Zen 2

Picked up The Art of Happiness at the library, by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler.  Cutler, a Western trained and practicing psychiatrist, actually wrote the book after extensive interviews and time spent with the Dalai Lama (with the Dalai Lama’s approval, review, etc).  It’s not that I’m interested in adopting Buddhist religion, rather I [...]

Quote for the day

“Excessive epistemology becomes cognitive cannibalism.” The Real Jesus
– Luke Timothy Johnson
Pithy, cogent, and bonus points for double alliteration.

Oops and a Thought Experiment

An interesting case study of evolution in “real time” (that’s the oops).  This is one of several examples that demonstrates the challenge of studying evolution, and highlights a good question my father-in-law asked me recently: How do you study evolution when you can’t observe it?  I’m paraphrasing, but I interpreted and answered his question along [...]

Saving Darwin

Karl Giberson’s book Saving Darwin, How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution is outstanding.  In keeping with Collins’ and Millers’ books that act as a corrective (by Christians) to intelligent design from a technical standpoint, Giberson’s book is a cultural corrective.

Papers and investigative journalism

James Surowiecki has a take on the future of print papers.   I’m concerned – more after the quote…
Does that mean newspapers are doomed? Not necessarily. There are many possible futures one can imagine for them, from becoming foundation-run nonprofits to relying on reader donations to that old standby the deep-pocketed patron. It’s even possible that [...]

Gladwell appreciated, but…

I’ve long been a fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s writing, which I first discovered in the New Yorker magazine, and then subsequently in his books The Tipping Point and Blink.  He has a new book just out, Outliers, which I have not read yet.  Gladwell is enormously successful as non-fiction journal writers go.  His books sell [...]

WWJD?

In my last post, I alluded to a problem with the what-would-Jesus-do approach to ethics, and it needs to be elaborated on, otherwise my statement would just sound cynical. Jesus did not face every possible situation other people, cultures, and times would face, and his life, words, and actions cannot be distilled to a [...]

The Net Effect

As I contemplated my last two posts, I thought about the net effect of voting.  On the one hand, I don’t believe that my one vote, per se, made a difference; the people who had a more direct effect were campaign volunteers – I’m not looking at that.  I’m considering the net effect for myself, [...]

More on voting…

My last post left the propositions issue too incomplete. I didn’t vote no just out of principle on the process, but did have some specific reasons.

I voted…

…for the first time today (well, second, if you count the primaries).  I just turned 39 a week ago, and this is the first time I voted. So what changed?