May 2012
3 posts
40 years and going with Down syndrome
Columnist George F. Will on his son Jon’s 40th birthday:
Judging by Jon, the world would be improved by more people with Down syndrome, who are quite nice, as humans go. It is said we are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and remain greedy. People with Down syndrome must remain brave in order to navigate society’s complexities. They have no choice but to be trusting because, with...
"You want to grab a politician by the scruff of...
(Hat tip to Abraham Piper.)
April 2012
12 posts
The Downside of Cohabiting Before Marriage
Psychologist Meg Jay of the University of Virginia summarizes some new research and polling data on cohabitation. Regarding the increased likelihood of divorce for those who cohabit before marriage:
Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples...
Should the U.S. legalize hard drugs?
Columnist George F. Will writes about how the “War on Drugs” has actually been making the drug problem worse for the country:
A $200 transaction can cost society $100,000 for a three-year sentence. And imprisoning large numbers of dealers produces an army of people who, emerging from prison with blighted employment prospects, can only deal drugs. Which is why, although a few years...
The real reason gas costs $4 a gallon
Economist Gal Luft writing for Planet Money:
Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, Saudi King Abdullah almost doubled his Kingdom’s budget, committing billions in subsidies, pensions and pay raises in an effort to keep his subjects from storming the palaces.
This expensive response effectively raised the price of oil needed for the Saudis to balance their budget from under $70 a barrel...
Divided by God
Ross Douthat, from an interesting analysis of faith and politics:
Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum all identify as Christians, but their theological traditions and personal experiences of faith diverge more starkly than any group of presidential contenders in recent memory. These divergences reflect America as it actually is: We’re neither traditionally Christian nor...
Good Friday thoughts from G. K. Chesterton
Lastly, this truth is yet again true in the case of the common modern attempts to diminish or to explain away the divinity of Christ. The thing may be true or not; that I shall deal with before I end. But if the divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary. That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a...
Whom do we offend?
To most people in our society, Christianity is religion and moralism. The only alternative to it (besides some other world religion) is pluralistic secularism. But from the beginning it was not so. Christianity was recognized as a tertium quid, something else entirely.
The crucial point here is that, in general, religiously observant people were offended by Jesus, but those estranged from...
March 2012
5 posts
For those of you who drink soda
C. S. Lewis on divorce laws and state-sponsored...
Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question—how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people...
February 2012
9 posts
The concept and call to justice are inescapable
[I]f you are trying to live a life in accordance with the Bible, the concept and call to justice are inescapable. We do justice when we give all human beings their due as creations of God. Doing justice includes not only the righting of wrongs, but generosity and social concern, especially toward the poor and vulnerable. This kind of life reflects the character of God. It consists of a broad...
Science, wonder & the search for extraterrestrial... →
Jason Summers on the future of SETI:
Science caught hold of me early on in life, as is often the case for those who go on to become professional scientists. But, as is also often the case, the science that first captured my childhood mind was markedly more fantastical than the science to which I am now devoted. That’s not to say that science practiced is necessarily prosaic, but rather...
A pastor's conversation with President Obama →
Eugene Cho, a pastor at Quest Church in Seattle, on his experience meeting President Obama:
I was simply introduced by “Eugene Cho” and I’m certain many were asking, “Who is this and why is he here?” In fact, President Obama, himself, had a puzzled look as he said, “Hello Eugene.” So, I had to introduce myself to him and explained to him that I was a pastor here in Seattle and involved with some...
2 tags
2 tags
“Piracy is the new radio. That’s how music gets around.”
– Neil Young
January 2012
3 posts
Reputation vs Character? According to John Wooden,... →
Don Miller:
People don’t judge who we are, they judge who we’ve led them to believe we are. The more time and effort we put into making ourselves look great, the longer and harder the fall when the truth comes out. And eventually the truth comes out.
All of Don Miller’s books have had a profound impact on my life. He is an insightful memoirist who struggles with deep...
December 2011
13 posts
What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's... →
Finland in the last decade has had the highest ranked education system in the West, typically only bested by countries such as South Korea and Singapore where students study 80+ hours a week.
Is Finland a model we should follow to to raise our education rankings from it’s current mediocre spot among industrialized nations?
In addition to no private schooling available from pre-K to...
The U.S. Leads The World In R&D, But For How Long? →
Adam Davidson:
China already has plans to focus on exciting but vague ideas now — like green energy and bio- and nanotechnology — that will most likely become products in the 2020s. And if U.S. government labs, university departments and corporate researchers aren’t already on top of the next generation of breakthroughs, the country will very likely fall behind in 10 or 20 years when those...
Keeping Students From the Polls →
The New York Times:
Next fall, thousands of students on college campuses will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. Sorry, they will hear, you have an out-of-state driver’s license. Sorry, your college ID is not valid here. Sorry, we found out that you paid out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver’s license, you still can’t vote.
Political leaders should be...
Does Airport Security Really Make Us Safe? →
Charles Mann writing for Vanity Fair:
Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.1 trillion on homeland security.
To a large number of security analysts, this expenditure makes no sense. The vast cost is not worth the infinitesimal benefit. Not only has the actual threat from terror been exaggerated, they say, but the great bulk of the post-9/11 measures to contain it are little more than...
Top Ten Christmas Films
10. Miracle on 34th Street — Eccentric old man purports to be the real Santa.
9. The Nightmare Before Christmas — Halloween Town residents struggle to understand the true meaning of Christmas.
8. Scrooged — This Dickensian adaptation is not Bill Murray’s best film, but anything he touches is golden.
7. The Santa Clause — Apparently if you kill Santa, you become Santa.
6. National...
Satellite image of North and South Korea at night
This satellite image shows the amount of night-time light in parts of China, North Korea, South Korea, and parts of Japan.
For reference, almost 50 million people live in South Korea, while the best estimate is that 25 million live in North Korea. Other than the isolated spot for the capital Pyongyang, North Korea is devoid of modern civilization.
The Iraq War: 2003-2011 →
The Iraq War officially ended today.
I vividly remember being a senior in high school when the Iraq War began. In my US government class, the students were evenly split on whether the weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda were sufficient to invade without a lack of international support.
I’m actually surprised at how few people remember what the justification for the war...
Recommendations for Christmas Listening
Now that it’s officially December, I feel free to start listening to Christmas music non-stop up through the 25th. I thought I would share the two albums that are always at the top of my list every year:
The first is Sufjan Stevens’ Songs for Christmas. This work started out as a labor of love for Sufjan, as it became a tradition every December to record a Christmas album and give...
November 2011
15 posts
Douglas Adams on democracy
Douglas Adams, author of the excellent Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series has some witty and apt comments on democracy in this excerpt in which the character Ford Prefect explains to Arthur Dent why a robot said the phrase “take me to your lizards”:
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”
“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”
...
My review of In Time →
My good friend Donovan Richards curates the excellent site, Where Pen Meets Paper, which is a collection of reviews of music, books, films, and other cultural content.
I was recently invited to post my review of director Andrew Niccol’s In Time (starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried), which is one of the more intriguing sci-fi films to be released this year. You can read the...
So, will you be celebrating Black Friday or Buy Nothing Day?
The Dwindling Power of a College Degree →
Adam Davidson for the New York Times:
One of the greatest changes is that a college degree is no longer the guarantor of a middle-class existence. Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from nonelite schools. A...