Nov 11, 2009

College students graduate with 10’s of thousands of dollars of debt, home ownership is a myth since few people stay long enough in the same home to own it, car leases, credit cards, etc. The US economy needs debt in order to be prosperous and that means it needs the public to hold that private corporate debt...

Nov 11, 2009

While academic debate persists over whether Baum intended the story as a political allegory about the rise of industrial monopolists like John D. Rockefeller and the subsequent populist backlash, there is no doubt that Harburg’s influence made the 1939 film version more political. The film, says Ernie Harburg, is about common people confronting and defeating seemingly insurmountable and violent oppression...

Nov 10, 2009

One of the common complaints against traditional evangelicalism is that it has been held captive by a distinctly Western approach to rationality. The central target of this complaint is the “Enlightenment,” with its emphasis on reason to the detriment of revelation.

Nov 9, 2009

This is fun: Joanna Newsome. “The Sprout and the Bean.”

Nov 6, 2009

The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) has a long history of teasing Christians into dangerous territory. I suspect that many if not most Christians have more than a little curiosity about life after death. We want to know what happens. We want to know “how things work.” And this parable – at least on its surface – seems to give more indication of “how things work” than almost any other passage in Scripture.

Nov 5, 2009

Pakistani man in Kabul shows a Ministry of Finance identity card that includes his father's name, though given the average life expectancy of an Afghan male is 44 years it is not likely he is still around.

Nov 5, 2009

When the door of the steambath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good. Thereafter, the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets.

Nov 4, 2009

The truth is that people are frightened of being poor because they have no faith in Him who promised to provide all things needful to those who seek the kingdom of God. It is this fear that spurs them, even when they are endowed with all things, and it prevents them from ever freeing themselves from this sickly and toxic desire. They go on amassing wealth, loading themselves with a worthless burden — or rather, enclosing themselves, while still living, in a most absurd kind of tomb.

Nov 3, 2009

The most numerous and stable jobs of tomorrow will be those that cannot be offshored, because they must be performed on U.S. soil, and also cannot be automated, either because they require a high degree of creativity or because they rely on the human touch in face-to-face interactions. The latter are sometimes called “proximity services” and they include the fastest-growing occupations, healthcare and education.

Nov 2, 2009

We begin, sometimes without realizing it, to worship things, to relate to them as persons. And in the process, we inevitably relate to other persons as if they were things.

- Edward J. Farrell
from his book Gathering the Fragments