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“When there’s no social pressure behind it, respectful behavior becomes a decision, an individual choice. Americans, even when they pay lip service to Judeo-Christian rules of moral behavior, tend to regard moral behavior as a personal decision, above rules, and often above laws. “This is morally problematic when personal decision is confused with personal opinion.…
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[CLICK TITLES TO READ THE ENTIRE POSTS] During my Junior year at the University of Washington, I took Elementary Botany in order to fulfill the distribution requirement for natural sciences. Most of my friends recommended Astronomy or Geology, but I chose plants for that last required class outside my major. Two months later I was ready…
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The New York Times has an article this morning that is misleading about Oregon’s public retirement system. Many readers are furious. One wrote: “As a Republican in Oregon I weep regarding the Mary Walsh piece on Oregon´s public sector pensions. It is to a large degree a rehash of periodic attacks by the state´s largest…
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[from main page, CLICK TITLE above TO READ THE ENTIRE POST] The canon is the essential literature that we assume everyone ought to read. In the twentieth century the Western Canon came under attack for being too determinedly dead, white, and male. Mostly dead. It has broadened somewhat since the days I was in school…
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Just now I have only two ads on the side of my Facebook feed. One is for organic cotton sheets and the other offers to sell me the “best reviewed” mattress. I am seeing these two ads because yesterday I was shopping for organic sheets and a new mattress. You see the connection, right? Facebook…
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Check straight news services such as Rueters and the AP, check Pew surveys, check NPR, The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Hill. Check the left and the right. Look for government statistics. Verify. Wikipedia does a decent job. I might not place each news source exactly as shown below, but it’s a pretty…
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Eight hours, then six hours the next afternoon, then a day off, then another seven hours revising my 2016 novel after working my paying job. I have queried it more times than I am willing to admit and under four different titles. (The husband of a friend suggested the title last week that I think…
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“Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving. and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these.” —Gautama Buddah

