Voters

The problem isn't that a rat runs for public office telling voters it's a gerbil. Voters see it's a rat, agree it's a gerbil, and vote it into office to eventually discover to their horror it's a rat.

Opportunity

You can go buy a door at Home Depot, hang it from a tree, sit on one side and wait for opportunity to knock - or become and make what draws people who are opportunity. 

Two Types of Good People

If gardeners behaved like many good people do, gardens would be mostly weeds. Thank God there's another type of good people.

Voting

Voting has two attributes. One is that its a free action, the other is that it's non-retractable. The performance of a vote is an individual's life (what ever the array of motives, values, assessments, judgments and prejudices (all humans have prejudices), etc) for an individual to represent them. 

Grammar

Grammar is not genius; understanding intent and meaning is.

Liberalism

Liberalism: a state of mind liberated from reason and memory.

Value

There are those who keep warm by sitting under a star, and those by sitting by the fire. The wise will understand this.

Ego Deforms

Intelligence has no ego so never let ego be involved in your dealings with those with views deformed from their own.

Blindsight

Our enemies live with us. But our government suspects we are them. While government and citizens dally with strawmen, our real enemies look like them.

Social Stew

Though the stew appears to be egalitarian, it can be a meritocracy of scum if its not periodically stirred from its indolence.

Mindfulness

I cannot behave in a world I don't know or understand. If I only know and understand myself, I most likely achieve nothing more than contempt, hatred, bigotry, and destruction of others. I watch, listen, read and learn, instead - without having to agree.

A Betting Vote

Money is the first vote in politics.

Pretty Colors

If only people were like flowers, colors would take the place of strife.

Ideologues Don't Reason

Ideologues perform thinking and action based on an ideological template they rarely, if ever, deviate from. Not only their thinking is performed via ideology, but it's often their reason d'être. All too frequently an ideology has an object for hatred - on a small scale or large, it must hurt, punish or more, subtly or conspicuously. Most ideologies have no shame or guilt. The ideology justifies the ideologue. Notwithstanding all these characteristics, the most bizarre is ideologues believing themselves intellectually superior to others.

Nature

Nature abhors perfection or Nature would end.

Interior Design

A room without art is like roots to stem without a flower.

Simplicity

The fewer assumptions, the simpler life.

Socialism

Socialism: Where your neighbor is rankled you own something he or she does not own and reports you to a government official who is rankled you enjoy owning something he or she owns and enjoys, too.

IQ and Belief in God

Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God' posted on StumbleUpon, Jun 13, 2008

This is an interesting article, which if drawn further would presume that those who don't believe in God have high IQs.

Yet for all this, those with high IQs are still susceptible to logical fallacies and irregular ratiocinations. The daily news is rife with examples.

IQ measures, without troubling ourselves with the Flynn effect, cognitive ability, intellectual ability, not raw native 'intelligence' which frequently manifests in circumstances and episodes of daily life. IQ tests only what it can measure: spatial, language, mathematical and memory abilities. Yes, the operational word is abilities. And there are many more abilities than are tested as are found in the arts or persausion as in salesmanship, oratory and leadership, all in their best performance frequently called genius.

Coming back to abilities, this would be like having a test for sports ability, measuring reflex, jumping, running, throwing and kicking, and weight resistance abilities. You'd probably say, 'But wait a minute, there are other abilities that can be measured, too.' Yes, for cognitive measures as well.

Nevertheless, in the end, cognitive ability testing distills into one number, called IQ. It would hardly be accepted if physical ability measures were measured and displayed as one number. People might say it's upsurd. I'd agree, even in the case of a number called IQ.

Without extending this, I'll get to the point. People with a high number in anything, whether money, friends, medals, trophies, or abilities are by themselves irrelevant to a belief in God. There is something else that's going on.

It is most likely that those with high IQs are socially comfortable under professional disciplines that obviate institutional religious discipline and, as a result, have no need for a 'master' called God, and find their cognitive status and access to modern auxilaries of technology gives them a sense of independent dominion over life - and a feeling they are the measure of all things.

And this now begins to touch on the subject of their belief.

Growing

Life doesn't grow to its roots, it grows to its stems. I'm happy to grow to my limits and let life's manure help through my roots.

INTJ

I am an INTJ, profoundly spiritual and respectful of all religions that serve and make wise, passionate and compassionate, with boundless curiosity, infinite zeal for freedom, undying allegiance to common sense and reason, contempt for intellectual bigotry, and a love for right like honey on my lips, and an undying hate for evil.

Genius II

I'm a genius for I admit my mistakes.

Lipstick

Women wear lipstick to protect themselves from warts while kissing frogs to find a prince.

Genius I

Creativity is genius, Everything else is iteration.

Ignorance

Ignorance is the eventual horror of bliss.