Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.

It's Buddhist. Get it?

To download the text in PDF form, go to:
https://archive.org/details/monistquart22hegeuoft

Read from page 130 to about 139...

And WAKE UP (Neo).

It's as good as this

A Zen Highball

is nothing and tonic.

Some might choose Zen Tonic - it's really nothing!

Nothing and nothing... it just doesn't get any better than that.

The psychology of politics

"In psychology, an idiot has the least intelligence on the IQ scale; an imbecile is not quite as dumb as an idiot; a moron is then the highest level of intelligence among the mentally retarded, being now considered as 'mildly mentally retarded.' Specifically, those who have an IQ between 0 and 25 are idiots; IQs between 26 and 50 are considered imbeciles; and those who have an IQ between 51 and 70 are considered morons.

These terms were popular in psychology as associated with intelligence on an IQ test until around the 1960s. They were then replaced with the terms mild retardation (55-70), moderate retardation (40-55), severe retardation (25-40), and profound retardation (below 25). In addition to this, other factors besides IQ are now used in diagnosing these levels of mental deficiency."
Read more at http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/03/the-words-moron-imbecile-and-idiot-mean-different-things/#9gusQKYF8SPstgJt.99

Political affiliation comes to mind. Those who have an IQ between 0 and 25 are Fox News addicts; IQs between 26 and 50 are considered Tea Baggers; and those who have an IQ between 51 and 70 are just considered Republicans.

These two are NOT an opening hand at poker.

College bound High School students are above average. And the scoring of this elite group is found HERE.
Let's face it, the AVERAGE IQ in the USA is below the world average! (See #19)

Congressional IQs? Let's not go there!

RED states are usually below average!

The US Military uses Stanines or "Standard Nines" -- a forced ranking of 9 11% groupings. The bottom 11% are unfit, at any level, from serving the US Military Machine. The next 11% - in time of war - can stand guard outside a perimeter. They are the self-sacrificing monkeys of our genus (HOMO). The other new world monkey families are HERE.
This Mormon Cartoon adequately explains L.D.S.

And THIS BOOK collects some other folklore.


We might as well have some Xenu/Xemu Folklore.
Esoteric?

Average and Median - don't confuse them!

Median: The middle number (in a sorted list of numbers).

To find the Median, place the numbers you are given in value order and find the middle number.

Example: find the Median income of $13,000, $23,000, $11,000, $16,000, $15,000, $10,000, and $26,000.

First, put the numbers in order: {10,000, 11,000, 13,000, 15,000, 16,000, 23,000, 26,000}

The middle number is 15,000, so the median is $15,000.

Average: A calculated "central" value of a set of numbers.

To calculate: add up all the numbers, then divide by how many numbers there are.

Example: what is the average income of workers making $13,000, $23,000, $11,000, $16,000, $15,000, $10,000, and $260,000?

Add up all of the numbers: 10,000 + 11,000 + 13,000 + 15,000 + 16,000 + 23,000 + 260,0000 = 348,000

Divide by how many numbers (i.e. we added 7 numbers): 348,000 ÷ 7 = 49,714

So the average income is $49,714.

Only one person in that ordered list makes more than an average income!

Another Example: Three men are riding up in an elevator.

One makes $25,000 one $50,000 and one $75,000.

The average income is $50,000. ($150,000 / 3)

Bill gates gets on the elevator, the average income immediately went up to almost $3 Billion!

The Tea-bagger in the group said: "See how much better off everyone now is?" (Their average income went WAY up!)

The MEDIAN income in the USA is... $51,017

The Average income in the USA is... closer to $114,000!

The top 1 percent is defined as households with incomes above $394,000 in 2012.

In fact, both wealth and income are super-concentrated in the top 0.1%, which is just one in a thousand.

The pay gap between the richest 1 percent and 'the rest of America' widened to a new record in 2012.

The top 1 percent of earners collected 19.3 percent of all household income in 2012, their largest share in Internal Revenue Service figures going back a century.

U.S. income inequality has been growing for almost three decades (Reaganomics). But until last year, the top 1 percent’s share of pre-tax income hadn’t surpassed the 18.7 percent it reached in 1927, according to an analysis of IRS figures dating to 1913 by economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and three colleagues.

Top 1% = $368,238
(20.9% of all household income)
Top 0.5% = $558,726
(16.8% of all household income)
Top 0.1% = $1,695,136
(10.3% of all household income)
Top 0.01% = $9,141,190
(5% of all household income)
source

Take only memories, leave only footprints...

"In a previous lecture, I compared zazen practice to usual everyday activity. In usual activity, as you know, our effort is directed to the outside, and our activity is concentrated on some particular thing. This particularized activity creates many things. But this kind of creativity can—at the same time-create fear. This creativity will result some feeling——a good or bad feeling we will carry forward."

See more at: Suzuki roshi sfzc org/dharma-talks/ fear-of-death

So Zazen is not about creativity. It is about overcoming some of the baggage that creativity produces - intentionally or unintentionally.

Monastic living - in a formal or informal setting - is about avoiding the creation of unnecessary baggage.

Some shopping baggage is staged.

O.K. We do have better funnier things to watch...