Ernie Harwell was calling the play by play over television for the first live televised sports broadcast from coast to coast. The series featured the famous “shot heard round the world” at the Polo Grounds in 1951. It’s possibly baseball’s most well known historic moment featuring a dramatic 9th inning home run by Bobby Thompson to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers, sending the New York Giants to the World Series. It was Russ Hodges radio call of the same game, however,...

A Harvard Astrophysicist argues that global warming is more related to solar cycles than to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. QUICK! Someone find out how Exxon managed to buy her off! In her lecture series, “Warming Up to the Truth: The Real Story About Climate Change,” astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas shared her findings Tuesday at the University of Texas at Tyler R. Don Cowan Fine and Performing Arts Center. Dr. Baliunas’ work with fellow Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Willie...

“The challenge of climate change is at once individual, local, national and global. Accordingly, it urges a multilevel coordinated response, with mitigation and adaptation programs simultaneously individual, local, national and global in their vision and scope”, stated Archbishop Celestino Migliore, representative of the Holy See, at the 62nd session of the U.N. General Assembly, which took place earlier this month. The theme of the session was “Addressing Climate Change: The United Nations and the World at Work.” Much attention is...

Nearly two years ago, in “Who Will Protect Kosovo’s Christians?” I wrote: Dozens of churches, monasteries and shrines have been destroyed or damaged since 1999 in Kosovo, the cradle of Orthodox Christianity in Serbia. The Serbian Orthodox Church lists nearly 150 attacks on holy places, which often involve desecration of altars, vandalism of icons and the ripping of crosses from Church rooftops. A March 2004 rampage by Albanian mobs targeted Serbs and 19 people, including eight Kosovo Serbs, were killed...

Speaking of the history of morality and moral judgments in historiography, Alister MacIntyre makes a pointed observation about plementary distinction that arises between what might be called “intellectual” and “social” history: Abstract changes in moral concepts are always embodied in real, particular events. There is a history yet to be written in which the Medici princes, Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, Frederick the Great and Napoleon, Walpole and Wilberforce, Jefferson and Robespierre are understood as expressing their actions, often partially...

AGAIN Magazine has published my “Conflicted Hearts: Orthodox Christians and Social Justice in an Age of Globalization.” The magazine is produced by Conciliar Press Ministries, Inc., a department of the self-ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church of North America. Excerpt: Just as there is no real understanding of many bioethical issues without a general grasp of underlying medical technology, there is no real understanding of “social justice” without an understanding of basic economic principles. These principles explain how Orthodox Christians work,...

Presidential front-runners and Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are lacking environmental leadership by failing to pay for offsets to cover their campaign carbon emissions. An article in the Washington Times titled, Green Crusades Lot of Talk, by Stephen Dinan, notes John McCain and Barack Obama aren’t leading by example. “Though both campaigns say they practice energy conservation, Mr. Obama offsets only some of his airplane flight emissions, while Mr. McCain doesn’t cover even that,” says Dinan. It looks as...

Interesting: Backed by studies showing that middle-class Seattle residents can no longer afford the city’s middle-class homes, consensus is growing that prices are too darned high. But why are they so high? An intriguing new analysis by a University of Washington economics professor argues that home prices have, perhaps inadvertently, been driven up $200,000 by good intentions. Just some food for thought on a Friday afternoon. ...

It’s a shame that the marvel of government-controlled health care hasn’t been implemented in the US yet: Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets. Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge. What a fool I’ve been to oppose this...

Rev. Robert A. Sirico (unfortunately misidentified by host David Asman as “Father John Sirico”) made an appearance on America’s Nightly Scoreboard on Fox Business Channel to discuss the announcement that 81 year old Fidel Castro is stepping down as dictator of Cuba, officially handing power to his sprightly, 76 year old brother Raoul. If you couldn’t catch it live, you can see it here: ...