An object in rest naturally tends to say in rest; an object in motion naturally tends to stay in motion with the same velocity.  It takes an external object to change this.

Why?  Newton I think it was who first propounded it (although come to think of it I have a vague notion here he may have gotten the idea from others) but all it is is a naked assertion.  We look and we claim that this is what we find (after "adjusting" (rationalizing?) for all sorts of complicating factors such as air pressure and ground friction and gravity and magnetism and so on).  Are we so sure or is it not just a simplifying assumption to make the math work out.  Maybe we design our universe to fit our maths.

What has always bothered me, besides the point that some people take things like this to try to support -- absurdly -- pre-believed religious notions, is why that object out there sitting all alone in space insists so strongly that it doesn't want to move.  Believe me it is a rather profound problem in both philosophy and physics (the real tough physics problems still tend to be philosophical).

It won't do about anything to just say, "That's the way nature is."

Here very briefly stated and over-simplified is my take on consciousness:

What is "conscious" or "aware" is not a thing but a process -- more akin to a flame or a wave than to a gland or bit of brain tissue.  We realize this by sitting quietly and mindfully "watching" our mind do its thing.  What we "see" are short-term memories of where the mind was a moment ago, so don't let the ability to "watch" fool you -- it is all part of the process, not something separate.

What we see is a loosely connected chain of thoughts, sensations, memories, external distractions, what have you.  Sometimes a sort-of link or causal connection can be discerned, sometimes it seems random.  Of course we see only the surface and there is a lot going on unseen (below in the depths) that we don't see so the seeming randomness may or may not be real.

There is a lot of well established scientific evidence that this arises somehow from neuronal activity and the exchanges of chemicals and so on between neurons, plus other things.  This tells us little about how this electrical and chemical activity turns into mind and awareness and so on -- quite a little mystery there.

A couple days ago I posted a comment that the sexual promiscuity typical of many young male homosexuals, including myself for a few years, is something of a waste of time.

I've had second thoughts.  Of course, most of what we do in life, in the end, is a waste of time.  All the effort I made learning the ins and outs of, first, the insurance business, and then, second, computer programming (at about forty I abandoned underwriting and redefined myself as a computer analyst -- maybe more about that someday) were all a waste of time since I use neither skill today and the skills I did learn are now obsolete.  All the massive study time I spent on both in the end were a waste of time except very short term.  Similarly, the effort finding sexual partners is a waste of time only longer term -- short term it was pleasurable and in the end served me well.

For someone like me who doesn't like competing, a sexual drive forcing me to get out there and compete was, I think, a good thing.  Of course you have to remember that even though for a decent looking, masculine (or at least normal behaving -- excessive masculinity is as much a turn-off in my eyes as is femininity), young man, in a major American city, sexual partners and sexual flings were easy to come by, even though one might suffer a high rejection rate.

Also, I liked older men -- mainly in their thirties and forties -- not uncommon but not common either -- the main emphasis is for partners in their twenties and even younger.  I was I think lucky that way as associating with these guys helped me mature and got me a lot of advice and help in life, and in the end got me out of my typing job and into something where my degree was appropriate.

What happened is that I became friends with a guy who couldn't understand why, with Harvard and all, I had the (in his eyes) dead-end job I had.  He just didn't believe that absence of the degree should be such a barrier.  So he networked around a little for me and got me an interview with an insurance company looking to hire underwriter trainees (degree required) and talked them into taking me anyway -- and, once one has such a job, that does the trick for the future and the degree never came up again.

Competence wins out in practice but getting in the door requires either credentials or some sort of "in."

Indeed, thinking about it I learned a lot in those days.  I was typically naive and over-worried about pleasing my partner in sex, and I was taught how to say, "no."  Since there were certain things I found painful and unaesthetic, this was a good lesson.  Of course one must not be sexually selfish -- good homosexual sex is mostly a matter of two people "taking turns," unlike heterosexual sex where in theory a mutual climax is achieved simultaneously.  (A lot of gay guys try for this too and in some cases it works, but I don't think it is the rule and I don't think it is terribly important).

As I see it now the biggest problem with promiscuous sex is the law of diminishing returns.  One can never duplicate the tremendous excitement and pleasure that comes with the first few experiences, and after awhile one finds oneself fantasizing during sex as though one were just masturbating.  You then think about this and wonder what it was all for.  So a lot of people end up trying wilder and wilder sexual activities and, of course, mixing in drugs.  I did a little of that too and sometimes it was good, but, fortunately, I kept my head and realized fairly quickly that pleasure is transient and cannot be grasped, and there is no point trying.

And, of course, one also wants a permanent relationship.  At first one builds a network of friends -- some of whom are old tricks where the sex was not worth trying to repeat, but most of whom are just other gays one shares life with but not sex.  What about having a lover?  Even better, what about having a life partner?

I decided that if it happened and I found one, that would be great, but I wasn't going to worry about it. 

I don't think much is accomplished denying claimed miracles such as the virgin birth by saying they don't happen and aren't believable.  That is the idea of a miracle -- they don't happen and aren't believable, but, it is claimed, happened anyway -- hence there necessarily was supernatural intervention.

The only real problem I see with such claims is one of evidence.  They are extraordinary claims and therefore need extraordinary evidence before being worthy of acceptance.

There is also what may be a minor theological problem -- why should a perfect omnipotent being need to interfere with the workings of His creation?

Celebrities should not bellow opinions other than how to act or whatever.  They are not authorities on anything else, and I don't care if I agree with what they are saying or not -- they are given entirely too much credit and the press and everyone else should ignore them when they are out of their competence, just as we do with anyone else behaving like that.  Talent and intelligence, also, are only slightly related (you do have to have a few smarts to properly utilize your talent if you are talented).

The "God of the gaps" concept is one I have to constantly remind myself of in a slightly different context.  I fully know better and am repelled when people try to insert God into places where science doesn't have a full answer to something, but I have noticed it sometimes enters my thinking in a subtler way -- not God exactly but some form of mysticism or Taoist concept.

This is when I ponder the problem of sentience -- the fact that we experience the universe through sense sensations -- sensations entirely created by our brain that have only a loose connection with the reality "out there."  That some such interface would be needed to simplify and interpret incoming sensations is easy enough, but the way it manifests just boggles me over -- I "experience" things -- colors and sounds and smells and pains and itches and emotions -- they don't happen to me they are me.

I use to take that as evidence that a non-material, non-physical aspect to existence must be part of our existence, and hence part of the world, and it is easy to apply words like "spiritual" or "ethereal" to it.  However I think that is to go too far: all we can say if it is a mystery to us is we don't know and can't conceive any way it could be, but that could be lack of imagination, not real.  Just because I can't conceive how something could be a certain way does not prove it can't be.

A few days ago I mentioned that when I left Harvard and got a typing job, I discovered that there existed a paradise for young male homosexuals that I had never dreamed might exist.  At least it seemed a paradise at the time, although as I matured I came to be able to put it into better balance, particularly seeing what a waste of time it was.

The biological nature of the male is to be promiscuous.  Of course such a broad statement has to be hedged in with a lot of qualifications and exceptions, both as to species and to individuals.  Still, the picture remains -- the male generally makes little contribution, at almost no cost, to the next generation -- although our cultures and even natural selection often "fixes" this.

Females will be somewhat different.  They may also have reason to be promiscuous up to a point, but have other objectives, mainly to somehow lasso the male into helping with the rearing of children, and this doesn't work very well in an unbounded society.  So, then, many if not most males would be promiscuous except the females won't allow it.  Hence we see female prostitution far more than male prostitution (and what of that is largely to other males) and in the gay world the gay male society is largely promiscuous, while the gay female society much less so.

This sets up, when religious and societal rules have been weakened and by large numbers dismissed or rationalized, a situation in most American cities, and, indeed, many cities around the world, a situation of paradise for the high-libido young male homosexual, in that there are available to them in any city several thousand similar young men, each with pretty much the same agenda and behavior.

And they find each other -- a system of cultural institutions (mainly in the twentieth century the gay bar) and ghetto-like neighborhoods (this is diminishing) and the fact that male homosexuals gravitate toward certain career paths and of course various signaling methods that evolve.

Now there are drawbacks -- one must have free time and some excess spending power, but without children and other family burdens this is not hard for most.  One must also, since finding partners for flings or once-only "tricks" is not too difficult, not let the "law of diminishing returns" take over or one ruins the whole thing.  This "law" is the tendency we all have to get bored with what is easy to get and set ourselves greater challenges.  It also comes from the fact that sexual fantasy over-promises and sexual reality is usually underwhelming and often disappointing -- what do you expect in an environment where both partners are treating the other as a sexual object -- taking turns, as it were, in using each other's bodies for sexual pleasure?

Taken at face value and not letting it blow one's ego out of proportion, and just enjoying oneself, this lifestyle is a hell of a lot of fun.  My experience with it was before AIDS and all those other monsters appeared (which, with what I know of biology, seems to have been predictable, but that is a good topic for another journal entry).

I guess I would go the way of Bruno if some of the views here are to be credited, since I think people like the idea of extraterrestrials so much they grasp at it, when there is really no evidence to think they exist and a lot of good reason to think we are probably effectively alone.  All the arguments on the other side are grasps at straws, at "what ifs" and possibilities, not based on anything firm.

Oh, for sure "we" are "out there" -- the universe is BIG.  Still, things like us, and maybe even life, is going to prove to be excruciatingly rare.

The misinformation about galaxies that produce lots of excess radiation was a bit much.  These are active galaxies that do so from known natural processes.  We would naturally expect some to produce a lot and some not so much anyway.

I think about the long and complicated, and mostly fortuitous, series of events that led to us and to a planet like ours and to the evolution of things like multicellular life and photosynthetic organisms and plate tectonics and trees and arboreal primates and no extinction events and so on and on and I conclude we were extremely lucky, the corollary being that we are rare.

If "they" land on the White House lawn (or maybe at the Forbidden City) tomorrow, fine, I will be delighted but a bit scared.  Anything much less than that is not going to be persuasive.

In time the four years I had available to be at Harvard came to an end, and my aid and scholarships ran out and I had to leave.  I dare say without the pressure of graduating and getting grades and so on a university life is utopia, at least for someone like me.  I could go talk to really informed people, listen to lectures and take courses, all in the morning, and then have a job in the afternoon and evening that the university arranged, or at least provided a listing service for.

You have to picture me leaving Harvard.  No future that I could see, no longer any religious belief, overweight, and a fairly heavy smoker (I had picked it up in the process of leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses -- they don't make it easy).  I did have a nest egg set aside from my college work, since my living expenses had been nil and I am frugal and not interested in most of the things young people waste money on.  So I set out for home to visit my folks and give them a chance to air their frustrations about me and to do what they could to encourage me (I owed them at least that).

Depression runs in our family, and has haunted my mother's side, and I didn't escape it, and got seriously depressed.  One of the techniques I then knew was to find something not impossible but difficult to achieve, and achieve it, so I could rebuild myself, and so I determined to lose weight and to stop smoking.  Fear of gaining weight had kept me smoking so I decided to achieve these I had to do the two simultaneously.  I did.  I stopped both cigarettes and food cold turkey (they are both addictions -- a week or so of fasting and the body's addiction mechanisms are just as strong with food as with nicotine).  All I consumed was nutrient pills and water with a touch of vinegar.

(I digress here about depression -- there is a bushel of techniques available for managing it, and people who tend to this need to learn them, but they don't work dependably and never permanently.  One must by all means do whatever if one is suicidal, but in the end medication is the only way to go, and finding the right medication today is not too difficult.  Of course back then this was not available.)

So I stopped smoking (good) and fasted (bad).  At the time I did not know the consequences of rapid weight loss from fasting (my gall stones remind me of this every now and then, as I have yo-yo'd like that a dozen or more times in my life).  Then I went back to the Boston area and set about getting a job.  Well, someone with four years of a high-prestige college but no degree is basically unemployable.  The prestige college over-qualifies one for anything that doesn't require a degree and the absence of the degree disqualifies one for everything else.

One good thing is that I typed extremely well (I had made a lot of money on the side typing graduate theses -- I was fast and accurate -- wish I still were but word processors have spoiled me).  So after a couple weeks of frustration I went into a clerical employment agency and presented myself as a typist, and after taking the agency's typing test they agreed.  Now of course back then typing was done almost entirely by women, but I did get a job in a union-trucker-oriented outfit typing motor freight tariffs.  It was tedious work doing mostly boilerplate (if this kind of work still exists it has to have been automated by now) that required speed and absolute accuracy, and I did well enough and made enough money to get a nearby apartment with some roommates and begin living.

As one would expect being male typists, the place was a nest of gay guys, mostly too effeminate for my taste but at least I fit in and easily found roommates.  Now I was thin and young and probably handsome, at least to many guys' taste, and before long a world of sexual opportunity that I had never imagined might exist opened itself up, limited only by my willingness and stamina.

It is not hard to say when someone has had too much too drink -- they manifest being drunk.  However, drinking can be bad even without intoxication, such as when one is going to drive.

I have a chronic liver condition known as chronic hepatitis B.  It doesn't go away and as far as tests tell us is just sitting there doing me no harm.  However, were I to have a few drinks, the liver enzyme tests would quickly go abnormal.  The conclusion is that people who have this liver condition must not drink at all.  The same applies to all sorts of people with all sorts of health issues.  Alcohol exacerbates a lot of underlying problems.

That makes one wonder whether for most people the negatives might outweigh the positives, even in very small amounts.  It is more and more beginning to seem that that may be the case.

How far is it fair for me to carry this analogy forward with the pluses and minuses of religion?  As with alcohol, a dose of religion can serve to lower one's blood pressure and make one feel better and more sociable.  Still there is a price -- unnoticed but that regardless must be paid.  There is a similar price with belief -- not just religious belief.  Beliefs are an instinctive way of shortcutting rationality, derived from natural selection and basically animal in nature, and in a world dependent on reason, they do insidious and hidden harm.

Cats have a wonderful set of survival instincts, but in a rational city they are in grave peril depending on instincts and need human protection.

We should avoid beliefs as we should avoid intoxicants, and instead try as much as possible to rely strictly on opinions we have good reasons to accept but can modify or abandon given good rational grounds for doing so, and without any institutional or emotional or traditional grasping.

Some of my earliest memories involve playing with girls -- word games and jump rope and so on -- and I never had a phase like most boys have of "hating" girls.  I guess in this respect I was a bit feminine when young, and my dad certainly noticed it.  I also didn't much like sports and other boy things like playing soldier and mechanical things.  Of course much of this was probably because I was nerdy (let's be honest here -- I was an almost intolerable nerd) and I also have always had a strong pacifistic streak.  Even today I know that if it came to it I would rather die than kill, even in self defense.  So, then, the interconnections in my personality between being effeminate and not liking violence and not being competitive and being bookish, and which led to which behaviors, are probably impossible to disentangle.

The understanding that I was gay and that it was best to keep this hidden must have come very early, as I remember no such realization, seemingly having known it all my life.  I know I was very aware long before I learned the derogatory meaning of "queer" and before the word "gay" was widespread (I think about then is when it began to be applied to homosexuals).

In seventh and eighth grades and maybe a little later I was "sis" to all the boys.  Wasn't bullied though -- I think this happening to "sensitive" gay boys is a later thing in our culture -- or maybe I was just lucky.  Part of it may have been that I was bigger than the other boys, and just naturally I would kiss ass out your ear to avoid confrontation -- a counterproductive behavior if ever there was one.

Of course the Jehovah's Witness thing entered into it all quite early and subconsciously.  I believed then that being gay was wrong, and early on decided I had to abstain.  No real problem and in fact I can't think of any bad emotions that accompanied all this -- no guilt or fear or anything -- I just understood that God didn't want me to have sex the way my libido directed me.  (I think about that now and don't know whether to laugh or cry).

And so I didn't have sex, and never had any problems along those lines, except for keeping my orientation to myself.  I sometimes wonder if I hadn't had the religious belief I had back then what might have happened -- more than likely I would have had experiences at a much younger age, but maybe not -- I was heavy and pimply and nerdy and so on so I doubt I would not have had all that many temptations.

It's interesting -- my sexuality seems to have played no role in either my religiosity nor, later, in my realization of the reality of the religious fantasy I was in.  So many gays seem to have no end of problems with their religious beliefs, generating guilt and so on.  Not me.  I understood what was expected, accepted it, and acted accordingly.

Anyway, one thing I did do was become more masculine in my behavior.  Not that I came to like sports or become "one of the boys" or anything, but later my associates became mostly other guys of an intellectual bent and I did fine.  I even had several girl friends in high school, although not from my initiative but from my acceptance of theirs and that, although perhaps I was no football star, I was a school leader and honor student and seemed to have a future.  And, of course, in dealing with my girl friends, I was always the "perfect gentleman."

More than fifty years have passed since my youth, and it comes to mind that this means almost everyone I then knew then as an adult or as my superior is now almost certainly dead.  That is of course a chilling thought, and I guess a sad one, but it is also a little liberating: I can write honestly of those days.  Of course that I can write honestly doesn't mean I necessarily will -- I have to watch myself closely here since I have my share of false memories, mainly places where I have distorted events to protect others and aggrandize myself, or at least make my self not look quite so bad.

I wasn't in Harvard more than six months before I fully realized I was never going to graduate.  This was because of their foreign language requirement -- an armchair rule made by bureaucratic types who thought such a rule was a "good" thing for encouraging the students to study languages.  What it did to me, as happens often enough with rules, was close the door to me, since I wasn't in French more than half a year and I knew I would never pass the requirement.

I think this is an example of the Chinese saying of, "Pass a law, make a criminal," although in this case of course not a law and not a criminal, just a rule and a failure.

Of course I am not free of blame here, but I can remember spending hours studying the lesson (mainly vocabulary lists) and then having the graduate student over the class humiliate me with the accusation I hadn't even cracked a book.  So I read several books on how to remember things and tried, but didn't succeed.  I am intelligent and remember things well, but there are cracks and the biggest one is remembering things like vocabulary words or numbers or people's names.  (Later in my career I use to keep a list of my clients organized by who they worked for -- which I had no trouble remembering -- so that by the time they got from the receptionist's desk to my desk I could have looked up their name).

One other example: even today after years and years I still am never quite sure of my Social Security number, and make sure to have it at hand whenever I call a bank or broker or someone who is likely to ask for it.

Anyway I realized I would not graduate.  Of course at the time I did not see this as the disaster it in fact would turn out to be, as I thought nevertheless I would get a Harvard education in other ways, as I would not have any trouble staying there the full four years.  And, I had another card available -- "the Truth."

When I was younger my mom had come for a short time under the influence of Jehovah's Witnesses.  I think my dad's natural skepticism had influenced her away, along with her own rational intelligence, but I was unlucky enough to have been caught when I was indoctrinable (younger).   I had learned one thing -- they were, "the Truth."  I believed this.  I was not rational but beliefs rarely are, or at least don't need to be.  Beliefs are things you believe without conscious awareness -- they are just there -- furniture your mind sits on and uses and assumes without analysis or even notice.

So shortly after arrival at Cambridge I found the local congregation and began attending meetings and going to Bible studies and so on.

Since I then thought that the end of the world (Armageddon) was soon to come, the degree from Harvard did not seem so valuable.  It seemed to me I could learn what Harvard had to offer in things like history and so on and dispense with worrying about the credential that would be of no meaning in the New World that was to come.

Juvenile (sophomoric) stupidity and youthful indoctrination.  Sheesh!

It can and obviously is argued that things like the Golden Rule come from logical selfish thinking such as tit for tat or karma (what you do tends to come back on you) and so on.  I don't however notice that the proponents of things like the Golden Rule usually offer such reasoning as the reason we should follow them.  Instead they are offered as axioms of goodness, not something in our personal interest, and we do them out of a desire to do what is good.  Besides, often enough it is to our selfish advantage to not follow the Golden Rule, and even in society's rational advantage (such as punishing criminals, even though we would not want to be punished).

We also see examples of human kindness and generosity that goes way beyond anything that could earn reward for us -- saving beached whales, at great inconvenience and expense, or people dying (maybe or maybe not foolishly) for causes they perceive as greater than they, such as country or God.

It is in the modern "materialist" frame of mind to try to explain everything with some sort of selective advantage, including this amazingly widespread Golden Rule type of thinking, in spite of all the cultural differences from which such thinking derives.  The thing is the thinking does not come from ordinary people but from what we would call religious geniuses or saints or prophets or things like that, and then gets adopted by their followers because of its inherent rationality and appeal.  It took Jesus to introduce it into Abrahamic thinking, Buddha into Indian thinking, and so on.  (I rush to aver that similar thoughts can be found in the OT or in Hindu teaching -- again from limited sources).  Most of us are not born with the Golden Rule, we are born more selfish but with a desire to get praised.  We learn if we are able.

So I have trouble saying this is an evolved instinct.  It is I think instead a rational proposition derived by religious geniuses from their meditation or prayer or just reasoning that gets adopted quite widely because of its power, and biology is not involved.

Any religious doctrine can get in the way of doing good -- even the "law of love" or the Golden Rule.  There are times when war and prosecution and discrimination and lies and corruption are better than the opposite.  We need to be objective and realistic here and not sit on our moral high road justifying what we do and tut-tut-ing others.

For example I'm stopped for a minor traffic violation.  Came from being impatient and serves me right, but rather than go through all the paper work and disruption of my life that following the rules would entail, as well as causing the cop involved a lot of paper work and interfering with his continuing with his real job, we agree on a small bribe.  If I think I am innocent I will decline such a thing and I will get due process, but even then I may prefer otherwise.  In the meantime the cop gets a little more income (lord knows they aren't payed enough here) and society gets the benefit of traffic enforcement at lower cost.

For another example, I would far rather lie through my teeth than tell someone unable to handle the truth -- let us say they are going to die.  Most of us would rather know the truth, but there are exceptions and these are not hard to spot.  The classic problem posed by Socrates of whether we are obliged to return a weapon to someone who loaned it to us, the person having subsequently become deranged, comes to mind.

The thing is religion is really -- really -- irrelevant in all these matters.  Doing what is right is not a religious impulse, and determining right and not being mislead by our culture and our religion and our "conscience," but, instead, reasoning out what is right on the basis of doing the most good and the least harm (compassion and justice) as a practical matter is what we need.