Three months ago. I went to my kids’ school to have lunch with them and sat at a “peanut-free” table. I had seen the signs around school outside various classrooms. I had been made aware of kids’ peanut allergies in school fliers and letters and e-mails when someone in one…
Members of the U.S. military are now speaking up, as documented by DemocracyNow. This set of interviews by DemocracyNow was provoked by a recent article by The Nation. Here's how DemocracyNow describes that article, entitled "The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness": The Nation has published a startling new expose…
There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.TANSTAAFL.
Anybody recognize that? Where it comes from? What it refers to?
This past weekend was the 100th birthday of Robert A. Heinlein. I was not there, though I’d wanted to be. You see, Robert A. Heinlein was one of the greatest science fiction writers in the world, and when I was a child, his books informed my apprehension of just about everything. It might be questioned whether one man deserves the kind of press Heinlein gets. Even when he was alive (he passed away in 1988) he was controversial but there were still many places you could walk into where not a soul would know who he was. I think he’s important because, in a way, he made modern America.
What? A science fiction writer? Made America?
Such a statement demands clarification.
A biography is soon to be out by a gentleman named Bill Patterson. You can read it, read about the man who once wore the title “The Dean of Space Age Fiction”, and judge for yourself. I won’t go into huge detail about his life or work here. I want to make a smaller, more pointed observation.
In 33 novels and a significant number of short stories, Robert A. Heinlein established a didactic approach to science fiction that has been copied, improved, debated, revered, and hated since he began his career in 1938. Heinlein was born in Missouri. He graduated from Annapolis. He received a medical discharge from …
Last Friday, Governor Blunt signed a bill that mandates that sex ed teachers provide political affiliations and charitable contribution disclosures to the state in order to prevent any teachers possibly affiliated with any reproductive rights centers or groups from teaching about reproduction. It also prohibits schools from obtaining materials from…
I've studied moral philosophy for many years, mostly in frustration. Though many philosophical theories of morality have offered tantalizing glimmers, they ultimately fail to account for the “moral” decisions people make in the real world. Traditional philosophical accounts of morality have appeared especially feeble in light of the ongoing and volatile American culture wars. For instance, some of us claim that torture is OK while others feel that we have a moral duty to impeach the President and Vice-President for failing to stop the torture. Starting with the assumption that both sides to this controversy are sincerely, no philosophical moral system begins to account for both of those positions. Luckily, we are in a new era with regard to understanding morality. Cognitive scientists such as psychologist Marc Hauser and primatologist Frans de Waal are studying morality with new sets of tools. Recently, I had the opportunity to read an extraordinary article by Jonathan Haidt (pronounced "height") and Jesse Graham: "When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions That Liberals May Not Recognize." This article is written in an easily accessible style and its 16 pages are packed with ideas that bridge Haidt’s theories to the real world. If you're in the mood to watch rather than read, sit back and view this video of Haidt describing his approach (the 30-minute video moves right along--Haidt is an eloquent speaker as well as a talented writer). I’m not going to try to hide my excitement at Haidt’s approach. The more I learned about it, the more I thought of the words T. H. Huxley spoke upon learning of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection: "How stupid of me not to have thought of it." If you want to test your own moral foundations before proceeding, go to Haidt’s site and take a short test to determine your own moral foundation. Then read on (either read Haidt’s article or come back here).