|
NEWS BY NATURE
|
Cheating: A Success Story
|
At NBN we love watching Hollywood heroes. Productive workdays grind to a halt when we happen upon YouTubes of "Platoon," "The Big Short," "The Shawshank Redemption," Do the Right Thing," and "Fiddler on the Roof"- to name a few. What kind of heroes are characters with names like Tevya and Mookie? They are real people who do the right thing, simply because it’s the right thing to do, not to save the world from some evil menace. Kind of like Jesus, before he became a “Christian,” or Allah before he became “Great.”
The evil NBN’s Hollywood heroes fight is an inconspicuous sort which masquerades as being good through traditions and beliefs so ingrained adherents unquestioningly use them as moral yardsticks to measure their own self-worth. The kind of evil that’s often called good by the people holding those yardsticks. This issue of NBN is not about good and evil, or even Hollywood script-writers, per se. It’s about the people we so often find holding the yardsticks. People that for the purposes of this post we will refer to as cheaters. There are all kinds of cheaters in this world, but they all share one thing: they take advantage of weakness. In some respects such cheating is perfectly fine. A 400-pound lion snapping the neck of a defenseless baby gazelle is nature’s way. But a genius, sweat-of-the-brow investor goading colleagues less-so into making a malignant bet that ultimately cripples the global economy? Or a Bed-Stuy pizza delivery boy leading the looting of his place of work for not sufficiently respecting the community it has served for 25 years? When it comes to humans, defining cheating depends on discerning good from evil. That gets tricky and that’s where the people with the yardsticks step in. People like priests, politicians and script writers—let’s call them poets, for alliteration purposes. We trust them to explain and interpret the morality of such conflicts and sadly, they too cheat. More and more, these days. It’s just nature’s way, right? But is it human nature? Do we want it to be? Cheating, a success story, in our Opinion Pages of News by Nature. |
PLEASE VISIT OUR SPONSORS
Every one has a story to tell, now you can tell yours. The Story of Your Life, is the affordable, professional way to leave your loved ones a legacy. Email us to learn more: LIfestory@comcast.net
Websites we really like
Sludge Report Dark Money in the News McMansion Hell Hilarious Housing Hedonism IRN Recycling Network Great Green Goings On Science Niblets Great Stuff on Science tuka Once again own your creativity Kulwich Wonders Weird Science Deep Sea News Funny Marine Musings Invasives.org Eat Your Invasives Greenfudge Does a nice job ripping green news Birds and Bees Daily All About Avians We Effing Love Science Stupid Name, Great Content Simplicty 2.0 Geeky Stuff Made Less So Ruffners Blog Big ideas from a nano scientist Rational Wiki Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement GuideStar Find out who really benefits from charity tax deductions |
<')((((((((><~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the good ‘ol USA we’re freedom loving capitalists and damn proud of it. You wanna smoke cigarettes?-Knock yourself out. Wanna drink pancreas pummeling, liver lesioning levels of sugar and/or alcohol every day? Hey, it’s a free country. Wanna be all that you can be? Join the Army and possibly sacrifice all you’ll ever be, fighting someone else’s war. Wanna live forever? Send us some money and we’ll put in a good word with God. NBN believes firmly in our inalienable rights to do stupid stuff. What we question is the right of others to deceive you into doing so in order to profit grotesquely in the process. That’s not capitalism, that’s cheating.
|
|
|
|
What's not to love with the entirely 21st century phenomenon of binge-watching really pricey productions of subscription TV programs like "Stranger Things," "MadMen," "Peaky Blinders" and "House of Cards." No commercials, amazing costumes, decent script writing, 21st century special effects and lots and lots of cigarettes. Watching for hours a day people we admire smoking cigarettes? Haven’t we seen this movie? Tobacco use in entertainment "bottomed out" in the 1980s and is now back to 1960s levels. Back then cigarettes were everywhere, most notably in movies. Lung cancer went from a rare cancer to the most common. Why? Was it to make the story characters we’re watching on film more believable or heroic? Or was it to make money for those underwriting the production by addicting to their products those simply looking for a happy ending? Tobacco companies say they aren’t financing the sudden popularity of cigarettes in binge-watch entertainment today. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of simply trusting those willing to kill customers to make a profit, the entertainment industry was compelled to reveal who their underwriters are? Then again, if we can’t get our public officials to reveal who they owe money to, Hollywood certainly won't?
|
How is it possible untold millions of believers in the world’s most widely practiced religion are following leaders preaching precepts antithetical to its namesake. How is it possible a handful of bloodthirsty fanatics have rebranded the second most popular religion on earth, one whose very name means peace and submission, as a force determined to kill, conquer or enslave nonbelievers? How is it possible a tiny, ancient religion which provided the ideological underpinnings for the other two is now goading them into an Armageddon it forecast while surreptitiously gobbling up lands all three lay claim to? NBN has a theory: Science. Today we have credible science seriously studying the prospect of eternal life, the very same promise these and other religions made to billions before us who lived and died according to their dictates in hopes of same. Talk about disruptive technology. The sad part is there are millions of us alive today who clearly won’t see science deliver on its prospects, so we cling to the age-old promises made by these religions. Sadder still is these once-wonderful philosophies, which rested firmly on foundations of common sense and kindness which got us to the amazing time in human history, are being devoured by greedy, power-crazed individuals taking advantage of an aging population of increasingly desperate inhabitants.
|
|
Diogenes: A lifetime in search of an honest man.
|
|
Nothing is more American than Coca-Cola and Pepsi. At least that’s what Coke and Pepsi have spent 120 years and something north of $1 trillion getting you to believe. Thanks to their hard work and sacrifice average Americans today annually drink 44 gallons of soda containing 10 pounds of addictive sweeteners that fast-track diabetes. Here’s the cool part. Diabetes has increased 3-fold since 1990. That was about the time 7-11 and Coca-Cola teamed up to introduced half-gallon, to-go drink containers dispensed alongside in-store self-serve soda fountains. Slumping sales for both businesses got a sudden jolt as did the nation’s 5-to-15 age group and a variety of peripheral businesses. An entire diabetes publishing industry was born while sales of diabetes products and services skyrocketed, mostly notably to people receiving public healthcare assistance. So, who can blame these businesses for freaking out when New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg proposed banning sales of these portable cisterns of soda. Hey Mike, get with the program. Restricting commerce in lethal products reverberates throughout the economy. It’s bad for business and that’s anti-American.
Flush Out Karmic Congestion: Read Your NBN
|
Cheating sounds like such a little thing. Much like telling a little white lie. Not when that cheating and those lies wheedle their way into dearly defended freedoms like self-defense, family, religion, racism, and making a living, to name a few. That’s where cheating and lying get personal, profitable and potentially apocalyptic. Those kinds of lies and that kind of cheating are not little or white. They have another name: “The Big Lie.” Telling The Big Lie on just one of these hot button issues got a sociopath elected chancellor of a down-trodden, war-torn country 80 years ago, killing 60 million in the process. Imagine telling The Big Lie on all these issues to the world’s wealthiest and most powerful populace. We don’t have to imagine, it’s happening. NBN is quite pleased with penning some 2,500 words with just this one mention of Trump, but he is the inspiration behind ever one of them. Our president is now taking cheating and lying to a level unseen in American history by wiping out the very concept of history. Why think about yesterday and tomorrow? Right now, is all that matters. And maybe he’s right. Discerning cheating from bending the rules, and truth from lying, is like searching for black and white in the grayness of degrees of honesty. The last guy to try that lived in a clay jar a few thousand years ago. Hardly an example to aspire to. So why bother? To which NBN says: Why not?
|
~~~~~~~~~~~~~><((((((((()'>
Please click here to add your two cents. Or two bits.
________________________________________________________________________________________