Tangled bank

What do these four, apparently very unconnected items, have in common?

•  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/lake-vostok-drilled/

• http://www.thecleanestline.com/2012/02/cerro-torre-deviations-from-reason.html

• Star wars: the clone wars

• http://www.vpacademic.uoguelph.ca/fys/seminars/

My life used to be easy.

I was a scientist,  climber (a long time ago), father, and a teacher. And now suddenly these separate aspects of  my life got sucked into a vortex, all thanks to reading some passages of Aldo Leopold’s “The Land Ethic” for the First Year Seminar course Ingrid and I have designed. These items literally came across my desk (RSS reader, watching TV with the kids, teaching a course) in a 2 day period. And they point out ethical decisions we/I should be making on a daily basis:

• should we/I, scientists, actually sample this unique lake that has been separated from the rest of life on earth for who knows how many years?
• should we/I “conquer” (Leopold would love this word) a mountain by drilling and placing bolts every couple of feet?
• should we/I study, let alone kill, the last individual of a species that could end a war, especially if society (or in this case Chancellor Palpatine, for all the wrong reasons) made this decision?

My life is now a tangled bank.