Always nice to hear news from the old home town. This story from Fox News is entitled, “Minnesota Man Allegedly ‘Hunted’ Suicidal Victims.”

William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of aiding suicide in the deaths of an English man and a Canadian woman. Attorneys for both sides presented oral arguments Thursday to Rice County District Court Judge Thomas Neuville, who has up to 20 days to decide whether Melchert-Dinkel is guilty.

Prosecutors say Melchert-Dinkel, an ex-nurse from Faribault, was obsessed with suicide and hanging and that he sought out potential victims on the Internet. When he found them, prosecutors say, he posed in chat rooms and in e-mails as a woman, played the role of a compassionate friend and offered step-by-step instructions on how they could take their lives.

Melchert-Dinkel is identified as a resident of Faribault, which is my secondary home town. It’s only fifteen miles from my actual home town, and my mother’s parents lived there. Both my folks eventually took jobs there. Since Mom was a nurse, she might even have known this guy.

I note the hyphenated name, “Melchert-Dinkel.” Although it’s not always true, such hyphenization often indicates (in America) a “progressive,” non-traditional attitude to the world. Which sets me thinking.

If you’re a modernist, a moral relativist, what exactly would you say this guy did wrong? Would you say he did anything wrong at all?

A relativist would never concede that suicide is wrong in itself. Nothing is essentially wrong, for the relativist. If someone wants to commit suicide, certainly that’s their own choice, isn’t it? It might be unkind to their loved ones, but we often encourage people to do things their loved ones don’t like, like marrying people their parents reject, or going into careers they don’t approve of. Why should dying be any different?

You could say he did wrong in deceiving these people, but the relativist can’t say that deception is necessarily bad either. Melchert-Dinkel could argue that these people felt they had the company of a caring friend at the end of their lives, and were never disabused of that belief. He could maintain that he’d actually done them a great favor. And if he got a sexual charge out of the experience, well, who does that hurt? Everybody wins.

I often harken back to the words of Wisdom (depicted as a woman) in Proverbs 8:36: “But whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death.”

Just to put your mind at ease—so you can sleep tonight—I’m happy to report that I picked up a new microwave oven today. It’s smaller and more powerful than my old one. Also much cheaper than I expected. What an amazing world of scientific marvels we do live in!

Mitch Berg at Shot In the Dark is upset—rightly—by this appalling story from KDVR TV, Denver Colorado:

ARVADA, Colo. — Arvada Police are defending the way they handled the arrest of an 11-year-old boy.  The Arvada boy was arrested and hauled away in handcuffs from his home for drawing stick figures in school – something his therapist told him to do.

His parents say they understand what he did was inappropriate, but are outraged by the way Arvada Police handled the case. The parents did not want their real names used.

They say “Tim” is being treated for Attention Deficit Disorder and his therapist told him to draw pictures when he got upset, rather than disrupt the class. So that’s what he did.

Mitch says:

Do you think a charter school, responsible to a board elected by the school’s parents and stakeholders, just might have come up with a solution that wouldn’t have embarassed a Soviet komissar?

It’s time to bring back public humiliation – stocks and pillories – for public officials who so utterly transgress the boundaries of sanity, decency and morality itself.

And if the Arvada, Colorado school board doesn’t fire every single party involved, and the voters don’t in turn erase every single member of that school board from any contact with children forever, and the people can stand for that sort of priggish idiocy from their police department, they deserve what they get.

I’m pretty sure “Tim” does not.

You know, I’m getting kind of sick of hearing from educational experts who warn us constantly that if a Muslim child or a “gay” child hears a single word that could possibly be offensive to them, they have probably suffered irrevocable harm, and will have to be put on suicide watch.

But handcuffing an already troubled kid and dragging him off to jail—that’s just part of the process of growing up. Good for ’em. Makes ’em tough.

The whole point of the Zero Tolerance movement is that common sense is inadequate. We need rigid rules, enforced in a draconian manner.

Well, common sense has certainly left the building.

On a more pleasant note, I recommend this new blog: Man Of the West.

It’s written by my friend Ian Barrs, an English transplant to the U.S.

You may possibly recall that I mentioned having a splendid discussion with an expatriate Englishman last spring at the Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa.

That Englishman was Ian Barrs. Not long ago we became Facebook friends, and I discovered to my amazement that we have a mutual friend, a guy who’s involved with the U.S. L’Abri Center in Rochester, Minnesota (and sometimes comments on this blog).

Phil will be happy to learn that Ian is a Presbyterian.

Here’s an interesting set of letters between two critics of video games, one prioritizes personal experience and story, the other views the games in the context of all games since the beginning of civilization.

Tom Bissell writes about his approach: “I do, however, like to write about how games cross over into affecting, enriching, or profoundly messing with one’s life outside of game-playing.”

By contrast, Simon Ferrari explains: “It’s my contention that games are systems of rules and artificial spaces before they’re stories. And if we want to foster creativity, depth, and breadth in the design of future games, then we need to begin by teaching the reading, writing, and critique of rule systems at an early age.”

Chad at Fraters Libertas quotes today from a Wall Street Journal column by Mark Helprin. He celebrates the glory and worth of winter:

And this may be the heart of it, that winter even as we fight it is both a measure and cause of our vitality. That though it may exist as an enemy, it is something of extraordinary beauty. And that though in representing the last season of our lives it symbolizes our death, year after year experience teaches us that, miraculously and invariably, after winter’s inescapable conquests the new life of spring comes nonetheless.

Wonderful stuff, and just the sort of thing you’d expect from the genius who wrote Winter’s Tale (and if you haven’t read Winter’s Tale, what are you waiting for?). Even I, the world’s champion heat lover, resonate a little bit with that. I’ve written before that I never felt right living in Florida. I need my spring, and you can’t really have spring without chopping your way through winter first.

Speaking of which, winter’s back in these parts. You may have heard about it on the news. A few days back it was almost 50 degrees. Last night and today we picked up about a foot of snow. But there was a good side and a bad to that, in my case. Continue reading Winter's Toil →