Image from wallsave.com Confession: While my family and friends eat themselves into food comas, binge watch football, and shop themselves into debt by doorbusters specials, I'm compulsively reading when not taking advantage of a certain online retailer's Cyber Monday 30% off incentive to purchase many of the books on my long TBR list. BATAF: More consumption generates more satisfaction.

Image from graduationsource.com An Education copyright 1988, 2012 by Cardyn Brooks All rights reserved A babe crawls around enormous space. A monotonous drone whispers in the background. She explores, mesmerized by patterns as they reveal themselves. Her expanding vision fills the space, once-infinite space that transforms Into a room within an institution with walls constructed of projection screens. Formal education begins. Pivotal assessments are made. "GIFTED" is branded on her. Time passes. The room shrinks. Her isolation increases as the screens surround her in coils of rapidly decreasing radii. Jumbled words flash to the screens as their rate of shrinkage accelerates. Meanwhile, that monotonous whisper hisses louder. It hisses louder, until it undulates into a thunderous peal that echoes the Manic velocity of the projected words:    smart, Special,    talented,   nice, shy,aloof,uppity Oreo. Zebra.Uncle...

Image from cafepress.com Confession: It doesn't matter if reading romance novels is politically incorrect for a feminist (who's actually a humanist). What other solitary pastime offers totally risk-free sex (to readers, not characters), travel, humor, adventure, intrigue, social commentary and a guaranteed happily ever after whether the main characters are paragons or annoying idiots? Romance novels celebrate love in all its incarnations from sublime to catastrophic. BATAF: Feminists (and female humanists) hate men.

Image from sportsillustrated.cnn.com Confession: Hearing the free usage of ethnic slurs combined with despicable threats and abhorrent remarks about black and brown women from an immature professional athlete wasn't a surprise. The archaic, primitive definition of manliness being broadcast by otherwise sophisticated sports pundits was. BATAF: Real men resolve conflicts with their fists.

Image from dw.de Confession: This child's courage challenges me to reconsider my priorities. BATAF: Being virtuous protects people from injustice.

Original image from tabtote.com Confession: Billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson baffle me with their conscientiously mean-spirited behavior. How does preventing other people from accessing basic human and civil rights; the protections, privileges, and rights of U.S. citizenship; stable paths to upward mobility improve their quality of life? What makes billionaires like Richard Branson and Bill & Melinda Gates embrace The Golden Rule at a cellular level? BATAF: In a 70% retail consumer-driven economy, the wealthiest 1/10 of 1% can flourish indefinitely while the masses deteriorate.

Image from istockphoto.com by Alan Crosthwaite copyright 2007 Confession: During each U.S. congressional showdown it feels as if we the people, the masses are simply collateral damage in the wake of the warring parties' legislative destruction. The politicians who refer most often to the U.S. Constitution act in ways that undermine its intent to avoid tyranny, oligarchy, and plutocracy. Today's 21st-century United States doesn't feel like a democracy. BATAF: Politicians will ultimately make the wisest decisions for the country because doing so is in their own best interests.