Entropy is a term from physics that describes the tendency for matter to move from order into disorder. Life can be seen as deliberately working against entropy.

With our minds, we train our own brains to hold the structure of our lives. The habits that we practice daily, weekly, monthly; they are all based on neural pathways that we have established in our brain that make it easy and natural for us to follow these routines. These habits – if they are good ones - help us to resist entropy and have a sense of meaning, purpose and direction.

When you have a plan, and you are persistent with that plan, your habits become your allies. They work for you to reach your goals, so that you don’t have to work against your habits. What you create through your own fight against entropy is the masterpiece of your life.

The Jade Steps
Chapter Nineteen: The Marriage of Teculehuatzin

For more than two weeks, every day in Tlaxcala seemed more enjoyable to the Spaniards than the previous. The friendship shown to them by the Tlaxcalans was overwhelming. Children were constantly giving them flowers. Everywhere they went in the city, they would be invited into homes to share a meal. Older women, Señoras, were always bringing them food in their quarters, and there seemed to be a never-ending number of young ladies, Señoritas, desiring to share their quarters with them.

One reason for such an abundance of hospitality was the Spaniards’ strict obedience to Cortez’s stern command to take nothing – nothing – from the Tlaxcalans except what was given to them. They vividly remembered when Cortez caught a soldier named Mora stealing a turkey from a village on the way to Tlaxcala and ordered him hung. Mora would have died had not Pedro de Alvarado cut the rope with his sword at the last moment.

While the men were enjoying themselves, Cortez spent as much time as possible with King Xicotencatl and Chief Maxixcatzin teaching them about Christianity.

President Obama has made a not-so-subtle attempt to personalize his administration's war on "climate change" by linking it with his daughter Malia's asthma.

Nice try, Mr. President. But the evidence just doesn't stack up.  It's one more farce for the Climate Fascists.

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the EPA's Gina McCarthy and the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy have lent their ‘expert' support to the ‘global warming means more asthma' thesis  -- all a classic case of doing their masters' bidding.

Problem is, despite this impressive show of concerted ‘expert' strength, the connection between climate change and asthma is flimsy on stilts.

This becomes evident when you examine the claims made by the CDC website. It certainly sounds authoritative. (How could America's leading national public health institute possibly get it wrong where health issues are concerned?) But none of them bears close scrutiny.

Let's examine them one by one.

If you were a librarian, would you put President Obama's recently delivered State of the Union address in the fiction or nonfiction section?

All presidents puff their accomplishments and gloss over their failures, but no previous president has been so blatant in just making up "facts" and numbers that are so disconnected from reality.

The Islamic State (which is also called ISIS or ISIL) is gaining territory, yet the president said we are "stopping ISIL's advance."

He said, "We're upholding the principle that bigger nations can't bully the small, by opposing Russian aggression." In the year since his last State of Union address, Russia has grabbed Crimea, taken control of part of Eastern Ukraine, and continues to take more territory in Ukraine. If this is success, what would failure look like?

The president's description of the economy was also a trip through Fantasy Land.

Emotions like anger, fear, and grief serve a function. Shame, too, serves a function. When we do something that violates our own values, we feel shame. Shame is a particularly excruciating emotion, and it lets us know that whatever it is that we did that we’re ashamed of is something that we never, ever want to do again.

But once the event that causes us to feel a particular emotion has passed, and we have changed our behavior to cope with the situation effectively, it’s important to let that feeling dissipate. Shame is no different.

To actively, purposefully swim around in negative feelings is more than an indulgence, or a bad habit; it can actually be dangerous. With shame, this has been shown to lead to a greater likelihood of repeating the shameful behavior itself.