"Why did you wait?" Donald Trump seemed confused by CIA's desire not to kill family members of terrorists.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

President Trump’s pronouncement that he would be pulling troops out of Syria “very soon” has laid bare a major source of tension between the president and his generals. 

Trump has made winning on the battlefields of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan a central tenet of his foreign policy and tough-guy identity. But Trump and the military hold frequently opposing ideas about exactly what winning means. 

Those differences have played out in heated Situation Room ­debates over virtually every spot on the globe where U.S. troops are engaged in combat, said senior administration officials. And they contributed to the dismissal last month of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster who as national security adviser had pressed the president against his instincts to support an ­open-ended commitment of U.S. forces to Afghanistan. 

Trump’s words, both in public and private, describe a view that wars should be brutal and swift, waged with overwhelming firepower and, in some cases, with little regard for civilian casualties. Victory over America’s enemies for the president is often a matter of bombing “the s--- out of them,” as he said on the campaign trail.

Of course under President Obama the policy was to spare innocent civilians, and family members, and instead use precise targeting to take out the terrorist objective.

As we know that did not always work, and many innocent civilians were also killed.

However Trump does not seem at all bothered by that sort of collateral damage.

Trump came to office promising to give the Pentagon a free hand to unleash the full force of U.S. firepower. His impatience was evident on his first full day in office when he visited the CIA and was ushered up to the agency’s drone operations floor. 

There agency officials showed him a feed from Syria, where Obama-era rules limited the agency to surveillance flights — part of a broader push by the previous administration to return the CIA to its core espionage mission and shift the job of killing terrorists to the military. 

Trump urged the CIA to start arming its drones in Syria. “If you can do it in 10 days, get it done,” he said, according to two former officials familiar with the meeting. 

Later, when the agency’s head of drone operations explained that the CIA had developed special munitions to limit civilian casualties, the president seemed unimpressed. Watching a previously recorded strike in which the agency held off on firing until the target had wandered away from a house with his family inside, Trump asked, “Why did you wait?” one participant in the meeting recalled.

To be clear killing innocent people overseas is how you create more terrorists, not defeat terrorism.

Trump's inability to understand that, or to respect human life, will only ensure that not only does terrorism outlast his term, but that it increases exponentially.

Having said that I am going to tack on the report about those Russian sanctions right here, because I do not think they deserve a post of their own.

Some in the media are trying to give Trump credit for finally cracking down with some aggressive sanctions that will actually hurt the Russian oligarchs who support Putin, but they are fools.

Trump is NOT behind these sanctions. In fact he was clearly dragged kicking and screaming into supporting them, because he had NO choice.

If this were really something that Trump was behind, he would have tweeted the shit out of it, but there is not a peep about this on his account.

To sum up Donald Trump does not value human life, but he absolutely values his relationship with Vladimir Putin.

Boy I wish I was smart.

Courtesy of Fast Company:

People are living longer than ever, says a report from the World Health Organization (WHO), but smart people live longer yet. People who are, shall we say, less smart die younger than more intelligent folks, and various studies around the world are attempting to find out why. 

IQ affects how long you manage to stick around in this life, with a 15% increase in IQ giving a 21% better chance of not dying. These numbers come from a cohort study by researchers Lawrence Whalley and Ian Deary, using the Scottish Mental Surveys, a historic survey in which almost all 11-year-olds in Scotland got the same IQ test on the same day in 1932. The new study found out which of these subjects were still alive, and at which age others had died. 

Scientific American cites one example, where "a person with an IQ of 115 was 21% more likely to be alive at age 76 than a person with an IQ of 100 (the average for the general population)."

Socrates said that "The unexamined life is not worth living."

And I have ALWAYS believed that to be true.

Perhaps one of the reasons that intelligent people live longer is because we don't want to leave until we have figured out the mysteries of life, witnessed every new creation, and basked in the glow of an enlightened planet.

Or perhaps that is just me.

The true story of the origin of the universe. So much more beautiful and awe inspiring than those imagined by the religions of man.

It's just a touch over eight minutes long, but do yourself a favor and sit through it sipping your coffee and just marvel at the magnificence of our beginnings.

And then afterward you can go through your day empowered with the knowledge that you are the universe searching to understand itself.

In response to question about Syrian refugees Ben Carson brags about the size of his frontal lobes.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

"We should use our expertise and resources to help get them resettled — over there — and to support them over there,” he said. “But to bring them here under these circumstances is a suspension of intellect.” 

“You know that the human brain has these big frontal lobes, as opposed to other animals, because we can engage in rational thought processing.” 

The former neurosurgeon noted that his advanced brain gave him the ability to “extract information from the past [and] present, process it, and project it into a plan.” 

“Animals, on the other hand, have big brain stems and rudimentary things because they react,” Carson explained. “We don’t have to just react, we can think.”

You know I actually agree with Carson that human beings DO possess the ability to use rational thought processes.

However knowing that Carson realizes that as well, makes it all the more difficult to understand why he believes that humans cannot have morality without God, that Noah's flood was real and Evolution was inspired by Satan, and that the pyramids were built to store grain instead of the bodies of he pharaohs?

Does this mean that Ben Carson's frontal lobes are not that big? (Not that size is everything of course.)

Or perhaps it means that he simply refuses to utilize them if by doing so it endangers his faith in certain mythologies or conspiracy theories.

When it comes to listening to Ben Carson lecture people about using their developed brains for reasoning, I cannot help but to fall back on that old "Physician heal thyself" chestnut.

New study finds that non-religious kids are more generous than children raised in religious homes. Gee, no kidding.

Source

Courtesy of The Oregonian:

A new study in the journal Current Biology found children in religious households are significantly less generous than their non-religious peers. 

At the same time, religious parents were more likely than non-religious ones to consider their children empathetic and sensitive to the plight of others. 

It's a common assumption in the United States that faith goes hand-in-hand with goodness. The Pew Research Center reported last year that 53 percent of Americans think it's necessary to believe in God to be moral. 

Americans overwhelmingly elect Christian representatives, and they distrust atheists. 

This study challenges those attitudes. It was the children in non-religious homes most likely to be generous toward a stranger. The longer a child had lived in a religious home, the stingier he was compared to his secular peers. 

Here is another obvious fact that people cannot accept without a study to back it up. And let's face it religious people are not going to accept it even WITH a study to back it up.

Clearly if you are raised to expect rewards for good behavior (Heaven) and dire consequences for bad behavior (Hell), and taught that you are constantly under surveillance (God) to monitor those behaviors, then you are going to have a severely underdeveloped morality.

Generosity and goodness cannot be forced on children through threats or rewards. They learn that by observing the example of those around them.

And those who are constantly struggling with doing the right thing, and who openly admit that their morality comes from their fear of a supreme being, set a very poor example indeed.

The non-religious among us give and take care of each other because it is the right thing to do, not to earn passage into eternal life.

To do it with the expectation of reward, cheapens what it means to be human.

Since 1970 humans have wiped out fifty percent of the world's wildlife.

Walter J. Palmer showing off his machismo.

Courtesy of Vox:

In early July, a dentist from Minnesota named Walter James Palmer traveled to Zimbabwe, lured a male lion out of Hwange National Park, and shot him to death. The twist? This was no ordinary lion. No, Cecil the lion was a popular tourist attraction, and so now half the internet has erupted in outrage over his death. 

It's a grisly tale. But it's also not an isolated case. Not even close. Over the past four decades, humans have managed to kill off a staggering number of wild animals worldwide — from charismatic lions and rhinos right down to lowly frogs. Most of these deaths don't spark anywhere near the furor that Cecil's did. But they certainly add up. 

A major recent survey by the World Wildlife Fund estimated that the number of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish worldwide has declined a whopping 52 percent between 1970 and 2010. The main culprits? Humans. Mainly through hunting, fishing, deforestation, pollution, and other forms of habitat destruction. Statistically speaking, Cecil's death at the hands of a person was more likely than not.

When people refer to human beings as a cancer on this planet they could not be more accurate.

And the thing is that we know better, and yet we still cannot accept the responsibility of caring for the creatures whose lives are put into jeopardy by our very existence, much less by our need to demonstrate dominance over them.

I have to say that in this area my daughter is my moral superior, as she is a strict vegetarian who contributes time and money to conservation projects. Especially towards the protection of elephants who hold a special place in her heart.

We all have to do much, much better or else someday children will be learning about lions the same way that we all learned about the Dodo bird.

P.S. Speaking of big brave hunters killing animals the Zimbabwe officials are calling for the extradition of  Palmer to face charges for killing Cecil.

A little perspective.

Personally I find this somewhat humbling.

However I consider myself lucky to have ever spent time in the top portion of the hourglass, making it harder to regret my eventual tumble into the bottom.

Just a little reminder how amazing we all are.

We have come so far from those days of scrambling up trees to escape predators, and huddling in caves paralyzed with fear.

And look we did it without having to rely on firearms to make us feel powerful and safe.

Watching this literally fills me with joy.

If we could only shed ourselves of our crippling insecurities, and shake off the chains of superstition, just imagine how much farther we would be down the path of understanding.

Everyday we should ask ourselves what we want to learn today.

And the answer should always come back "Everything."

Does anybody else feel like this?

I swear I feel like this all of the time.

Bill Nye: The Joy of Discovery.

This was taken from the recent debate between Nye and Ken Ham.

"We are, you and I, at least one of the ways that the universe knows itself."

I have been saying some version of this for years and I find it so much more profound and inspiring than anything I have ever read in any religious book.

We have a duty to strive to understand, and appreciate, and stand in awe of, the majesty that surrounds us.

Because if we don't then who will?

The Story of us.

I thought you could use a little inspiration this evening.

Every step we take forward into our future, is one more step away from the fear and uncertainty which once frightened us into accepting supernatural explanations for the natural miracles all around us.

We are explorers, we are creators, we are humans. And we have just begun to show what we can do.

Just a thought to start the day.

I know it must seem sometimes like I am beating a dead horse here, but if I accomplish nothing else I want to help prove that being a non-theist does not mean that somebody is morally inferior to those who embrace faith. If I could prove the opposite, then all the better.

I may be no more ethical or moral than the next guy, but then again I have never claimed to be.

I have made a lot of mistakes, and plan to make more in the future, but I have hard and fast rules about how I interact with others, how I live my life, and what I am willing to do for money.

Simply put I don't lie, I don't cheat, and I don't take what does not belong to me.

And none of that is the result of my fear of eternal punishment, nor my desire for an eternal life.

I conduct myself like a civilized human being because I AM a civilized human being. A civilized human being by the way who has a deep and abiding distrust for those who claim that without their fear of God there would be nothing to hold them back from acting on their baser instincts.

Neil Degrasse Tyson answers mankind's most pressing question.

One of my pet peeves in life is the idea that we must find purpose with why things exist, and by definition why WE exist.

This idea irritates me to no end.

Only a true megalomaniac feels the need to have their existence justified.

As far as you are aware, leaving Descartes out of this, you do exist. To be honest that should be good enough.

However I know that for most people it is not, so here let me help you.

To be brutally honest, as far as the planet is concerned, you really have only one purpose. To procreate. To pass along your genetic material onto the next generation.

That is what all who came before you in your ancestral lineage managed to do, and now they have passed the procreation baton to you. So don't just stand there start fucking!

This is referred to as your biological imperative, and seriously as far as the planet and universe is concerned you can die just as soon as you have raised your kids and your job has been accomplished. If you need a further purpose beyond that you need to find it for yourself.

The universe owes you nothing.

And yet it gave you the chance to exist. So don't waste it worshiping false deities, worrying about your mortality, or following rules that strip all of the fun out of life's journey.

Now that is NOT to say that you cannot create a purpose for your life without asking God or the universe to do it for you. Personally I have always been grateful that I was born and have tried to give back at least as much as I have been given. My goal before I get to the last chapter of my story is to have had a lot of fun, loved a lot of people, and made the most positive impact possible for a grumpy old fart like me.

And then I get to die. And even THAT is gift, because before one gets to die, one gets to live.

So thank you universe. I'll take it from here.