By the time the Lord made woman, He was into his sixth day of working overtime. An angel appeared and said, “Why are you spending so much time on this one?” And the Lord answered, “Have you seen my spec sheet on her? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic, have over 200 movable parts, all replaceable and able to run on diet coke and leftovers, have a lap that can hold four children at one time, have a kiss that can cure anything from a scraped knee to a broken heart and she will do everything with only two hands.” The angel was astounded at the requirements. “Only two hands!? No way! And that’s just on the standard model? That’s too much work for one day, Wait until tomorrow to finish.” “But I won’t,” the Lord protested. “I am so close to finishing this creation that is so close to my own heart. She already heals herself when she is sick AND can work 18 hour days.” The angel moved closer and touched the woman. “But you have made her so soft, Lord.” “She is soft,” the Lord agreed, “but I have also made her tough. You have no idea what she can endure or accomplish.” “Will she be able to think?”, asked the angel. The Lord replied, “Not only will she be able to think, she will be able to reason and negotiate.” The angel then noticed something, and reaching out, touched the woman’s cheek. “Oops, it looks like you have a leak in this model. I told you that you were trying to put too much into this one.” “That’s not a leak,” the Lord corrected, “that’s a tear!” “What’s the tear for?” the angel asked. The Lord said, “The tear is her way of expressing her joy, her sorrow, her pain, her disappointment, her love, her loneliness, her grief and her pride.” The angel was impressed. “You are a genius, Lord. You thought of everything! Woman is truly amazing.” And she is! Women have strengths that amaze men. They bear hardships and they carry burdens, but they hold happiness, love and joy. They smile when they want to scream. They sing when they want to cry. They cry when they are happy and laugh when they are nervous. They fight for what they believe in. They stand up to injustice. They don’t take “no” for an answer when they believe there is a better solution. They go without so their family can have. They go to the doctor with a frightened friend. They love unconditionally. They cry when their children excel and cheer when their friends get awards. They are happy when they hear about a birth or a wedding. Their hearts break when a friend dies.. They grieve at the loss of a family member, yet they are strong when they think there is no strength left. They know that a hug and a kiss can heal a broken heart. Women come in all shapes, sizes and colors.  They’ll drive, fly, walk, run or e-mail you to show how much they care about you. The heart of a woman is what makes the world keep turning. They bring joy, hope and love. They have compassion and ideals. They give moral support to their family and friends. Women have vital things to say and everything to give.

HOWEVER, IF THERE IS ONE FLAW IN WOMEN, IT IS THAT THEY FORGET THEIR WORTH.

We were just kids. 

Let go and went our separate ways.

But somehow our hearts remained linked.

Full circle, and back to the beginning.  We made it through the hell and found our innocence in the fire.  A little less naive, a little less trustful, a little more grown up…but still the same.  I love your soul.  I love you so much dear friend…  I’ve missed you.

From The Ethical Spectacle September 1995 http://www.spectacle.org

The story of the frog and the scorpion has been cited everywhere from discussions of mid-east terrorism to the movie The Crying Game. In the story, a scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.” The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp “Why?” Replies the scorpion: “Its my nature…”

Please note that the story does not portray a prisoner’s dilemma. The frog has absolutely nothing to gain by carrying the scorpion across, and is therefore a foolish altruist, proving the truth of the adage, “No good deed goes unpunished.” But it is not hard to turn the story into a prisoner’s dilemma, as follows.

The frog desires to cross the stream but is afraid of a stork on the other side. The scorpion has no means to cross the stream but is capable of scaring the stork. If the frog carries the scorpion across, the scorpion will reciprocate by frightening away the stork; the scorpion will have crossed the stream and the frog will be safe. The apparent sucker’s payoff for the frog is that the scorpion will slip away without scaring the stork once the frog has gone to all the trouble of carrying him across. There is no apparent sucker’s payoff for the scorpion–the frog’s major opportunity for defection is not to carry the scorpion, but, since the scorpion will not yet have had the opportunity to extend its cooperation it will not have lost anything (the moves are not simultaneous). Perhaps the frog’s defection may consist of eating the scorpion, once it has scared off the stork.

In any event, the scorpion’s unexpected and selfdestructive defection raises the issue of how to counter a player who defects first, and defects in a way that prevents you from retaliating on the next move (your life has ended in the meantime.) All assassins and terrorists play the game this way. Because they are willing to die–it is their nature–the future has no shadow for them. This madness is not unique to humans–the bee that stings to defend the hive, then dies, is a suicidal defector in nature.

Gandhi succeeded in his variation on the prisoner’s dilemma because the British were not willing to resort to the ultimate defection. A player, like the Nazis, willing to stop at nothing, creates an illogical loop much like the one that results when two players play a series for a known number of moves. Since, on the last move, the future has no shadow, I might as well defect. Since the other player will certainly be smart enough to defect on that move as well, I may as well defect on the move before, when he may still be cooperating. But, since he is smart enough to reason this through the way I did, he will probably defect on that move too. So again I will consider defecting a move earlier. But so will he. The result: we both defect on the first move and each move afterwards.

Because the scorpion will kill you as soon as it is given a chance, you must find a way to defect earlier than the scorpion, and decisively. But the scorpion will study the situation, looking for a way to defect earlier than you can; so you must assume he will do so, and seek to defect earlier still. Like gunfighters in a Western movie who run down the street at each other, howling and shooting as soon as they catch sight of each other, the prisoner’s dilemma escalates into an immediate duel to the death. The concept of a pre-emptive strike expresses nothing other than a strategy based on defecting early and decisively. Tarquinian’s symbolic cutting of the tops from the tallest flowers, or the massacre of opponents after any coup d’etat in history, are other examples.

It is the scorpion that pulls humanity down. If you are not yourself a scorpion, you still are unable to play every move of every game in the cooperation zone, because sooner or later you will meet a scorpion. Not every scorpion is a suicide bomber; the law partner who made a successful motion to cut my draw, forcing my resignation from a law firm, suffered the symbolic fate of the scorpion when the firm’s biggest client (the one I alone knew how to service) left as a result, and the firm folded. Yeats’ judgment that “things fall apart, the center cannot hold”, because “the worst are full of passionate intensity” is a recognition of the fact that there are scorpions.

Scorpions may know the consequences, and not care, like the suicide bomber, or may, through vanity and denial, refuse to see the consequences, like my ex-partner. In any event, the effect is the same: a player defects when there is no reason to, and something–a life, an enterprise–ends as a result.

Game theory does not really take scorpions into account. It holds that people will defect because that is in their best interest–because the future has no shadow. Game theory fails as a tool when we are dealing with sociopathology or extreme denial. The human dilemma is that all progress ultimately fails or at least slides back, that anything once proven must be proven again a myriad of times, that there is nothing so well established that a fundamentalist (of any religion or stripe) cannot be found to deny it, and suffer the consequences, and then deny that he suffered the consequences.

All rivers begin in the human heart and, as I said recently in my Auschwitz essay, the human heart is infirm. The saddest saying I ever heard, “trees never grow into heaven”, will be true for so long as we have scorpions.

The Scorpion and the Frog

One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.

The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn’t see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.

Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.

“Hellooo Mr. Frog!” called the scorpion across the water, “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?”

“Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.

“Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!”

Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. “What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”

“This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the river!”

“Alright then…how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?” said the frog.

“Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you’ve taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!”

So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog’s back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog’s soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.

Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.

“You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”

The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back.

“I could not help myself. It is my nature.”

Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

Four United States Presidents got caught up in a tornado….  and off they whirled to the land of OZ.

They finally made it to the Emerald City  

…and went to find the Great Wizard

“What brings the four of you before the great Wizard of Oz?”

 Jimmy Carter stepped forward timidly:

 ”I’ve come for some courage.”

“No Problem! said the Wizard. Who’s next?”

Richard Nixon stepped forward, and said: 

 ” Well, I think I need a heart.” 

 ”Done! says the Wizard.”

“Who comes next before the Great and Powerful Oz?”
Up stepped Bush and said,

“The American people say that I need a brain.” 
“No problem!” said the Wizard. “Consider it done.”

Then there is a great silence in the hall.  Bill Clinton is just
standing there, looking around, but he doesn’t say a word.

Irritated, the Wizard finally asks, 
“Well, what do you want?”

“IS DOROTHY HERE?”

THE Right Brain vs Left Brain Test

   

  

 

Which way is she spinning?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 … do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?   

 If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.  Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.