From the New Yorker, a clip, from Jay Martel: Here’s my problem: I don’t believe in people. To me, human beings and their world are nothing more than the product of our collective imagination, a sad manifestation of our need to feel important beyond our actual existence. I also can’t help feeling that our lives would be better if no one believed in people; only then would we be able to truly deal with our problems without nursing the delusion of a... Read more

There is a major question we need to ask as a society, but the question will come after a brief listing. It is a listing of violence we Americans are both exposed to throughout culture and which we engage — engage so much companies can make lots and lots of money from us by producing violent images. (By the way, in Europe violent movies create an R rating. Is it the same in the USA?) Violent images are encountered in... Read more

What are the marks of intellectual humility? Where do you see it? What gives it away as present? W. Jay Wood: Philosophers known as “virtue epistemologists” claim that the goods of the intellectual life—knowledge, wisdom, understanding, etc.—are more easily obtained by persons possessing mature traits of intellectual character, such as open-mindedness, teachability, and intellectual courage, than by persons who lack these virtues or who are marked by their opposing vices.  Here I focus on the virtue of “intellectual humility” and... Read more

RE-POST: Asking the “Congress to confront America’s idolatry of guns was asking the fox to guard the chickens.” In fact, as Upton Sinclair put it, “It is very difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary, or his power is dependent on not understanding it.” Whatever the church has done to cajole or convince Congress to take gun safety or control has been outdone by the NRA. James Atwood, in fact, says he failed to take the Bible and Calvin... Read more

From The Onion: NEW YORK—Emphasizing the importance of “developing contacts and getting your name out there,” sales coordinator Keith Elliott told reporters on Tuesday that he was traveling home to Ohio for the holidays to put in some solid networking time with his family. “Christmas is a great opportunity for me to really work the room, and I’m hoping to make some big contacts, especially on my mom’s side of the family,” said Elliott, who mentioned that he would “definitely... Read more

Henry Blodget: Ron Unz of the American Conservative posits that 375-year old Harvard University has grown so rich that it is now essentially a giant hedge fund with a little school attached. The evidence: Harvard’s endowment is now back over $30 billion. To manage this endowment, Harvard employs a platoon of hedge fund managers who are paid like, well, hedge fund managers. Just the top 5 of these hedge fund managers, Unz reports, recently took home $78 million in a single year. That’s... Read more

From Edmund Sanders, LATimes: Samaritans, who trace their roots back about 2,700 years, are best known for clinging to strict biblical traditions that have largely disappeared, including animal sacrifice, isolation of menstruating women and, until recently, a ban on marrying outsiders. But after facing near-extinction and being devastated by a high rate of birth defects because of inbreeding, the community is using modern science — including genetic testing, in vitro fertilization and abortion — to preserve their traditional way of life. “It’s changing our... Read more