Fear the slippery slope | Nat’l Post | Suicide and End of Life Issues

Ms. Kay mentions a topic feared by media and public in her article:

Barbara Kay: Fear the slippery slope | National Post.

4,000 people take their lives every year in Canada, and we don’t like talking about it.  “We might encourage others,” they say.  I’m not sure whether this feeling is based on evidence or emotion.

Physician assisted suicide forces us to discuss the suicide epidemic in Canada and many other things besides.

A slippery slope exists when no meaningful stop could halt the progression from one end to the other.  The burden of evidence lies with those who insist there is no slide.  So far, all the evidence supports the slope and our movement along it.

Thank you, Ms. Kay, for having the courage to say so.

(photo credit: http://uofme.blogspot.ca/2012/12/fallacy-alert-slippery-slope-of-gun.html)

Comment: Fear the Slippery Slope | Nat’l Post | Suicide

slippery slopeMs. Kay mentions a topic feared by media and public in her article:

Barbara Kay: Fear the slippery slope | National Post.

4,000 people take their lives every year in Canada, and we don’t like talking about it.  “We might encourage others,” they say.  I’m not sure whether this feeling is based on evidence or emotion.

Physician assisted suicide forces us to discuss the suicide epidemic in Canada and many other things besides.

A slippery slope exists when no meaningful stop could halt the progression from one end to the other.  The burden of evidence lies with those who insist there is no slide.  So far, all the evidence supports the slope and our movement along it.

Thank you, Ms. Kay, for having the courage to say so.

How to be Great Without Being Gifted: Knowledge Integration

outliersSome say you achieve greatness, or excellence, by finding your unique talent and pouring life into it.  Malcolm Gladwell’s writes about people who master their talent with 10,000 hours of practice in Outliers.

 One talent, sport, pastime, or ability.  Gifted people with tones of time.

For the rest of us, excellence is less obvious.

We can all have it, but unique greatness shows up invisibly to us.  It grows out of a life of enthusiastic passion poured into a unique combination of interests particular to our individuality.

Consider your interests in quilting and guacamole, or petunias and meteorology: we combine interests unlike anyone else.  If you think of more, say porcelain, hydrology, glass blowing and poetry, you should expect very few people in the whole world to be passionate about all of them at once.

If you take a unique mix of ideas and add decades of enthusiastic exploration, you end up a world expert.  YOU become a world expert at the unique integration of knowledge that’s been your life’s passion.

You:  a World Expert.

We all have the time.  We all have interests.  The only decision remains whether we will spend our time passionately pursuing all that captures our interest around us.

What’s your expertise?  How can you share it?