Objectionable Affect and Smoking

     Ever wonder why smoking is illegal as an indoor activity these days? I believe that if a person wants to smoke, they should be allowed to smoke unless they happen to be in a building owned by someone who doesn't want anyone smoking inside their building. Why does the government have the right to make that decision for anyone? Or rather, why don't people believe in liberty and freedom enough to allow others to make these decisions themselves?
    But anyway, smoking is illegal indoors and that's that. My personal explanation for this phenomenon is that smoking is just plain rude. Think about it, you know it's true. I compare lighting up to farting. You know that most people think it's just plain disgusting to do either, so why do people think it's ok to light up without clearing it with everyone 50 feet up wind? When you fart or when you light up, what you're actually doing is subjecting everyone around you to an affect that is subjectively objectionable. I like to call this sort of thing an "Objectionable Affect," which is anything one can perceive with any of their five senses that is objectionable.
    Along with farting and smoking, other objectionable affects include burping, picking your nose, digging in your ears, cleaning your finger nails, hacking and spitting, audible chewing of any kind, occasional singing out loud, talking too loud, wearing your baseball cap crooked or backwards, talking with your mouth full, glaring, staring, any Axe scent, crying (children only), slurping, announcing what your business is at the bathroom, licking anything, and talking about politics, religion, or what illness(es) you think your coming down with or just got over, especially at the dinner table.

Jesus, Champion of Forgiveness

    I don't believe in Jesus, but when I think of him I choose to think of him as a great literary hero. He was a wise man with a message: Forgiveness. Teaching forgiveness to the world was so important to Jesus that he was willing to endure horrible torture and death. The noble death of Jesus illustrates just how important forginveness was to him: He died in order to atone for the sins of all human kind. Sometimes, forgiving others is hard. Maybe even as hard as dying. But Jesus believed forgiveness was so important that we must go those extraordinary lengths just to do so.
    Why is forgiveness so important? Because in order to have true peace, we must be able to love and understand each other, which comes after forgiveness.
    To forgive, you must put the world into perspective. All people are fallable and subject to dark urges natural to us because of our biological imperative and (sometimes?) our psychological conditioning. Sometimes we are susceptible to situational evil. People aren't evil, but they have the capacity for evil. Such evil is truely a result of one or more of three things: folly, mental sickness, and/or the human condition. A wise, healthy mind doesn't actively try to hurt others. Try to understand the perspective of others and withhold your judgment or be damned.

Science Proves Racism is Stupid!

     I don't understand how any half-intelligent person can be racist. Look at it from the perspective of the humble biologist and see that we all have something called DNA. Guess what? The DNA of human beings is very much the same across ethnicity except for some very few superficial differences, but genetically, we're all essentially identical. Racism is the practice of looking at those slightly different bits of our common DNA, and then choosing to hate based on those slightly different bits. Why? What's the point? Remember The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss? Racism as stupid as hating people for buttering their toast differently.