Here's a Financial Times article about Pope Benedict XVI's newest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. In it the Pope talks about, among other things, justice. (all excerpts are from the article, not the encyclical)

Unfortunately, one of the lost insights concerns justice. The Pope would like us to think about justice as having three aspects. There is ( Read more... )

I often scoff at the making of New Year's Resolutions, so I'm not sure why I suddenly feel the urge to make Birthday Resolutions. Anyways, here's what I've got ( Read more... )

Jen and I went to Seattle Center and watched the ceremony for the newly naturalized citizens--507 of them! Our friend Eduardo Mendonca (who works with Power Of Hope) was awarded the Spirit of Liberty award for being a badass naturalized citizen who works to share his native culture with his new home. He got to make a speech, along with a whole ( Read more... )

Hey guys, I think I just figured out how we can educate our children for less than a fourth of the cost! Thanks, Washington, DC!

Alternately, if you'd like, we can keep our education budget the same and multiply the effectiveness by four. Either works for me, I guess.

Here's an NYT Article (registration required--try bugmenot.com) on the corporate behemoths that are so large that we'd rather spend taxpayer money saving them than let them go by the wayside. One solution posited:

Ms. Bair and others argue that the government should impose fees on giant banks to encourage them to operate more carefully and offset ( Read more... )

"Knowledge Without Borders"

It highlights the fact that anybody can do it regardless of group or institutional affiliation.

I can't decide which one I like better.

Scientia Super Sapientia is here to stay, though.

So this gay couple is suing the Federal Government to chuck out the Defense Of Marriage Act as unconstitutional, because it keeps them from getting federal married-person benefits, even though they were legally married in their home state. Obama's position on gay marriage has been "nuanced". As I recall, he favors repealing DOMA, but hasn't come ( Read more... )

I miss knowledge bowl. I miss college bowl too. It saddens me that now that I'm out of school the only academic competition I can expect is the mishmash they dish out at pubs.

I've been thinking about this for awhile, and there's no reason we can't have knowledge bowl for grownups. Therefore I'm forming a league of my own. I've talked this idea ( Read more... )

Mark Steyn on the Stimulus, via the Orange County Register.

This whole situation is starting to sound more and more like Atlas Shrugged. I think I read that book at the right time--to be freaked out by the current situation!

Here's the NYT editorial page advocating a bail-out for California, because it is too big to fail. (you may have to sign in--try bugmenot.com to make that problem go away forever)

Sure, if we're going to give California money, there should be conditions. But not conditions that just make California a vassal of D.C. Here's my condition: If California ( Read more... )