The Warfare Is Mental

Walking Down Stairs

June 7, 2007

Earlier today I walked down the stairs. I've actually got a few different styles of walking down stairs that I employ depending on how I'm feeling at any given moment. Sometimes I run down them, skipping stairs as I go. The inherent danger is readily apparent. A really hip youth marketer could term this style "extreme stair walking" and probably create a whole new subgenre in the useless sports industry. I could see it in the X-Games now; heaps of would-be athletes clad in dorky-looking protective gear raining down staircases of various heights and grades, all the while sponsored by soda companies, wireless providers and hair product manufacturers.

What’s Your Boiling Point?

June 6, 2007

It's common knowledge that a frog will remain in a container of water that is being brought slowly to a boil. In fact, the frog will remain there until the temperature gets high enough to cause death. While we humans may be quick to exclaim, "Stupid frog, leap out of the water," before we pride ourselves on our "intelligence" and demean the poor frog for it's apparent lack thereof, we ought to suspend judgment of our fellow creation and try to see things from a more honest perspective.

On Making A Living

June 2, 2007

In order to live we must in some way or another acquire the basic physical necessities of food, water and shelter. In other words, we must work. Once these have been attained in sufficient measure, our focus can shift to the more complex task of meeting the necessities of intellectual, emotional and spiritual matters. It seems the norm to despise one’s work, and this is unfortunate. Work should be a labor of love and an extension of personality. So many people remain unhappily stuck in positions they absolutely hate, yet they endure it, waiting for that golden future of retirement. The sad truth is that most people don’t love what they do with their lives, either in work or in habit. We are brought up to think of work as a terrible burden of necessity; therefore we never awaken to the fact that it can be an extension of our unique personalities.

On Global Warming

June 1, 2007

No pun intended, but global warming is a pretty hot issue right now. I heard one statistic that said the ten hottest years in recorded history have all occurred within the last 14 years. For the sake of brevity, I'm not going to even attempt to go into detail on any of this, but I am fired up on one particular aspect that I do want to rant about right now.

First off I need to make my fundamental belief on the environment known and that is this: including you, the reader, and myself, the author, every human being living in a techno-industrial society is culpable in global warming and the destruction of nature to one degree or another.

Explosives on a Plane

May 30, 2007

It was summer 2002. Only eights months after the September 11th fiasco and the country was still reeling in the aftermath. That summer I somehow conned my hippie dad into going on a road trip up the California coast. Our ultimate destination was Canada, and I had a friend who was living in Medford, Oregon. We took our sweet time meandering up the 101. Plenty of rest stops for smoke and an occasional tall can. Had the video camera to document it all…couldn't of been better. The trip got cut short due to one of those "family emergency" situations that I'll spare the details of. Long story short, we had to turn around and get to LAX – fast. So fast in fact, that I didn't even get to change clothes or get a new bag together – I simply went with what I had on me.

Timmy’s Last Nightmare

May 28, 2007

Isolated beads of sweat were forming on Timmy’s brow as usual. The dream had just begun. The long corridors leading into that eerie room seemed all too familiar. He managed to make it to the door. His fingers clenched the handle as he hesitated briefly. He knew and feared what he was about to embark upon, yet the possibility remained: might it be different this time? Unsure, Timmy entered the room.

Separation of Church And State

In 1802, representatives of the Danbury Baptist Association wrote to Thomas Jefferson inquiring about his refusal to follow in the footsteps of presidents George Washington and John Adams, who declared religiously-based national holidays of fasting and thanksgiving. Jefferson’s response referred to a symbolic “wall of separation” between religion and the state, a phrase that finds expression again and again in the debate over the extent religion should play in the public arena.

The institutions of religion and government have been noted in most every world civilization since the inception of recorded history, and for better or for worse most all societies have attempted to marry the two. Whereas Muslims and Jews, for example, both operate under systems of government that could be defined as theocratic or God-centered, one of the fundamental attractions to theoretical American democracy was its refusal to go this route: enter the outdated concept of religious freedom.

Popsicles & Sound Science

Stephen J. Gould once commented that orthodoxy can color our interpretation of the facts, and many people subconsciously interpret evidence to prove their desired conclusion. Even the most honest of writers often do research to confirm their personal convictions or attack somebody else’s, and unfortunately it is rather easy to enter into and conduct research with an unhealthy confirmation bias. In the worst case, a writer will selectively interpret evidence without acknowledgment or cross-examination of any counter evidence. As opposed to rendering an objective decision based on the sum total of pertinent evidence, the victims of confirmation bias usually embark upon research with premeditated conclusions, and often they will go to great lengths to get them.

Facts & Faulty Reasoning

It has been said that ignorance of the law is no excuse, and even that which we are unaware of or indifferent to is still applicable to us. We were all subject to gravity prior to its discovery. While going out to eat one night, I observed a situation that perfectly illustrates this principle. The following occurred at a restaurant where placing orders at the counter and seating yourself was the norm.

Wisdom from Sherlock Holmes

Though we may believe in certain foundational truths we must never close our minds to the possibility that we may be wrong. Often a different perspective yields a different perception, or as the great Sherlock Holmes put it “…circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing…it may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different…there is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

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