tom sarbeck

Has American education ever been top draw?

At a graduate level (MA and PhD) they are definitely top of the line. World class research institutes, MBA programs and prestigious institutions. As for primary and secondary school? Eeeek. What do you expect when so many states underfund most services, actively interfere with curriculums for ideological…[Read more]

While it would be idea if we found definitive answers to questions like: what is knowledge, is it moral to buy a homeless man’s kidney, is “thought” a social construct etc. the value of exploring these questions is not just satisfying a human need to know these answers (something some people obviously care more about than others) as well as not…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg!

Hi Encogitationer,

If a dying person refuses usage of his organs after death, the organs are not used. Therefore the corpse he is about to become, cannot be harvested. It had the right to remain intact when living, under general laws. Once it is dead, it has the right not to be harvested.

The right to not get pregnant is rather optimistic,…[Read more]

@simon – why do you think late term abortions are carried out?  Do you think a woman gets to 7 or 8 months and then thinks “fuck it, I’ve changed my mind”?  Late term abortions are carried out because the baby is deformed to the degree it cannot survive, or the mothers life is massively at risk, or the baby has died and needs to be removed…[Read more]

@simon If morals were objective, they would be rules. It is precisely to handle things that ‘feel wrong’ but are within the rules, or ‘feel right’ but are against the rules, that morals are required.

Murder is not immoral, for example.  It is illegal.

Morality is the fluffy stuff that bridges the gap between what can be generalised into a rule,…[Read more]

@Simon. Unborn children are like undead adults. They’re an invention.

But let’s pretend a fetus has fully working organs, brains and let’s go overboard here, a way of communicating with the outside world.

In whose world does a human being get to leech off another human being without the leechee giving permission?  You’ve got a rare blood di…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg!!

There was a Bob Newhart radio sketch where he and his friend bemoan the boredom of a Sunday, over and over – then one of them realises the clocks went back the night before, and they have an extra hour to hate!

Thanks Reg!

Nobody told me the clocks went back last night.

_Robert_ wrote:
It’s a good explanation of the mechanics of it, but not the root causes.

I agree, but am recently thinking there’s more than one cause, and I’m often not sure which to call the “root cause” any more. There seems to be a kindof perfect-storm confluence of causes, where the most gullible or angry citizens are successfully led and p…[Read more]

Here’s a take on why left and right candidates tend toward their extremes. I pretty much knew this already, but Fareed Zakaria has the best way to explain it that I’ve heard to date.

You can see that in the Institute for Nonprofit News’ most recent INN Index, which serves as an industry census of sorts. The total number of nonprofit news outlets increased nearly 70% between 2017 and 2021 — but the number of local nonprofits more than doubled. Five years ago, about 20% of nonprofits covered local news; now it’s 42% and rising…

[Read more]