I saw the latest blockbuster Avatar last night, and the early plaudits are true: this is a visually stunning masterpiece of “hybrid” cinematography, a “full live-action shoot bination puter-generated characters and live environments.” But there are other, pelling ways, in which Avatar is a hybrid of sorts. There are literal hybrids in the Avatars themselves, the genetically-altered bining both elements of Na’vi and human genes to act as bodies for the Avatar “sleep walkers.” mentators have noted the lack of...

The question: Is this Copenhagen global warming conference an environmental pilgrimage for some? Says one demonstrator: “You can call it, like, some kind of a new religion, I don’t know … ” But the guy in the polar bear costume isn’t so sure. ...

If ever G.K. Chesterton’s old quip about heresy being “truth gone mad” was in full view, es a report from England whereby Fr. Tim Jones, an Anglican minister, had actually encouraged the poor to shoplift from large chains this holiday season. … the minister’s controversial sermon at St. Lawrence Church in York has been slammed by police, the British Retail Consortium and a local MP, who all say that no matter what the circumstances, shoplifting is an offence. Delivering his...

Those three words Just Sign Here are what you’re told when you sign up for a cellphone, or buy a car or take out a bank loan. And it’s what you’re told to do when you buy a house whether or not there’s a mortgage. Just the buying part involves many disclosures about the nature of the property and pages of stuff to read and acknowledge. Over the years I’ve heard more than one escrow officer admit, “if you read...

With all of the blizzards, cold temperatures and the circus-like atmosphere in Copenhagen last week, it looks like people are ing more and more skeptical of global warming—or I should say climate change. But in times like these we have to remember that blizzards, or even historical low temperatures, are irrelevant–because it is not LOCAL warming, it is GLOBAL warming. The only time LOCAL temperatures have any significance is when they are hotter than normal–then it es empirical evidence. I...

My mentary this week looks at As We Forgive, a moving documentary about reconciliation and forgiveness in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. As I reflected on forgiveness in my own life, my thoughts fell on a dear friend who died very young and my feelings towards the man who took his life. The mentary follows: Two and a half years ago I lost my good friend, Tim. He had just reenlisted for his second term in the Army after...

As a follow-up note to my previous post, “Wealth and Fidelity, Golf and Marriage,” it’s worth exploring in some more detail the multi-billion dollar phenomenon that has been called “Tiger, Inc.” and the relationship between power in sports, wealth, and politics. Lord Acton’s dictum, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” has found relevance in a number of contexts beyond those of its initial utterance. It is most frequently used nowadays to refer to the kind of fullness...

Update: Naturally, right after I post this article, new es out that makes Climategate look even worse. It’s been noted in ments that Russian scientists are now saying outright that climate data from Russian weather stations has been tampered with in order to make it appear to substantiate claims of catastrophic man-made global warming: On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the...

Breaking news: India, China walk out of climate summit So much for the “God moment.” Seeing as how this was our last chance and all, I think I’m going to take the afternoon off to go get my affairs in order. Mind Boggling: How could world leaders e to a consensus when Chin-Strap the Polar Bear and the Guardian Angels of the Climate were all in agreement? Unity in diversity! It was so spiritual! The mind reels. CONSENSUS! No, seriously,...

A new NBER working paper promises to blow up the myth that it is primarily the wealthy that will bear the cost of taxes on carbon emissions. In “Who Pays a Price on Carbon?” Corbett A. Grainger and Charles D. Kolstad explore the possibility that “under either a cap-and-trade program that limits carbon emissions or a carbon tax that imposes an outright tax on these emissions, the poor may be among the hardest hit. Because they spend a greater share...