JANE GALT looks different. The Cranky Professor looks different too. It is all very confusing. Also, Oblique House has a lot of fun, random stuff… “Ixnay on the erretfay,” a beauty hint for the non-squeamish, and more homeschooling personal-blog-type flotsam. Armed&Dangerous; has this discussion of different views of military life in science fiction, which I found super-interesting even though I have not read any of the books under discussion. Read more

“These references to past history are not simply an idle exercise in scholarly interpretation. They are, as the recent debate on the anti-Zionism resolution in the United Nations shows, the weapons of political warfare. Thus the Jordanian ambassador, contrasting European guilt for persecution of the Jews with the good conscience of the Arabs: ‘There was no situation similar to this in the East, particularly with the civilization where for centuries the majority of Jews lived happily and productively and to... Read more

St. Bonaventure on what scholars must avoid: “reading without repentance, knowledge without devotion, research without the impulse of wonder, prudence without the ability to surrender to joy, action divorced from religion, learning sundered from love, intelligence without humility, study unsustained by divine grace, thought without the wisdom inspired by God.” Read more

MATTHEW YGLESIAS points out an obvious huge problem with campaign finance reform, a.k.a. the New York Times/FoxNews Empowerment Act. Read more

KIKKOMAN!: Stolen with love from Charles Murtaugh: An amazing link. link. No, just so you don’t miss it, here it is again. Click. Wow. You’ve seen the Viking kittens, right? This is better. Read more

“Anti-Semitism, then, is not the answer to the emergence of Zionism: it can explain why people left Russia and other countries for other shores: it does not explain why a small minority–which later changed the course of Jewish history–opted for the Zionist solution.” –Shlomo Avineri, “Zionism as a National Liberation Movement” Read more

WHAT DO SCIENTOLOGISTS AND THE GOVERNMENT OF KAZAKHSTAN HAVE IN COMMON? They’re really, really lame; and they try to suppress people who disagree with them. Diana Hsieh is getting sued; as for Kazakhstan, here’s an excerpt from today’s Keston Institute bulletin: KAZAKHSTAN: HOME BIBLE STUDY ENDS IN POLICE RAID. (11 Nov). On 8 September police and officers of the National Security Committee (KNB, former KGB) raided the apartment of a Baptist church leader Kormangazy Abdumuratov, where Baptists were studying the... Read more

I HAVE NO MORE FUNNY MOVIE QUOTES! I used the last one yesterday. So from now on, I will start every blogging day with a quotation from whatever I’m reading at the moment. Maybe something funny, maybe something insightful, whatever. Today’s quote comes from Telford Work‘s paper, “Divided Loyalties? Christian Identity in Wartime America” (PDF file). “The New Testament appropriates every age of Israel’s history: the patriarchs (at Jesus’ annunciation and his calling of the Twelve), the exodus (in Jesus’... Read more

THE MOST COMMON AND THE BEST: This post and the next two are cross-posted at Questions for Objectivists. My main problem with Diana Hsieh’s essay/lecture “The Philosophical Underpinnings of Capitalism” actually doesn’t have anything to do with capitalism, or libertarianism, or even underpinnings. It’s instead a problem of method, though I do think this method-problem affects the philosophy. (Since this post has some fairly pointed criticism, I should note up front that I got some good, chewy food for thought... Read more

FIDES ET RATIO: Last night I read Diana Hsieh’s essays/lectures “The Philosophical Underpinnings of Capitalism” and “Why Be an Atheist?“. I’ll get to the capitalism one in a moment; for now I just want to address the atheism one. Hsieh is a good, clear, fluent writer, and I found many of her analogies both helpful and entertaining. As far as convincing me of stuff, the lecture didn’t do much, simply because the arguments she presents for belief in God are... Read more