Persecution in Somalia.

Wow.

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

seaweed

Link to the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange. The documentary I posted earlier focused on the demands placed on the ECX by the Ethiopian government, but paid very little attention to the formal nature of their relationship. Ethiopia, coming out of a command economy, may be showing progress, but I'm not sure that the ECX necessarily represents market freedom for the people of Ethiopia. I may use this issue for my research paper topic in African Politics.

ECX

Interesting documentary by wideangle on the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange. A Cornell-educated economist returns to her homeland with market solutions to issues like poverty and hunger.

I'd like to do a little research on the relationship between the ECX and the Ethiopian government before I draw a final conclusion.

Micah 6:8

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?

money

Two things about money: I need it, and to get it, I need to write about it.

Between semesters at Grove City this summer, I worked nearly full time. It wasn't terrible, but I was tired. Too tired to do my other job: search for scholarships. My mom, intent on seeing me graduate without debt, got me signed up for an abundant feed of scholarships from a couple of websites promising free, easy, and not-so-easy money. But she signed me up with her email address, so she had to forward them to me as they came. And they came. Sometimes two or three at a time, every couple of days.

So she forwarded them to me, confidently assuming that I was filling them out in my spare time. Someone told me that she'd told them that I was working hard on scholarships, especially on one in particular... something about money.

Yeah. Money. The Ayn Rand Institute gives out thousands of dollars in scholarship money to the deserving poor. The catch is that being in the heritage of the matron saint of capitalism, they can't give away something for nothing. An essay is required in exchange. That way money doesn't fall into the hands of the moochers.

With a choice of three essay questions to answer, I read Atlas Shrugged early in the summer. It was good. Actually it was ugly. Ugly and Inspiring. It wreaked temporary havoc on my worldview and made me want to switch my major to business. I thought about it. I thought about the book, and about money, and a little about the essay questions. I chose the explanatory topic over the character comparisons. I'm bad at those.

"What is the difference between the man who wants to have money and the man who wants to make money?" Naturally this has to be answered with examples from the book. The book is one thousand, one hundred, and sixty-nine pages long. The deadline is the seventeenth of this month.

So what is the difference between the person who wants to have money and the person who wants to make money? Can money be made? Who wants to do that?

The man who wants to make money is the rational man whose grasp of reality causes him to act to make money through production while the man who wants to have money is the man who has divorced his mind from reality and wishes to have wealth without productive labor.

Before this answer makes any sense though, I suppose I should attempt to define or describe money.

Money is created only through the production of goods for trade. Even a natural resource can be extraced only through some rational productive process. Behind this process is the reason of man. So money, as Franciso d'Anconia says in Atlas Shrugged, is "the product of man's capacity to think." The rational man, recognizing that something can't come from nothing, makes money. The man who rejects rational thought embraces mysticism, divorcing existence from cause--he wants to have but not to make money.

So somehow money is the product of human rationality (this presupposes that self-interest and preservation are rational). And then I have a lot of quotes and I need to read for a biology quiz...

Resolutions

The first of Jonathan Edwards' Resolutions:

"Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriads of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever."

The rest of the resolutions can be found here.

Direct link to Acirfa. This business has created multiple jobs and supplies bikes for use by medical workers and rural pastors in Zambia.

Check out Zambikes

Ayn Rand

I am reading Atlas Shrugged. Currently I'm in the middle of the 60 page monologue. In many ways it appeals to me; then I glimpse the uglier side of Rand's libertarian utopia, and I am shocked and somehow disappointed. I think that's her mistake. She denies original sin and assumes that some sort of utopia can be attained through libertarian capitalism on the basis of reason. But what is the reason based on? Ultimately it must be subjective. I love her picture of a man unhampered by guilt, seeking and finding joy in truly living, but I can't accept her premise. And I wonder, if she truly understood justification and the radical freedom from guilt found in Christ, would her view of Christianity have been any different? I feel suspended in the antithesis between her morality of the hero and that of the servant she despises.

Pensees

"To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher."
Blaise Pascal

I feel overwhelming sadness... for no apparent reason. It presses down and takes my strength and I want to lean on something and cry.

I am lonely.

music?

I heard Denis Matsuev play Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra last night. The first movement had some wonderful moments, although I felt that Matsuev's playing lacked clarity in places. By the end of the third movement, he had almost completely sacrificed clarity to speed for a Finale that I found frankly disappointing. Technically the guy was brilliant- I could see it. But when an artist sacrifices the music to their technical prowess, when the music becomes a venue for display... I was disgusted by the arrogance. He got a standing ovation (something I might have given him after the first movement) and had to play two encores. After being treated to a frenetic G-minor Prelude, I was ready for the man to stop, but the audience ate it up like kids at a gymnastic competition. So we got more.

Who has set me here?

"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in an eternity before and after, the small space I fill engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I am terrified."
Blaise Pascal

thinking...

Economics: I am currently taking a course on the foundations of economics at Grove City College.

The Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Holiness: God is, I am not. Too often, I don't seem to care.

Paul Washer's sermin, "Examine Yourself."

Sometimes I wonder if I have a personality.

That's all.

Also, I love Baroque music. I have discovered an affinity for some jazz as well. And that's Ok. I don't have to find any redeeming value in what you listen to. I can find most music vapid, shallow, and completely pointless if I want to.

2008

I'm not quite sure where 2008 went, but it is over. I have been blessed beyond measure.

Resolutions 2009? To rest in Christ, in whom I am blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.