Filthy Rich -- Anthony Esolen of Touchstone magazine reminds us of the unnoticed gift of trickle-down decadence:
The rich can afford their vices, for a time anyway; the poor have no such margin for comfort. They are, in fact, endangered by the vices of the rich. I don’t simply mean that the rich man can extort his will from the poor, or wield the law as a club to keep the poor man in his place. He can do worse: He can infect the poor man with his vice, and that may be the quicker way to destroy him.
Easy to Answer, Hard to Live -- Jennifer Hardy explains the meaning of life.
What is "Poverty"? -- From The Economist: "Now that poverty means a risk of obesity, rather than starvation, it is harder to decide what constitutes the minimal decent standard of living a society should provide. On the one hand, there are those who feel that the minimum should basically be some fixed fraction of the top incomes—in essence, that it is indecent for anyone to be more than X times richer than the worst off. On the other hand, there are those who believe, as P.J. O'Rourke so pithily put it, that "the biblical injunction is to clothe the poor, not style them." (HT: In the Agora)
Tax Time Tips -- 10 don't-miss tax breaks
Sunni or Shiite? -- ABCNews.com has a test to see how much you know about who's who in the Middle East (I only got 6 out of 8).
Virus 2 -- This simple, infectious online game can cause lead to frustration, amusement, and memory loss (you'll wonder where the time went). (HT: Kottke.org)
Heresy Hunters -- Macht makes an interesting point about a blogosphere phenomenon: "The watchblogger is the guardian of truth, calling out those who dare deviate from orthodoxy. Out of all the types of blogs that I read, the only two types of blogs that have watchbloggers are Christian blogs and science blogs."
1
Joe asks, "What is the meaning of Life?"
And Jennifer Hardy responds, "Love".
Now, I thought the answer was supposed to be "Faith".
What's going on here, Mr. Carter? Is it possible we might be yielding to heretical sentimentality in our dotage? ;)
Or are the infidels, be they loving or not, still placing their souls in immortal peril?
posted on 02.23.2007 5:14 AM2
Mother Theresa noted that in her opinion, Westerners suffered a worse poverty than the people she picked up in the streets of India. They merely lacked rice; Westerners lack love, acceptance, and family.
"Abandonment is an awful poverty" - No Greater Love, Mother Theresa
posted on 02.23.2007 7:28 AM3
"The watchblogger is the guardian of truth, calling out those who dare deviate from orthodoxy. Out of all the types of blogs that I read, the only two types of blogs that have watchbloggers are Christian blogs and science blogs."
That's the entire text of the post; there's no definition of "watchblogger" given, and no watchbloggers are named. I can't tell how you decide who is or is not a watchblogger. So there seems to be no way to prove this claim is right or wrong.
Even so, it doesn't sound right. If you identify as "watchblogger" only those who claim to be "calling out those who dare deviate from orthodoxy", there are probably no scientific watchbloggers, but quite a few on partisan political blogs. If you think of "watchbloggers" only as those who make a point of criticizing wrong thinking, then arguably everyone is a watchblogger who writes on contentious topics.
I don't think this claim really tells us anything.
posted on 02.23.2007 11:16 AM4
I quite clearly defined "watchblogger." I also quite clearly wasn't trying to "prove" anything.
posted on 02.23.2007 4:38 PM5
I would quarrel that political blogs have 'watchbloggers' too - those who screech about folks who deviate from orthodox 'liberality' or 'conservativism' (as defined by the blogger, of course). :-)
posted on 02.25.2007 9:31 AM6
I don't read many political blogs but I wouldn't doubt that you are correct.
posted on 02.25.2007 12:44 PM