Book, Bookstores, Libraries

Bookstores and Books It’s Personal Reading the Wall Street Journal article this morning, Bye-Bye Bookstores, I thought of my Kindle. I’m reading Great Expectations on it presently. It’s a stream of words without a body. Books have presence and identity and history like a person. As books lose their personal-ness due to Kindles and Nooks, [...]

Surrogacy

Surrogacy I had a conversation with a friend last week. She found surrogacy unobjectionable in the case of a sister offering to carry a baby for her sister. She opposes it for hire. She said she would certainly do it, “I would just be an oven.” She wouldn’t sell her eggs or advise her daughter [...]

Avatar: Cowboys and Indians

I have seen the movie Avatar. It didn’t take me long to realize this was not a story about bioethics or about biotechnology. It was a morality tale. Evil modernism destroys natural sacredness. The subjugation of native peoples by European invaders. Custer’s last stand. Indigineous peoples are portrayed as serene, cultured, civilized, loving, and, above [...]

Enough: Book Review

Enough By Bill McKibben Re-read January 2009 Bill McKibben is my favorite extreme environmentalist author. He does not disrespect people of religious inclination. In fact, at the conclusion of this book, he shows the linkage between them and environmentalists in seeking for meaning beyond technological whiz-bangery. This book is a compendium of statements, projections and [...]

Exercise or Blame

The Hidden Benefits of Exercise: An Article to Make You Feel Bad Beach exercise The Wall Street Journal published a mean-spirited article this morning. It claims that people who exercise gain hidden benefits. They have fewer symptoms and less-severe illnesses compared to “low-fitness subjects.” Do they realize how hurtful these statements are? Do they think [...]

Bioethics: Its Many Faces

Bioethics: Some of its many subdivisions: IVF. In vitro fertilization. Extra embryonic humans; store, destroy, or adopt? Sexuality’s purpose. Will it be sexual at all when it’s virtual, not bodily? Will virtual sex be other-related, a communion? PGD. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. Picking the best baby. Government health care budget imperatives could force all couples to [...]

Comments on Ray Kurzweil’s Book: The Singularity Is Near

I read  from the book. I was persuaded by the section documenting ogarithmic growth in technology development, computer speeds, miniaturization, technology ubiquity, price declines for computing capacity. That part is undeniable. I did notice one prediction that Kurzweil missed. One of his predictions- “We will have the requisite hardware to emulate human intelligence with supercomputers [...]

Sex-change Operations On Demand

Forcing Taxpayers to Support Abortion, Sex-Change and Physician Assisted Suicide It should be alarmingly clear that if national health dictates pass, it will only be matter of time before advocates secure payments for abortion, sex-change operations and physician assisted suicide, either by forcing private insurers to cover them, or under government-run plans. Every American will [...]

Flesh of My Flesh: The Ethics of Cloning Humans

Flesh of My Flesh: The Ethics of Cloning Humans Edited by Gregory E. Pence Read October 2009 Since reading Kass’ Life Liberty and the Defense of Dignity, I have read half a dozen other related books and articles, trying to cover the spectrum of thought on life’s ethical debates, especially pertaining to biology, marriage, kinship, [...]

License to Kill

Headline: Bozeman Daily Chronicle Ap 4, 2009 “Doctors reluctant to assist in patient deaths” The text read: “While a district court judge has ruled it is a right protected in the state constitution, life-ending treatment has proved elusive for many patients in Montana, advocacy groups said on Friday.” Janet Murdoch of Missoula said, “I feel [...]