Tomorrow, eight months after my wife’s sudden death, is the memorial event that a good friend and my sister, among others, organized because I couldn’t face it…still can’t, truthfully. I have to speak, and I’m determined to do better than this weatherman, but I still don’t know what I’m going to say.
I still have social responsibilities as some friends are flying in from as far away as Seattle, so despite having a lot of work work pressing me and my Ethics Alarms duties, I’m going to be out of the office a lot today. I’m counting on the commentariat once again to provide stimulating ethics content.
I am very grateful for the terrific participants we have here.
Ethics Alarms 
Fish in a barrel kind of content, but maybe it will get the commenting started:
https://www.unilad.com/news/crime/texas-teacher-arrested-accused-relationship-minor-674681-20241007
-Jut
Nothing to add for discussion, however, with regard to the memorial – no shame in cracking a bit.
At my dad’s burial, I spoke briefly, cracked. My daughter sang a song in honor of her grandfather, and hardly got through a verse without having to stop and brush back tears.
God bless you, man, and give you the strength to get through it in the manner you wish. He’ll provide the words that are in your heart.
God bless, Jack.
I agree with Bad Bob. Emotion is perfectly acceptable. My younger brother passed away three years ago My wife was amazing during that time but I had to take care of the funeral arrangements, cremation, etc. Then, our parish priest asked if I wanted to say a few words as a eulogy. I really didn’t want to but did it anyway.
I found the best way to approach it was acknowledging the proverbial elephant in the room but talk about things my brother loved- music, UFO (the band, not the flying thingies), pizza, cats, and a long-standing argument he and I had over whether Rush was/is, in fact, the greatest band on the planet. We also argued about guitarists and he would make a compelling argument that Angus Young from AC/DC has the purest tone of all current rock guitarists.
I placed his favor guitar – a cream white1976 Gibson Flying V next to his ashes, using that as a focus of what was important to him. I wanted to bring his Marshall stack into the church but my the sheer size of it terrified my wife. That was a really good choice on my part because I focused on that guitar, explaining why he loved it (it was similar to Michael Schenker’s guitar, and aided him through brain cancer surgery when he was only 17 years old and how music was the major source of his joy). I also included humor, including some of the bizarre things he did over the years.
Eulogies are terribly difficult. How do you sum up someone’s life in 5 to 10 minutes? Maybe John Cleese’s eulogy for Graham Chapman is a great example: https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=john+cleese+chapman+eulogy&type=E210US739G0#id=2&vid=94194dabda7ce4ae9209f043b5103d74&action=click
jvb
I wrote my brother’s eulogy and simply read it. Made it through pretty much unscathed. Got a kick out of the comments following from other younger brothers in attendance.
Here is an issue worth its own blog post.
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/10/09/state-threatens-media-with-criminal-punishment-for-spreading-supposed-health-related-disinformation/
So they are saying that the First Amendment protects a political advertisement that makes demonstrably false statements about what is against the law. Florida is ordering them to take this ad down, under threat of civil and criminal penalties.
Their rationale appears to be that since the ad says that abortion is illegal in Florida to protect the life of the mother, and that this can result in harm to mothers (if they don’t get an abortion in that situation or come to grief doing so illicitly), and lead them to commit crimes such as unlawful surgery.
Have I summed it up reasonably well?
I don’t know that I like it, but Volokh seems to me to have a reasonable point. Despite being a flat out lie, I’m not sure it rises to the level of imminent harm.
But I am not a lawyer, nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
There are two ethics issues.
The ads themselves, and the state reaction.
There have been accusations that abortion laws prohibit doctors from treating miscarriages. This is false. Among other things, no such prosecution has ever happened in the pre-<i>Roe</i> era.
But our tradition allows people to make up outright lies about government policy. And I support this. A state powereful enough to suppress outright lies about its policies would be powerful enough to hide the truth about its policies.
Darrow was correct. “In order to have enough freedom, it is necessary to have too much.” Regardless of the blatant political lying, the only way to stop it would be to allow the government to trample people’s rights. I don’t believe it’s possible to craft an exception narrowly enough that the government wouldn’t end up gaming the rule to abuse it.
We have to allow misinformation to spread.
I’m not sure this is really an ethics tale, but I wanted to share something that happened yesterday as it does relate to several of our host’s common topics outside of politics.
I had to get my tires rotated and my oil changed in my minivan, so I called up the Toyota dealership and asked for an appointment. Yesterday was the lucky day that they had time for me. I brought the vehicle in, filled out the necessary paperwork, and sat down in the waiting area with six other people. Now the last time I did this, they had the TV turned onto a channel that was essentially political ads, and I know from experience that when I watch political ads during an election cycle, after about ten minutes, I start resembling a domestic terrorist, wanting to burn down the whole government. Therefore, yesterday I brought noise cancelling headphones and a plan to while away the time pleasantly uninterrupted by reality, knowing that no one else around me is engaged in anything more meaningful, so I can have my one hour of kid-free time be relaxing without feeling guilt or the pressure to be productive.
I was not wrong. The other people in the waiting room were either fiddling on their phones or watching the TV, which was mainly Democrat vs Republican attack adds filled with extreme exaggeration or outright falsehoods directed both ways. I sat down, unnoticed by my fellow man and waited for my car to done. Everyone was focused on their devices, and the room was frankly designed so that human interaction was unlikely to occur. I’m an introvert, so this caused no problems for me.
About half an hour later, the room, unnoticed by me, absorbed as I was in my digital destraction, filled up and I noticed an older gentleman trying to walk to the only open chair, which was next to me. My backpack was probably not in his way, but he had a cane, and I was raised to at least sort of be polite-ish, so I paused what I was doing, pulled down my headphones, and moved my backpack whilst apologizing for the inconvenience. He looked at my backpack, recognized the logo, and commented upon it. I kept my headphones down and encouraged him to talk.
What followed was twenty pleasant minutes of interaction with another adult over shared life experiences. We both had oil company experience, though his was pipeline based and my experience is in process engineering. This led to a discussion on family, as I quit work to care for my children and we discovered that both of us have a special needs daughter. His wife had also quit work to deal with a child who, to this day, cannot function normally, and in her case, got a disorder named after her behavior. We bemoaned the fact that half of the doctors and three-quarters of the special needs helpers have no compassion or understanding of the difficulties of living with a special needs individual, but are only in if for the money. We discussed how rare it was to find good help, or how to get out of the house for any amount of time. Time passed far faster than it would have, would I stuck with my digital distraction, and I got to meet an exceptional gentleman who would have felt bad about interrupting anyone from something important, but seemed to crave a more old-fashioned human interaction.
The digital world is full of exciting things with which the mundanity of every day life cannot compete. However, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that humans are social creatures and we need social interaction with other humans to feel complete. I forget, sometimes, those I interact with online are actually people, as full of complexity as I am, and not just bots and AI. Yesterday, a chance interaction reminded me of the beauty of human society and the wonders of the real world and real people.
Mrs. OB and I had a similar experience in Libertyville, Illinois last night. We attended our grandson’s high school varsity football game. (He’s a sophomore on the junior varsity and sat with his mother and grandmother.) I hadn’t been to a high school football game since probably 1968. What a revelation. Old guys were there watching the game because they were fans of the team and probably have been since they went to high school there and played there. The parents of the players were in the stands kind of supervising the younger siblings. No one made a peep about any calls by the officials. Everyone stood for the national anthem and faced the flag. The band was very well rehearsed and performed well. Volunteers staffed the place. I’ve told our son Libertyville is essentially Mayberry. So nice to see. There didn’t appear to be any hipsters from Brooklyn. There were no political signs. I guess I’d mistakenly assumed that kind of America doesn’t exist anymore. It’s out there, it just doesn’t get noticed by the internet.
“I guess I’d mistakenly assumed that kind of America doesn’t exist anymore.”
Breath of fresh air finding out it does, am I right?
I know of a LOT of places like that, and it’s always great hearing about another.
PWS
Newt Gingrich Suggests Biden Is Trying To Undermine Harris’ Campaign
Think there’s anything to this?
PWS
Yeah, I think there could be something to it. Biden’s got to know that Harris was part of the coup ousting him, and from what I’ve heard he does enjoy holding a grudge.
It could be a coincidence, but one that happens several times in a week?
It does make you raise your eyebrows.
TENSIONS RISE Between Biden And Harris Teams As Election Nears
Hmmm…..
PWS