The Questioning Christian

Kristof's good-news column

The New York Times's Nicholas Kristof reminds us that life is a movie, not a snapshot. EXCERPT:

 

"Every day, another 250,000 people graduate from extreme poverty, according to World Bank figures. About 300,000 get electricity for the first time. Some 285,000 get their first access to clean drinking water. When I was a boy, a majority of adults had always been illiterate, but now more than 85 percent can read.

 

"Family planning leads parents to have fewer babies and invest more in each. The number of global war deaths is far below what it was in the 1950s through the 1990s, let alone the murderous 1930s and ’40s."

 

 

Success: How much is due to effort, and how much to luck?

This is an interesting discussion thread about how success depends not just on our own efforts, but on luck, too — especially in our choices of parents and of upbringing — and so we ought to have plenty of sympathy for those who come up short in the luck category. Excerpt: "When once asked for the secret of financial success, he [the Duke of Westminster] replied it was to have an ancestor who had been a close friend of William the Conqueror."