A life in words

  • A Quick Rebuttal

    I wish to respond to this. Do you really consider Putin’s presidency—which so greatly improved incomes, security, and national self-confidence—disastrous? George W. Bush did not cause the rise in commodities prices, nor did Barack Obama’s election lead to their collapse. If anything, the economic crisis is improving the prospects of an opposition party in Russia,…

  • But I Do

    With words, sweet words—the currency of the day— He tells how you’ve won his heart. Giving roses, dozen roses—Earth’s love letters loaned— He says he’ll always, ever be true. And maybe, By the swoons, the gasps, the thrills, It’s justified. The symbols are so sweet because of What they signify. But allow me to observe…

  • Mormonism Unveiled! (Again!)

    A Harvard Latter-day Saint girl named Rachel Esplin explains Mormonism in the above video. I appreciate the open-minded faith, the awareness of the dogma vs. doctrine distinction, and the ability to explain and connect.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations…. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form….John Stuart Mill, On LIberty