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Thursday, September 13, 2007
Which is the most universal human characteristic?
A cool clip from Waking Life. A bit too pessimistic for me, but still an interesting clip.
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Humor: Hubris Rewarded
From The Onion:
Hubris Rewarded
LOS ANGELES—Hubris, the theoretically fatal sin of overweening pride, failed to lead to the tragic downfall of high-powered executive Ted Carson, 49, who was instead rewarded with a promotion Monday to a junior partnership at the incredibly successful talent agency Farber & Schenk."Ted's attitude of unbridled selfishness—defined by a belief that he can do no wrong, a disregard for other human beings, and an insistence on ignoring those whose counsel he would be wise to heed—almost tempts fate when he declares himself somehow better than God," CEO Guy Carlisle said. "That's exactly the kind of person we want around here."
As of press time, there was no indication that Carson's new girlfriend, supermodel Ella Veronovitch, would be struck down by vengeful higher forces in the cosmos for considering herself a greater beauty than the goddesses of Olympus.
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Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Gratitude 9/12/07
Some things I am grateful for today:
1) Garlic. But I suspect my clients aren't so happy with my love of garlic.
2) My health. I have been blessed in my life not to have any serious health issues, aside from a whole mess of broken bones.
3) Sleep. I have been sleeping better lately, with a few exceptions, and I am grateful for that.
What are you grateful for today?
1) Garlic. But I suspect my clients aren't so happy with my love of garlic.
2) My health. I have been blessed in my life not to have any serious health issues, aside from a whole mess of broken bones.
3) Sleep. I have been sleeping better lately, with a few exceptions, and I am grateful for that.
What are you grateful for today?
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Kicking Her When She's Down
I've avoided saying anything about the Britney Spears VMA meltdown because, well, I don't care. The girl had very little talent to begin with, but she was well-packaged. Now she's a train wreck, and America loves a train wreck. But I think it's time to quit kicking her when she's down.
If you didn't see the VMA mess, here it is (don't watch if you're eating):
Aside from simply feeling bad that her messed-up life is so damn public, and that so many people seem willing to take advantage of the situation to make a buck (that's you, MTV), I really hadn't thought too much about the whole thing. But then I read this column from Entertainment Weekly: Are you enjoying Britney's downfall?
Here's a bit that makes sense:
How fair is it to pile on what is clearly a young woman in serious need of some help? She is a real human being after all, even if she only appears to be a caricature in the media. Rather than tear her to shreds, or enable her on-going self-destructive behavior, it might be nice if someone seriously reached out to her and tried to get her some help.
There comes a point when the media needs to become more self-aware and more humane -- this is one of those times. But I doubt it will happen.
If you didn't see the VMA mess, here it is (don't watch if you're eating):
Aside from simply feeling bad that her messed-up life is so damn public, and that so many people seem willing to take advantage of the situation to make a buck (that's you, MTV), I really hadn't thought too much about the whole thing. But then I read this column from Entertainment Weekly: Are you enjoying Britney's downfall?
Here's a bit that makes sense:
But on the flip side, what exactly has Britney done to deserve the thunderous, rancorous response to her badly lip-synched, lethargically choreographed rendition of "Gimme More"? She didn't maim a newborn kitten. Nor did she dangle her baby off a hotel balcony. She didn't utter a racist or homophobic slur. So how come on Monday morning, she made the front page of dozens of newspapers, got covered by cable news outlets as if she'd just delivered Gen. Petraeus' Iraq report in an ill-fitting sequined bra?
In our current comment-board culture, it's easy to tar-and-feather a fellow human being — especially if that human being is a vocalist/dancer who makes an exceedingly large amount of money but is apparently too lazy or too disinterested to enthusiastically shake her moneymaker and actually, um, sing live, during her big, televised comeback performance.
But I've also got to wonder: Are we enjoying Britney's downfall? And if so, why? Has she somehow become our pop-cultural sacrificial lamb, meant to pay the price for the disposable music that clogs our airwaves, for the collective guilt we feel for the copies of Star and Us and In Touch that sit on our bathroom floors? And how much do we want Britney to pay? What if her story ends with a paparazzi chase that leads to a tragic car accident? Or a drug overdose? Or a suicide attempt?
How fair is it to pile on what is clearly a young woman in serious need of some help? She is a real human being after all, even if she only appears to be a caricature in the media. Rather than tear her to shreds, or enable her on-going self-destructive behavior, it might be nice if someone seriously reached out to her and tried to get her some help.
There comes a point when the media needs to become more self-aware and more humane -- this is one of those times. But I doubt it will happen.
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Speedlinking 9/12/07
Quote of the day:
"War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace."
~ Thomas Mann
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Eat 8, Feel Great -- "Get the goods on the foods you should be eating every day."
~ Muscle on a Budget -- "You didn't hit your football pool this week, and now you gotta buy a new physiology textbook to replace the one your dog ate. How the heck are you going to have any money left over for food?"
~ Inhibiting The Growth Of Tumors With Vitamin C -- "Nearly 30 years after Nobel laureate Linus Pauling famously and controversially suggested that vitamin C supplements can prevent cancer, a team of Johns Hopkins scientists have shown that in mice at least, vitamin C -- and potentially other antioxidants -- can indeed inhibit the growth of some tumors -- just not in the manner suggested by years of investigation."
~ Portion Sizes Do Matter -- "Whether or not you are overweight, portion sizes of food are a major factor in determining how much you eat."
~ Eating dark chocolate can prevent heart disease -- "Two or three squares of dark chocolate a day may keep heart disease at bay. Studies show cocoa-rich dark chocolate boost heart health by keeping blood flowing freely round the body."
~ Being Overweight is Hard on the Heart (HealthDay) -- "A new study involving more than 300,000 people finds that being overweight independently increases a person's risk of coronary disease."
~ Cartilage Grown From Embryonic Stem Cells -- "Rice University biomedical engineers have developed a new technique for growing cartilage from human embryonic stem cells, a method that could be used to grow replacement cartilage for the surgical repair of knee, jaw, hip, and other joints."
~ Straight vs. Curly: Why One Gets More Tangles -- "Physicists find one type of hair gets more knots and untangle the reasons."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Searching versus Seeking -- "Recently I was talking with an acquaintance of mine who is preparing to leave his job in investment banking to go to an ashram in India to practice mediation and yoga. It was clear that he was excited by the prospect of this new journey, but he was also apprehensive. Having attended business school and lived in the Tal Ben-Sharar notion of the “rat race” (Ben-Sharar, 2007) working on Wall Street, he was unsure of giving it all up to embark on a more spiritual journey."
~ Three Reasons to Mistrust Reports about Ongoing Conscious Experience -- "We'll be talking about our forthcoming book, but for most of our 2 1/2 hours we'll be "beeping" the audience. That is, we'll set a random beeper to sound while we're talking. When the beep occurs, audience members will reflect on their "last undisturbed moment of inner experience" immediately before the beep. Then we'll interview people about their sampled experiences, right there on the spot."
~ The Political Brain [The Frontal Cortex] -- "Just a quick note on the liberal/conservative psychological study that everyone is talking about. (Dave Munger has a thorough write-up here.) Color me dubious."
~ Disaster Needn't Dampen Spirits -- "We all experience unexpected events in our lives - how we cope with them makes all the difference. For some an unexpected disaster such as floods or storms, can cause unending misery, flashbacks and possibly post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Others find ways to learn from setbacks and move forward with their lives. Some people experience amazing gratitude and new-found resilience after disasters."
~ A Field Guide to the Cynic -- "Nothing really matters to these bitter (yet entertaining) pessimists."
~ How to Fail at Practically Anything -- "I say, fail a lot. Push yourself to the limits of your talents, endurance, and common sense, and then go one step further and fall down, spectacularly if possible. Failure is one of life’s great forces; it’s driven far more innovation than talent, creativity, or necessity combined. Plus, its stories are better."
~ How to Fill Leisure Time Intelligently and Some Powerful Reasons You Should -- "When you come home, tired and stressed, the last thing you want to do is think. You want to relax and cut loose. For most people that means zoning out in front of the TV or joining friends at the bar for some chemical stimulation. Is this
really the best way to use free time? Are all intelligent pursuits draining and tedious?"
~ Self-Esteem IS Personal Development By Michael Mcgrath -- "Low self esteem can cripple you emotionally and stop you reaching anything even close to your full potential."
~ Top Tips for Improving Memory -- "Cognitive psychologists have discovered a number of techniques that can significantly improve your memory. Strategies such as elaboration, rehearsal, and mnemonic devices can help you better remember...."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Free-lunch foragers -- "'Freegans' are a growing subculture that has opted out of capitalism by cutting spending habits and living off consumer waste."
~ The Edifice of Pinkerism -- "Among the most prolific and most public of the current generation of inquirers into human understanding is the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. In a veritable bookshelf of recently published volumes, he has argued for what might be called a soft innatism: a theory of mind that holds that certain concepts or ways of thinking are hardwired into our brains at birth."
~ WorkPlace: Housing Bubble Pops; It's Recession Time -- "The growth of the housing bubble made this sort of collapse inevitable, just as the crash of the stock bubble was inevitable."
~ 5 Tech Stocks for Tough Economic Times -- "Solid balance sheets, cool products, and an alternative energy kicker are common themes."
~ The Petraeus and Crocker Testimony -- "General and ambassador make a strong case for a continued American presence in Iraq."
~ Bolton Wants Iran Regime Change -- "John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, says in an interview with U.S. News that despite the Bush administration's continued attachment to a diplomatic solution on nuclear programs in Iran, he favors seeking a change of regimes there." Bolton is nuts.
~ Life expectancy in U.S. rises to all-time high of 78 -- "Life expectancy in the United States has increased to almost 78 years, the country's highest on record, amid a downturn in deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke, according to new federal estimates published on Wednesday."
~ America's Absurd Farm Subsidies -- "The farm legislation proceeding through Congress symbolizes much of what's wrong with Washington. It's government by inertia."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Study: Pollution Raises Exercise Risks -- "People with heart disease may want to steer clear of heavy traffic when exercising or simply take their workout indoors to avoid breathing polluted air...."
~ What’s That Have to Do With the Price of Corn? -- "The rising price of corn due to ethanol demand will have a variety of unintended consequences. As noted earlier on this blog, it might even make Americans skinnier, since food manufacturers may start using a cheaper (and less fattening) substitute for corn syrup."
~ Environment: As We Stand on the Brink of Catastrophe, Bio-Fuels are no Magic Bullet -- "Having made ethanol into this magic elixir, politicians, financial investors, and the occasional environmental organization are masking the need for far deeper investigation and solutions."
~ Shrinking Kilogram Bewilders Physicists -- "A kilogram just isn't what it used to be. The 118-year-old cylinder that is the international prototype for the metric mass, kept tightly under lock and key outside Paris, is mysteriously losing weight - if ever so slightly."
~ Don't Just Be the Change, Mass-Produce It -- "Be the change. This motto -- shorthand for Gandhi's instruction that "We must be the change we wish to see in the world" -- has become ubiquitous. And while a sensible person will appreciate the essential wisdom behind Gandhi's words, in the context of sustainability, this shorthand has become associated as well with another idea: that the being the change is a lifestyle choice. In this context, Be the change in fact usually means Buy the change."
~ Wild male chimps steal to impress females -- "Scottish researchers studying wild chimpanzees in West Africa have discovered male chimps steal fruits from local farms to attract female mates."
~ Astronomers find bizarre planet-mass object orbiting neutron star -- "Using NASA`s Swift and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellites, astronomers have discovered one of the most bizarre planet-mass objects ever found."
~ To maximize biofuel potential, researchers look for sorghum's 'sweet spot' -- "Picture this - IV (intravenous) lines in a sorghum field. It's not as far-fetched as it sounds. It's one way that scientists at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station are researching crops that may contribute to the biofuel revolution."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Genpo Roshi's long awaited book, Big Mind/Big Heart, is here! -- "As many of you already know Genpo Roshi has just published his new book, Big Mind / Big Heart: Finding Your Way, which makes his Big Mind teachingsavailable to the general public for the first time in book form. The book will not be in bookstores until late September, but you can obtain it today directly from Big Mind Publishing."
~ Wayne Dyer's Real 'Secret' -- "With his new book a best-seller, the spiritual teacher talks to Beliefnet about embracing the Tao and how he creates abundance by giving instead of asking--and how you can too."
~ Did “Big Bang” Ever Happen? Understanding the Universe from Human Perspective: Part 2 -- "In the previous segment of this post, scientific arguments were presented to point out the absence of an absolute time and a unique clock in the universe that refutes the Big Bang theory and any beginning of time. This segment describes many other significant irresolvable paradoxes and inconsistencies between the Big Bang theory and the widely accepted theories and principles of science."
~ Every sense perception is an act of division within prior wholeness -- "In the absence of revelation -- either “given” or “intuited” -- there is no way to know about either the cosmos or its "parent," or source. Reduced to natural reason, human beings are like spiders spinning concepts out of their own substance and then living in and crawling about on them, catching the occasional meal. In fact, if the secular black window spider is going to be honest, he will have to admit that all he can ever know is his own web, which was Kant’s point. Kant took profane philosophy as far as it could go, which is why most philosophy since has merely been a footnote on Kant."
~ Principles of Morality - a fascinating new theory and model -- "So, there's this fellow named Jonathan Haidt who has been writing about the psychology of morality for a while, and he's just come out with some new papers and presentations on how morality works, and how it's affecting us as individuals and societies in the modern world. This is fascinating stuff."
"War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace."
~ Thomas Mann
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Eat 8, Feel Great -- "Get the goods on the foods you should be eating every day."
~ Muscle on a Budget -- "You didn't hit your football pool this week, and now you gotta buy a new physiology textbook to replace the one your dog ate. How the heck are you going to have any money left over for food?"
~ Inhibiting The Growth Of Tumors With Vitamin C -- "Nearly 30 years after Nobel laureate Linus Pauling famously and controversially suggested that vitamin C supplements can prevent cancer, a team of Johns Hopkins scientists have shown that in mice at least, vitamin C -- and potentially other antioxidants -- can indeed inhibit the growth of some tumors -- just not in the manner suggested by years of investigation."
~ Portion Sizes Do Matter -- "Whether or not you are overweight, portion sizes of food are a major factor in determining how much you eat."
~ Eating dark chocolate can prevent heart disease -- "Two or three squares of dark chocolate a day may keep heart disease at bay. Studies show cocoa-rich dark chocolate boost heart health by keeping blood flowing freely round the body."
~ Being Overweight is Hard on the Heart (HealthDay) -- "A new study involving more than 300,000 people finds that being overweight independently increases a person's risk of coronary disease."
~ Cartilage Grown From Embryonic Stem Cells -- "Rice University biomedical engineers have developed a new technique for growing cartilage from human embryonic stem cells, a method that could be used to grow replacement cartilage for the surgical repair of knee, jaw, hip, and other joints."
~ Straight vs. Curly: Why One Gets More Tangles -- "Physicists find one type of hair gets more knots and untangle the reasons."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Searching versus Seeking -- "Recently I was talking with an acquaintance of mine who is preparing to leave his job in investment banking to go to an ashram in India to practice mediation and yoga. It was clear that he was excited by the prospect of this new journey, but he was also apprehensive. Having attended business school and lived in the Tal Ben-Sharar notion of the “rat race” (Ben-Sharar, 2007) working on Wall Street, he was unsure of giving it all up to embark on a more spiritual journey."
~ Three Reasons to Mistrust Reports about Ongoing Conscious Experience -- "We'll be talking about our forthcoming book, but for most of our 2 1/2 hours we'll be "beeping" the audience. That is, we'll set a random beeper to sound while we're talking. When the beep occurs, audience members will reflect on their "last undisturbed moment of inner experience" immediately before the beep. Then we'll interview people about their sampled experiences, right there on the spot."
~ The Political Brain [The Frontal Cortex] -- "Just a quick note on the liberal/conservative psychological study that everyone is talking about. (Dave Munger has a thorough write-up here.) Color me dubious."
~ Disaster Needn't Dampen Spirits -- "We all experience unexpected events in our lives - how we cope with them makes all the difference. For some an unexpected disaster such as floods or storms, can cause unending misery, flashbacks and possibly post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Others find ways to learn from setbacks and move forward with their lives. Some people experience amazing gratitude and new-found resilience after disasters."
~ A Field Guide to the Cynic -- "Nothing really matters to these bitter (yet entertaining) pessimists."
~ How to Fail at Practically Anything -- "I say, fail a lot. Push yourself to the limits of your talents, endurance, and common sense, and then go one step further and fall down, spectacularly if possible. Failure is one of life’s great forces; it’s driven far more innovation than talent, creativity, or necessity combined. Plus, its stories are better."
~ How to Fill Leisure Time Intelligently and Some Powerful Reasons You Should -- "When you come home, tired and stressed, the last thing you want to do is think. You want to relax and cut loose. For most people that means zoning out in front of the TV or joining friends at the bar for some chemical stimulation. Is this
really the best way to use free time? Are all intelligent pursuits draining and tedious?"
~ Self-Esteem IS Personal Development By Michael Mcgrath -- "Low self esteem can cripple you emotionally and stop you reaching anything even close to your full potential."
~ Top Tips for Improving Memory -- "Cognitive psychologists have discovered a number of techniques that can significantly improve your memory. Strategies such as elaboration, rehearsal, and mnemonic devices can help you better remember...."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Free-lunch foragers -- "'Freegans' are a growing subculture that has opted out of capitalism by cutting spending habits and living off consumer waste."
~ The Edifice of Pinkerism -- "Among the most prolific and most public of the current generation of inquirers into human understanding is the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. In a veritable bookshelf of recently published volumes, he has argued for what might be called a soft innatism: a theory of mind that holds that certain concepts or ways of thinking are hardwired into our brains at birth."
~ WorkPlace: Housing Bubble Pops; It's Recession Time -- "The growth of the housing bubble made this sort of collapse inevitable, just as the crash of the stock bubble was inevitable."
~ 5 Tech Stocks for Tough Economic Times -- "Solid balance sheets, cool products, and an alternative energy kicker are common themes."
~ The Petraeus and Crocker Testimony -- "General and ambassador make a strong case for a continued American presence in Iraq."
~ Bolton Wants Iran Regime Change -- "John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, says in an interview with U.S. News that despite the Bush administration's continued attachment to a diplomatic solution on nuclear programs in Iran, he favors seeking a change of regimes there." Bolton is nuts.
~ Life expectancy in U.S. rises to all-time high of 78 -- "Life expectancy in the United States has increased to almost 78 years, the country's highest on record, amid a downturn in deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke, according to new federal estimates published on Wednesday."
~ America's Absurd Farm Subsidies -- "The farm legislation proceeding through Congress symbolizes much of what's wrong with Washington. It's government by inertia."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Study: Pollution Raises Exercise Risks -- "People with heart disease may want to steer clear of heavy traffic when exercising or simply take their workout indoors to avoid breathing polluted air...."
~ What’s That Have to Do With the Price of Corn? -- "The rising price of corn due to ethanol demand will have a variety of unintended consequences. As noted earlier on this blog, it might even make Americans skinnier, since food manufacturers may start using a cheaper (and less fattening) substitute for corn syrup."
~ Environment: As We Stand on the Brink of Catastrophe, Bio-Fuels are no Magic Bullet -- "Having made ethanol into this magic elixir, politicians, financial investors, and the occasional environmental organization are masking the need for far deeper investigation and solutions."
~ Shrinking Kilogram Bewilders Physicists -- "A kilogram just isn't what it used to be. The 118-year-old cylinder that is the international prototype for the metric mass, kept tightly under lock and key outside Paris, is mysteriously losing weight - if ever so slightly."
~ Don't Just Be the Change, Mass-Produce It -- "Be the change. This motto -- shorthand for Gandhi's instruction that "We must be the change we wish to see in the world" -- has become ubiquitous. And while a sensible person will appreciate the essential wisdom behind Gandhi's words, in the context of sustainability, this shorthand has become associated as well with another idea: that the being the change is a lifestyle choice. In this context, Be the change in fact usually means Buy the change."
~ Wild male chimps steal to impress females -- "Scottish researchers studying wild chimpanzees in West Africa have discovered male chimps steal fruits from local farms to attract female mates."
~ Astronomers find bizarre planet-mass object orbiting neutron star -- "Using NASA`s Swift and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellites, astronomers have discovered one of the most bizarre planet-mass objects ever found."
~ To maximize biofuel potential, researchers look for sorghum's 'sweet spot' -- "Picture this - IV (intravenous) lines in a sorghum field. It's not as far-fetched as it sounds. It's one way that scientists at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station are researching crops that may contribute to the biofuel revolution."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Genpo Roshi's long awaited book, Big Mind/Big Heart, is here! -- "As many of you already know Genpo Roshi has just published his new book, Big Mind / Big Heart: Finding Your Way, which makes his Big Mind teachingsavailable to the general public for the first time in book form. The book will not be in bookstores until late September, but you can obtain it today directly from Big Mind Publishing."
~ Wayne Dyer's Real 'Secret' -- "With his new book a best-seller, the spiritual teacher talks to Beliefnet about embracing the Tao and how he creates abundance by giving instead of asking--and how you can too."
~ Did “Big Bang” Ever Happen? Understanding the Universe from Human Perspective: Part 2 -- "In the previous segment of this post, scientific arguments were presented to point out the absence of an absolute time and a unique clock in the universe that refutes the Big Bang theory and any beginning of time. This segment describes many other significant irresolvable paradoxes and inconsistencies between the Big Bang theory and the widely accepted theories and principles of science."
~ Every sense perception is an act of division within prior wholeness -- "In the absence of revelation -- either “given” or “intuited” -- there is no way to know about either the cosmos or its "parent," or source. Reduced to natural reason, human beings are like spiders spinning concepts out of their own substance and then living in and crawling about on them, catching the occasional meal. In fact, if the secular black window spider is going to be honest, he will have to admit that all he can ever know is his own web, which was Kant’s point. Kant took profane philosophy as far as it could go, which is why most philosophy since has merely been a footnote on Kant."
~ Principles of Morality - a fascinating new theory and model -- "So, there's this fellow named Jonathan Haidt who has been writing about the psychology of morality for a while, and he's just come out with some new papers and presentations on how morality works, and how it's affecting us as individuals and societies in the modern world. This is fascinating stuff."
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Daily Dharma: Samsara
Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle:
Samsara
The oft-cited parable of the burning house tells of a father distraught as his children blithely play, unaware that the house is ablaze. Knowing of their respective predilections for playthings, he lures them from the inferno with the promise that he has a cart for each waiting outside, a deer-drawn cart for one, a goat-drawn cart for another, and so on. When they emerge from the conflagration, they find only one cart, a magnificent conveyance drawn by a great white ox, something that they had never even dreamed of. The burning house is samsara, the children are ignorant sentient beings, unaware of the dangers of their abode, the father is the Buddha, who lures them out of samsara with the teaching of a variety of vehicles. . . knowing that in fact there is but one vehicle, the buddha vehicle whereby all beings will be conveyed to unsurpassed enlightenment.
~ Donald S. Lopez, Jr., in Buddhism in Practice; From Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith.
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Billy Collins: The Country
This whole series of animated poems is a great idea -- I wish this were being done with other poets.
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Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America's best-selling poets, reads his poem "The Country" with animation by Brady Baltezor of Radium.
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Satire: Maybe We Should Try Coddling The Terrorists
From The Onion, a guest post from Bill O'Reilly:
Maybe We Should Try Coddling The Terrorists
I want to make myself clear, right from the get-go: I hate terrorism. Those of you who follow the Factor know that I have never been a fan. Never will be either. I think what they do, particularly to children, violence-wise, is unforgivable.
That said, I'm beginning to suspect that we've been going about this War on Terror all wrong. Before, I said we should treat the terrorists like the vile dogs that they are. But even vile dogs respond well to getting patted once in a while. So perhaps the best way to stop these jihadists from destroying our way of life is to do what the liberals have been proposing all along: start coddling them.
The "blame America first" crowd wants to invite these crazed Islamic extremists to visit Main Street USA, and I say let's give it a shot. Let's invite them into our homes, put them up in the guest bedroom with the good linens, and fluff up their pillows real nice. But let's not stop there. Let's take those heartless murderers out to our finest restaurants, order them appetizers and wine and dessert and then pick up the tab.
Look, folks, we don't really have a lot of options left. We've spent six long years fighting this war, and I don't feel any more safe than I did when we began. So why not call up this Muqtada al-Sadr fellow and tell him that the whole Iraqi shooting match is his for the taking?
Now, I haven't gone soft. I've never taken the easy road and I'm not about to start. Make no mistake, terrorists are no better than cockroaches. But as with cockroaches, if you see one, that means there are dozens more, and the more you kill them, the more there seem to be. We've tried isolating these bloodthirsty killers, bombing them, waterboarding them, locking them away in secret prisons, and still they hang on. But you know what we haven't tried? Rolling out the red carpet and treating them like royalty.
Take Osama bin Laden, for example. He's still a sworn foe of mine, but trying to smoke him out of his hole hasn't been working too well. We can't seem to find this guy through violence and intimidation, so let's send him a fruit basket instead. Let's pamper him and the rest of his evil band of freedom haters.
I know I've been saying for years that we're fighting them in Baghdad so we don't have to fight them in Boston. That hasn't been working out so well, and maybe it was the wrong strategy all along. Perhaps we can book them a few flights into town, make them the guests of honor at a fancy-schmancy tea party, and ask them what we did wrong to make them hate us so much in the first place. We'll eagerly listen to their demands, and immediately cave in to them. I don't care how outlandish those demands are, just give these folks what they want. We're a rich nation; we can afford it.
Folks, here's the bottom line: I don't want to die.
That night, we get them a room at the finest hotel in New York, preferably the bridal suite. Then we tuck them into bed, read them a bedtime story, and tiptoe quietly out of the room so as not to disturb their sweet slumber. Bright and early the next morning, we give the terrorists a good old-fashioned ticker-tape parade right there in lower Manhattan.
You don't have ticker tape? Not a problem. Just go to my website, billoreilly.com, and you can get some great Factor gear, including some brand-new "Let's pamper the terrorists" ticker tape. Makes a great back-to-school gift, and remember, all proceeds go to a terrorist-coddling charity.
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Tuesday, September 11, 2007
A Little Insomnia . . .
So a video in honor of insomnia: Bezmiegs (Insomnia) (2004) - Vladimir Lesciov
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