the glory and the horror

It has occurred to me that the state of Texas, as wonderful as it is, does not have the same attitude towards technology that California does. For example, I’m sitting in Palo Alto, in an area of town about 8 blocks by 3 blocks that has free wifi for anyone to use, courtesy of a nice bunch of people called anchorfree. I can hardly find free wifi anywhere in Dallas. Tempest Tea is the only one that pops into mind.

Law Students for Alito

Put together by a law student friend of mine.

This is my first test message on my new rmfo blog. First things, first, so I must thank Geof for so graciously setting this up for me. Let’s see how WordPress does for me.

Now this looks fascinating! Forbes.com has a place where you can send yourself an e-mail time capsule. They give you different options for how far into the future you want to send it to yourself (or someone else for that matter). The only problem I can imagine is that the address you’re sending it to may not exist in the future, given how fast various companies and stuff turnover. Honestly, do you really think you’ll have the same email addresses 20 years in the future?

This short opinion piece on Yahoo! caught my eye, as it deals quite specifically with who Kathleen and I are, as an interracial marriage. While it is nice to see that many people approve, especially in our generation, it is still sad to see that many people do not. What is interesting is that it’s not that far away. My own grandparents have had issues, not specifically with myself and Kathleen, but other parts of the family, and other ethnic groups.

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I was enlisted to help write test questions in the USMLE format on the topic of medical ethics. I was given 50 questions to write, and the first 20 came really easily. The next 20 or so weren’t too bad, but that last 10 were really hard to write. I’m not sure why, but it probably has to do with the fact that medical ethics doesn’t lend itself well to multiple choice questions. Also, the “values” that drive it (autonomy, justice, beneficence/non-maleficence) are inadequate, in the sense that we talk about these values, and there are obvious situations in which they are held in tension with one another, but rarely do we talk about how we are supposed to decide which takes precedence and why. So far, our society has sort of defaulted into placing autonomy at the highest place.

Anyway, I still enjoyed writing those questions, and I hope my explanations help some people think through some of that stuff.