There has been no official explanation of the tool on the official YouTube blog, where most new features are trailed, but the comment section of the website is notorious for hosting some of the least intelligent discussions on the internet. Anyone posting a comment on a YouTube video can now hear what they have written read back at them, just by pressing a button beneath their words.

Here is the comic strip which illustrates this feature. It is about a hacker who creates a virus that embarrasses YouTube commenters by reading out loud back what they have written.

YouTube should be credited for having so much concern on civic values. It really made me cry. For once, I thought they didn't care a bit about what the comments are, be it hideous or shameful. But here they are proving me wrong.

Hooray.

The Campaign to Nowhere opening soon at a rally near you

The McCain-Palin rallies are scaring some Democrats Republicans,

John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

Its difficult to ell whether some of these people are so unhinged they would take that next step. If crowd behavior at these rallies is making some Republicans nervous, maybe its time for concern. The best way to assure the general public that McCain supporters are not going to take the hateful rhetoric to the next level is for McCain to lead them toward less threatening behavior. Which he tried to do and was booed for, Supporters jeer as McCain calls Obama 'a decent person'

"Who is the real Barack Obama?" McCain asked repeatedly.

Crowds at McCain's rallies have responded zealously, including a handful who saluted Obama's name with violent threats and cries of "treason," "terrorist," and "bum." The incidents became the subject of extensive media attention, and apparent interest from the Secret Service.

Earlier yesterday, Obama responded directly to the attacks, telling people at a rally in Ohio: "I think that folks are looking for something different. It's easy to rile up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that's not what we need right now in the United States. The times are too serious. The challenges are too great."

It would be great to give McCain some credit for defending Senator Obama as a decent family man, someone who has accomplished a lot, especially considering his very modest working class background, but even as McCain said those words he still has that "Who is the real Barack Obama?" ad running regularly and has repeated that phrase at numerous rallies. Faux News has been more then glad to help McCain echo those fears of the oh so ominous other. Nazi official Dr. Achim Gercke wrote in a speech called Solving the Jewish Question,

All proposals that include a permanent presence, a permanent regulation of the Jews in Germany, do not solve the Jewish Question, for they do not eliminate the Jews from Germany (denn sie lösen die Juden nicht von Deutschland). And that is what we want to do. If the Jews are able to exploit their host peoples forever, they will remain a constant source of the open, destructive flame of Bolshevism, making it easy to repeatedly kindle it again, not to mention the political uncertainties resulting from disunity within the people and the danger to racial unity. Let us swear off such thinking forever, whether it results from poor thinking or evil intentions. To summarize, the state can and must focus on systematical elimination, on emigration.

McCain supporters and right-wing pundits have described Senator Obama as "Arab", "Terrorist", "communist (Bolshevism)", "socialist", "traitor", “palling around with terrorists”, in addition to constant reframes about his otherness such as "who is Barack Obama," - rabid Right web sites and rightie viral email are partly to blame. The Right's legacy of eliminationism continues with the McCain camp. If they now think its out of control and can sense the backlash, John and the soccer mom have only themselves to blame. One often repeated rhetorical device is the request that Senator Obama or his wife "explain" this or that "relationship". Senator Obama does owe an explanation of his resume to the American people and has given one. Mccain supporters always reply its not good enough. The problem is that Mccain and his surrogates are being dishonest. They're not interested in honest debate about issues and the future of the country, no explanation would ever be good enough. Its a game and they know it. So the media faced with all this evidence that Mccain has created a toxic campaign environment what does the big bad liberal media do. They take up for him, CBS News’s Bob Schieffer - "I’d like to think that maybe it’s not McCain himself, but some of those around him." I record the CBS Morning Show occassionaly and Schieffer seems like a nice guy with good intentions, but its that very quality that might be keeping him from calling things the way they are.

Beltway journalists — so long in love with John McCain — seem to have trouble accepting this, but John McCain owns his campaign. He’s responsible for it. Its actions are his actions. It is him. You can like it, dislike it, whatever. But it’s his campaign. Journalists and pundits shouldn’t give him credit for leaving the extra-nasty lines to his minions.

Some people seem confused as to what constutes voter fraud (PDF),

Voter fraud only occurs if someone tries to improperly cast a vote. “It’s not voter fraud unless someone shows up at the voting booth on election day and tries to pass himself off as ‘Tony Romo.’ And who would try to do that?” wrote Rep. Jesse Jackson (D-IL). The Brennan Center for Justice noted that “there are no reports that we have discovered of votes actually cast in the names of [false] registrants.”

Its not a good thing that there are a few people that have registered to vote more then once, but its not a serious crime until someone tries to vote multiple times under the same name or aliases.

'Economists For McCain' Trash McCain's New Mortgage Plan

George W.Bush is still president and an weak spined terrorist appeaser. The Right would be calling him that if he was a Democrat, Bush to remove N. Korea from terror list to save nuke deal

Art Brown, a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst, said that Japan would consider Bush's removal of North Korea from the terrorism list "a major affront. I know that the Japanese strongly object to this action."

Brown, a former National Intelligence Officer for East Asia, said that he favors tough diplomacy with North Korea, but opposes Bush's move. "In some ways, we are reinforcing bad behavior by the North Koreans," he said.

Lighthouse sunset wallpaper

Old Britsh Galleon Sailing Ship wp

The names you attach to your values aren’t really important. One person may call her value “integrity” and one may call it “honesty”. What is important is that as you define your values, you take time to totally understand them, visualize them, and feel them. That will help you to get a clear picture of what that value means to you.

Here are the steps you can take to identify your values and what they mean to you:

1.   Draw a table with 3 columns. In the first column, write the answers to the following questions: what people, places and things are most important to me in my life? Write this in as much detail as possible.

2.   In the second column, write down the answer to the question: “what value does this person, place or thing give me?” Focus on the positive aspects of the value you receive from that goal.

3.   Look at the second column in detail. You should have a great many values and some of them may be the same. Like if you value your marriage and it gives you security and you value your job and it also gives you security, circle those that come up more than once.

4.   Write out the most frequent occurring values in the third column. Look at the remaining values and decide which are most important to you. Don’t try to prioritize them yet, but pick the top 10.

5.   Review your list for completeness. Make sure these values meet your intrinsic needs. Think of them as looking outward and forward.

6.   Also, look for any missing values that are vital to you. Next prioritize the values

7.   Take the first value and compare it to all of the others. Make sure you allow your conscious and unconscious mind to answer these questions truthfully for you as you are today.

8.   After you have them prioritized, define precisely what your values mean to you in the way you live your life. You can use mind mapping techniques here if you so choose. If you are a creative person, you may want to create a collage of pictures that define the values to you.

9.   Reflect on the final product and make sure it matches with your goals and mission statement. Then look at how you can bring your life goals into alignment with these values. You are on your way to motivating yourself to incorporate things that give you passion!

Money has a cultural hold on all of us. It is quite hypnotic. Money has put us into a trance so profound that our cognitive ability has diminished to the point of simply knowing the price of things at the expense of being able to discern the true value of things.

Like modern physics, we have divorced ourselves from a life of meaning and values. In America, money is how one keeps score.

Money thwarts our search for meaning yet it exerts a powerful pressure on us that is constant. It is hard to become spiritual when our stomachs are empty and we have no roof over our heads. Even worse, spiritual growth has been almost completely abandoned as a means to finding happiness. Instead, we will not be happy until we keep up with and finally surpass the Joneses.

We better ourselves by bettering someone else. This economic philosophy is contrary to God’s great commandment of loving the neighbor. 

Do not get me wrong. Money is important. But more and more, it is being made from cunning and cleverness rather than from a sincere desire to be of service to others. In most cases, we seek to help ourselves rather than to improve the well-being of others.

The big problem is that we have separated the acquiring of money from the enrichment of our innermost being. Making money enters into everything we do EXCEPT for our spiritual growth. But making money should be intimately involved with our spiritual growth as well!

Why? Because, making money should be the “fruit” of our God-given talents. These talents are lost in the corporate scheme of things where one is swimming among sharks and looking to gain some advantage.

We are in our current financial crisis because greed, envy, and self-identity have taken the cockpit in the acquisition of money. Rather than happiness, any success at making money leads to fear in keeping it—to the point that nothing can be really enjoyed anymore.

Surveys often show that many of the most “successful” people feel they are missing something in their lives. Acquiring riches can dull us to the richness of life and love. Such individuals have not paid attention to their souls. This type of success poisons everything.

All wars, all forms of social injustice, crime, and the destruction of the environment, emerge from this blind striving towards wealth and power.

How we acquire money and spend it shows WHAT WE ARE. We are looting America and God’s gifts.

How do we escape this financial and social captivity?

First we must not live above our means. Next we should work on our relationships with friends and family (before we find ourselves making this discovery on our deathbeds). Finally, we must either do the jobs we have from a sincere principle of mutual love and service, or find new ways to make a living that offer us true self-worth and deep satisfaction.  

Follow this simple path and you will begin to experience heaven itself.

It's my life
It's now or never
I ain't gonna live forever
I just want to live while I'm alive 

I love this song for the reason stated above....

P.S: Most of the times I think I have to live for myself when I am disappointed with others.... and I wrote this after a great disappointment ...may be like sahaja I should follow ‘I want what I get"

In line for fast food,
the truck behind me growls angrily
and honks,
demanding attention.
When I turn,
the bearded man shouts
in words thick and sticky with Southern dialect,
Obama's the Antichrist!
and then
You support the devil!
His engine roars again and he flips off my bumper sticker as he yells 
You're all going to hell!
and finally,
We'll all pay!
as I weigh whether he means
for Barack
or cholesterol.

© Bryan Borland

Let's not go down that path. Let's keep our focus on good ideas (constrained by good values) and protect them. For the sake of our future, let's work together and keep the baby in the bath.  Let's be eternally vigilant against corruption. In government.

Let's keep compassion and social justice in its proper place - private sector (and encourage it more and more, yes! Let's!). But, look ... Don't pull "a French Revolution" here.  Our history is short. Let's not be so quick to forget what this freedom has cost ...

Look ... I can see the green Earth better without a large government blocking the view/the innovation/the resources. 

Tell your new friend Biden, Life isn't "fair" -- it will never become fair through Washington legislation. And, look, that Legislature there ... its rudder belongs to we the people, not any President, pundit or policy.

And we the people have fallen down in our responsibility to steward it. Look. We have. But she's the most beautiful baby ever. Let's clean her up and dry her off and send her lazy nannies home to find new jobs! She's our girl, this one. Let's raise her! Let's encourage her health - and not be content to see her bloat and stumble and go nowhere fast and without consequence!

Look . . . Follow . . . and I'll show you something beyond your greatest imagination!

I use the word "defend" in its literal meaning.  This implies that there has been some kind of previous attack.  And boy, have there been attacks.

Not on me per se - heaven forbid - at least, not yet anyway.  It's more of the culmination of the general order of things; the totality of the environmental circumstances in which I am operating.

For instance, I was surfing the net recently and came across a blog post written by a fellow Filipino attacking the change in featured articles in one of the daily national newspapers.  When he was young, he said, it was the staple for his generation - it featured the myriad views, angst, opinions and difficulties of others his age and which not only made him feel that he was not alone, but also gave him a broad view of national problems and how best to position oneself against the huge, insurmountable problem of progress and poverty against which all nationalist and idealist youths face squarely at one point or another.  Young, rebellious hearts and all that...

The more recent articles featured were not even at par, according to him.  Youths dealing with personal problems, youths speaking of their love for nature, youths expounding on family or love relationships... all a waste of space, in his opinion - considering the never-ending national difficulties and the political and social problems which deserve considerably more attention.

I am all for freedom of speech and freedom of expression.  But I am also a very vocal proponent of self-accountability and self-responsibility.  This means that you speak your piece - whatever it may be - and do not find your limitations by what would or would not get you sued.  You find your limitations in the limits of your own understanding.

For instance, in the example above, any individual who was really serious about helping his fellowman, about fighting for social, political and economic freedom for all, regardless of social status, would have to explain to me precisely how he can be expected to be taken seriously when he castigates anybody else who chooses to exercise their own freedom - both in their personal values and the things he or she considers important enough to write about.  One does not say he values freedom when he resents everybody else who exercises their own.

Or perhaps the resentment comes more from a refusal to yield to changing times and changing values.  A recent conversation I had with one woman I very much admire only convinced me that I was not alone in this view.  She was there during those turbulent times during the Martial Law era.  She stood on the front lines of the revolution, even got blacklisted from school and thrown into prison during those darker years.  Now she prefers to take a step back from current militant efforts for a political and national revolution that aims to stamp out corruption.

I ask her why, and she answers that the words they were shouting back then are still the exact same words that were being shouted now.  Is it because their efforts then were useless?  Is it because there has been no change?  But they succeeded in overthrowing the dictatorship then - does that mean that a greater kind of revolution is called for - maybe a more violent and comprehensive one that would stamp out all political troubles in the sacrifice of more blood and more lives?  Or maybe, just maybe, the time has come for a different kind of approach.  Parang hindi na kasi tama... (It seems all wrong now...)

Maybe times are changing, and people no longer wish to feed the cycle of violence and corruption by offering themselves up as human fodder to a vague idea of a cause or an ideology.  Maybe they prefer to deal with the real items in their lives - their jobs, their relationships, their families, the people in their own community which they have a better chance of helping by shaking their hands and reinforcing their self-worth, than by banding together with others and making plans to take over social order in a rain of bloodshed.

Maybe people's values have evolved into one that prefers order over anarchy, living life well over self-sacrifice, appreciating even the little things over being the poster child of a very subtle yet pervasive kind of crab mentality that absolutely delights in throwing labels around at everybody else.

Freedom of expression and all that - I say watch what you say, and don't make the mistake of equating the refusal to get caught up in the same values that you believe in with stupidity.  People are more intelligent that you may give them credit for.  You may think that people have no clue and that they simply can't see - maybe they see and perceive more clearly than you think.

My sunny island is getting hotter and stuffier with more people in this small tiny island, I felt so tiny being the BIG size me in the sardine packed train today (including the fact that everyone FINALLY moved to the centre of the cart) and now I am a minority not the majority. sigh.

This malaysia trip have taught me quite a lot of valuable lessons I can say.
Important issues (maybe):
-money
-mom&dad
-values in life
-etc. (to name a few)
be thrifty joy! be thrifty! (I can't even spell thrifty - the auto-dictionary taught me so) :

Lastly, I need to stop scaning people out, cause I don't dress that well either.
:add-on// note-to-self: be careful of words spouting out!!!

Yet, it is not so that people necessarily consume themselves, but egotism does, and therefore a system which is founded on its principles is doomed to crash. On the other hand, it is difficult to conceive how a species of mankind's advancement, driven by altruism so that the good of others serve as incitement for each, would destroy themselves in such a disgraceful fashion. That is, altruism achieves the goals of the egotist, who fails in the same -- and in this, the evil is truly the fool.

Perhaps the most exciting dialogue around health care was stimulated by a question that came from the moderator, Tom Brokaw. He asked both candidates: Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?

For those of you that didn’t watch the debate, I won’t hold you in suspense: McCain answered first, and described it as a responsibility, while Obama defined it as a right. I’ve put the transcript of both of their responses below, so you can see for yourselves exactly what each candidate said, and I’d be interested in how you all would answer. Privilege? Right? Responsibility? Also, Obama stated that health care was a right in a country as wealthy as America. Other advocates of a right-based approach for health care, such as Paul Farmer (my Harvard bias is revealed), believe that health care is a right for everyone, from the poorest Haitians to the wealthiest Americans. Does the nature of health care depend on the context? Should the American government treat health care differently than Malawian government?

I know we have some international readers, and I’d be interest to hear your thoughts as well about how health care is perceived in your country.

Look forward to a good discussion! Please try to keep your answers civil, and include links/references when possible.

Link to the full transcript on cnn.com: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/07/presidential.debate.transcript/

Senator John McCain

I think it's a responsibility, in this respect, in that we should have available and affordable health care to every American citizen, to every family member. And with the plan that -- that I have, that will do that.

But government mandates I -- I'm always a little nervous about. But it is certainly my responsibility. It is certainly small-business people and others, and they understand that responsibility. American citizens understand that. Employers understand that.

But they certainly are a little nervous when Sen. Obama says, if you don't get the health care policy that I think you should have, then you're going to get fined. And, by the way, Sen. Obama has never mentioned how much that fine might be. Perhaps we might find that out tonight.

Senator Barack Obama

Well, I think it should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can't pay their medical bills -- for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that.

So let me -- let me just talk about this fundamental difference. And, Tom, I know that we're under time constraints, but Sen. McCain through a lot of stuff out there.

Number one, let me just repeat, if you've got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it. All I'm going to do is help you to lower the premiums on it. You'll still have choice of doctor. There's no mandate involved.

Small businesses are not going to have a mandate. What we're going to give you is a 50 percent tax credit to help provide health care for those that you need.

Now, it's true that I say that you are going to have to make sure that your child has health care, because children are relatively cheap to insure and we don't want them going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma.

And when Sen. McCain says that he wants to provide children health care, what he doesn't mention is he voted against the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program that is responsible for making sure that so many children who didn't have previously health insurance have it now.

Now, the final point I'll make on this whole issue of government intrusion and mandates -- it is absolutely true that I think it is important for government to crack down on insurance companies that are cheating their customers, that don't give you the fine print, so you end up thinking that you're paying for something and, when you finally get sick and you need it, you're not getting it.

And the reason that it's a problem to go shopping state by state, you know what insurance companies will do? They will find a state -- maybe Arizona, maybe another state -- where there are no requirements for you to get cancer screenings, where there are no requirements for you to have to get pre-existing conditions, and they will all set up shop there.

That's how in banking it works. Everybody goes to Delaware, because they've got very -- pretty loose laws when it comes to things like credit cards.

And in that situation, what happens is, is that the protections you have, the consumer protections that you need, you're not going to have available to you.

That is a fundamental difference that I have with Sen. McCain. He believes in deregulation in every circumstance. That's what we've been going through for the last eight years. It hasn't worked, and we need fundamental change.

]]> http://irresponsibility.wordpress.com/?p=247 Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:44:52 +0000 zooeyibz http://irresponsibility.tl.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/recession-2008-first-world-countries-vs-developing-economies-as-imf-readies-bailout-loans/ Posted by irresponsibility

“The poor stay poor/ and the rich get rich/ that’s how it goes/ everybody knows”

There aren’t many situations immune to Leonard Cohen’s scalpel-sharp wisdom, not even the credit crunch. The above lines are from one of my all-time favourite songs, Everybody Knows, and they started buzzing in my head as I absorbed the news the IMF is standing by to bail out the rich.

Not that they’re admitting it in so many words: “Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Fund's managing director, said it could make ‘hundreds of billions of dollars’ available to either rich countries in the west, or to developing nations…. ‘We are ready to answer any demand from a country facing problems’.”

Interestingly “[Strauss-Khan] added that the Fund had not lent during the past five years, and therefore had a sizeable war chest available.” Because of course there haven’t been any countries (containing the requisite levels of white Westerners) facing problems in the world in the last five years.

Lest anyone be in doubt that the IMF has only sprung to attention now that it is the über-privileged economic status of the first world is threatened have a look at a wonderful little slide-show from the IMF website.

Should you lack the time/inclination to scroll through let me summarise. Basically, in the last three years the first world has gone from “low financial stress” to high financial stress. Simultaneously its economy has gone from “heating” to “cooling”. Clearly, the IMF's definition of a financial crisis is merely one which threatens the fat pocketbook of the ruling white oligarchy.

NB: I didn't realise this particular video was Spanish subtitled. That makes it even cooler.

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Sleazy, because she advocates -- she actually advocates -- what she pretends are the "rights" of underage adolescents to pose for pornographic works.

It's been hours since first reading her email and I'm still feeling sick from it.  I feel like I need a shower.  Among other things, I believe her values are dishonorable, twisted, and dangerous to children and adolescents.

This "M" apparently misread two or three blog posts in which I've defended adolescent nudity in non-pornographic art.  Then, based only on her gross misreadings of my posts, she has jumped to the conclusion I am -- like her -- in favor of underage pornography.

It seems telling to me those posts were heavily commented on, yet only one or two of the commentators were, like her, mentally incapable of distinguishing between non-pornography and pornography.

I reckon I'm gettin angry now.  I'm not sure if that's a good thing because I don't know where that anger will go or what I can do with it that's constructive.  It is an ugly fact of life the world has many predators who exploit children and adolescents -- and in every society I know of, we do far too little to stop it.

Now, I am not at this moment just talking about underage pornography.  The list of how children and adolescents are systematically exploited, abused, and violated is a very long one.  Some of those ways -- many of them, in fact -- are perfectly legal, perfectly acceptable by most social standards, and utterly wrong.  For instance: Only a very few societies, such as Sweden, ban advertising to children.  Which is to say, only a very few societies see anything fundamentally wrong in systematically exploiting young people through manipulative advertising for no greater purpose than mere economic gain.  I think it is shameful how many ways our societies exploit children and adolescents.

Far worse than confusing children's values with advertising, however, is the sexual exploitation of youth.  And youth are sexually exploited in a number of ways, from child prostitution and rape to the sexualization of eight year olds.  The problem is not trivial.  In today's world, it's epidemic.

I am no prude.  I understand children and adolescents have a sexuality.  I do not believe their sexuality should be repressed.  I am not even opposed to affirming it in an age appropriate fashion through art.  But pornography is another matter.  Pornography is not about truthfully depicting the puppy love a nine year old has for her favorite rock star; the first confused stirrings of puberty; the longing of older adolescents for sexual validation; or any of that.  It is instead about demeaning its models, reducing them to nothing more than sexual beings, and quite frequently it's about imposing on its models a sexuality that is pure adult fantasy and in no way true to them.

"M's" email to me was full of sickening bullshit about how children and adolescents have a right to consent to their exploitation, about how internet predators are not genuine predators, about how age of consent laws "infantilize" teens, and even about how middle school children should be encouraged to take nude photos of themselves to send to their friends.  All of which makes me suspicious this "M" is an utterly deluded and self-serving pedophile.  Most likely, not even a woman, but a man masquerading as a woman.

It's taken me over four hours to write this brief post.  I write a sentence in anger, erase it, start again, toning it down.  I guess there are two aspects of this that anger me the most.  First, that kids are exploited in so many ways.  Second, that we do so little that is wise to protect them.  It ought not be like that.

I don't know what else I can do at the moment but rant about it.  I'm frustrated.

In the Western world, being prosperous is literally synonymous with a big house and fancy car – or better yet, several. Being rich is defined by the amount of consumer goods you can purchase.  It’s the STUFF of wealth.

This is the construct of wealth in North America. Everyone knows the construct of wealth, down to the finest detail, even if they’ve never thought about it.   Movies, TV and magazines saturate our psyches, day and night, with images of the rich and famous.

But what if you don’t want a swimmin’ pool or care if your neighbours are movie stars?  What if you think Park Avenue is just busy, noisy and dirty?

Where is the motivation to strike your own Black Gold if you don’t even want the stuff that goes along with it?  How can you manifest if there is no desire?

For some wealth avoiders, I believe this is the prime reason for getting stuck in scarcity-ville. There is no genuine desire for the rich lifestyle so there is a subconscious rejection of wealth.

So what do you do? Get very clear on what wealth means to you.  Write it down. What WOULD you do with a million dollars or more? Reflect on your true values. Don’t just reach for pat answers like I’d travel the world and buy a Ferrari.  What would truly bring you the deepest satisfaction in this life?

You must know what YOUR wealthy life would look like. The Universe is very intelligent and it knows if you are not fully aligned. True desire must be present for you to attract so GET REAL about why you want to be wealthy and then GET READY to receive.

Yesterday, my friend was bugged by some sort of laziness (peace, murat!) but didn't want to succumb to it. Instead, she texted me if i want to go out and shoot our "negativities" away. She gave me two options: the mountain or the park. I told her we'll decide when we meet but i had already chose where i want to go. I wanted the mountain because i wanted to see a bigger and a wider perspective of everything. (now, I don't make sense.) I just want some sort of meaning or answer or whatever there is to make sense of everything because it feels like I am standing too close to the problem that i can't even stretch my arm to make way for me to punch it in the gut.

So there we were heading to the jeepney stop anticipating the trip with the sceneries we will be able to see. We got there in 30 minutes, focused on appreciating nature and soaked ourselves with our own sweat. We were triumphant, i may say, because nature itself is pure of beauty and we were forced to exercise because we didn't have any choice.

Going home took us one hour because the jeepney driver was being careful going down. There were school children and two teachers and I was sure the driver didn't want to endanger anyone of us. Anyway, my friend and I seated ourselves separately by the window to appreciate again the scenery. I had the chance to think and look out at the horizon. I was given the chance to ask and plead with God that I am His daughter and being that I deserve to be happy too. I don't want meanings anymore. I just want to feel overwhelmed by blessings that I will kneel down again and say that I am grateful for everything because, after all and again, I am His daughter. He must have smiled from above because He gave me a beautiful and dramatic horizon. The pictures I took are not even enough to describe how beautiful it is (well, for the lack of better skills also in taking photos). They seem to scream peace, love, apathy, benevolence, contentment, pride, anticipation, kindness, significance.... I can name everything that enveloped me right that moment because it felt like the horizon was designed to come out just for me.

By and large my friends approached each of those topics in certain predictable ways.  Moreover, those were the very same predictable ways I had approached those topics when I was their age.  Some things never seem to change.  For instance: It seems the very first question everyone at that age asks about god is whether god exists.  Perhaps it's only a bit later on in our lives that we ask first if it matters whether god exists. I was quite fond of seeing how my friends went at those four grand topics of adolescence in the same ways I once did.

On the meaning of life issue, among my friend's standard approaches was to look for a thought or belief that could either create, or reveal, life's meaning.

That approach can be fascinating.  It assumes if I think the right things, or believe the right things, then my life has meaning.  So, for example, if I believe in the right god or gods, my life has meaning.  Conversely, if I believe my life is meaningless, then my life is meaningless.  Perhaps there's an odd appeal to that approach, for it seems to put the meaning of life almost effortlessly into our hands.  We have only to think the right thoughts and meaning is ours.

Now, I happen to believe that approach is an adolescent mistake.  I no more see how meaning comes from thoughts than I see how you take a wilderness hike by sliding your finger across a map of the wilderness.  After all, thoughts are symbols, just like a map is a set of symbols.  And symbols are not the things they represent.  Life is not made meaningful just by thinking it's meaningful.  Nor is it made meaningless just by thinking it's meaningless.

To make that point vivid, let's first assume for the moment the Dalai Lama was onto something when he said, "What's the purpose of life?  I believe the purpose of life is to be happy."  If that's so, then we might ask whether we are happy just because we happen to be thinking about happiness?  I myself can think all day about happiness without becoming more or less happy than I already am.  My thoughts about happiness are only symbols for happiness.  They are not happiness itself.

Instead of searching for meaning in thoughts, I suggest one search for it first in one's talents and skills, and second in the needs of the world.  Where those two meet in harmony, there you will find your passion in life.

Our genuine talents and skills, of course, are firmly rooted in our nature -- both our universal human nature and our unique individual nature.  It's important to recognize that because so many of us spend a considerable amount of time trying to develop skills we have little or no talent for, while perhaps neglecting to develop the skills we do have some talent for.  But to be the best we can be, we need to look to our nature, discover our talents, and turn those talents into skills.  And it's worth pointing out here that a good coach or mentor can help immensely with accomplishing that.

Yet, it usually isn't enough to merely turn our talents into skills.  It seems people who do only that much still feel their lives are meaningless.  We need a mission.  And that mission comes from employing our skills to fulfill one or another of the world's needs.

Those need not be grand needs.  It's not how big they are, but whether they are big enough to challenge us.  By that I mean, does fulfilling those needs require us to develop our talents into increasingly well polished skills?  A call center supervisor can be just as challenged as the president of a country to develop her people skills though she is fulfilling a very different set of the world's needs than that president.

Of course, the needs we fulfill must be genuinely the world's needs.  I might be fulfilling a need by fetching my mail, but no matter how I slice it, fetching my mail is not a genuine need of the world, and it does not give me a sense of living a meaningful life.  Again, I might be fulfilling some sort of need by getting drunk Saturday night, but that also is not a genuine need of the world, and it does not give me a sense of living a meaningful life.  I don't know why we humans must do something to fulfill the world's needs for us to feel our lives have meaning -- I only know that's what we must do.

Happiness -- not transient happiness, but deep, abiding happiness -- seems to come in some part from finding our passion in life.  And finding our passion in life is a matter of discovering where our talents and skills are in harmony with the needs of the world.  This is a very different view, however, from the adolescent notion the meaning of our life can be found in our thoughts.

Does it actually make a difference?  I don't think so -- if Obama wasn't a party member, he most certainly was a fellow traveller.  And anyone who knows anything about his politics ought to know that.

So I'd say that the people who are sophisticated enough politically to know these things already knew enough about his intellectual history and have factored it in, and the people who aren't won't give a damn.

Poor ACORN.  Opinion of their good deeds falling into disrepute as time goes on, and more reports surface of voter registration fraud at their hand.

New York Post.  October 9, 2008. 

Two [Cleveland] Ohio voters, including Domino's pizza worker Christopher Barkley , claimed yesterday that they were hounded by the community-activist group ACORN to register to vote several times, even though they made it clear they'd already signed up.

Barkley estimated he'd registered to vote "10 to 15" times after canvassers for ACORN, whose political wing has endorsed Barack Obama, relentlessly pursued him and others.

"Some of them were getting paid to collect names. That was their sob story, and I bought it," he said.

"They will follow you to the buses, they will follow you home, it does not matter," she told The Post.

"Running Away"
Image courtesy of http://isabont.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/all-that-glitters-is-not-gold/.

She added that she never put down an address on any of the registration forms, just her name.

The major risk of fraud growing out of mass canvassing involves the possibility of ineligible voters filing absentee ballots, and thus avoiding checks at polling places, said Republican National Committee chief counsel Sean Cairncross.

The subpoenas come as Republicans have ramped up criticism of ACORN. Officials in Nevada raided ACORN's Las Vegas office Tuesday, accusing the group of signing people up multiple times - in some cases under phony names, like those of Dallas Cowboys.

Doug Ross August 24, 2008, Michelle Malkin August 22, 2008, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel August 20, 2008.

All of the workers targeted for investigation were paid employees of two liberal groups running voter registration drives, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Community Voters Project...

...Of the 32 ACORN workers referred Wednesday to Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, Edman said:

• Seventeen apparently filled out voter applications and then signed the cards themselves. That involved two to four cards in each case.
• Twelve submitted cards for individuals who later told ACORN they never filled out an application. That involved one card in each case.
• One submitted a card for a dead voter. That was the second such case; a Voters Project worker previously submitted a card for a deceased voter.
• One was apparently making up driver's license numbers for an unknown number of voters.
• One submitted about a half-dozen applications for already-registered voters.

"Whenever Democrats need to win elections, the DEAD will walk the EARTH and Vote."
Image courtesy of http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2008/08/acorn-soros-funded-vote-fraud.html. 

History.  Wall Street Journal November 3, 2008.

Acorn and its affiliates have pulled some real stunts in recent years. In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a Congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained Acorn's practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.

"You have to wonder what's the point of that, if not to overwhelm the system and get phony registrations on the voter rolls," says Thor Hearne of the American Center for Voting Rights, who also testified at the hearing. "These were Democratic officials saying that they felt their election system in Ohio was under assault by these kinds of efforts to game the system."

Given this history, it's not surprising that Acorn is so hostile to voter identification laws and other efforts to ensure fairness and accuracy at the polls. In Missouri last month, the state Supreme Court held that a photo ID requirement to vote was overly burdensome and a violation of the state constitution. Acorn was behind the original suit challenging the statute, and it has brought similar challenges in several other states, including Ohio.

History.  Soda Head September 27, 2008.  From Fox News May 2, 2008, regarding the Washington State voter fraud case 2006.

Two years ago ACORN submitted just over 1,800 new voter registration forms, but there was a problem. The names were made up — all but six of the 1,800 submissions were fakes. Reed said he was appalled.

The ACORN workers told state investigators that they went to the Seattle public library, sat at a table and filled out the voter registration forms. They made up names, addresses, and Social Security numbers and in some cases plucked names from the phone book. One worker said it was a lot of hard work making up all those names and another said he would sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out the forms.

ACORN paid a $25,000 settlement and agreed to monitoring of its voter registration efforts.

 
"No Integrity"
Image courtesy of http://www.feelmypain.net/ce_mediation2.php.

See:

• http://www.nypost.com/seven/10092008/news/politics/nuts__132771.htm.  NUTS!  HOW ACORN GOT ME INTO VOTE SCAM.  October 9, 2008.
• http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2008/08/acorn-soros-funded-vote-fraud.html.  ACORN, the Soros-funded Vote-Fraud Consortium, is at it again.  August 24, 2008.
• http://michellemalkin.com/2008/08/22/acorn-watch-pt-i-of-the-day-more-voter-fraudsters-in-milwaukee/.  ACORN Watch, Pt I of the day: More voter fraudsters in Milwaukee August 22, 2008.
• http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=785773. More voter registration workers under scrutiny.  May 2, 2008. 
• http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009189.  The Acorn Indictments.  A union-backed outfit faces charges of election fraud.  Friday, November 3, 2006. 
• http://www.sodahead.com/blog/17434/">http://www.sodahead.com/blog/17434/.  Voter Fraud Watch: ACORN .  September 27, 2008.