BACK FROM NEW YORK, but I hab a code, so I’m really not firing on all pistons. Blogging will be light until I stop feeling like a dying sofa. For now: More on the giant squid!!! (link via Murtaugh.)

Barlow on hunger and reporting. My take is in the comments box.

Will reply to Sanchez when I stop feeling like a dying etc. For the moment I should point out that I don’t think his argument can be supported on fully secular premises any more than mine can (Russo nodded to this in her initial speech, so maybe all those attempts to persuade her to my ex-Platonist position did some good!)–why protect stuff just ’cause it has a consciousness? How is that any more secularly justified than protecting stuff just ’cause it’s a human individual? Will write more about soul vs. consciousness and the nature of identity, but don’t expect that this week. I hope I haven’t been presenting my objection to abortion as strictly secular–as you’ll see if you click the “my ex-Platonist position” link above (and scroll down for two more posts that might clarify things), I believe that very, very few of my controversial moral beliefs can be supported through strictly secular reasoning. However, a) I think Sara was speaking to people who share premises in common (esp. “killing babies is wrong, end of story”); starting from those premises, a purely secular argument against abortion can be made, though I don’t believe that the premises can be justified on purely secular grounds. And b) you can see my ex-Platonist position as either evidence for the moral rightness of killing babies, or yet more troubling evidence that there might be something to this God business after all. When these options are viewed in conjunction with other aspects of Christian anthropology (its understanding of justice and mercy, its emphasis on the importance of the physical world [if you want a good book on this, try Chesterton’s biography of St. Thomas Aquinas], its understanding of transcendence through submission [cf. Chesterton’s bio of St. Francis of Assisi, which is even better than the Aquinas book], and much more), I tend to think the latter interpretation is the better one.

Also, if you’ve emailed me, especially if you’ve emailed me with a link to your blog, I apologize for not doing anything about it. Things here are kind of crazed and will remain so for the foreseeable future. I will look at all these blogs… eventually.