Monetizing Jesus and the God gulf

Nicholas Kristof, in contrasting the life of the Rev. John Stott to other evangelical Christians, points out that Stott was very far from the preachers who monetize Jesus in preference to emulating him.  Stott was a scholar and did good works; he has much company in those qualities among other evangelicals still living.

Humanitarian-minded folk, some Christian, contribute to the "God gulf" by ascribing the distasteful qualities they perceive in some evangelical leaders to all who believe that way.

How much more good we could accomplish if religious and secular together would overcome the "God gulf."

Kristof, Evangelicals Without Blowhards, NYTimes, 7/31, SR 11.

Whaddya know?

From the founder of the world's largest hedge fund (with a return of 9 1/2% in 2008 when everybody else tanked):   "Our greatest power is that we know that we don't know and we are open to being wrong, and learning."
Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, quoted by J. Cassidy in the New Yorker,  7/25/11, p.58.

I think Bridgewater subscribes to  Rumsfield's 2d and 3d categories, but does the first exist for them?  The Secretary of Defense in 2002:   Known knowns - things we know;  Known unknowns - things we don't know; Unknown unknowns - things we don't know we don't know.


And does the famous Outside the Context Problem (OCP) in Bank's science fiction  Excession (1996) and
Taleb's analyses in Black Swan Theory (2007) fall only in the 3d category?

Life on the Farm

In a review of recent films about rural areas, Mike Hale, who grew up farming "on a quarter-section" in rural Iowa, evocatively remembers the "anomie and a sense of endlessly declining fortunes" that characterized life there.

So many times we stout-hearted, forward-looking folk rhapsodize about rural life.  We don't know or we don't remember that people leave for better opportunities not only monetarily, but also mentally.

Read his review NYTimes, Aug5, p.C1.