In this session the Supreme Court has clearly felt its oats and dropped its fear of appearing too partisan and ideological. The overturning of Roe v. Wade was the big win, imposing minority-held sectarian religious dogma on the female citizens of Republican-controlled states. However, the Court has one more far-reaching case on which to rule this session, and it requires… Read more »
We await the Supreme Court likely undoing decades of jurisprudence on the topic of women’s reproductive rights and we simultaneously see new state-by-state battles over LGBTQ+ rights. It has become obvious to me that our culture’s long insistence on binary choices on morality issues does not help us navigate Mother Nature’s (and democracy’s) love of continuum and complexity. Even among… Read more »
Although the U.S. dollar is worth significantly less today than a year ago if you are buying gasoline in Des Moines, American currency looks a lot different if you are living in Europe or Japan. They, as well as us, have seen their own domestic prices for staples shoot up (which, Republicans insist, must somehow be Joe Biden’s fault as… Read more »
It always helps when your wedding anniversary coincides to an historic event that the news media will remind you of in advance. A big 50th anniversary is coming up. On the pleasant Saturday afternoon of June 17, 1972, I got married in a short ceremony followed by ham sandwiches in a Grand Rapids church basement, and then the two of… Read more »
TL;DR is Internet-speak for “too long; didn’t read.” This blog is now over four years old, and while the basic title-relevant posts can be followed more-or-less chronologically via the “The Story So Far” link at the top, this post is an attempt to summarize those four years in light of some recent tragic events. The word theodicy, literally “the justice… Read more »
It has been three years since some major gun massacre or another (unfortunately they all run together these days) prompted me to write about the real math behind the “Great Replacement” hypothesis that again has Tucker Carlson, plus a teen killer in Buffalo, New York, and other Fox News hosts in a tizzy. It is time to revisit. In short,… Read more »
My pre-retirement career went back and forth about three times between teaching and educational publishing, the latter as an editor, a managing editor, and a technology director for a publisher with imprints both in the U.S. and Great Britain. After over 30 years combined in those related fields and I am still no expert on this professional concept called pedagogy,… Read more »
The recent controversy over a leaked Supreme Court opinion perhaps overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision highlights how even Supreme Court justices, when blinded by sectarian religious fervor, can get Ethics 101 wrong. In a pluralistic society, issues of public morality may overlap with issues of legal practice, but only in places like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan do judges make… Read more »
Many of the most fascinating advances in DNA research have been in the extraction of readable genetic material from ever older biological sources. When those sources are ancient humans, the analysis of DNA fragments takes us back to our very origins as a species, analogous to the Hubble Telescope peering back through time to the beginnings of the universe. But… Read more »
I have intentionally been listening to, and reading comments from, ordinary Russians regarding their view of the “special operation” being conducted by their military into Ukraine. The similarities of their arguments to positions being amplified daily in right-wing American media are troubling. The similar threads I pull out are: Paranoia Conspiracy-thinking, and Reinforcement by religious leaders Of these, #1 may… Read more »