Michael Schur

I told him I had already cut him a check, which was in the mail.

I went back to the blog.

I told everybody.

The outcome?

Most people, not all, but most of them thought it was a pretty happy outcome.

I encouraged them to give money to the Red Cross anyway, because giving money to hurricane victims is a nice thing to do, and in the end, more than $25,000 was indeed donated to the Red Cross Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

Don't applaud that.

That's the happy result of a bad event.

So ...

Why did this embarrassing, miserable mistake that I made make me want to continue to study moral philosophy?

If I told you that you were going to be in jeopardy

How would you prepare?

You would read some trivia books and flip through a world atlas.

If I told you that you were going to take a half-court shot at an NBA game for the chance to win $50,000, how would you prepare?

You would get a basketball, you would go to the YMCA and you would practice hucking up half-court shots.

Well, you're probably never going to be on Jeopardy.

You are probably never going to take a half-court shot at an NBA game for a chance to win $50,000, but you will, I guarantee it, at some point become embroiled in a complicated, confusing, ugly, gut-wrenching moral dilemma.

That is just a fact of life on Earth.

There will be a dilemma in which there is no clear rule to follow.

There is only a kind of vague investigation, and everything you do seems like it might be wrong.