A story over the weekend in Washington Post gives a good overview of the mixed motives behind evangelical campaigning for and against a la carte pricing of cable channels, despite the poorly chosen title, “Evangelicals vs. Christian Cable” (as if Christian broadcasters aren’t largely evangelicals of some sort or another). Just a sign that in the MSM evangelical is ing a term with primarily political rather than theological content. On the one side, lobbyists who want to be able to...

On April 3, I reported the story of Texas scientist Eric Pianka, who allegedly argued in a speech that the only hope for the planet was for a mutated Ebola virus to exterminate 90% of the human population. Forrest Mims, who attended the speech, broke the story. Over the next few weeks, there was a media firestorm over the incident, and Mims was accused of misrepresenting Pianka’s speech. As a result, I received several emails telling me that I should...

John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, writes up a summary of the proceedings of The Historical Society’s conference, “Globalization, Empire, and Imperialism in Historical Perspective.” “We urgently need an antidote to the journalistic clichés and the even more deplorable pseudo-scholarly discourse surrounding the interlocked themes of globalization, empire, and imperialism. We need the distance—the perspective—that good historical thinking affords. There was plenty of that on display in Chapel Hill, along with some muddle,” reports Wilson. For more on how...

Here’s a link to the introduction to Frederick Crews’ new book, Follies of the Wise, which includes the following statement: Having made a large intellectual misstep in younger days, I am aware that rationality isn’t an endowment but an achievement that e undone at any moment. And that is just why it is prudent, in my opinion, to distrust sacrosanct authorities, whether academic or psychiatric or ecclesiastic, and to put one’s faith instead in objective procedures that can place a...

TerraPass is a way to assuage a guilty conscience caused by your car’s CO2 emissions. In the interest of trying to be balanced on the whole CO2 debate, here’s a link to their climate change blog with plenty of GW posts. To each his own. But it sounds like a way for mon folk to buy into what Iain Murray calls “the new aristocracy:” Al Gore justifies his enjoyment of a carbon-intensive lifestyle in a speech in the UK: He...

Joe Knippenberg, who blogs at No Left Turns, provides a thoughtful and engaging analysis of the particulars of the recent Iowa court decision finding against InnerChange Freedom Initiative, an outreach of Prison Fellowship Ministries. In “Penitents in the Penitentiary?,” at The American Enterprise Online, Knippenberg writes, “Despite my general support for the faith-based initiative, and for religious efforts to put the penitence back in penitentiaries, I’m inclined for the most part to agree with Judge Pratt. In this particular case,...

Pro-family and church groups are battling over a proposed policy that would allow viewers to select their cable TV plans on an “a la carte” basis. But why are they asking the federal government to referee this fight? In this week’s Acton Commentary, I examine at the most munications policy: Turning off the TV. Read the mentary here. Related Items: Daniel Pulliam, “Preachers and pornographers unite,” GetReligion, June 12, 2006. Jordan J. Ballor, “Evangelicals and Cable TV,” Acton Institute PowerBlog,...

During this year’s hurricane season, global warming will likely e a topic of discussion at dinner tables across the United States (and likely in other countries as well). Al Gore recently released his documentary on climate change. “An Inconvenient Truth” asserts that global warming is indeed a real occurrence, and that it is being caused by CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere by factories, vehicles, etc. Gore also asserts that the majority of the munity” agree that global warming is...

“Amtrak officials seem to be working hard to patch up the older parts of the system. But recent delays serve as only the latest reminder that Amtrak’s problems are not bad management so much as stingy government. With gas prices up and airplanes overloaded, the nation’s leaders should be trying to figure out why this advanced nation does not have a more advanced passenger rail system.” Thus says an editorial in today’s NYT, blaming the lack of government subsidy for...

I’ve noted before the ballooning and bipartisan feeding at the public trough conducted by this Congress, for projects of dubious value. Brian Riedl reports on NRO today that there is at last some good news. Some of the pork from the latest spending bill has been plucked, credit due not least to a strong veto threat from the president. One might speculate that Republicans are rediscovering the benefits of spending restraint just in time to impress voters in November—but that...

A recent NYT article outlines some recent research showing that many people who give to charity “often tolerate high administrative costs, fail to monitor charities and do not insist on measurable results — the opposite of how they act when they invest in the stock market.” Tyler Cowen writes in “Investing in Good Deeds Without Checking the Prospectus,” about the research of John A. List, a professor at the University of Chicago, which “implies that most donors do not respond...

Before reading the rest of this post, let’s try a little experiment. Here are a set of quotations…your job is to decide who said it, a real-life scientist or Agent Smith from the Matrix trilogy (see answer key below the jump): 1. Humans are “no better than bacteria!” 2. “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.” 3. “There is no denying the natural world would be a better place without people. ALL people!” 4. “Planet Earth could...