The Lost Year
Michael Williams on homosexuality and the Church:#
From verse 29 and on we see that all mankind is filled with evil: envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, hatred for God, insolence, arrogance, boastfulness -- who among us is innocent? None. We all stand condemned, before a holy and righteous God.
Why, then, do many Christians see homosexuality and homosexuals as particularly evil? Theologically, we shouldn't. The real difficulty, however, is that although most of us acknowledge the wrongfulness of our many lies, thefts, and boasts, many people deny the wrongness of homosexuality. Our culture glorifies many types of evil, but individually we mostly agree that greed, slander, gossip, and the rest are bad and that we should not participate in them. However, when it comes to homosexuality, many people argue that it's not wrong at all; and unless we are willing to confess the evil of our actions, God will not forgive us. We must be willing to submit ourselves to God's dictates on right and wrong, and we must be willing to agree with him when he condemns our actions.
Alex Tabarrok explains why ownership is the key to long-term interests.#
Don Boudreaux is my hero:#
Today's Washington Post reports that
The U.S. government yesterday accused the nation's largest tobacco companies of conspiring over the past 50 years to deceive the public about the proven dangers of smoking to protect billions of dollars in profits the industry earned from cigarette sales.
Must be the most inept and ineffective half-century-long conspiracy in human history.
Tom G. Palmer has some delightful back-and-forth with some scholars from the Mises Institute, particularly Hans Herman Hoppe, on immigration and libertarian thought.#
Peter Leeson reminds every lotto winner that the first thing you should buy is an alarm system.#
Niall Ferguson writes about the future and present of the "special relationship" between the United States and the United Kingdom.#
Tony Pierce covers Jon Stewart on The Factor. So funny.#
Robert Lawson has very interesting story about deadweight losses and "gifts."#
You may have heard of the giveaway of a $28,000 Pontiac to all 276 audience members at the 19th season premiere of Oprah show. She said Ponitac would be paying all the taxes on the car. While Pontiac will pay the sales tax and other fees, Pontiac is apparently not going to pay the income taxes on the $28,000 gift. (That's not a tax on the car, that's a tax on you.) Depending on your marginal tax rate, this could increase your tax liability by $7,000.
Russell Roberts on how news stories develop and why accuracy is not always 100%. Reminiscent of Jay Rosen at points.#
I think a lot of folks think newspapers and news programs report on the news of the day. The editors and producers sit around and look at what has happened or they dig around to find stuff that no one has noticed (investigative reporting) and they decide what is important and what is not. Yes, bad news gets a lot of play because people like to read about it and ratings and sales matter. Yes, there may be bias. But in this essentially romantic view of the media, the media sorts through events and decides what's to print or put on the air.
Alice in Texas commits the common mistake of talking about terrible religions -- her examples are Christianity and Islam -- then implying that Tibetan Buddhism is fabulous. Maybe it would be if it wasn't the power structure of a brutal despotic theocracy that held back the entire country of Tibet for almost five centuries. But whatever, they're just facts, who needs 'em?#