Where Is God?

Tens of thousand of years ago early civilizations honored and prayed to many gods and types of gods.The Greeks, the Romans, and  the Egyptians had many gods and goddesses for whom they built numerous elaborate temples. The ancient Egyptians also believed that their pharaohs were gods and treated them as such. Other ancient people prayed to the gods of nature, such as the sun, wind, fire, animals and the forest. People prayed to different gods who represented different aspects of life.  About 4000 years ago the idea of, monotheism or"one"god was introduced by Abraham in the founding of the Jewish religion. A few thousand years later, Christianity, an offshot of Judaism was founded. At about the same time Islam was founded. All three of these religions honored one single God, who was basically the same God with different names, Jehovah, Allah or God, according to what religion you belonged to. All of a sudden praying to only one God became the norm. Even though the same one God is recognized as the same "one true God" each of these religions have been at each other's throats for thousand of years, professing to be the "only true religion". Even the different sects in Judaism, Christianity and Islam are professing to be the true sect of their religion. Millions of people have died and thousands continue to die to this day, all in the name of God.

All of these religions believe that God is an all loving, all powerful and all forgiving God.  One thing that baffles me is, how God lets this bloodshed continue. Why does he stand by an allow people to murder each other in His name? Why doesn't He come out and say "cut the crap and accept and love one another in My name instead of killing your fellow man in My name"?  Surely God can do that.

If you look at the Bible, you will see that God had talked to Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Ezekiel, Noah and a few others. But that was about 4,000 years ago. Why was God so talkative way back then, but suddenly so quiet now?  As far as I know God has not talked to anyone in at least 2000 years, if you don't count some of the present day Republican candidates for president. Another question I have on this subject is "where was God all of those tens of thousand of years before he supposedly spoke to Abraham"? What made Him decide suddenly to talk to Abraham and tell him to found the Jewish religion? I don't uinderstand it. I am sure if I were to address these concerns to any devout member of the above religions I would get the response, "It's God's will". The standard response a religious person gives when he can't come up with an logical answer.

What I am really worried about is that if by some amazing miracle God reads this blog and decides to talk to someone about the religious violence ocurring in the world today. Would that person believe that God was actually talking to him? And what would happen when he communicated to the rest of us what God had said? We all would probably think he was crazy and pay him no heed. Who knows? Maybe God has already told us to stop the killing and violence in the name of religion and we just laughed at the messenger. I really believe, however, that is intrinsically human for people to hate and to kill for no reason at all, other than slight differences in opinion. Animals kill for food and for defense. Humans kill for no reason at all. And we consider ourselves superior! Maybe God is just fed up with us all.

How Can I lose Weight Fast?

How many people have Googled the question, "How can I lose weight fast?" I am willing to bet that hundreds of thousands of people have. Well if you've landed on this post in response to your question about losing weight, don't be upset because you won' find any answers here.

If you do a search for help in losing weight you will find hundreds of sites, mostly all useless. You will undoubtedly find results in sites such as "Wikihow", "Ehow" and "Ezine" and if you look closely enough you will notice that the articles are almost exactly the same. Drink plenty of water, exercise, eat more fruit and vegetables, less fat and sugar and count your calories. This is information any idiot would know, unless they have been living in a cave all of their life. Then you will find sites selling the miracle diets or supplements, ranging from diet teas to exotic fruit from the jungles of the Amazon. Diet teas work great if you want to sit on the toilet all day and give up eating. The supplements usually are very expensive and consist of ingredients which have absolutely no effect on weight and can be very dangerous in many cases. A lot of these miracle weight loss supplements raise your metabolism, which also raises your heart rate and blood pressure. Coffee is a much cheaper and safer alternative. You can also buy over the counter drugs that prevent fat from being absorbed by your digestive system. These work great as long as you don't mind the occasional "accident" you have when you sneeze or cough, or when you thought "it" was going to be a fart. If you take the pills you really shouldn't wear white pants and have a constant supply of clean underwear with you. 

Aside from the supplements there are a number of alternative exercise techniques, like those vibration plates that are supposed to shake the fat off you.  Some of the advertising claims that you can burn 1000 calories in 15 minutes. None of the current research on these techniques have found any positive benefits for weight loss. I have known people who have tried the vibration plates and paid some hefty fees over a few months period. The only weight they lost was in their wallets.

Some sites advertise "body wrap" where they promise you can lose inches around your waist. Of course you do. The wrapping just moves the fat to another part of the body! If this doesn't work maybe you can try electric muscle stimulation to shock the fat off your body. Once again all of the current research shows no evidence of any weigh loss benefits. If you read any literature on the above techniques, you will find some extremely fine print at the bottom of brochures or customer testamonials, which says that success comes only when used in conjunction with proper diet and exercise.

The other sites you will run across will be legitimate sites which offer just that - proper diet and exercise. They offer advice on eating healthy, along with recipes and which foods will help you lose weight  and keep it off.  Other sites offer exercise programs and tips that will help you burn fat and lose weight in a healthy fashion. Many of these exercises can be done at home at little or no cost. There are sites that advertise gyms or home exercise equipment to lose weight and keep in shape. Unlike weight loss miracles, supplements and the latest fat burning technologies, nutrition and exercise has been proven to be effective for weight loss.

The bottom line is that for most of us, we are fat because we eat way too much of the wrong food and won't get off our butts to do any exercise. We realize we are fat but we are too damn lazy to do anything about it except to waste our time looking for a miracle quick fix weight loss gimmick. The anwer to the title question is eat less, drink water and exercise more.

Is There Ever A Point Where One Can Have Too Much Money?

Everyone, at some time or other, has wished they had more money than they actually do. Many people have little or no money from a job or business and depend on public assistance.  There are many people who are living from paycheck to paycheck, who naturally wish they had more money to spend for their daily living expenses, health care or education. There are many of us who just wish they had a little more money to spend on that dream vacation, dream house or some kind of special toy. Then there are those who are literally drowning in money. Mitt Romney comes to mind.

I am retired now and I live on a relatively fixed income of social security and a pension. I often wish I had more money to spend on a bigger house or more lavish lifestyle, but I am 100% sure that what I have is what I have, for ever. Unless, of course, this and my other blogs start to make a hell of a lot of money, rather than the meager dollar a month average. So instead of me dreaming about becoming rich  I watch the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination attack each other, with Romney taking most of the attacks. Since I have lived in Massachusetts I knew Mitt Was rich, but I really didn't give it much thought, until a couple of days ago.

When Romney revealed what he paid in income taxes I was a bit surprised. On one site I read that if you take the net worth of all of the presidents from Nixon to Obama and then double that, you are approaching what Romney is worth.  Another site I read allowed the user to figure out how long Romney would have to work to equal their own salary. He would have to work almost 12 hours for him to make what I receive in 1 year. On the other hand I would have to work 731 years to equal Mitt's salary. Maybe I'll just try to stay alive for only another 600 years! Romney's net worth is estimated to be about $200 million. A tad more than mine.

I was trying to think what I would do with $200 million. I really had a difficult time coming up with ideas on what I could do with the extra money.  After getting a bigger, nicer house, giving money to family, donating to charity and buying some tech toys I would still have a lot of money left. I can't imagine what Mitt uses all of that money for. Sure he has 3 big houses, but I am sure they are paid for. Taxes are a concern, but apparently he pays less in income taxes than the average American. He gives to charity, mainly to his church, but this is also tax deductible.

Now he is running for president. He certainly doesn't need that meager income, so it must be just a power trip. One thing is for sure. If he does become president, he will leave office even rich than when he entered. So why do he and other millionaires and billionaires need so much money? I guess the answer to that question will never be known. Most of us, I am sure will never have the chance to find out for ourselves what it feels like to be filthy rich. So I guess we just have to be happy and enjoy life with what we've got.

The Color of My Skin

I grew up in a small town in upstate New York and attended undergraduate college in another small town in New York State during the civil rights movements of the 1960's. I did not know any Black people when I was a child because I think there were only about 100 Blacks living in my hometown at the time. When I moved away to college I made my first Black friends, who were mainly from New York City or from out of state, attending college on a special program to assist disadvantaged Blacks from the inner cities of the Midwest.  I recall seeing demonstrations in larger cities and in cities of the South in support of Civil Rights for Black people, which were a part of the nightly news almost daily.

I must admit, being from that small town in upstate New York, that I was very far removed from the savage realities of what Blacks had been and were going through. I really didn't understand why some Whites viewed Black people differently, merely on the basis of their skin color. My Black friends were no different from my White or Asian friends, except for the color of their skin. Actually I would not consider any of my friends as being "white". They came in a variety of shades from light skinned to darker shades. Tanning was not popular then, so the different skin tones were genetic, depending upon what the nationality of the person was. At that time I didn't pay attention to what "race" a person was. I was familiar with Nat King Cole, Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson and Sammie Davis Jr. I didn't understand what all the fuss was about, but I could see the suffering of those who were not so fortunate to be a famous celebrity.

I must admit that not everyone I knew felt as I did when I was growing up, but even though they did not feel as I did, they were not as demonstrative about their feelings as the hardcore racists I was used to seeing on the TV news. I was naive enough to believe that the United States was the only country who discriminated against its own citizens, Black people. A number of years after grad school I had a chance to visit Vietnam for a month. I was not involved in the war, so everything I knew about the country was from friends who had served there, from Vietnamese friends who came to the US as refugees and once again from seeing news footage of the war. I remember standing in a field, under a star filled sky late one night, in complete silence, knowing that many Vietnamese and Americans had been killed in that very field. I could never put in words how I felt.

I thought that here in Vietnam, my first trip to Asia, I would not find any of the discrimination on the basis of skin color, that I had found in the US. After all everybody was Vietnamese or Vietnamese-Chinese or of indigenous decent. There weren't any Black people. I was wrong. I discovered that the same discrimination existed there, as well as all of the other parts of Asia. I noticed that some people were darker than others. I learned that people who had darker skin, were farmers or worked outside at low paying jobs as manual laborers. They were looked down upon by the more affluent.These affluent or supposedly higher classed people had lighter skin and took great pains to keep their skin lighter.

I am retired and now live in Malaysia, where I see a variety of skin colors. I still see people being looked down upon because of their dark skin. I see women driving with large floppy hats  and full length gloves, so their skin doesn't tan. The stores are filled with whitening products to bleach the skin of Asian women, so they can look more Caucasian and more affluent. The idiotic side of this is the number of Caucasian women I see baking themselves in the sun, so they can get darker tanned skin. It makes absolutely no sense to me.

 Now that I am much older and am still being educated by life I can see that much has changed in the US and other parts of the world. Things have gotten better in the US for people of different races, but there still needs to be a lot of work done to make sure that we don't become complacent. There are still racists and bigots in this country and all over the world, who would love nothing better than to erase all of the gains that minorities or people who are different have made.   Fortunately in countries like South Africa, Black people have gained the rights to which they are truly entitled to. Civil rights include more than rights of people of different skin colors. Civil rights include the rights of women, children, handicapped, all religions, gays, all races, the young, the old and any member of the human race who may be different in some way.

I guess that I have come to the conclusion that bigotry and racism has been part of the human race since the beginning of time and probably will exist until the end of time. Evolution has not been able to eliminate discrimination. Today we see religious movements that are trying to force bigoted and discriminatory beliefs on entire populations. We see groups trying to deny basic human rights to wide segments of the population. We see groups trying to blame the present word economic situation on other members of the population, just like the Nazis did.  But I haven't given up on the idea of equality yet. Maybe those who promote equality, human rights and fairness, in actuality are those members of the human race who still are evolving as humans, while those who want to go backwards Only time will tell. To this end I often think what would happen at the end of the world when we meet our maker, he turns out to be a Black, female, lesbian Jew!