• carve our own image into the inhumanity of space
• man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'i think,' 'i am,' but quotes some saint or sage. he is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. these roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with god to-day. there is no time to them. there is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. but man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. he cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
• Hello! Your poem titled "may 15th" was very beautiful, and ended up bringing me to your blog. May I ask why you chose your major?

-Thank you! For those who don’t know, I’m a Philosophy/Bioethics double major. It means that while I take the usual barrage of Heidegger, Kant, Plato, and Wittgenstein, I also take a lot of science classes and classes specifically on issues of medical ethics or technological change. If you’re asking what interests me about the subject, it’s basically the same reason that I’m interested in anything—the collision of the transcendental and the human. Philosophy by its very nature strives for something True, if not absolutely then at least the existentially or societally-defined. Bioethics, however, drags that down to the gut-wrenchingly human level, to those who are suffering and often at their most vulnerable and do not necessarily think in proofs or comply with first-order logic. Bioethics struggles towards the answers to difficult questions—how we should act towards vulnerable populations? How much power can a doctor wield before they infringe on the rights of their patient? What are those rights? Should we give the kidney to her or him, should we resuscitate or not, what does negligence look like, can we ethically allow this patient into the trial, are medical schools inculcating students to the wrong behaviors, what should govern the sprawling medical system that involves patients, families, doctors, nurses, students, research scientists, insurers, lawyers, policy-makers, administrators, and everyone in between? -There’s a particular cognitive dissonance, I will admit, because these populations make many decisions without any philosopher’s say so. I’m certainly not planning to descend on medical culture with a bachelor’s degree and a twinkle in my eye and enlighten the misguided. But I’m interested in these questions, and my major is a way of studying them. (And hopefully getting into law school.) -I don’t think I’m expressing myself well, but it was the collision of the lofty and the physical, theory and practicable action, with the centrality of justice and the awareness of humanity’s humanness that drew me to my major. I love science and philosophy as systems of knowledge, but bioethics is where both those things meet with the messy inexactitude of our species and I’ve majored in wading into that.