US WWII vets are war criminals

At least the ones serving the pacific front. Just finished watching the anime movie Graveyard of the Fireflies which is a story about the US firebombing urban housing areas on mainland japan, aka civilian targets, in WW2. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to happen because they ended wars, current and potential and saved lives. The target areas were business districts, a civilian target but not targeting civilians per say. Creating firestorms out of wood houses in Japanese urban population areas and indiscriminately killing in one of the most horrible ways possible (burns suck) 100,000s of women and children (since all the man were out at war) is barbaric. As far as I know Japan never attack a US civilian target, and it certainly had the opportunity. I'm thankful most WW2 vets arnt around any more..I dont generally enjoying kicking old people in the nutz.

What I'm Playing 11/30

Playing :

Xcom Enemy Within :: was on sale for Black Friday so I picked it up. The original game sat unplayed like all year on my desktop (got it for 5 bucks on sale a while ago)..I had heard they made it into a FPS but after watching some great lets play videos it clearly is a very fun game very much in line with the original 90s classic. 2K games did right by Xcom..thats not to say I forgive them for civ5 or the GTA series.

Sots The Pit Gold :: Another game bought on sale that sat on my desktop unplayed for the longest time. These developers epically blew their AAA debut but The Pit is a great little scifi rougelike. Its an "old school" game designed to do everything it can to defeat the player..there are 45 levels and I rarely make it past 10.

Pandora First contact :: Beta tested this game and wasnt going to buy it, but the Beta tester discount was too good to say no to. I love me cheap games. This is a beautiful "Civ in space" game that may be a real winner in the future if the devs fill in the empty but pretty shell the game is now with content.

Looking to Play ::

Hearthstone :: I've been watching a lot of lets plays for Blizzards card gambling game  "Hearthstone". Its an evil evil game that will make Blizzard lots of ill gotten gains 1 dollar at a time from their 10 million customers. I really want to hate it..but it looks fun. You can play without paying $$ and earn enough winnings to keep playing..god its evil. Blizzards stupid 15 different levels of security features on players account have been keeping me from using my account...hopefully customer service will be able to help me without a DNA test.

Watching : Downloaded Seasons 11,12,13 of South Park. Always a great laugh. downloaded the anime historical drama "Graveyard of the Fireflies", which is a really depressing movie about the firebombing of Japanese cities by the US in WW2 as seen through 2 homeless children. Cant seem to turn on the internet without tripping over stories about the US killing 100,000+  random civilian in some foreign county we have no business being in. Oh NO Japan has claimed some pissy 1 mile island in the pacific! Lets slaughter 100s of innocent families with FIRE so they die in the most horrible prolonged way imaginable!

Obama: Turkeys pardoned 10 vs non violent Humans 11

This story just sums up Americans for me. The justice system that everyone feels is broken in sucking the life out of 100,000 people plus their families. Turkeys need to be abused and stuffed with food to get to that weight. The thanksgiving story is bad history. The president that got elected to change things doing more of the same. The American public who isnt outraged at how hurtful this hypocrisy must be for the families of (mostly inappropriately and unproductively) incarcerated Americans.

It seems like such a nice, cute little ceremony. But things stop being cute in the face of blatant hypocrisy. These ceremonies of light become a reminder to those of us with any values whatsoever how far we've fallen. And how America will eat the cake whether its our birthday or not.

Where culture and faith intersect with religion

My mother writes me on Facebook all the time suggesting I shouldn't be publicly critical of the Jews and Israel. She misunderstands; I'm criticizing society for mistaking the mental illness of addiction as faith. Faith is critical component to creating good moral citizens and a huge part of what is missing in today society. I mean philosophical faith aka spirituality- not dogmatic fervor. My issue is with the culturally, human develop dogma that taints religion. Dont get me wrong,  religion isnt all bad, its just being misused. Religion is an expression of culture; a tool we use to teach people how to behave in society. It is largely meant for CHILDREN and is suppose to fall away to great philosophy musing during adulthood where most people dont need the fear of internal damnation to be reminded to not steal or rape your neighbors goat. Religion is also of the past. It is another word for tradition. It is a list of things a community has done before in order to get closer to god but it is certainly not the only path available. Religion is not divinely inspired - its what worked for a community in the past. The old "well thats how my father did it, and my father before him so it must be right" routine. When the orthodox say "this is how god wants us to live" I am reminded of the robot who keeps performing the motions of a task, regardless of whether the purpose of that task has been completed, because no one has come around and given the robot new instructions. The purpose of life is not to pay congressional dues in order to sit year after year reading the same child's parable over and over. No higher being wants you to live your life based on 3000yo standards. If you think living like that helps you get closer to god, fine, its a good thing to want higher understanding. But to say what works for you is everyone needs to act, including your children, is totally selfish. As if your mold is the only mold for the key to infinite wisdom. There are kids out there who you can definitely say were born orthodox. And there are kids being pressed by virtue of their parents closed minded self centered ego, or in the name of tradition, onto a path to god that doesnt work for them.

Religion is not the same as faith or cultural tradition. It is a tool to help people get a leg up on their spiritual journey. People who need it as crutch to live their adult lives should be given their space and their peace, but not treated as equals because they are psychologically missing something that lets healthy people have spirituality and live in the present. They are like addicts, using dogma to fill a missing hole like meth fills in for missing chemicals. The addiction may not be their fault - they could be a product of cultural brainwashing. And that is the main reason we can not be accepting of this lifestyle. Cycle of addiction runs in families and communities. The more we accept them the more likely the children of these people will emulate their behavior and suffer the same spiritual deformity.(and by that I mean people who pass on the idea that their ritual is the only spiritual answer and allow no others in their home)

Am I missing a zero somewhere?

Interesting article over on the libertarian news website. I dont agree with everything there but apparently it would cost 6 trillion dollars for the government to give every American 20K/year to cover living expense. And thats about how much we bring in with our pathetically low taxes. If we raised taxes on the wealth horders we could cover this and still have a budget to play with. 20k isnt much but since it does include babies and 100yos..I think it would be big net gain in quality of living for the majority. More people could escape the fight for basic survive and take a ride on that land of opportunity bus the rich are always talking about.

My visit with the God of Abraham

Last night I had a really vivid dream. I often have complicated "real feeling" dreams but this one really felt like it was me..just somewhere else. It started out with me teaching scuba diving lessons at some huge stone, square pillar thing in the middle of the ocean. There was another scuba group there and they were misbehaving somehow though I dont remember now what they were doing. I think it was something destructive to the coral. Anyhow I decided to go and complain to the owner of that scuba club, who lived in a giant overturned ark and turned out to be a Jewish Rabbi. Healthy-skinny, white American jewish young-ish man with a long will trimmed black beard short black hair and a skullcap. The inside of his arc-house has all well polished wood, gold candelsticks, large rooms with vaulted ceiling far from the floor. He invited us in and we went to his study where he listened to my complaint and said he didnt manage the club actively and I'd have to take it up with the guys misbehaving. So he walked us back to the door (where we passed the bedroom of an ex-girlfriend of mine who was apparently staying with this guy) and before I left I told him, with the purpose of a 1-uping him, I was also a Rabbi and could sing Hebrew. The huge vaulted ceiling had impressed me with their acoustic potential (which I remember saying to myself in the dream) and I belted out the most beautiful heartbreaking version of the prayer over the wine I've ever heard, which was amplified and echo'd by the wooding ceilings. This is the really vivid part of the dream. I can still remember how melodic I sung. At some point my voice was hijacked and the voice singing became feminine and even more lovely and I got the impression that it was coming from the ceiling itself. At which point the Rabbi said "You realize we we could really use a beautiful voice like that in our congregation, and I said "you realize we are destine to be lifelong enemies?" This was over the scuba diving issue..and I didnt think of him as a god at the time..but I remember thinking about the voices sing back in terms of angels at the time. The Rabbi smiled sadly and let us out. And that was the end of the dream.

I am thinking the Rabbi was the Jewish God and the feminizing voice was the angels in Heaven singing back at me. I didnt realize in the dream but the prayer over the wine starts with a blessing about how great god is..so I was trying to one-up this God by blessing him and telling him he is great? Prob thought I was a idiot.