Check Out These Blog Posts From Steve McEllistrem

I used to have a landline. Pretty much everyone I knew had one too. Then cell phones became more ubiquitous and they gradually took over the industry. But I kept my landline for a variety of reasons. First, I’d had it for 40 years. It felt comfortable, and it was an easy number to remember. When my parents were at the end stages of their lives, it was a number they still could recall, even though they’d forgotten most of ...

The Free Will Problem Whenever I bring up the problem of evil in the world, believers talk to me about free will. That’s why there’s evil. God gave us free will and some people choose to act maliciously. That’s not God’s fault. And if God forced us to act with kindness, we wouldn’t really be good because we wouldn’t have the option of acting any other way. We would just be drones. Got it. However, why should a few madmen ...

We tend to think that we came out of an ice age about 12,000 thousand years ago, and it’s true that we were in a glacial period from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. That was known as the Quaternary or Pleistocene Glaciation and is considered a major ice age. Subsequently, we had what’s called a Little Ice Age, which began in the sixteenth century and reached its peak around 1750, before receding to where we are today. We’re currently ...

I worry at times that I’m not a better steward of the environment. Walking along a path in the park, I often spot a discarded can, bag, wrapper, etc. and sometimes hesitate to pick it up. What is my responsibility to the world with respect to this item? Do I have an obligation to clean up someone else’s mess? I could bring a trash bag or bucket along on my walks like I’ve occasionally done in the past, but that ...