The Role of a Critic

Internet commentary is mostly so disappointingly awful (it's awfully easy to forget how good it was for a minute with Chowhound). Yet there are still gold nuggets amid the mud. A few years ago, I found a shimmering bit of wisdom in a comment on some crappy Buddhism site. And tonight I stumbled across the following elegant thought, buried in a discussion of Penn and Teller's mildly interesting film about an inventor who tried to recreate a Vermeer painting:

"A good [film] critic should tell you what to look for in a picture, not what you'll find."

The most incisive takedown of modern-day atheism I've ever seen came via a letter to the editor of Wired Magazine.