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March 21, 2007

Church and state: do you serve two masters?

Last week, Acton’s Rome office, Istituto Acton, held a conference entitled “The Religious Dimension of Human Freedom” at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. (See this Zenit piece for a brief, if unexciting, summary of the event.) Continue Reading...
March 20, 2007

Google minds the gaps in statistical analysis

Google recently announced that it has purchased the Trendalyzer software from Gapminder, a Swedish non-profit (HT: Slashdot). Trendalyzer is the brain-child of professor Hans Rosling, who was lecturing on international development “when it struck him that statistics were an underexploited resource, often presented in an incomprehensible fashion. Continue Reading...
March 19, 2007

“The university is totally ignoring diversity of thought”

Coming soon to a theater near you (hopefully) – Evan Coyne Maloney’s Indoctrinate U. From the film’s website: At colleges and universities across the nation, from Berkeley and Stanford to Yale and Bucknell, the charismatic filmmaker uncovers academics who use classrooms as political soapboxes, students who must parrot their professors’ politics to get good grades, and administrators who censor diversity of thought and opinion. Continue Reading...
March 19, 2007

EU conflicts of interest

The nearly decade-long battle between the European Union and Microsoft took another turn earlier this month, as the EU Commission offered a fresh threat to Microsoft: Submit to our demands or face stiff new penalties. Continue Reading...
March 16, 2007

Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments

Kevin noted earlier this week that the UK has issued a paper bill featuring Adam Smith. I also received notice this week that the Adam Smith Review is planning a conference in January of 2009, celebrating the semiquincentennial (250th) anniversary of the publication of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. Continue Reading...
March 15, 2007

‘Great Firewall’ not great enough

According to published reports, China is planning on adding new censorship regulations covering blogs and webcasts (HT). President Hu Jintao says the government needs to take these steps to “purify” the Internet, leading to “a more healthy and active Internet environment,” according to the Xinhua news agency. Continue Reading...
March 14, 2007

Turnabout is fair play?

The nation which hosted a large conference welcoming Holocaust deniers last year is now full of righteous indignation over historical inaccuracies in the film ‘300’. As Azadeh Moaveni reports from her daily travels in Tehran, “Iranians buzzed with resentment at the film’s depictions of Persians, adamant that the movie was secretly funded by the U.S. Continue Reading...
March 14, 2007

Global warming and population control

From the “we had to destroy the village to save it” department, check out this item from the Huffington Post by Dave Johnson, “A Global Warming Suggestion: Fewer Babies.” It’s pretty indefatigable logic: if there are no people to be affected by environmental catastrophe, then the problem has been avoided. Continue Reading...