thoughts

This recipe is based on the Award Winning “Chocolate Hazelnut Torte” recipe by Elizabeth Reynolds of Benton, Kentucky.  I have adapted it by switching to Macadamia nuts and a few other changes. The sassy comments are my own and should never reflect poorly on Ms. Reynolds, who I am sure is a very nice lady.

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Formatted version of this recipe: PDF File

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Cake

• 4 Spring-Form and/or Non-Stick pans (You can use 2 pans if you are magical enough to slice delicate cakes in half.  I’m not that magical.)
  
  

• About 1-2 Tablespoons confectioners’ sugar or flour
  
  

• 6 eggs separated
  
  

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  
  

• 1 1/3 cups ground toasted Macadamia Nuts (about 12 oz if preground, 6 oz whole nuts).  (Be sure to get them “dry toasted” or “dry roasted.” Otherwise, when you grind them up they will turn into butter.  Ever hear of Peanut Butter? If you get the wrong kind, you’ll end up with “The $50 Home Baked Just Like Momma Never Made Hawaiian Style Kentucky Born Macadamia Nut Butter.”)
  
  

• 1 teaspoon grated orange peel (alternative: lemon zest)
  
  

• 2 Tablespoons orange juice (alternative: lemon juice)
  
  

• 2 Tablespoons dried bread crumbs (substitute Matzo meal for that down home Yiddish Style Hawaiian Style Kentucky Born torte.  BTW, this makes the torte suitable for Passover but check with your Rabbi and/or conscience first.)
  
  

Filling

• 3 cups heavy or whipping cream
  
  

• 3/4 cups sugar
  
  

• 1 cup ground toasted Macadamia nuts (about 9 oz if preground, 4 oz whole nuts)
  
  

Frosting

• 2 egg yolks
  
  

• 2 Tablespoons sugar
  
  

• 1/4 cup butter or margarine
  
  

• 2 squares (1 oz. each) semisweet chocolate
  
  

• 1 Tablespoon ground toasted Macadamia nuts (to sprinkle on the top of the cake for a pretty presentation)
  
  

Nuts Preparation

Grind the nuts as finely as possible.  Some people like to crunch their teeth into nuts when they eat nut-based cakes.  But for this cake the experience is enhanced by the ethereal flavor provided by the less-than-substantial macadamia nut powder.  Grinding nuts this fine — without turning them into butter — takes a lot of patience. It may be worth it to you to buy the nuts in powder/meal form which really drives up the cost of the cake, assuming you can find a place that sells macadamia nut meal anyway.  The whole recipe needs about 2 1/2 cups of ground nuts powder, about 21-22 oz.

Cake Preparation

Preheat oven to 325˚F (162˚ C).  Lightly grease the Spring-Form and/or Non-Stick pans and coat with confectioner’s sugar (or flour).  I always end up cursing the Kitchen Gods when I try to get these cakes out of the pans unless I use Spring-Form and/or Non-Stick pans.  Don’t think about it. Just buy the pans and amortize their cost over a lifetime of baking this recipe. You’re spending $40 on the nuts, so what’s a few dollars more for Spring-Form and/or Non-Stick pans that you’ll reuse anyway?  And while you’re at it, get four 8-inch Spring-Form and/or Non-Stick pans.  Trust me on this.

Beat egg whites until stiff.  Set aside.

Beat egg yolks at high speed until lemon colored.  Gradually add sugar, two Tablespoons at a time, beating well after each addition.  Fold in Macadamia nuts, orange (alternative: lemon) peel, juice, and bread crumbs until well mixed.

Fold yolk mixture into whites — gently — until well combined.

Divide the cake mixture into the four Spring-Form and/or Non-Stick pans.  You did get four pans, didn’t you?  You didn’t skimp and only buy two, did you?  If you bought only two, then Divide the cake mixture into the two Spring-Form and/or Non-Stick pans.

Bake 40 minutes or until surface of cake springs back when pressed with fingertips.

Cool fully, at least one hour, in the pans inverted on cake rack.

Remove from pans when cool.  If you had listened to me earlier and bought four Spring-Form and/or Non-Stick pans, you’d be done by now.  Instead, now you have to go and split the two cakes to make four layers, and curse or bless the Kitchen Knife Gods.  Either way, you should end up with four layers in all.

Filling Preparation

Beat cream.  Gradually add sugar and continue beating until soft peaks form.  I like to keep beating until flecks of butter start to appear in the whipped cream.  Fold in nuts. Set aside, and don’t eat any… if you can… this stuff is heavenly. Especially of you ground the nuts into fine powder like I told you to.

Frosting Preparation

Melt butter and chocolate together.  I like to do this in a double boiler to guarantee that I don’t burn it.  Set aside.

Beat yolks with sugar until thick and light.  Add butter and chocolate mixture, continuing the beating until well mixed.  This makes about 3/4 cups. Set aside. Be sure that it cools somewhat: not so warm that it is runny and not so cold that it cannot be spread.

Assembly

Spread 1/4 of Filling on one layer.  Top with another cake layer. Repeat two more times.  Top with remaining layer. Use lots of the filling between the layers.  There is lots of it available.

Slather sides with remaining Filling.  Eat the rest from the bowl.

Spread top of cake with cooled Frosting.

Sprinkle top with 1 (one) Tablespoon of ground Macadamia nuts.

Refrigerate until ready to serve — up to 4 hours.  Makes 12 to 16 servings. Sell by the slice, but charge at least $4 per piece or you’ll never make back your expenses.

All people who work in technology, as I do, should read some of the poem “Psychomachia” by the poet Prudentius from the 4th century, from which we get the wisdom “Patience is a Virtue”:

Here, in part: (Full text: http://web.archive.org/web/20020429135514/http://www.richmond.edu/~wstevens/grvaltexts/psychomachia.html):

[,,,] Longanimity or Patience comes on to the field. she is standing by the side watching the uproar of that combat: her quiet expression never changes as spears inflict their mortal wounds. Wrath, from, a great distance, spies the easy-tempered virtue and all at once becomes enraged. Baring her teeth in anger and letting flecks of foam fall from her gaping black mouth, the vice darts her bloodshot eyes this way and that and challenges Patience to fight both by brandishing the weapons of combat and by making a speech: she mocks Patience for keeping a place on the side. infuriated by such reticence, Wrath throws a spear and abuses the meek, long-suffering virtue: ‘This is for fools like you who stand aside and watch the combat without expressing favour. Take this wound in your gentle breast without crying; you would be dishonoured to admit any pain! With these words a shaft of pine is hurled through the air. Thrown with a good aim, the long sharp shaft strikes against the belly of Patience but falls into the dust. The virtue has wrapped her body in a jacket of steel links: this garment is three layers in thickness and its fabric is stitched together with leather. Longanimity stands there quite unruffled while a storm of weapons falls at her brave feet; she keeps such a line of defence that nothing injures her. While she stands unmoving, Patience watches her foe rage in an uncontrolled frenzy. But Patience waits because Wrath will perish by her own violence. When that opponent has finally exhausted her strength and used all of her weapons her right hand is useless and the ground is littered with weapons. Then she reaches-for a sword: raising the steel blade high over her head, she brings it down on the head of Patience, but a helmet of forged bronze only rings under that great blow. The sword its edge blunted, rebounds; the unbending helmet shatters it and Patience still stands there, unmoved, as she was before. The fury of Wrath is multiplied: with her sword scattered about her feet, she throws the hilt aside and finds herself without weapons. Only one thing remains: she had spent all her energies and won nothing for herself; her unreasoning anger turns on herself and she prepares for suicide. She picks up one of her useless weapons; she puts the shaft in the dirt and falls on the upturned point. Patience stands over Wrath and speaks: ‘We have conquered. With no danger to life our accustomed virtue has won the day again. This is the way we live, wiping out the devils of passion and all their attendant evils by standing as they attack. Wrath is its own enemy, Fury kills herself.

The emphasis is mine. (It’s safe to assume Prudentius didn’t use HTML / CSS formatting.)

God called the stars by name in their courses and they answered him from eternity to eternity.

—  Moses Maimonides

Thanks to my new friend, Mary M—-, for this quote.  It made my day.  It’s possible that the quote is not Maimonides’, but the Book of Enoch.  See below.

FYI, Biblical references to calling the stars by name —

Psalms 147:4 and Here :   He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name.

Isaiah 40:26 : Lift up your eyes on high, and see: who hath created these? He that bringeth out their host by number, He calleth them all by name; by the greatness of His might, and for that He is strong in power, not one faileth.

Also see the Book of Enoch 69:21 —

And through that oath the stars complete their course,
And He calls them by their names,
And they answer Him from eternity to eternity.

I’ve been re-reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. Early on, during a (fictional) conversation, Alan Turing comments that all math (and therefore everything of importance in Turing’s world) can be reduced to symbols.

For example, the number 5 is a symbol representing five somethings. Maybe five pickles, five clouds, five angels on the head of a pin, five amorphous interwoven boundary-less concepts, five people.

The symbol can be manipulated without affecting the things it represents.
Math can be applied to the 5.

The symbol 5 can be encrypted, transmitted, decrypted, read, stored, and redundantly backed up. Because the 5 is a symbol, an icon that is a representation of other meaning besides the symbol itself.

So:
Let X = Spirit    /* X is a symbol representing the big "S" Spirit, or Self */
Let X = pow(X,X)  /* Raise X to the Xth power; Increase Spirit to the Spirit power */
Transmit(X)       /* Cast the Spirit upon the waters */
While (true) { Receive(X) } /* Get more Spirit back forever */

When the symbol is transmitted, actually we hope to transmit the Spirit; that a properly-outfitted receiver will get the Spirit. Is this because the transmitter and receiver had previously learned and agreed that this symbol is a shorthand for the Spirit? Or does the Spirit itself get transmitted along with the symbol?

My daughter, Sarah, has written about a related topic, exploring the limits of Reason when dealing with the spiritual / artistic / heavenly:

There is a vast complexity in the world that Reason cannot hold.
Reason is masculine, the Tarotic Emperor, that wishes to control
everything and make Heaven into an orrery. It cannot succeed, and in
attempting it necessarily discards that which it cannot hold. It does
not understand that observing collapses the wave-function, that the mere
asking the question causes the answer to become, once divine and
all-[knowing/pervading/consuming], now dead and mundane.

In an article on Politico.com titled “Osama bin Laden raid yields trove of computer data”, one official said, “Can you imagine what’s on Osama bin Laden’s hard drive?”

Wow, now there’s an opening for a parlor game!    (Or a top-10 list… David Letterman, are you reading this?)

Let’s see:

• nude pictures of 72 virgins;

• draft of a love letter to Jodi Foster asking if she was impressed by his 9/11 attack;

• high scores in Minesweeper (top score: 0 — he was always LOOKING for the bombs so he could blow himself up);

• email from a banker in Nigeria promising to help “Ben Laden” find lost millions;

• 10 years’ worth of files updating Adobe Reader;

• a list of “suicide bomber of the week”, with the top few names crossed off;

• a crossword puzzle with all the answers filled in with “Ba-wah-hah-hah!”

For fun, I tell people I’m a scientist, working in fictional professions:

1. Etymological Entomologist

• Studies Book Worms

2. Pachydermal Ichthyologist

• Studies swimming elephants : Facts & Video — What, you’ve never heard of elephant seals?

3. Phantasmological Mathematician

• Studies ghostly and spiritual math as in:

Question: Spencer the Sociable Spirit and his 5 friends — Casper, Wendy, Hot Stuff, Spooky, and Pearl — all want to sit on a fence post. How many rails and posts does the fence need so they all can sit on a fencepost at the same time?

Answer: 5 rails and 6 posts. Every fence has 1 more post than rails.  Confused?  Imagine a fence with only one rail ( it looks like this: |-| ).   See? Two posts has one Rail. Similarly 3 posts has 2 rails: |-|-| and so on…

This is known in Phantasmological Mathematics as the “Spence Ghost Problem”. (That’s a joke, son. Don’t get it? See Fencepost Problem) *

  * Careful readers will note that ghosts don’t sit anyway. They float non-mathematically above this sort of pun.

Here’s my comment on this video: http://www.youtube.com/comment?lc=qsrjM6kdoUk4jFCzgwgesYOR7XOmR8qrJvVPYzotPS0

I’m no fan of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. But her thinking is clear and this interview makes an excellent introduction. This video gets my strong thumbs-up.

But Objectivism starts with a false premise, thus leads to a false conclusion. The false premise is rejection of a human soul and the innate value of that soul; so naturally her conclusion is that rational thought alone is how human value should be judged.

Valuing soul and rationality BOTH together form a human’s total value.

In addition, “soul and rationality” is equivalent to “inner and outer”, and similar to “mind and body”

In my job we use Agile / Scrum to manage our projects. One of my petty annoyances is the inability to use Story Points in a meaningful way outside of the context of the individual scrum team. This is annoying to me because it should be one of the easiest to use.

Story Points are supposed to be all about estimating very generally how much effort it will take to do something.  Its purpose is to look into the future and make an educated guess.  It recognizes that (a) we can’t accurately predict the future; (b) we’ll get a better estimate later; (c) we don’t need to know more detail now; (d) anyway, we ought to be able to know whether the thing is Small, Medium, Large, or Gargantuan.

However, technical people don’t like definitions that are intentionally unspecific.  They want to use Numbers … and when do they happily begin doing Math to the numbers and lie to themselves, thinking they are being Precise … when in reality their information is vague.

So I have a proposal…  Eddie’s Rule of Halves.  These kind of look like they are Numbers but are also Vague.  Still, they convey the sense of how much effort is involved to people outside of the individual scrum team:

• Half a Day

• Half a Week

• Half a Month  (gee, that looks a lot like a two-week Sprint….  Hmmmm….)

• Half a Year

Update: This is more than an annoyance.  Since our department (and enterprise) are trying to prioritize, schedule, and balance resources across multiple scrum teams and outside of the IT organization, using the language of Days, Weeks, Months, Years is consistent across everybody involved. Remember that these values are no more or less accurate than story points.  They are just a common currency that is meaningful in a larger organization.

Dennis Kucinich explains the futility of the Wall Street bailout.  [update 14-Oct-2016: Google for the full text here]

Here is a very quick explanation of the $700 billion bailout within the context of the mechanics of our monetary and banking system:

The taxpayers loan money to the banks.  But the taxpayers do not have the money.  So we have to borrow it from the banks to give it back to the banks.  But the banks do not have the money to loan to the government. So they create it into existence (through a mechanism called fractional reserve) and then loan it to us, at interest, so we can then give it back to them.  Confused?

This is the system.

Hillary Clinton’s attempt to catch up to Barack Obama by participating in primaries and caucuses.  If you aren’t familiar with Slate.com’s Delegate Calculator, you will see that the more Clinton competes, the further behind she gets. Move the red slider at the top of the page until the box at the bottom says, “Clinton is ahead…”:

• 3/03/08: Clinton needed to win 60% of the remaining vote to pull ahead of Obama in the delegate count.

• 3/06/08: Clinton needed 62% of the remaining vote.

• UPDATE 3/12/08: Clinton needed 63% — Recall that Clinton hasn’t won ANY state by more the 60% so far.

• UPDATE 3/17/08: Clinton needed 63% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 60% WITH Michigan & Florida

• UPDATE 3/20/08: Clinton needed 64% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 60% WITH Michigan & Florida — now more unlikely than before

• UPDATE 4/09/08: Clinton needed 65% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 60% WITH Michigan & Florida

• UPDATE 4/23/08: Clinton needed 68% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 61% WITH Michigan & Florida

• UPDATE 4/28/08: Clinton needed 70% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 61% WITH Michigan & Florida

• UPDATE 5/07/08: Clinton needed 86% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 67% WITH Michigan & Florida

• UPDATE 5/14/08: Clinton needed 86% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 66% WITH Michigan & Florida

• UPDATE 5/22/08: Clinton needed more than 100% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 70% WITH Michigan & Florida

• UPDATE 6/02/08: Clinton cannot win, but still soldiers on.

I’m reminded of an (American) football game where the team that’s behind needs a 7-point touchdown to win, but only gets a 3-point field goal. They may be happy to have gained any points at all, but they’re still going to lose.

Recently, somebody compared this race to the best-of-7 Stanley Cup playoffs: After Obama has won the first 4 games, Clinton insists they play the remaining 3 games because she might score more total goals or maybe the officials will award her the Cup anyway.

So now we watch while Clinton’s old-style bare-knuckle politics tries to find ways to change the rules of the game.

See previous entry from Andrew Sullivan (Leaving the Right)

Recently, Andrew Sullivan wrote another well-balanced reasoning on why (or why not) should a baker be allowed to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple:

Let Him Have His Cake:

Mistake to force the baker:

• […] I think it was a prudential mistake to sue the baker. Live and let live would have been a far better response. The baker’s religious convictions are not trivial or obviously in bad faith […]

• […] That is particularly the case when much of the argument for marriage equality was that it would not force anyone outside that marriage to approve or disapprove of it. […]

• […] It always worries me when gays advocate taking freedom away from other people. It worries me as a matter of principle. […]

Mistake to allow the baker:

• […] I worry that a decision that endorses religious freedom could effectively nullify a large swathe of antidiscrimination legislation — and have a feeling that Scalia, for example, would have backed the gays in this case on those grounds alone. […]

• (paraphrasing John Corvino): […] in this particular case, the act of creation is so deeply entwined with hostility to an entire class of people that antidiscrimination laws overrule it. […]

• […] One final thought as a Christian. Sealing yourself off from those you consider sinners is, in my reading of the Gospels, the reverse of what Jesus taught. […]
  […] Somewhere, the fundamental Christian imperative to love others and be humble before them has been lost. […]

Not left, not right, but maybe he’s left the right:

Andrew Sullivan, writing for the Atlantic in Leaving The Right:

I cannot support a movement that claims to believe in limited government but backed an unlimited domestic and foreign policy presidency that assumed illegal, extra-constitutional dictatorial powers until forced by the system to return to the rule of law.

I cannot support a movement that exploded spending and borrowing and blames its successor for the debt.

I cannot support a movement that so abandoned government’s minimal and vital role to police markets and address natural disasters that it gave us Katrina and the financial meltdown of 2008.

I cannot support a movement that holds torture as a core value.

I cannot support a movement that holds that purely religious doctrine should govern civil political decisions and that uses the sacredness of religious faith for the pursuit of worldly power.

I cannot support a movement that is deeply homophobic, cynically deploys fear of homosexuals to win votes, and gives off such a racist vibe that its share of the minority vote remains pitiful.

I cannot support a movement which has no real respect for the institutions of government and is prepared to use any tactic and any means to fight political warfare rather than conduct a political conversation.

I cannot support a movement that sees permanent war as compatible with liberal democratic norms and limited government.

I cannot support a movement that criminalizes private behavior in the war on drugs.

I cannot support a movement that would back a vice-presidential candidate manifestly unqualified and duplicitous because of identity politics and electoral cynicism.

I cannot support a movement that regards gay people as threats to their own families.

I cannot support a movement that does not accept evolution as a fact.

I cannot support a movement that sees climate change as a hoax and offers domestic oil exploration as the core plank of an energy policy.

I cannot support a movement that refuses ever to raise taxes, while proposing no meaningful reductions in government spending.

I cannot support a movement that refuses to distance itself from a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh or a nutjob like Glenn Beck.

I cannot support a movement that believes that the United States should be the sole global power, should sustain a permanent war machine to police the entire planet, and sees violence as the core tool for international relations.

Does this make me a “radical leftist” as Michelle Malkin would say? Emphatically not. But it sure disqualifies me from the current American right.

To paraphrase Reagan, I didn’t leave the conservative movement. It left me.

And increasingly, I’m not alone.

Looking back at a post from Aug 5, 2011 re: the 2012 elections.  Quoting https://newrepublic.com/article/90131/rick-perry-campaign-texas

[…] the Republican Party considers the power of its ideology, not the brains or accomplishments of its leaders, its trump card in 2012.

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More about Rick Perry.  A good article about him in The New Republic:

http://www.tnr.com/article/the-permanent-campaign/90131/rick-perry-campaign-texas

every one of the enigmatic governor’s supposed strengths turns out to be yoked to a big, potentially damaging weakness.

and

All in all, you have to wonder why Texans, including hard-core conservatives, seem less impressed than people in other states with the prospect of a Perry presidential run. Some appear to be stunned at the very idea, treating him as a sort of Chauncey Gardiner figure who has stumbled, through remarkable luck, into the national spotlight. But Perry’s ultimate stroke of luck could be in appearing on the scene at a time when the Republican Party considers the power of its ideology, not the brains or accomplishments of its leaders, its trump card in 2012.

I thought maybe Canada’s promotion of the Keystone XL Pipeline was a long-range strategy to accelerate global warming and make Canada into a surfing destination. Well, the joke is on me.  It turns out there is already a healthy surfboard culture in Canada.  See Tofino, British Columbia, the unofficial “surfing capital of Canada”

This 2012 post has aged well, especially now in 2025 when Trump's DOGE and anti-intellectual agenda is gutting the Department of Education.

Education is the silver bullet.

If you want a smaller government and a better America, eliminate every federal agency except a lavishly funded Department of Education. Well educated citizens will figure out and organize the rest on their own. Don’t bother redistributing wealth; redistribute knowledge instead, making sure every person has solid gold education guaranteed.

Buckminster Fuller said that one person in 100,000 will create something that will pay for the other 99,999… but you won’t be able to predict who that 1 will be. So you must educate all 100,000 equally.

The answers are at hand.

Here’s my comment on this video: http://www.youtube.com/comment?lc=qsrjM6kdoUk4jFCzgwgesYOR7XOmR8qrJvVPYzotPS0

I’m no fan of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. But her thinking is clear and this interview makes an excellent introduction. This video gets my strong thumbs-up.

But Objectivism starts with a false premise, thus leads to a false conclusion. The false premise is rejection of a human soul and the innate value of that soul; so naturally her conclusion is that rational thought alone is how human value should be judged.

Valuing soul and rationality BOTH together form a human’s total value.

In addition, “soul and rationality” is equivalent to “inner and outer”, and similar to “mind and body”

From a discussion I had on YouTube — http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=CtDBp1OrCwI

The discussion is about abortion and libertarianism.  I argue that the government has no place in making the abortion decision, not if one wants to call himself a Libertarian.  How can one be for “Liberty” but still think the government should make moral decisions for its citizens?

jtwilson777 replied:

Your argument is one that the Libertarian Party has supported for years. Yet it completely neglects one of the essential ideas of libertarianism, which is the individual is free to do what he or she feels so long as it does not infringe on the rights of others. Clearly killing a living being is an infringement on their rights. I do believe it should be the right of the people to decide these matters at the local level.

Obviously I am not for prohibition of abortion completely, because prohibition of anything will never work. These things should be decided at the state level. And there should be no disagreement on the point of viability. A clear majority of babies survive in the 5 to 6 month range. So no abortions after 6 months. My point is, there is a point at which a baby has a great chance of survival. Libertarians do not except this because it make part of the platform hypocritical.

My response:

I appreciate your thoughtful and logical position. Ron Paul doesn’t take your “viability” stance, he says life begins at fertilization and would prohibit abortion completely. I find your stance more in line with Libertarianism, and Paul’s not. And this was my entry point into this debate here, that Paul’s stance is inconsistent… leading me to doubt him completely.

Even beyond the 5-6 month viable stage, there must be some allowance for necessary abortions, based on the health of the mother. Even after birth, doctors (and families) are sometimes (albeit rarely) faced with a choice between saving one patient or the other. The choice has nothing to do with the rights of one vs the other; the choice is based on the particular medical circumstances. And even then, the decision is the families’ and doctors — not the government’s.

When we talk about abortion, we presuppose the mother will be the one saved and not the baby. But that is not always true. I have a close family member who was given a choice by the doctor who believed he could only save one (the mother or the child)… which one did the father want saved?

Fortunately, both survived, but the father did make that difficult call before that happened. Not the Fed govt, not the State govt, not the “local” govt, and nobody on YouTube.

Being allowed to make that choice is real freedom, real liberty. When you find a candidate that will allow YOU to make those decisions and NOT the state, you will really have a candidate that deserves to call himself a Libertarian.

And an American.

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.

Molly Ivins -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Ivins

What should we call the form of government where everybody is free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t hurt somebody else?

Because that’s the government I want.

It sounds great, except the point that keeps tripping me up is the definition of the word, “hurt.” Some people (you extremists know who you are) are “hurt” when they see other people who don’t believe as they do. So they want to make laws (or use other forms of coercion) to force the others to believe “correctly.” Need examples? Inquisition; Holocaust; 9/11; Texas textbooks; Obamacare.

Is neglect “hurt”? Will this new form of government allow us to neglect others in need, because such neglect is “hurting” the needy?

In the end, I really believe that the form of government is a red herring. The real issue is how to create people whose moral and critical reasoning are sufficiently developed that the government doesn’t need to exist. Such people will do what’s needed regardless of the form of government.

But until such people exist, I think we need a strong government to do a few things:

1. Impose freedom (see my first paragraph)

2. Protect people from hurt.

3. Help the needy.

4. Teach moral and critical thinking.

5. Get out of the way wherever possible.

Why are undecided voters swayed so easily? Don’t they have any opinion about the difference between Democrats and Republicans, let alone the various (nearly-)single-issue parties, such as the Green or Libertarian parties?

Do Undecideds look at each major partisan issue and are unable to form an opinion? I imagine the Undecided voters go through a process like this:

1. Abortion: Gee, I’m undecided about that. Is a fertilized egg a human being? Should the government decide whether a woman should have a baby or not? Hmmm…. such a close call. Instead of thinking about it and forming an opinion and then deciding which of the parties best represents my interests in this regard, I think I’ll skip this issue and go on to the next.

2. Iraq War: Gee, I’m undecided about the Iraq war. Maybe if we stay there another 6 years I’ll be able to make up my mind. After all, I still haven’t made up my mind whether I like the Korean war — er, police action.

3. … and so on down the line, eliminating all the “hard” questions until we reach the only issue they can understand and have formed an opinion on: LIPSTICK!