Assorted Links (12/19/2009)

Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading today (organized by topic):

Art, Music, and Culture

  • The High Cost of Ignoring Beauty, by Roger Scruton

“Architecture clearly illustrates the social, environmental, economic, and aesthetic costs of ignoring beauty. We are being torn out of ourselves by the loud gestures of people who want to seize our attention but give nothing in return.“

Health Care Reform

  • Senate Preparing for Cloture on Health Care, by Megan McArdle
  • We Already Know Why Healthcare Overhaul Will Fail, by John Calfee

“The healthcare overhaul is shaping up as the highest-risk legislation in modern times.“

Highly Recommended

  • The decade in news photographs, from the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” blogsite

“Call it what you will, “the noughties”, “the two-thousands” or something else, the first decade of the 21st century (2000-2009) is now over. Looking back on the past ten years through news photographs, it becomes clear that it was a dramatic, often brutal decade. Natural disasters, terrorist attacks and wars were by far the most dominant theme. Ten years ago, Bill Clinton was ending his final term in office, very few had ever heard of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein still ruled Iraq – all that and much more has changed in the intervening time. It’s really an impossible task to sum up ten years in a handful of photographs, but below is my best attempt at a look back at the last decade – feel free to let me know what I missed in the comments below. (50 photos total)”

Religion

  • Christianity Caused the Crash?, by Greg Forster

“A screaming headline in the Atlantic magazine blames Christianity for the recent economic turmoil. In fact, changing economic attitudes among Christians did contribute to the problem—just not in the way the Atlantic believes.“