http://getyourhappyon.today.com A Melorist Worldview Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:45:48 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I’ve written it before, and I will never tire of repeating it. Despite what the vast majority of humans believe, guns don’t solve problems; no problem has ever been solved with a gun. You can shut someone up with a gun... until you turn your back. You can shoot a person ... http://getyourhappyon.today.com/2008/07/19/libertarianism-and-cowboy-diplomacy-part-2/ Sometimes, when I'm feeling really claustrophobic in the city, I would like nothing more than to enjoy the open plains of the Old West. For a bookish "pseudo-intellectual" like myself, Libertarianism seems like such a great idea on paper, because they claim to regard the philosophical pursuits more highly than ... http://getyourhappyon.today.com/2008/07/18/libertarianism-and-cowboy-diplomacy-part-1/ Lately, I've been getting questions such as "How did I get such bad karma?" or "Why is my karma so rotten?" This is the wrong way to look at karma, my friends. In Sanskrit, karma means "action." We retain bad karma because of something that we have done or something ... http://getyourhappyon.today.com/2008/07/17/how-to-erase-bad-karma/ Buddhism is a system of learning based on logic, on reason, and on a long history of a pre-Cartesian scientific method through philosophical discourse and empirical experimentation. Buddhists have refined the "how"s and "why"s of human suffering to a theory that all are invited to test for themselves. If it ... http://getyourhappyon.today.com/2008/07/16/do-you-know-why-you-suffer/ Gosh! I'm feeling so laaaaazy today, so I'm taking a page from folks who copy&paste gray noise straight out of National Review and other whiny conservative hate mags. I copied this straight off the Responsible Plan website: The United States invaded Iraq in March 2003. Since then, nearly 4,000 American ... http://getyourhappyon.today.com/2008/07/15/the-responsible-plan-to-end-the-war-in-iraq/ I have noticed that some folks on other blogs have labeled me a spambot, and it has me rather confused. Isn't a spambot an autonomous worm-like program that spammers use to leave advertising in e-mails and on comment billboards? Am I a spambot simply because my liberal opinions rankle the embittered ... http://getyourhappyon.today.com/2008/07/14/i-spambot/ This is something I have to get off my chest. It's been bothering me for way too long. I lived in Dallas for five years. It's a city that shouldn't exist. If it wasn't for oil and air conditioning, Dallas wouldn't exist. Seriously, it's a gigantic shopping mall.  Don't worry, I'm ... http://getyourhappyon.today.com/2008/07/13/not-another-needless-markup-victim/ Economist.com sends me regular e-mail newsletters. It's expensive, but The Economist is one of the best sources of relatively unbiased news out there. Yesterday I received the following news blurb about China: Chinese companies are investing more abroad AFTER 11 months of tricky negotiations, last week a subsidiary of China's state-owned oil ... http://getyourhappyon.today.com/2008/07/12/china-hungry-dragon-or-sleeping-tiger/ Recently, I reached a convergence in my faith that bridges Buddhism and the Christian tradition (in which I was raised). Essentially, it is the convergence of my mind and my heart. Oddly enough, it started with my renunciation of Christianity in 1994 and my exploration of other faith traditions. In 1998, ... http://getyourhappyon.today.com/2008/07/11/faith-convergence-alert-get-involved/ Many of you might never have seen "Babylon 5," but its many fans knew it to be one of the best TV shows that ran during the last few years of the 20th Century. In "The Paragon of Animals" (the third episode of the last season), the leader of an alien ... http://getyourhappyon.today.com/2008/07/09/the-declaration-of-life-principles/