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I have a few comments this morning:

-I am glad I went to Paris before the US-French relations go down the crapper. Even back in October, British and Parisian folk though George Bush was merely a man born with a silver head up his butt.

-This Sunday's Doonesbury gave me a chuckle.

I have my writer's group, of which I'm still only a critiquer, since my creativity and desire to sit and write a piece from start to finish has waned. But first, it's time to work out a little.

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I suppose some folks might find it sexy to note that I recently finished taking a hot, steamy shower. I was lathering up all my delicate parts and luxuriating under the hot water as it cascaded down my body.

Then I accidentally inhaled some of that hot, steamy water and began choking for a minute.

Oh yeah.

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Ms Tao stumbled upon an interesting magazine called "The Sun". Since they are a non-commercial magazine, they aren't sold in many stores. Only three places in Sacramento sell issues.

Here's there website: www.thesungmagazine.org

The article on Non-Violent Communication was rather interesting. Alas, they only include an exerpt on their web site, but not the exerpts I found particularly of interest.

So, I'll type them my own damn self.

"I agree with theologian Martin Buber, who said that you cannot do psychotherapy as a psycotherapist. People heal from their pain when they have an authentic connection with another human being, and I don't think you can have an authentic connection when one person thinks of him- or herself as the therapist, diagnosing the other. And if patients come in thinking of themselves assick people who are there to get treatment, then it starts with the assumption that there's something wrong with them, which gets in the way of the healing. So, yes, I teach this to psychoherapists, but I teach it mostly to regular human beings, because we can all engage in an authentic connection with others, and it's out of this authentic connection that healing takes place."

"Social psychologist Milton Rokeach did some research on religious practitioners in the seven maor religions. He looked at people who very seriously followed their religion and compared them to people in the same population who had no religious orientation at all. He wanted to find out which group was more compassionate. The results were the same in all the major religions: the non-religious were more compassionate.

Rokeach warned readers to be careful how they interpeted his research, however, because within each religious group there were two radically different populations: a mainstream group and a mystical minority. If you looked at just the mystical group, you found that they were more compassionate than the general population.

On the one hand, I could take this article as being too touchy feely. In fact, I'm quite used to not functioning at my basic emotional level, getting down to what I fear and what I need.

I considered this notion of non-violent communication. I had never thought of retributive justice versus restorative justice. At least, not in 10 years. But I think there's something to it. Restorative justice is better because it helps to get to the heart of the criminal's cause for his behavior. Retribution doesn't solve what's really making him do the crime.

My cat is rooting around in a clean, yet unfolded pile of laundry. I've never seen him do that before.

In some ways, he is right, we are accustomed to wanting revenge rather than peace. These ideas can be applied on an aggregate level to connections between countries, as well. Rosenberg states that violence stems from needs not being met. I have thought of this in the past. I have considered that there are countries out there that we have been involved with in a less than mutually beneficial situation. In the event no effort of cooperation is achieved, you can almost guarantee that some sort of terrorist act, or other act of aggression would ensue.

I have more on my mind, and this isn't complete, but I must go take care of some other things now...like getting to bed.