My lovely (and favorite) little sister has 'tagged me. This means that I have to attempt to be humorous while answering some inane questions...

1) Do you use an alarm clock to wake up in the morning?
Yes- and interestingly enough, up until about a week ago things were different. Until Monday I typically had no need to wake up at a certain time unless I wanted to look at my stocks (which was, indeed, usually the case). But, I would frequently wake up around 5 a.m. and stay up for a couple of hours to think about trades, check email, and generally just not get back to sleep due to frequent early morning insomnia. So, if and when I went back to sleep, I got up whenever. Many of the times I didn’t get back to sleep were those unfortunate days that news came out about one of my stocks or options and I got all excited or depressed, needed to take some sort of action, and then anxiously awaited what would happen at open.
I now have a new job which requires me to be there at 8am (and I can watch my stocks from there as it's part of my job).

2) What time do you set it for?
6:48

3) Do you hit the snooze button? If so how many times?
I would never hit the snooze button. It is one of the great all time pet peeves of mine. I have lived with over 10 people in my life (including family and roommates from college), and regularly slept in the same room with well over 15. And, almost every one of them has used the damn snooze button, or in some other way has awakened me before I believed it was time to wake up. Now, for most people this may not be of undue alarm (pardon the pun), however, as mentioned above, I have an extremely difficult time getting back to sleep. So, once someone else’s time to get that extra 10 to 50 minutes of sleep has come, I usually only have one chance to get back to sleep regardless of whether or not the other person can fall back to sleep 5 times.

4) Have you ever abused an alarm clock?
I have never abused an alarm clock. However, I may have abused someone that has continued to use the snooze when informed of the function’s proclivity to piss me off.

5) It’s “time” to spread some “It’s Blogcess” linky love.
Now comes the time that I'm supposed to "tag" some other people, but since I don’t know anyone else besides the folks from my sister’s website, I’m going to have to hunt around or send you back to my sister. Let me perform some inquiry and I’ll try to find a blog.

So, I’m driving in my car. Turned on the Radio. I didn’t pull anyone closer tho’ since no one was around. Anyway, I heard this pompous ass talking about how this war by the liberals was making it difficult to get his friend’s books sold.

The war: against Christianity

The books: books of hate against reason I’m sure

The reason for weak sales: ‘They can’t promote their books on anything but Christian radio stations’

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but the liberal war must not be going well since the intended target still has a bunch of radio stations and is still number one on the charts in the US. I guess anything that doesn’t have its own radio stations and is not the lead in its arena, may have already lost the war, huh?

The pompous ass?

I’ll wait to see if anyone tries to answer that.

Next post... our brains on TV

I wanted to add a headline for this post but couldn’t figure out how to do it in short time. The headline was to be… Mail-order porn: a lesson for everyone?

I was reading the paper today and came across a story about a man named Phil Harvey who, with a master’s degree in family planning administration, opened up a simple mail-order catalog which later became the large, successful company that I’m sure you’re all familiar with, Adam & Eve.

With his earnings, he and his partner have started a few non-profits that offer ‘social marketing’ of condoms, birth control pills, and other contraceptives. As a way of controlling population and the spread of disease, the companies sell these items at large discounts all over the world so everyone can afford them. Sounds to me like a good thing to do with your profits from the wealthy perverts, eh? Why not just give the goods away? According to Harvey, people who buy products are more likely to use them than if they are freely dispensed.

So, there you have it. Become a millionaire by selling sex toys and save lives by selling things the Bush administration doesn’t want people to give away or even talk about. It’s estimated that Harvey’s non-profits have saved over 100,000 lives, mostly in third world countries.

Tune in next time for information about my new marketing company, Preservatif pour les Pauvres SA.

Uhhm, I’m the one that estimated the 100,000 lives saved.

Well, the next couple of posts will be off my intended topic for this blog.

I just emailed my mother and told her that the stock market looked bad for a while to come due to continued inflationary pressures and rising fears of continuing interest rate hikes from the Fed. Two seconds later the Fed came out with their Beige Book and said the same things about inflation as I did, but put a positive spin on it.

The market has completely turned around and is much higher now (as I write, it looks like it may be one of the biggest single day turnarounds in the market that I have seen). I'm almost convinced at this point that when I finally think the market is stuck or headed down, that I should put all my money in the market. The way to invest may be exactly the way observers of the market have pointed out.....that at the height of market pessimism is the best opportunity to buy. However, it might be easier to just ask my opinion. When I'm pessimistic on the market, that's the best time to buy!

However, it seems as if I'm getting optimistic, now. Everyone, BEWARE!

I also noticed as I read the comments to my last post and as I wrote this one, that maybe I should try to put a positive spin on my theme instead of being completely negative about this stupid ID concept. I guess I’ll need to focus (or Fukuh as my nephew would say) on that just a little bit more…....boy, it’s gonna be tough.

Heard a commercial today about marijuana. I caught it only briefly, but the gist of it was that ‘you shouldn't be a hypocrite, that you should teach your kids that marijuana is bad.'

It appears to me that anything the government or society has deemed as 'bad' needs to be demonized or made inherently ‘bad’ through the use of propaganda. Now this commercial didn't demonize it thoroughly, but it is propaganda nonetheless.

Marijuana is probably not inherently bad. To my knowledge, most studies have shown that it does not impair long-term memory in adults and many other studies have been inconclusive in ‘adolescent’ rats. The medicinal properties have some fundamental scientific basis that has yet to be completely explained, but, anecdotal evidence abounds. Melissa Etheridge is the most recent person to go vocal about how it helped her during chemotherapy. She also stated that every doctor she spoke to advised her that it was the best drug to handle chemotherapy’s side effects.

Having said this, it probably is ‘bad’ for children since THC seems to have an effect on the formation of short-term to long-term memory. Well, I guess ‘bad’ would only apply if you didn’t want something interfering with your children’s ability to form long-term memories. I’m guessing that applies to most parents.

Why is it that many people feel the need to find certain things inherently evil without taking a thorough look at what they’re condemning? Is the use of propaganda appropriate? It seems as if propaganda is used by adults with their own children at times, but is it really necessary with adults?

Is it in our nature to find ‘evil’ in the world so we can shirk our responsibility and blame something or someone else?

Maybe this is the reason that religion finds such a stronghold in society. If we can find activities and various nouns to demonize, our view of ourselves as good and moral remains intact. It is only the evil things that corrupt our moral selves.

These questions are not meant to be rhetorical. I would really like to hear some opinions.

I’ll start posting more frequently. I promise. I will now post at least every other day.

In the past month the Bush administration has been successful in delaying a drug known to be safe and effective according to the FDA, and has succeeded in empowering people of faith to file a lawsuit at their school against the longest lasting theory on the planet. That theory is now considered scientific fact by mainstream scientists; and the drug was found to be safe by the FDA's own scientists.
How does George do this? How can someone that often times displays his inability to put words together to make a coherent sentence accomplish such a wonderful and horrendous feat? I mean he goes up against real nobel laureate scientists (see link on politiks) and still wins?
He talks about how gynecologists can go on 'to practice their love with women', and society listens to him more than they listen to well-educated people that have spent their livelihoods studying one particular area of science!?

Someone explain this to me, please!

I'll give some possibilities:

a) most people are stupid

b) most people want to believe something as long as it can't be proven -- now this may seem to be a stupid statement since a belief, by definition is something that can't be proven or disproven. However, evolution has been accepted as fact by the scientific community and therefore can't be disbelieved. Microevolution has, indeed been proven.

c) it is in our nature to believe in mysterious forces

d) the Spaghetti Monster has control of our brains (see link)

Ok, I posted a couple of other links simpatico to the theme I've established here. Hmmm, can I really have a theme when I've only posted twice and have 6 or 7 sentences total? It's my Creation, isn't it!

Yeah, you might have guessed that word of the day a few days back was 'simpatico'.

And, are you getting the great puns?

I don't have much to say right now other than check the link at the right about falling intelligently. It's a great piece and very well written.