Archive | Humanity

Clean Living: Bad for Your Health

The theory that living in clean conditions may do a disservice to your immune system is gaining some traction with a new study on rats. I’ve heard before that kids who grow up with pets end up having fewer allergies than their petless playmates have. And it seems common sense that immune systems in a […]

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Beer: The New Health Food

Kevin over at szuping.com finds research on the health benefits of drinking a lot of beer. Then, when the liver complains, he found research that drinking a lot of coffee can help that. In short, drinking gallons of beer and coffee is clearly the best way to stay healthy. Right?  [End of Post]

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Talk

Humans talk. That much is clear. What I find interesting is how strong the urge is. When we experience something unusual, whether it’s beautiful or terrible, the first thing we want to do (once out of harm’s way) is to tell someone about it. Until we share it, there’s something incomplete about the experience. It’s […]

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Should You Pay Your Debts?

A friend recently lent me the DVDs of the series of interviews called Errol Morris’ First Person. For those who don’t know, these are one-on-one interviews with assorted interesting (but not hyper-famous) people, filmed in a highly stylized way. Errol Morris did “The Fog of War,” which I really liked, so I was interested in […]

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More Civil War (Still Not Iraq)

I recently read Frederick Douglass’s autobiography. I have previously wondered whether the Civil War was worth the human cost to stop American slavery a generation before it would have stopped anyway. I’m sure I’ll wonder that again after the emotional impact of the book has worn off. But in the meantime, I say that no […]

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In God We Disagree

I’m reading Divided by God, by Noah Feldman. I just started it, so this post isn’t really a review or discussion about his book, but he did make me think about a few things right from the get-go. He’s trying to come up with a compromise between people (like me) who would have no overtly […]

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Polygamy

Big Love is coming to an HBO channel near you, and has sparked a bit of conversation about polygamy. Is polygamy ok? Well, I mean, isn’t it? What’s the moral reason that men shouldn’t be able to marry two women, or women marry two men? As long as all parties agree to the deal, I […]

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Annie Proulx Falls to Floor; Bangs Feet, Fists

Brokeback Mountain only won three awards, no Best Picture, and Annie is pissed. Blaming everything except the quality of the movie, she goes off on the academy, the winning movie “Trash – excuse me – Crash,” and even the “dim LA crowd.”   And she praises the Independent Spirit Awards, which gave Brokeback Mountain the […]

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Civil War (Not Iraq)

The new movie, The Confederate States of America, has gotten some press. I haven’t seen it, and I guess I don’t REALLY care about seeing it (with several reviewers saying that the best thing about it is the concept), but it did remind me of my own weird little questions about the outcome of the […]

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