My relationship with my father is, and has always been, one of the greatest blessings in my life. I hope that my daughters, one day, can say the same. It began with a sense of kinship. Even as a young boy, I was told how like my father I was. I look like him in face and frame. I sound and speak like him. I think like him — so much that my mother sometimes asked me for insight into... Read more
Should Christians reject a Mormon Presidential candidate for fear that a Mormon presidency would help Mormons evangelize? When I received Warren Cole Smith’s contribution to our discussion on Faith and the Future of Social Conservatism, I gave it the title, “A Vote for Romney is a Vote for the LDS Church.” (Believe it or not, I had no idea that this was an echo to a much more incendiary essay that made the rounds in 2007, “A Vote for Romney is... Read more
1. Sometimes The Onion is more on-the-mark than the regular news: 2. But as someone who spent fourteen years in the academic world, this is one of my all-time favorites: 3. And who could forget, “Is the Government Spying Enough on Schizophrenics?” 4. This is more funny-sad than funny-ha-ha, but it is amazing how liberal celebrities circle the wagons when one of their own is accused, because, you know, they’re the good guys. 5. Max Lindenman’s Diary of a Wimpy... Read more
1. My friend Dan Gilgoff launched the Belief Blog at CNN a year ago, and he reflects back on 10 Lessons they’ve learned in the year since. 2. 10 Must-Follow Fake Twitter Celebs. 3. The 9 Most Shocking and Incriminating Revelations from the Sarah Palin Emails. 4. From LifeHacker, Top 10 Ways to Upgrade Your Daily Routine. If you’re not a regular reader of LifeHacker, you might want to give it a try. 5. Ten Online Services Worth Paying For. Read more
If you believe that a set of religious beliefs is fundamentally mistaken, even detrimental to the eternal fate of its adherents, does this make you a bigot? Are you a bigot if you believe that people who hold to this set of religious beliefs are less desirable as potential Presidents? Romney, Evangelicals and Bigotry I ask these questions because of the avalanche of controversy that fell upon Warren Cole Smith for his article, “A Vote for Romney is a Vote... Read more
Celebrated intellectuals have long predicted the demise of religion in modern scientific society, and a new, headline-grabbing study presented at a Dallas meeting of the American Physical Society claims to demonstrate mathematically that organized religion will be “driven toward extinction” in at least nine Western-style democracies. One of the study’s authors, Daniel Abrams, had developed a mathematical model to account for the extinction of languages spoken by small numbers of people. Another of the authors, Richard Wiener, noted that similar... Read more
From Britain’s Daily Mail comes the story of Lieutenant Todd Weaver, who was killed by an improvised explosive in Afghanistan in September 2010. When his wife opened his laptop computer, two days after his funeral, she found letters that her husband had addressed to her and to their baby girl, in case he should die. In his letter to his wife Emma, he wrote the following: Never forget that God knew what was best for us before we were even... Read more
“Thumbs Up for Rock and Roll!” Hilarious. I don’t know if this is a future President, future dictator, or future exercise guru, but this kid will go far: If you like the thought of a Boy George wannabe wearing various Dumbledore robes, surrounded by others who are (apropos of nothing) twirling flags in the air, singing a hit tune, this video’s for you. What astonishes me is that we did not fall on the floor laughing when we saw this... Read more
Nine Ways to Increase Your Productivity While Working from Home From the Daily Beast, 25 Best Cities for College Grads From a former hospice worker, The Most Common Regrets of the Dying (h/t Greg Kandra) Read more
As most of America knows by now, recently a picture went out from New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter feed to a pretty young coed, containing a picture of some bulging underpants. The picture was quickly deleted from yfrog and Twitter, and Weiner claimed that his account was hacked. A lot of folks seemed willing to give Weiner the benefit of the doubt, but then his actions, evasions and non-answer answers have only intensified interest in the story and... Read more
Philosophical Fragments
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