Accoring to a recent AP story, the District of Columbia is planning to pay released felons who agree to behavioral therapy up to $9,000 a year not to commit crimes.
The most popular day on this blog is Monday, when I reply to letters I’ve received. What do you think? Should I run letters posts more often?
I wouldn’t fill the week with Mondays, but a richer blend of Mondays might be interesting. Let’s try it. If you are so inclined, write. We’ll see how it goes.
Aristotle famously remarks that everything which the law does not expressly permit is forbidden. Some people take this as showing how different the classical concept of liberty is from the modern one. For we say just the opposite: That everything which the law does not expressly forbid is permitted.
Nature exhibits organisms with one-chambered hearts, two-chambered hearts, three-chambered hearts, and four-chambered hearts.
A certain kind of thinker regards this as proof of Darwinism. See? First came the one-chambered heart, then the two, then the three, then the four.
“Nothing is objectively good for human beings; or at any rate, if anything is, there is no way to know.”
“Is that so? Then put your finger in this candle flame.”
“I’ll do no such thing!”
“Why not?”
“Because it would hurt, as you well know.”
“So?”
“So I don't like pain, all right?”
“Why don’t you?”
When I was a grad student and a nihilist, I perceived that my closest professors also held nihilist assumptions, but they didn’t draw nihilist conclusions. Of course this is still going on.
If you are a person of faith seeking admission to grad school, more power to you! But be sure that the persons whom you ask to write letters of recommendation for you exercise caution.