There is an awful story about a suicide obsessed man named William F. Melchert-Dinkel, who allegedly helped counsel and teach the suicidal—including a Canadian college girl—to do the deed over the Internet. He has been criminally charged with assisting suicide in two cases. From . . . . Continue Reading »
From the Language Log blog , a note of a story much-reported on the web the past few days: Richard Smith, a 41-year-old care worker in Carlisle, England, did not think his name did justice to the exciting person that he actually was, so he changed his name by deed poll. The new name he chose was . . . . Continue Reading »
The ongoing deprofessionalization of American medicine was furthered by a just released opinion of the Committee on Bioethics of the American Academy of Pediatricians, which opined that female genital mutilation is wrong—gee, really?—but that pediatricians should, perhaps, be allowed to . . . . Continue Reading »
I just read a very detailed—and way too long for me to recount fully here—expose` in Der Spiegel, about Climategate and the bar room brawl between climate warming alarmist scientists (and I don’t meant that pejoratively) and skeptics. It is a very important article and anyone . . . . Continue Reading »
[Note: While I had intended to avoid writing any more about atheism for a long, long time, I thought I’d add just a couple of more posts on the topic. It tends to be a bit slow around here on the weekend so I thought it couldn’t hurt to extend the conversation for one more day.] You . . . . Continue Reading »
[Note: While I had intended to avoid writing any more about atheism for a long, long time, I thought I’d add just a couple of more posts on the topic. It tends to be a bit slow around here on the weekend so I thought it couldn’t hurt to extend the conversation for one more day.] My . . . . Continue Reading »
I was going to post about this case—in which a husband with cancer murdered his wife with Alzheimer’s disease, and then killed himself—because the political opportunists at the assisted suicide advocacy group Compassion and Choices decided to exploit the case to push their . . . . Continue Reading »
What’s a blog for if you can’t sometimes indulge yourself? Sam Frank, the son of two of my close friends from college ends his sophomore year at St John’s on their nationally ranked croquet team. Croquet Weekend - 4.17.10 from Noah on Vimeo . Um, I know. It’s only croquet . . . . Continue Reading »
Something a little old but perhaps of interest to some of you who missed it as I did: Michael New’s How Red States Reduce the Abortion Rate . Among the claims he addresses is the common one that government should promote contraception as a way to reduce the abortion rate. He notes that . . . . Continue Reading »