"More than 1 in 10 men between the ages of 20 and 44 take some form of prescription antidepressant, antipsychotic, ADHD drug, or anti-anxiety treatment, according to a recent study by the pharmacy benefit manager Medco. Those numbers are up 43 percent from 2001 according to the report, which reviewed the prescription health claims for more than 2 million people..."
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| A true test of how much you actually buy into what you say. ['Buy into' - you see what I did there? I'm clever.] |
"In the nearly 20 years he worked in comics he wrote countless Batman and Superman stories (in comic books and in newspaper strips), came up with the idea (and title) for World’s Finest comics, and was behind the remarkably durable villain Bizarro...
Schwartz returned to the world of superheroes in his 80s when he published An Unlikely Prophet; a meta-autobiography that imagined Superman as a tulpa, a mind-created reality or “thoughtform,” a concept adopted from Tibetan Buddhism. The highlight of the book is Schwartz’s claim that he physically encountered Superman in a taxi in New York City.
In 2006, he published a follow-up of sorts titled A Gathering of Selves in which the Superman tulpa character helps Schwartz transcend the realms of personal identity and travel to a realm inhabited by “a multitude of selves, including the dark figure of Batman” to quote the book jacket..."
"My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard religion as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
Plus, he's just *rockin'* the pipe.
I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes.
A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue."
