As we’ve given ever-deeper thought to our nation’s distressingly high infant morality rate, we’ve started to wonder how best to address the problem. Everything we’ve read in recent days seems to indicate that the rate could be dramatically lowered if more expectant mothers took better care of their bodies—specifically by quitting smoking, which pretty clearly [...]
Entries Tagged as 'philosophy'
Can Nicorette Be Righteous?
September 23rd, 2009 · No Comments
Tags:cigarettes·infant mortality·medicine·Nicorette·philosophy·public health
Inadvertently on the Angels’ Side
September 15th, 2009 · 2 Comments
Our post about Teddy Roosevelt’s health-care reform attracted a fair number of responses, in particular the ending snippet about the Progressive Party’s opposition to privately contracted prison labor. As one commenter pointed out, this opposition wasn’t borne out of genuine concern over the practice’s moral shortcomings, but rather Big Labor griping over the downward pressure [...]
Tags:C.L.R. James·economics·philosophy·prisons·slavery·Theodore Roosevelt
A Dose of Burmese Glamour
August 31st, 2009 · 3 Comments
Not that we’re insensitive louts or anything, but we generally fail to get riled up by charges of religious blasphemy. As such, we really can’t say we understood the recent, rather obscure to-do over the photo above, in which a Burmese film star named Min Maw Kun was accused of disrespecting Buddhism. No, what made [...]
Mortality as Morality, Cont’d
August 25th, 2009 · 2 Comments
Eleven days ago, we questioned whether it might be immoral to keep certain animals captive in zoos. Our hunch is that a species’ ability to thrive in a zoo is based not only on its physical needs, but also its intelligence—animals who become aware of the limits of their existence will certainly suffer psychological stresses [...]
Tags:animals·cetaceans·orcas·philosophy·wildlife management·zoos
Mortality as Morality
August 14th, 2009 · 4 Comments
We’ve yet to fully sort out our feelings about zoos. On the one hand, we obviously love us some exotic animals, especially those who occasionally turn on Man. (Yes, we’re macabre like that.) But the concept of captivity makes us more than a wee bit uncomfortable; we’ll never forget our last trip to the Bronx [...]
Tags:animals·Bronx·Bronx Zoo·elephants·hippos·Malaysia·philosophy·primates·wildlife management·zoos
