What is the super-regenerative secret of some amphibians like the salamander to grow new limbs, lizards growing new tails and starfish regenerating dismembered arms.? What is the biological process that is unfortunately only bestowed to a select few species in the animal kingdom? New insight into this mystery has been discovered and comes from Dr. Mayumi Ito, a stem cell biologist and dermatologist at NYU’s Langone Medical Center, giving new hope to the 1.7 million amputees in the U.S.
WWWLet’s fisrt go back to 2010 when a woman by the name of Deepa Kulkarni lost the tip of her pinky due to a door being slammed on it. After doctors told her there wasn’t any possibility of having it reattached, advising her to allow them to amputate more of the finger so it would heal properly, she refused and proceeded to do some intense research in what was probably a futile effort to save her finger. Finally, she found a doctor who agreed to treat her with a substance called MatriStem wound powder actually made from ground-up pig bladder, and, in seven weeks her finger grew back.
WWWMost likely though, it grew back only because part of her nail was retained on her severed finger; because the nail, and the nail tissue called epithelium, has a group of stem cells that promote cell growth of not only the nail, but also of bone and tissue. These stem cells rely upon a family of proteins known as the Wnt signaling network—seemingly being the catalyst for bone and tissue regeneration. So, we can regrow the tips of out fingers within five weeks as long as enough nail or tissue remains, suggesting we, to some degree, retain the regeneration mechanisms operating in amphibians.
WWWDr. Ito and her team induced the production of the Wnt proteins in mice and were successful in growing both bone and tissue when fingertips were amputated beyond the nail. “Amputations beyond this magnitude do not ordinarily grow back,” states Dr. Ito, “When we blocked the Wnt-signaling pathway in mice with amputated fingertips, the nail and bone did not grow back as they normally would,” definitively showing these proteins are key to extraordinary limb regeneration.
WWWThere is however, a limit—the Wht pathway will not stimulate any regrowth if the fingertips are amputated too far back where too much epithelium is lost. This limit will be the challenge for Dr. Ito and her team; also, as reported from the National Geographic Phenomena site, a small salamander takes about 400 days to regrow a limb only 4 millimeters across, and a large salamander would need about a decade to regenerate an arm. So at that rate, even if a human could grow a new arm, it could take 15 to 20 years.
WWWDespite these hurdles this research holds promise. Dr. Ito’s next step is to uncover how the molecular mechanisms controlling the Wnt biochemical signaling pathway interfaces with the stem cells of the nail to induce bone and tissue growth. That may be the key to enabling whole limbs to regrow.

© Joe Arrigo

 Energy. The leader giveth or taketh. That’s a lot of power. Energizing the workforce would be the thing, the first thing any leader would want to do. Much to often it’s treated as an afterthought or not at all. Recognition is, hands down the most powerful tool a manager has to energize his or her workforce.
WWWSigmund Freud said, “Everything a person does springs from one of two things,” and one of them is the desire to be great.  William James said, “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated,” and Dr. John Dewey states, “The deepest urge of all in human nature is the desire to be important.” Recognition doesn’t have to be a parade or a five-foot trophy, it could be praise during a meeting, a plaque, an email, a call, a lunch or a note. Some may fear giving recognition will give workers license to become prima-donnish, sit back, relax, but then, it’s hard to sit back when you’ve just been infused with energy.

Be a person Of Your Word. You want employees to know and feel that when you say something, they can take it to the bank. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you’re not going to do it, don’t say it. If it turns out that you’re wrong about something, command respect by having the strength of character and emotional security to say straight-up, “I was wrong,” instead of delivering a verbal tap dance in a pathetic attempt to squirm out of it.
WWWThis type of behavior is a rare commodity in our fast-paced world. You, as a leader, can be that rarity. People say a lot of things, they talk-the-talk, but few walk-the-walk. Who among us doesn’t despise the business person or politician who will say anything to get you to act on their behalf, or the “friend” who is beside you only when you’re riding high. Be a person Of Your Word. If your behavior exemplifies this kind of integrity, you will stand out like a high altitude 1,000 watt beacon in the night sky as a leader who is truly worth following.
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An individual in a position of power can certainly control the people subordinate to her. She can control, to a large extent, their time, how they direct their efforts and what they can and cannot do. If she harbors an over-demanding ego, she could also use intimidation to get temporary results—intimidation being emblematic of incompetence. But, to enlist people’s minds hearts and spirit, thereby capturing the enormous energy that comes with it, demands skill and a genuine joy for the success of those under her. WWWEmployees are really volunteers. Their creativity and hearts are voluntary—they must be earned. Helping your staff feel their great potential by individually communicating to them their worthiness is an excellent way of being of great service to them. Listening to them is another. Some managers instead of actually hearing what a worker is trying to  communicate, will only hear their own preconceived notions about that person, so when a truly creative and intelligent thought or solution is presented, that manager cannot hear it, dismissing their contribution; believing a good idea cannot come from an underling. General George Patton said, “A fault of many fine commanders is a lack of the ability to admit that other people have good ideas.”
WWWGoing to your people for help is not only a way to solve problems, it’s quite powerful in building their esteem. One manager for instance asks his people for suggestions on how to reduce overhead—to show him the best way to do it—and most of the time they come up with solutions. Then all he does is ask them to implement their own suggestions,  finding that people will always support their own ideas, and has never had a person refuse to help him. The hands-on workers are closest to the problem, and is where the real wisdom resides.
WWWConversely, the day your people stop bringing their problems to you, will be the day you have stopped leading. They have either lost confidence in your ability to help them or come to feel that you don’t care, either one being a failure of leadership. That profound insight comes from General Colin Powell.
WWWGreat leadership is content to see the honors go to his followers, because a great leader knows that most men will work harder for commendation and recognition than they will for money alone. Great leadership is selfless, and governs by serving.

© Joe Arrigo

“You have what’s known as Hong Kong Dong.”

The man asks, “What’s the treatment for it?”

“I’m afraid there isn’t any…uh, we’re going to have to amputate.”

“What!!? Are you kidding me, amputate!”

“Well, I know a specialist in this disease, Dr. Wong. Here’s the information, go to him for a second opinion.”

The man arrives at Dr. Wong’s office and is thoroughly examined. Dr. Wong then tells the man,

“Yes, it is Hong Kong Dong.”

“Oh my God, you mean we’re going to
have to amputate?!”

“No, no, no need amputate.”

“Ohhh thank God doctor. Ohhh, that’s great”

“Fall off by self.”
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Being Beautiful
A husband and his wife are shopping in their local supermarket. The husband picks up a case of Budweiser and puts it in the cart. The wife asks,

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“They’re on sale, only $10 for 24 cans.”

“Put them back, we can’t afford them.”

And so, they carry on shopping. A few aisles further, the woman picks up a $20 jar of face cream and puts it in the cart.

Husband asks, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Its my face cream…it makes me look beautiful.”

So does 24 cans of Budweiser and it’s half the price.”

That’s him on aisle 5…never knew what hit him.

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Schultz, Schultz and Schultz Corp.
A man calls the company.

May I speak to Mr. Schultz?

On the other end, a man responds,

“He’s on vacation.”

“Well, then let me speak to Mr. Schultz.”

“He’s out to lunch.”

“Ok, let me speak to Mr. Schultz.”

“Speaking.”
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Subtle Message
I’m reaching out on behalf of a good friend of mine who needs some help.

His wife told him to him to go out and get some of those pills that would help him get an erection.

When he came back, he handed her some diet pills.

Anyway, he's looking for a place to live. Let me know if you can help.
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Cajun Magic Trick
Thibodeaux and Boudreaux entered a chocolate store, and as they were looking at the candy, Thibodeaux stole three chocolate bars. when they left the store Thibodeaux said to Boudreaux,

“I’m the best thief, I stole three chocolate bars and no one saw me put them in my pocket.”

Boudreaux replied, “You want to see something better? Lets go back into the shop and I’ll show you real stealing; I’ll steal while the shopkeeper is watching me and he won’t even know.”

So they went to the counter and Boudreaux said the shopkeeper.

“Do you want to see a great magic trick?”

The shopkeeper said, “Ok, sure,”

“Give me three chocolate bars.”

The shopkeeper gives him the chocolate bars and Boudreaux
proceeded to eat all three.

The shopkeeper asked, “Well, where’s the magic?”

Boudreaux replied, “Look in Thibodeaux’s pocket.”
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 Al Capone favored Prohibition. No, that’s not a typo. He favored it because it drove up the price of alcohol dramatically generating a cool $2 billion a year for him (in today’s dollars), from his 10,000 speakeasies. Prohibition lasted 13 years, and its demise came from the creation of the 21st amendment in 1933, based on the numerous societal problems it caused including stronger liquor, increased murder rates, increased theft, and corruption in law enforcement agencies.
WWWThe United Nations estimates the drug trade at $400 billion a year, and the driving force behind that is once again, Prohibition. Some industries, like Capone, favor keeping drugs illegal for nefarious reasons. For instance, private prisons are all to happy to keep illicit drugs illegal as it is their constant source of increasing profits; an almost unholy alliance between them and the cartels. Every 19 seconds, someone is the U.S. is arrested for violating a drug law, every 30 seconds it’s for marijuana, having SWAT teams rounding up people as their profit generators with 50,000 no-knock raids every year searching for illegal drugs. Cancer patients and paraplegics have been sentenced to decades in prison for marijuana possession. Quite cozy.
WWWAfter 40 years and 40 million arrest at a cost of at least $1 trillion dollars, the war on drugs has been an abysmal failure. The prohibition of drugs has guaranteed to keep these drugs very expensive, incentivizing the school drop out rate lured by the incredible profit from the drug trade, and the harder government fights, the higher the drug prices become to compensate for the higher risks, making a return on investment from 5,000 to 22,000 percent. The illegality of these drugs is the foundation of the industry; remove the foundation with legalization, and the industry collapses.

James Gierach is a former Assistant State’s Attorney of Cook County, and a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an international organization of criminal justice professionals who bear personal witness to the wasteful futility and destruction of the war on drugs. Gierach states,

The war on drugs is basically at the heart of nearly every crises you could name in America; guns, gangs, crime, prisons, taxes, deficits, AIDS, health care, trade imbalance, corruption of the police, no money for schools and constructive things like drug treatment, job stimulus and of course we fund terrorism.

LEAP’s position is to legalize drugs because prohibition is what makes them so valuable, giving criminals a monopoly over the supply, unregulated beyond society’s control. Arrests merely create job openings for an endless stream of drug entrepreneurs taking on huge risks for the enormous profits prohibition creates.
WWWLEAP believes that by eliminating prohibition of all drugs for adults and establishing regulations for distribution and use, law enforcement could focus more on crimes of violence, such as rape, aggravated assault and murder, making communities much safer. They also believe that sending parents to prison for non-violent personal drug use destroys families; that with a regulated and controlled environment, drugs will be safer for adult use and less accessible to our children—in our schools today, kids can acquire drugs easier than a six-pack. They believe that by placing drug abuse in the hands of medical professionals rather than the criminal justice system, rates of addiction and overdose deaths will decrease.
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There are many people who strenuously object to the legalization of drugs based on morality, especially those in the religious community. They fervently believe in free will yet are entirely comfortable with imposing their perceived morality on the free will of others by empowering government to criminalize the private use of drugs.
WWWWhat feels moral is not necessarily moral. Morality being anything that alleviates and prevents the suffering of human beings—human welfare. Where is the morality in incarcerating paraplegics and cancer victims for decades for the personal use of marijuana? Where is the morality of supporting laws that perpetuate the funding of terrorism, police corruption, and gang murders? Where is the morality of destroying families by imprisoning parents for personal drug use and making their children wards of the state? Where is the morality of sustaining multi-thousands of percent profit on drugs by keeping them illegal, incentivizing predators to target our children? And where is the morality of supporting laws that are devastating our country, just for the feeling and gratification that somehow criminalizing drugs symbolizes the disapproval of their use without the slightest concern of the cruelty it causes to human beings.?
WWWIn an article titled, A Biblical and Moral Case Against the War on Drugs, a  Christian author writes,

…the reality is that being for the legalization of drugs and
for putting an end to the war on drugs is a moral position.

Will there be some downside to the legalization of drugs, yes. Can it compare to the havoc it’s wreaking on our society at this moment, no. Doing the moral thing takes courage, despite it being counterintuitive for some. It requires intellectual honesty.

                                                                                                 © Joe Arrigo 

The atheistic viewpoint has always struck me as a rather narrow one as heard from its more dogmatic proponents like Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss and the late Cristopher Hitchens pictured here.. Their arguments are against the traditional Biblical god—this personal

A good many of us have grown up being conditioned by this one and only concept of god by our family, culture and religious education, where the programming has been so complete, for most it’s close to impossible to view this one concept of god in any other context. To suggest another concept to them of what god may or may not be, their eyes glaze over as if you were speaking in tongues. And so it seems, this one and only god concept has reached out and impacted even atheists, as that is the concept they denounce and rail against as a myth. And I agree, that is not what god is.
WWWThat very circumscribed simplistic definition of the deity of scripture seems to me squandered effort and time by these famous cerebral so-called atheists to rail against so vehemently. There is a deeper broader scope in which to enter into more meaningful dialogue, rather than focusing on expunging this single primitive concept. And that brings us to the definition of atheism.

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By atheists arguing about the nonexistence of the Biblical god, they are implying by default, this is the one and only definition of god, the only way in which we can think about god. What they should be discussing is what their definition of atheism is, first and foremost—could it really be only the nonbelief of this mythical god? It’s difficult to believe that this is what their definition of atheism is, especially people of such high intelligence and profound thinkers. Yet Dawkins himself describes god as a “supernatural creator.”
WWWMy definition of an atheist is one who believes that the physical world is the only game in town—that an immaterial reality does not exist. That would be a true atheist. I posed this question to Richard Dawkins through Twitter…he never responded. It was disappointing. Of all the aggressive rhetoric he submits to Twitter on this subject, he wouldn’t comment on what I thought was a profound question: Does he believe in an immaterial reality, a nonphysical realm? Perhaps he didn’t know how to answer.
WWWThere’s more than a hint that these so-called atheists have a soft spot. In reading Chistopher Hitchins’ book, God is Not Great, I found him to be a highly moral and spiritual person, although he didn’t describe himself as such.

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So, is the physical world the only game in town, or is there a nonphysical immaterial reality in this stunning, stupendous and majestic universe? Well, an unlikely source—science, has proven there is. There are least three profoundly mysterious intangible forces scientists have uncovered, and they have no idea what they are. The most compelling of these is that consciousness changes the behavior of particles just by the mere act of observing them. Another—quantum entanglement—Einstein described as, “Spooky action at a distance.” See my article, Intangible Forces Far Beyond Our Understanding. It would be more than interesting to hear from of a host of atheists, their answer on whether or not they feel there is a realm in our universe other than the physical. By the definition of atheism I posed here, I suspect their numbers would decrease substantially.

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What caused all of this—planets, suns, us, water, gases, tigers, avocados, bacteria, bees, belugas? Whatever did, we would call god. What god is, how do we define god?…no one knows; it is just too far beyond us. As physicist Allen Wolf stated,

I have no idea how to define god, to see god as a person or a thing. I can’t seem to do that. It’s kind of like asking a human being to explain what god is, is similar to asking a fish to explain the water in which it swims.

Consider we live in a universe that is about 14 billion years-old. We, man, have been here about 200.000 years. In the context of that time frame, we are an early stage embryo, and anyone who claims to have the truth about this infinitely complex place and existence is laughable on its face.
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Just because one doesn’t believe in the traditional god, does not default that person into atheism, nor does it necessarily render them an agnostic. It simply means they’re secular…not belonging to any religion. Scores of people are not religious, yet they describe themselves as spiritual, believing there is an immaterial reality; there’s far more than meets the eye.
WWWThe definition of atheism should be expanded and not automatically defined by simply rejecting a perceived religious supernatural being. The grandeur and spectacle of the universe, and its mystery, is far too awesome to be captured in any one narrow creed.

© Joe Arrigo

A fascinating, mystifying and contentious subject of fate versus determinism. Fate can be described as what awaits us after we make a decision based on free will, and determinism insisting that even our choices are predetermined, thereby reducing free choice to a mere illusion; effectively reducing us to, as one author put it, “A rudderless barge on a rampaging river.” Or as another quoted, “that humans are essentially nothing more than fleshy computers spitting out the behavioral results of some inescapable neurogenetic program.” So, are we controllers of our destiny or enslaved by it?
WWWThis is a subject that can become complex and convoluted as there are diametrically opposed views—profound ones at that. So, it is more than a challenging issue to tackle to say the least. The intent of this article is to stimulate new and deeper thought about fate, not to necessarily arrive at an answer of all answers, but through intellectual honesty, perhaps come closer to the truth. It requires looking at it with as objective a mind as one can conjure up, and release hard and fast preconceived notions. As Friedrich Nietzsche stated, “Convictions are more deadly enemies of truth than lies.”
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Like all other species, man was at one time under the powerful influence of programmed instinct—an automatic reflex action of behavior without a second thought—but we as humans have evolved into creatures unlike any that have ever existed, in that we transcended that instinctual programming, becoming cognizant of the new evolutionary fact that we are free from that reflex action through the immense power known as conscious choice.
WWWAll my life I was passionate about the philosophy that conditions are meaningless…it is our thoughts and deliberate actions that create our conditions. One my first insights to this knowledge came from the words of The Father American of Psychology, William James:

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human
beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

More inspiration came from the great James Allen:

Men and women are makers of themselves by virtue of the thoughts they choose and encourage. The mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they may have been hitherto woven in ignorance and pain, they may now be woven in enlightenment and happiness. 

These men and others like them empowered us with the knowledge that choice, not chance determines human destiny. Our philosophy regarding fatalism or free determination of our destiny will strongly affect our behavior. If you believe in self-determination you will tend to be proactive in directing the path of your life. If you believe in a set fatalism you will tend to take much less action in determining your life. Therefore, if free determination is true, a fatalistic person writes a self-fulfilling prophecy to their future that is much less than it can be. Many times a person’s proclaimed belief in fatalistic determinism is merely a self-deluding tactic to remain in their comfort-zone and avoid exercising courage and effort to grow or change.
WWWBut, there is more to the story.
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For 150 years classic science upheld the view of universal causality where one act begets another as in a string of dominos acting upon one another falling in a fascinating and mesmerizing pattern, otherwise known as determinism. What has happened will cause another thing to happen, and theoretically can, if you know the complete workings of a system, predict what will happen in the future, and it cannot be altered.
WWWSupporting this, is what’s known as the law of excluded middle, that there are only two propositions—true or false—there is no middle ground. Just as the events of the past are true, there can be only one future that is true which cannot be altered, and the fact that it is going to happen guarantees this—much like the song Che Sera Sera Whatever Will Be Will Be. So it seems, nothing we can do will alter the future; controlling of our destiny is futile, and this argument is compelling.
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Free will of man has always been taken for granted and accepted as fact. We instinctively feel it as we go through life making innumerable decisions each and every day. Recently though, this premise has been challenged by science, where cerebral cortex measurements indicate the thoughts we think initiate from the subconscious seconds before our consciousness is aware of them, having no direct control over what comes into our minds, the choices predetermined by the circuitry of the brain. See my article, Is Free Will an Illusion. Free will is undermined by the forces of both our DNA and the influences of our environment. As Sam Harris points out, author of Free Will, if he had the same DNA and grew up in the same environment as a serial killer, he’d do exactly the same thing as that person did.
WWWIt seems that belief in God and free will is contradictory, supporting free will as an illusion. Belief in the traditional God is to believe he is omniscient and has foreknowledge of our choices and what the future will bring; preordained so to speak, meaning no matter what we do, we have zero control over our destiny. And if that’s the case, we cannot be responsible for those actions, making the concept of reward and punishment unjustifiable, cruel and nonsensical. The Bible itself makes this argument in Romans 9:18,

Therefore God has mercy on whom to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will.”

Einstein was a determinist believing in the universal operation of the law of causation, and therefore was inconceivable to him of a God who rewards and punishes because,

“Man’s actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God’s eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes.”
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Enter quantum physics, turning classical physics and determinism on its head. What it’s telling us is that we are in a universe of all possibilities, and no longer could all things be predicted with precision. Physicists absolutely cannot always know exactly how something will turn out before it happens through universal causality, our actions don’t unfold in a mechanical manner. Observing the behavior of matter at the atomic level exhibits a fundamental indeterminism, an inherent randomness of existence, a bizarre world in which the mere conscious observation of atomic particles changes their behavior.

As you can see, getting a handle on this question is a challenging prospect. And being a bit confused is ok because it helps us to contemplate it on a deeper level and away from a hard and fast conviction that is most likely to be false.
WWWIn reading some philosophers regarding the DNA genetic factor influencing our choices, one eloquently points out that genes don’t make decisions, humans do. We are whole organisms of which genes are a part, but we are not reduced to the mere sum of our parts, there is a powerful synergy where we are far greater than sum of those parts.
WWWAs these involuntary thoughts and urges bubble up from our unconscious, there is the conscious mind that can act as the mediator to evaluate rather than we reacting as an automaton to those urges, bringing it into the realm of choice, therefore, the conscious mind has the capacity to override the preprogrammed DNA.
WWWRegarding determinism, philosopher Corliss Lamont enlightens us with,

Determinism is logically self-defeating. For when the determinist propounds his theory, argues insistently in its favor and rebuts the free choice doctrine, he is all the while implicitly affirming that he has responsibility adopted his thesis and that thus he has chosen freely between true and false. 

Looking closer at the law of excluded middle, it’s quite obvious that this fatalistic view is absolutely true for the past, but as to the future, it is much less obvious. When it states there in only one future and it cannot be altered, how can you not alter something that hasn’t happened yet, leaving, in my opinion, the future in flux, as quantum physics unveils.
WWWWhile it is true on a subconscious level, our emotions play a powerful role in influencing what we believe and what we act upon of which we are unaware, our brain is constructed of the quantum world. Particle physicist Henry P. Stapp is of the opinion that there is a quantum consciousness that transcends the physical that is supportive of free will.
WWWI have not arrived at a conclusion—completely convinced in one direction or the other—except to say that in some strange paradoxical way, both human freedom and determinism are true. That although they are opposites, they are still bound together. All the views have merit and are compelling. In many things, a question is closer to the truth than the certainty of a belief, it being much easier to gravitate to a belief than sincerely ponder all the elements of an issue. I hope I’ve contributed something here to contemplate further. I will leave you with this thought about human consciousness from Karl Marx,

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this—that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.

© Joe Arrigo

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tells us that by 2050, 1 in 3 adults in the United States will have diabetes if current trends in children’s diets continue. What’s driving this oncoming train wreck?  The power of the food,   beverage and fast food industries and their lust for fatter bottom lines.

The  Inter-agency Working Group (IWG) is an agency that includes the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). In 2009 Congress commissioned them to develop standards in advertising foods to children, where it stated that food ads directed at children  must provide, “a meaningful contribution to a healthful diet,” and that those foods in the ads to children must, “contain at least 50% by weight one or more of the following: fruit; vegetable; whole grain; fat-free or low-fat milk or yogurt; fish; extra lean meat or poultry; eggs; nuts and seeds; or beans.”
WWWGeneral Mills retorted that under the IWG guidelines, most foods now purchased by consumers would be classified as unhealthy, saying, “of the 100 most commonly consumed foods and beverages in America, 88 would fail the IWG’s proposed standards.” That’s an admission that most of what kids are eating is crap! General Mills also related that if everyone in the country ate healthy, it would cost them $503 billion a year. Well hey, we wouldn’t want them to sacrifice that revenue stream over a trivial matter like children’s health…how then could they pay their CEO Ken Powell $12 million a year?
WWWIt’s not difficult to understand how Congress is in bed with the food and beverage industry, the industry spent $37 million buying Congress to trash the IWG recommendations.

The food industries’ food scientists and executives from companies like Coca-Cola, Kraft, Frito-Lay and Nestle, know and utilize to its full extent, that sugary, salty, fatty foods are addictive, targeting the same pleasure centers of the brain as cocaine does, and, if they hook young kids, they will be customers for life. This works. For instance, when I make potato salad, I found that adding some sugar to it along with the normal amount of salt, it’s more delicious.
WWWIn his book, Salt Sugar Fat, investigative reporter Michael Moss asked these food scientists and executives if they drink soda or feed their children Cheetos and Lunchables (prepackaged trays of bologna, cheese and crackers); their answer—no. Howard Moskowitz, the man who reinvented Dr Pepper, told Moss, “I’m not a soda drinker, it’s not good for your teeth.”
WWWMoss also writes about a 2008 Kellogg’s commercial for Frosted Mini-Wheats where they claimed, “A clinical study showed kids who had a filling breakfast of Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal improved their attentiveness by nearly 20 percent,” but half the children who ate it showed zero improvement in attentiveness. These companies are lacing, what would be considered wholesome foods like yogurt and spaghetti sauce, with loads of sugar and salt, such as Yoplait with twice the amount of sugar as Lucky Charms, and a half-cup of Prego Traditional spaghetti sauce with as much sugar as three Oreos and one-third the daily recommended salt intake.

As long as we have a system where Congress can be greased, we will have corporations with deep pockets controlling the playing field, much to detriment of the people. The game is rigged. Even the innocence of our children, the most vulnerable among us, are no exception to the greed that pervades our economic and political system. For that reason, we must be vigilant in what goes into our children’s tummies. 

                                    © Joe Arrigo

 Being judgmental is being in conflict. Conflict is not conducive to happiness. While judgment is necessary to guide and protect ourselves through life, using it to form opinions of people with frightening speed based on limited information doesn’t serve us well.
WWWClarity increases when we avoid the urge of being judgmental as it helps us greatly to see what is really happening, unclouded by an indulgent knee-jerk emotional response. It helps us to accept those people who are not as we wish them to be, bypassing the negative wasted energy of laboring under the assumption of how people should behave and think. When we indulge in this activity, we are really becoming upset that the world is not living up to our expectations, and not a path to being happier.
WWWWe don’t have to personalize the behavior of other people when it doesn’t affect us. Their actions may be repulsive, distasteful or unacceptable to our standard 

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In his book, Handbook to Higher Consciousness. Ken Keyes writes these select passages.

“What do I want to change in the outside world instead of doing the inner work of changing my own response to it?”

“Your ego and your rational mind labor under the harsh programming that there is a certain special way the world should be and the people around you should act—and it is up to your rational mind to put it all aright”

“Whether you enjoy your life continuously, or constantly harass yourself, depends upon how well you learn to simply change what is changeable without throwing people out of your heart.”

From our primitive ancestors who feared all outsiders as a survival mechanism, tribalism seems to written into our DNA. We strongly identify with the group to which we belong, and many times suspect, even fear, others outside of it. There are many avenues in which it can insidiously seep in—racial groups, income strata, religious belief, sexual orientation, national origin, other neighborhood, other country, etc., all of it spelling separation from others, away from acceptance, which again, does not serve us well.
WWWMany of us live by a set of institutional dogmas that are hard and fast—a binary system of good and bad—contributing to narrow thinking with zero understanding, laying a prime foundation for harsh judgment to flourish. Taking a closer look at those doctrines to determine if they tend to separate you from, rather than embrace people, will go a long way. It may be necessary to rise above such a staunch, restrictive and biased position.

Since judgment comes so naturally and easily to us, breaking the habit is difficult. Being more aware when the urge presents itself, and perhaps reminding yourself of some of the thoughts this article expresses will hopefully have an impact on changing. It will also be of great help to keep in mind that when you are less judgmental of others, you will also be less judgmental of yourself, increasing your self-esteem.
WWWKnow that the vast majority of people are doing the best they can in the heat of living and coping with life, which will tend to bring some compassion into the game and derail the judgment impulse. We all judge, at the same time, we all love to be treated kindly. Kindness or condemnation is the choice.

If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease.
—Sent-ts’an, 700 A.D.

© Joe Arrigo

Annie

It’s funny how you forget
The years of diapers
And remember how the children scrambled into our bed
When the thunder came,
It’s funny how you forget
Their whining and fighting
And remember how we wrestled on the floor
Pinning me down while they laughed,

How you forget
The one hundred gallons of spilled milk
But remember when we all ate together,
It’s funny how you forget
The emergency room treks
And remember the times
You could’ve spent more time with them,

How you forget
Toys splattered across the floor
But remember their joy Christmas morning,
Forget the noise, when you were trying to concentrate
Remember their squeals of delight
When you threw them in the air
Your arms never failing their trust;

It’s really funny
How you sometimes long
To go back
To live the joy again
And relish them even more
…funny

© Joe Arrigo