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Same thing true of an ice cube.
"But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created that a cat should play with mice." -- Charles Darwin, Letter to Asa Gray
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G. Ethics and trolley problems. (6 points) In the first illustration, the trolley is hurtling down the main track. If the man at the switch throws it, the trolley will go onto the side track, killing the man tied to the side track. If he does not, the four on the main track will die. In the second illustration, the man on the bridge knows that if he pushes the fat man next to him onto the main track, the weight of the fat man will stop the trolley and the four people on the main track will not die, though the fat man will be killed. Based on our class discussion, discuss the differences (if any) some ethicists find between the two dilemmas.
Okay. That's not the diagram I actually used. But I could have. That's the point,
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My responsibility! I *insist* students ask the question, if only to get used to being rebuffed. Sometimes it’s a useful piece of info, as is age. Of course, I don’t encourage students to ask those questions with an eye to getting a “refused to comment” into the story. Occasionally that’s appropriate, particularly with those in the public eye, but seldom otherwise.
I can imagine having a class full of tabloid types who ask rude irrelevant, even cruel, questions and need to be dialed back if only for their own safety. I have never had such a class. There are two big problems with U.S. journalism right now, I'd say.
One is inaccuracy. As (I think) Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, We are all entitled to our own opinions but not to our own facts. The second is timidity, self-censorship about what may be asked and what not. Fill up your notebook, I tell students. Just because you have it, doesn't mean you have to use it.
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1.
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Philip Larkin, "Autumn"
The air deals blows: surely too hard, too often?
No: it is bent on bringing summer down.
Dead leaves desert in thousands, outwards, upwards,
Numerous as birds; but the birds fly away,
And the blows sound on, like distant collapsing water,
Or empty hospitals falling room by room
Down in the west, perhaps, where the angry light is.
Then rain starts; the year goes suddenly slack.
O rain, o frost, so much has still to be cleared:
All this ripeness, all this reproachful flesh,
And summer, that keeps returning like a ghost
Of something death has merely made beautiful,
And night skies so brilliantly spread-eagled
With their sharp hint of a journey--all must disperse
Before the season is lost and anonymous,
Like a London court one is never sure of finding
But none the less exists, at the back of the fog,
Bare earth, a lamp, scrapers. Then it will be time
To seek there that ill-favoured, curious house,
Bar up the door, mantle the fat flame,
And sit once more alone with sprawling papers,
Bitten-up letters, boxes of photographs,
And the case of butterflies so rich it looks
As if all summer settled there and died.
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(I)f you look under "passive-aggressive personality disorder" (PAPD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the older editions--more about that below), you find the syndrome solemnly described as a "pervasive pattern of passive resistance to demands for adequate social and occupational performance." But once you delve into the history of the term, you realize that--at least in the eyes of its critics--it's mostly useful as a high-flown way to call someone a pain in the ass.
The term "passive-aggressive" was introduced in a 1945 U.S. War Department technical bulletin, describing soldiers who weren't openly insubordinate but shirked duty through procrastination, willful incompetence, and so on. If you've ever served in the military during wartime, though, or for that matter read Catch-22, you realize that what the brass calls a personality disorder a grunt might call a rational strategy to avoid getting killed.
After the war the term found its way into civilian psychiatric practice and for many years was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the bible of the mental health trade. According to the revised third edition (DSM-III-R, 1987), someone had PAPD if he displayed five or more of the following behaviors: (1) procrastinates, (2) sulks or argues when asked to do something he doesn't want to do, (3) works inefficiently on unwanted tasks, (4) complains without justification of unreasonable demands, (5) "forgets" obligations, (6) believes he is doing a much better job than others think, (7) resents useful suggestions, (8) fails to do his share, or (9) unreasonably criticizes authority figures.
Recognizing that the definition as then formulated wasn't working but uncertain how to fix it, the compilers of DSM-IV (1994) dumped PAPD from the list of official disorders and relegated it to an appendix. The most telling complaint, in my opinion, was that merely being passive-aggressive isn't a disorder but a behavior--sometimes a perfectly rational behavior, which lets you dodge unpleasant chores while avoiding confrontation. It's only pathological if it's a habitual, crippling response reflecting a pervasively pessimistic attitude--people who suffer from PAPD expect disappointment, and gain a sense of control over their lives by bringing it about. Some psychiatrists have suggested that PAPD be merged into a broader category, called negativistic personality disorder. Diagnostic criteria: passive-aggressive plus (a) mad at the world, (b) envious and resentful, (c) feels cheated by life, and (d) alternately hostile and clingy.
We'll let the specialists work out the details. For now, though, we lay folk should strive to use the term "passive-aggressive" more precisely in everyday life. Say for instance that a coworker cheerfully agrees to refrain from a specified uncool act, then does it anyway. Is this passive-aggressive behavior? No, this is being an asshole. Comforting as it can be to pigeonhole our tormentors with off-the-shelf psychiatric diagnoses, sometimes it's best just to call a jerk a jerk.
So there you (may) have it. Today I really felt like being a jerk.
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The House Dog's Grave
by Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)
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