interweaving ideas

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: On January 25th, your paper reported that Diebold had withdrawn their electronic voting systems from North Carolina districts rather than comply with new North Carolina certification standards. That same day, the other…

Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” is the brilliant tale of a child prodigy coming of age in a world at war with extraterrestrials. It tackles deep ethical conundrums and delves into many fantastic science fiction concepts. The book, I believe, will last for decades as one of the masterpieces of science fiction literature. That’s why…

Cross posted at the Centrist Coalition: In the FISA Wiretapping debate, pundits on both sides of the aisle are citing various opinion polls to make their cases. As someone who samples a wide variety of political opinions (one of the reasons I enjoy this blog), I’ve noticed that similarly conducted polls are yielding widely different…

Ask ten different people, “What is Spirituality?” and you will get ten different answers. Monotheists have a different conceptualization of it than polytheists. Sub-sets of Monotheists, such as Christians, Jews, and Muslims, will have different explanations for it. Sub-sets of any of these religions, like Baptists, Episcopalians, and Catholics for Christianity, will also give widely…

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: Your recent opinion piece, “Senate will confirm Alito, but shouldn’t,” fell into the same trap so many of Alito’s other opponents have succumbed to: focusing too much on Roe VS Wade. Yes,…

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: A recent exchange of political letters in your paper truly disheartens me. Richard T. Cartwright’s “Bush imperils right to criticize” and E.C. Toppin’s “Writer is wrong about Bush, war” both rely on…

I’m serving on my department’s Morale Committee for the next year, part of a group responsible for organizing events and opportunities for coworkers to socialize in an environment devoid of work-related stress. With the Holidays we’ve been tasked with setting up luncheons, charity events, and whatnot. December’s multitude of events have proven especially challenging due…

Cross-posted at Centrist Coalition: Dr. David Brin recently directed his readers to The Claremont Institute’s article “Not Your Father’s Republican Party,” which summarizes the Republican party’s ideological evolution from the progressive days of Lincoln, through modern conservativism, into new conservativism, and ending with Bush Jr.’s seemingly half-way progressive, albeit “faith-based,” half-way neoconservativism (That’s not the…

I must express my approval of the “WWJD?” (“What Would Jesus Do?”) fad. I find it inquisitive, searching for those basic principles of Christianity that are so positive. “What would Jesus do?” is a simple way of getting to the core of Christian beliefs, placing their messiah back in the center of their religion as…

Chimpanzees, Gorillas, and Parrots are able to communicate with human beings, demonstrating the ability for abstract thought, and holding a theory of other minds raises serious ethical questions about the “human” rights of such animals. Already most farms have strict requirements for the humane treatment of cows because their emotional discomfort affects the productivity of…