Inappropriate Conversations

One major generational shift from when I was growing up until now: the role of imagination in childhood.  When I was young, toys didn't often come with a story.  You made up the story using toys or even household objects.  Now, effort is required to provide similar opportunities for our young, future storytellers.  Has an entire generation of "imaginary friends" been left, abandoned and alone? Different Drummer: Jerrold Freedman Springfield (left) and Frank (right)

While I'm playing music on my MP3 player, it is almost always set to shuffle.  I believe in variety and unexpected combinations, and radio stations have not provided that at any time in my memory.  When you hear "your station for variety" or other taglines, it never refers to a combination of rock, country, jazz, classical, spoken word, and other genre.  Why not?  A format with that challenging combination might never lead the market, but a program like that might prove to be the second choice for a very large set of listeners. Different Drummer: Francis Picabia

Easily the best argument against television is that it's not very good.  I believe that I would only watch a couple of programs a week if it weren't for sports and the power of recording.  DVR makes it possible to screen what I see.  A better tool would let me replace the current TV offerings with the older programs they are referencing.  Surely, all these imitators of "I Love Lucy" have some explaining to do! Different Drummer: Jay Bulworth

The way we use products as customers is a significant, and less acknowledged, pressure on the environment.  Even merchandise that we expect to last for years has become much more disposable.  Unfortunately, there is no easy way to backtrack from society's investment in lower prices, with lower quality.  We need to be wary, though, of what else we're tossing out when we dispose of old and worn things. Different Drummer: Jerry Mander

At some point, the idea of capital punishment stopped being about protecting society through the dispensation of justice, and it started being about settling the score for crimes that offend a lot of people.  The word "heinous" could almost be defined as "justification for revenge."  If you take vengeance away from the death penalty, we would certainly seek such a sentence far less often. Different Drummer: Neil Peart

The best argument against the existence of God that I have ever heard makes a mistake you see more often in "young earth" creationism.  It's the belief that time has a permanence, an importance, even a "reality" that we frankly should not trust.  Ironically, tracing the philosophy of religion through an argument that has led me to question this faith in time ... well, it requires a greater number of minutes than usual. Different Drummer: Norman Kretzmann

6) America could not provide adoptive homes for more than a million children per year over limitless successive years.  7) After agreeing to pay a clinic several hundred dollars, a woman does not need an extra day of waiting to decide if she is doing the right thing.  8 ) Most Americans do not know the names and telephone numbers of more than 30,000 women, and certainly none can name that many new acquaintances for each calendar year.  9) If doctors never study or practice the abortion procedure, then an emergency abortion to save the life or health of a pregnant woman is less likely to be safe and free from complications.  10) If a person threatens the life or welfare of a man's wife, most of us would understand the man's decision to kill this assailant -- even if we wouldn't take that same action ourselves for moral reasons. Different Drummer: Aristotle