Live Better, Help Often, Wonder More

So as we come to the end of they year Two Thousand Thirteen (2013), enter the final holidays of the year. Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Every year I write about these holidays giving you a rant or even perhaps a rave about each of them.  Last year I ranted on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, I even gave you my opinion on Christmas 2011.  I sit back today, read these posts and realize that I have grown past a lot of what I said in those posts.  I was very bitter and sarcastic.  After reading last years post on Christmas.  I have come to a new revelation.

Today is different, this year I have turned a new leaf.  It is not my place to judge other people about what they do with their money and or time.  We must each live our own experience, find our own peace, and spread our own joy.  For each of us this will be different.  For myself, it is probably no much different than what is taught in the Atheist mega-churches that are springing up all over the country.



Does this mean I am atheist?

The answer this year is: I don't think so.  What I mean is that I believe that there is a higher being aka God or energy that we merge or join with in the end.  Is it an actual being or is our life energy absorbed into the universe?  I think that my brain is too small to even attempt to answer that question.  In addition, for each person that answer is different.  As I get older I fine tune my beliefs which are derivatives of all the years I have lived.  Hence the reason that I have written posts in the past that I do not necessarily fully believe today.

Stephan Hawkins said, "A belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a "fairy story" for people afraid of death."

A belief that heaven or an after life awaits us is a "fairy story" for people afraid of death just like time is a

"fairy story" and subject to our frame of reference.  The closer we get to the end of life the more we realize that time is not a fixed unit of measure, just like god is not a fixed unit of belief.

What?

No one can tell you or "preach" to you who or what god is, each of us must experience life and come to our own conclusions.  Life is a journey, there is no guide, there is no manual, what I see life as, is not the same as what another person is experiencing.  Who am I to preach my set of beliefs on someone else?  We each have to live with our journey and accept it for what it is...  Truly amazing.

H.R. 2356: We Are Watching You Act of 2013

Did you know that the big media distributors like Verizon and Comcast can legally install cameras and microphones in your set top box to monitor the activity near the TV in order to feed the proper advertising to your screen?  I wrote about the loss of our privacy while watching TV back in June 2013.

H.R. 2356 was introduced by Michael Capuano, U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 7th Congressional District a Democrat of all people.  This bill, nicknamed "We are watching you act of 2013" would make the installation of cameras, microphones and other monitoring devices illegal without consumer agreement.

"To provide for notification to consumers before a video service collects visual or auditory information from the viewing area and to provide consumers with choices that do not involve the collection of such information, and for other purposes."

Unfortunately according to GovTrack.us there is only a 6% chance that this bill will make it out of committee. With just a 1% chance of it becoming law.

So what has happened?  Did we get too involved in the Debt Ceiling debate or perhaps the Affordable

Health Care Act?  Or perhaps the fact that Verizon and Google are helping the NSA spy on regular Americans and foreign countries.  It would seem that our rights and privacies are under attack from all sides.  We are currently losing our right to choose what type of health insurance we want as well as being forced to have insurance.  Now the very privacy we enjoy in our homes is under attack.

This "New America" is not the direction our forefathers wanted the country to go.  Someday in the future, sooner than later, we will wake up and wonder how we lost all our rights and privacy.  People you do not lose your rights in one day.  You slowly give them up little by little.  So after a bit of time you look back and say "What happened?".