Public Thoughts

 I had to cut this from my business article because it didn't fit very well with the voice of the article, but I really liked the ideas I brought up. The trolley problem is one of the most well-known examples of an ethical dilemma and has thousands of variations. If you’ve ever seen the TV show The Good Place, you’ll know that it is easy to say what you think you would do, but it is a lot harder to actual do what you think you would do. A major lesson of the trolley problem is that there is no right answer. There is no consensus on which decision is correct. Consider the following variation on the trolley problem. You are driving your car in the afternoon down a two-way street in the big city. As you enter an intersection a car traveling the opposite direction tries to make a left turn in front of you! You have to make a quick decision, do you swerve to avoid a head on collision, or do you keep going and crash? What if there is an old lady carrying her groceries across the street r...

There are three restaurants that every tourist to the southeast needs to visit. They are Cook Out, Bojangles, and Waffle House.  Cook Out is my all-time favorite restaurant because it is delicious, inexpensive, and fast. Cook Out is a traditional burger joint that serves burgers, bbq, hot dogs, shakes, and other southern foods. For $5.99 you can get an entree, two sides, and a drink or milkshake. The price per pound of food at Cook Out rivals that of Costco or Sam's Club. There are three things that Bojangles does better than anyone else. The first is their Cajun Chicken Filet Biscuit. This breakfast food is just a chicken patty, battered with cajun seasoning and fried to a crisp, then placed on a fresh buttered biscuit. The second is the BoBerry Biscuit. More than just a blueberry biscuit, the BoBerry biscuit is crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and drizzled with a delicious glaze. The third thing that Bojangles does best is their cajun fries. When I go to Bojangles, I or...

 When is it appropriate to start listening to Christmas music? Ten years ago, it seemed like the consensus was that the Christmas season started in December. There was Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and then Christmas and New Years. The last two months of the year are packed with events and holidays, but they each had their own time and space. Gradually over the last few years the well defined boundaries between holidays have become blurred. Christmas started seeping into Black Friday, and then Black Friday suddenly changed from being a single day to being a three day event, to a whole week and now it is a month long event that starts right after Halloween. It has completely eclipsed Thanksgiving. There remains a small but sturdy percentage of the population that believes each of these holidays should be celebrated. For them, Christmas music should be illegal before Thanksgiving. My personal opinion is that good music should be listened to year-round. If a Christmas song ha...