Sunday, September 20, 2015

Joseph Epstein has written for COMMENTARY for fifty years

Alan Dershowitz's History of Jewish Lawyers

9/20/15. He lived two doors down from Jackie Mason, near Buddy Hackett, and in Woody Allen's neighborhood. 

Jewish humor is essential for coping with anxiety, absurdity, suffering, horror, and much more.

Four Europeans go hiking together and get terribly lost.

First they run out of food, then out of water.

"I'm so thirsty, " says the Englishman. "I must have tea."

"I'm so thirsty," says the Frenchman, I must have wine."

"I'm so thirsty," says the German. "I must have beer."

"I'm so thirsty," says the Jew. "I must have diabetes."

No less than Freud expressed his wonder at Jewish joking:

"I do not know whether there are many other instances of a people making fun to such a degree of its own character."


http://www.wsj.com/articles/alan-dershowitzs-history-of-jewish-lawyers-1442587805

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Improvisation and Psychology

9/12/15. There is a link between someone skilled at improvisation and psychotherapy.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/comedy-improv-anxiety/403933/

All Scientists Should be Militant Atheists

9/12/15.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/all-scientists-should-be-militant-atheists

My friend Tom replies, a chemist and a Christian:


This article is a pitiful display of ignorance.  It is most often the physicists who are the vocal atheistic minority among the scientific community, for physics is perhaps the branch of the physical sciences with the most amount of assumptions behind it and the one with the least opportunity for hard experimentation, because of its great expense.  It is also these few scientists who are the most difficult to give up on an idea, they have built their careers upon; even though, they are often dead wrong.  Of course, there is no way to do the experiment because of the high cost or impossible circumstance.   The high-energy physics experiment of late is the best example in the search for the “God” particle.  I do not remember the details, but the outcome was very clear.  There were two opposing camps of high-energy physicists with each theory predicting the energy of the “God” particle.  After much hailed experimentation, cost, and public attention, the energy of the particle was determined, and low-and-behold, its energy did not support either of two major theories (or any other theory for that matter).  It was an energy altogether different than predicted.  I remember a Nobel prize-winning scientist speaking to commentators saying his entire life’s work was for nothing, and that he did not know what to do but retire and go fishing.  No physicists had any idea why they were all wrong.    The point is that atheism is a religion in-and-of-itself, and those who believe in it try to hide behind a science that cannot be tested easily with tenacious ignorance, and not accept any other idea but their own.

 

There are false assumptions throughout the article; the most obvious is that we live in a secular society.  Well, if that is true, then why do 90% of people in surveys in the U.S. say the believe in a God?  The fact is one does not live in a secular society; unless the culture has been made that way by atheistic socialist doctrine.  Religion is historically an integral part of all cultures.   Only by socialist governments in modern times has religion been removed, degraded, or presumed to not exist.  

 

Another false assumption is that the universe is in chaos.  All evidence today is that the universe is remarkably “fine tuned” in a manner that could not have possible by random occurrences.   This is indisputable!  The author, in his ignorance, holds onto the random-chaos theory, which has been demonstrated otherwise.  Why does he do this?  Because he has no other answer, and it trashes all his theories.  Every atheist has a God; it is himself.  He will defend that God at all costs.

 

The only problem that is “self-evident”, is that the framers of the Constitution failed to define religion.  Since the only thing that existed in their domain at the time was Judeo-Christian, they thought it was “self-evident” that any religion to be concerned about in their domain was simply a difference of interpretation within the framework of the Judeo-Christian ethic.  They had no idea of how the world was going to change in the two hundred years.  The concept of an acceptable “religion” needs to be defined.  It goes without saying, that any theocratic governance that might  “…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (Amendment XIV, Section 1.) is not a “religion” under the Constitution; so it is absurd to suggest that such would be protected by the Constitution as a “religion”.     

 

The other problem is that Amendment XIV precedes the statement above with “…nor shall any State…”, meaning that States have the right under the Constitution to enact laws that are not covered by Congress enacting others, and that the Supreme Court does not have any right under the Constitution to create new law by review or judgment.  It is only by repeating this false assumption over and over again and manipulating the court system to act as if the Supreme Court had the authority to make law by redefining the scope of a statement in the Constitution that liberals say the Supreme Court has this power, when in fact it does not.     

 

I normally express my opinion in letters to my congressman in the form of hypothetical Constitutional Amendments, and limiting the power to the Supreme Court was one of them.

Joseph Epstein: A Biography As Great as Its Subject

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

What the Left and Right Don't Get about Campus Rape

9/1/15. Mona Charen's trenchant comments.


Reminds me about what the left and right don't get about mental illness. The left's passion is to protect the civil rights of the mentally disturbed --- so they can die with their rights intact. The right's passion is to get the mentally disturbed and their families to take responsibility for their actions, question whether mental disturbance is a myth, and put the psychiatrically disturbed in prison, not hospitals. Both the left and right have contributed to the closing of psychiatric hospitals leading to the tragedy of homelessness.




http://eppc.org/author/mona_charen/

Wayne W. Dyer RIP