EZ Reads, 2/26/09

A little less out there today, but still some cute stuff and food for thought:

• Wolf asks if there's any personal integrity left out there. Honestly, there is; but at the same time, I'm consistently dismayed by how often even some good friends of ours shrug off personal responsibility, communal responsibility, honesty, low-level theft, etc. It's really troubling.
• The OU Job Board is offering free Quickbooks classes.
• This piece on Freakonomics is difficult to sum up - just read it, it's fascinating.
  
• EoZ has a few good ol' Jewish jokes that will bring a smile to your face.
• Indexed notes how two people can see the same thing a bit differently. Cute.
• Freakonomics asks people to say who the smartest person they know is. Feel free to submit your own.
• A cute and interesting piece in the WSJ asking economists the best way to spend $8/week Obama's tax cuts will net.
  
• Gil posts about the problem religious diversity creates for a man of faith, then addresses why he does not think it's a problem. The discussion is at some points rather interesting as well.
  
• R' Aviner has an interesting explanation about why we pasken like Beis Hillel now, though we may follow Beis Shammai when Mashiach comes:

  We must understand that Beit Shammai discusses the world in the future in which our world will have a reality more appropriate to the stringent positions of Beit Shammai. Beit Hillel intended positions more compatible to our current world.

  I think that applied, this would be a good lesson to internalize in general regarding psak and our approach to chumros in specific. There needs to be an appropriate understanding of when we should be strict and when we need to live in this world.
  

Check it out.