Archives for October 2011

So far, the end of the world is looking just like any other day of my life. But surely Harold Camping is going to come through for us with the apocalypse he promised us for today. Right?

Well, no. He’s not, because Camping has no idea what he’s talking about. He’s just another arrogant man who believes he’s smart enough to speak for God. History is littered with them, even if their excuses for being wrong change with the times.

If you’re an atheist or an adherent of another religion, you might think Camping’s failed prediction says something about Christianity, since Camping claims to be a Christian. In reality, though, it says the man can’t read the book he claims to believe. When Jesus spoke of the end of the world, He had this to say in Mark 13:32-37:

“But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning—lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.”

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Let’s say you’re looking to start a new business, but you don’t want to deal with a lot of bureaucratic red tape. Where’s the best place to start it? The most interesting thing about the list of best places to start a business today is who’s not close to the top of the list: the United States.

The World Bank’s annual Doing Business report ranks countries according to how friendly they are to business. Of the 11 categories ranked, the United States is in the top 10 in only four of them. (In the category of paying taxes, the United States is the No. 72 country in the world.)

So where’s the easiest place in the world to start a business? The report says it’s New Zealand, followed by Australia, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong. None of those are terribly surprising to anyone who keeps up with world business, but the No. 8 country is Rwanda. Yes, the country that’s synonymous in our minds with mass killings in its recent past is one of the few African countries getting its economic act together in this particular way. (Here’s a slideshow of the top countries in that category.)

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Why is it that most of us can come to perfectly logical conclusions about philosophy or politics — with airtight logic that nobody could possibly disagree about — but other equally intelligent people can come to radically different conclusions about the same things?

This happens to me all the time, and I’m sure it happens to you. If it happens about which car to buy or which computer is best or which smartphone to choose, it’s not that big a deal, because we can each make our own choices and let everybody else do the same — even if we argue about it along the way. (The correct choices, by the way, are Acura, Macintosh and iPhone. Just in case you were wondering.)

When we disagree about things in the market, we might sometimes assume that people who make different choices from us are wrong, but it doesn’t generally affect our own choices. As long as enough others share our choices to keep a company viable, we can all have what we want. (My condolences, though, go to those who preferred the Palm WebPad or the Amiga computer or even the Buick, because they’re all dead due to lack of market demand.)

Even with philosophical and theological issues, there’s no reason we can’t all stick to our ideas and assume that others are just blind to the obvious rightness of what we believe. But all that changes in one key area today — in our choices for how the society around us should be governed. When it comes to our “one size fits all” rules for society, if a majority accept socialist ideas, I’m stuck being forced to live a socialist life. If a majority want to strip our right to be free from warrantless searches, we’re stuck with that, too.

Does it really have to be this way?

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