Philosophic sock puppets

Quotable blogs Vomit the Lukewarm:

I don't ever seem to have the same idea of what "profound" means as the Philosophers I tend to converse with. Most of them seem to think that "profound" means "unanswerable". This has never been my experience. The profoundest things are usually the simplest things; the words we all know and use a thousand times a day. Something isn't profound because you can never find a reason for it- this is more typical of irrational and silly things. A question is profound because you can contemplate the answer forever, and always find new things to it. It is a sham profundity that can never begin to know- the true profundity is the kind that never ceases to know something new.

Burn Cells Brained Out is teacher in a private Catholic school:

I crave more in the way of discussion and debate than I get in my day to day life. I haven't yet resorted to making hand puppets for each of the Pre-Socratic philosophers and talking to myself, but it may come to that. On the other hand, I'm certain that I am performing a good and useful function right now, albeit a humble one. Forming young people in the Faith is necessary. Teaching them how to read critically and write well is necessary. My students need the help I provide. Would I be needed, really, in another field? Also, the sense that I am responsible for providing a good moral example for forty-odd souls keeps me on the straight and narrow (*cough* more or less *cough*). Would I be as good, elsewhere? Anyway. PHILOSOPHIC SOCK PUPPETS will make up for the lack of a philosophobabble fellowship. I'm designing a line of them. Hegel is particularly entertaining to animate, but his button eyes keep falling off.

Finally, check out Sicut Cervus: diary of a medical student:

As part of my anesthesia rotation I have been learning to do epidural and spinal blocks for women in labor. My first case yesterday morning was a C-section for a woman in her early forties, only 19 weeks pregnant. The average Joe knows that 19-week-old babies can't survive outside of mom. Nonetheless, I was informed that this baby had a "lethal fetal anomaly." So the baby would likely die before delivery, during, or soon after. The reasoning behind "delivering early," as far as I can guess, is to relieve the mother of the last few harder months of pregnancy - because the baby will die anyway. The Questions Now what is the point of continuing a pregnancy once you know your baby cannot live outside the womb? If baby will die on the day of delivery, why not deliver sooner and get the whole tragic ordeal over with and get on with life? Is there really a difference between letting the pregnancy go to term, and inducing early, when the end result is the same? The Answers There's a big difference - morally, psychologically, emotionally and even physically...