Marijuana has not always been illegal, therefore one would have to assume that it was accepted as wrong before it became illegal. As a base, we can say that it has always been wrong to commit murder. Our oldest stories, in the Western Christian world being Cane and Abel, reflect this. Some actions, such as incest, are so wrong that even animals know instinctively not to partake in such acts. But other actions come through discovery and the progression of technology. Who can say if stem cell research or tampering with a baby’s DNA is wrong? These things have not had enough time for society to make that decision.

Marijuana has been illegal in the United States long enough for many people to not only think that it is, in fact, morally wrong, but so much so that it’s actual effects have been drastically exaggerated, as though the drug was as powerful as LSD or that it could instantly addict you, causing you to look like a 10 year heroine addict after just one puff. In fact, even though scientific studies have not proven marijuana to be very dangerous at all, save for a heavy smokers increased chances of lung cancer (hardly enough to merit the drug as morally wrong given our laws’ desire to appease tobacco so easily), marijuana continues to be illegal and therefore perceived as wrong.

Chicken or egg, perhaps such questions aren’t completely answerable, because it is more based on culture, or even individual perception. I do wonder what would happen to those who’ve come to believe that certain actions, such as a good stonering, are wrong if those laws were suddenly changed. Would parents be happy for their children to light up a joint after Thanksgiving dinner, suddenly? Or would there be a transition of a generation or two where regardless of the law, parents raised their children and laid out their own stipulations.

Marshall law at Mom’s house.

But more than such trivialities — anyone who’s made anything of themselves worth being knows that it’s better to be happy than any amount of worldly success — come up the idea of religion. It seems that just about everyone in this area, a small town surrounded by emptied mines and rural farmlands, is heavy set into their Church-going and Godliness. Many will assure you that they are not “religious” but simply “spiritual”, that they don’t live by the rules of the Church but by God’s rules. It’s all I can do to not attempt to argue it out with them, that without a Church there would be no Bible, and without a Bible what connection would you have ever had to God? But I’m not interested in breaking the faith of others, just dealing with my own lack of the stuff.

Some would think that to be of the agnostic or atheistic persuasion would be a life of simple, easy living, with no morals or Godly rules to abide. Of course, simply not believing in God doesn’t instantly leave you lacking in morals, and in fact it’s religion that makes life easier, giving you the benefit of the idea that even if you die, you’ll still have more time. Not just more time, but the best time, theoretically. In fact, the idea that Heaven is such a wonderful place would have you thinking more Christians would live insane lives, jumping out of airplanes, serving in wars, driving with reckless abandon, in hopes of an accidental death.

But the realities of not believing in God leave me with the inevitability that there may be nothing after this life. I can hope that there is, reincarnation might be nice (I recall a movie where a guy was reincarnated as the seat of a girls bike…) or even to be a spirit who can float through the galaxy with endless time to explore. Unfortunately, I’m lead more toward believing that there is nothing, that for all of the amazing consciousness, our thoughts, our achievements, our lives and how important they are to us, that we might simply be a fluke, and that there is no greater being waiting for us with 99 virgins or golden palaces. The finality of life is a daunting aspect, but it has one massive side effect: live now, because this is your only chance.

And I feel like I’ve done quite the living thus far.

I can’t believe I only heard about this today, but apparently there is a star made completely of diamond a mere 50 light years away from Earth, in everyone’s favorite hotspot vacation galaxy, Centaurus. According to the BBC:

Twinkling in the sky is a diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, astronomers have discovered. The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across… It’s the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk. Astronomers have decided to call the star “Lucy” after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Let the BBC tell you all about it.

Firstly, Eva Vesper over at WebHostingSearch.com gave me an award. That’s right, a regular blue ribbon prize. I suppose now I can officially say that I’m an award winning Web designer. Please feel free to ooh and ahh as is your personal family tradition.

Secondmostimportantly, I’ll be getting this guy tomorrow:

If you weren’t aware, California is facing a $42B deficit. That’s a capital B for billion, folks. The press is claiming that this is going to be Arnold’s legacy, who somehow seems to be serving his 3rd term despite California’s 2 terms/governor limit, if he can’t get everything cleaned up and looking pretty for January 1st, 2011.

While the Governator tries to sort things out behind a cloud of sweet smelling cigar smoke, I’ll do the honors of saving the world’s 11th largest economy from utter devastation: Arnold Schwarzenegger.

A Schwarzenegger movie, on average, grosses around $90million. Arnold would only have to make 466 movies in order to pay off that debt. That number shrinks to about 210 movies if he only makes really good Terminator movies.

Schwarzenegger Trivia: Did you know that Arnold was a millionaire before the age of 30, even before he had even begun his acting career? Apparently, he made a bunch of cash with a mail order and bricklaying business. I found the Wikipedia article on the guy actually quite fascinating.

I mean, why would you have a song that you only give 1 star to? Even 2 stars? Who wants music they don’t like hanging around on their machines, wasting valuable filespace and cluttering up our Cover Flow? The only reasoning I could see behind this is that a person might want to download entire albums and keep every song, even if tracks 1 - 9 are utter suckfests (ahem, the new My Morning Jacket…)

So I’ve developed the following system for getting the most out of your iTunes stars.

• 5 Stars. A song you absolutely love. The ones that still make you cry/beam/mosh/whatever you’re into.
• 4 Stars. A pretty darn good song. Better than average and whatnot.
• 3 Stars. A song you like. If you heard it on the radio, you wouldn’t turn it off. These are good filler songs, so that you don’t have to listen to only your favorites and wear them all out.
• 2 Stars. Don’t use the 2 star option. It’s lame.
• 1 Star. Songs you’re not sure about yet, which perhaps need some more time before being thrown away.

Okay so with that system, go off, make yourself some wonderful Smart Playlists and until next time, the comments section:

For $80 / month the insurance will cover things like doctor visits, eye exams, trips to the dentist and give me discounts on prescriptions. In that regard, it’s a typical insurance plan and seems pretty decent.

For hospital stays, emergency room visits and the like, they’ll cover up to 40%. I was blessed recently with the opportunity to be hospitalized due to failure of the appendix to work (and be necessary). So I have a real life example we can all work from.

First off, a trip to the ER which results in surgery and a hospital stay can be quite confusing. The hospital bills you for the bed and drugs you use while in the hospital, and separately for the ER experience. Additionally, each “specialist” charges you individually as well: a radiologist sends you a bill, a pathologist sends you a bill, everyone who so much as looked at you during your experience will send you a separate bill. This is frustrating because if you have trouble paying, you know, because you don’t have insurance, then you can end up with four or five blemishes on your credit record, rather than just one big one. But I digress…

Another little known and baffling fact is that since I had no insurance, I received a 50% discount on my entire bill. I’m still not 100% sure what the total of that bill is — I’m still trying to sort out all of the different charges from the various suppliers — but it looks like it would have been around $40,000 total. That’s an immediate $20,000 they just knocked off of my bill. Now, before you go thinking “wow, that was nice of them” realize that if they’re actually charging the insurance companies the $40,000 instead of the discounted price, then that’s a big contributor to why health insurance is so damned expensive. I’m sure there are other factors, the likelihood of the insurance co.’s getting some discount too, but it all wreaks of a scam.

Okay, so what we’re left with is this simple fact: Were I to have had that $80 / month insurance, my bill would have actually been higher!

Here’s the math:

With Insurance: $40,000 (total bill) - 40% (insurance payout) = $24,000 (my responsibility)

Without Insurance: $40,000 (total bill) - 50% (hospital discount for people w/o insurance) = $20,000 (my responsibility)

Final equation: insurance = scam.

However, so many Americans don’t even have enough insurance to cover them when it really comes to crunch time: when the cancer shows up. So the $50, $100, $600 / month that they’ve been paying every month are all for naught. Consider how often you actually need to use your health insurance vs. how much it costs you to have it. And don’t be fooled into thinking that since your company pays for your health insurance you aren’t: if Company A has to pay $150 / month to keep your ass insured, that’s $150 / month they won’t be paying you directly.

When you purchase health insurance you are, in essence, betting that you will get sick one day. Horribly sick.

Now consider this other reality: the very fact that we need insurance. There is a product that apparently every American needs which is so expensive that we can’t even afford it without making monthly payments towards it our entire lives. Monthly payments which will increase over time as we have children, get married, and get older, in no particular order. Every year you don’t get sick, you’re actually lowering the big pay off that you hope to get.

You’re making a monthly installment on a bill you don’t even have yet, but are essentially hoping to have. You’re paying toward your own bad luck.

Wouldn’t it be better then to save that money, particularly for those paying $300, $400, etc., and earn interest on it. According to this quick interest calculator I just used, if you save $100 / month for 10 years at 3% interest, you’ll have almost $29,000 at the end of that 10 years. If you don’t get sick, now you’ve got $29k to blow on your midlife crisis!

If you feel the same, you may be interested in doing something about it, like signing this petition.

Read all about it via NYTimes.com.

Nifty confirmations include MMS, copy and paste and 3G tethering. Some rumors are claiming video recording and possibly even editing will be possible. But what no single publication has revealed yet is my personal list of upgrades I’d like to see.

1. The ability to hide Apple’s apps. I’m a bit retentive, anally that is, and like my phone to be nice and neat. I don’t need the clutter that a pointless Contacts application provides, and I desperately want to hide all things Stocks, Weather, Mail, and Photos. I’d particularly like it if there could just be a “hide” feature
2. Easier WiFi access. I like to leave the option on to search for WiFi networks, but too often the networks don’t actually have Internet access, or they’re those stupid “free” coffee shop networks that make you sign up for an account first. It’d be nice if just tapping on the WiFi/Edge/3G symbol would take you to the Settings > WiFi page. This would also be a relatively easy way to get to the settings page in general, and then you could hide the dedicated icon.
3. App Plugins. there are cool applications out there like Camera Zoom that would really be better as plugins to the existing Camera app than having their own space-wasting icons. Something like Wikipanion could plug into Safari to tell the browser to always open wikipedia.org articles in that external app.

Sure, video recording (and editing!) would be awesome, in fact, I’m quite surprised it hasn’t been offered as an app yet. But interface improvements are just as important to me as being able to use my iPhone as a Pea Shooter 2000. And, as we all know, it is in fact all about me.