Jordan Ballor, associate editor at the Acton Institute, responds to a study published by Joan Silk, a researcher at the University of California, which finds that monkeys do not passion. Silk’s team placed a chimp in a situation where it had the option of pulling one of two ropes. Pull the first rope, and the chimp received a bit of food. Pull the second rope, and the chimp received the same bit of food, but a monkey in a neighboring...

A story on today’s Morning Edition by Claudio Sanchez examines the future of the school system in New Orleans following the hurricane Katrina disaster. New Orleans school superintendent Ora plains that charter schools are stepping in to fill the void left when public schools were cancelled for the remainder of this school year. She says, “There are so many different agendas. The mayor has decided that the city can run 20 schools under a charter. We have individual schools going...

Aaah, the magical soothing balm that is government regulation! The delightfully titled Now Batting for Pedro Borbon blog (“Manny Mota…Mota…Mota”) reveals the (predictable) results of governmental efforts to “increase transparency” in the business world: So, let’s review. The law that was supposed to ensure greater transparency and make the stock market safe for all of us, especially the little guy, is panies to purge the little guy, e less transparent, and shun our world-class public capital markets. Score another beaut...

The Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW! coalition announced today that Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has endorsed the campaign to use DDT as a primary weapon in the fight to control and eliminate malaria. The coalition wants 2/3 of world’s malaria control funds to be spent on DDT, or any more cost-effective insecticide, plus bination therapies (ACTs). Archbishop Tutu describes malaria as a “devastating” disease that is holding back African development. Many African countries desperately need cost-effective insecticides, such as DDT, to...

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at mand, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. Hebrews 11:3 NIV ...

Joe Carter, purveyor of the evangelical outpost (no longer active online), had a discussion last week worth paying attention to on the specifically Christian pursuit of knowledge. He argues that this applies even in something so apparently noncontroversial as mathematics. Regarding questions of math and science, “Even the concept that 1 + 1 = 2, which almost all people agree with on a surface level, has different meanings based on what theories are proposed as answers,” he writes. He also...

For those of us who harbor some nostalgic sentiment for this country’s agrarian past… I’ve written previously about the corrosive effect of subsidies on American agriculture. Now, Denis Boyles, in a thoughtful piece on NRO, notes from a similar perspective the importance of entrepreneurial thinking in preserving the agricultural towns of rural America. Here’s one piece: When I asked Genna M. Hurd, the co-director of the Kansas Center for Community Economic Development at the University of Kansas and an expert...

In today’s Times of London, William Rees-Mogg writes about the Vatican and its apparent rejection of intelligent design. Rees-Mogg also makes this provocative claim about Pope Benedict and some possible surprises from this new pontificate: His critics had expected him to be more conservative than his predecessor. I tended to share this expectation myself, but refrained from expressing it because new leaders always surprise one; they move in directions no one had previously foreseen. We should have been more conscious...

From Herman Bavinck: Even a freedom that cannot be obtained and enjoyed aside from the danger of licentiousness and caprice is still always to be preferred over a tyranny that suppresses liberty. In the creation of humanity, God himself chose this way of freedom, which carried with it the danger and actually the fact of sin as well, in preference to forced subjection. Even now, in ruling the world and governing the church, God still follows this royal road of...

Via Best of the Web Today, an ment from Senator John Kerry: Democratic Sen. John Kerry called the Republican budget approved by the U.S. Senate “immoral” and said it will hurt cities like Manchester. “As a Christian, as a Catholic, I think hard about those responsibilities that are moral and how you translate them into public life,” the Massachusetts senator said at a rally Saturday in support of Democratic Mayor Bob Baines, who is running for re-election. “There is not...

In the days preceding the arrival of Hurricane Wilma in Florida, Center for Academic Research Director Samuel Gregg joined host John Rabe on Fort Lauderdale radio station WAFG’s Vocal Point show to discuss what, if any, relationship exists between the increased frequency of hurricanes over the past few years and global warming. You can listen to the 20 minute interview below. (MP4) ...

A long oral and written tradition about the mixing of species has been noted on this blog before, specifically with regard to Josephus. I just ran across this tidbit in Luther that I thought I would share, which points to a continuation of a tradition of this sort running down through the Reformation. Luther menting on the Old Testament character of Anah, and debating whether we might consider Anah to mitted incest. He writes: We could say that Anah also...