Latest Posts

June 20, 2008

Science or religion? A false choice

On Tuesday the 17th Mons. Rino Fisichella was called by Pope Benedict XVI to succeed Mons. Elio Sgreccia as the head of the Pontifical Academy of Science, Social Sciences, Life. His Excellency was also raised to the title of archbishop while maintaining his role as Rector of the Pontifical Lateran University of Rome. Continue Reading...
June 19, 2008

A new advertising campaign

Beginning this month in Christianity Today, Acton is introducing a new advertising campaign that asks readers to look at the economic implications of policy questions put forward by religious leaders. The first ad looks at the top down planning, command-and-control orientation of many humanitarian aid programs and opens with this: In developing countries, two million children die each year from common diarrhea. Continue Reading...
June 19, 2008

The federal landlord map

A short time ago I posted a bit about the amount of land owned by the US government. My blog colleague, Jordan Ballor, located a lovely map displaying graphically the amount of land owned by the government in each state. Continue Reading...
June 18, 2008

Acton USB flash drive

The Acton Institute is branching out into the technology sector with its new Acton branded flash drives. We initially offered these drives to attendees of Acton University where they were received with cheers from bloggers and others who still remember—with a shudder—the horrors of the old 3½ floppies (remember the good old “tape hack” you could use to trick your computer into thinking that it was a DD and not an HD disk?) Continue Reading...
June 18, 2008

Interventions target people, not robots

Shankar Vedantam on the problems of “social” governmental intervention, including increased moral hazard (HT: Arts and Letters Daily): While it seems like common sense to pump money into an economy that is pulling the bedcovers over its head, the problem with most social interventions is that they target not robots and machines but human beings — who regularly respond to interventions in contrarian, paradoxical and unpredictable ways. Continue Reading...
June 17, 2008

Acton University 2008 audio

Update – Tuesday, 5:00 PM: The full menu of lecture recordings is now available. We’ll likely post some video of the evening speakers as well sometime this week. Enjoy! — It’s hard to believe, but AU 2008 has come to a close. Continue Reading...