Reading On The Rise

According to this report, reading is on the rise in America for the first time in a quarter century. It's difficult for me to express how pleased this makes me. Civilization and its discontents have been in the back of my mind since I became aware of how little reading most people do. To go into a house---a nice house,well-furnished, a place of some affluence---and see no books at all has always given me a chill, especially if there are children in the house. Over the last 30 years, since I've been paying attention to the issue, I've found a bewildering array of excuses among people across all walks of life as to why they never read. I can understand fatigue, certainly---it is easier to just flip on the tube and veg out to canned dramas---but in many of these instances, reading has simply never been important. To someone for whom reading has been the great salvation, this is simply baffling. Reading, I believe, is the best way we have to gain access to the world short of physically immersing ourselves in different places and cultures. Even for those who have the opportunity and resource to travel that extensively, reading provides a necessary background for the many places that will be otherwise inaccessibly alien to our sensibilities.

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Carnival of the Godless #109

That's right, it's carnival time once again! This 109th time around, our gracious host Rana uses poetry to introduce each featured article. Click here for a big ol' fix of godlessness. I love the COTG and have been following it since it was in its venerable 80s. There's always a great range of articles and perspectives and I've found quite a few blogs who've ended up bookmarked for daily visits, so do get over and have a browse (oh yeah - one of mine's in this carnival too!). Cheers H

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Comments that sour conversation: free speech versus censorship

Most of us seek a mutual exchange of ideas in our conversations, but not all of us. Most of us are open to the possibility of intellectual change, but not all of us. We get many comments at this site, most of them thoughtful, many of them really challenging to my pre-conceived beliefs. I revel in those challenging comments. In the past few months, though, I have struggled with how much leash to give to several visitors to this blog even though they tried to A) monopolize the conversation, B) preach, C) impose their favorite two issues upon every post, and D) ignore clearly-stated bona fide points made by others. In addition to using these ignorant and aggressive tactics many of these comments clearly have their facts wrong (some claimed that Obama is a terrorist; others claimed that God Himself wrote the Bible in King James English). When these sorts of people join in-person real-time conversations, almost all of us employ similar strategies. We extricate ourselves from those conversations so that we can join some other conversation. We also take steps to avoid spending time in the same room with those sorts of people on future occasions. A blog is not exactly a conversation, but it is a lot LIKE a conversation. What, then, should a moderator do when conversation-killers attempt to roost at a blog? For many months, I've struggled with this question.

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A Few Quotes To Start The Year Off

This first is something for all of us to contemplate when engaging each other in debate. Since logic and sensibility do not coincide, and since both have legitimate claims upon our decision, the great and recurring debate about century boundaries simply cannot be resolved.  Some questions have answers because obtainable…

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