According to The Census Bureau, and the New York Times, 51% of women in 2005, said they were living without a spouse. That is a 46% increase over the 1950 figure.   Married people, as a portion of the US population, have been declining for decades, especially among women aged 15-24, which declined a whopping 62%, from 46% in 1950, to 16% in 2005.

Only 30 percent of black women reported living with a spouse, as did 49% of Hispanic women, 55% of Non-Hispanic White women, and 60% of Asian women.

A demographer with the Brookings Institute, William H Frey, said; “For better or worse, women are less dependent on men or the institute of marriage.   Younger women understand this better, and are preparing to live longer parts of their lives alone or with non-married partners.”

Men are very out of style these days.   They are dangerous, predatory, over-sexed, egotistical and stupid, -just watch prime time TV.  Science says men are genetically inferior and deteriorating.  Instead of evolving we are told they are genetically devolving.   All of which makes them very out of fashion.

In our modern society, women no longer need to be protected or provided for.  A man’s traditional role has largely become obsolete and unnecessary in our automated world.  Women can provide for themselves, feel secure, and make their own decisions.  Men are largely just valued sperm donors, based on their entertainment value.  

In this age of liberation, “real women” don’t have husbands, only victims do.

In the absence of a strong religious and moral system, to keep male behavior reliably in check, I think women will increasingly tend to rely on, and vote for, a police state to do it for them.

This is why Socialist policy will continue to replace Capitalism.  There is more risk and uncertainty inherent in Capitalism.  Ever since women have been able to vote, they have largely voted in favor of less risk and more security, something inherent in Socialism.  Generally, women seem to be fine with a big central government that will protect and care for them – totally replacing, in all practical aspects, the male relationship role, while allowing women greater personal freedom and less personal responsibility.

Ironically, it was the male desire to do and achieve, that Capitalism cleverly harnessed to bring about the group advancements that raised the standard of living to a high enough level that women could live independently and support themselves in this modern society.  But now, women are in effect, killing the goose that laid the golden egg, by slowly voting it out of existence and replacing it with socialist programs.  Nevertheless, any government that cares about our security, and which cares about our children, is hard to resist voting for.  That’s why politicians began kissing babies to get elected.   And, as our new female Speaker of the House declared; “It is all about the children.”   Actually, getting elected has become 'all about ' pandering to women voters.

As history shows, Socialism only actually works if all the members are saints. Otherwise, it drifts into an oligarchy where elite members of the party rule and become rich, or a dictatorship where only one person and his cronies wield power and become rich.  Either way, that is the old world order that stifled human advancement for thousands of years, and which Capitalism attempted to replace with a new world order.   Socialism is, however, a more secure and predictable social order - something that women seem to value highly.

As long as our new masters will kiss babies, apologize nicely, and talk about how much they care, I think it would be perfectly fine with half of our current electorate.  “Can I still go to the movies?  As long as I can still dance and go to the movies I don’t care.”  So, the stage is set for someone like Papa Castro to step forward and seize power so he can take care of everyone, -maybe by making our trains run on time like Mussolini did, or by funding big new social programs for unwed mothers like Hitler did.  History has, after all, been largely replaced by Ethnic Studies in schools, so I seriously doubt that many young people would even know enough to get upset about such an event.

We have, already, for example, a sizable amount of the population who actively hope for outer space aliens to arrive like modern messiah’s and take us over.  Many hope the space aliens will set things right and tell us what to do.  Or, in other words, to take responsibility from us, and wisely and lovingly care for us.

Big Brother, where are you?   Old World Order, where have you gone?

 

Humans are selfish and base creatures.   For most of their history they bred and fought each other with little or no advancement at all.   

Only the advent of the 'capitalist experiment,' stealthfully planted and protected  -far away in the New World, brought about rapid human advancement.  

Greed-over-Fear, which once enticed and employed the few to keep the many in check, (i.e. 'He makes the most money -who weilds the most power.') was cleverly legalized by capitalism and used to encourage the few to serve and empower the many.  (i.e. 'He makes the most money -who serves the most people.')  Instead of naturally inhibiting human advancement, capitalism actually channeled their most selfish and base desires toward group advancement.   Knowledge and the general human standard of living increased at such a wild pace that humans invented the term 'future shock' to describe their bewilderment at the frantic pace of change and advancement.

Socialism, slowly replacing it, will smother this fire like a blanket, and stability will again return.    Humans long, once again, for the old way.

 

Well, bless their pointy little heads! Don’t you just love it? On Christmas they write about valuable gifts of whale vomit, now, on New Years, the venerable New York Times prints an article suggesting maybe you don’t have any ‘free will’ to actually make or keep any resolutions anyway. . . Are you feeling the flow of high moral energy here? Not me. But, it was an interesting article. Looking forward to your comments. There are some cool quotes in it so I edited and condensed some excerpts from it below:


Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t

By Dennis Overbye, 1/02/2007

“If by free we mean the ability to choose, even a simple laptop computer has some kind of free will” said Seth Lloyd, an expert on quantum computing and professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.

“Every time you click on an icon, he explained, the computer’s operating system decides how to allocate memory space, based on some deterministic instructions.   But, Dr. Lloyd said, If I ask how long will it take to boot up five minutes from now, the operating system will say “I don’t know, wait and see, and I’ll make decisions and let you know.’”

“There are no shortcuts in computation,” Dr Lloyd said.  That means that the more reasonably you try to act, the more unpredictable you are, at least to yourself,” Dr. Lloyd said. Even if your wife knows you will order the chile rellenos, you have to live your life to find out.

Mark Hallett, a researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said, “Free will does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will.  They have the sense they are free.  The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it,” he said.  That is hardly a new thought.  The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, as Einstein paraphrased it, that “a human can very well do what he wants, but cannot will what he wants.”

The traditional definition is called “libertarian” or “deep” free will. It holds that humans are free moral agents whose actions are not predetermined. This school of thought says in effect that the whole chain of cause and effect in the history of the universe stops dead in its tracks as you ponder the dessert menu.

At that point, anything is possible.  Whatever choice you make is unforced and could have been otherwise, but it is not random.  You are responsible for any damage to your pocketbook and your arteries.

“That strikes many people as incoherent,” said Dr. Silberstein, who noted that every physical system that has been investigated has turned oout to be either deterministic or random. “Both are bad news for free will,” he said.  So if human actions can’t be caused and aren’t random, he said, “It must be- what- some weird magical power?”

People who believe already that humans are magic will have no problem with that. But whatever that power is – call it soul or the spirit – those people have to explain how it could stand independent of the physical universe and yet reach from the immaterial world and meddle in our own.   A vote in favor of free will comes from some physicists, who say it is a prerequisite for inventing theories and planning experiments. That is especially true when it comes to quantum mechanics, the strange paradoxical theory that ascribes a microscopic randomness to the foundation of reality. Anton Zeilinger, a quantum physicist at the University of Vienna, said recently that quantum randomness was “not a proof, just a hint, telling us we have free will.”

But, in the 1970’s, Benjamin Libet, a physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, wired up the brains of volunteers to an electroencephalogram and told the volunteers to make random motions, like pressing a button or flicking a finger, while he noted the time on a clock.

Dr. Libet found that brain signals associated with these actions occurred half a second before the subject was conscious of deciding to make them. The order of brain activities seemed to be perception of motion, and then decision, rather than the other way around.

In short, the conscious brain was only playing catch-up to what the unconscious brain was already doing.  The decision to act was an illusion, like a monkey riding a tiger, and the monkey making up a story about what the tiger had already done.

Dr. Libet’s results have been reproduced again and again over the years, along with other experiments that suggest that people can be easily fooled when it comes to assuming ownership of their actions.

“We see two tips of the iceberg, the thought and the action,” Dr. Wegner, Psychologist at Harvard, said, “and we draw a connection.”

But most of the action is going on beneath the surface. Indeed, the conscious mind is often a drag on many activities. Too much thinking can give a golfer the yips.  Drivers perform better on automatic pilot.  Fiction writers report writing in a kind of trance in which they simply take dictation from the voices and characters in their head. “


-EDIT--

Um, gee, maybe not everything begins in this material world?   A radical concept I suppose. . . .

But could it be - that life exists in a co-existing spiritual dimension of our material world?

Question:   What is more valuable than anything I’ve written?

Answer:    A four pound hunk of petrified whale vomit.     Of course.

This, believe it or not, is what the New York Times writes about on Christmas Day. . . Yes.   Petrified whale vomit.   I'm serious.   

Here are condensed & edited excerpts from said referenced article:

 

Gift of petrified whale vomit could be worth its weight in gold.
Corey Kilgannon, New York Times

Monday, December 25, 2006

  (12-25) 04:00 PST Montauk, N.Y. -- In this season of strange presents from relatives, Dorothy Ferreira got a doozy the other day from her 82-year-old sister in Waterloo, Iowa. It was ugly. It weighed 4 pounds. There was no receipt in the box.   Inside she found what looked like a gnarled, funky candle but could actually be a huge hunk of petrified whale vomit worth as much as $18,000.

"I called my sister and asked her, 'What the heck did you send me?' " recalled Ferreira, 67, who has lived here on the eastern tip of Long Island since 1982. "She said: 'I don't know, but I found it on the beach in Montauk 50 years ago and just kept it around. You're the one who lives by the ocean; ask someone out there what it is.' "

Ambergris begins as a waxlike substance secreted in the intestines of some sperm whales, perhaps to protect the whale from the hard, indigestible "beaks" of the giant squid it feeds upon. The whales expel the blobs, dark and foul-smelling, which then float. After much seasoning by waves, wind, salt and sun, they may wash up as solid, fragrant chunks.  Because it varies widely in color, shape and texture, identification falls to those who have handled it before, a group that in a post-whaling age is very small.

"A hundred years ago, you would have no problem finding someone who could identify this," said James Mead, curator of marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution, who said he hears of new ambergris surfacing somewhere in the world maybe once every five or six years.”

After researching ambergris on the Internet, Ferreira's neighbor, Joe Luiksic, advised, "Put it on eBay." But endangered species legislation has made buying or selling the stuff illegal since the 1970s; a couple who found a large lump of ambergris valued at almost $300,000 on an Australian beach in January has had legal problems selling it.

 . . .So, I was just wondering. . . Do any of you know anyone who is paying this kind of money for good whale vomit ? 

 

Shopping would be okay, if it weren’t for the people.  But here is how a friend of mine was affected:

 

“I went shopping at a particular Mall last Saturday to buy gifts.  I had fun, but then I decided my life was not adventurous enough.  I walked around with my packages, came upon an escalator with people getting on.  I cautioned them that the escalator was not functioning correctly and might not be able to support their weight on the way down.  The looks on their faces went from “are you serious” to “very funny” to “walking around this crazy woman.”  About 60% blew me off and started down the escalator, but a couple of them did turn around and look at me to see if I was telling the truth.  It was a lot of fun until some dude came up to me with the “I wish I actually passed the test to be a real cop” attitude and asked me what exactly I thought I was doing.  I just smiled at him and said “I was just making sure the escalator was safe.”  He assured me it was, and I quickly got on it.  That was it for me at the Mall that day, although I did turn around on my way to the car to make sure no one was following me.” 

 

 

Hey, I can make people blush without smearing anything on their cheeks!

 

I’m powerful that way.

 

So why, when I try to do my face in the cosmetics aisle at Kmart, do they always come over and ask me to leave?   I don’t know.   They’re just rude like that.

 

Anyway, my friend and I decided I should go shopping, this time of year, wearing a big rubber inner tube.  I thought it would be great to film that too.  

“Yes, I AM trying to get through, and up this aisle!”  

“What are you staring at?  I’m not the one wearing striped pants that look like you stole them from Garfield’s tomb!”  

“Honey, I was made to shop bouncy!”   

 

I told my friend if any store managers gave us any grief  -I would just tell them it’s for a ‘medical condition’ and cough at them.  She suggested I should just tell them straight-faced that we were there looking for the swimming hole!  The cement pond.  

Like, -this is the Holiday Inn Gift Shop, isn’t it?  

Well, you have a Front Desk, don’t you?   

Well, we called ahead for reservations! 

Where is the consigliere?   I want to speak with the consigliere! 

Do you think my legs look dry?  I might be getting chapped right here. 

 

Ahhh, yes, shopping this time of year can be FUN!!!  I even wrote a poem about it last year.  Here is a link for everyone who is too lazy to page back to it:  http://www.xanga.com/The_Sea_Turtle/395327417/item.html

 

Merry Christmas!

Here's a little rock/pop song I wrote about 30 years ago. 

 

(1)

Far away and distant

Do I hear you when you’re near,

Your thoughts -on the horizon

Seem too far away to hear.

 

But at times come rushing at me

And like a rolling tide,

They fill the space -between the rocks

And occupy my mind.

 

 

(Chorus)

You’re a rolling stone. . .,

Bouncing here and there.

You’re going to smash to pieces,

Like in a real nightmare.

 

I want to help you out. . .,

And though you don’t believe it,

Please let me help you now,

Because you really need it.

 

 

(2)

But in quiet moments all alone

The clock ticking away,

I run my fingers -through my hair

And try to find a way

 

To let you know I love you

And I know a better way,

Before my chance -slips away

And darkness ends your day.

 

-Chorus-

 

(3)

Why won’t you listen to me?

Where do you always go?

Whenever I -get near you

Or do you even know?

 

Why when I reach out to you,

You always run away,

And leave me stranded here alone

-With nothing I can say     

To a rolling stone.

 

-Chorus-

 "Thanks for calling our request line!      WHO would you like to dedicate this song to?"

 In the spirit of Thankfulness, I thought I would shamelessly pump a few of the blogs I subscribe to. No particular order, I just went through recent posts of blogs (that I didn't think were private or restricted) and pulled out sample tidbits, hopefully for your enjoyment. My apologies if anyone is offended, but I thought this would be a fun substitute for showing my whole subscription list on my site. It’s not comprehensive, but maybe it’s pithy?

________________________________________________

“Last night, Robbie came into my bedroom as I was reading the book above. We started talking about school and he relayed the following incidents to me.

Incident "A": A White teacher was speaking in front of the class. A student began to playfully shine a laser pointer in his face and eyes as he was speaking. The teacher became irritated, yelled at the student and ordered her out of the classroom and to the dean's office.

As she left his classroom, she mumbled under her breath "Jus' 'cause I'm Black . . . " http://www.xanga.com/SwordAndSacrifice

_______________________________________________

“A man walks into a bar . . .

No! Wait, that's not where I'm going with this! (Don't you love how I always have to preface serious stuff with totally unrelated attempts at humor?)

Forget it, I'll just jump right in.

Say you find out that someone you know, someone you've in fact known your entire life, someone you thought you were close to, has a presence in one of the online communities you frequent. You find this out by running a random search of people in your email address book one day. . .” http://www.xanga.com/ThatOneBlondeChick

________________________________________________

“I wish being in the presence of celebrity really made me feel like... um, all, celestial, intoxicated, or important.

But the greatest buzz I was getting was from my cocktail...”

______

“So uh, in Hawaii there are these things called "Sugar Cane" spiders. They are as big as your hand with their legs spread out. They have thin bodies though... but big enough to have faces. Ya, you look at them, and you can see them looking back at you... with ALL their eyes.

I'm sitting here, blogging away, when one of them comes across my wall. . .” http://www.xanga.com/theladyofabundance

_________________________________________________

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

Martin Luther King, Jr. American Civil Rights Leader http://www.xanga.com/wlfspirit

________________________________________________

seriously, people.

we should be able to:

lose our inhibitions and have fun without the help of alcohol.

relax without smoking or eating handfuls of chocolate.

wake ourselves up in the morning without coffee.

have our internet crash for a couple of days without feeling terribly inconvenienced and upset.

walk the streets confidently without wearing makeup. . . .

. . . we ought to be strong enough to go without...

appreciative of all things, but addicted to nothing. http://www.xanga.com/StarOfLorien

________________________________________________

“I'm in no need to fret or feel like i have to hurry...feels like the holidays are kind of paradoxical in the sense that it's time to relax, slow down and enjoy the cold and the company...but who the heck is corporate consumerist America kidding? not me...i went and did some shopping...seems like a hustle and a bustle and 2 cactuses close to my butt if you ask me...(weird expression out of nowhere)...but i decided that in the midst of shopping and going into this hurriedness flow of Christmas, i was going to chill...like a penguin in the North Pole...call me Happy Feet…” http://www.xanga.com/janicelittle

________________________________________________

“It has always fascinated me how two people can have the exact same experience (positive or negative), at the same time... and even in the pursuit of a "common interest," yet one sees the outcome as "excellent," while the other sees it as "shitty." Could be something as simple as two people with the same income and the same car getting the same kind of fender-bender fixed... yet one thinks $500 is "a good deal" while the other thinks the same deal is "outrageous."

I think about this stuff, and I am reminded that it's a small miracle that we even get along with each other... and that, of course, is my perception... where someone else would probably insist that getting along is easier than first grade math.” http://www.xanga.com/DenmarkGuy

________________________________________________

“Bryan and I have put up a Christmas tree. I think it's very pretty. I haven't had a tree in several years now. I never felt the need to put one up when I was single and when I wasn't single I was dating complete assholes who felt like it would be money wasted. Anyways, I love this tree. White lights, some Hallmark ornaments, a frog ornament, some blue and silver balls, some red spirally thingamabobs. (I'm good at this, aren't I?) It's pretty and I'm thrilled that Bryan helped decorate it.” http://www.xanga.com/zanyajc

________________________________________________

“Leben ist Loben...

"To live is to praise."

...nothing like a good German phrase to make you think about God!” http://www.xanga.com/BradleyMarshallLenzner

________________________________________________

“Remember as a child that painful lesson about sharing? Who wanted to share when it was more fun to have it all for yourself? It was worse to share with that bratty sibling or schoolmate who went and tattled that you were not sharing. How painful to give some of your loot to the smug-faced brat who dragged your name through the mud? I feel the same way when the government makes me share my hard-earned money with them. They smugly blow my money in stupid places and put their hand out for a larger portion when they've squandered it away. For some reason, it was always more pleasurable to share with somebody who didn't demand it from you and was in a needy place. Perhaps that is why we have more problem paying taxes than we do giving to charity.” http://www.xanga.com/polymergoddess

________________________________________________

“I am silently livid. All Saturday evening. They come out of his room around midnight. I'm not very good with hiding my rage. You can see it on my face. Same thing if I tried to lie. I can't lie. It shows on my face I don't even try to do it. I'm not good at it. Jamie can see I'm sucking something in. He doesn't know what. He keeps asking, I don't say anything. I think that I'll get up in the morning and act like I cleaned Kylers room, and he won't know. . .” http://www.xanga.com/haven36

_________________________________________________

“Bought a bag of green plastic army men for 24 pesos because I thought the smell of the plastic was nostalgic enough. I might be too caught up with the season - I'm not sure, just decided I'd go carefree. For the past years I have been missing the Spirit of Christmas; this time I'm letting go all my worries and constraints or whatever the world says -- just like the way I used to, back when I was a kid...” http://www.xanga.com/desolatebeach

_________________________________________________

“Crows go in flocks and wolves in packs, but the lion and the eagle are solitaires.

Strength is not in bluster and noise. Strength is in quietness.”

http://www.xanga.com/Bumblypick

_________________________________________________

MAGIC AND ILLUSION. Recognizing thought patterns, allows one to cause people to see and assume things that are not real.

HUMOR, is the opposite, or duality of this. Recognizing familiar thought patterns, one can abruptly break from the normal comfortable expected pattern, and inject the unexpected and absurd.   This causes people to laugh, because what they expected to happen didn’t, and what did happen was far away from what they expected.

The Court Jester, and the Magician, actually use the same ability, only in opposite ways.

One might postulate that anyone who is a master of one, could easily master the other.

 

Edited and condensed from a LiveScience article by Charles Q Choi, Nov 20 2006.

Researchers looked into a magic trick called the "vanishing ball," in which a ball apparently disappears in midair.  It's done by faking a throw while keeping the ball secretly palmed in the magician's hand.

Kuhn videotaped himself performing the illusion.  In the fake throw, his gaze and head followed an imaginary ball moving upwards. Roughly two-thirds of volunteers watching the illusion on television had a vivid recollection of the ball leaving the top of the screen. "Often they claimed someone at the top of the screen caught the ball," Kuhn said.

Kuhn and his colleagues measured the eye movements of volunteers during the experiment.  Surprisingly, they found that when people believed they saw the ball vanish, most claimed they spent their entire time looking at the ball, yet most actually glanced at the magician's face prior to following the ball to help them perceive the ball's location.

"Even though people claimed they were looking at the ball, what you find is that they spend a lot of time looking at the face.  While their eye movements weren't fooled by where the ball was, their perception was. It reveals how important social cues are in influencing perception," Kuhn said.

"As we are looking at the world, we have this impression that what we see is the real world.  What this tells us is the way we see the world is more strongly dominated by how we perceive it to be,  rather than what it actually is," Kuhn added.

"Even though the ball never left the hand, the reason people saw it leave is because they expected the ball to leave the hand.  It's the beliefs about what should happen that override the actual visual input."

What? You didn't see me actually make a comment, did you?.  No.  You have a comment?