The purpose of the Cato institute and/or Steve Milloy's junkscience.com: example: California enacts a law saying that "there shall be no smoking in restaurants, due to second-hand smoke. Waitresses and waiters have to breathe in the accumulated hours of your second-hand smoke for their whole working day. Studies have shown that waitpersons who don't smoke get lung cancer more frequently than the general populace of non-smokers, therefore we are outlawing smoking in restaurants." Now, the restaurant owners whine "this will hurt our business." (Speaking of junk science, has this actually been SHOWN to hurt their business? In any event...) So the Cato institute/Steve Milloy hears this whine and attacks the study, whipping up some kid of rationalization as to why it was "junk science." The entire motivation is to get rid of the PERCEIVED/ALLEGED threat to Business, without caring about the people (waitpersons and non-smoking customers.) That's my viewpoint on why Steve Milloy does what he does (i.e. lie pathologically.)

How's this for a thought: look at American elections. Okay, actually, hold that thought, I'll get back to it. Okay try this: maybe there is no such thing as a 100% ironclad indisputable "study" or "experiment." You can always find some picky little detail that could be assailed, and which sometimes the author(s) of the study/experiment may themselves even point out. Perhaps certain studies/experiments could be more conclusive if they were better funded. So to leap on some little detail and say "Ha! they blew it! This whole thing is invalidated! Junk science! Go smoke all you want, second hand smoke won't kill the waitpeople, I promise," is rather short-sighted, and, in fact, damaging. [On elections: it could be that any election has "irregularities" of, say, +/- 5%, so any election that is this close, whichever of the two parties is ahead, should be done over.]

Actually, what I meant to say about libertarianism is: okay, you get the government off "Our" backs by reducing it's size, scrapping whole departments like the EPA, FDA, Department of Education, and so on. Now, Big Business will be on our backs, unregulated. You've just shifted who's on our backs, and made the situation worse, as we breathe smog, drink MTBE, and eat dioxins, and watch the ozone layer evaporate. [In Iran, they got rid of the Shah, and welded religion and government together and now they have that on their backs. Not really an improvement.] So, no, when it comes to the environment, a strict libertarian viewpoint here is not helpful. Capitalism as well, probably. A capitalistic economy with absolutely no governmental interference at all would not be a good thing, not only for environmental reasons. (Ran out of brain. Take a break.)

(APRIL 15, 2005)In my quest for an honest conservative, I came across David Horowitz, but I soon realized that I was confusing intelligence with honesty. He is "just" able to use his intelligence to make his lies sound more convincing. Perhaps he learned how to use his brain back when he was a liberal.

My rejection of him is based on amazon.com reviews of his book (islam left). Well, the title of the book, quite frankly, was enough to do it, and reading all ( ) reviews merely confirmed that I jumped to the right conclusion. Now, one might argue "how can you tell a book is full of crap if you don't actually read it yourself?" Do I have to read every book that might be full of crap so I can look back and say "Yes, indeed, that book was full of crap."? I believe that by reading all the reviews, this would tend to filter out any lies/distortions/misrepresentations of the book, since the positive reviewers would protest against the lies of the negative reviewers and vice versa. (link to book)

What I learned from reading the reviews: (fill in later)

It may be interesting to read a book where he described what happened to him to turn him from a liberal to a conservative. (not sure about this, but, perhaps he used to be highly in favor of Marx and Chomsky. I am not an expert on Marx, and have only recently begun to look at Chomsky, but at this point, I don't particularly like Marx and I can see why people would disagree with Chomsky. On the far left. you have Marx, people who literally do seem to be saying "maybe we 'deserved' 9/11 (wait, didn't Falwell say something like that? look up and link) and people who admire Stalin and Mao, and on the far right you have the KKK, people who bomb abortion clinics, and people who admire Hitler. So, in rejecting the extreme left, why go all the way past moderate and into the right? (I didn't say extreme right, but considering Horowitz's views on immigrants...[just kidding, maybe.])

Bless Bill O'Reilly's little pointy head. He says (I think it was him) that "Hey, I'm not totally a conservative, I think we should legalize (or decriminalize) marijuana.." (paraphrasing) Well, I'm not "totally a liberal," since I accept that we seem to be stuck with capitalism (for now) since we can't Seem to be able to think up anything better. Now a conservative would say "Yes, capitalism has been shown to be the only workable economic system. All alternatives, all attempts at socialism (not communism) have collapsed or are collapsing." Whereas someone like Noam Chomsky would point out "They were never actually given a chance to succeed. Everywhere socialism cropped up, it was mercilessly attacked by the USA. There is therefore no way we can judge whether or not socialism could have succeeded, if left alone." Well, he might say something like that. Think he might have a point?

Marx may have said something like property does not exist. Possibly he may have said that money does not exist. I would argue that "property" and "money" are ideas in our heads. Atheists like to go on and on about "memes" and they like to call Jesus and God "memes." A "meme," as I understand it, is basically an idea, which is looked at as though it were a virus. Like viruses, a "meme" can "reproduce" and spread from person to person. Perhaps this ANALOGY was thought up to reflect the "contagious" nature of ideas. But now we have atheists running around (the phrase "running around" is admittedly, tossed in there arbitrarliy to make them look dumb, see, I point out some of my semantic tricks. I can be honest some of the time) saying "God is "just" a "meme," and they figure this is some kind of adequate "reasoning" to reject the existence of God (straw man). Well, money and property are "just" "memes," so how do you like them apples? And if the "meme" concept existed in Marx's day, he may have agreed.

My current position (which may change tomorrow) is that although property and money are basically lies/illusions/delusions/memes, they are convenient lies. Although, there's a potential "emperor has no clothes" situation here, in that once the boy says "the emperor has no clothes," everyone realizes that the emperor in fact has no clothes. If people believed that money was a convenient lie, it wouldn't work anymore.

A counterargument to this would be "Yes, money and property are all in our heads, but nevertheless they still exist." Which gets back to "it all depends on what your definition of 'is' is." Is money more or less real than Santa Claus? Are there "levels of reality?" Is my mind more real than my body, or my body more real than my mind? Plato would say (I think) that my mind is more real than my body, that the Platonic ideal tree is more real that any physical tree you may meet personally. So would Plato then argue that money is in fact more real than any tangilbe physical object? (You aren't thinking that the pieces of paper are "really" money, are you? The vast majority of the money in the world has no symbolic physical substance. At one point, we were on the "Gold standard," and at that time, one might be able to argue that "money was real" back then, but we are the people who decide how much gold is "worth", or in fact that gold is "worth" anything.) Marx thought money and property weren't real. He also thought God wasn't real ("religion is the opiate of the masses"). This may be true (the money and property bit, not the God bit) but then he jumps to the conclusion that because these things aren't real, then they should be discarded. Well, I never read Das Kapital, so I don't know if he had some rationale from moving from "money isn't real" to "let's discard it." There may be some justification in thinking that a civilization based on lies/memes is inherently unstable. Well, if it's inherently unstable, it will fall apart eventually. No hurry. Well, I guess if you're Utopian (and I'm not rejecting that out of hand), you might argue that "the best of all possible worlds is one in which the individual people do not suffer from any delusions of any kind, and the society they live in isn't based on any delusions." And then we all argue on what's a delusion and what isn't. I personally believe that a God exists, and that those who disagree are deluded, whereas those who disagree consider me deluded. I am not sure that God is definable by humans, and when I look at the attempts that have been made to define God, I think the definers are deluded. So, how are we going to get this delusion-free society thingy? Even though money exists only in our head, does it still "exist" anyway?

Marx's idea (if I recall correctly) was that labour, and possibly physical objects as well (?), have "worth." So, somehow, for instance, it is determined (by "market forces" perhaps) that x amount of time spent working is worth y amount of bread. Labor itself has different values assigned to it depending on the nature of the work. For instance, just being Jim Carrey is extremely difficult, so his acting is correspondingly expensive, and he is not overpaid, but in fact getting exactly the amount of money he "deserves" (sarcasm/irony/thingy.) Money is therefore a symbolic representation of the value of work and the value assigned to material objects, as one is paid money to buy bread. But the money itself isn't "really real." (Hmm, if people could create things out of thin air by the power of thought, it would screw up the economy.)

Okay, this stream of thought rambling of me trying to figure out "is money real or not." has left me with the tentative answer "no, it's not." [I'm not going to say "it's just a 'meme'" because I'm miffed at atheists. Yep, totally illogical, I admit.] So, okay, money doesn't really exist. Again, what's a delusion and what isn't? The problem with any Utopia is you can't get anyone to agree on what Utopia ought to look like. Even if you start with the assumption that a Utopia should be totally delusion-free, how do you get rid of people's delusions about God? Well, that would occur in heaven, I suppose, and therefore Utopia is impossible on earth. And you can't just say "we can have Utopia on earth if we converted everyone away from atheism," since what will you convert them to?

What if you converted everyone to Buddhism? "Life is suffering. Suffering is caused by craving/desiring. Therefore, remove desire." What would a society in which no one desired anything look like? This couldn't actually be achieved. As long as children continue to be born, there would be new desirers. Of course, if no one desired anything, where would kids come from? Hmm, a Buddhist Utopia doesn't seem to be workable (in this extremely brief and superficial view, but Buddhists aren't trying to create a Utopia on earth anyway, that I know of.)

A Christian Utopia. Well, that seems silly, as it would make heaven redundant. (How's that for a quick superficial argument?)

Okay, forget Utopia. How about just "something better than what we have now"? People like to go on and on about "world peace," but how would you actaully accomplish it? "If everyone actually had fundamental human rights, there would be no reason for rebellion." Hmm, perhaps this is a workable theory, once everyone agrees what "fundamental human rights," means. Liberals look at the Patriot Act and say "our rights are being eroded away." Conservatives look at the removal of the Ten Commandments from public places and say "our rights are being eroded away." So, both liberals and conservatives agree on this issue, they just are concerned about different rights. Some conservatives (some of the Supreme Court Justices!) would say "there is no right to privacy in the Constitution, therefore You Don't Have One." Some of the Founding Fathers objected to including the Bill of Rights precisely because of this Error these "Justices" have fallen prey to: those Fathers didn't want a list of rights because they were concerned that people would think "these are the only rights you have."

The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law providing for the establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof. (plus freedom of the press. speech, etc.) Liberals tend to ignore the second half, conservatives tend to ignore the first half. "Putting the Ten Commandments in a court of law does not violate the First Amendment! I can't see any reason why any Christian or Jew would be offended at quotes from the Bible. It's not establishment of religion, as there is no preference for Protestant, Catholic or Jew." This line of "thinking" ignores everyone who is not Christian or Jewish, it ignores the fact that Jewish people don't section off the "Ten Commandments" this way, and it ignores the fact that Protestants and Catholics list the Ten Commandments differently. My assumption would be that the Ten Commandments hanging in an Alabama court room would be the Protestant version, not the Catholic version. Don't ask me why, it's just a hunch :) "The Ten Commandments is an historical document. This is a symbolic representation of where our legal system comes from." Fine, if you want to post the Ten Commanments, do you post the Constitution anywhere? (Who knows, maybe they do.) If you want to turn a courtroom into a historical law museum, how about throwing in some Egyptian, Greek, or Roman stuff, maybe Hammurabi's code (which all contain roots of our legals system). (I suppose a liberal could counter-argue that this focuses on the West and excludes Africa, the Far East, and Native Americans [even though the point of such a law museum would be to show where "Our" legal system came from] so we could...) or toss in some stuff about the pre-Columbus Iroquoi. Or, just screw all this and hang up a dollar bill, since property is nine tenths of the law anyway. Which is "just" a "meme" :P

Back to Utopia. How about a partial-Utopia? When it come to religion, we will simply have to agree to disagree, and have as one of our "fundamental human rights" something like, oh, I don't know, preventing the establishment of religion and the free exercise thereof (after we've figured out what this actually means.) (Why is it that these things seems like such great ideas, but when people try to put them into practice, they "always" (exaggeration (?)) screw it up?)

And now my stream-of-consciousness has led me to: why do certain conservatives balk at giving longer to sentences to people accused of "hate crimes?" "You killed this man specifically because he was black, therefore, we're going to increase your sentence beyond what it normally would have been." Well, I guess if the sentence for "murder" is 10 years, but "killing a black man because he is black" is 20 years," the conservative would say "just make it 20 years for everyone." Hmm. But then, what if you substitute "gay" for "black"? [Not sure where I was trying to go with this, or even how I got here.] Ah well, I'm heading off into incomprehensibilty here, time to take a break.

Topic for a future time: just what the heck is "anti-American" anyway? If, as an American, I have a "right" to my opinions, how can any opinion I have be an "anti-American" opinion?

"Rights:" Here's an opinion I have that might be considered "unAmerican:" we don't actually have "God-given" "inalienable" "rights." I have the "God-given" "inalienable" "right" to an attorney? Fine, I go to another country, they arrest me, lock me up, and not let me see an attorney. There, I've just had my "right" "alienated" from me (or however you express it grammatically. You know what I mean, maybe.) Okay, then you counter-argue "Yes, but that foreign government had no 'right' to do that to you." Well, knowing that while this foreign government is holding me in custody for months without letting me see an attorney, knowing that they have no 'right' to do so will certainly be a comfort. At least, nothing like that happens in America, unless you're Moslem.

My "unAmerican" opinion is that these "rights" do not "exist," they are "just" "memes," and yet they are useful "memes," so if you want a Utopia, getting rid of all the delusions isn't really what you want to do (and I acknowledge that "meme" and "delusion" are not equivalent terms.) Or, let me start again. We do not "have" "rights," we identify "rights" and define them and refine them, according to how we would like to live. We would like to live in a society where we would have "freedom of speech," therefore we write a Constitution claiming that we have "freedom of speech" and over time the defintition of "freedom of speech" mutates (memes, as a biological analogy, are also thought to mutate over time.) We build the legal system on legal precedents set by court cases, as well as actual congressional laws, continually refining what "freedom of speech" means. But "freedom of speech" is not some "thing" that God "gave" to us, not directly anyway. If I can personify God for a moment (which might not be a good idea), perhaps "He" gave us the desire for freedom (and yet we also have the conflicting desire to be controlled, or we want other people to be controlled so they don't hurt us). [Actually, it just occured to me, the "inalienable" things were "life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness." Hmm. Well, same difference: lock someone up, and you've "alientated" them from liberty and pursuit of happiness, and they don't have much of a life.]

So, back to Utopia: the delusion-free attitude would be: "This is how we want to live. We want 'freedom of speech,' therefore, we design our society around this concept (and whatever other concepts we want). We do not call 'freedom of speech' a 'right' that we 'have.' Or, we define 'right' as 'one of the underlying principles we base our lives on.'" Hm, as far as that goes, why not just call "freedom of speech" a "principle" instead of a "right"? [Because of the emotional content of the (delusionary) "right." People will get more emotionally excited over "The government is violating my rights!" in comparison to "The government is violating my principles!"] So, I am wondering what a liberal atheist (I am not saying all liberals are atheists) would make of my idea that so-called "rights" are "just" "memes"? Not all atheists go on about memes (possibly "just" because they haven't heard of memes yet). And again, not all memes are necessarily "bad." Money and property, though delusions, are useful. (And a meme is a contagious idea; memes aren't necessarily "wrong." For instance, "freedom of speech" itself a meme. "The right of freedom of speech" is a different concept from "the principle of freedom of speech," which is a different concept from "freedom of speech," which is a different concept from "speech.")

Random odd thought: I wonder if there is some kind of left-hemisphere right-hemisphere thing going on that causes the tendency for "intellectuals" to more likely be atheistic and liberal (or I guess it could just be a result of our school systems. That seems, more likeley, actually. Nurture vs nature in this case. On the other hand, the more "scientific" "logical" left hemisphere would be more inclined to be atheistic. Then again, you could say the right hemisphere would be more likely to be sympathetic towards the poor.)

On an almost totally unrelated note: I recently saw "What the Bleep do We know?" Which I recommend, even though it has a lot of Ramtha in it.

Also: the "meme" concept is "just" an analogy.

(MARCH 29, 2005)Today, I looked into the Kyoto Protocol. The extremely minimal research I did suggests that it will scarcely make a dent in global warming, and will basically involve moving large amounts of money around. If the US ratified it, the US would most likely continue to emit as many greenhouse gasses as it is does now, and have to pay in order to do so, so what exactly was the incentive for the US to ratify it? This conclusion is based on my pessimistic assumption that the US can't reduce it's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels.

While researching this, I've come to the conclusion that Steve Milloy of junkscience.com can be about as useful as Rush Limbaugh for critical thinking students to sharpen their skills on, by assuming that everything he says is wrong, exaggerated, or distorted.

A funny thing about numbers: the wikipedia article suggests that the Kyoto Protocol could reduce global warming from 0.02 to 0.28 degrees C. Naturally, most of the anti-Kyoto pages mention only the 0.02 figure, though some will go as high as 0.07 (or maybe 0.07 F = 0.02 C?). Some more funny numbers: when researching the DDT issue, the por-DDT pages usually say "500 million people contract malaria a year," whereas the [sorry, can't find the page] WHO page says "350 to 500 million." The WHO page explains why they can't be more accurate. Also, I've seen numbers ranging from "1 million people have died per year from malaria" to "2.7 million." Which number is correct? And which years are they talking about?

I have what may be a stupid thought: I understand that in third world countries, many young children, particularly poorly nourished ones, die from diarrhea. Many of those who die from malaria are also young children. Say a child has both diarrhea and malaria and dies. Under which statistic death the death fall? Or did he die from malnutrition? Just making up numbers here: what if 3 million die from malnutrition, 2.7 million die from malaria, and 1.5 million die from diarrhea, but in actuality only 4 million children (instead of 7.2 million) died?

So, on to a much more important topic [facetious]. I have noticed that Rush (the Canadian band, not the goofball) is not yet in the Rock 'n' Roll (sic) Hall of Fame. I suppose this is understandable if the judges are ignorant; e.g. when they hear the name "Rush" they think "What did they do? 'Limelight' and 'Tom Sawyer'? I'm sick of those songs already. Actually, I don't think I ever liked those songs. Screw 'em." (These people obviously never heard Hemispheres. Or even 2112?) This biased attitude totally ignores the influence Rush has had on other bands, which is part of the purpose of the Hall of Fame, yes?

Looking at it another way, who else have they let in? In my opinion, Rush "deserves" to be in the Hall of Fame more than the following people/groups (and here I freely admit my ignorance, i.e. for many of these I have no clue who they are, or I can only name one song they did, and the reason I know which song they did was that it's listed on the Hall of Fame's web site):

Sam Cooke, The Coasters, Clyde McPhatter, Jackie Wilson, The Drifters, Dion, The Platters, Sam and Dave, Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers, Martha and the Vandellas, The Shirelles, The Staple Singers, Lovin' Spoonful, The Moonglows, Ritchie Valens.

Now for these next ones, I'm not saying that they don't "deserve" to be in, only that if they are in, Rush also "deserves" to be in: Prince, U2, ZZ Top, Talking Heads, The Police.

[Is it because they're Canadian? :)]

And: If Nirvana gets in before Rush does, I shall most definitely HAVE to puke.

And: If Marilyn Manson gets in before Rush does, I might just go insane.

[Cute fact: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison are each in the Hall individually, as well as the Beatles as a group, but Ringo isn't :)]

[Also: "desreves" is in quotes because I consider it to be a semantically suspect word. More on that later, perhaps.]

(MARCH 28, 2005) After spending many hours looking up various webpages on DDT, starting with the Wikipedia article, I eventually concluded that this pagewas the most honest and objective. Also, MSG (Monosodium glutamate) looks Bad(tm). I'll let you do searches on that one yourself. Then again, you can find webpages that say milk is Bad if you look hard enough. Well, not that hard at all, really. And soybeans. Soybeans are Bad, too, unless they're not. My point? Well, DDE (a molecule realted to DDT, which DDT breaks down to) probably does causes the egghells of certain raptor species to thin. And MSG is bad for you, probably, maybe.

Here's an experiment you can do: take a child diagnosed with ADD. Remove MSG from his (they often seem to be male) diet. Observe behavioral differences. Put MSG back into his diet. Observe behavioral differences. Repeat as many times as necessary with additional children until you become convinced. The control group would have to be a set of ADD children who eat the typical MSG laden American diet.

(MARCH 18, 2005) So now with the introduction out of the way, here's what I actually wanted to write about. I hear Rush mumbling about Alar on the radio in the cubicle next "door" [okay, we don't have doors, but you get the point..] Operating under the assumption that Rush is always wrong (link) or lying, I do a little research on the Internet. [Um, after I get home, that is. Yeah, that's it.] My "research" basically consisted of looking at two web pages. [Now I have to go find them. Ah, here they are, here (link) and here (link) .] To me, the Anti-Alar page seems more believable, though this is of course colored by the fact that I started off with the assumption that Rush would be wrong.

For those of you too lazy to click on the links, well, tough, but I will do a brief summary of what the Alar issue was. Alar was a substance used on apples. Two studies were done, one showing death rates of 50 in a million and one showing 23 in a million [These death rates do not refer to actual people who have died. Click on the links for an explanation.] A rate of 1 in a million is unacceptable to the FDA, so the company which produced Alar voluntarily removed it AND HASN'T BROUGHT IT BACK. A few years later, and in fact, even up until yesterday, "anti-environmentalists" [term to be defined below] use the "Alar scare" or the "Alar myth" as a "poster child" [straw man?] showing how environmentalists rely on "junk science" ["Junk science" is apparently a term invented by the Cato Institute (link) which means "any science done by environmentalists." Okay, I'm being facetious here. Kind of.] My conclusion after looking at these pages is: no, I don't want Alar on my apples, thank you very much. [If there truly were no significant problems with Alar, WHY aren't they trying to bring it back? And also: what other junk is on our apples? [Hint, wash all your fruits and vegetables, but you knew that, didn't you? On second thought, peel them and throw away the peels.]] And another point: say Alar has a death rate of 23 in a million. what if there are 25 chemicals on an apple, each with a death rate of 1 in a million. What would be the cumulative effect of all these chemicals? What would be the synergistic effects, i.e. [in other words] how do these chemicals interact in the body?

So, that's all I wanted to say about Alar. Now, I'm defining an "anti- environmentalist" as someone who is against environmentalists, not someone who is against the environment. Depending on your point of view, there is no difference between the two ideas, but this would be assuming that the environmentalists are always right. Before I got my current job, I may have been more inclined to believe that "enivironmentalists" [I'm putting that word in quotes in this sentence because not all environmentalists may agree on all issues, so lumping them together in one category and pretending they all believe all the same things is invalid.] are right more often than not, but these days, I'm not quite so sure.

Before I got my present job, I thought of environmentalism as a no-brainer. Of course we need clean air to breathe. Of course we need clean water to drink. Of course we need safe food to eat. Of course we need to stop eating up the ozone layer. And then we enter the maybe region: maybe we're creating too much CO2, and maybe this is causing global warming, and maybe this is a problem. And further along the no-brainer line of thought is the issue of motivation. What do the environmentalists get out of lying? Nothing, What do the polluters get out of lying? Money. Hmm, I wonder who I should believe? [I told you this blog will have logical holes. Here's an example. It assumes that someone is lying, instead of perhaps being mistaken. It ignores accusations by "anti-environmentalists" on the motivations of the environmentalists. Etc, etc. Yes this is not an air-tight argument by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't have time to get into it now. Well, I do, but anyway...Oh, and also, it kind of relies on the Marxist paranoid "Who benefits?" argument, which I do not believe myself, and will explain why not at some point.]

But: with extreme environmentalism, business can't get anything done. [exaggeration] Also, I live in California. If a business can't do something in California because of environmental regulations, it will just move out of state, or even out of the country, which hurts American workers. Or, I should say, instead of "can't do something" I should say "it's cheaper for the business to go somewhere the regulation does not exist." So, great, NIMBY. Not In My Back Yard. Because of the regulation, we don't pollute here, we just pollute over there, and then we pollute some more while shipping the product back over here, with a net result of more pollution. But it's not in our backyard, so that's all right [sarcasm].

A side issue arises at this point which is so important that I'm switching tracks and making it the main issue. The biggest reason I hate Rush Limbaugh so much is that he lies so much. I mean the guy's pathological. Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter may be as bad or worse. If the conservatives are right, why do they have to lie so much, and if they lie so much, how can they be right? [And again, using "conservatives" in this way is semantically incorrect, as I am lumping all conservatives in with these lying goofballs. Which leads me to this:] Can I get one conservative who doesn't lie? What annoys me so much is that they [they being those specifically mentioned, and not conservatives in general] are not even trying to be honest, and what frightens me so much is that so many people believe their lies. If anyone can direct me to an honest conservative, please do so. (email me) Perhaps Bill Bennet or William F. Buckley are honest and actually believe what they say, I don't know, I haven't researched them Not Sean Hannity, or most likely not anyone with their own show on TV. But when I say "believe what they say" who knows, Savage, Rush, Coulter, and O'Reilly might be so messed up in their heads that they actually believe their own crap.

So, this side issue of "honesty" concludes with a request to "show me an honest conservative," an acknowledgement that Michael Moore isn't particularly honest himself, and a change in direction to "Am I a liberal or a conservative?" [Perhaps I'll get back to the environment at some point. I wish Word Pad had spell check.]

I probably still qualify as a liberal. For a time, on economic issues, I've been assuming "capitalism is the only system that's been demonstrated to be workable in the long run," but I'm beginning to have doubts on that assumption. Perhaps I'll write a Scientological argument about "upstats" and "downstats" some time [and now I've just given you two MUs, or three, if you haven't read the Scientology articles yet.] On social issues, though, I am against making abortion illegal, I am against putting a DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE in the CONSTITUTION [For crying out loud!], I am against a flag burning AMENDMENT, a prayer in schools AMENDMENT [What is it with these people and amendments? (Sematic Cop frowns on the usage of "these people")], I am agianst banning Harry Potter, Wizard of OZ, or Lord of the Rings from public or school libraries, I am against mandating the teaching of creationism in schools [there's some "junk science" for you.] And several other things. Ah well, run out of steam. More later. Now I have to actually put in the links.

Oh, one final point: to the liberals: if you are on the side of truth, why should you lie? Let the conservatives lie, and if you stick scrupulously to the truth, people will eventually realise who is right, and who is wrong. And: to the conservatives: the same, but switch "conservative" and "liberal." [Oh, don't even get me started on "relativism."] The true point may be: anyone who is completely 100% honest with himself can't describe himself as a liberal or a conservative [and my old college writing professor doesn't like me using the "generic he" but this is my blog, so there.]

(INTRODUCTION): At work, the guy next to me "has" to have his radio on (no, really, he does!) for reasons I won't go into now. "Luckily", it's low enough so I can't quite make out what is being said. I just get to almost hear Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, and Michael Savage every day. Joy. Well, these days, it's as if you have to piss me off in order to get me to write, but I am, so I am. [By the way, I am quite thoroughly annoyed with the song "New Attitude" by the Pointer Sisters by now. Being forced to hear the same song three times a days every day for months makes me despise the song, the show playing the song, and the guy in the cubicle next door with the radio, even if he is a nice guy, really, and it's not his fault he has to have the radio on. But he chose the station. But it's the "only" station we can pick up (well, not really.) Anyway...]

So, this blog will be kind of stream of consciousness rambling for the most part, done with minimal research, if any, with maybe a few links tossed in here and there. The logic will likely have huge gaping holes which anyone can easily attack, because I'm lazy and I don't get enough sleep. I'll try to put the tangential ramblings into brackets. [How 'bout them Dodgers?] Also, I'm thinking of adding some articles on semantics to the site. Suffice to say for now that when I put something in quotes, the words within are of dubious semantic content. For instance, I "should" probably put the word "should" in quotes all the time, for reasons I'll get to later, on the first semantic page I write, perhaps. Or, sometimes I'll put a word in quotes as a sign of sarcasm, like "Luckily" above. In the case of "has" to above, "has" in quotes because does anyone ever truly "have" to do anything?

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