Latest Posts

July 31, 2006

‘We get Viagra. They get malaria.’

At least, the title of this post is typical of the mantra against the practices of drug pharmaceutical companies, according to Peter W. Huber’s “Of Pills and Profits: In Defense of Big Pharma,” in Commentary magazine (HT: Arts & Letters Daily). Continue Reading...
July 28, 2006

On Blogging

G. K. Chesterton on Journalists: “…there exists in the modern world, perhaps for the first time in history, a class of people whose interest is not in that things should happen well or happen badly, should happen successfully or happen unsuccessfully, should happen to the advantage of this party or the advantage of that party, but whose interest simply is that things should happen. Continue Reading...
July 28, 2006

Sin and Extreme Sports

You may know that a traditional way of interpreting the Ten Commandments involves articulating both the explicit negative prohibitions as well as the implicit positive duties. So, for example, the sixth commandment prohibiting murder is understood in the Heidelberg Catechism to answer the question, “Is it enough then that we do not kill our neighbor in any such way?” Continue Reading...
July 28, 2006

Isn’t the Cold War Over?

I’ve got an idea for a new sitcom. Titled, Hugo and Vladi, it details the zany adventures of two world leaders, one of whom (played by David Hyde Pierce) struggles to upkeep his image of a friendly, modern European diplomat while his goofball brother-in-law (played by George Lopez) keeps screwing it up for him by spouting off vitriolic Soviet rhetoric and threatening all of Western civilization with his agressive (but loveable) arms sales and seizures of private oil companies. Continue Reading...
July 28, 2006

Krauthammer on Proportionality

“‘Disproportionate’ in What Moral Universe?” asks Charles Krauthammer in today’s Washington Post. He continues: When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel “proportionate” attack on a Japanese naval base. Continue Reading...
July 27, 2006

Gambling Hypocrisy

“All forms of gambling are predatory and immoral in their very essence,” says Rev. Albert Mohler. I don’t agree, at least insofar as his identification of what makes gambling essentially immoral is not necessarily unique to games of chance: the enticement for people to “risk their money for the vain hope of financial gain.” Continue Reading...
July 26, 2006

A Unitarian, the Pope, and Jeffrey Sachs Walk Into a Bar…

Hunger, disease, the waste of lives that is extreme poverty are an affront to all of us. To Jeff [economist Jeffrey Sachs] it’s a difficult but solvable equation. An equation that crosses human with financial capital, the strategic goals of the rich world with a new kind of planning in the poor world. Continue Reading...