One of the first posts I wrote for this site covered Einstein’s religious beliefs. Recently, the comment thread has taken on a life of it’s own.

Yesterday Penny pointed me to a recent TIME article that follows the development of Einstein’s beliefs from early childhood to his complicated relationship with the religious and political figures of his time.

It’s a great article and well worth reading. It even goes into Einstein’s beliefs (or lack their of) regarding free will.

“Human beings in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free but are as causally bound as the stars in their motions,” Einstein declared in a statement to a Spinoza Society in 1932. It was a concept he drew also from his reading of Schopenhauer. “Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity,” he wrote in his famous credo. “Schopenhauer’s saying, ‘A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills,’ has been a real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance.”

But despite his conviction in a mechanized universe, Einstein was capable of believing in free will for practical purposes.

“I am compelled to act as if free will existed,” he explained, “because if I wish to live in a civilized society I must act responsibly.” He could even hold people responsible for their good or evil, since that was both a pragmatic and sensible approach to life, while still believing intellectually that everyone’s actions were predetermined. “I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime,” he said, “but I prefer not to take tea with him.”

Really makes you wonder.

Although I normally stay clear of crowded tech topics, I’ve decided to do a short review of Joost because they made me feel special by giving me access to the private Beta version.

This is also the next step in the convergence of television and internet media. The success of Joost could have a big effect on how we watch TV in the future.

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We read for information, with the hope that information we acquire will improve our minds, giving us the means to improve our lives. In the modern Age of Information, more reading material is available than ever, making it increasingly difficult to allocate our reading time efficiently.All books are not created equal, and it follows that all readers are not equal either. To read prodigiously and to read profitably are two very different things. A great amount of time is wasted reading books that are forgotten a short time after they’re completed. But time spent reading books that cultivate intelligence and wisdom is a labor that yields continuous benefit over a lifetime.

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90% of writing published online isn’t worth the server space it’s stored on. This is due to lack of purpose and underdeveloped style. Many writers fail to take themselves seriously. Perhaps they underestimate the validity of their ideas or the power of the medium.

Effective writing can be learned by practice and observation. The purpose of this article is to encourage the creation of forceful, passionate writing, the sort of writing people love to read.

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