One of the free downloads offered today in the iTunes music store is an interview with Jack and Meg White of the White Stripes. They were guests of Terry Gross on Fresh Air on June 9, 2005 and spoke about their new album, Get Behind Me Satan. Here’s an exchange between Jack and Terry on religion: TG: …Were you brought up with religion? JW: Oh yes, heavy duty. But not to the point of speaking in tongues or anything, but...

A fascinating interview with Kenyan economist James Shikwati in the July 4 edition of Der Spiegel: SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa… Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop. SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty. Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they...

In the words of puritan Samuel Hieron, in the care of a bad Miller we loose but our meale, of the Farrier but our horse, of the Taylour but our garment, of the Lawyer but our money, of the Physitian but our bodyes: but in the hands of an vnfaithfull minister a man looseth his soule and his everlasting portion in heaven. –Samuel Hieron, Aarons Bells A-sounding (1623), quoted in J. William Black, Reformation Pastors: Richard Baxter and the Ideal...

Another day of tragic news. The thoughts and prayers of all of us here at Acton are with the victims of today’s terrorist attacks in London. ...

A new analysis of birth records by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that in 2002 almost one in four births in the United States was to an immigrant mother (legal and illegal), the highest level in American history. In addition, nearly ten percent of all births in the country were to illegal-alien mothers. It is currently U.S. government policy to award American citizenship to all persons born on U.S. soil, even the children of tourists and illegal aliens. In...

Are you a blogger? Then you are invited to take the MIT Weblog Survey of 2005. ...

ARMAVIRUMQUE passes along an excerpt from an article posted yesterday by The New Republic, “The Killing Machine,” by Alvaro Vargas Llosa. The article is about Che Guevara, and the famous photograph that “thirty-eight years after his death, is still the logo of revolutionary (or is it capitalist?) chic.” Llosa interviews Javier Arzuaga, a former Catholic priest, self-described as “closer to Leonardo Boff and Liberation Theology than to the former Cardinal Ratzinger.” Arzuaga’s relates the following: there were about eight hundred...

I’m not sure whether this reflects the fractiousness of the European “Union,” or European unity in opposition to protection for intellectual property (or both), but yesterday the European Parliament “overwhelmingly rejected a proposed law Wednesday to create a single way of patenting software across the European Union.” “Patents will continue to be handled by national patent offices … as before, which means different interpretations as to what is patentable, without any judiciary control by the European Court of Justice,” said...

The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-Five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills, by Nathaniel Bluedorn and Hans Bluedorn, illustrated by Richard LaPierre, ISBN 0974531510, 234 pp. Christian Logic, 2005. Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn are brothers who live in Indiana (more about them at ) and The Thinking Toolbox is a follow-up to their first book, The Fallacy Detective. These books are primarily intended for use as homeschooling textbooks, and the Bluedorns’ interest in this area stems largely from their education at...

On the heels of the defeat of proposed protections for intellectual property at the hands of the European Parliament, according to the AP the European Commission is addressing an aspect of the same debate: online music and copyright. With respect to the potential economic benefits, “The most effective model for achieving this is to enable right-holders to authorize a collecting society of their choice to manage their works across the entire EU,” said the Commission in a statement, adding such...

As the jobless levels across the nation continues to decline, Michigan continues to lag behind. The nationwide unemployment rate decreased to 5.0% in June, to the lowest levels since September, 2001 according to reports. Meanwhile, Michigan remains at the bottom of the list with the worst unemployment levels, upwards of 7%. But the key to understanding why these improving numbers have not translated into job gains in Michigan appears in the same report: “Factory payrolls shrank for the fourth straight...

Today is the UN-sponsored World Population Day, which most of us have never heard of, I’m sure. From the name, I cynically (and rightly) assumed that rather than celebrating human life, this day would instead address many of the spurious “crowded planet” concerns put forth most popularly in Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (first edition 1968). Equality empowers…to do what exactly? You won’t see Ehrlich’s name plastered all over World Population Day materials, but I’m convinced that his thesis is...