WHAT STARTED AS A MILDLY STUPID JOKE has turned into an interesting discussion. Zeth has moved his "Er What" post here and replied to my update here. My posts are also often thoughts-in-progress, so I appreciate his continued reflections. One small point and one larger one in response. The small one: how do you know that Nicole and Pammy aren't donating lots of money to starving people in Africa? If I had to bet, I'd bet they're both giving more to charity of some sort than either you or I could afford. Say what you like about celebrities (and I do, don't I?), but that's something they usually get right.

The larger one: just to clarify, my stance is not one of "moral relativism" (and Zeth wasn't saying it was), but rather classical liberalism. That is, the belief that individuals have the right to do whatever they please as long as they're not directly hurting someone else by malice or culpable stupidity. I may or may not approve of what they're doing, but that's my problem, not theirs, and if I want them to change, its up to me to reason with them and up to them whether they want to listen to me. (This is neither a conservative nor a leftist position, but for some reason it often seems to make conservatives think I'm a leftist and leftists think I'm a conservative.)

I've already said what I have to say about using the Bible for moral insight in my first SBL resolution post, so I won't repeat myself here. I've commented on the Waterstone's debacle here.

I do take the point about Internet humor, and am still feeling my way through that one. But I don't have it in me to be earnest all the time. Bear with me.