There are two Christmases: take your pick.

I have often heard from friends who don't share the Christian idea of Christmas -- the birth of Jesus, etc. -- that they feel left out at this time of year, which is so important to all us Americans.
I have good news! You, too, can participate without violating your ideals!

Christmas in America is not just about Jesus but is also about Santa Claus, and Santa transcends all faiths. Santa is a mythical (don't tell your kids) figure who appears on Christmas Eve and brings presents to all the girls and boys who have been good during the previous year. Santa is of no religion, no faith: He comes, bearing gifts, to anyone who had been good (and probably to those who haven't but have convincingly lied about it).

In short, Christmas in America is about rewarding friends and family for what they've done for us during the year gone by, but it's also about celebrating the birth of the person we think of when we think of giving without getting: Jesus.

It's also about celebrating the season: the snow, the camaraderie it endears, etc. Witness the song "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" and others. There is something about the Christmas season that brings us all together, or that should.

You don't have to be of any faith to celebrate Christmas. Think of it as that time of year when you realize that the seasons change and that snow falls and that you and I bestow presents on those we love. Why now? Why not? It's the deepest, darkest part of winter, so why not give to those we love? Probably more presents than they deserve and that you can afford. But it's the time when we go over our limits and lavish gifts. It doesn't happen any other time of the year, except maybe birthdays, and birthdays are limited to one person: Christmas celebrates us all.

And if you're not a Christian, you don't have to buy into all the beautiful hymns to Jesus. You can celebrate with songs about Santa and Frosty the Snowman and even Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. You can sing Jingle Bells or Walking in a Winter Wonderland or Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire or Here Comes Santa Claus or I'll Be Home for Christmas. All terrific songs, easy to sing along with; none even remotely religious but all honoring the spirit of Christmas. Why not think of Christmas as a time when we can decorate our homes -- or drive around admiring others' decorations -- and just enjoy each others' company at parties with lots of eggnog?

We can sing lots of songs around the piano or the tree that have nothing to do with the Jesus thing. A whole mythology has grown up around Christmas, but, when you come right down to it, the holiday season is all about giving and about family and really, what more do we need to celebrate than that?

I'm not particularly religious, but I can sing -- off-key -- "Silent Night" with the same fervor I sing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town". It's all about feeling the spirit of the season. And the spirit is there, whatever your faith.

Christmas is not just about Jesus, though I think he would approve of Santa Claus. In the end, it's just about feeling good about our future as humans. Jesus would like that, no?

High school students should have a course in personal finance.

I know this sounds boring, but with so many young people getting in over their heads these days with credit card debt and houses they bought that they can't afford to pay for, the need is more urgent than ever. Let's all learn about how to manage our money, and the younger the better.


There used to be a course in high schools called Consumer Math. I never took it, and not many friends I had did, either. It was all about how to manage your money. At sixteen or so, I had no money, so it seemed irrelevant. Later on, when I was in my twenties, with a wife and debts, it came back to me with a wham! Once I'd had a car re-possessed and was on food stamps, I was thinking that maybe it would have been a good idea to have taken a course like that.

Nowadays such a course, offered in college but maybe not anymore in high school, is called Personal Finance. But it's required of no one, and relatively few students take it. That's a shame, as college students are even closer than high school students to actually being out there in the world, earning paychecks, faced with the realities of how to manage their money. I think it's kind of shocking that we turn out high school and even college graduates who have never had a single course in how to manage their earnings. What a disservice we are doing to them!

Will a course in managing your money keep you from making stupid mistakes? Charging too much on your credit cards? Buying a house you can't afford? Of course not. But once you've learned the principles of personal finance, they become part of your thinking, and if you get into trouble later on, you really have only yourself to blame because you knew better.

Think about sex education, as taught in our public schools. Does a course in how your reproductive system works and how to prevent pregnancy and/or avoid sexually-transmitted diseases somehow make you more responsible? No. But if you've had the course and it happens to you -- if you get a disease or if you get pregnant or get someone pregnant-- who's to blame? You. Because you knew. You'd been taught. It should have become part of your thinking, part of who you were. If you ignored what you'd been taught, that was a conscious choice on your part. Again, you knew better.

Let's suppose you take a course, in high school or college, in nutrition. You learn all about which foods make you healthier and stronger and which taste good but make you fat and maybe more prone to heart problems in later life. What you do with that knowledge is up to you. If you still drive through McDonald's three nights a week and chow down on quarter-pounders and those admittedly tasty fries, that's your decision -- but you're making that decision in direct contradiction of what you know about various kinds of food and their impact on your health and body composition. In other words, you know better, but you decide to go against the knowledge you have. Who's to blame when you get fat? You.

Back to Consumer Math: Once you've learned the basics of opening a checking account and the rules of credit and loans, etc., and the consequences of violating those rules and basics, it's up to you whether you play by the rules or ignore them. You've been taught. You've been warned. That course you took, like it or not, is part of your thinking. Or should be.

And that, I think, is the value of such courses. Make it a part of each student's thinking, part of who he/she will become as an adult. Of course some will ignore what they've learned, just as they ignore good advice from parents and others, but some will take it all to heart and become responsible citizens, never going hopelessly into debt, causing themselves and their families endless grief. One course like this can probably save at least half of our kids from becoming homeless, because half of the kids who take the course will pay attention and apply what they've learned to their own future lives. The other half we'll be seeing on the welfare rosters.

It seems to me that, as a society, we should school our children in basic personal finance. As a society, we'll reap the benefits down the line. And so will they.

There should be a "romancing" place for boys/men.

Someone should set up a website that boys and men can tap into to get advice on "romancing" the women in their lives. We, the males, are so clueless when it comes to such things.

Pardon me for making generalizations here, but it seems to me that girls (and later women) grow up with some ideals of love and romance that often go sour once they've actually chosen a mate. The man who was so attentive in the beginning turns out to be a lout who insists his beloved has supper on the table and then passes out from too much beer. Or, even worse, the single mom with a child in tow meets a cool guy who she leaves for a while with her infant son or daughter only to come back and find that he's shaken the child to death and is in custody. She's lost her precious child and her latest lover all in one fell swoop. And she has to appear in court, too.

Okay, this is the worst case scenario, but you know as well as I that it plays out every day in every city and in every newspaper.

What's up with this? I'm just venturing a guess here, but stay with me. I think the woman is torn between love of her offspring and the need to be loved herself. She hopes that this guy she's just met, who maybe played with her kid while courting her, is going to love her and her kids equally. She is without blame. She's got her fingers crossed. Dear Lord, let this work out right!

But the guy -- a boy and now a man -- has never learned how to "romance" a woman, how to make her feel valuable, how to value her. And all that entails. He has no idea what a woman needs or wants or what to do with this child she had with somebody else who is crying and needs the kind of attention he has no clue about how to provide. All he knows is that his d*ck is hard and he needs some relief, and his woman is out somewhere with friends -- maybe with another man. And this kid he doesn't know is screaming his/her lungs out, and it's really starting to get to him. So he picks the kid up and shakes it -- and ends up in prison.

So let's back up. Where does this start? In high school, obviously, when most males start to feel the need to couple with anybody willing to "put out". I've always thought that males are not very complicated, especially when it comes to relations with females. They want sex and are looking for girls who will accommodate them. And girls/women need to know that. And they need to know it early on. When a guy says he loves you, and his d*ck is hard, he's probably just trying to put it into your vagina. Sorry to be so blunt, but that's the truth.

What can a girl do? Be careful. Take your time. Don't get into those situations. Always be in control. Have an exit strategy. Take your own car to meeting places. Have friends you can call.
Know yourself and don't drink too much with guys you don't know all that well.

But back to the original premise: guys need to take a course in "romancing" girls.

Okay, guys, what you want is for this particular girl to have sex with you. Understood. But you want -- whether you know it or not -- for her to enjoy it as much as you and -- here's the real kicker -- for it to be her idea. And this applies whether you're sixteen or sixty. Play it cool. Tell her how much you enjoy spending time with her. And mean it. After the first date, ask if you can kiss her goodnight -- and leave it at that. Ask if you can see her again. Don't press her as to when. Let her decide. Give her your phone number and let her know that you'd love to see her again whenever she wants. It's totally up to her: if she calls you, that means she's sized you up and wants to be with you again. If she doesn't, move on.

So what it she has a child by someone else? As a guy, you have to understand that her first obligation is to her child. But that doesn't mean she doesn't want to be held and loved and made love to. She may want you in a big way, but her child has to come first. Can you handle that? If you can't, let her know up front. Be a man. Put your character before your d*ck.

Back to the beginning again: Boys and men need to be schooled in romance. We need to understand that women take longer to decide on their mates -- unless they've had too much to drink or are just kind of risk-taking women -- and we should learn to be patient. Go back to the old courtship rituals: pay a visit, take flowers, sit in the parlor or on the porch and listen and learn. Don't be in such a big-ass hurry! Anything important takes time. And this -- your choice of a mate, even just for this evening -- should take lots of your time. Be the one she thinks about when the day is done and a decision is due. Be the one who never pressured her but always let her know she was who you were thinking about night and day. Then back off and wait. Watch some TV. Hope the phone rings.

And don't blame her if she made a bad decision early on and had a kid. She's choosing you now, above all others, and if you can't handle her children, let her know early on so she can find someone who can. It's the best thing you can do for her, for the kids, and for yourself.

Just don't rule out true love if you happen upon it. My experience is that it doesn't come calling more than once or, at best, twice in a lifetime.

So my final advice to boys and men: Take your time, be attentive, don't exert pressure, enjoy every moment with your beloved, and leave it all up to her. Accept her baggage and claim it as your own, as she accepts yours. And if she rejects you, take it like a man. (Don't shoot her and then yourself: that's the ultimate selfishness and is unforgiveable.) Thank her for her time and let her know how much she meant to you. Hey, she may come back to you someday. On your terms.

We're all romantics at heart, and the sooner boys and men realize it, and learn how it works, the sooner girls and women will be at peace with themselves and their choices of men.

We should have a national joke registry.

How often have you heard or read a really funny joke, probably sent or told to you by a friend or family member? Pretty much every day, right? Sometimes, but not very often, the joke comes from a late-night talk show host, but more often it's totally out of the blue: it just sort of appears
from the great national dialogue about current topics.

So who makes up these jokes?

We all know some that we repeat when we're trying to be funny. I mean, think about it: how many of us actually come up with original jokes ourselves? Not many of us, I'm sure. But do we ever say, when telling one, "Joe Schmoe of Newark made up this joke I'm about to tell you?" Of course not. We have no idea who came up with the joke in the first place.

But, really, jokes have to start somewhere, right? Someone, somewhere, made up each and every joke we repeat to our friends and that end up in joke books. Where do they come from?

In the old days, I suspect it was word of mouth. Some clever person said to a friend, "Do you know why so-and-so never blah blah blahs? Because he . . . [fill in the blanks.]" I'm not trying to quote any particular jokes because I'm terrible at remembering them and also because I think we're dealing with a general principle here: nobody gets credit for the jokes we all love to tell and that make us look funny and smart.

Nowadays we're much more likely to get jokes via email, often sent out to a whole group of people . . . but, again, no one ever says where the joke came from.

Okay, here's one I remember. "What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness with a Unitarian?" Answer: "Someone who goes door to door for no apparent reason." Who came up with that? (Substitute Mormon with Unitarian, and you get the same funny result.)

Has no one else ever noticed this strange phenomenon? Do we really think that funny jokes just spring, un-parented, from the atmosphere? Someone is making them up -- but who are they? And why don't they copyright them?

Which brings me back to the idea of a national joke registry. If you think up a good joke and share it with friends and family and co-workers, wouldn't it be a good idea to register it on some kind of web-wide site where you might get credit, if not money (but maybe that, too), every time that joke was told again? Especially if it was told on TV or in print and you could prove that you were, indeed, the originator of that joke? It boggles my mind to think of all the funny stuff out there that goes un-claimed year after year!

Let me give you an example. Garrison Keillor, the host of the popular NPR show "A Prairie Home Companion," and a very good writer and funny man himself, sells a book updated every year of jokes that he's done, or others have done, on his show. And many of them are very funny. But I have yet to see, in any of them I have -- and I have several -- a single writer credited with originating any of the jokes. So where did they come from?

Are jokes, spoken or written down, somehow outside the laws of copyright? If you tell a friend a good joke, or if you send one to a TV or radio show, do you lose all rights to it? Maybe something is working behind the scenes that I'm not aware of, but it seems to me that jokes are perceived as being in the public domain upon creation and utterance. That doesn't seem right.

Why shouldn't you be able to copyright a single joke? Maybe you can, but I'm not aware of it.
Still, it seems reasonable, no? Yet, apparently no one is doing it. Obviously you can't collect a royalty every time someone re-tells your joke, but if someone in the media does, you ought to get something, right?

So -- back to my first bafflement: who makes up these jokes? Who are these anonymous clever people?

I think we need a national registry where anyone who comes up with something really funny can post it and later get credit -- at least recognition -- when it becomes popular. Why should writers of jokes we all love and tell to others receive less credit than the staff writers on silly TV shows, who insist, via their union, on being named and compensated?

Let's call it The National Joke Registry, and let's start submitting our jokes and being recognized and lauded for all the good we do to keep America amused.

The big question, of course, is how do we do it? Who's in charge? I have no idea. But I think it could all be done online. If you come up with a joke that your friends think is funny, log on and register it. Once a database is established, you'll be able to tell if you're the first to tell it and claim ownership. On the other hand, you can Google and find out it someone else came up with the same joke and registered it first. Would some people be ripped off -- their jokes stolen? Of course, but that's the value of registering yours as soon as you think of it.

Back to who's in charge. I would think some entrepreneurial person would set up a website, called something like NationalJokeRegistry.com. He or she could collect royalties every time a joke that is registered is told by David Letterman or whoever. Along with pop-up ad revenue. I'm not someone who will set up such a website, but it's hard to believe that no one else will.

And don't you think it's worth doing? Wouldn't you like to know who made up that joke you told at a recent party that made you look smart and funny? And wouldn't you like credit if YOUR joke goes public?

Last note: I was talking with some friends recently when the issue of the President's opposition to teachers' unions came up, and I said, off the top of my head (so to speak), "How is George W. Bush like a laid-off teacher?" Answer: "No class." This may never make it onto the late-night talk show circuit, but it's mine, and I'd like to register it somewhere.

Hey, it's only fair, right?

The human brain is faster than any computer -- in the things that count most to us.

The human brain is the most amazing item/system that we know, bar none.

And one of the most amazing things about it is that it really is an item. It's a mass of tissue and lots of nerve endings and connections that is about the size of a smallish chicken we'd buy at the grocery store to cook for dinner. But inside it is, well, magic.

It's a system of inter-locking and inter-facing interactions that defy description, since they all happen at a level way below introspection and too small for us to see and too strange for us to comprehend. Scientists can dissect it and name its parts and even figure out parts of its workings -- and yet be nowhere near explaining its mystery.

One of the most astonishing things about the brain is the speed with which it conjures up a panoply of information about anything we're "thinking" about. Not just numbers and pictures, like a computer, but instantaneous displays that can involve -- in a fraction of a second -- all our senses and more.

I was thinking recently about a family gathering from years ago, and in a literal instant, my brain was processing information at a blinding speed: snapshots of relatives, what someone said, where we were, what was cooking in the kitchen, the smell of my aunt's perfume, along with what I thought of those people and even what eventually happened to them. Of course not every detail was presented in chronological order; more like a rich and massive panoramic photo on a big-screen TV. And since it was composed from my own memory, everything in it was familiar.

What was incredible and inexplicable was how my brain was able to retrieve -- from wherever within itself -- all that sensory information and assemble it in the blink of an eye. And get this: none of my conscious senses were actually engaged. In other words, as I thought of those people and that event on that day way back in time, I didn't really see or smell or hear or taste or touch anything or anyone -- but I did "virtually". What a concept: the memory of a smell! Where do you suppose THAT is located in my brain? And where is the memory of the extra-sensory way I felt when left out of a game that day with older cousins? And how did my brain not just plug that into the scene set out for me but laid it down like a sort of soundtrack running underneath?

And how did it do all that so fast?

It gets confusing even trying to explain what a memory is (as you can tell by the above), but it's downright baffling to think of the brain's ability to instantly construct such multi-faceted mental experiences (or re-experiences) -- and then to dissolve them as quickly as they appeared and move on to something else. Are they stored, intact, somewhere? I don't think so. I think they are re-constructed each time we "think" of that person, event, place, etc. As a result, unlike math problems worked out on a computer, probably no two memories of the same thing are ever exactly alike.

As the poet Blake said, "Eternity in a grain of sand."

Granted, a computer can process factual/numerical/pictorial information much faster than my brain, and more accurately, but that's sort of the "work" part of our lives; the human brain handles the most important details of our lives, the elements of our existence that make us, well, human -- and does it so fast that we're not even aware of the process. (That, of course, is why brain diseases and disorders are so sad and disturbing: without the brain operating at full capacity, we are less "human" and, if it continues to deteriorate, eventually nobody at all.)

The brain seems to be best at retrieving information already stored and catalogued in it. For instance, I see someone whose name I should know. Someone I used to work with. The name is lost on me. But by the time she gets to where I am, smiling, the name pops up, and I say, "How good to see you, Lisa!" Where did that come from? The brain, without my conscious help, sorted through all the people I'd ever known and came up with the right one, at the right time. In about two seconds. Bam!

Scientists tirelessly study the human brain but only come up with educated guesses. Where, for instance, does our ethical template come from? Where is it stored in the brain? And how? Some of us value this, some that. But if you see a child drowning in a lake, you instantly want to help, right? Your brain has done some kind of ultra-fast calculation that lets you know that you ought to help. But how many calculation steps did it have to do to get to that conclusion? And at what lightning speed? And where in itself did it find the information to make that calculation?

I remember when a super-big computer beat one of the world's best chess champions, and everyone was talking about how someday a computer would be smarter than any human.

Dream on.

Being human is so much more intricate -- even on its lowest levels: survival, sex, etc. -- than anything any machine could hope to replicate. And of course no machine could even hope, right?
Hope, after all, is purely human.

The human brain is not just faster than a computer, if not in mathematical calcuations then in processing emotions and motives and decisions, but it's more sensitive, more intuitive, more nuanced. Hey, what is love?

To a computer, nothing. Just a confusion of equations.

To a human brain, love is a challenge: something to send it into overdrive, trying to figure out what's gone wrong with the set-up, the wiring, the pre-program. But it finally figures it out, makes the necessary adjustments, and we mate and maybe even get married.

Here's to the brain: long may you reign! And don't give out on me any time soon, okay?