Gregory Wolfe on Art & Creativity National Review Online: "If Wilde strikes you as suspect in voicing this opinion, given his own notorious troubles, how about those two paragons of reason and rectitude -- Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas? They provide a philosophical basis for Wilde's position by distinguishing between two different types of human action: making and doing. Doing involves human choices, the way we exercise our free will. In the realm of doing -- or Prudence, as it has been called -- the goal is the perfection of the doer. In other words, in our behavior we are seeking to perfect ourselves as moral agents.

But in making -- or Art, if you will -- the end is not the good of the artist as a person but the good of the made thing. The moment that art is made subservient to some ethical or political purpose, it ceases to be art and becomes propaganda. Art seems to require an inviolable freedom to seek the good of the artifact, without either overt or covert messages being forced into it. And history demonstrates that it is simply a statement of fact (to paraphrase Aquinas) that rectitude of the appetites is not a prerequisite for the ability to make beautiful objects. Thus our poisoner with his exquisite prose. Or Picasso brutalizing the women in his life. Or the legion of artists and scientists who drank or drugged themselves to death."

OpinionJournal | Extra | Investing in the Right Ideas: "The political world that these writers saw around them in the 1970s looked much different from the one that had so troubled Hayek in London in 1944. Instead of leading us down the path to collectivism, the welfare state had produced fragmentation, group conflict, disorder and a general loss of authority in society. In the United States, moreover, the welfare state had advanced itself not through the nationalization of industry but through incremental expansions of social programs and accretions to federal regulatory power. It was the intersection of these programs with the cultural revolution of the 1960s and '70s that gave rise, as the neoconservatives saw it, to urban crime, illegitimacy, broken families and educational failure. The contemporary problem was thus not so much collectivism or socialism as the loss of morale and self-confidence that was in some ways characteristic of all affluent societies--a problem to which classical liberalism did not promise any obvious solution."

Episode 44: A New Hope
New Scientist 11 steps to a better brain | Features: "It doesn't matter how brainy you are or how much education you've had - you can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties doesn't have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 11 of them."

John Stossel: "Take a few ounces of water. Garnish with an elegant bottle and a large price tag. Convince Americans it's cool. Somehow, in the 1990s, a French company called Perrier did that, and now, America is getting soaked.

Today, Evian has surpassed Perrier in sales; it's now the chic French water of choice. It costs more than gasoline � about $5 a gallon � and if you'd rather wear it than drink it, you can pay $10 for a five-ounce aerosol can (ingredients: 'aqua' and nitrogen). "

Show 'em my motto: "If it's not Right, it's crap."

Clear thinking by WSJ, way back in 1984:
OpinionJournal | Extra | Liberal Fundamentalism: "American liberalism has traditionally derived much of its energy from a volatile mixture of emotion and moral superiority. The liberal belief that one's policies would on balance accomplish something indisputably good generally made opposing arguments about shortcomings, costs or unintended consequences unpersuasive. Nonetheless, politics during the presidencies of Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower was waged mainly as politics and not as a kind of religious political crusade. Somehow that changed during the Kennedy presidency. "

Hiring is Obsolete: "Risk and reward are always proportionate. For example, stocks are riskier than bonds, and over time always have greater returns. So why does anyone invest in bonds? The catch is that phrase 'over time.' Stocks will generate greater returns over thirty years, but they might lose value from year to year. So what you should invest in depends on how soon you need the money. If you're young, you should take the riskiest investments you can find.

All this talk about investing may seem very theoretical. Most undergrads probably have more debts than assets. They may feel they have nothing to invest. But that's not true: they have their time to invest, and the same rule about risk applies there. Your early twenties are exactly the time to take insane career risks."

Levi's 501. Uncomplicate

Arthur Herman on World War II on National Review Online: "Today, it is sobering to contemplate how close Hitler came in the early summer of 1941 to achieving that new order. Had he followed the advice of his naval advisers and completed his rout of the British from the Mediterranean by seizing the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf, Germany would have secured control of the world's oil supply and the world's sea routes to India and the Far East. After Pearl Harbor, Hitler and the Japanese could have divided the resources of Asia -- from Bombay and Afghanistan to Australia and Singapore --� between them. "

VDH's Private Papers::: "As different as they may seem, all the problems and crises afflicting us, whether social or political, domestic or international, can be traced back to one historically unique development that has defined the modern world, and that was memorably expressed with brutal simplicity by Nietzsche: the death of God, or perhaps we should say more accurately, the attempted murder of God. The consequences of this phenomenon have been enormous, and were first identified by one of the great battlers against this delusion, Dostoevsky, who with equal simplicity said, 'If God is dead, everything is permitted.'"