dustinhartley

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Mom's Skin Cancer

Mom’s Skin Cancer

Mom was picking me up for church in her new car. It was a nice car, I thought, though I don’t know much about cars. It was definitely better than her older car, the door of which I broke while opening it, and which was falling to pieces in other ways. She had definitely been in need of a newer one. I noticed something else besides how nice the car was. Mom had some sort of growth on her…

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Neighbor's Wedding

Neighbor’s Wedding

There was a tap tap on my apartment door. I thought perhaps it was the apartment manager, Betty, coming to ask me to sign a new lease, because my rent is going to increase next month. I sighed and got up and answered the door. It was a younger lady. She looked nervous. And she nervously explained to me that she was getting married today. Uh oh, I thought, she must know that I’m an ordained…

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Episode 12

Today, let’s talk about a sensitive subject. Much could be said about it, much more than I’m going to say today, but I just want to share a few thoughts. On suicide. Emile Durkheim said there four types of suicide, four reasons for suicide. They were anomic suicide, egoistic suicide, fatalistic suicide, and altruistic suicide. I might focus the discussion a little more on altruistic suicide…

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Episode 11 Notes

[Start off by talking about camera/SD card] Friend was asking me about calendars: What was the first year? So let’s talk about calendars. The first year in the Christian Era was the year 1 A.D. or C.E.. There was no year 0. First year before that is 1 B.C. We currently use the Gregorian calendar, and improvement on the Julian Calendar 365 1/4 days vs. 365 days a year Julius Caesar…

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Episode 9

waiting for camera ordered off Walmart used to get groceries delivered from Walmart, can’t now in a small town anyway, camera is coming going to make fitness videos fitness videos are going to be fun, but I am serious about fitness kind of like Richard Simmons: easy workouts, not shredded, fun, about personality, a character my look is probably going to be a tank top and pajama pants,…

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Episode 9 Notes

Love k-cups, love tea Ordered tea pods 33 cents a pod, use twice matcha tea included matcha specially grown and powdered not sure if the pods are good match tea good for energy caffeine is stimulant, affects adrenaline (epinephrine; digress about “on the renal/nephrine” as root) excitatory vs. inhibitory neurotransmitters also contains l-theanine l-theanine a nootropic, caffeine also…

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Episode 7

Objective Morality William Lane Craig is fond of saying, “If there is no God, then objective right and wrong cannot exist.” And that, this “divine command theory”, is supposed to answer the alleged shortcomings of atheism; atheism, the divine command theorists would have it, cannot be the right view of whether or not there’s a God, because there simply must be objective morality, an the only way…

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Episode 6

Everybody has an opinion about the economy, yet almost none of us are economists. And we don’t even try to be. Economics is one of those areas of study that is so complex that people either don’t appreciate how complex it is and suppose that they know how it all works, or else they recognize how complex economics is, and they know that they can get away with saying just about anything about…

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Podcast Episode 5 Things to Talk About

Podcast Episode 5 Things to Talk About

In a small town, things are simple. Especially the ideas. Or, if they’re not simple, they’re just not thought through very well. One of the things Kyan and I like to do is frequent the local Dollar General. We love to walk, ad if we’re walking, why not walk to Dollar General and pick up a Venom Energy Drink for 95 cents? Venom is one of those rare items that apparently has not been affected by…

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Podcast Episode 3 Script

Podcast Episode 3 Script

The phone rang.  The number didn’t show up. It showed up as Restricted. I had been trying to read The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. I was enjoying my evening on my chaise longue with a book in hand. I had also been reading a psychology book, though I don’t at this moment recall which psychology book that was, because I have been reading quite a lot of psychology lately for my…

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To Forgive is Divine

To Forgive is Divine

To err is human, but to forgive is divine. This doesn’t mean that forgiveness has to come from God. It can be as if from God, or godlike, or more prosaically, a good or excellent thing. We definitely do all make mistakes; to err is human. We are fallible creatures, and most of us are damaged people. And too often, as they say, hurt people will hurt people. And so we’re all making mistakes and…

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Gay: Sin and Sickness

Gay: Sin and Sickness

I was talking to a friend some time ago. As I understood it, his daughter had a very good female friend who she was living with. This was a very close friend it seemed. What I’m trying to say is that it appeared to be a lesbian relationship. But I wasn’t sure, so I asked my friend, “So, um, is your daughter in a relationship with that other young lady?” It was a while back that we had this…

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Innocent Accept Pleas

Dr. Phil says often on his TV show that innocent defendants do not accept guilty plea bargains from the prosecution. Dr. Phil is wrong. Plenty of innocent defendants plead guilty, because they would rather have a sure thing of lesser consequences than the unsure thing of a potential long term jail or prison term. The reason for this is quite simple: Juries are unreliable. They’re unsophisticated.…

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Student Loan Relief

In one of my bumper-sticker political koans that I so loath, I saw this: “If your degree isn’t worth your paying it off, it’s not worth my paying it off.” To which I replied, “It shouldn’t be paid off at all.” Is there an actually argument there? My response is just as much a valid point as theirs. Their opinion is that they, as individuals, are going to pay off someone else’s student loans.…

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Original Intent

The U.S. Constitution is a wonderful document, but it is not without its difficulties. One topic of debate is whether it should be interpreted according to the times, or whether the original intent of the authors, the Founding Fathers, is all that matters. For example, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that the original authors of the Constitution had no intent to provide a right to privacy, an…

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Arguing

I was recently at a friend’s house, and on the way out the door, I noticed a magnet on her refrigerator door. It had the elephant Republican logo and the donkey Democrat logo with the words “Love, not hate, makes us great.” I don’t really like bumper-sticker style sayings; they imply a lot without really making an argument, and it becomes more of a political koan. But I think the intended…

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New Sofa Broke

I got my new convertible sofa on Saturday. I was going to use it exclusively as a sofa rather than converting it to a bed at night, though I still planned to sleep on it. I sleep on it Saturday night and Sunday night. The sofa was supposed to hold up to 400 pounds, but upon my getting up on Monday morning, the front leg broke off. The wood of the base that held it was split, and the nails or…