implies that any means of database collection services implemented by commercial interests should not restrict this right in any manner, and royalties collected by owners of such databases should be shared with original authors of intellectual and artistic works who legally own rights to those works. Furthermore an author's legal rights should always predominate over corporate legal rights. This right should void corporate copyrights over their database, and encourage negotations between authors and commercial interests for fair market value of intellectual and artistic works authored by individuals.
   
   

5. Right to communicate
   

   The right to communicate should not be infringed upon by any law, both common and criminal. This means that corporations cannot ban individuals from criticizing business practices through establishment of mailing lists and web sites used expressly for this purpose. As well, neither corporate nor public information providers may use protective software to infringe upon this right. If a source of information does not specifically violate the rights of children as provided by UN declarations, then each individual reserves the right to strike that source from the ban list, and the right to be allowed to control the editing of any such list.

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Source: D. Gutstein, e.con: How the Internet Undermines Democracy;
Chapter 9: Reclaiming Public Information, pp. 283-290

A Mathematical Diversion

T: If c = a + b and x = a/c and y = b/c , then x + y = 1.

Proof:

1) if a = 0 and b = 0, then c = 0 but x = a/c and y = b/c give divide by zero errors
therefore x + y gives divide by zero errors.

2) if a = 0 and b = 1, then c = 1 and x = a/c = 0 and y = b/c = 1.
therefore x + y = 1

3) if a = 0 and b = 2, then c = 2 and x = a/c = 0 and y = b/c = 1
therefore x + y = 1

...

4) if a = 0 and b = infinity, then c = infinity and x = a/c = 0 and y = b / c = infinity / infinity = 1
therefore x + y = 1

5) if a = 1 and b = 0, then the answers are like 2 above.

6) if a = 1 and b = 1000, then c = 1001 and x = a/c = 1/1001 and y = b / c = 1000/1001
therefore x + y = (1 + 1001) / 1001 = 1001 / 1001 = 1

7) if a = 1 and b = infinity, then c = 1 + infinity and x = a/c = 1/infinity ~ 0 and y = b/c = infinity / (infinity + 1) ~ 1
therefore x + y = 1