I have this weird suspicion that Randall Mario Poffo, better known as Macho Man Randy Savage, really wanted to be a stand-up comedian, but felt compelled to follow in the family business, which was wrestling.

Think I'm talking nonsense? Watch this clip:


Both his father and brother were wrestlers. This probably prompted Macho Man to hide what his family would consider to be a lesser profession.
You could argue that Macho Man actually wanted to be a baseball player, since that's what he was doing before he threw his shoulder out and became a wrestler, but the problem with that argument is that if you look at Macho Man you can tell he's a natural athlete, so being a minor league baseball outfielder was probably something that came naturally to him, and the things that come natural to us are rarely the things that we have a passion for.

My guess is that he tried the baseball thing to avoid falling into the footsteps of his father, but when he had no choice but to become a wrestler he found ways to work in his true passion.

How many of you have a career path that was influenced by your parents?
How many of you are doing something that comes naturally to you while secretly working on your passion?

Whenever someone makes an outrageous claim such as the infamous, "McDonald's made me fat," the knee-jerk response is to list for this person all the actual reasons they have acquired a less than desirable mountain climbing physique, because you can clearly see the lack of willpower and unwillingness to exercise and eat healthy, and why can't they?

Certainly I have once again been thinking about free will/choice, the human mind, and the automatic calculations it makes on a daily basis that somehow result in something as unreasonable as Vanilla Ice jumping a fence on a yellow motorcycle (I know, it sounds like I'm just stringing words together).

At one time, an orange jacket and splotchy colorful shorts were a wardrobe combo worthy of praise. In hindsight we have a good laugh and blame it on the bizarre logic system established in the 90's. But in reality no outfit is safe from time.

Eh, but I'm getting myself a little off topic here... What I was trying to point out was the general use of blame and praise in an attempt to make one's life better.
What I mean by that is how we as a species use this tagging system in order to create our own working models of reality.

The fat person blames McDonald's for being fat, and in a sense this might work for them, providing they stop eating there because it is what they believe to be the source of their unhappiness (we can presume them to be unhappy because they are not praising McDonald's for their current condition).

What we see that they don't are the boundaries they have placed on what I refer to as "blame proximity."
They only extend it as far as McDonald's, probably in an effort to avoid any real work.
However, if the boundaries of blame proximity were extended too far we could end up blaming Emperor Charlemagne.

I believe this is how black cats end up with such poor reputations.

A long time ago Destiny took a day off.
No one really knows for what.
Upon returning to work Destiny noticed that nothing had changed.
Fates remained tangled and providence sustained its reputation as being utterly indifferent.
Everything was moving along the same, without manipulation.
So, she left again.
Destiny hasn't been back to work since.

I believe random behavior or free will to be conclusions processed and arrived at by an uninformed brain.

Say you are presented with two desserts, neither of which you have ever tasted.
Having no previous data on the desserts, your brain will begin to recognize patterns like typical dessert flavors such as vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and so on. These and other patterns in the desserts will be processed for previous experience.

Eventually your brain will help you decide on the dessert with the most patterns recognized for having had a pleasurable outcome.
For me this would mean having both desserts.

The trouble with free will is that when you inform someone they don't have it they'll change their actions to prove to you that they do.

"If people come to believe that they don’t have free will, what will the consequences be for moral responsibility?"
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=free-will-vs-programmed-brain

In the above sentence resides a truth much more sinister than dessert.

Psychologists Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler tested this question by giving participants passages from "The Astonishing Hypothesis." One group received a passage that talked candidly about free will, the others did not.

Afterwards the participants filled out a survey on free will and were then told to complete 20 arithmetic problems. It was explained that when the question appeared on the computer they would need to press the space bar, otherwise a computer glitch would make the answer appear on the screen too.

At this point it is safe to assume the results, since I wouldn't have brought up the topic and the article wouldn't have been published had the participants reacted differently.

Existence [ig'zistens]
verb [intrans.]
The fact or state of living or having objective reality

A comical philosopher once stated the obvious.
Long before we were here, we didn't exist.
After we've gone, we no longer exist.

Interrupt [intuh'ruhpt]
verb [trans.]
Stop the continuous progress of (an activity or process)

Is nonexistence an activity or process?

Typically I disregard existential questions such as, "How am I not myself?" because they don't answer anything; they are a brummagem substitute for the genuine pursuit of answers.
Nevertheless, they can be fun and the idea of having "interrupting nonexistence" was just too amusing to pass by without comment.

I think I find the concept enjoyable for the same reason I find the debate on Free Will enjoyable, it amuses me and makes me uncomfortable. I don't want to not exist or as Woody Allen put it, "I don't want to live on in my work; I want to live on in my apartment."

Kavka's Toxin Puzzle
An eccentric billionaire places before you a vial of toxin that, if you drink it, will make you painfully ill for a day, but will not threaten your life or have any lasting effects. The billionaire will pay you one million dollars tomorrow morning if, at midnight tonight, you intend to drink the toxin tomorrow afternoon. He emphasizes that you need not drink the toxin to receive the money; in fact, the money will already be in your bank account hours before the time for drinking it arrives, if you succeed. All you have to do is intend at midnight tonight to drink the stuff tomorrow afternoon. You are perfectly free to change your mind after receiving the money and not drink the toxin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavka%27s_toxin_puzzle

Kavka's Toxin Puzzle is designed to establish human dissonance in decision making.
Do we actually make decisions? Are they already made for us by our brains based on previous experiences, mood, teachings, chance happenings, time frame?
Do our brains give us the illusion that we are making decisions?

For those who like to debate Free Will.

National Institutes of Health neuroscientist Mark Hallett "doubts that free will exists as a separate, independent force... [free will] originates in a misconception of self as separate from the brain."

[POST SCRIPT - http://www.physorg.com/news127661532.html]

I am not Winston Churchill, nor are you Andrew Lloyd Webber.
This is something we can be certain of .
There is no chance the opposite is, or can ever be, true (unless you actually are Mr. Webber and you are collecting material for "LiveJournal: The Musical" in which case ignore this example since it is meant for people who are supposed to not be you).

I cannot become the first Queen of America.
There is no chance of that happening.
Strangely, there is a larger chance of my becoming the first Queen of America than of you being Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Granted, my becoming the Queen of anything would be curious circumstances indeed.
These are large enough odds, big clunky examples, that, when questioned, the answer becomes obvious.
Odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field are better or worse than Mickey Rourke playing Harry Potter in the next film?

When do chances become less defined?
When do the odds become uncertain?
Is there a way to start with the large and obvious odds and work our down to predicting the smaller stuff such as…
… will there be peanuts or pretzels in those little brown bowls at the pub tonight?