In a shocking exposé of Capitalism, the AP news outlet has released their findings of rampant free-market forces and enlightened self interest within the oil industry!  Shell Oil company decided to close their Bakersfield oil refinery without asking for AP's permission.  Oil industry executives have gone on record as trying to "make more money on other projects"! 

AP also makes the charge that the oil industry would like to "maximize profit" and decide how much of their product to produce.  Oil industry executives also decide when to invest in new wells and equipment.   Apparently, studies have shown that the oil industry also decides when to sell its products in order to get the best prices.

Yes, you heard it here.  Oil industry executives apparently think it is their job to make money for their stockholder and to get the best return on their investments.  Stop the presses and call the Nobel Prize committee!

What was the result of all these evil market forces?  Shell decided to close the Bakersfield refinery and another company purchased it.  Shell did not think they could make money on the refiner, Flying J does think they can make money.  Shell thinks their money will be put to better use elsewhere, Flying J believes their money will be best put ot use in Bakersfield. 

AP does not understand the free market and never will. 

I just voted in Utah County, Utah.  The electronic voting machines were down from 7am to 8:50 am, according to one person in line.  I arrived at 8:45 am to the poll station.  There was a small line when I got there but the poll workers got the machines up and running after about 5 minutes.  After the machine was working the voting went very easily.

According to one poll worker the problem was with the machine that programmed the voting card.  Each voter gets a card which gives them the right ballot on the voting machine and also authorizes them to vote once and only once.  The machine that programs the card was not working.  Each polling location should have had a "Supervisor" card in order to solve the problem.  They had an envelope that said "Supervisor" on it but when they opened the envelope there was no card.  Because the poll workers where well trained, they were able to convert a voting machine to program the cards.

I like the electronic voting better than the punch paper ballots because I can check and change my votes at any time.  I know my vote is the way I wanted it to be and I know my vote is being counted.  With the punch paper ballots I was never sure if I had punched the right hole, because sometimes they did not exactly line up.

Good job, poll workers in Utah County!

Have you ever been sitting in a meeting or just driving down the street and see a black, middle easterner or obviously gay person and “The Thought” creeps into your mind.  Before you have a chance to stop it, you have entertained racist, prejudiced thoughts.  Thoughts that make you feel ashamed and dirty; thoughts you don’t believe and would never say out loud.  So, where did they come from?

 

The secret may lie deep in our brains in the Amygdala.  The Amygdala is an ancient part of the brain.  It is in charge of fear learning, most notably the “flight or fight” response.  Our large frontal lobes have given us lanquage and civilization but our poor little amygdalae have given us life by helping us survive long enough to get those large brains.

 

What does this have to do with prejudice?  Our amygdalae is in charge of making us afraid, but the amygdalae is not very bright.  It can’t store a lot of information so it has to store just a few unique things.  The amygdala is also not very good at figuring out what things we should be afraid of.  Chemicals released in the brain cause the amygdala to “store” or consolidate memories of events.  Our amygdala, activated by chemicals, chooses any unusual marker accompanying the threat.  It’s assumption is a good one, most of the time it is not active, so being activated is a unique event caused by unique circumstances.  Any unique sight, sound or smell is recorded to mark the event.  When the unique marker is experienced again the process works in reverse.  Chemicals are released to cause the “freeze or flee” response.  So could our amygdala cause prejudice by storing unusual skin coloring, clothing, or accents, and ignoring the unusual markers of the majority population?

 

Veterans who startle at fireworks or POW’s who cannot lock the doors to their homes are experiencing the amygdala at work.  Fireworks are not like mortar rounds to the rational mind, but to the amygdala the sound releases massive amounts of chemicals. 

 

9/11 was a beautiful, clear, blue, cloudless day.  One person who watched the planes crash into the buildings, gets a little anxious on crisp, clear autumn days when there is a slight chill in the air.  The amygdala scanned the memories of the day and picked out the obvious threats but also noted clear blue skies and cooler temperatures.  The information is not obviously relevant, but the amygdala doesn’t know or care.  It just knows something awful has happened which could cause it to go extinct.  Heart racing, chemicals pumping, the amygdala knows this is the real deal and stores information.

 

Why do I believe the amygdala has a role in developing racial and ethnic prejudices which lodge deep in our brains?  Have you noticed that prejudice is usually associated with minority populations and outward appearances?  You probably think this is a silly question.  But why don’t we have prejudice towards white people in mostly white populations or toward people who eat soup a certain way?  Behavior would be a more accurate way to be prejudiced against people because what we are afraid of is behavior, not skin color or whether a person is wearing a turban or kafia.  You can claim that American prejudice is because of our heritage of slavery, but prejudice was the reason and justification for slavery, not a result of it.  Also, in a 20/20 program, tests, which try to get at sub-conscious prejudices showed that blacks are also slightly prejudiced toward blacks.  If slavery was the cause of prejudice then why would blacks be slightly prejudiced against other blacks?

 

Any activity by blacks, which caused learning and fear at the same time would cause the amygdale to store “black” as a fear marker, in the same way it would store red frogs and not green frogs.  It would not store white skin as a marker because 80% of the populations is white.  That marker would not be helpful.  We can’t go around being startled by 80% of the population.  But let a black face show up on the nightly news often enough and the brain will start to associate blackness with a fear response. 

 

We are not afraid of the Amish because even though the don’t look like the rest of us, not many of them rob banks or commit violent crimes.  (perhaps they change out of their Amish clothes to look like the rest of us before resorting to a life of crime to support their lavish life style).

 

I now have a loathing of pudgy, white, middle aged men who are slightly balding.  This seems to be the appearance of child molesters.  My amygdale has seen this profile often enough to store this profile as a threat to me and I just don’t like them.  My next door neighbor was molesting his step-daughter and this is exactly how he looked.  So is this really helpful to me or a problem for my future survival as a gene carrier?  My amygdala has nothing to loose from my being afraid of pudgy, white, balding men, and everything to gain.  It may have identified the nicest people in the world as threats, but if just one of them is harmful, I am protected and have lost nothing from my prejudice, since there are so many other people who do not meet this criteria with whom I can associate.

 

Our conscious mind knows more than our amygdala and constantly dampens or reinforces our fears.  So why did Mel Gibson say what he did not mean?  Because he was drunk.  Alcohol depressed the rational brain and lets our amygdale do the talking.  Alcohol does not tell the truth of our whole mind.   Our amygdale is a child living in a murky, half understood world full of fear.  So if you are having white mans guilt over a thought that peeped into your brain while your conscious mind was idling, relax, you are not an evil bigot.  You are just a survivor of evolution with an active amygdala.

 

This is not to excuse joining the KKK, putting on a white sheet and burning crosses on another person’s front lawn.  The amygdala has nothing to do with that.  I mearly mean to try to offer an explanation for why we sometimes think what we do not mean and would never say out loud.  Our conscious brain has a role in controlling our amygdala and mitigating our fears.

 

Further research? – are there any populations where the population has subconscious prejudice against the majority?  (South Africa could work here, but you will have to show that black south Africans are subconsciously more afraid of blacks than whites)  Are there any populations which do not show sub-conscious fear of minority populations where they is crime amongst the minority population (Amish exception).

 

 

Reading: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Lifeby Johnson, Steven

New York : Scribner 2004   Wikipedia: search for Amygdala   Viewing: The Psychology of Stereotypes: Survival of the Fittest, Like animals, humans are biased.  ABC News, Sept 15th 2006.  By John Stossel and Kristina Kendall

I saw a PBS special showing Chinese doctors and government officials saying they do use harvested organs from executed prisoners.  China is becoming a world leader in organ transplants along with being a world leader in executions. 

The question is:  Would you go to China to get an organ transplant if you knew:

1. The organ was being harvested from a healthy live prisoner who was forced to give up part or all of one kidney? The prisoner was not killed and would live a long and healthy life without the kidney.
2. The organ was harvested from an executed prisoner who was guilty of murder?
3. The organ was harvested from an executed prisoner who was guilty of a capital crime in China but it was not murder?
4. The organ was harvested from an executed prisoner who was innocent?
5. What if it was not for you but for your parent?
6. What if it was not for you but for your child?

If you don't get the organ transplant, the patient will die.  You can't stop the executions and if you don't take the organ, someone else will.

 

The current definition of marriage:

Marriage - \mar-ig\ - the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family.

Gays want to change the definition of marriage to: the joining together of any two or more people in a legal bond for the purpose of having an intimate personal relationship.

The most common reasons cited for support of Gay marriage:

· Love

· Marriage gives heterosexual partners end of life rights not available to homosexual partners

· Benefits, like Social security and health insurance, are denied to homosexual spouses.

Love

I am amused when I hear Gay advocates say they are discriminated against because they can’t marry the person they love, as if love is the most compelling argument for gay marriage. As a heterosexual, married for more than 20 years, with children, I can assure Gay advocates that love as a reason for getting marriage is totally absurd.

Marriage has been existence for at least 5,000 years and until 100 years ago most people has no choice of when, if, or who they would marry. Marriage was created for the protection of women and children, passing of inheritance and to organize our social and political world. At higher levels of society, family and tribal bonds were created or strengthened by marriage.

Science has shown the chemicals in the brain which give us the feeling of being in love, rarely last more than two years. Love is a chemical imbalance, causing temporary insanity, which traps the young, inexperienced and innocent into making impossible promises to a complete stranger.

Gay advocates may wonder why the “LUV” reason has no resonance in the hetero world. For those of us creating families there is a spiritual and social aspect of marriage which transcends “LUV”. The production and rearing of children is the most important aspect of heterosexual marriage. Gay marriage can never produce children. Our society depends on the production of children. The production and rearing of children creates those spiritual and social bonds and serves societies needs. Society should reward those who are meeting societies needs by giving them special protection and benefits.

End of Life Benefits

The second argument is that marriage confers rights on married partners, like the ability to automatically inherit property and to manage health care when the partner is unable to make decisions. Since most heteros die single, either from death, divorce or from never having married, heteros don’t benefit from these laws.

The argument that married couples inherit each other’s property automatically at death is of little benefit. Most married couples have a will – or should – no good lawyer will advise married couples to rely on state inheritance laws. Many married couples make extensive plans, especially if they have property, to purposefully avoid the state laws of inheritance. The rights of inheritance in marriage laws, again, don’t benefit people who choose to avoid them or die single as outlined above.

My Mom and Dad were married for more than 55 years. My mother died. He was there to manage the end of life decisions and protect her interests, but no married partner is there for him. He is in the same position in terms of managing his own end of life decisions as a homosexual would be.

Gay advocates can’t argue they are being discriminated against because of sexual orientation because most heterosexuals don’t benefit from these laws. It is only the small percentage of people, who happen to be married when their spouse is ill or dies, and choose the use the laws, who benefit. Gay advocates overestimate this number.

Gays can and do create contracts and using living wills to the same effect as the laws governing marriage. So our laws do not keep gays from having the same rights as any single person or widow(er).

Social Security and Health Care Benefits

The argument for Social Security and Health Care benefits is also not compelling. If gays succeed in litigating spousal benefits from the Social Security administration and from employee or private health insurance companies, the result will be less benefits for everyone. Gay marriage will open up the definition of marriage to any grouping of two or more people. And, of course, there will be those few who use marriage simply to get benefits even though they really do not have an intimate personal relationship.

The social security system is bankrupt now and can’t give the benefits promised to its current beneficiaries. If gays succeed in getting those benefits, then the result will be fewer benefits for all, spreading the current sparse resources over a larger population. The current benefit for spouses is to reward and protect those who spent time producing and raising children. This is a benefit for society and should continue.

Employers are already struggling to maintain their insurance benefits and private health insurance companies are facing double digit increases in medical costs. How can employers and private health insurance companies begin to cover this on-slot of new beneficiaries? Faced with this problem, employers and private health insurance companies will retreat to covering only employees and not their families and/or stopping family coverage. Employees will have to pay for their “family” coverage out of their own pocket or possibly get other insurance not with their employer. Private insurance companies will allow individual coverage for adults and their children, but not allow “spouses” on the same plan. At a time when children are underserved, this would cause more children to be uninsured.

If marriage is open to any two or more adults then the benefits currently available to tradition men-women marriage will go away. Unveiled, the gay lobby’s push for marriage is about money and the normalization of the gay life style. In the end, their push for these benefits will result in all people losing those benefits and children will be hurt in the process. Heterosexual marriage, between one man and one woman, is an institution for the protection and production of children and as such, deserves special protection and benefits, not for the benefit of the married couple but for the benefit of children. Gay advocates should put aside their grasping for money and status to consider the children who will suffer as a result.

 

Al Gore wants you to be very, very worried. Al Gore claims the world is warming up which will cause all manner of ills. Al Gore says, “If we don’t do something drastic right now, we will all be very, very sorry”. The something Al Gore wants you to do is, stop living the American Dream. Good News, Al! Anyone with a 4^th grade education knows the world is getting warmer. The northern part of N. American was covered with a two mile thick ice sheets only 10,000-18,000 years ago. Remember the Bering Straight? It was covered with ice and now it isn’t. Perhaps my insistence that Al Gore is right is not making you feel better. Here are some other points to remember.

1. Technology exists today to remove carbon dioxide from the air. The technology is inexpensive and could be implemented today. Labs around the world are working on other solutions to remove greenhouse gases.
2. Many natural events could reverse global warming. Volcanic explosions have caused mini ice ages in the past. Yellow Stone National Park is a huge caldera volcano and, when it explodes, it will cause the climate of the earth to change dramatically. Scientists believe a meteor crashing into the earth caused the cooling period which killed the dinosaurs.
3. Global warming has been mostly beneficial to man by opening up vast land masses in the northern hemisphere to habitation and cultivation.
4. All the carbon we are releasing into the atmosphere was once in the air. It has been trapped underground in the form of oil and coal. The earth has been much, much warmer than it is now. Remember those dinosaurs?
5. Even if global warming is not reversed through technology or natural processes, man will survive. Men have survived at far extremes of the earth’s climate. Today, some live on polar ice caps, some live on the side of active volcanoes, and tropical jungles. Man will adapt and migrate.

So, stop worrying about global warming. If it doesn’t reverse itself through natural processes, we can reverse it using technology. If we choose not to reverse it, then we will have a different world to live in.   The challenges we face in the future from global warming are insignificant compared to the challenges in Europe during the Black Death or the violent revolutions and wars of the 20^th century.  We will survive and possibly thrive.

 

China has done a great job of reversing its population growth rate. Today, there are 1.7 births for every woman compared to 2.2 in the USA. The Chinese government expects to stop population growth at 1.4B Chinese.  The one child per couple policy has been the principle cause of the slow down in population growth.  The unintended consequence of the one child policy is an imbalance between boys and girls.  Government figures show 119 boys are born for every 100 girls.  This preference is deeply rooted in Chinese culture.

 

China to Keep Population Below 1.37b

(2006/01/07)

BEIJING, Jan.7 - China's population and family planning minister said here on Friday that China will work to limit its mainland population below 1.37 billion by 2010.

Zhang Weiqing, minister in charge of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, stressed that China will keep its family planning policy in place to maintain a low birth level.

"But demographically speaking, China will face another upsurge of population growth in the coming five years, and China's first single-child generation is about to enter reproductive age then, which make it all the more difficult to maintain a low birth level in the coming years," said Zhang.

Statistics from the commission show that China's population has been brought under control in the past 5 years, with birth rate and natural growth rate dropped from 14.03 per thousand to 12.29 per thousand and 7.58 per thousand to 5.87 per thousand respectively.

According to data released by commission, given China failed to implement the family planning policy, China's population would be nearly 400 million more than the present figure.

Zhang said China will continue to improve its legal system on population in an effort to work out laws and regulations to manage unbalanced sex ratio at birth.

Government figures show 119 boys are born for every 100 girls in the world's most populous nation. About 40 million men may live as frustrated bachelors by 2020.

(Source: Xinhuanet)

The imbalance of boys and girls is not just a problem for the “frustrated bachelors”; it is a problem for the survival of the Chinese as an ethnic population.   If current trends continue the Chinese population will peak at 1.4b and then begin to decline rapidly.  Why this rapid decline?  Women have babies, not men.  The number of births is not a function of the total population, but to the number of women of child bearing age.  In each succeeding generation, there are a decreasing total number of women. Women are only 45% of China’s child bearing age now, according to the U.S Census Bureau ( www.census.gov/ ( search for IDB Summary Demographic Data for China).  China’s government concludes that this trend will continue unless laws and regulations are changed to manage the imbalance.

But will this happen?    China’s repressive Communist regime has not been successful in eliminating the Confucianist prejudice against girls and for boys that is part of Chinese culture, why would it be able to do so now, when the government has far less control over people’s choices?  The Chinese government is falling behind in providing the basic health care and pension benefits for its people as promised by the Communist revolution.  The aging population will require more health and pension benefits.  The traditional Chinese old age program has been sons who were required to take care of their parents.  If the government can no longer keep its promises, then the population will revert to what has always worked in its culture, boys.  So, the pressure to have boys to provide for China’s growing aged population will grow, not diminish.

If the government begins to offer incentives to have more girls, this will only make the problem worse.  For instance if a family has a boy child first, through accident or sex selection procedures, and the government offers an incentive for them to have another child,  there is more than a 50% chance that the child will be a boy anyway, because at birth there are slightly more boys than girls (about 5%).  If a family has a girl first, there will be no incentive for the government to offer an incentive to the family, therefore there will be an incentive for families to ensure that they have a boy first, not a girl.  Either way, the population will become more and more skewed toward males.

If the current trends are plotted, the last Chinese person will be born in year 3546.  So that 1500 years from today, there will be no pure Chinese ethnic people.  But before that happens, the Chinese culture will die.  In a mere 300 years the Chinese population will fall from 1.3b to 391 million (assumes no migration).  This population loss will be accompanied by mass migration of the bachelor males from China.  11% of males between the ages of 20 and 34 could be without partners.  In 2026 this is the equivalent of about 12 million men.  Presumably, only the educated will be able to migrate to other countries, leaving behind, the lucky (able to find partners) or the uneducated.

Many books and articles have predicted that China will funnel its excess males into the military and set out to conquer the world.  I disagree.  China’s aging population, severe environmental problems, fragile military dictatorship, increasing economic dependence on the west will not make it possible for them begin military adventurism.  The Chinese are smart and will choose the cheaper and less disruptive option of migration, not war.

Of course, the Chinese will try to reverse their one child policy to reverse the total population decline.   Instead of limiting the number of children it can simply encourage lots of children, hopefully relieving the pressure for sex selection.  China’s emerging middle class has high aspirations and with increasing aspiration comes declining birth rates.  Women also, have high aspirations and high aspirations for their children.  Having seen the benefits of single child families to provide better education and housing for their children, and after a life time of indoctrination by their government, it is not likely that the government will be able to reverse the trend quickly.

China is beginning a necessary but dangerous path to decrease population.   Ancient Rome had the same problem with gender imbalance.  Girls were routinely exposed because they could not carry on the family name and they required a dowry.  Some scholars believe this may have contributed to the decline of the Roman empire.  Hopefully the world’s oldest and greatest civilization can reinvent itself again in order to reverse the population freefall that could result from the current trends.

 

I recently moved to a great neighborhood in Utah. The area I live in is 90% LDS. My neighbors are the best I have ever had. They are concerned, giving and very connected to one another. Living here is like stepping back in time 50 years. They are also very intelligent, educated and well read.

I read a few books on the LDS church before I moved, but I was completely unprepared for the culture shock. Before I moved to Utah, I thought Mormons were just another branch of the Christian faith, like Seventh Day Adventist, but they are as far removed from traditional Christianity as Hinduism is.

.Below is a partial list of Mormon doctrines that contradict traditional Christianity.

• Men can becomes gods of their own planet if they perform enough of the right “sacraments”
• Without polygamy, men can’t become gods
• god has a physical body and has sex with his wife in heaven to produce spirit babies
• Families are sealed together and spend eternity together
• Dead people can be baptized in the Mormon Church and have a chance to enter the Mormon Church after they are dead.
• All Christian history, after the original 12 apostles died, has been false and the LDS church is the one true Christian church.
• No one can be saved unless they are LDS.

This is the culture shock: How can people who seem so accomplished, believe this crazy LDS religion. It is mind boggling to me. It also created the crisis that caused me to loose my faith

These educated, well meaning people, living in a predominantly Christian culture, are polytheist pagans. At first I was amazed, and then angry. Amazed, because the LDS Church twists and perverts Christianity to something that can no longer be recognized as Christian and is the exact opposite of Christian belief. Angry, because they call themselves the one and only true Christian faith.

So why does all of this make me loose my faith? As I stood aghast at the mindless, unthinking acceptance of the bizarre and non-biblical Mormon doctrines, I turned the mirror around and wondered if I was also blind to my own cultural and family prejudices. After reading several books by Jews on why they do not accept Christ or the teaching of the New Testament, I realized I had never questioned the basic foundation of Christianity. Does the Old Testament predict Jesus Christ? Is the Christ to be God? Did Jesus fulfill the predictions concerning the Christ? Do the Jews need a savior? The answer to all of these is, no. The New Testament has no foundation in the Old Testament, therefore, Christianity is either, a true, but new religion without a foundation in any other religion or it is false.

I can’t believe in a brand new religion that relies on mysteries and bizarre contortions of logic to be believed – Christian or Mormon.

Thanks to my wonderful Mormon neighbors, I realized there is nothing illogical or irrational that reasonable people won’t fervently believe if they are taught it early enough.

  Many atheists argue against belief in God by using the problem of pain.  The argument goes: If God is good, he would not want his people to be in pain.  If God is all powerful, he could prevent his people from being in pain.  His people are in pain.  Therefore, God is either not all powerful, or not good.  Seemingly this is an insurmountable argument.  Many people, including C.S. Lewis, who wrote the book "The Problem of Pain",  have argued convincingly that this argument has holes in it on many levels.  But, all of the arguments argue from a human point of view and don't really take into account God's very difficult problem.

God's very difficult problem is to keep humans, who are 100% certain to die, from thinking about death every day.  Death is an unavoidable fact of life which everyone fears yet most people go for years without thinking about.

Contrast this with the myriad of fears that keep people up at night: global warming, burglary, fear of child abduction.  Most things people fear won't happen.  Yet, we obsess on the statistically improbable and unvoid thinking of the certain.

I propose that this is only possible because of the infinitely variable way people die.  When talking to people about a loved one's death, one gets the impression that the deceased would never have died if it were not for unusual, random, completely unforseen circumstances.  Even when looking at the deceased in the coffin, we can still manage to avoid thinking about our deaths.

There are 6 billion people in the world with an average life span of 50 years.  God must kill 120 million people each year.  That is about 330,000 people per day.  If our world were not dangerous and painful then how could God accomplish this?  Perhaps he could have everyone die peacefully in their sleep or get run over by a bus?  Maybe, we would all fall asleep in the snow?  But imagine how we would all feel about sleep, or taking the bus or snow.  They would all be harbingers of death.  If a pattern ever started to become apparent, people would be obsessed with death.  Just see what has happened with power lines and cancer.  Although no scientific link has been established between power lines and cancer, there were law suits and prime-time specials.  Like wise, cell phones and brain cancer.  If any of us began to understand how our deaths would be caused; to what lengths would we go to avoid the circumstances. What if we knew we would drown?  Would we bathe, do the dishes or the laundry?

The amazing randomness and the infinite variety of death must necessitate a dangerous and painful world.  Ironically, it is the very unpredictable and dangerous nature of the world we live in which allows us to stop thinking about our deaths long enough to plan, love and laugh.  Our pain and our death's in all their variety are a necessity if we are to live productive and hopeful lives.

God's existence is not proved by the dangerous and painful world we live in, but it is certainly not disproved.