Vote SIGAL for President 2016

SIGAL 2016 – A NEW CANDIDATE FOR A NEW DAY

I have been watching the Republicans for some months now, and I've learned a lot from them. I am now ready to announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America.

I will be running as a Republican. Some of you might be asking what qualifications I have to be President, and why am I running on the Republican ticket. Clearly you are not familiar with my record, so let me fill you in.

I spent 16 years as the chairman of the Republican National Committee, during which time I took that organization from a $3 million deficit, to a $14 billion surplus. Using those funds, I personally increased Republican voter registration to unprecedented levels.

I have outstanding executive experience from my time as governors of both Massachusetts and Alabama. My fiscal policies in Massachusetts allowed me to lower taxes in that state to the lowest in the nation, while I tripled job growth in Alabama.

As for foreign policy experience, I was the chief negotiator for the Allies at Versailles. Later, as Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State, I was instrumental in bringing about his famous 1972 visit to China and meeting with Mao Zedong. I have a proven track record that shows that I know how to manage foreign leaders. In fact, just last year Vladimir Putin tried to kiss me in a bathroom at de Gaulle airport, but I was able to say to him, "No, Vlad. Not here. Not now."

Don’t bother to fact check any of this, I promise you that it is all 100% true. Besides, only a terrorist would question the veracity of a Republican.

[Oh, and I happen to know that Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina are having an affair.]

Thank you. I look forward to your support.

SIGAL 2016 – BECAUSE 14 CANDIDATES AREN’T ENOUGH

SIGAL 2016 - BECAUSE STRENGTH MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU'RE SORRY

My fellow Americans, my candidacy is rooted in a platform of freedom and liberty. Nothing is more important to Americans than the freedom to have liberty when they are free. I will safeguard your liberty and make sure that freedom freely rings across this great land - a land grounded in the free expression of that liberty. I will liberally use the word "freedom", and freely speak out for freedom and liberty in this land of the free. I will use the freedom that I feel when liberty courses through my veins to inspire free liberty and freedom for all.

Thank you for your support. Stay free.

SIGAL 2016 - WILLING TO SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR

SIGAL 2016 – A WORLD APART

As your President, first thing, day one, I will make it illegal to give a child a name that is hard to pronounce. I will also direct the office of homeland security to stop letting anyone into the country whose names involve funny letters like that "O" with a slash through it. What is that anyway? My name is made up of good old USA American letters. That "O" with a slash through it, I just don’t know about that. No one whose name contains an "O" with a slash through it, or unnecessary dots on top, will be let into the country until our representatives are able to investigate what that is all about.

SIGAL 2016 – OUR ALPHABET IS OUR FIRST LINE OF DEFENCE

SIGAL 2016 - KNOW YOUR BORDERS AND BORDER YOUR KNOWLEGE

As your President I will secure our borders. I will set up a 3000-mile-long row of piñatas across our southern border, since it is well known that no Mexican can pass a piñata without having a party.

SIGAL 2016 – BECAUSE LAUGHING IS BETTER THAN CRYING

SIGAL 2016 – IF YOU VOTE FOR SOMEONE ELSE, THE TERRORISTS WILL HAVE WON

Under a Sigal presidency, you can rest assured that I will punch terrorists right in the nose!

SIGAL 2016 - FAKE IT 'TILL YOU MAKE IT

SIGAL 2016 – BOLDLY THINKING WHAT NO ONE HAS THOUGHT BEFORE

When you make me your President, I will bring American jobs back to the US from China using a bold, three-part plan:

1. I will move all the people from China to the US.
2. I will give them jobs.
3. I will mandate that lists of 3 things may include only 2 things.

I will do this on my first day of as your President.

Vote Sigal!

SIGAL 2016 - CRAZY RHETORIC FOR A NEW AMERICA ®

SIGAL 2016 - KNOWING WHAT YOU WANT IS HALF THE BATTLE

Nothing is more important to Americans than feeling that they are safe. No other President will give you the sense of security that I will. I pledge to you that first thing, day one, I will work tirelessly to improve the perception of security that all Americans hold so dear.

SIGAL 2016 - MAKING YOU FEEL SAFE BY ENHANCING YOUR SENSE OF SECURITY

SIGAL 2016 – GREETING SAFETY FOR OUR CITIZENS

As your President, I promise that first thing, day one, Walmart greeters will no longer be allowed to use the internet.

SIGAL 2016 – I KNOW A THREAT WHEN I SEE ONE

SIGAL 2016 - PUTTING THE PEE BACK IN PANDERING

I am deeply angered by my opponents’ baseless accusations that I am an atheist. According to Wikipedia, Christianity is the #1 most common religion in America, with Protestantism being the #1 form of Christianity. Evangelical Protestantism is the #1 sect of Protestantism, making up more than one quarter of the citizens of this great nation - the greatest nation that God has ever put on earth.

In keeping with my pledge to uphold American values and the American way of life, I say to you today that I have never been more proud to be an Evangelical Protestant.

SIGAL 2016 - IF ITS GOOD ENOUGH FOR PINOCCHIO, ITS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME

SIGAL 2016 - EVERYWHERE YOU WANT TO BE

Andrew Sigal is the only candidate that has been endorsed by both Rush Limbaugh and Rachel Maddow.

SIGAL 2016 – BRINGING AMERICA TOGETHER BY SPLITTING IT APART

SIGAL 2016 - STANDING UP FOR NOTHING BY STANDING UP FOR EVERYTHING

I am the only candidate who has the guts to tell our enemies, and our friends, across the globe, that we don't like them. Other candidates are willing use strong language to condemn those that would attack this country. But none among them will come out and say to our allies, "we hate you too." It is easy to stand up to your foes and threaten retaliation for their actions. It takes a really strong leader to go up against our supporters and let them know that they are on thin ice too.

SIGAL 2016 - STANDING UP FOR EVERYTHING BY STANDING UP FOR NOTHING

SIGAL 2016 - BAKING COOKIES FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

I want to be known as the Education President. I won’t do anything to improve education in this country, I just want to be known as the Education President.

SIGAL 2016 - AN APPLE A DAY IS A HELL OF A LOT OF APPLES

SIGAL 2016 - TALKING TOUGH WHILE TALKING

The stature of this nation on the world stage has fallen embarrassingly low. World leaders no longer want to come here to meet with our President. Even religious leaders such as the Pope refuse to visit America.

As President I will be committed to reversing this deplorable situation. To show the world that I mean business, I will direct the office of Homeland Security to deny entrance into the country by any foreign leader who refuses to come here.

SIGAL 2016 - CIRCULAR LOGIC IS BETTER THAN NO LOGIC AT ALL

SIGAL 2016 - WHERE FACT AND FICTION ARE ONE

I want you all to know that I know you are in pain, and I feel your pain. So, you rub my back and I'll rub yours - if you catch my drift.

SIGAL 2016 - WISHFUL THINKING FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM

SIGAL 2016 - THINKING THE NEWEST THOUGHTS

All of the candidates from both parties are old. I mean really, really, old. None of them understand the internet and technology the way I do.

As an engineer at Bolt, Baranek and Newman, I invented the internet, the mouse, and the iPhone. I am the only candidate who knows how to send an Evite to ISIS. Ask yourself, would you trust Jeb Bush to get the invite list right? Would Bernie Sanders know how to send out a reminder message? Does Ben Carson know what a computer is?

I don’t want a President that might be tricked into giving the nuclear launch codes to a Nigerian prince. Do you?

SIGAL 2016 - DELUSIONS ARE JUST CREATIVE THINKING THAT YOU DONT UNDERSTAND

SIGAL 2016 - ALL CAPITALS ARE FOR SLOGANS

On my web site you will find an eleven-point plan for developing a 14-point plan for reducing the deficit. All of the other candidates will tell you that they have a plan for reducing the deficit, but, when pressed for details, they always evade the question. This is because in reality they don't have a comprehensive plan for developing a plan for reducing the deficit.

With my detailed eleven point plan I am ready to hit the ground running, day one, to develop a plan for reducing the deficit.

SIGAL 2016 - A SLOGAN IS A SOUNDBITE WITH EMPHASIS

SIGAL 2016 – A TOUGH LEADER FOR TOUGH TIMES

Never before in our nation’s history have we faced more certain destruction. This country deserves a strong leader to lead it through these dangerous times. I am that leader.

My fellow Americans, as President, I will do whatever it takes to keep our country safe. Nothing is more important than the safety of this, the greatest nation on earth. Not even the first amendment is more important than our safety. Not the third, forth, or fifth amendments. Not even the sixth through 27th amendments to our Constitution are as important as our safety. After all, if we don’t feel safe, how can we enjoy those liberties that we each take for granted every single day.

As your leader I will act strongly, swiftly, and decisively to protect America and its Americans. If those in Congress won’t act with me, I will appoint Congress-people that will. It has never been more important for the Congress to line up behind their Republican leader.

Everyone knows that there is nothing more patriotic than supporting your democratically elected Republican President. As my mother told me, if anyone in Congress or the media doesn’t have something nice to say about their Republican President, then they shouldn’t say anything at all.

Now is the time for all citizens, young and old, tall and short, Christian and Catholic, white and tan, boy and man, to pull together as one. With Congress and the Judiciary solidly supporting a true leader - one that knows that leadership means leading - we will restore the safety and security of our country once more. I am that true leader.

SIGAL 2016 – LEADING THROUGH LEADERSHIP

SIGAL 2016 - COOL IDEAS FROM A HOT HEAD

I am the only candidate that really understands the threat that global warming poses to America and our American way of life. As your President, I will face this threat head on. I will direct the Army Corps of Engineers to build a wall across our southern border to stop the hot air from Mexico entering our country. I will also build a wall of fans along our northern border to keep our country cool.

I will do this first thing, day one.

As for the impact of global climate change on other countries? Let 'em buy their own damned fans.

SIGAL 2016 - BREAKING WIND FOR AMERICA

SIGAL 2016 – A NEW RELATIONSHIP WITH THE TRUTH

The other candidates for President have shown time and again that they cannot be trusted. They will lie for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Tonight I want to assure you that I will always tell you the truth - except when you don’t want to hear it, or when it would be bad for you, or when it might hurt my chances of being elected.

A Sigal White House will have a policy of 100% transparency about every issue where we feel that you need 100% transparency. With Andrew Sigal as your President, you need never worry about discovering something terrible that you didn’t want to know.

This is my pledge to you.

SIGAL 2016 – WHEN THE TRUTH JUST ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH

Vote SIGAL in 2016

Thank you for your support!

#SIGAL2016

SIGAL 2016 – TINFOIL HATS FOR EVERYONE

Do You Know That There Are 52 States in the USA?

I recently stumbled across a blog post discussing the idea that a lot of people think that there are 52 states in the United States of America. Apparently, the purpose of the blog, “The Mandela Effect”, is to consider why it is that different people remember the same event or historical fact differently. The blog’s author has a theory that people may have different memories because they slide back and forth between alternate realities (or something like that.) I think that the author is serious about this idea - but to be honest, I’m not entirely sure.

In the post in question, she wonders if people might think the US has 52 states because they mistakenly believe that Puerto Rico and Washington D. C. are states. She asks “is this simple confusion or a glimpse into alternate geography in another timestream?” [sic] To stimulate the conversation, she provides illuminating anecdotes from a number of readers.

I would have just left this alone, but, after a brief internet search I found that the question of 50 vs. 52 states has come up repeatedly. You can find it on Ask.com, Yahoo Answers, and even a site entitled “Debunking the Mandala Effect”. Even though I am not a cartographer, sociologist, or psychologist, I couldn’t resist throwing my ring into the hat.

As on The Mandala Effect blog, in the attempts to answer the question, “why do people think that there are 52 states”, one of the most common themes is that some people believe that Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. are states. [FYI – they aren't. At least not yet... in this time-stream. ] I find it highly unlikely that misunderstandings about Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia is the right answer. Here’s why: the intersection between the set of people that believe there are 52 states, those that know that Puerto Rico is related to the USA in some way, and those that know that Washington D. C. isn’t just a city, is vanishingly small. Here is a Venn Diagram to illustrate:

The intersection isn't zero, but it's pretty close.

Granted that my only qualification for answering this question is that I possess a functioning frontal lobe, I believe that this has more to do with two other factors. The first is visual. Here is a fairly ordinary map of the USA – the kind that people run across all the time:

If you have heard that there are 50 states, but you don’t really know much about the geography of the US, you see this big blob cut up into pieces. It is unlikely that you are going to count them. It is easy to assume that there are 50. Then there are two other sets of blobs. I doubt that many viewers think about this consciously, but, somewhere in the back of the mind, over time, it is easy to turn a blob assumed to be made of 50 pieces, plus two other blobs, into 52 states.

The second factor is the way peoples' memories work. Our brains are bombarded with vast amounts of information, some important and some not. It is normal for humans to remember approximations, unless, for some reason, they really need to know a fact with precision. If you don’t have a compelling reason to know how many states make up the United States of America, your brain is likely to store it as a fuzzy "50-ish". This would be true for a great many non-Americans, and a terrifying number of American citizens as well.

So why 52, and not 51, or 53, or 766? First and foremost, there are 52 weeks in a year. We learn this early in life, around the time that we learn all about calendars. Furthermore, in "western” nations we have the number “52” trained into us, because there are 52 playing cards in a standard deck. This exact number is stored because you learned it while playing cards - especially if your father ever taught you “52 pickup.” (Aside: why do I say "your father" and not "a parent"? Because I don't think many mothers are that cruel, and besides, they know that they might be the one that has to "pick up.")

If someone asks you how many states there are, you may recall that it is about 50, but, of course, you want to give a precise number. Your brain’s memory systems start looking for the number. Along the way they bump into the big, bold, shiny number "52". You don’t want to appear “slow”, so as soon as you come up with a number that seems right, you use it. Fifty-two is about 50-ish, so that is the answer you give. If questioned about your answer, self-justification circuits kick in which solidify it in your mind. Also, you just heard someone say that there are 52 states. Even though that someone is you, brains sometimes don’t realize that, and furthermore, as far as your brain is concerned, you are an authoritative source. If you said something, you can believe it.

Voila. A pair of really solid  reasons why a person that doesn’t need to know how many states make up the USA could easily think there are 52, and feel quite convinced that they are correct. No need to slip into a different timestream, the answer is right here.

A Brief Primer on the Eight Nights of Hanukkah

I have received many inquiries asking what the heck the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah is all about. More specifically, people want to know what the significance is of each night. I am happy to provide this brief primer to help everyone understand this important holiday.

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The First Night:

This is the first night that we remember a time when a bunch of idiots in the desert (my cultural ancestors) failed to correctly calculate the burning time of a vial of oil. However, celebrating the first night of Hanukkah is really pretty stupid. After all, the oil was supposed to last one day. At this point it had, in fact, lasted one day. So what else is new? I recommend skipping the first night.

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The Second Night:

Happy second night of Hanukkah. The second night of Hanukkah is important because it represents the first night on which the Jewish people realized that they had underestimated how long oil burns. As noted, for the entire first day, they were burning a vial of oil that they expected would last for one day. No big whoop. But, by the second night they had to be saying to themselves, "Hey, look at that! The oil is still going. Guess we were wrong."

It was this famous miscalculation that caused the Jewish people to conclude that maybe they should learn to be accountants.

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The Third Night:

Shalom! It's the 3rd night of Hannukah, or is it Chanukah, or Hanukkah? Whatever. As long as you've got some h's, some n's, some k's, and some phlegm, you're good.

By this point there were a whole bunch of Maccabees scratching their noggins under their yarmulkes, wondering who measured the oil and what they were smoking at the time. Everyone knows that smoking and oil don't mix, but hey, they were under attack. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

This is the night when modern Jews make a special blessing that Hanukkah happens at about the same time as Christmas, which is very convenient for piggybacking on Christmas sales.

For those of you that don't know, "Christmas" is the holiday in which Christians celebrate the birth of yet another Jew. No one knows how much that particular Jew understood about volumetric measure and the combustion rates of lipids, but we do know that his parents appear to have had a rather shaky understanding of the relationship between sex and conception.

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The Fourth Night:

It's the 4th night of Hanukkah! Woo hoo! Half way, baby!

You might be wondering why we light the candles from right to left. Well, go ahead and wonder. I could tell you, but then I’d have to convert you.

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Hanukkah Episode V - The Maccabees Strike Back:

By now it was becoming clear that there was a major fuck-up. The oil had lasted five days. All along the big machers were going on and on about the calamity of running out of oil. No doubt the people must have been pretty peeved that they were warned about this huge, fat emergency, but it really wasn’t a problem at all. Clearly this is when someone penned the first version of the parable of the “boy who cried wolf.”

[BIG MACHER, n - Hybrid English-Yiddish term for big shot. A man who is (or thinks he is) really important. Usually refers to someone who is showing off in some way.]

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The <yawn> 6th Night <yawn>:

If you’re not Jewish, by now you should be just about as sick of this whole thing as we are.

If you are Jewish, yes, we have to keep on doing this, and no, gifts for the final nights aren’t going to be crappy, and we don’t appreciate that kind of language in this house. It’s not easy coming up with eight nights of gifts for each of you. Your mother worked very hard finding presents that will be fun, educational, age appropriate, non-violent, locally made, hypoallergenic, and avoid gender and racial stereotypes. I think you owe your mother an apology, or you can just give back the gifts right this minute!

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The 7th Night:

I’m out of ideas, and making this post format correctly is getting on my nerves. Here’s a quarter and some mediocre chocolate wrapped in gold paper that’s supposed to look like coins.

Don’t spend it all in one place.

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The 8th Night:

Amongst much bickering over who was going to lose their job from this massive screw-up, someone came up with the brilliant idea of declaring it a miracle. The true miracle was the whole lot of them weren’t fired.

Hanukkah is celebrated for 8 nights because that's how long it took to come up with an explanation that covered their collective asses.

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I hope this clears things up and puts the eight nights of Chanukah/Hannukah/Hanukkah in an appropriate historical perspective. Regardless of your faith or anti-faith, may you all have an entertaining holiday season.

A-men.



[PS: Thank you to the many web sites from which I stole the images used in this post.]

Technology advances

Last night while watching VSauce, I was made aware of the rate of technological advancement in a way that I had never thought about before (of course, I did more research and added to the original germ of the idea.) I knew all these facts, but hadn't put them all together.

For all of the history of human kind, and probably well before historical times, we have imagined flight. But, for countless thousands of years no one ever got more than a few feet into the air (unless they jumped off a cliff.)

That was true until the first successful balloon flight in 1783. It then took another 120 years for the Wright Brothers to create a viable airplane (1903.) But here's the shocker - from the time of the Wright Brothers' first flight until Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon in 1969 was just 66 years.

In my mind the first flight at Kitty Hawk was ages ago. But, It wasn't really that long. According to Wikipedia, there are 43 people alive today that were born before Orville Wright took flight in a powered airplane on December 17, 1903. Meanwhile, I was alive when Armstrong made a "giant leap for mankind." On August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 became the first man made object to leave the solar system - 43 years after we got to the moon. If you are reading this anywhere near the time that I wrote it, you were probably alive when that happened.

Thousands of years of dreaming -> 120 years from balloon to airplane -> 66 years from airplane to moon walk -> 43 years from moon walk to leaving the solar system.

Wow.

The Ten Commandments?

I have been giving some thought to the Ten Commandments and I've gotta say, I have a problem with them. It’s fairly common for people to say that regardless of which religion you believe in, or even if you are an atheist, we can all pretty much agree on the moral validity of the Ten Commandments. But the Ten Commandments probably aren't what you think they are, and their morality is questionable. Furthermore, according to a Reuter’s article, a survey done in 2007 showed that more Americans can name the ingredients in a Big Mac than can list the Ten Commandments. That was true of me until just days ago. So, when people say they agree with the Ten Commandments, it’s not clear what they think they are supporting.

Let’s look at the Ten Commandments, shall we? First of all, for the vast majority of people, what they think of as the Ten Commandments, aren’t actually the Ten Commandments. According to Exodus – which is hardly an historically accurate document – God wrote a set of rules on two tablets, but Moses smashed them before anyone else ever saw them. Later, God wrote a completely different set of Ten Commandments on two new tablets. The second set of commandments were given to the people, so they are the Ten Commandments. But they're not what you think. Those commandments relate almost entirely to the proper worship of God, containing almost no moral or ethical content. If one believes Exodus (and why would one?) the second set of commandments are the true Ten Commandments. The first set were smashed and thus were kind of an “oh by the way” first draft.

Nonetheless, it is the first set of “Ten Commandments”, described in Exodus but never actually handed down to the Israelites, that the vast majority of people refer to as “The Ten Commandments”. It is that set that people talk about, or hang on a wall, or engrave onto a set of tablets to place on the grounds of an Alabama courthouse. But even within that set, there is disagreement. Wikipedia provides a table showing the somewhat different sets of Ten Commandments held by different religious groups.

But I’m not interested in errors of understanding about which set of commandments are “The” Commandments, or even about the exact language of each commandment in the set. The important questions relate to what people think of as "The Ten Commandments" - considered to be the underpinnings of Western morality.

To talk about them in any sensible way, I have to choose one version. Since they originally appear in the Old Testament, I am going with the basic, Jewish, first-edition Ten Commandments:

1) I am the Lord thy god, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
2) Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
3) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
4) Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
5) Honor thy father and thy mother.
6) Thou shalt not murder.
7) Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8) Thou shalt not steal.
9) Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
10) Thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy neighbor.

The First Commandment isn't even a commandment. It's just a salutation. I don't understand why it is listed as a commandment. It really belongs in a preamble or a signature line. Perhaps God put it there so the Israelites wouldn't think Moses simply made up the other nine on his own.

Thinking about the Ten Commandments as an atheist, the next two are null and void. If there is no God, then they are meaningless. The Fourth Commandment fits into the same category. If there is no God, then the seventh day of the week is just the seventh day of the week; it is not “the Sabbath” and “keeping it holy” is pointless. Even if you believe in a God, then these are rules about how to worship one particular god - they are not ethical statements about how to live a moral life. They are not a guide for how to behave in society.

So, four down and six to go.

I find the Fifth Commandment to be terrible. “Honor thy father and thy mother.” Okay, sure. Of course I will honor them if they are good people, and were good parents, and did their best to raise me. But what if they were drunk and abusive? What if they molested me? What if they abandoned me, beat me, or sold me into slavery? What if they sent me to work in the coal mines at the age of 7? Am I commanded to honor them? That’s absurd.

On the other hand, if my parents were wonderful people and worked hard to raise me kindly and well, then of course I will honor them for their excellence. Doesn’t it diminish my honoring them by telling them that I was commanded to do so?

I cannot accept the Fifth Commandment, even though it sounds good at first. Honor thy father if he deserves it. Honor thy mother if she deserves it. Honor your grandparents, aunts, uncles, nannies, neighbors, mentors and teachers – if they deserve it. If they don’t, then defend yourself against them; tell them not to hurt you; tell the authorities that they are molesting you; and so on. Other than in establishing a patriarchal society, a commandment to honor your parents is worse than useless.

We’re half way through the list and there is not one that I can accept.

Number six commands that “Thou shalt not murder.” Sounds great. But did you really have to tell me that? Furthermore, if we were to believe the Bible, in Exodus 32, no sooner does Moses receive the Ten Commandments than he orders the Levites to slay the Israelites who worshiped before the Golden Calf. So, the Sixth Commandment should really read, “Thou shalt not murder unless your leader tells you to.” The juxtaposition between receiving the law from the Lord, and the murder described in the Old Testament, utterly calls into question the Sixth Commandment; arguably the one which should be most universally accepted.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery”, says Commandment number seven. Why is that a commandment? Isn’t that between you and your spouse? Wouldn’t it be better to say, “You are commanded to treat your spouse well; you are commanded to treat your spouse the way you want them to treat you.” We are told, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, but feel free to beat your wife, take your spouse for granted, henpecked them, criticize them, browbeat them, or subject them to any form of physical or mental torture. Just don’t have sex with anyone other than them. Oh, and by the way, you’re not commanded to make sure they enjoy it. I’m going to give the Seventh Commandment a qualified OK, because generally speaking committing adultery probably wont make your partner happy, but as is, I hardly think it is worth the stone its written on.

The Eighth Commandment says, “Thou shalt not steal”. Good. I’m good with that… kinda. Obviously I could come up with a dozen examples of when you should steal: you should steal if you’re starving to death, or if you know that someone is about to commit murder and you steal their weapon, or if someone has stolen something and you "steal" it back, etc. But that’s not the point. The point is that the Ten Commandments are generally considered to be the bedrock of Western civilization’s morality, but the eighth Commandment is just about possessions. It’s about private property. Shouldn’t the moral basis of our society be reserved for ethical statements about how to live your life and how to treat each other, rather than about material goods? This commandment is fine; it just doesn’t deserve a spot in the top ten.

Wow, only two to go and I haven’t found a single commandment that I can really advocate for.

Commandment number nine: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” All right! Finally! A real statement about how to behave in a civilized society. Thank you. The Ninth Commandment works. Whew.

The last commandment reads, “Thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy neighbor.” Depending upon your source, it might specify your neighbor’s house, wife, servants, animals, etc. Once again, other than your neighbor’s wife, this is really about material goods. [For the versions that specifically mention “your neighbor’s wife”, the implication that she is a possession presents a whole extra set of problems.] I find this Commandment to be much worse than the materialist Eighth Commandment, because this Commandment is about coveting. To “covet”, is to yearn to possess something, to desire wrongfully, or simply to wish for eagerly. But yearning, desiring, or wishing are thoughts, not actions. So the Tenth Commandment is commanding you not to think something, regardless of whether or not you’re going to act upon that thought. This is the work of the thought police. I can’t accept the Tenth Commandment at all.

[Note: if your set of Commandments includes the "your neighbor's wife" clause, it has to make you wonder if the 10th Commandment doesn't apply to (heterosexual) women - there is no commandment that thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's husband. In fact, do any of the commandments apply to women? Of course I am being ridiculous. Though it's a bit late to be pointing out that the Bible is utterly patriarchal and misogynistic, it is clear that nothing in the bible applies to women, slaves (!), animals, children (even male children), unbelievers, or members of other tribes. As far as the authors of the bible were concerned, they were all sub-human.]

In summary, of the Ten Commandments, one isnt a commandment at all; three are meaningless (or if you are a theist, they are meaningful but not useful as moral precepts); two are terrible; two are OK, but morally ambiguous; one would be good if it weren’t nullified by the context of the Old Testament; and one, just one, as written in the Bible, truly deserves to be a grounding principle of our culture.

Meanwhile, in reading the Old Testament and learning the circumstances of Moses supposedly receiving the Ten Commandments from God, I have to conclude that Moses was a sanctimonious moron with serious short-term memory problems. If we are to believe Exodus 32, he went up Mount Sinai and there received the stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments. He was up there for a long time - God knows what he was doing all that while. Because he was gone so long, the Israelites lost faith in him and created the Golden Calf. In Exodus 32.9-10 we are told that God looked down from Mount Sinai [Huh? Isn’t God everywhere? Why does he need to “look” in any particular direction?] and saw that the people were praying to the Golden Calf. He was furious, declaring that he would destroy the people for what they had done. But in Exodus 32.11-13, Moses talks God out of it. [Huh? God is infallible and omniscient, but you can talk him into changing his mind?]

Moses then descended the mountain and saw the people praying to the Golden Calf. He became enraged. He, “hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain.”(Exodus 32.19) Are you kidding me? God told Moses that the people were praying to a false idol. But Moses forgot while hiking down the hill? I know Moses was old, and likely forgetful, but that sounds like something he might have kept in mind. We are told that he was so peevish that he smashed the gift that The Lord created with His own hand. Really? I don’t care if they were fornicating with the Golden Calf. Smashing God’s tablets is more than a temper tantrum. Then, having just talked God out of killing the Israelites, Moses calls the faithful to him saying, “thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: each of you put sword on thigh, go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay brother, neighbor, and kin” (Exodus 32.27). Uh, Really? So Moses talks God out of his fury, then goes down the mountain and is so furious himself that he destroys the tablets containing the Ten Commandments, and orders the faithful to kill “some 3000 of the people” - which, we note, is a violation of the Sixth Commandment that he just received. Did Moses have a stroke while hiking down Mount Saini? If so, Exodus doesn’t mention it. The Lord then makes what is supposed to be a copy of the first tablets, but turns out to be a completely different set of Ten Commandments. Maybe God also suffers from memory loss? Moses successfully gives the new-and-improved Commandments to the remaining people.

So that story is pretty psychopathic, but here’s the worst thing about it: The Commandment that the Israelites had supposedly disobeyed, and for which they were put to death, hadn’t yet been given to them at the time of their transgression. The first set of Ten Commandments says, “thou shalt have no other gods before me,” but when the Israelites made the Golden Calf, and prayed to it as a God, they had not yet been told that they must not do so. Therefore, wiping them out, as God had wanted to do, or killing 3000 of their number as Moses did, is utterly unreasonable. We don’t retroactively punish people for breaking newly minted laws. Why should God, or his servant, Moses?

OK. So, the Ten Commandments that we speak of aren’t theTen Commandments, and no one remembers what they are, and only one of them is worth the stone its written on, and the circumstances described in Exodus are indicative of sociopathy. Well, how have we done obeying God’s Commandments? Lousy.

Every second of every day, somewhere on earth, millions upon millions of people are breaking at least one of the Ten Commandments. Every moment someone, somewhere, is taking the Lord’s name in vain. I’m hard-pressed to believe that there is a millisecond that goes by when someone isn’t making a graven image or regarding one. Go to any city or town anywhere in America on any given Saturday or Sunday, and you will find businesses that are open. We can argue about which day is the Sabbath, but there is no questioning the fact that it has not been kept “holy”. The statistics on murder are stunning. Robbery, theft, and burglary are even more common than murder. Sociologists have shown that adultery is commonplace. People bear false witness, gossiping and lying about each other, all the time. Everyone, everywhere, (with the possible exception of the of the Dalai Lama) covets things. In most of the world, encouraging people to covet is a major industry.

So really, rather than engraving the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone, God might as well have sent a card. We would’ve read it, said, “yeah, sounds good,” and thrown it in a shoebox with birthday, get-well, and sympathy cards.

The Ten Commandments? Don’t be ridiculous. Just do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and we'll all get along just fine. Or, if you want a better set of Ten Commandments, check out Ten Commandments That Would Have Changed the World.

#WhatIsOurFuckingProblem

#shootings + #massacre + #Pulse + #AuroraShooting + #JeSuisCharlie + #PrayForNewton + #ChapelHill + #PrayForParis + #PorteOuverte + #SandyHook + #PrayForMoncton + #UCCShooting + #SanBernardino = #WhatIsOurFuckingProblem.

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San Bernardino

I've been thinking a lot about the San Bernardino shooting and I've been discussing gun violence issues with friends that are both pro- and anti- gun control.

Last night I came up with a thought experiment that has been heavy on my mind: Imagine that there was almost no history of gun violence in America. Pretend that there had never been a mass shooting in this country, and that domestic gun violence and accidental shootings were something that happened once a decade, not multiple times each day. In this fictional America there isn’t a problem of gang shootings, the most recent Presidential assassination was Lincoln, and no bank or gas station was ever robbed at gunpoint.

Try to picture that scenario, then visualize the reaction to the San Bernardino shooting. The entire nation would collectively flip out. It would be the biggest news story of the year. There would be televised congressional hearings. We would stay home from work to watch the proceedings. We would all want to know where, when, and how the perpetrators got the guns and ammunition that they used.

It would be Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Teapot Dome scandal all rolled into one. There would be marches on Washington. Someone would suggest that President Obama should be impeached since the tragedy happened on his watch. We would demand that mechanisms be put in place to make sure that nothing like the San Bernardino massacre could ever happen again. A modern day Upton Sinclair would write a modern day “The Jungle”. Within six months, bookstore shelves would be filled with volumes on the subject. There would be three major motion pictures dramatizing the event.

Now come back to the real world. We hear about San Bernardino and say, "oh crap, another one." We create a hashtag. The NRA has a $10 off sale on membership. We go on with our lives.

I put it to you that #SanBernardino isn’t the right hashtag. The right hashtag is #WhatIsOurFuckingProblem.

Sigh.