* The newest History Carnival is up at "Clioweb".
* Sharon looks at what Henry Ford really said in Is History Bunk?
* A day or two ago I discussed the morality of looting; "The Acton Blog" has a post on it from the same perspective. For a discussion from principles that are almost exactly opposite, see the Evangelical Outpost.
* At "Parableman" there's a post discussing the dysfunction objection to design arguments: Daniel Schorr, Katrina, and Intelligent Design. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: people shouldn't use a design argument to criticize design arguments in general; and the dysfunction objection, like most problem-of-evil arguments, is a design argument. (Abednego rightly notes some of the problems with this.) The only reasonable way one could do this is if you were arguing for a rational inconsistency in design arguments generally, and were simply using the dysfunction argument as part of a reductio. However, it has been known since Hume that problem-of-evil arguments do not work against arguments for the existence of a designer; they only work against certain facile assumptions about the nature of the designer. Hume himself uses the argument correctly (when Philo uses it, he has already set aside the question of whether the designer exists, and is investigating Cleanthes's claims to be able to conclude on design considerations alone that the designer is perfectly good), but almost no one else does. Whether ID critics like it or not, the response of ID supporters to this sort of argument is exactly right: it's not a serious problem for them. The focus needs to be elsewhere.
* Daniel discusses Aristotle on Tragic Flaws.
UPDATE: I had forgotten that I want to link to Jeremy's interesting post on the Prodigal Son.
-> Blogging over the next few weeks will be more sporadic than it has been; I've recently moved. My new location is quite a bit better than where I was staying, but it's all the way out in Etobicoke. I do my blogging on-campus (usually in breaks while doing other things, like writing papers), but it won't be economical to come to campus more than two or three times a week. I can get internet where I'm at, but I need to set up for it, and that will take a while. I suspect that on days when I will be on campus, there will be a lot of blogging going on, though.
