On Mortality and Children

Today, I didn’t listen to any podcasts or audiobooks or music.  I just walked in silence.  The cemetery air was a little heavier than usual, and I got to thinking about mortality.  It only took me a few minutes of initial discomfort to come to terms with my own mortality.  It took me a little more time and discomfort to come to terms with the mortality of my wife and peers.  Then an awful thought popped into my head.  My children will die someday.  I can’t begin to explain how dreadfully this hit me.

Global Gun Deaths

Recently the Appeal to Authority Logic Fallacy has been foisted off on readers of publications, on the Web and off.  Google “global gun deaths.”  This looks like an annual proclamation — global gun deaths at 250,000.  The latest flurry of stories stem from a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).  Through some sleight of mind, the compilers leave out direct explication of war-related deaths.

Defining Anti-Semitism, Threatening Free Speech

In May the benign-sounding Anti-Semitism Awareness Act appeared before the U.S Congress “to provide for consideration a definition of anti-Semitism for the enforcement of Federal antidiscrimination laws concerning education programs or activities.” No big deal? Let us see. S. 2940 is sponsored by Republican Sen. Tim Scott and has four co-sponsors: Republican Lindsey Graham and…