Acquiring wealth allows people to have more leisure time. This is not generally a point with which people would take issue. Wealth allows people to not work as much since they have reserves on which to fall back. Further, wealth allows one to pay others to perform tasks that one would otherwise have the onus of performing. Likewise, wealth, or the pursuit thereof, spurs innovation in that one must trim costs by being more efficient or design new products that have marked advantages over the predecessors. However, wealth, and the pursuit thereof, is not the only, or perhaps not even the best method of achieving success for the commons.

Based on the above assessment of the benefits of wealth, one could say that being successful necessitates acquiring wealth. Let us reconsider this proposition.

Greed, in this case considered as the pursuit of excessive wealth, will not be addressed beyond saying that we shall not acknowledge greed as being a noble trait, and certainly not a desirable trait. Capitalism can be said to be based upon an innate greediness of people, but we shall instead view it as being based on the desire to become successful by having greater amounts of leisure time. This desire for greater leisure time might actually be what some consider to be greed.

Being successful, that is, maximizing one's leisure time, does require that only one criterion is met: we must devise new methods of meeting our needs that require less time for completion than our existing methods. Success for the artist -- one who generally would not consider being more efficient at his craft to be a blessing or a measure of success -- would be measured by the amount of time he has to commit to his art. Success for the philosopher would also be the amount of time the philosopher has to commit to his thought.

Being successful then can be achieved by sharing knowledge. By sharing knowledge, one is able to advance not only those around him, but himself too. One receives the criticisms, recommendations, and constructive feedback to one's ideas that then advance the collective knowledge of society. Through this shared knowledge, we are able to be more innovative by advancing technology. Through technology, we become more efficient, and therefore have more time to devote to our pleasures.

The drive for success would then be the key to advancing society; not greed nor capitalism. When knowledge is shared, everyone then has the chance to be more successful. When wealth is acquired, only one person sees the immediate benefits; and, through the acquiring of wealth, one must take from the wealth of others, thereby diminishing their ability for success.

When knowledge is shared, everybody wins.

For the past year, I've worked on the campaign of John Laesch. I was never under the assumption that defeating the income-bent Speaker of the House would be easy. Nevertheless, I was upset when I found out that John lost the election.

John's campaign slogan was "Revive the American Dream!" Now, I would say that the principle American ethic is to leave the world a better place for our children. Nearly all of us want our children to be better off than we are.

Building on this, the American Dream is a dream of hope. Things can and do get better, no matter how bad we have it. The patriots threw off the British rule. The abolitionists succeeded in bringing the South back into the Union and ending slavery. Oligopolies and monopolies were busted. Fascism was defeated. Social services were instituted. Things get better. There is hope for our future.

I say that I won in this election because John Laesch brought hope. I won because when I stepped into the voting booth to fill-in my ballot, I cast my vote for whom I thought was best fit to serve the office. I won because I had the privilege of voting for Jonathan "John" Laesch. Never before had I ever been as excited and proud to vote.

I won because I was able to volunteer for John, to feel like I was an integral part of a team bent on reviving and fulfilling the American Dream.

I won because through the campaign I made many new friends: Carolyn, both the Joes, Ben, Laura, Dick, Lisa, Steve, Jim, Jimi, Sue, Robyn, Onyx, and John Laesch and his lovely fiancée Jen. Thank you all. I would gladly do it all over again.

Thanks for the hope.

My wife, flautist has decided to start a new channel on DALnet for Universalist Christians.

For those who don't know, Universalists essentially believe that everybody will make it to heaven.

If you are up for chat, you will need an IRC client like mIRC for Windows, X-Chat for Linux and Windows, or jIRCii for Mac OSX, Linux and Windows.

Then, you connect to a DALnet server (irc.dal.net), and join #universalism.

I'm an agnostic atheist and I hang out in there. There are no requirements to join. Just behave yourself.

All throughout elementary school, middle school, high school and even in a large portion of college, math is all about solving problems using techniques taught in class.. You are taught the order of operations in elementary school; factoring techniques, graphing techniques, trigonometric proofs, and even some methods of solving for derivatives and integration in high school. The concentration is always on using theorems and techniques developed by other people. You are to assume that the theorems and techniques work.

I am currently a student of Abstract Algebra at Northern Illinois University. Abstract Algebra is the course that NIU uses to introduce its math majors to developing proofs. A while back got the results of our first exam. Many students who are now taking the class haven't ever done math proofs before (except for high school geometry, perhaps).

I am from the very Republican, very Conservative town of Jacksonville, Illinois. In our local newspaper, the Journal Courier, we have a section on the back page called the "Open Line" where people can call in and voice their opinions on different matters. During one such opinion, a caller refered to the Democrats as the "anti-American Democrats". The following is my Letter to the Editor in response:

I am a Democrat. From a recent comment in the Open Line, it appears that at least one person thinks this makes me anti-American. I, however, beg to differ.

Mr. Speaker,

Since we are a nation of laws, we must see to it that the laws are upheld and applied equally to all citizens. That principal is what this nation was built on; it is for what our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

And it is in this great legislative body that we are charged with making the laws that govern our nation. To permit the chief executive enforcing those laws to cast them aside as he pleases would, in effect, sanction such actions. To do nothing would be to place a stamp of approval on illicit conduct and transfer power to the executive branch, thus upsetting the system of checks and balances devised by the Framers. It would cheapen the law, which, in turn, would cheapen the work by this House.

Apparently I'm not the only one who gets ticked off when the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee refuse to have the Attorney General sworn in before a hearing. All the Democrats on the committee voted to have him sworn in and all the Republicans voted against.

Although, this has to be one of the few gems from the hearings:

I'm sorry, Mr. Attorney General. I forgot you can't answer any questions that might be relevant...

-- Sen. Patrick Leahy, Feb. 6, 2006 questioning Alberto Gonzales during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on illegal NSA wiretapping and domestic surveillance

Last night I had the misfortune of having a nightmare that made sense. I am a volunteer for the John Laesch campaign. John Laesch is working to unseat incumbent and current House Speaker Dennis Hastert in the Illinois 14th Congressional District. In the dream, I had the revelation that given the fact that animal right's protesters have been deemed terrorists by the Bush administration, that political dissidents or political opponents might also be.

I have taken part in two protests while I've been at Northern Illinois University. Revelations that the NSA has been performing warrantless wiretapping of American citizens make me worry that I might become a target of such unwarranted wiretapping.

Well, not much has been posted in the past month. I've tried to keep this site solely consisting of original items - thought experiments, papers, rants, my own views, et cetera. Lately, I've been working on a large piece on my view of morality and government. I hope to have that done sometime within my lifetime and when it is, I will post it. I might end up working on it a chapter at a time, each time posting the newest chapter. That is only a possibility.

Also, I am going to be working on migrating the site to a new server in the coming week. I am going to mirror the site on the new

My name is Jared Lash. I usually go by the online monicker "errorlevel".

I have often been criticized as "thinking too much" and compulsively pursue the Truth in politics and morality.

Some posts that I have made that describe me are the following:

• Errorlevel's Wager -- Why I am an Agnostic Atheist - Background on my religious beliefs.
• Atheist Growing Up - An essay that I submitted to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's 2005 College Essay Contest explaining my non-religious upbringing (including some parts from "Errorlevel's Wager").
• Morality Without Religion - An article describing my basis for being moral in the absence of a religious morality.