Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Public Policy

January 03, 2007

Stem cell tenure battle

A professor at MIT has been denied tenure and he claims that the reason is his opposition to embyonic stem cell research (his specialty is adult stem cell research). It is always impossible to know exactly what the motives are in these tenure battles unless one is personally involved, but it would not be surprising if his claim were accurate, given the high stakes (e.g., Continue Reading...
January 02, 2007

Wal-Mart environmentalism

“The environment is begging for the Wal-Mart business model,” says H. Lee Scott Jr., CEO of Wal-Mart Stores in a NYT article, “Power-Sipping Bulbs Get Backing From Wal-Mart.” The piece discusses Wal-Mart’s campaign to increase the sales of compact fluorescent bulbs, as compared to traditional incandescent bulbs. Continue Reading...
January 02, 2007

The outsourced knight

James Dyson, inventor of the world’s most exciting bagless vacuum cleaner, will receive a knighthood. Speaking of his company, the BBC reports: Today, the company has about 1,400 staff in the UK, with about 4,000 others working in production plants in Malaysia and China. Continue Reading...
January 02, 2007

Images of plenty and want

The conflicting images I spoke about last week, the obesity of poor children in America, are the subject of a weekend piece in the NYT, “India Prosperity Creates Paradox; Many Children Are Fat, Even More Are Famished.” Continue Reading...
January 02, 2007

Resolved

‘Tis the season for making resolutions. Today’s ZondervanTo The Point newsletter focuses on a variety of Christian resolutions, and includes a link to a piece from Leadership Journal on Jonathan Edwards’ resolutions (related blog piece here). Continue Reading...
December 29, 2006

Poor Kids in America are Fat

A new study finds that children growing up in poverty in America are disproportionately more likely to be obese, compared to other income groups (HT: God’s Politics). So, poor kids in the US are fat…and in this they are just like the rest of America: “The whole country is struggling with this,” said Virginia Chomitz , senior scientist at the Institute for Community Health at the Cambridge Health Alliance . Continue Reading...
December 29, 2006

Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth

Several weeks ago now I was offered a review copy of Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. After watching it on a cross-country flight in November I elected to let Gore’s expos’e sink in a bit before I pasted my thoughts more or less permanently on the web. Continue Reading...
December 29, 2006

Who Really Cares for the Poor?

Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks challenges perceived mainstream social orthodoxy in his new book, Who Really Cares: America’s Charity Divide – Who Gives, Who Doesn’t and Why It Matters. For generations it has been assumed that political and social liberals are generous towards the poor while conservatives are proverbial tightwads. Continue Reading...
December 28, 2006

Never a Countdown on Effective Compassion

The “10 years after welfare reform” articles of this past summer are old news, of course. Not surprisingly, indications were that, like any public policy, reform hadn’t been the all-time poverty solution, but that policies had, in fact, helped a significant number of people to move themselves to self-sufficiency. Continue Reading...
December 28, 2006

Single-payer Schemes=Supply Shortages

Go to this page to watch a short video highlighting the story of one man’s fight against Canada’s health system. The film is focused on the defects of socialized medicine and so, naturally, does not deal with the serious problems existing in other systems (such as the United States). Continue Reading...