"When there's no social pressure behind it, respectful behavior becomes a decision, an individual choice. Americans, even when they pay lip service to Judeo-Christian rules of moral behavior, tend to regard moral behavior as a personal decision, above rules, and often above laws. "This is morally problematic when personal decision is confused with personal opinion. [...]
[CLICK TITLES TO READ THE ENTIRE POSTS] During my Junior year at the University of Washington, I took Elementary Botany in order to fulfill the distribution requirement for natural sciences. Most of my friends recommended Astronomy or Geology, but I chose plants for that last required class outside my major. Two months later I was ready [...]
The New York Times has an article this morning that is misleading about Oregon's public retirement system. Many readers are furious. One wrote: “As a Republican in Oregon I weep regarding the Mary Walsh piece on Oregon´s public sector pensions. It is to a large degree a rehash of periodic attacks by the state´s largest [...]
[from main page, CLICK TITLE above TO READ THE ENTIRE POST] The canon is the essential literature that we assume everyone ought to read. In the twentieth century the Western Canon came under attack for being too determinedly dead, white, and male. Mostly dead. It has broadened somewhat since the days I was in school [...]
[CLICK TITLES TO READ THE ENTIRE POSTS] An eagle flew by just offshore. Both my husband and I noted that she was flying lower than we had ever seen one of our eagles fly. Gary thought she would hit the water, but she was working hard and stayed in the air. I watched her skim around [...]
Just now I have only two ads on the side of my Facebook feed. One is for organic cotton sheets and the other offers to sell me the "best reviewed" mattress. I am seeing these two ads because yesterday I was shopping for organic sheets and a new mattress. You see the connection, right? Facebook [...]
Skim milk and new snow, American’s teeth, the inside of most apples, stratus clouds, locker room towels, fleet trucks, bathtubs, coconut flesh, porcelain, chalk, sugar, bleached flour, drawing paper, Jockey shorts, daisy petals—loves me or loves me not?—, picket fences, the whites of their eyes, the fog line beside the highway, and the sign that [...]
