JP Morgan Chase Paid $9 Billion to Keep This Woman Silent About Its Crimes




Whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann has told all to journalist Matt Taibbi.

Over at Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi has a blockbuster story about a thirty-something securities lawyer who Wall Street giant JP Morgan Chase paid $9 billion to keep silent.

Alayne Fleischmann witnessed criminal securities fraud while working as a deal manager at the bank. Part of her job was to review loans that the bank was taking over, and she began to see more and more cases where the bank was taking on loans where the individuals involved obviously could not pay.

One example: she reviewed a loan to a manicurist who claimed to have a $117,000 annual income; she calculated that she'd have to work 488 days a year to make that much money. Fleischmann and her co-workers flagged many of these loans as “stated income unreasonable for profession”; in one case in 2006, managers marked 33 percent loans in a loan sample under this category, but were effectively overturned by a Chase executive who forced them to drop the rate to less than 10 percent. Yet the bank continued to “sell...high-risk loans as low-risk securities,” despite the fact that doing so would be fraud.

Fleischmann continued to make similar complaints to her managers until she was laid off in 2008. She was under a confidentiality agreement with Chase, but she did have the ability to report crimes. So she put her trust in the federal government, which was tasked with overseeing and punishing the sort of fraud she witnessed.

But time and time again, the investigators demurred when presented with evidence of Chase's major crimes, instead choosing to focus on smaller ones. In 2012 and 2013, she worked with the U.S. Attorney's office in the Eastern District of California to again lay out the case for the crimes Chase had committed. In the fall of 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder had scheduled a press conference to announce fraud charges against Chase; Fleischmann felt vindicated at last. Yet curiously, the press conference was canceled, and reportedly the bank's chief, Jamie Dimon, had called Associate Attorney General Tony West and offered instead to go to settlement. By November, the case ended in a settlement for what was reported to be $13 billion, but ended up being closer to $9 billion due to the fact that $4 billion of it was “consumer relief” taken largely from investors. It soon became obvious that the reason that Chase and the government went to a settlement was to avoid a public trial and prosecutions which would hinge on Fleischmann engaging in a very public testimony.

By going to Rolling Stone, Fleishcmann has in a way been able to make the public testimony Chase effectively paid to stop. Still, a news story isn't the same as a criminal investigation. But Taibbi warns that the statutes of limitations for a number of these fraud cases is running out, which, he says is Fleischman's main motivation for speaking out now. Hope is rapidly fading for serious justice before JP Morgan Chase simply gets away with it.





Zaid Jilani is the investigative blogger and campaigner for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. He is formerly the senior reporter-blogger for ThinkProgress.

Paul Krugman Divulges the Real Reason Why the 'Wrong About Everything' Party Won




Masking their real positions won't be so easy now that the GOP is in power.

"Politics determines who has power, not who has the truth," Paul Krugman says in his Friday column. That is his summing up of the midterm election results this week which delivered a huge win to Republicans. "Still, it’s not often that a party that is so wrong about so much does as well as Republicans did on Tuesday."

Just to review, the Republicans have been demonstrably wrong on the following issues, Krugman writes.


First, there’s economic policy. According to conservative dogma, which denounces any regulation of the sacred pursuit of profit, the financial crisis of 2008 — brought on by runaway financial institutions — shouldn’t have been possible. But Republicans chose not to rethink their views even slightly. They invented an imaginary history in which the government was somehow responsible for the irresponsibility of private lenders, while fighting any and all policies that might limit the damage. In 2009, when an ailing economy desperately needed aid, John Boehner, soon to become the speaker of the House, declared: “ It’s time for government to tighten their belts.”

Time has proven all of this wrong. And cutting taxes on the rich to drive economic growth has not worked either. Just ask Kansas.

Not that any of this real life evidence has gotten any Republicans we know of to admit they were wrong.

Second on Krugman's list of Republican wrongheadedness is health reform. Everything Republicans said would happen did not happen, including low enrollment, loss of coverage and skyrocketing costs. Reality stubbornly refused to deliver on all these hysterical and disingenuous predictions. More people than ever have insurance and health spending is down.

The biggest lie of them all is climate change. The Republicans are now a party of climate denialists, who claim that it's all a left-wing hoax concocted by, what, stunt scientists? A mere six years ago this was not so, Krugman points out. "Senator John McCain proposed a cap-and-trade system similar to Democratic proposals." Not going to happen anymore. This is devastating, and is likely to push us past the point of no return in terms of the damage that will be wrought on the Earth.

Time for Krugman's analysis of why voters would give this group such a victory. It's not pretty, and none too flattering to voters.


Part of the answer is that leading Republicans managed to mask their true positions. Perhaps most notably, Senator Mitch McConnell, the incoming majority leader, managed to convey the completely false impression that Kentucky could retain its impressive gains in health coverage even if Obamacare were repealed.

But the biggest secret of the Republican triumph surely lies in the discovery that obstructionism bordering on sabotage is a winning political strategy. From Day 1 of the Obama administration, Mr. McConnell and his colleagues have done everything they could to undermine effective policy, in particular blocking every effort to do the obvious thing — boost infrastructure spending — in a time of low interest rates and high unemployment.

What was bad for America, proved to be good for Republicans. Voters did not get that it was the dysfunctional legislative process that was failing them, they just punished the sitting president for the failure to deliver prosperity.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Putin's Speech in Valdai that went Unreported by US & British Media

Friday, 31 October 2014




Most people in the English-speaking parts of the world missed Putin's speech at the Valdai conference in Sochi a few days ago, and, chances are, those of you who have heard of the speech didn't get a chance to read it, and missed its importance. Western media did their best to ignore it or at best to twist its meaning. Regardless of what you think or don't think of Putin (like the sun and the moon, he does not exist for you to cultivate an opinion) this is probably the most important political speech since Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech of March 5, 1946.


In this speech, Putin abruptly changed the rules of the game. Previously, the game of international politics was played as follows: politicians made public pronouncements, for the sake of maintaining a pleasant fiction of national sovereignty, but they were strictly for show and had nothing to do with the substance of international politics; in the meantime, they engaged in secret back-room negotiations, in which the actual deals were hammered out. Previously, Putin tried to play this game, expecting only that Russia be treated as an equal. But these hopes have been dashed, and at this conference he declared the game to be over, explicitly violating Western taboo by speaking directly to the people over the heads of elite clans and political leaders.



Russian blogger chipstone summarized the most salient points from Putin's speech as follows:




1. Russia will no longer play games and engage in back-room negotiations over trifles. But Russia is prepared for serious conversations and agreements, if these are conducive to collective security, are based on fairness and take into account the interests of each side.

2. All systems of global collective security now lie in ruins. There are no longer any international security guarantees at all. And the entity that destroyed them has a name: The United States of America.

3. The builders of the New World Order have failed, having built a sand castle. Whether or not a new world order of any sort is to be built is not just Russia's decision, but it is a decision that will not be made without Russia.

4. Russia favors a conservative approach to introducing innovations into the social order, but is not opposed to investigating and discussing such innovations, to see if introducing any of them might be justified.

5. Russia has no intention of going fishing in the murky waters created by America's ever-expanding "empire of chaos", and has no interest in building a new empire of her own (this is unnecessary; Russia's challenges lie in developing her already vast territory). Neither is Russia willing to act as a savior of the world, as she had in the past.

6.
Russia will not attempt to reformat the world in her own image, but neither will she allow anyone to reformat it in their image. Russia will not close herself off from the world, but anyone who tries to close her off from the world will be sure to reap a whirlwind.

7. Russia does not wish for the chaos to spread, does not want war, and has no intention of starting one. However, today Russia sees the outbreak of global war as almost inevitable, is prepared for it, and is continuing to prepare for it. Russia does not want war—nor does she fear it.

8. Russia does not intend to take an active role in thwarting those who are still attempting to construct their New World Order - until their efforts start to impinge on Russia's key interests. Russia would prefer to stand by and watch them give themselves as many lumps as their poor heads can take. But those who manage to drag Russia into this process, through disregard for her interests, will be taught the true meaning of pain.

9. In her external, and, even more so, internal politics, Russia's power will rely not on the elites and their back-room dealing, but on the will of the people.

10. There is still a chance to construct a new world order that will avoid a world war. This new world order must of necessity include the United States—but can only do so on the same terms as everyone else: subject to international law and international agreements; refraining from all unilateral action; in full respect of the sovereignty of other nations.

It doesn't matter what you have faith in so long as you have faith

51

Sounds too odd for me-


Why the Term 'Biblical Marriage' Is Misleading
While same-sex marriage is not endorsed in the Bible, neither is a loving, mutually agreed upon union of a man and woman
October 28, 2014 |
In light of the recent resignations of two North Carolina magistrates, explained by their religious convictions that same-sex marriage is a sin or desecrates the "holy institution established by God Himself," I would like to offer a few points of clarification to the overall discourse.

First, the kinds of relationships that qualify for marriage in the Bible, and thus could count as "biblical marriage," represent quite a striking range of options. They include polygyny (more than one wife or concubine, simultaneously), open marriage for the man (since he can have access to the female slaves or servants in the house), forcing a woman to marry her rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) and levirate marriage (wherein a childless widow must marry the brother of her deceased husband). Those are just a few of the examples from the Hebrew Bible.

What we see in the Newer Testament includes Jesus claiming that men can leave their wives and children in order to follow him (Luke 18:28-30), in addition to him somewhat throwing the gauntlet in Matthew 19:10-12, where he discusses men being made eunuchs or making themselves such for the sake of the kingdom: "Let anyone accept this who can." Paul, the man who got the Christian movement started, says in 1 Corinthians 7 that he wished that everyone was as he was, which he clarifies later as being celibate. In the same chapter, Paul's letter endorses equality between husband and wife in a marriage. This idea is later countered in Ephesians 5 when the writer endorses a return to the patriarchal ideal of men ruling over their wives. I think most people are simply unaware of the range of possibilities that qualify, regardless of which testament of the Bible we look to.

The second point I would like to clarify is that, aside from that one moment in 1 Corinthians 7, marriage is discussed in terms of the woman as the property of the man. I say this with a fairly literal sense intended. It does explain why or how so many biblical stories show wives being treated as less than fully human, but I do hope that people who love the Bible can admit that this is an element of it that we ought not to continue to endorse.

Third, when people say that the "Bible says homosexuality/gay marriage is a sin," I know that they believe that the Bible says this, since I used to think so, too. But it does not. There are passages such as the Sodom story (Genesis 19), which depicts every male in the town gathering to gang rape some visitors. The issue there is not "gay sex," but rather that these men were just plain cruel to outsiders. The scene would have been no less offensive if Lot had succeeded in giving the men his two virgin daughters to do to them as they pleased. That is about cruelty. There are other passages people turn to, such as Leviticus 18:22, and focus on men having sex as an abomination. But they do not take into account why. Just as in Genesis 38, where Onan is struck dead for avoiding getting his sister-in-law pregnant by pulling out early, the issue is about the people of Israel needing to grow in numbers. Any wasting of semen was not to be tolerated and thus was an abomination. None of those situations are talking about two same-sex people in loving relationships.

Finally, there is no specific place where "God Himself" establishes marriage as a holy institution. Genesis 2:24 is talking about the fact that humans do have an urge to leave home and start their own families. The "and cling to his wife" phrase can (and perhaps ought to) be translated as "cling to his woman." We read into this passage the idea of marriage, mainly due to the translations we are reading. One can read Ephesians 5:21-33, where marriages are discussed as representing the head/body hierarchy of Christ to the Church, as God making marriage holy. But that is certainly not how it was established, and one might challenge the level of submission that is required of the wives in that situation as being something other than holy.

When I hear someone say she only believes in "biblical marriage," my knee-jerk reaction is to want to ask her which version she is referring to. I also find myself wanting to remind her that love is never discussed as foundational to marriage. Thus, while same-sex marriage is not endorsed in the Bible, neither is a loving, mutually agreed upon union of a man and woman.



Jennifer G. Bird is a biblical scholar, author, speaker, teacher, permissiongrantedthebook.com

Here is an example:

Worst Online Dating Profile Ever Attracts Hundreds Of Positive Male Responses

It seems no online profile is too repulsive for men, as long as the woman is attractive.


November 3, 2014 |

Do men have any limits when it comes to women and online dating? Apparently not, according to L.A.-based comedian and columnist Alli Read, whose latest experiment proves men don't care about personality, only looks.

Reed set up a fake OKCupid online dating account of the “Worst Woman on Earth” in a bid to prove the existence of “an online dating profile so loathsome that no man would message it.” Sadly, Reed announced on Cracked.com that her efforts failed.

A longtime OKCupid user herself, Reed had obtained permission from her best friend, a gorgeous model, to use her photographs to create a profile that was, “mean, spoiled, lazy, racist, manipulative, and even a gold digger," Reed wrote.

In an effort to seem as unlikable as possible, Reed touched on every major facet of being "truly horrible." On her profile, she said she was a goddess and her main aim was to “keep America American.” She said on a typical Friday night she was “knocking coffee out of homeless people’s hands because it was so funny." She also declared she was unemployed and couldn't live without money.

But despite these less than appealing admissions, within 24 hours, Reed was inundated with 150 messages.

Attempting to curb the responses, Reed became "unforgivably awful," even going so far as to ask guys if she could pull out their teeth. To another man she wrote that she was really good at convincing people she is pregnant.

Still, the men were undeterred and the messages kept rolling in. This suggests that some men really don’t have any limits when it comes to women, sex and dating.

Despite the cynical conclusions that could be drawn from her experiment and Alli Reed's own personal desire to invest in a “high-quality chastity belt and start collecting cats” she decided to stay optimistic. She offered this impassioned plea:


“Men of the world: You are better than this….There are women and men out there who are smart, and kind, and challenging, and honest, and a lot of other really positive adjectives. You don't want someone who will pull out your teeth and then sue you for child support; you deserve someone who will make you want to be better than you are, and will want to be better because of you.”

As I was taught when I was a child: if you have nothing nice to say, then say it very LOUDLY!


Why Jesus Wouldn't Cut It as a Pastor in Today's Evangelical Megachurches
Jesus promoted empathy for everyone, while the actions of today's religious establishment undermine it
October 29, 2014 |

Jesus never could have been the pastor of a contemporary evangelical church nor a conservative Roman Catholic bishop. Evangelicals and conservative Roman Catholics thrive on drawing distinctions between their "truth" and other people's failings. Jesus by contrast, set off an empathy time bomb that obliterates difference.

Jesus' empathy bomb explodes every time a former evangelical puts love ahead of what the "Bible says." It goes off every time Pope Francis puts inclusion ahead of dogma. It goes off every time a gay couple are welcomed into a church. Jesus' time bomb explodes whenever atheists follow Jesus better than most Christians.

Put it this way: Godless non-church-going Denmark mandates four weeks of maternity leave before childbirth and fourteen weeks afterward for mothers. Parents of newborn children are assisted with well-baby nurse-practitioner visits in their homes.

In the “pro-life” and allegedly “family friendly” American Bible belt, conservative political leaders slash programs designed to help women and children while creating a justifying mythology about handouts versus empowerment.

In "God-fearing America" the poor are now the “takers,” no longer the “least of these,” and many conservative evangelicals side with today’s Pharisees, attacking the poor in the name of following the Bible.

So who is following Jesus?

Confronted by the Bible cult called evangelicalism we have a choice:follow Jesus or follow a book cult. If Jesus is God as evangelicals and Roman Catholics claim he is, then the choice is clear. We have to read the book--including the New Testament--as he did, and Jesus didn't like the "Bible" of his day.

Confronted by bishops protecting dogma and tradition against Pope Francis' embrace of empathy for the "other" we have a choice: follow Jesus or protect the institution.

Every time Jesus mentioned the equivalent of a church tradition, the Torah, he qualified it with something like this: “The scriptures say thus and so, but I say…” Jesus undermined the scriptures and religious tradition in favor of empathy. Every time Jesus undermined the scriptures (Jewish "church tradition") it was to err on the side of co-suffering love. Every time a former evangelical becomes an atheist in favor of empathy she draws closer to Jesus. Every time Pope Francis sides with those the Church casts out he is closer to Jesus. Every time conservative Roman Catholics try to stop the Pope from bringing change to the Church they are on the side to those who killed Jesus.

A leper came to Jesus and said, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” If Jesus had been a good religious Jew, he would have said, “Be healed,” and just walked away. Instead, he stretched out his hand and touched the leper, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean,” even though he was breaking the specific rules of Leviticus. Two chapters teach that anyone touching a person with leprosy is contaminated.

In evangelical and Roman Catholic fundamentalist terms, Jesus was a rule-breaking humanist who wasn't “saved.” A conservative bishop would have refused Jesus the sacraments. Christianity Today magazine would have editorialized against him, called for his firing, banning and branded him a traitor to the cause of Christianity.

The message of Jesus’ life is an intervention in and an acceleration of the evolution of empathy. Consider this story from the book of Matthew: “A woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.’ Jesus turned and saw her. ‘Take heart, daughter,’ he said, ‘your faith has healed you.’ And the woman was healed at that moment.”

Jesus recognized a bleeding woman touching him as a sign of faith. By complimenting rather than rebuking her, Jesus ignored another of his scripture’s rules: “If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time her [period], or if she has a discharge beyond the time, all the days of her discharge she shall continue in uncleanness... Every bed on which she lies during all the days of her discharge shall be treated as [unclean]… Everything on which she sits shall be unclean … Whoever touches these things shall be unclean” (Leviticus 15:25).

Jesus’ un-first-century antics went beyond coddling lepers and welcoming the touch of a bleeding woman. Jesus’ embrace of a woman from an enemy tribe in a culture where tribal belonging was paramount distressed both his followers and enemies. His attitude to the “other” was as incomprehensible as if he’d blurted “E=mc2 is the equation of mass–energy equivalence.” Even the Samaritan woman at the well knew that his actions were shocking. When Jesus stopped to talk to her, she said, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans” (John 4:9).

Jesus responded by attacking the preeminence of religion, tradition, dogma and group identity, offering an entirely new way of looking at spirituality by emphasizing basic human dignity above nation, state, gender or religion:

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth” (John 4:19–24).

"Worship in the Spirit and in truth," is not about a book, let alone "salvation" through correct ideas or tradition.For people who call Jesus "the Son of God" you'd think they would also reject the veneration of the book he's trapped in and church dogma that has crucified him again each time a gay man or divorced couple are refused the sacraments.

Evangelicals struggle to conform Jesus to a book, not the other way around. And the conservative bishops have aligned themselves with the American neoconservative wing of their church against not just the Pope Francis but against the emancipating logic of Jesus' empathy time bomb. If Jesus isn't the "lens" evangelicals and Roman Catholics read the Bible and their traditions through then whatever they say to the contrary they do not really believe Jesus is the son of God.

This article is largely excerpted from WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace



Frank Schaeffer is the author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.

1. LOL! I got the "What on Earth is wrong with today?" Three times just this morning at work. My posts do not always reflect my personal beliefs, but stimulate conversation and/or thinking. As my old theology professor would say: those who respect the Bible have never actually read it; or as the Islamic sufi would say: a donkey with a load of holy books is still a donkey.

2. My personal beliefs? I follow the Noahide code (7 laws of Noah), which can be summarizes as : 1. Love the HaShem your g-d with all your heart; 2. Love one another. I thinks someone else also said something similar. But whether Noah existed or not, does not effect my belief whatsoever.

3. A person whom I think is worthy? Epicurus

4. Who I serve? the Logos (Ancient Fire)

5. What is wrong with me? My thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways

I used to stomp around the NorthEast, but things have probably changed a bit since then

Yes

Can you prove that a fart is not just the ghost of a poop?

Despite the look on my face... you are still talking

My g-d can beat up your g-d

7 nations, 1 soul

I (heart) lesbians [it also has the Rolling Stones lip logo on it]

Life is quantum

Weird quantum effects are so delicate it seems they could only happen in a lab. How can life on earth depend on them?

by Johnjoe McFadden 2,400 words

Johnjoe McFadden is professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey. His latest book is Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology (2014), co-authored with Jim Al-Khalili. His website is www.johnjoemcfadden.com.
The point of the most famous thought-experiment in quantum physics is that the quantum world is different from our familiar one. Imagine, suggested the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, that we seal a cat inside a box. The cat’s fate is linked to the quantum world through a poison that will be released only if a single radioactive atom decays. Quantum mechanics says that the atom must exist in a peculiar state called ‘superposition’ until it is observed, a state in which it has both decayed and not decayed. Furthermore, because the cat’s survival depends on what the atom does, it would appear that the cat must also exist as a superposition of a live and a dead cat until somebody opens the box and observes it. After all, the cat’s life depends on the state of the atom, and the state of the atom has not yet been decided.

Yet nobody really believes that a cat can be simultaneously dead and alive. There is a profound difference between fundamental particles, such as atoms, which do weird quantum stuff (existing in two states at once, occupying two positions at once, tunnelling through impenetrable barriers etc) and familiar classical objects, such as cats, that apparently do none of these things. Why don’t they? Simply put, because the weird quantum stuff is very fragile.

Quantum mechanics insists that all particles are also waves. But if you want to see strange quantum effects, the waves all have to line up, so that the peaks and troughs coincide. Physicists call this property coherence: it’s rather like musical notes being in tune. If the waves don’t line up, the peaks and troughs cancel each other out, destroying coherence, and you won’t see anything odd. When you’re dealing only with a single particle’s wave, on the other hand, it’s easy to keep it ‘in tune’ – it has to line up only with itself. But lining up the waves of hundreds, millions or trillions of particles is pretty much impossible. And so the weirdness gets cancelled out inside big objects. That’s why there doesn’t seem to be anything very indeterminate about a cat.

Nevertheless, wrote Schrödinger in What Is Life? (1944), some of life’s most fundamental building blocks must, like unobserved radioactive atoms, be quantum entities able to perform counterintuitive tricks. Indeed, he went on to propose that life is different from the inanimate world precisely because it inhabits a borderland between the quantum and classical world: a region we might call the quantum edge
Schrödinger’s argument was based on the following, seemingly paradoxical fact. Although they seem magnificently orderly, all the classical laws, from Newtonian mechanics to thermodynamics to the laws of electromagnetism, are ultimately based on disorder. Consider a balloon: it is filled with trillions of molecules of air all moving randomly, bumping into one another and the skin of the balloon. Yet, when you add up all their motions and average them out, you get the gas laws, which precisely predict, for example, that the balloon will expand by a given amount when heated. Schrödinger called this kind of law ‘order from disorder’, to reflect the fact that the macroscopic regularity depends on chaos and unpredictability at the level of individual particles.

What does this have to do with life? Well, Schrödinger was particularly interested in the question of heredity. In 1944, a decade before James Watson and Francis Crick, the physical nature of genes was still mysterious. Even so, it was known that they must be passed down the generations with an extraordinary high degree of fidelity: less than one error in a billion. This was a puzzle, because one of the few other known facts about genes was that they were very small – far too small, Schrödinger insisted, for the accuracy of their copying to depend on the order-from-disorder rules of the classical world. He proposed that they must instead involve a ‘more complicated organic molecule’, one in which ‘every atom, and every group of atoms, plays an individual role’.

Schrödinger called these novel structures ‘aperiodic crystals’. He asserted that they must obey quantum rather than classical laws, and further suggested that gene mutations might be caused by quantum jumps within the crystals. He went on to propose that many of life’s characteristics might be based on a novel physical principle. In the inanimate world, as we have seen, macroscopic order commonly arises from molecular disorder: order from disorder. But perhaps, said Schrödinger, the macroscopic order we find in life reflects something else: the uncanny order of the quantum scale. He called this speculative new principle ‘order from order’.

Was he right?


The colour of your eyes, the shape of your nose, your intelligence or propensity for disease are encoded at the quantum level

A decade later, Watson and Crick unveiled the double helix. Genes turned out to be made from a single molecule of DNA, which is a kind of molecular string with nucleotide bases (the genetic letters) strung out like beads. That’s an aperiodic crystal in all but name. And, just as Schrödinger predicted, ‘every group of atoms’ does indeed play ‘an individual role’, with the position of even individual protons – a quantum property – determining each genetic letter. There can be few more prescient predictions in the entire history of science. The colour of your eyes, the shape of your nose, and aspects of your character, intelligence or propensity for disease are encoded at the quantum level.

And yet, the new science of molecular biology that followed Watson and Crick’s discovery remained largely wedded to the concepts of classical physics. This worked pretty well in the latter half of the 20th century, as molecular biologists and biochemists focused on things such as metabolism, which is a product of very large numbers of particles operating under the order-from-disorder principle. But as the attention of 21st‑century biology is now turning to the dynamics of ever-smaller systems – even individual atoms and molecules inside living cells – quantum mechanics is once again making its presence felt. Recent experiments indicate that some of life’s most fundamental processes do indeed depend on weirdness welling up from the quantum undercurrent of reality.

Let’s start with a few relatively peripheral examples – such as the sense of smell. The conventional theory of olfaction is that odour molecules are detected by odour receptors via a kind of lock‑and‑key mechanism inside the nose: the molecule slots into the receptor and triggers a response, like a key turning a lock. It’s a nice, intuitive theory, but it fails to account for certain puzzling observations – for example, the fact that very similarly-shaped molecules often smell different and vice versa. A revised approach suggests that, instead of shape, the receptors might be responding to molecular vibration. This idea received a further quantum twist in 1996, when the biophysicist Luca Turin proposed that vibrations might promote quantum tunnelling of electrons to open the olfactory lock. A quantum theory of smell sounds outlandish, perhaps, but evidence has recently emerged to support it: it was found that fruit flies can distinguish odorants with exactly the same shape but different isotopes of the same elements, something that is hard to explain without quantum mechanics.

Or consider this. Some birds and other animals are known to find their way by detecting the Earth’s very weak magnetic field, yet the mechanism by which they do this has been a long-standing puzzle. The problem is that it is hard to see how such a weak field can generate a signal inside an animal’s body. Further questions emerged in studies involving the European robin: the research revealed that its compass is light-dependent, and that, unlike a conventional compass, it detects the angle of magnetic field lines relative to the Earth’s surface rather than their orientation. No one had any idea why.

Then in the 1970s, the German chemist Klaus Schulten discovered that some chemical reactions produced pairs of particles that remained connected via a peculiar quantum property called entanglement. Entanglement allows distant particles to remain instantaneously connected, no matter how far apart they are: they can be flung to opposite ends of the galaxy and yet remain mysteriously correlated. Entanglement is so weird that Albert Einstein himself, who gave us black holes and warped space-time, dismissed it as ‘spooky action at a distance’. But hundreds of experiments have demonstrated that it is real.

Schulten discovered that entangled pairs of particles can be extraordinarily sensitive to both the strength and the orientation of magnetic fields. He went on to propose that the enigmatic avian compass might be using quantum-entangled particles. Hardly anyone took the idea seriously, but in 2000, Schulten wrote an influential paper with his student, Thorsten Ritz, showing how light could be used to make a quantum-entangled compass in a bird’s eye. In 2004, Ritz teamed up with the celebrated husband-and-wife ornithologists Wolfgang and Roswitha Wiltschko, and together they found compelling experimental evidence that the European robin was indeed using Einstein’s spooky action to find its way around the globe every year.


electrons and protons vanish from one position and rematerialise in another – a kind of teleportation

Navigation and smell are important, no doubt, but perhaps they don’t seem very central to the business of life on Earth. So let’s go after something bigger.

Take enzymes. These are the workhorses of the living world, speeding up chemical reactions so that processes that would otherwise take thousands of years happen inside living cells in seconds. How they achieve this speed-up – often more than a trillion-fold – has long been an enigma. But now, research by Judith Klinman at the University of California, Berkeley and Nigel Scrutton at the University of Manchester (among others) has shown that enzymes can employ a weird quantum trick called tunnelling. Simply put, the enzyme encourages a process whereby electrons and protons vanish from one position in a biochemical and instantly rematerialise in another, without visiting any of the in-between places – a kind of teleportation.

This is pretty fundamental stuff. Enzymes made every single biomolecule in every cell of every living creature on the planet. They are, more than any other component (even DNA, given that some cells get by without it) the essential ingredient of life. And they dip into the quantum world to help keep us alive.

We can up the stakes still further. Photosynthesis is the most important biochemical reaction on the planet. It is responsible for turning light, air, water and a few minerals into grass, trees, grain, and, ultimately, the rest of us who eat either the plants or the plant-eaters. The initiating event is the capture of light energy by chlorophyll molecules. This light energy gets turned into electrical energy, which is then transported to a biochemical factory called the reaction centre, where it is harnessed to fix carbon dioxide and turn it into plant matter. This energy transport process has long fascinated researchers because it can be so efficient – close to 100 per cent. How is it that green leaves can transport energy so much better than our most sophisticated technologies?

Graham Fleming’s laboratory at University of California, Berkeley has been investigating this question for more than a decade, using a technique called femtosecond spectroscopy. Essentially, the team shines very short bursts of laser light at the photosynthetic complex in order to discover the path of the photon as its makes its way to the reaction centre. Back in 2007, the team investigated a bacterial system called the FMO complex, in which the photon energy has to find its way through a cluster of chlorophyll molecules. It was thought to travel as a kind of electrical particle that hopped from one chlorophyll molecule to another, much as Schrödinger’s cat might have hopped from one boulder to another across a stream. But this didn’t make complete sense. Lacking any navigational sense, most photon energy should hop aimlessly in the wrong direction, ending up in the metaphorical water. And yet, inside plants and bacteria that perform photosynthesis, nearly all packets of photon energy reach the reaction centre.

When the team shone the laser at the system, they observed a very peculiar light echo that came in beat-like waves. These ‘quantum beats’ were a sign that, instead of taking a single route through the system, the photon energy was using quantum coherence to travel by all possible routes simultaneously. Imagine if, when confronted by the stream, the famous cat somehow divided itself into lots of identical quantum-coherent cats that hop across the chlorophyll boulders by every available route to find the quickest one. Quantum beats have now been detected in many different photosystems, including those of regular plants such as spinach. It appears that the most important reaction in the biosphere is exploiting the quantum world to put our food on our table.


How does life maintain its molecular order long enough to perform its quantum tricks in warm and wet cells?

And if that’s not enough for you, we come at last to the very mechanisms of evolution itself. Schrödinger suggested that mutations could involve a kind of quantum jump. In their classic DNA paper, Watson and Crick proposed that they might involve nucleotide bases switching between alternative structures, a process called ‘tautomerisation’ thought to involve quantum tunnelling. In 1999, the physicist Jim Al-Khalili and I suggested that proton tunnelling might account for one very peculiar kind of mutation – so-called adaptive mutation – which appears to occur more frequently when it provides an advantage. Our paper was entirely theoretical, but we are currently attempting to find experimental evidence for proton tunnelling in DNA. So, watch this space.

Beneath all these quantum solutions to puzzling vital phenomena, we find ourselves with a deeper mystery. Quantum coherence is an immensely delicate phenomenon, depending on those in-tune particle waves. To maintain it, physicists usually have to enclose their systems within near-perfect vacuums and cool them down to very close to absolute zero temperature to freeze out any heat-driven molecular motion. Molecular vibrations are the mortal enemy of quantum coherence. How, then, does life manage to maintain its molecular order for long enough to perform its quantum tricks in warm and wet cells? That remains a profound riddle. Recent research offers a tantalising hint that, instead of avoiding molecular storms, life embraces them, rather like the captain of a ship who harnesses turbulent gusts and squalls to maintain his ship upright and on-course. As Schrödinger predicted, life navigates a narrow stream between the classical and quantum worlds: the quantum edge

Pope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory are real and God isn't 'a magician with a magic wand'
Francis goes against Benedict XVI’s apparent support for 'intelligent design' - but does hail his predecessor’s 'great contribution to theology
The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with a magic wand”, Pope Francis has declared.

Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which experts said put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

• Sir Elton John Labels Pope Francis 'My Hero'

Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator – arguing instead that they “require it”.

“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said.

He added: “He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfilment.

“The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.

“Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”

The Catholic Church has long had a reputation for being anti-science – most famously when Galileo faced the inquisition and was forced to retract his “heretic” theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun.



But Pope Francis’s comments were more in keeping with the progressive work of Pope Pius XII, who opened the door to the idea of evolution and actively welcomed the Big Bang theory. In 1996, John Paul II went further and suggested evolution was “more than a hypothesis” and “effectively proven fact”.

Yet more recently, Benedict XVI and his close advisors have apparently endorsed the idea that intelligent design underpins evolution – the idea that natural selection on its own is insufficient to explain the complexity of the world. In 2005, his close associate Cardinal Schoenborn wrote an article saying “evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process – is not”.

Pope Francis look on during the unveiling of a bronze bust in honor of Pope Benedict XVI on October 27, 2014 at the Vatican Pope Francis look on during the unveiling of a bronze bust in honor of Pope Benedict XVI on October 27, 2014 at the Vatican

Giovanni Bignami, a professor and president of Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics, told the Italian news agency Adnkronos: “The pope’s statement is significant. We are the direct descendents from the Big Bang that created the universe. Evolution came from creation.”

Read more:
Comment: • Perhaps gods need to evolve to survive, like the rest of us

Giulio Giorello, professor of the philosophy of science at Milan’s University degli Studi, told reporters that he believed Francis was “trying to reduce the emotion of dispute or presumed disputes” with science.

Despite the huge gulf in theological stance between his tenure and that of his predecessor, Francis praised Benedict XVI as he unveiled a bronze bust of him at the academy's headquarters in the Vatican Gardens.

“No one could ever say of him that study and science made him and his love for God and his neighbour wither,” Francis said, according to a translation by the Catholic News Service.

“On the contrary, knowledge, wisdom and prayer enlarged his heart and his spirit. Let us thank God for the gift that he gave the church and the world with the existence and the pontificate of Pope Benedict.”

Why Do Women Guess Wrong About Men's Perception of Beauty?

Considering how much time we spend thinking about the opposite sex and their desires, we're awful at predicting them.

October 20, 2014 |

My husband likes to squeeze onto what I’ve been taught to call my “muffin top,” the bit of “extra” flesh just above my hips. Recently, he planted a hand on it, squeezed and made a desirous grunting noise that made me think he might eat me alive. “Baby, no!” I protested, batting his hand away. “Don’t squeeze my fat.” His face softened. “But I love it. I love this juicy little oyster,” he said, referencing the tender, most delicious part of a chicken. “It’s the best.”

Funny, I thought it was the worst.

This isn’t just a case of my particular insecurities and my husband’s sexual idiosyncrasies. Studies have shown that straight women overestimate the importance of thinness in heterosexual men’s perception of female beauty. That is to say, women think men prefer ladies much thinner — and “oyster”-less — than they actually do.

It started with a study in 1985, which had men and women use a set of figure drawings to indicate “their current figure, their ideal figure, the figure that they felt would be most attractive to the opposite sex, and the opposite sex figure to which they would be most attracted.” They found that “women thought men would like women thinner than men reported they like.” Similarly, men “thought women would like a heavier stature [in men] than females reported they like.” In other words, both sexes were wrong about what was attractive to the opposite sex — but this misperception only hurt women. That’s because men, unlike women, chose “current, ideal and most attractive” figures that were “almost identical.” The researchers wrote, ”Overall, men’s perceptions serve to keep them satisfied with their figures, whereas women’s perceptions place pressure on them to lose weight.”

Three years later, the same research team found that “mothers and daughters believed that men (of their own generation) prefer much thinner women than these men actually prefer.”

This discrepancy has also attracted the attention of pseudo-scientific surveys. A headline in the Daily Mail captured it well, “Men love Kim Kardashian’s curves while women want Emma Watson’s slim hips: Infographic shows the sexes have VERY different ideas about the body beautiful.” The emphasis isn’t always on the figure. In 2011, the media went nuts over a study commissioned by a beauty retailer (ehem), which found differences between men’s and women’s perceptions of the ideal female face.

These findings make headlines because they’re surprising: Given the enormous industry around self-improvement, shouldn’t we have an accurate sense of what the opposite sex wants? It also seems to go against what evolutionary psychologists like to call “mate selection theory,” which suggests that women should have an accurate perception of what men find attractive, so as to judge their relative “mate value” (which is such a depressingly dehumanizing term, isn’t it?).

Psychologist David Buss, author of “The Evolution of Desire,” tells me, ”Why women are a bit off in what they think men want is a weird modern phenomenon,” he told me. “My speculation is that it is distorted by media images of repeated exposure to ultra-thin female models that have even been photoshopped to make them look thinner than they really are.”

It is possible to explain in evolutionary terms, though. “One ‘input’ into women’s mating psychology is rival women in their ‘social environment,’” he said. “Ancestrally, of course, women would not have been exposed to hundreds of images of these ultra-thin women; small-group living meant that women had perhaps a dozen or two other women of reproductive age that would have effective same-sex mating rivals.” He speculates that “the thinness oddity” began with “the notion that clothes on models ‘hang better’ if the models are thin.” He explains, “Once the models started to get thin, this provided weird, modern, novel input that hijacked women’s sense of who their effective mating rivals were.”

That is to say, “If women perceive their competition to be multitudes of thin models, or their psychology tricks them into thinking that these are their effective rivals, then that could cause this female misperception of what men find attractive.”

There’s another element here, which is the whole “women dress for other women” thing. A 1986 study reported, “For some women, the anticipated reactions of same-sex peers may be of greater importance in their pursuits of slimness than are the anticipated reactions of male peers.” Interestingly, research has shown that women also overestimate the thinness of female peers’ sense of the ideal body. Buss adds that “women compete not just to attract men but also for a position in women’s status hierarchies.” So, it isn’t all about the guys.

Even if straight women could accurately predict what most hetero men find attractive, it would only be true for the average man — and who wants “average,” anyway? For that matter, who wants to live in a world where we are no more than our evolutionarily defined mate value?

There’s evidence to back up Buss’s theory of media brainwashing. Earlier this year, a study found that women’s perception of female beauty varied depending on the images they were exposed to beforehand. Women who were exposed to photos of attractive plus-size models before being surveyed chose a higher BMI as ideal than those who were exposed to attractive “lightweight” models. Men’s perceptions, on the other hand, were not affected by what they were exposed to prior to being surveyed. Simple acts, like publishing plus-size models in advertisements, could actually change women’s bodily ideal — and, as a consequence, move their perception of straight male desire closer to reality. In that case, everybody wins, right?

Well, everyone except advertisers who want to maintain an unrealistic ideal to which women can strive via purchasing an endless array of products.

Tracy Clark-Flory is a staff writer at Salon. Follow @tracyclarkflory on Twitter and Facebook

10 Amazing Things That Will Happen When You Learn to Enjoy Being Alone


The Mind Unleashed
on 15 October, 2014 at 07:46

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Tony Robinson, lifehack.org | Some people think of “being alone” as a bad thing. It either means you’re anti-social, or unwanted, neither of which are a good position to be in.

But actually, being alone isn’t’ necessarily a bad thing, as there are a handful of benefits that emerge once you learn to embrace solitude.

I’m not advocating you go all Tom Hanks in Cast Away, because no one can argue the benefits, and the joys, that come along with fulfilling relationships with other people.

But I am saying that once you learn to enjoy being alone, you’re going to grow as a person.

Below are ten amazing things that will happen in your life when you start to enjoy being alone.

1. You’ll get to recharge.

Often times when we’re surrounded by other people, we’re expending a lot of energy. Trying to keep others happy, make them laugh, soothe their egos, read their emotions, and all of the other rigors that come along with regular interaction.

It can be mentally draining if you’re constantly connected to other people. A little alone time lets you recharge and take a break from the emotionally and mentally taxing job of constant interaction.

2. You’ll reflect more often.

Your life is always moving at a crazy fast pace. So fast in fact, that it’s probably rare when you have a moment alone to sit and reflect on your life.

Being alone gives you the perfect opportunity for a little self reflection. Since you aren’t spending so much time processing the thoughts and feelings of others, it’s the best time to turn your focus inwards.

Solitude provides the perfect environment for reflection.

3. You’ll get in touch with your own emotions.

Again, when you’re surrounded by other people all the time, you’re constantly trying to read, and cater to, the other persons’s emotions. So much so, that you could end up losing touch with your own.

When you start to enjoy being alone, you’ll gain a greater perspective for your own emotions. You’ll create a deeper understanding of what makes you happy, what upsets you, and what saddens you.

With that knowledge, it’s then easier to regulate your emotions. But it all starts with understanding how you feel, and that comes from a little bit of solitude.

4. You’ll start doing things you actually enjoy.

When you’re constantly in the company of other people, you’re always making compromises in order to find solutions that the entire group can enjoy. And unfortunately, the things you want most, may not always line up with what the group wants.

So it’s easy to enjoy being alone once you realize that doing so gives you more freedom to do the things you actually want to do.

5. You’ll become more productive.

Being in the company of other people can be fun and entertaining, but it can also seriously affect your productivity. There are times when the company of other people acts as nothing more than a distraction from getting your work done.

Time spent alone can be some of the most productive time in your life—mostly because there are less distractions, and you can just put your head down and get to work.

6. You’ll enjoy your relationships even more.

When you spend time alone on a regular basis, and eventually start to enjoy being alone, you’ll come to find that you also enjoy your relationships with other people even more.

And that’s because the time spent alone gives you a greater appreciation for yourself.

But it also let’s you appreciate all the great things that come from your relationships with other people, most of which you were oblivious to before.

7. You’ll feel more independent.

Once you enjoy being alone, you’ll feel more confident in your ability to actually be alone. And that naturally leads to you feeling more independent.

You’ll no longer feel that anxiety, or burning desire for company, once you learn to enjoy being alone. You won’t feel the need for constant interaction with other people, or the anxiety associated with looking around and seeing no one but yourself.

8. You’ll get a break from constantly trying to keep other people happy.

Life is filled with relationships, and most relationships only last when both people are kept happy. And that can turn into a draining job depending who that relationship is with. Now, this does’t only apply to personal relationships, but every kind of relationship.

Once you’re alone, the only person’s happiness you have to worry about in that moment, is your own. You can treat yourself to thing that makes you happy, but may have upset someone else.

9. You won’t have to apologize for anything.

When you start to enjoy being alone, you’ll quickly see that solitude means you don’t have to keep apologizing for what you’ve done. So often, we do things that end up upsetting other people, or hurting someone else’s feelings, and then have to quickly apologize for it.

But when you’re alone, you don’t have to apologize for anything. And that takes a lot of pressure out of most situations. You get to stop second guessing everything you say, or every move you make because you’re afraid someone is going to be offended, or saddened, and angered.

10. You’ll stop looking for validation.

So often we feel we the need to get the “OK” from our friends and family before we take action. We constantly look to other people for advice on what we should do next.

Of course, there are times where it’s not only perfectly acceptable to ask for advice, but downright necessary. But there are also times where we’re perfectly capable of acting on our own, be we instead of looking to others for ananswer.

When you start to spend more time alone, you’ll learn to trust your instincts and make decisions without any third party validation.

Source: lifehack.org, by Tony Robinson

20 Powerful Secrets to Meaningful Relationships


The Mind Unleashed
on 23 October, 2014 at 20:38

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Here are twenty powerful secrets that will help you form meaningful relationships with people:
1.When two people meet, the prize always goes to the one with the most self-insight. He will be calmer, more confident, more at ease with the other.
2.Never permit the behavior of other people to tell you how you feel.
3.Pay little attention to what people say or do. Instead, try to see their innermost motive for speaking and acting.
4.Any friendship requiring the submission of your original nature and dignity to another person is all wrong.
5.Mystically speaking, there is no difference between you and another person. This is why we cannot hurt another without hurting ourselves, nor help another without helping ourselves.
6.When we are free of all unnecessary desires toward other people, we can never be deceived or hurt.
7.You take a giant step toward psychological maturity when you refuse to angrily defend yourself against unjust slander. For one thing, resistance disturbs your own peace of mind.
8.You understand others to the exact degree that you really understand yourself. Work for more self-knowledge.
9.Do not be afraid to fully experience everything that happens to you in your human relations, especially the pains and disappointments. Do this and everything becomes clear at last.
10.The individual who really knows what it means to love has no anxiety when his love is unseen or rejected.
11.If you painfully lose a valuable friend, do not rush out at once for a replacement. Such action prevents you from examining your heartache and breaking free of it.
12.Do not be afraid to be a nobody in a social world. This is a deeper and richer truth than appears on the surface.
13.Every unpleasant experience with another person is an opportunity to see people as they are, not as we mistakenly idealize them. The more unpleasant the other person is, the more he can teach you.
14.You can be so wonderfully free from a sense of injury and injustice that you are surprised when you hear others complain of them.
15.We cannot recognize a virtue in another person that we do not possess in ourselves. It takes a truly loving and patient person to recognize those virtues in another.
16.Do not mistake desire for love. Desire leaves home in a frantic search for one gratification after another. Love is at home with itself.
17.There are parts of you that want the loving life and parts that do not. Place yourself on the side of the positive forces: do all you can to aid and encourage them.
18.You must stop living timidly from fixed fears of what others will think of you and of what you will think of yourself.
19.Do not contrive to be a loving person: work to be a real person. Being real is being loving.
20.The greatest love you could ever offer to another is to so transform your inner life that others are attracted to your genuine example of goodness.

Source: “Twenty Special Secrets,” from ‘Mystic Path to Cosmic Power‘, by Vernon Howard

Photo courtesy of: Per Ola Wiberg

Originally featured on: theunboundedspirit.com

Open-Minded Man Grimly Realizes How Much Life He's Wasted Listening To ********



Richman estimates he's squandered 800 hours alone by letting salespeople pitch things to him that he's not going to buy.


CLEVELAND—During an unexpected moment of clarity Tuesday, open-minded man Blake Richman was suddenly struck by the grim realization that he's squandered a significant portion of his life listening to everyone's ********, the 38-year-old told reporters.

A visibly stunned and solemn Richman, who until this point regarded his willingness to hear out the opinions of others as a worthwhile quality, estimated that he's wasted nearly three and a half years of his existence being open to people's half-formed thoughts, asinine suggestions, and pointless, dumbfuck stories.

"Jesus Christ," said Richman, taking in the overwhelming volume of useless crap he's actively listened to over the years. "My whole life I've made a concerted effort to give people a fair shake and understand different points of view because I felt that everyone had something valuable to offer, but it turns out most of what they had to offer was complete ********."

"Seriously," Richman added, "what have I gained from treating everyone's opinion with respect? Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

According to Richman, it was just now hitting him how many hours of his life he's pissed away listening intently to nonsense about celebrity couples, how good or bad certain pens are, and why a particular sports team might have a chance this year. The husband and father of two said that every time he's felt at all put out or bored by a ******** conversation—especially a speculative one about how bad allergy season was going to be—he should have just turned around, walked away, and gone rafting or rappelling or done any of the millions of other things he's always wanted to do but never thought he had time for.

At various points throughout the day, Richman could be heard muttering to himself that he couldn't believe he was almost 40 years old.

"Twenty minutes here, 10 minutes there. It all starts to add up," said Richman, who sat down and figured out that between stupid discussions about favorite baby names and reviews of restaurants in cities he'll never visit, he'd wasted 390 hours of his life. "And you know what the worst part is? It's my fault. Here I thought being considerate to others by always listening patiently to what they had to say was the right thing to do. Well, **** me, right?"

According to Richman, he started thinking about how much time he's flushed down the toilet being an approachable person after a work meeting in which he let a coworker, David Martin, ramble on and on with an idea everyone knew was "total ****" the moment the man opened his mouth. Richman said that a single glance at the clock made him realize he had just spent 14 minutes of his finite time on earth not playing with his kids or being with his wife, but listening to garbage.

"It was like I stepped out of my body and saw myself actually listening to this man's worthless drivel—but it wasn't him who looked like a moron, it was me," Richman said. "I was nodding my head like an ******* and saying ridiculous things like, 'Right,' and, 'I see your point, Dave,' when I should have just said, 'Dave, your idea isn't good and you are wasting our time and you need to shut up right now.'"

By his estimates, Richman's receptiveness has resulted in 160 irreplaceable hours of listening to grossly uninformed political opinions, 300 hours of carefully hearing out both sides of pointless arguments, and at least a month of listening to his parents' ******** about how important it is to be open-minded.

Eighty days have been wasted on the inane blather of his college friend Brian alone.

"All those hours I could have been relaxing, or reading all these great books, or getting into shape, or working on side projects that I'm really excited about," Richman said. "But instead I've been listening to overrated albums recommended to me by my ******* friends."

"Did you know that in my life I've listened to five days' worth of people talking about their furniture?" he added. "It's true. That's a trip to Europe right there."

While Richman has vowed to cease being open-minded to absolute horseshit, acquaintances reflected on his approachability.

"I love Blake," coworker David Martin said. "He's such a good listener. A lot of people are closed-minded and self-absorbed, but Blake always makes an effort to hear where I'm coming from. The world could use more people like him."

I have some background in the area

5:68


Sahih International
Say, "O People of the Scripture, you are [standing] on nothing until you uphold [the law of] the Torah, the Gospel, and what has been revealed to you from your Lord." And that which has been revealed to you from your Lord will surely increase many of them in transgression and disbelief. So do not grieve over the disbelieving people.

5:69


Sahih International
Indeed, those who have believed [in Prophet Muhammad] and those [before Him] who were Jews or Sabeans or Christians - those [among them] who believed in Allah and the Last Day and did righteousness - no fear will there be concerning them, nor will they grieve.