The title should be all you need.

[ Strong Believers and Strong Atheists Are Less Depressed ]

No comment needed.

[ Houston Police Secretly Testing Unmanned Surveillance Drones ]

If you don’t like silly gamer geek stuff, don’t waste your time. If you do like that stuff, don’t miss this.

[ Do We Really Have Free Will ]

[ Norway: A Socialism Proof of Concept ]

So here’s the question — and this isn’t rhetorical: what’s the problem with this system? What about this (other than high taxes) is wrong? And are the high taxes perhaps tolerable given the fact that they’re being used properly? I genuinely have some cognitive dissonance on this issue.

Once you’ve consumed those questions, answer me this: what keeps America from being able to do this? I have an answer — an unpopular answer.

High quality societies require high quality populations.

We don’t have one of those in this country, or in most countries. The lower the quality of people, the less advanced the government will be. On one side of this government scale we have Norway and Sweden, on the other side we have Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.

Bad Kids

When a misbehaving child in a supermarket is rolling on the floor screaming obscenities and throwing merchandise at people, you can’t ask them to take a “time out”. That child requires an ass-whoopin’.

Sweden and Norway have well-behaved people/children that respond to subtle, gentle behavior modification techniques such as, “please don’t disappoint us.” Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and increasingly the United States have people/children who respond to brute force alone.

The overall quality of the people is what determines the quality of the society. That’s why Norway looks like it does while our country builds jails and churches.:

[ I'm aware that "quality" is a term that has different meanings to different people. I was aware of it when I used the word in a simplistic statement because I thought even people with widely varying views could agree in principal. The post, like many of mine, is based on attempting to simplify something complex. Many hate this with a passion, but I think it's extremely useful. Please remember that there's a difference between the standard of proof that I use here vs. one I would use in an academic paper or in court. This is a blog. I'm exploring ideas. Relax. ]

Next time, less flying through the air with the face exposed.

First one of these I’ve ever seen. Brutal.