Kinda Wimpy

Seattle Public Schools had another snow day even though there was but a light dusting of new stuff and most of it had melted by just after noon or so.

Mimi was delighted of course, but I thought that the decision to cancel classes was kinda wimpy. “When I was a boy,” we would have sucked it up and made it to school in conditions much worse than those that obtained today.

I’m probably only saying this because Cascadia wasn’t closed this morning; I had to be there to teach so I’m just spewing sour grapes; on the other hand, I was glad, as a matter of fact to be back in class.

The Philosophical Ethics class is going especially well; my students really did philosophy today: they spent a lot of time pressing me on questions about epistemology which I can’t say that I answered with any great degree of success.

One student wanted to talk about whether Bill Talbott’s claim that there should be certain universal human rights implied the existence of objective truth. Another wanted to know if relativism entails subjectivism.

I kept trying to address their questions while at the same time sticking, in general, to the content we were supposed to be covering.

Of course, it’s only me who decides what we’re “supposed”to be doing, just like it’s only the school board or whoever who decides whether school is going to be held or not. And if I think they were kinda wimpy to close school today, then I was kinda wimpy to insist that we cover content.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting here watching American Idol when I probably should be preparing for Thursday’s classes.

In the Business Ethics class, we watched Black Gold, a documentary about the global coffee industry that highlighted the plight of Ethiopian farmer who are unable to secure a living wage for their product.

This made me think that if I weren’t kinda wimpy I’d start drinking tea.