Is the war in Libya more justified than the war in Iraq? (H/T Neil Simpson’s latest round-up)
I wonder when someone is going to make one of these for Christian apologetics.
Neil’s latest round-up contains other interesting stories as well – an open letter to universalist pastor Rob Bell, an open letter to left-wing apostate Brian McLaren, an article about how General Electric is getting a tax break from Obama, and another universalist pastor who was fired by his United Methodist congregation.
Here’s one with a hummingbird.
Here’s another one:
They’re so cute! I love birds! Making friends with wild birds is the best thing in the world!
The Color of Paradise
This is a movie from Iran. Here’s a review from Christian Answers.
Excerpt:
The story focuses on the life of an 8-year old blind boy, Mohammad (Mohsen Ramezani), who spends the school year in an institute for the blind in Tehran and the summers with his grandmother and sisters in the hills of Iran. His widowed father, Hashem (Hossein Mahjub), is late in picking up Mohammad for summer vacation and even wishes to leave him behind at the school. His aversion to his son is painful to watch. The reason for his attitude becomes apparent when they arrive at the grandmother’s house in the country and Hashem visits the home of the Islamic woman he wishes to marry. He hides the existence of his son from her family, hoping to find favor with them. He has already told his mother he wants to put Mohammad in apprenticeship with a local carpenter, who is also blind. Hashem’s antipathy toward his blind child is his fatal flaw and error, and precipitates the tragic sequence of events that follow.
It’s not overtly Islamic, it’s just really good.
Watch the first few clips and then I will comment. (If you only have time for one clip, watch clip 3)
Clip 1:
Clip 2:
Clip 3:
Clip 4:
You can watch the whole movie on Youtube.
Sometimes people are born with characteristics that they can’t help that cause other people not to care about them. But we should really be seeing other people like God sees them. He doesn’t care about accidental external things. He cares what people are like on the inside.
Here’s the video. (H/T The Blog Prof)
He’s my second favorite economist, right behind Thomas Sowell.
In his latest column, he explains the famous “Broken Window Fallacy”.
Excerpt:
Economic lunacy abounds, and often the most learned, including Nobel Laureates, are its primary victims. The most recent example of economic lunacy is found in a Huffington Post article titled “The Silver Lining of Japan’s Quake” written by Nathan Gardels, editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, who has also written articles for The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post.
Mr. Gardels says, “No one — least of all someone like myself who has experienced the existential terror of California’s regular tremors and knows the big one is coming here next — would minimize the grief, suffering and disruption caused by Japan’s massive earthquake and tsunami. But if one can look past the devastation, there is a silver lining. The need to rebuild a large swath of Japan will create huge opportunities for domestic economic growth, particularly in energy-efficient technologies, while also stimulating global demand and hastening the integration of East Asia. … By taking Japan’s mature economy down a notch, Mother Nature has accomplished what fiscal policy and the central bank could not.”
[…]Why might Japan’s and Florida’s devastation be seen as “pluses”? French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) explained it in his pamphlet “What is Seen and What is Not Seen,” saying, “There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.”
Bastiat elaborated further in his “Broken Window Fallacy” parable where a vandal smashes a shopkeeper’s window.
A crowd forms, sympathizing with the shopkeeper. Soon, someone in the crowd suggests that instead of a tragedy, there might be a silver lining. Instead of the boy being a vandal, he was a public benefactor, creating economic benefits for everyone in town. Fixing the broken window creates employment for the glazier, who will then buy bread and benefit the baker, who will then buy shoes and benefit the cobbler and so forth.
Bastiat says that’s what’s seen. What is not seen is what the shopkeeper would have done with the money had his window not been smashed. He might have purchased a suit from the tailor. Therefore, an act that created a job for the glazier destroyed a job for the tailor. On top of that, had the property destruction not occurred, the shopkeeper would have had a suit and a window. Now he has just a window and as a result, he is poorer.
I learned a lot about economics from his columns.
WINTERY KNIGHT 