What's the Right Thing to Do?

Harvard University's
Justice with Micheal Sandel

http://justiceharvard.org/

An engaging twelve hours of lectures broken into twelve one-hour episodes.  Before passing up on listening to these lectures, ask yourself, what was it you chose to do with those twelve hours instead?  Next time you add your two cents worth to a political discussion, was it worth even that? When it comes time to vote, should you even be allowed?

If not all twelve lectures, I ask you to at least consider watching  Episode One ".....philosophy doesn't teach you anything you don't already know.  It's takes what you already know from familiar settings and presents it in a way that makes it strange.  But once thought, cannot be unthought again" and Episode Eleven which basically has to do with loyalty; how it conflicts with morals.

"A truly virtuous man would come to the aid of a complete stranger no less than he would for a close friend.  However, a truly virtuous man would have no friends."


Below are some fun trivia that came from the lectures: 

Did you know.....

Bill Gates,
when figured out on a hourly basis,
makes more than $150.00/sec.

If he were to drop a $100.00 bill
&
stops long enough to pick it up,
he 
LOSES
money!


Did you know.....

Sandra Day O'Connor & The Supremes
each make less than $300,000.00/yr
while
 
Judge Judy
makes $25,000,000.00/yr.


Did you know.....

one woman's egg

under the right circumstances
could fetch
$50,000.00
while
one man's toss
would be lucky to make
$75.00!

****

Turns out,
 Harvard doesn't know the answers either.
Like the Bible,
raises more questions than answers;
answers vague at best.

***

"Imagination is more important than knowledge.  The important thing is never to stop questioning."

-Eistein-

PALE BLUE DOT

Carl Sagan's
"Reflections on a Mote of Dust"

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

"The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."