A Thinking Reed

  • Moderate drinking = longer life

    From MSNBC: Moderate drinking may lengthen your life, while too much may shorten it, researchers from Italy report. Their conclusion is based on pooled data from 34 large studies involving more than 1 million people and 94,000 deaths. According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol — up to four drinks per day…

  • Making omelettes

    I’m willing to agree that, other things being equal, a pro-capitalist dictator would be preferable to a pro-communist dictator, but I’m not quite sure what this editorial from the Washington Post is supposed to be getting at. Even granting, for the sake of argument, that Pinochet deserves some credit for the Chilean “economic miracle,” does…

  • The economics of Bible publishing

    “The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some…

  • The pope and animals

    Via Andrew Sullivan, part of an interview with then-Cardinal Ratzinger: At any rate, we can see that [animals] are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God’s creatures, and even if they do not have the same direct relation to God that man has, they…

  • Blessed Spinoza

    Hillary Putnam reviews a new book on Spinoza in the New York Observer. I have a longstanding fascination with Spinoza. As an undergrad I became obsessed with his writing and all the secondary literature I could get my hands on. Harry Austryn Wolfson’s book in particular (which sadly appears to be out of print) was…

  • The deserving poor

    Author Kritzer, a Jewish convert to Christianity by the sound of it, writes on contrasting Jewish and Christian attitudes toward giving to the poor.

  • Voting with your fork

    Informative article in the Economist on various forms of “food activism” (buy organic, buy local, buy fair trade, etc.) and some of the complicated realities behind the slogans: All food choices involve trade-offs. Even if organic farming does consume a little less energy and produce a little less pollution, that must be offset against lower…

  • Backpedaling

    I’m not usually a fan of this style of music (jangly-indie-folksy), but I bought my wife the Sufjan Stevens Christmas box set and I have to say it’s grown on me quite a bit (go here to stream it). Disc 2 is my current favorite.

  • Liberation theology for animals

    Andrew Linzey has a nice piece in the London Times. Nothing really new if you’ve read any of his books, but a good concise case for an “animal inclusive” Christianity. (via Thinking Anglicans) I’m intrigued by the idea that the scope of Christ’s redemptive life and death extends to all creation and not just human…

  • NT Wright and the nature of apologetics

    The Christian Century reviews two recent books by that one-man publishing house N.T. Wright. Our parish curate warmly recommended Simply Christian, the Mere Christianity of the 21st century if reports are to be believed. Of course, Wright and Lewis are very different thinkers speaking to very different audiences. The reviewer, Samuel Wells, writes: I’m generally…