“Throughout history, shortages of vital resources have driven innovation, and energy has often starred in these technological dramas. The desperate search for new sources of energy and new materials has frequently produced remarkable advances that no one could have imagined when the shortage first became evident.” So says Stephen L. Sass, a professor of materials science and engineering at Cornell, in today’s NYT op-ed, “Scarcity, Mother of Invention.” He concludes, “If there is anything to be learned from history, it’s...

I’m reading John W. de Gruchy’s Confessions of a Christian Humanist, and despite some rather disagreeable elements to his theology, he does have quite a few valuable insights. Here’s what he says in the context of Nietzsche’s derision of Jesus Christ contained in The Anti-Christ: Christians should not disparage the body, human strength and bravery, or the aesthetic dimensions of life. But Nietzsche is right, if not wholly so. The Christian God is the ‘poor people’s God, the sinner’s God’....

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NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams is asking, “Was the BP pipeline problem preventable?” It seems that BP has allegedly been giving required maintenance to the pipeline short shrift: “Allegations about BP’s maintenance practices have been so persistent that a criminal investigation now is under way into whether BP has for years deliberately shortchanged maintenance and falsified records to cover it up.” BP shut down the Prudhoe Bay oil field earlier this week, after a “spill” resulting from “unexpected corrosion.”...

According to figures recently released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, federal workers receive on average about double what private sector workers make: $106,579 vs. $53,289. These numbers are based on pensation. A study done by the Cato Institute (PDF here of 2004 figures), under the direction of Chris Edwards, shows that for 2005, “If you consider wages without benefits, the average federal civilian worker earned $71,114, 62 percent more than the average private-sector worker, who made $43,917.” In...

Seth Godin, a marketing guru, passes along this nugget: One mistake marketers make is a little like the goldfish that never notices the water in his tank. Our environment is changing. Always. Incrementally. Too slowly to notice, sometimes. But it changes. What we care about and talk about and react to changes every day. Starbucks couldn’t have launched in 1970. We weren’t ready. Of course, sometimes the reason that our perspective on an issue changes is because the thing itself...

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We’re working through the meaning of the tenth anniversary of welfare reform, debating important ‘next phase’ issues like marriage and fatherhood and what those mean to helping people leave poverty…permanently. That debate about government’s appropriate role in addressing social need is important. At least equally important is the work or private citizens at the local level, ‘on the street’–figuratively and literally. In February, a blog post featured A Way Out Victim Assistance program in Memphis, one of Acton’s Samaritan Award...

Another round of stories are out about the possibility of creating a modern-day wooly mammoth, Jurassic Park-style. The process would include injecting frozen wooly mammoth sperm into an egg of a closely related species. In this case, an elephant would be the logical choice. And in case you were wondering what you would call such a thing, I’ve already explored the possibilities in a previous post on chimera nomenclature: it would be called a “mammophant,” with the full taxonomy being...

“Scientists have discovered a way to help stop the spread of malaria by genetically altering a bacterium that infects about 80 percent of the world’s insects. Malaria is primarily transmitted through mosquito bites and kills more than a million people every year.” Source: “Genetically Altered Bacteria Could Block Malaria Transmission,” by Lisa Pickoff-White, The National Academies, Science in the Headlines, August 2, 2006. HT: Zondervan “To the Point” For more on the fight against malaria, visit Acton’s Impact campaign page....