Popular Culture

December 15, 2012

Evil Visits A Small Community

If you pay any attention to the news, you know that on Friday morning, December 14, a 20-year-old man shot and killed his mother in her home in Newtown, Connecticut, and then drove her car to a local elementary school and murdered six adults and twenty children.  He then turned his gun on himself and committed suicide.

October 13, 2012

Responding To Criticism

A couple of weeks ago I published an article in which I discussed organ donation and two incidents involving individuals who found themselves in a position where they had to make decisions concerning ending the lives of family members who had been declared brain-dead.  If you didn’t have a chance to read the article, you can find it here.

September 29, 2012

The Sale of Body Parts

About six years ago on a Thursday morning around 10 o’clock, I got a phone call from Georgette.  At the time, I was at my office.  She told me that a man we both knew was on life support at one of the local hospitals.  He was in his 60s and had gone in for surgery earlier that morning.  Something went wrong during the surgery, and he had stopped breathing.  The surgical team was able to bring him back to life, but his wife and children were told that he was “brain dead.”  The only thing keeping him alive was a ventilator (a breathing machine).

September 27, 2012

Email – The Lowest Form of Communication

Although I like the Internet and most of its features and benefits, when it comes to sending and receiving communications of any substance, I hate email.  I long for the good old days (20 years ago) when people wrote real letters, folded them up, placed them in envelopes addressed to the intended recipients, and mailed them.

September 8, 2012

A Hip-Hop and Gangsta Rap Culture

Earlier this year, one of my daughters was standing in the hallway of a local school visiting with a small group of girls.  The ages of the girls ranged from 14 to 20.  As they were talking, a 19-year-old boy they all knew came walking toward them.  (For purposes of this discussion, I’m going to call him James.)  As James approached, he said to the girls, “Step aside, bitches.”

August 18, 2012

The Poison Pipeline

I recently settled an auto accident injury case for a university professor.  For purposes of discussion, I’m going to call him John (not his real name).  John told me that he originally came to the United States in the early 1980s to attend college.  After graduating, he accepted a job offer from a large U.S. corporation.  He eventually became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

July 14, 2012

Superheroes, Daughters, and the Catholic Faith

After arriving home on a Thursday evening a couple of months ago, I learned that three of my daughters – Mary (20), Christine (18), and Teresa (16) – were planning on going to the midnight showing of the newly released movie The Avengers.  When I found out about their plans, I announced, “You’re not going tonight.  You can wait one more day and go tomorrow at a more reasonable time.”

July 7, 2012

A Government of Unlimited Powers

I owe my patriotism and my love of country primarily to the two men who had the most influence on me while I was growing up – my dad, Carl Williams, and my grandfather, Tom Williams.

June 30, 2012

Cooperation Among Strangers

The Ford Quadricycle