Freedom is a funny thing.  Too borrow and pervert an aphorism, freedom is like oxygen: most people don’t think about it until it’s missing.

Think of me (and this article) as a canary in a coal mine. I only hope you’ll actually notice — and then do something about it.

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I’m not sure why I’ve called this post Tikkun Olam, since many of the references in it are actually to the Christian Bible. Perhaps it’s because although the references are taken from the Christian Bible, the concepts about which I write — particularly that of making the world a better place, of healing the world — seem to me so foreign to what I see in the Christians amongst whom I live.

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Is it me, or are Americans becoming increasingly stupider as time goes by?

We’re told that banks and mortgage companies made a bunch of stupid mistakes which resulted in an economic meltdown.  So to save us from the economic meltdown, we were told we have to give $700 billion to the same banks that put us into this mess to start with.

And now the banks tell us that they are not going to tell us what they did with our money which we gave them to save us from them.

So, seriously, just how stupid are we?

Over on the blog, Defending People: The Art and Science of Criminal Defense Lawyering, after a post titled “Thoughts on a Hanging,” a character named “Y” comments:

Wait. A. Minute.
How can we have real liberty if we lack safety?
How is a man free to “pursue happiness” — another key phrase to our country’s Founders, if his house may be burned or his family killed?

Safety is a necessary condition to liberty. Not a sufficient condition, of course, but necessary. And we cannot have safety without our criminal code, which means “tough on crime” and docket management. Granted, there must always be a balance between safety and liberty, but they are not always at odds. Without safety, there can be no liberty. Without safety, any liberty we might have is an empty notion of what might have been.

There are a number of issues one might take with this.  For that reason, I decided to blog my response, rather than leave what would only be an overlong comment.

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Several friends of mine are going through difficult times right now.  The world has dealt — or is dealing — several of them a hand which nobody wants to have to play.

I always feel inadequate in terms of knowing what to say in these kinds of situations.

Some time back, I read a novel (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), a central thesis of which is that because each of us is the embodiment of but one life out of so many billions, what happens in our lives is inconsequential, insignificant, and thus the decisions we make are unimportant.

I would say that because each of us has but one life, that makes what happens and our reactions to what happens all the more important.

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Okay, I don’t usually do these, because I figure that they’re in the 48 things most of my blog readers could care less about. On the other hand, I sometimes like looking at them myself, because I enjoy learning new things about people I know — and most of the blogs I read belong to people I know.

So with that — and since I’ve been tagged by blogger extraordinaire and friend Joni Mueller of Joniverse — I proceed to give you this Holiday Season, the 48 Things YOU Could Care Less About….

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The hotly-anticipated sequel to the online video game World of Warcraft hit the shelves recently.  Here’s a report:

The best part is that I could actually imagine something like this. I particularly like the comment in the “web only bonus clip” at the end, where we learn about the horrible worst thing is that could happen to your character.

City Collector Debora Marcoccio of Attleboro, Massachusetts, says, “My question is, how come it wasn’t paid when the (original) bills went out?”

It’s easy to understand why  Marcoccio wants to know: the city spent 42 cents on a stamp to bill a blind woman who “underpaid” her water bill by one penny — let’s not forget the cost of the paper, the envelope, the time someone spent getting it through interoffice mail, or otherwise handling it.

The city would be “fiscally irresponsible” if it decided paid someone to weed through the bills and pull all those below a certain amount out.

My first thought is, “Hasn’t Debora Marcoccio ever heard of a computer?  Computers can be programmed not to print bills when they’re below a certain amount.”  Then I remembered something else Marcoccio said: “A computer automatically prints letters for accounts with an overdue balance….”

So let me see if I’ve got this right, Ms. Marcoccio.  You have a computer that somehow computes whether or not there is an overdue balance.  It therefore probably was programmed so that if the balance is greater than zero on a certain date then a bill should be printed.

How hard would it be to have the computer programmed so that if the balance is greater than zero and less than aCertainAmount, then (and only then) print the bill?

Voilà!  No need to assign anyone to weed through the letters and pull out all those below a certain amount!

This post grows out of an email exchange with a good friend.  Although he and I differ dramatically in our views relating to religion, he’s still a good friend.  (Heck, my two closest friends both hold rather dramatically different views from those I hold!  One is night to my day on religion; the other is night to my day on politics.  And, yes, I made myself “day” and them “night” on purpose.  I hold different views, but I’m still human enough to think I’m the one who’s right! )

The email exchange began when I sent my friend a link to this article about a priest who urges those who voted for Obama to repent and do penance.  In a sense, I was baiting my friend.  The subject line of my email was “Sick people” and the text I wrote said, “There are indeed sick people in the world.  And folks wonder why some of us don’t like religion.”

Note that my original email did not actually say anything like “all Christians are sick.”  My friend read it that way, though.  He wrote a long and interesting explanation for why this wasn’t true.  (And, he is correct.)  Since he believed that I was saying “all Christians are sick,” he ended of his note by admonishing me: “Don’t fall for the bait.”  I responded to that by asking, “Why not?  You did. ”  I went on to say,

I have my personal views about religion, but they have very little to do with that priest’s comments and more to do with my own particular beliefs about human psychology and evolution.

Unfortunately, my comment lead my friend to think he’d “done all that writing for nothing.”

But you see, I enjoy a good debate over religion every now and then.  I knew my friend would be drawn in by the original email.  And I do not think his response to me was “for nothing.”

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True capitalism does not exist.  Anywhere.  In the Known Universe.  At All.

You think I’m kidding? Name me one place where true capitalism, as a social structure driving the economy of a real country, actually exists.  It just doesn’t.

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