Cardopoly...

It seems like everywhere you go there is a company trying to get you to put their plastic keytag on your keychain or their cheap barcoded card in your wallet. Just about all the clothes stores, supermarkets, shoe stores, pharmacies, convenience stores, even my hair salon has it. I looked at my keychain the other day and was positively overwhelmed at the amount of shuffling I'd have to do to get my appropriate tag in the event that one of these merchants actually called me out on it. I propose that we let the merchant do the shuffling and that we disregard the way they look at us when we present them with the opportunity to handle our wares. I think if they want our business they ought to share the burden of our carrying for all these tags.
The wallet cards are another story. Why associate all of our information in an online account and assign it to a card for us to just lose the card and then ask our phone number to give us the discount. I'd like it if our license would work the same way. Just give your address and your license info will pull up. Why not have a thunb print database that links our names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card info, and the works. That would be great.
I read maybe 6 months ago in popular science magazine that they would be putting cell phone information out there for people to try in select cities. All of our information would be stored on our cell phone and it could be swiped at various convenience locations thus eliminating the need for a plastic card.
Ideally, if dogs can be chipped now to scan and identify them in the event of loss, then the concept of scanning a thumb to identify credit is just as feasible. I'd get into the spare thumb market now, while the concept is still relatively unexplored. Cut em off and freeze them on a metal stub. Remove yours accordingly, and save it so that you can attach the thumb of your chosing for appropriate identity theft!
I'm just kidding, but this is the wave of the future. There was a time when nobody thought you could like about your identity online and now everyone does it. Caveat Emptor. Let the buyer beware.

Virtue

A pre political society has people that are inherently one way or another. All sorts of political thinkers vary their opinions on this and there is no correct answer to this. Hobbes thought all people were inherently evil and sacrificed freedoms to maintain peace, hence any gov being good gov, people naturally competitive so forth. I mention this because I assume the opposite that everyone is naturally cooperative and that virtues are demonstrative positive attributes to people. Lack of a virtue is negative in itself and needs no polar opposite. So viciousness would lack of compassion and lack of some other independent attribute. I haven't sat down and thought of the virtues as features, but I'd probably use utility, creativity, compassion, constraint, wisdom, agility, and ability.
Lethargy would be lack of utility and ability. So forth.
Just my own little theory. I borrow from catholic(universal) theology's virtues a tad, but mostly my own spin.

I think your view on virtues depends on your view of people innately. If people are innately peaceful in your opinion, then assume they possess pos attributes from the start, if neg view on people in state of nature, then neg view on attributes. Christianity depicts its members as inherently evil by lineage, and assumes that they strive to become virtuous. That was Thomas Aquinas, the catholic saint and philosophers view point.

Anyway, This is not a religious debate, it's just that the best philosophers in my humble opinion were the ones that contested religious ideals.

Plato is my personal favorite though. The analogy of the cave was one of my favorite stories ever. love it.

Something I'd like to add. To compare us to animals is fair, but think of this: from a sociological point of view, a professional is one who strives for excellence (not perfection, there is no perfection to a professional) in their field or expertise and compares only to those other professionals in that field. Animals have insufficient mental capacity to evaluate and perform the types of analysis on themselves that makes them capable of determining whether or not they can enhance or falter in the process of being virtuous. Thus, making it improper to really compare animal to man. Sand is no more virtuous than plant by this standard, but girl can be more virtuous than boy or specific comparable better than specific comparable and like. It allows for more accurate comparison. The ability to reason is what makes us human. It used to be tool use, but since a monkey is able to grab a honey stick, cross over a hill, and then jab the honey stick into an anthill to pull out a delicious treat utilizing the stick as a tool, we are now classified as the only species that has the ability to reason.

Agree?

I had a nightmare last night about this cannibal that took a torso and put it on a barbecue grill. The torso was smothered in barbecue sauce and it bubbled over and boiled the meat. The flesh that remained cooked looked like an uncooked hamburger patty, giant, and saucy. The grill sides had oozing red liquid gushing from its sides as the grill rose higher and higher. It looked as though the blood from the body had seeped out and overflowed. The sides of the grill were a mess and if it didn't smell like a 4th of July feast, it would have overwhelmingly nauseated me.

Anyway, this was the nightmare I had and I'm still grossed out by it now!

I was doing some reading of Diet Studies and saw an article that rated diets. The Ornish diet rated very well. It's no meats, vegetables and very lean snacks. It's a lot of wheat products and no fat items. Looks good, supposedly very good for your heart. Ang doesn't like it. She likes meat too much. I'm fine with that. I love a good steak and chicken of all sorts. I think I could have the will power to do it though and would somewhat like to try. I can't do it unless she supports it! We'll see it.

Today we went shopping for clothes. We went to the Florida mall after driving in circles for a while. We are still learning the back ways! The Florida mall was busy because it was a rainy day. Because of the nature of the Orlando Tourist industry, this time of year being off season, we think about rainy days as busy days for shopping and indoor activities. At a movie theater, one of the busiest times of year is a rainy day. A succession of a few rainy days in a row drives big business to restaurants, movie theaters, malls and the like. When hurricanes hit in this remote area it leads to everyone cancelling their vacations. I can't say I blame them, people wait the entire year to take their vacation. It's hard to coordinate work for 2 or more people, school for a few kids and travel accommodations as well as a place to stay. Timeshare makes that easy, but it's still a dilemma if weather is involved. So I'm writing to discuss how to make a great vacation if there is rain all week long! A typical week consists of 5 days of actual vacation. 1 day of prep on arrival, 1 day of exit prep. In that 5 days 1 day is usually destination, such as Sarasota, Naples, Florence, Miami, Tampa, something of that sort. So for the 4 days that you actually stay, what do you do to enjoy the days? For starters if it's raining, the movie theaters only buy you a night. Otherwise, there's wine bars, coffee houses, restaurants galore, dinner shows, casino cruises, and more. Not too mention, the indoor Disney attractions! If you do them all you'll have plenty of things to entertain you. We went to the prime outlets today and they were great as well. I recommend visiting and window shopping. If you use your WHO savings card, they give you a discount pack that can help get you discounts. Check it out.

I'll be going to an old friends wedding soon, and it made stop and think about some of the friends I've had over the years. When we think about the people that last in our lives, and I say last because, you don't know what's going to happen month to month, so many of them leave and move around. Some of them keep in touch, some of them don't. I've recently had some people in the past year come back into my life, family and former family. Also, some are dearly departed. I can't help it but sometimes i feel like there is always a balance in life and the equilibrium sets in to take where you've given and give where you've taken from. Things become wonderful just as soon as there is peril. The peril ends and so begins glory. This might be pessimism, or maybe it's just the bitter rants of man who's napkin blows away in the wind. I think a realistic view about the balance of life is a budhist idea, but this brings me to my original idea of friends over the year. It's always good to keep those friends somewhat close, because you never know when you need one, if nothing else for than to make some noise that doesn't come from an electronic device. That's a whole new post in itself!

Autism

I have been doing some reading lately and someone named Michelle from Ithica posted something that stuck with me about Autism that I'd like to share on her behalf. She said that you can't look at someone with autism and treat them like they are with cancer, that you have to realize it is who they are and almost like an alien who needs to be loved and nurtured to survive here, we need to care for them and acknowledge them for their essence. I just thought that was pretty moving. On a side note, I wanted to say that the emotional aspect of discussing Autism in reference to families is difficult for some. I think the science behind Autism is difficult to talk about because so much of Autism and Science in general is either theory or unknown and just speculated, but humanity, in all of it's splendor is emotional, and that is something we can all celebrate and cherish.

Arabian Nights

We went to Arabian Nights on Friday night. It's a dinner show that starts at 8:30 and has a pre show starting at 7pm. It's roughly $50 a ticket and always sells out. We arrived at 7:10 and there were hundreds of people already. The food was mediocre. Not amazing service but the combination of dinner, desert, beer, soda and coffee with a magic show before hand and a nice horse riding show with lengthy presentation was definitely very much worth the money for an evenings entertainment and meal. I would recommend getting discounted tickets and taking advantage of the event.

Typhoon Lagoon

Today we went to Typhoon Lagoon at Disney World. It was a nice park with many exciting tube rides and wave pool, slides, the works. Prices were tourism appropriate and the weather was on the brink of raining so it was less than densely populated accounting for no wait time at all for lines. The park opened at 10 and closed at 5pm. It's about 40 per person entry fee and 7 dollars for a large locker plus a 5 dollar deposit, free parking, 5 dollars for 2 pretzels.
We had a blast and would do it again. Walking around the park made us pretty tired!