Corporal Punishment is Wrong

You shouldn't hit your children. Aside from the evidence that corporal punishment is ineffective at correcting bad behavior, that it reinforces aggression and aggressive behavior, that it makes your children fear you rather than love you, and that it teaches them that violence is a viable solution to their problems, hitting or beating your children (or anyone outside self defense in a life or death scenario) is savagery and brutish. If you can't teach someone right from wrong without hurting them, then you're not fit to teach anyone right from wrong.

Two Kinds of Apologies

There are two kinds of apologies. There is the humble apology which just says "sorry" or "sorry and..." As in "I'm sorry and I hope you can forgive me," or "I'm sorry and I hope we can still be friends." Then there's the arrogant apology which says "sorry but..." "Sorry, but you should have known better than to do this," or "sorry, but you shouldn't have done that..." The reason why we make arrogant apologies is because it's more important for us to be right than to be peaceful.

When we make a mistake or inadvertently harm someone, cross a line, violate a boundary or step on someone's toes, they lose a little bit of faith in you. One way of recovering it is by apologizing. A good apology does not try to explain, defend, or justify our actions. A good apology just tries to make up for a mistake and undo some emotional damage. Be the bigger person and apologize; if the other person is big enough, they'll accept your apology and maybe they'll apologize for something too. Give people some credit and assume they'll take some responsibility. If they don't, oh well.

How Old Does a Universe Have to be in Order to Produce Intelliegent Life?

I have a question for Quantum Physicists and Cosmologists: What is the minimum age a universe must be before it can produce intelligent life? After the big bang, the universe is full of hot, chaos for a long, long time. Finally, things settle down. Somewhere in between, planets and stars and etc. come and go. At what age is the universe no longer too chaotic and dangerous to sustain life somewhere long enough for that life to become intelligent? This is an interesting question because it could help us to figure whether or not there is other intelligent life in the universe and if so how much older is it than us. Maybe we're in the first generation?

It occurs to me that our universe has no name. I would like to suggest Universe Josh, or we could call it Michael Jackson. Either way, I'm good.