The Price Of Life Is Death

Tucson Weather Today

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Today is Valentine's Day.
(Enough said about that)

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The subject of rectifying financial inequality among the people of the world is one of those topics that sits rocking precariously within my mind, tipping first one way then the other in concert with my changes in perception and judgment of the state of my surroundings. Should there be something done about it, or not?

According to Wikipedia, Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is the current Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, he is also the 12th-richest person in the United States.

The 12th richest? There are eleven people who are richer than that in the United States?

Great Caesar's Ghost!

I read that Bloomberg has expressed concern about poverty and growing class divisions stating, "This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing." And I suspect that this is true. But I wonder what his motive is for stating it.

BIRTHDAY

Michael Bloomberg

Michael Bloomberg was
born February 14, 1942

One answer might be for the peoples of the world to seize all the assets and all the wealth of every single citizen of the Earth, leaving each one of them only enough to survive in reasonable (although not in excessive) comfort and to dedicate everything collected to solving the much touted incidence of global warming.

No?

Why not? Is personal gain more important than survival of the planet?

Yes. Of course it is. Where have you been living on all your life?

Besides, global warming is a planetary problem, and is possibly a solar phenomenon. The puny race of human beings cannot stop it. Or, even if it can... it won't.

The rich and the poor of every nation wage an ongoing war with each other, sometimes by an almost unnoticed wearing down as if by water trickling away the bedrock below, and at other times with an all-out murderous conflagration from loosened flames of furious fires, but always -- always -- embroiled in consistent conflict.

Sanity?

What's that?

Events and circumstances in nature occur not as they should, but as they must.

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"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning."
--Bill Gates

Just Musing Is All

Tucson Weather Today

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It seems to me that the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit imposing and collecting taxes from the annual income extorted from the citizens by the many organized religious institutions. After all, the first amendment in the Bill Of Rights states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Taxing money collected by a Church does not impinge upon the free exercise of church goers to practice their religion.

I recently read somewhere that in 2007 Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson) was reported to have given $10 million to The Church of Scientology. That is surely a mere drop in the bucket when so many wealthy celebrities call themselves Scientologists (John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and others) and who probably also donate huge 'tax deductible' amounts to the organization.

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If I Ruled The World is the title of a short piece by Steven Pinker wherein he decrees the following rule on pundits: No one may bemoan a decay, decline, or degeneration without providing a measure of the way the world is today...

This decree would, first of all, eliminate tedious jeremiads about the decline of the language. The genre has been around for centuries, and if the doomsayers were correct we would now be grunting like Tarzan. But not only do we see vast amounts of clear and competent prose in everyday outlets like Wikipedia and Amazon reviews, but a gusher of superb writing appearing daily, as anyone who has lost a morning to sites like The Browser and Arts and Letters Daily can attest.

This is an entertaining and (in my opinion) informative article and most thinking people will enjoy reading it.

Steven Pinker is professor of psychology at Harvard University.

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Memento mori