Some of you are no doubt already aware of David Plotz, a writer for Slate Magazine, who is currently Blogging the Bible (perhaps a take-off from the book Walking the Bible?). In his own words, he is "a proud Jew, but never a terribly observant one." And since mid-May, he's been blogging about reading the Bible, a book he's picking up for the first time in his adult life.

The results are occasionally entertaining. Of Joseph's rule in Egypt, which is otherwise inspiring, he writes:

Didn't someone write a book on the biblical roots of capitalism and free enterprise? How did he handle this episode? Our hero Joseph abolishes private property, turns freeholders into serfs, and transforms a decentralized farm economy into a command-economy dictatorship. This is bad economics and worse public policy. This is China, 1949. Joseph is Chairman Mao. (And, to speculate a little bit, perhaps this centralized dictatorship established by Joseph is what ultimately led to the Israelites enslavement in Egypt. Once you create a voracious state apparatus, it must be fed. Is it a surprise that slavery became part of its diet? In a less totalitarian state, perhaps slavery wouldn't have been as necessary or as feasible...)

I'm less engaged when he writes about the 10 Plagues in a post out today. Maybe it's just because I hear all sorts of clichéd answers jumping up meed to his clichéd questions. They're honest questions, and important at some level, but not at this level: they seem out of place on a zine with this kind of stature. Kind of makes me circumspect about the whole blogging enterprise.

Tags: Blogging

A piece from Slate skewers corporate blogging. I recognize that there are several reasons for blogging, but I thought glamorizing and formalizing the time a person spends not working were near the top of the list. The blogging-for-profit motive is almost antithetical to the genre.

Tags: Blogging, Humor