If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
There are now a multitude of character education programs being implemented in schools all across the United States. While in principle it might be important to teach character, one might ask, "Is it effective? What is it good for? Does it ultimately help academic performance?"
I reject the premise that rational argument on gay rights has outlived its usefulness. Watching the rapid shift in public support lately -- a recent poll suggests that 58% of Americans favor marriage equality -- it's easy to forget that plenty aren't there yet.
Frans de Waal's new book The Bonobo and the Atheist asks a question that vexed Greek sages thousands of years ago and every philosopher since: are we moral because we believe in god, or do we believe in god because we are moral?
Not since the American Civil War has the U.S citizenry had to endure such horrors. Yet discussion of these repercussions is noticeably absent as we still struggle to understand the scope of the Iraq war and what all of its lies have wrought.
I believe that traveling in the spirit of conscious awareness, humility and curiosity only enhances anyone's journey, and over the years I have expanded what I believe is a sensible and sensitive Traveler's Creed to live and travel by.
How many times have you received a call at your home at 9pm at night from a salesperson soliciting newspaper subscriptions or whatever. You find it beyond irritating.
Not everyone who showed up at the sex activists' conference was pierced, tattooed, and draped in leather. It was an edgy assembly for sure, but many of the men and women making their way to workshops at the recent CatalystCon East sported a classic, casual style.
New research shows that upper-class people have less empathy than lower-class people, but that sometimes this can lead them to do the most good for the most people when their bleeding-heart compatriots won't.
"We are a nation that has long been at war globally. But how do you talk of love and salvation to a guy who has just shot up a miserable village in a long ranging war that is condemned by a large chunk of the world, including his own church and maybe even family?"
Something happened recently that was a stark reminder that honesty is more than a matter of ethics -- honesty is good business.
So far, the "Lady Macbeth Effect" has been mostly a curiosity -- a peek at the quirkiness of the not-entirely-rational human mind. But might this scientific insight actually be clinically useful? Tel Aviv University psychological scientist Reuven Dar and his colleagues thought that it might.
Doctors are capable of making irrational and incorrect choices just like the rest of us. This provides us with a valuable lesson. Education, information and intelligence aren't always guarantors of responsible decision-making.
While the Attorney General will in time finish his work, the task of the ethical education of our young people will never be over. We should look to ourselves, not to him, to prevent this tragedy from being repeated.
Unfortunately the Iraq War isn't over. Not only is the Iraqi insurgency still going strong and wreaking havoc, but the American veterans returned home from duty are still dying, still suffering, still looking to God for answers.
Film, whether big-screen or TV, is a powerful medium of representation; it has the power to define. And with this controversy, Society pushed back and said we do not like how this film represents or defines us.
