We went camping this weekend. Saturday night, we and 2 neighbor families camped in the Falls’ “Back 40”.
We had a talent show, s’mores, and ghost stories.
Better Late Than Never
Two recent events:
Lex’s birthday Party: 10 6 yr olds and mini-golf. I’ll never do that again…. tho I may do it with 7 yr olds.
Mother’s Day: 2 traditions.
1) A picture in front of our neighbors bushes (azaeleas?).
2) A vist to the Van Vleck Gardens, here in Montclair, for a Mother’s Day Concert. (Tho we’ve actually made it for the concert only once, we do stroll the gardens.)
Hypothetical Moral Dilemma
I just finished reading this interesting article on moral principles. A Harvard researcher hypothesizes that evolution has provided us with a base moral compass. As evidence he offers these three intriguing questions on morality.
Question One:
A trolley is coming down a track and it’s going to run over and kill five people if it continues. A person standing next to the track can flip a switch and turn the trolley onto a side track where it will kill one person but save the other five. Is is morally permissible to flip the switch?
If you answered yes, then you have responded the way that most people do – they feel it’s morally permissible to harm one person when five are saved.
Question Two:
A nurse comes up to a doctor and says “Doctor, we’ve got five patients in critical care; each one needs an organ to survive. We do not have the time to send out for organs, but a healthy person just walked into the hospital – we can take his organs and save the five. Is that OK?”
Not surprisingly, no one says yes to this question.
Question Three:
What’s the difference between these two situations?
According to the Harvard professor, people of different ages, people of different religious backgrounds, people of different educations typically cannot explain why those cases differ. He proposes that there is some sort of hard wired unconscious process at work during moral judgments.
I found that quite intriguing and I certainly couldn’t rationally distinguish between the two hypothetical situations.
If you are interested, here’s the online version of the article.
Sometimes the internet is freaky…
I spend a fair amount of time on a sports forum called PennStateHoops.com dedicated naturally to Penn State basketball. There was a thread today that was off on a tangent where someone mentioned a couple of famous Fordham basketball players/coaches. In that thread it came to light that the poster didn’t know John Bach who coached at Fordham before he came to Penn State as their coach. I decided to educate the guy a little on Bach (see my post).
Since Natalie Berrena is John Bach’s granddaughter I couldn’t help but include a quick paragraph, and a little commercial, about her. I wanted to put a photo in the post so I naturally Google “Natalie Berrena” for images. Low and behold what popped up on the Google results page but this photo:
Needless to say I did a double take.
Google found one of my posts in our blog and I guess Natalie’s name was fairly close to our image so it tagged the image with her name.
Try it yourself – Google image search for “Natalie Berrena”.
A real hero’s story
A friend of mine, Matt Emmerling, was just honored by the Carnegie Foundation’s Hero Fund. Honorees receive the Carnegie Medal
and a financial grant ($5000 in Matt’s case).
The award was established in 1904 by Pittsburgh Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. His deed commissioning the establishment of the fund noted:
We live in a heroic age. Not seldom are we thrilled by deeds of heroism where men or women are injured or lose their lives in attempting to preserve or rescue their fellows.
Matt’s story, as told in last week’s press release announcing this year’s award winners.
Matthew J. Emmerling and Kevin J. Mahoney saved Seth L. Mattleman and others from burning, State College, Pennsylvania, April 2, 2006. Mattleman, 20, was asleep in the 2.5-story house he shared with other university students, some of whom were also inside the building. Fire broke out before dawn on the back porch of the house and, spreading rapidly, entered the structure, including into Mattleman’s first-floor bedroom. Emmerling, 21, university student, was nearby when he saw the fire. He and Mahoney, 22, lifeguard, who was walking nearby, responded to the front of the house, where they entered through the front door, shouting to alert any occupants. Two of the residents fled the building. Although dense smoke limited their visibility, the men entered Mattleman’s room and shouted for him to leave, but Mattleman was disoriented. Emmerling grasped him about the arms and pulled him to the front door and outside, Mahoney following. Emmerling and Mahoney then re-entered the house, through a side entrance, and went upstairs, where they evacuated the second floor of at least one occupant. Finding a disoriented man in a bathroom on that floor, Mahoney pulled him by the arms to the stairs, and they stumbled partway down before exiting the house along with Emmerling. Flames soon engulfed the interior of the structure and destroyed it. Mattleman suffered burns and was treated at the scene. He recovered. Emmerling suffered smoke inhalation, for which he sought medical attention the following day, and Mahoney sustained a minor ankle burn. They too recovered.
The actual incident took place a year ago and was written up in a couple of local newspapers including the Penn State student newspaper, the Daily Collegian, where Matt works.
Here are some of them:
The Penn State Daily Collegian on the original incident:
After seeing smoke coming from the back of a house at 700 West College Ave., Emmerling ran into the burning building and was able to fight off the heavy smoke to wake the sleeping residents and, with Mahoney’s help, get everyone to safety before flames engulfed the house.
The Centre Daily Times on the Carnegie Hero Award:
Matt Emmerling, 22, and Kevin Mahoney, 23, didn’t even know each other when they spotted a fire about 4:30 a.m. April 2, 2006, at 700 W. College Ave.
They just happened to be nearby.
Together, they dashed inside and helped wake the eight college students sleeping there. The house ended up being a total loss, but no one was seriously hurt.
The Daily Collegian on a fund raiser to help the kids in the house:
For Brian McHale, this week has been hectic, to say the least. But the fire that brought his house down could not bring his spirits down, especially not last night.
“Without those two heroes, there wouldn’t be a celebration tonight at all,” McHale (senior-supply chain management) said.
Those two heroes are Matt Emmerling and Kevin Mahoney, who saved the lives of several of the students whose house burned down in a fire last weekend.
Photo of Matt with the mother of one of the kids he saved:
Not your average high school
Last night, I was chatting with Danny Morrissey, an UncleLar nephew and shooting guard for Penn State’s basketball team. Danny went to prep school at the Pendleton School in Bradenton FL. Pendleton is part of the IMG Academies, a world renown collection of training academies for youth athletes. Some of the academies you have undoubtedly heard of – the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, the David Leadbetter Golf Academy, the Chris Evert Tennis Academy.
Pendleton creates a unique educational environment where kids go to class in the morning at the prep school, then attend training sessions at one of the academies in the afternoon. As Danny described it “This was not your typical high school. Taurean Green (starting guard for two time national champion Florida) was my point guard, Maria Sharapova (world renown model/tennis player) was a classmate of mine, and Freddie Adu (soccer phenom) lived in the dorm room below me.”
All of a sudden my high school experiences seemed quite boring.
Really Bad Day at Work
Yankees vs. Red Sox
This is going to break Gary’s heart, but I set foot in Yankee Stadium (in full Red Sox gear) on Sunday to see the Red Sox beat the Yankees. It was a great game, Manny hit a homer as soon as we were walking to our seats. The bus picked us up in Portsmouth, NH at 6am and dropped us back off around midnight. Thank God I took the next day off of work!
Fall Spring Break
Lis and the kids went to the Florida Keys for Spring Break. Marathon, FL.
Flood of 2007
Last year we had the Mother’s Day Flood that caused millions of dollars in damage. This year, it seems we’re having a repeat spring. I will be posting pictures of Dover, NH (where I live) shortly (that is if my cable is back at my house- I currently don’t have internet). Here is Hampton Beach which is 20 minutes south of me along the Atlantic. I guess I should say this where Hampton Beach used to be! YIKES!