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Against austerity
It has become fashionable among politicians to preach the virtues of pain and suffering, no doubt because those bearing the brunt of it are those with little voice—the poor and future generations. From Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Read the rest here.
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New social ethics blog
Readers may be interested in this new(ish) blog: The Moral Mindfield. The about page says that it is “intended as an open forum for the discussion of the ethical dimensions of society and culture. …informed by philosophy, theology, and social theory, as well as other academic disciplines.” If I’ve got this right, the contributers are…
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Taking a bite out of the war machine
This is late, but it was nice to see Nick Kristof publish a column (on Christmas Day, appropriately enough) making the case for reduced military spending. To me, the person who has made the case that Americans over-rely on military solutions most persuasively is Andrew Bacevich in his three books The New American Militarism, The…
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Christmas unplugged
I may have been overeating a bit, but I’ve been doing a pretty good job of limiting my diet of electronic media during the holidays. I haven’t tweeted or checked Facebook (or blogged, obviously) since leaving town for my wife’s ancestral home in Indiana on the 23rd. I’ve limited e-mail to once or twice a…
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Best books of 2010 (the year of the whale)
Here are the best books I read in 2010, most of which weren’t published in 2010. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick: Probably the greatest novel I’ve ever read. I hope to someday find words to write more adequately about it. Philip Hoare, The Whale: A social and natural history of man’s dealings with whales. This is the…
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An experiment in apologetics
Camassia recently wrote a post following up on a discussion we were having here about religious pluralism, specifically with regard to Marjorie Suchocki’s book Divinity and Diversity (see my original post here). One of the issues that came up in the ensuing discussion was whether affirming religious pluralism means you’re excluded from contending for truth…
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Christmas is awesome
Christmas has been getting flak from all sides this year. Conservative Christians think it’s too secular or “multiculturalized”; secularists think it’s too religious, or they make what they seem to think is the devastating point that Jesus was probably not actually born on December 25th; “radical” Christians think Christmas is too sentimental or commercialized; liturgical…
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“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse”
We’re doing a “lessons and carols” service at church tomorrow and I’m one of the readers. The passage I was assigned is Isaiah 11:1-9. It’s not terribly original to say so, but it’s one of my favorites: A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his…
A Thinking Reed 