The situational dependence of moral judgments

A lot of outrage has been expressed at the behavior of the school administrators and the school nurse who did not allow a student suffering an asthma attack the use of his inhaler. The question naturally arises as to how anyone could be so callous as to not respond to an immediate visible need. This was especially so with respect to the nurse whom one would think would put medical needs first and bureaucratic niceties second. [Read more…]

Game over for the climate?

Anyone who is even minimally aware of how climate science works knows that you cannot use any one weather event or one anomalous season in any single location to argue for or against global warming. But some of the most vociferous opponents of the global warming hypothesis tend to be scientifically naïve and parochial and think that way (“Look at that snow! So much for global warming! Ha! Ha!). Maybe such people in this area of Ohio will be sobered up by the fact that the last winter was the warmest on record (it was barely a winter) and that we are predicted to have a warmer than normal summer. [Read more…]

Reusing Memorial Day flags

Memorial day is tomorrow and the country is awash with flags, especially in cemeteries. I used to idly wonder who carefully arranged those flags in neat rows and assumed that it was some private veterans body or something like the Daughter of the American Revolution or the Rotary Club or something like that. I discovered that at least in our county it is paid for by the county government, i.e., the taxpayers. [Read more…]

What happens when the apocalypse doesn’t?

I was curious about what happened to all those people who believed in Harold Camping’s prediction that the rapture would occur in 2011. Tom Bartlett followed and interviewed a group of Camping followers before the predicted date and one year later. He found that “you don’t have to be nuts to believe something crazy” and that they had an incredible level of certainty that the world was going to end. [Read more…]

Codifying Bible-based marriage into law

We hear a lot from politicians about how we must protect traditional, Bible-based marriage against those who would change its definition to allow same-sex couples. Oddly enough, very few seem to be willing to fully embrace traditional marriage in its most comprehensive form, opting instead for such limited legal actions as restricting it to between one man and one woman. [Read more…]