jeffreymartin

Here we go again. The subject is ethics this time. I don't particularly like how this first question is phrased, because it doesn't make the problem plain. Nevertheless, I won't write an article on the

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. What is truth? How do we know? Important and difficult questions that will be debated as long as there are humans with the ability to debate them. The two questions

Winning is often the end of an endeavor, but not always. In politics winning should not be an end in itself, only a step. It is the beginning of the true struggle for which the entire history of humanity

I did an Ancestry DNA test a few years ago and ended up finding an older sister a few states over. My mother, father, and I have taken different approaches to giving her and her family gifts. I've sent

Philosophy applies to life. And life adds perspective to philosophy. Often these two things end up disconnected. Here's the question for this essay. What is the sorites paradox? Is there any satisfying

I have two essays on logic to write today. And we're going to see one of the reasons that I don't particularly like academia right away. Here is a note about the essays. Remember when answering that one

Philosophy is inescapable. It is ignorable, which is what most people do with it. There are parts that I find quite interesting, enjoyable, and useful. Technical logic is not exactly one of the areas that

A few years ago I went looking for a movie list to both inspire and instruct me about writing and being a writer. There are such lists, but there are no good lists. Over the last couple of years I've made

A few days ago I was watching the movie 'Gabriel's Inferno'. In one scene Julianne is fixing Gabriel's tie in a car. It annoyed me that the rich, sophisticated, intellectual was both bad at tying a tie,

This election will change things throughout the United States, and in Dalton Township. Predicting what that change will be is more difficult. In Dalton there are three possible directions. Vaclav Havel

Authoritarian governments have a tendency to limit or even collapse the food supply. At first that doesn't appear to make sense. People get angry and desperate when the food supply is limited, especially

There are certain situations that approach the limit of what it is possible for us to experience as human beings. In December of 2015 I was laying in a hotel bed in Mombasa, Kenya. I had been poisoned.

The stories we consume affect how we view everything. With a nine-year-old girl in the world today, the movie 'Frozen' has a good chance of coming up. Once upon a time in the kingdom of Arendelle lived

Transformation is a common theme in literature. Sometimes we transform and then enter a new world, at other times we enter a new world and then transform. Sometimes, it's both. Mermaids are interesting

Fun, funny, and serious can often go together. One can change to the other in a split second. That happens in life, and sometimes it happens while you're writing. Pay attention near the end when Vera changed

I've put some of the stories that Vera and I have written together up on my blog over the last few months. She likes it. You can see that in the ending of this one. I like fairy tales. They are allegories,

Dialogue is fun. It's the original uniquely human interaction, talking. And, humans love to bestow that gift upon animals in stories. You would think the dialogue of a nine-year-old would be simplified

Stories are kind of like waking dreams. That's especially true when you get into fantasy. Vera has the imagination of an intellectually engaged nine-year-old. I think I keep pace with her well when we're

Reading and writing stories is an amazing experience. Experiencing what a kid does when continuing a story idea is often quite surprising. The natural symbology that emerges is revealing, not only of the

One of the best parts about teaching is learning. I've had students from a multitude of cultures, different countries, different languages, different religions, different ages, different socio-economic