“ICANN Reviews Revoking Outdated Suffixes” (HT: Slashdot). From the piece, “The Soviet Union’s ‘.su’ is the leading candidate for deletion.” A Google search turns up about 3 million sites with the .su suffix. How exactly did the Soviet Union get a domain suffix? The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and wasn’t yet mercialized. But it seems that the administrative record for the .su suffix was created just in time, on September 19, 1990, a little over a year before the...

They say that technology drives culture (HT: Zondervan>To The Point). But what drives technology? Many believe that pornography is the driving force behind adoption of particular technologies. Thus, says Slate television critic Troy Patterson, “Watching YouTube is far closer to consuming Internet pornography than staring at the television. … But then, all media culture has an increasingly pornographic feel, doesn’t it?” Let’s look at some actual cases where this claim has been made (HT: Slashdot). In a recent TG Daily...

The business of philanthropy education, teaching people how to give their money away, is a growth industry, according to Business Week (HT: The Wealth Report). It seems that wealthy kids often have trouble realizing and meeting their moral duties to be good stewards of their inheritance. “With my inheritance, I felt a sense of guilt and responsibility,” says Jos Thalheimer, 24, whose great-grandfather founded the American Oil Co. (Amoco) in 1910. John Stossel’s recent “Cheap in America” program examined this...

Received an announcement today about this event to be held later this week, “Faith and International Development Conference,” at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., from February 1-3. Check out the list of sponsors at the bottom of the page, including: Bread for the WorldMicah ChallengeOffice of Social Justice and Hunger Action Just a hunch, but I wouldn’t expect a lot of market-friendly perspectives to be included. ...

Let’s engage in a little thought experiment. How would you feel about the following scenario? 1) The government bans all activities associated with Industry X because it judges that this industry damages mon good. Industry X is under government prohibition. 2) After enough time has passed and a new generation of bureaucrats has arisen, one of them has the idea of resurrecting Industry X because it has the potential to create new streams of revenue for the government. 3) The...

Kim Strasell in OpinionJournal today: CEOs are quick learners, and even those who would get smacked by a carbon cap are now devising ways to make warming work to their political advantage. The “most creative” prize goes to steel giant Nucor. Steven Rowlan, pany’s environmental director, doesn’t want carbon caps in the U.S.–oh, no. The smarter answer, he explains, would be for the U.S. to impose trade restrictions on foreign firms that aren’t environmentally clean. Global warming as foil for...

mittee, arguably, has more power or attracts more lobbyists than the Committee on Ways and Means,” writes the NYT’s Robin Toner. “Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, joined mittee in 1975, and now, at the age of 76, has finally arrived at the very top.” “[Jesus] said the rich are going straight to hell.” Jared Bernstein, a liberal economist, said: “When the Ways and Means Committee has worked well, they’ve identified social needs and advocated for the funds...

With respect to the extension of political, economic, and religious freedom, East Asia contains some of the more challenging spots on the globe. mented in the past on Korea and China. It seems safe now to place in the column “making progress” a nation that had been one of the most totalitarian, Vietnam. Concerning the sphere of religious freedom, Zenit offers this interview (Daily Dispatch 01-25) with French Archbishop Bernard-Nicolas Aubertin of Tours. Aubertin characterizes the situation of the Catholic...

The newest edition of the Journal of Markets & Morality is now available online and in print. You can pick up a single copy of the print version at the Acton Bookshoppe, or you can subscribe to the Journal. This issue of the Journal features a new scholia. “Selections from the Dicaeologicae” is an original English translation of several key chapters of Johannes Althusius’ Dicaeologicae, the ground-breaking seventeenth-century work that systematized current civil law, Roman law, and Jewish law into...

Several months ago I was invited to serve on the board of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). Frankly, I was stunned by this invitation. I will attend my first meeting in Washington, DC, in a few months. IRD’s purpose statement says that it is: (1) An ecumenical alliance of U. S. Christians, (2) working to reform their churches’ social witness, in accord with biblical and historic Christian teachings, (3) thereby contributing to the renewal of democratic society at...