Toledo, Ohio, has voted to grant human rights to Lake Erie.

I hope the article misrepresents what has actually been decided. I am in favor of strengthening laws to protect Lake Erie (and all lakes) from pollution, including helping more entities sue polluters. But not by descending into nonsense.

This law, as described in the article, is nonsense. Treating a lake as human is even more absurd than treating a corporation as human. A corporation does have preferences, and can make decisions — all actually decided by its directors and stockholders — yet still does not deserve human rights. A lake is unable to desire or decide anything, or consent to anything, and it has no chance of ever being able to do so. A human in such a condition would have its life support switched off.

To defend the idea of rights for humans (and other comparable intelligent beings), and to defeat the idea that a corporation is as good as a human, we must not go around according the status of human to mere things.

Depending on the "philanthropy" of the rich means we can't get to the root of our economic problems. "We have outsourced the betterment of our world to people with a vested interest in making sure we don’t make it too, too much better."

Two sisters from Salafi Arabia face imminent deportation back there, if they don't get a visa today. That would be followed by execution or life in solitary confinement.

I would urge them to commit a spectacular suicide before Hong Kong agents capture them and condemn them to a far worse fate. This rational martyrdom would deal a heavy blow to the misogynist theocracy of Salafi Arabia. It's not what they deserve — life in freedom is what they deserve — but it may be the best end they can get.

It is easy to imagine doing what is heroic, harder to do it. It is easier to analyze a bad situation when one is not suffering the stress of being in it. I don't know whether I would be able to follow my own advice, but I hope I could.

I urge Australians to reprove their government for cutting off the sisters' escape.

Anti-vaxxers are forming internet troll mobs to intimidate and silence doctors that defend the effectiveness of vaccination.

The anti-vaxxers risk their own illness, and I believe people have a right to do that if they wish. However, by organizing to mislead people about vaccines, they lure potentially millions of others to their deaths. They also endanger the people that, due to various other medical conditions, cannot be vaccinated. The only protection for them is to be surrounded by a society in which nearly everyone else is vaccinated.

In the DR Congo, distrust for medicine leads to hostility towards the treatment for Ebola. The outbreak there has continued for months, since the methods that have ended other outbreaks cannot be applied.

This could lead to the death of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, who if treatment had been allowed would not even have caught the infection.

America's New Voting Machines Bring New Fears of Election Tampering.