Fish in Space

I want to apologize in advance for touching on a subject that's probably going to trigger a few people, so this is your advance warning: if discussions about sexual abuse, rape and the difficulty of prosecuting those crimes are likely to provoke some bad memories or feelings please skip this post. Here in the US we have a problem with rape and sex abuse. The problem is that we're not treating it like a problem, just as an embarrassment that we'd rather see go away. That doesn’t mean addressing the problem so it doesn’t happen again or treating the problem like a genuine crime to be investigated and prosecuted like theft or murder, it means we just seem to throw up our hands and ignore the problem until people stop talking about it. For a while it seemed that the #MeToo movement would start moving the needle but I’m still seeing the same old attitudes and problems. Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein are being held accountable for their abuse but Brett Kavanaugh , Michael Sherm...

The following is a fairly meta post about stress and dealing with stressful times. I'm neither a neurologist nor a psychiatrist so I do not have an expert opinion on the topic, I have only my personal experience and the tactics I've learned to deal with it. People who are close to me often describe me as extremely calm and patient, which always surprises me. I never really think of myself that way but in the end appearances matter. The reason I bring this up, of course, is because I'm feeling a lot of stress at the moment. A lot of it is personal and per my usual policy I won't go into details here. My usual response to events that provoke me is to stop, take a step back and breathe, let myself feel the emotion and once the moment has passed try to look at the problem as objectively as I can. It's important that I feel emotions but it's even more important that I act more than react. In this article in the Washington Post (I strongly recommend you view the pa...

What is left to say that hasn't already been said? But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

Thank you, Jon Stewart and the Daily Show writers. I apparently needed this hot rage injection. The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes , The Daily Show on Facebook , Daily Show Video Archive

Someone I can only describe as a troll posted a video of Alan Watts giving his speech beginning with "You are a fluke. You are a separate event, and you run from the maternity ward to the crematorium and that's it." He goes on to scold non-believers for envisioning such a cold, dark world where nothing we do matters so we may as well just commit suicide now and get it over with. It's a very dreadful speech focusing on the inevitability of death and how non-belief gives us nothing to live for. This is my answer. Did you ever enjoy a meal or a dessert? An event or activity that gave you pleasure? But what's the point, it's over now. The impermanence of the things that give us joy is a reason to not go on living according to the worldview of this troll. Only a god invented by humans is sufficient to give us a reason to live, a god that tells us not to live for this world but the next one. I enjoy a good meal or a dessert. I look forward to activities or ev...

It's been a common talking point over the past twenty years: Americans have a spending problem. We have too little money saved up and too many of us have nothing saved for retirement . Everywhere you look the message is the same: our debt to savings ratio is too high and it's a serious problem. Yes, it is. But why are we having this problem? I find it very curious that when I try to track the changes to the cost of living I get a lot of confusing data. We have easy graphs to track spending for the federal government, graphs on health care and driving and gun violence and just about anything else you could want that's pertinent to our daily lives. But not so much for inflation and prices even from official government sources. It's like they don't want us to know how much we're spending just to meet our daily needs. I live in a nice apartment with one and a half cars (my Lady got her scooter), very little debt (which takes some doing, believe me) and a fe...