Learning Versus Thinking

Editor’s Pick. Written by Darci Walker. Last night I watched a Ted talk by Jacob Barnett, a 13-year-old genius with Asperger’s. His message? “Forget what you know.” “Stop learning and start thinking.” And, while Jacob’s story begins with how the educational and diagnostic systems that we have in our society were not able to meet…

The Safety Net Factor

Send him mail. “Food for Thought” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Tuesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Norman Imberman. Norman is a retired podiatrist who loves playing piano, writing music, lawn bowling, bridge, reading, classical music, going to movies, plays, concerts and traveling. Archived columns can be found here. FFT-only RSS feed available here.…

What Are Ethics Anyway?

Editor’s Pick. Written by Justin Nafziger. I have observed that people confuse various adjacent terms and ideas as equivalent. Belief and conviction for example, while they may overlap are not one and the same. Another oft misconstrued association is mixing morality, integrity and ethics. To be sure, they do interact heavily, but one and the…

The Politics of Play

Editor’s Pick. Written by Jay Griffiths. Aged fourteen and without his parents’ approval, the future King Henry II hired a band of mercenaries, sailed from France to England, and failed to take two minor castles. In the realm of fiction, the audacious and adventurous Huckleberry Finn, only “thirteen or fourteen,” rebels against the mores of…

Freedom versus Mandatory Charity

Editor’s Pick. Written by Jacob Hornberger. Imagine if Congress enacted a law requiring everyone to attend church on Sunday. The idea would be that mandatory church attendance would be good for American society. With everyone being inculcated with moral and religious principles once a week, our society would be less drug-ridden, violent, and dysfunctional. The…