Question of the Day: If Reincarnation Is Real, Would You Want To Come Back As The Opposite Sex In Your Next Life?

If your answer is yes, why? And if no, I understand, especially if you're a man. On the other hand, in spite of feminism, women still have certain advantages: my sister is still looking to land a well-off man so she can quit her job and have him pay all the bills. I don't have even the possibly of considering such an option. Then again, when I think about it, there have been a few women who made a lot more money than me that were interested in me. I wonder if I'd pursued them if one of them would have let me stay home all day and watch TV, eat junk food, read and blog?

What Would You Do Differently If No One Would Judge You?

The David Pakman Show

Food Question: Have You Ever Gotten Sick Eating At Taco Bell?

I think I have, but how can I prove it? Pretty difficult unless you can trace something right to them. I know one thing (my opinion only) I get sick just looking at their counters where they prepare the "food".

Yum Brands Inc.'s Taco Bell chain was investigated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for involvement in a salmonella outbreak that sickened 68 people in 10 states, Food Safety News reported Wednesday.-Taco Bell Linked To Salmonella Probe after 68 People Fall Ill in 10 States, Report Says

Question of the Day: What Do You Look Forward To?

Each day, that is. Years ago I think one of the top responses to that question was "checking the mail", but with the Post Office falling on hard times and fewer people using it as much, that has to have changed. George Costanza answered in response to "do you have any reason for getting out of bed in the morning?" that he "likes to get the Daily News", and I once knew an old man who literally lived just to watch CNN every day. But, what is your reason? And what do you forward to most on any given day?

Question of the Day: Do Libertarians Hate Superheroes?

T.C. asks, I only attempt to answer:

Superman and his fascist "patriotism" and support of the cops and the "law", no! Batman and his suspicions about the established order and his operation on the edge of (if not outside) the law, maybe (some interpretations of Batman are more objectionable than others).

I'll have more on this later, and the strange case of Frank Miller. I recently finished a book (Kevin Anderson's Enemies & Allies) about Superman and Batman set in the 1950s during the cold war. Batman was definitely more "libertarian" in that one than goody two-shoes (related to "Super Cheap"? -see link) Superman.

It may be news to...the majority of readers that Superman, the highly coveted American film hero, is an expression and a creation of fascist minds rooted in a political culture that epitomizes power and the use of force.

This is so, as Superman alters the nature of reality and creates a reality of his own, which defies human understanding and logic. He also violates every rule of physics and all scientific principles known to humanity. The notion of Superman is based on the idea of a battle between "good vs. evil," from an exclusively American perspective, where the battle always demonstrates an external threat to American society and its people.-America Uses Superman to Promote its Fascist Agenda

This is so, as Superman alters the nature of reality and creates a reality of his own, which defies human understanding and logic.

That sounds more like the Christian God to me, but what do I know.

Tree and Question of the Day: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

I'd put images in this post if I had the time, but since we're engaging the imagination here, just imagine there are trees to look at. Oh, hell, never mind, you superficial, shallow blog "reader", here's your damn tree!

image by peachygreen under Creative Commons


Now that you've had a chance to look at your pretty tree picture, can we please get on with it? Thank you!

You'll notice, by the way, that that is a redwood, and I have a reason for selecting it, as you'll soon see. First though, an explanation of the title of this post. Tree is a new Skeptical Eye series (we've got more of those than I can count now) all about, you guessed it, trees! It could be funny, serious, or just plain stupid, but it will be about trees. So, this begins the new series and is also a Question of the Day post.

So, if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? Answer honestly, now. Make Barbara Walters proud.


While you're coming up with your answer, let me go down memory lane for what inspired this post. A number of years ago, I worked for a mortgage company, and a co-worker who was a friend of mine asked this very question. I took it very seriously and was thinking of what tree I'd be, and came up with one that I figured represented strength, longevity and a wide view of the world (it's a tall tree).

I turned to her and said "Giant Redwood".

I did not get the response I was expecting. You see, she had come to see me as some kind of comedic genius based on my amazing gift of humor, so she must have thought I was still laughing it up, because she burst out laughing. She made some kind of sexual, reference, I think. Lucky she liked that sort of thing, or that might have been my own Herman Cain moment.

I let it go and didn't let on that I wasn't in on the joke. After all, I'd rather be known as a funny man than as a wise or profound thinker.

Dirty Microwave, Dirty Person?

image by code_martial under Creative Commons


Inspired once again by Mr.Incredible aka "The Commentator", I have a question for you. If someone has a filthy, dirty, disgusting microwave oven, is that fact alone a good indication of their general cleanliness? I don't know what it is about microwaves, but the food splatter they create when you're too lazy to properly cover your food as it waves, or clean up your ugly mess after the dish stops rotating, is a major yuck factor for most otherwise sane people (and I say "yuck factor" because, hey, the microwave is a technology to cook food that is of fairly recent origin, though it is not something people are adverse to using, except when the inside of a particular oven is covered with the remains of old food).

I once had a friend with a disgusting pig of a daughter, and because I would sometimes spend extended evenings there at her home, and often get the urge to heat a snack in the microwave, I was actually forced, under the ruse of a Christmas gift, to buy her a new microwave, because the one she had was so covered on the inside with crusted food particles that it was literally black. I advised both her and her offspring to take good care of it and clean up after microwaving, but not 2 months later, the new microwave was in the same condition as the previous one.  I should add that her daughter also had a cat whose litter box she never cleaned (poor cat) and a room that was so unkempt it even made me (I'm notorious for Oscar Madison syndrome) nauseous.

Question of the Day: Do We Need More Babies?

I'm asking this quite apart from the "natalism vs. antinatalism" debate. It could very well be that for real economic growth and a healthy economy with growing prosperity, we need constant population growth as well, which doesn't mean, however, that bringing more children into this hellhole of a world is in any way moral, just or right.

Here, Bill Bonner asks if "The Great Correction" (and because it is a "correction" not a recession, whatever its nature, people know that there is no recovery, only the government's phony, manipulated "recovery", which is why all talk of a "double dip" sounds crazy to sane, rational people who see through the state's lies; there is just one big "dip", and we're still in it and will remain in it for the foreseeable future) is more than some suppose:

But what if there were more going on than a simple financial correction…even a correction of a 60-year credit expansion?

What if the Great Correction were greater than we thought? More ambitious…more aggressive…and more dangerous?

In the space of the last 500 years the human population grew approximately 1000%. If it were a financial chart, you’d look at it and think — ‘uh oh…it’s a bubble.’

What if we were approaching a correction?

Reuters reports that the population of Japan is falling like a stone. Some 20 million Japanese are expected to disappear in the next 30 years.

Declining, graying populations are not what you need for economic growth. Old people don’t spend much. Dead people spend even less.

As a result, the economy shrivels up like a 90-year-old.

Read more: Dead Men Don't Spend

And Bryan Caplan wrote not long ago about the connection between population and prosperity:

The case against population is simple: Assume a fixed pie of wealth, and do the math. If every person gets an equal slice, more people imply smaller slices. The flaw in this argument is that people are producers as well as consumers. More sophisticated critics of population appeal to the diminishing marginal product of labor. As long as doubling the number of producers less than doubles total production, more people imply smaller slices.

These anti-population arguments have strong intuitive appeal. But they face an awkward fact: During the last two centuries, both population and prosperity exploded. Maybe the world just enjoyed incredibly good luck, but it makes you wonder: Could rising population be a cause of rising prosperity? -Population, Fertility, and Liberty

As for myself, I don't know, but I can't justify the true crime of bringing a new life, unasked, into the world and throwing the inevitable suffering that being alive brings with it, onto another. I'd rather be ethical than ensure I'm going to collect a decent Social Security check in my old age (or have a "prosperous" economy with endless growth). Massive Ponzi schemes (Rick Perry was right) need constant new blood (suckers) to maintain themselves, and I'm not willing to force that evil on anyone. The incredible selfishness of the very idea that we must create new babies to have a "healthy" economy is disgusting, regardless of whether or not a growing population and a growing economy go together like capitalism and the state.

Question of the Day: What Do You Think of Emergence?

"Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions are the same -- their difference, when their directions are contrary. Further, every resultant is clearly traceable in its components, because these are homogeneous and commensurable. It is otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding measurable motion to measurable motion, or things of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference."-G. H. Lewes





Here is the Wikipedia entry on the subject: Emergence.



And a theistic view:

'Emergence' is a totemic word amongst materialists (whether they claim to be "theists" or claim to be 'atheists'); that is, (they believe that) the word has Magickal Powers to solve, by its mere utterance, the logical difficulties of, and contradictions inherent in, materialism.-Iliocentrism: Emergence, Again

Question of the Day: Best Shift?

What? It's back? Yes, the Question of the Day returns!


"That's a great shift! If you don't mind getting up early!"

My girlfriend made the above comment after I informed her that I would now be leaving work at 3 in the afternoon instead of 6. I've been on a late shift, leaving work at 6, 7 or 8, since I started my current wage slavery position several years ago. I did once work a morning shift (5AM to 2PM, actually) at another job, and got used to getting up so early. Now I have to get used to it again, and worry about my alarm clock not working. You don't realize what a pleasure it is to get up without an alarm to wake you until you're forced to be out of bed at an obscene hour.

However, my first day on my new shift I was amazed the amount of extra time I had after work to do things. I love it, but I still don't like getting up so early.

The question today is, which do you prefer, getting off from work early, or sleeping in a little longer in the morning?

Today's Question: Should Polygamy Be Legal?

In Russia women outnumber men by about 10 million. The shortage of men has many women consenting to a polygamist lifestyle. The solution has some wondering could Polygamy ever become legal in the US?

Today's Question: Should Prisons Be Abolished?

One of the more difficult challenges the libertarian faces when advocating privatization is the case of prisons. There is good reason for this. The sincere libertarian, whether an anarchist or a misguided reformer, wants to do two things:

1) Remove from the state’s monopoly purview all functions the state merely monopolizes which are not inherently criminal in and of themselves.
2) Abolish those state functions which are inherently criminal violations of the libertarian non-aggression principle.

Perhaps no other thing the state does offers so much potential for privatization nightmare stories as prisons do. There’s a reason for this. Prisons themselves, as we understand the term today, are inherently abusive and criminal enterprises — whether managed directly by a state or a state-affiliated monopoly contractor.

Does that mean there will be nothing like prisons in a market anarchist society? Yes and no. Context matters. We’re really talking about two different things — “privatization” under statism is not the same thing as what will likely result in the marketplace if we were to abolish the state and make “law” a free market for consensual dispute resolution with justice understood as restitution rather than punishment.

Under corporate statism, a “private” prison is some company paid with stolen money BY THE STATE (in an environment in which big business is legally privileged anyway, through all sorts of political favoritism). The customer pays and it’s the customers interests that are served. When the customer is legally privileged in the way that the state (and its affiliated corporations) is to do things TO people without their consent, of course monstrous results should be expected. It’s all a matter of economic incentives.

Market anarchists want to turn the incentive issues around by making the “prisoner” the customer. Seriously. We’d really be abolishing prisons AS THEY ARE UNDERSTOOD TODAY (and more or less in line with classical anarchist thought on the topic).

To whatever extent there might be something we can compare to prisons, such would actually be high security hotels that cater to people trying to work off their restitution debts.

That is, the residents would seek to go there as a refuge because that’s the best deal they can get — because nobody else wants them around.

You know how some car dealerships offer “second chance” financing for people with bad credit ratings? Okay, now imagine “second chance” special residencies for people with bad “law ratings”.

The “prisoner” (resident, actually) would be free to leave at any time. They would be customers. Accommodations likely wouldn’t be luxurious, but most people wouldn’t want to endure inhumane treatment. In a freed market for such services, these private “prisons” would compete with each other to persuade “inmates” to move in. If some place starts getting abusive, people will move out for a better deal elsewhere.

-Brad Spangler - Prisons: Abolish, Don’t Privatize (republished under Creative Commons )

Today's Question: Would You Give Up The Internet For 1 Million Dollars?

The number of Internet users worldwide has now surpassed two billion and so many of us have integrated the web into our lives so much that it's hard to quantify how much it's worth to us. But why not give it a shot? Think about it.

How much would someone have to pay you to give up the Internet for the rest of your life?

Would a million dollars be enough? Twenty million? How about a billion dollars?





Okay, so I have essentially brought back to life the old SE feature "Question of the Day", which I said was over due to lack of answers. Hey, questions equal answers, don't they? I was tired of asking questions no one cared to comment on, so I gave it up, except I can never stop asking questions, as I now realize! So, I will carry on with this new series, Today's Question.

And on that subject, would any price be enough for you to give up the Internet, for life? But, isn't the Internet life itself? Think of all the things the Internet has replaced or will replace, from television to newspapers, encyclopedias, retail locations, maybe even (actually, it's happening rapidly right now) brick and mortar colleges.

And how much are all those things and more worth, over a lifetime? You would be cutting yourself off forever from the major source of information and global interaction. Not to mention how much you could potentially earn from the Internet, and I don't mean from some scheme you saw on a late night infomercial, either. No, there may be unending sources of income possible from the Internet for ordinary people, whether that's getting an education to earn more, or being in business for yourself, or promoting yourself for an existing or future venture.

One million dollars would never be enough to replace that loss. Maybe no amount would. Even aside from the money, how about your quality of life? In the modern world, that means using and taking advantage of technology. It would be like asking someone 100 years ago if they would take $100,000 (accounting for Federal Reserve inflation, which has destroyed 90% of the dollar's value these last 100 years)) to give up electricity or the automobile for the rest of their life.

Question of the Night: Will The News of A Cell Phone Cancer Connection Change Your Cell Phone Habits?

Possible Link Between Cell Phone Radiation and Cancer






Radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization. The agency now lists mobile phone use in the same "carcinogenic hazard" category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform.
Before its announcement Tuesday, WHO had assured consumers that no adverse health effects had been established.

A team of 31 scientists from 14 countries, including the United States, made the decision after reviewing peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety. The team found enough evidence to categorize personal exposure as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."-WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk






When I got my first cell phone I constantly held it up to my head. In fact, there was one marathon conversation I had by cell phone with a friend of mine when I was bored out of my mind at a convention I went to with some other friends, so I sat out in the lobby area at the hotel we were at and talked straight through for a couple of hours. By the time I said goodbye, the phone was blazing hot. I must have really given myself a good dose of radiation that day. In recent years I've rarely put my phone to my ear, but I know others, including my mom, who still do. Mom has come around only because of these recent reports on the dangers of cell phone radiation, though she's ignored my warnings to her on the matter for years.

SPECIAL QUESTION: What Did You Get Your Mom For Mother's Day?

As you may be aware, we ended our highly rated series Question of the Day a while back, however, like those new CNN Larry King specials, it hasn't disappeared completely, being resurrected to new life as our SPECIAL QUESTIONS!

This is the first of these SPECIAL QUESTIONS (if I remember rightly, who knows) so let's get it off to a roaring start, shall we?

Question of the Night: What Was The Best or Worst Knock On Your Door?

image by Daniel2005 under Creative Commons


One evening, many years ago, when my grandmother was still on this earth, we sat in the living room just talking. The front door was open and we could see the street outside through the screen. That brought up the story of strangers knocking on the door. Grandma (we called her Nana) launched into one of her periodic reminiscences, and told of a dark night when she was alone in the house, and a knock began on the front door. She looked through the peep hole and saw a sailor standing on the porch, wearing what looked like an antique uniform, but when she went to open the door, he had vanished. She quickly stepped outside and ran to the sidewalk and looked both ways, but there was no sign of him. Where had he gone? To this day, that mysterious knock on the door has gone unsolved.

No More Questions

I'm announcing the official end of the (almost) daily Question of the Day series. If questions get no answers, there's no point in asking them. Well, maybe there is, but probably not on a blog. Better to just make statements and tell the world (what little of it is reading) to go to hell if they happen to disagree.

The thing is, with many of the questions I've posted, I really did want to know what others thought, and in some cases, I didn't have an answer of my own. I suppose if I ever have another question for you guys, I'll post a SPECIAL QUESTION (the all caps works for that, I think).


For now, I plan to continue with the Question of the Night series, since I don't really care, in the depths of the darkness of those midnight queries, if I get any answers; I'm not expecting to hear back from the shadows, and I'm not sure I want to...

Question of the Day: Will Human Immortality Be Achieved By The End Of The Century?

In this (somewhat) funny piece by Hank Pellissier Hey Kids, Don’t Forget to Take My Brain Out of the Freezer, he tell his daughters (ages 6 and 10) that they are going to live forever. In the comments, he writes:

Even by present standards, they will live until 2080 or 2090 - by then immortality has a very strong chance of being established.

Do you think he's right? Will our children (if not us) never have to die? Was I born too damn earlier? Damn, why couldn't I have been born later, maybe even in this century instead of the last. So close...

Question of the Night: Would You Remain With Your Significant Other If They Had Their Face Blown Off In An Accident?

Or in other words, how deep is your love?

Question of the Night: What Is Your Favorite Horror Movie?

I would say Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, but it's just not that scary. I've seen it a least a dozen times, probably more, and it is on my list of favorite films. Still, Kubrick obviously failed in his attempt to make a great (if not the greatest) horror film.





Stephen King never liked Kubrick's adaptation of his novel, which, to be sure, was Kubrickized, and not a faithful translation of words to screen. King would much later have the novel turned into a television miniseries, but the Kubrick film by that time was already so iconic that nothing could replace it as the filmed version of the story.

Come and play with us, Danny!





Here's Johnny!





Okay, so I like The Shining. But I'd probably go with more of a cult film as my "favorite" horror picture. One that became an instant classic in my mind the first time I saw it is Phantasm








Then there's The Wicker Man (1973), starring Edward Woodward as a devout Christian investigating the disappearance of a child in a community of pagans. It too is a favorite of mine, and I might considered it as my top horror title, and it is a great (and under appreciated) film, but, except for the ending, it's more of a mystery or suspense film, and even a musical, than it is a horror movie.





Which leads me to my final choice, Miracle Mile,

Before Miracle Mile was made, its production had been legendary in Hollywood for ten years. In 1983, it had been chosen by American Film magazine as one of the ten best unmade screenplays. Steve De Jarnatt wrote it just out of the American Film Institute for Warner Brothers with the hope of directing it as well. The studio wanted to make it on a bigger scale and did not want to entrust the project with a first-time director like De Jarnatt.

Miracle Mile spent three years in production limbo until De Jarnatt optioned it himself, buying the script for $25,000. He rewrote it and the studio offered him $400,000 to buy it back. He turned them down. When he shopped it around to other studios, they balked at the mix of romance and nuclear war and the film's downbeat ending. This is what drew Anthony Edwards to the script as he remembers, "It scared the hell out of me. It really made me angry too...I just couldn't believe that somebody had written this." John Daly of Hemdale Films gave De Jarnatt $3.7 million to make the film.-Miracle Mile

Like the first Stephen King novel I ever read, Cujo, there is no need of the supernatural to create the terror; it is all too real. The story is about the accidental discovery by an ordinary nobody that a nuclear war is about to begin. War is one of the greatest horrors unleashed on the human race by the state. States murder millions, and our own government in the US has been (and is) guilty of mass murder on an incomprehensible scale. Lincoln started a war that killed more than 600,000 of his fellow citizens (he was without doubt the worst mass murderer in American history), and his evil acts had consequences that reverberate down to our own day.

The prospect of a nuclear exchange has been hanging over us for decades (though much of the underlying anxiety was eased by the end of the cold war) and as long as those weapons exist, it is something that remains in the realm of possibility, and that we can't just dismiss with the comforting words "it's only a movie".

When I played this movie for a friend one night several years ago, the reaction I got when it was over was "Why did you want me to see that?" and I suppose I understood what they meant. It was something you couldn't dismiss as a fairy tale, and it didn't come with a reassuring ending that everything was going to be okay. My friend looked rather depressed for the rest of the evening, not laughing and joking as would have usually been the case after a regular old "scary" movie. That's real horror, and it's why Miracle Mile is my top horror pick.





What's your favorite horror movie? Or, what do you think is the best horror film you've ever seen?