I’m proud to have given blood Tuesday. If you haven’t listened to yesterday’s podcast episode with Sebastian Junger, listen to hear his story of receiving ten emergency transmissions leading to his giving blood regularly. Why ashamed too? Because when the nurse checked me in, filling in my address from my driver’s license, she asked if I’d changed my address. The address in the system showed my freshman year dorm address.[…] Keep reading →

People once wondered if we would run out of fossil fuels. People who liked fossil fuels delight in showing how we keep finding more. “Ha!”, they imply, “we’ll never run out. It’s not a problem. Anyone who thinks we’ll run out is a fool.” We could talk about the finite number of molecules of oil, coal, and gas under the Earth’s surface, but when an economist like Julian Simon says[…] Keep reading →

In college, after I stopped eating meat but still ate dairy, I met a young woman who was vegan. I think I knew then that I intended to become vegan at some indefinite future time, but didn’t see a path to it. I’d lived in Paris a year and learned to love cheese too much. She was allergic to dairy, so ate none. Since then, I’ve often commented that nearly[…] Keep reading →

When most people say they balance their sustainability actions, they mean balancing their values or feelings. When they call me extreme, I believe they think I’m acting to one extreme of a spectrum. But I act balanced too, just not only considering myself. I balance my interests with how my actions affect others: people our money would displace from their land for resources, people our money would cause to breathe[…] Keep reading →

Abortion is in the news, which hinges on when a sperm and egg transition to becoming a life protected by the law. My world is filled with people whose beliefs in the supernatural differ from mine and whose conflicts with others’ supernatural beliefs cause suffering and death around the world. Their justification seems to be nothing more than strong feeling that they’re right, yet people they disagree with justify themselves[…] Keep reading →

I found some quotes from the roots of what transformed our culture from based on people as citizens, promoting freedom, to one based on people as consumers before citizens. They turn my stomach the way learning a Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. We became a consumerist culture, replacing food with doof, for deliberate reasons. I don’t know if the people promoting the change foresaw where they would lead us. I doubt[…] Keep reading →

Does a human life begin at conception or some time after? I can see arguments for at conception, at birth, and some time between. I believe most people today would be horrified at it, but I think when infant mortality was higher, people wouldn’t consider a life viable until after a few days or even years. Various cultures have traditions that mark the beginning of life well after birth. What[…] Keep reading →

You know the story about the two women each claiming a baby was hers, where King Solomon says to cut the baby in half and the woman who says to let the other woman keep it must be the mother? Have you ever thought about this story? How has it become a model of wisdom? It fails at every level. First, are we supposed to believe a woman simply claims[…] Keep reading →

Why bother with individual action if it alone doesn’t change systems? The ignorance behind that question astounds me. I’ll put the question in parallel, equally ignorant forms: Why bother changing your baby’s diaper if it doesn’t solve infant mortality? Why take the first step of a marathon if it doesn’t take you across the finish line? Why eat healthy or exercise if it doesn’t solve obesity, diabetes, and heart disease?[…] Keep reading →