Today, Dr. Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute delivered a lecture entitled “Why Love Matters: Understanding Pope Benedict XVI’s First Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est.” The address explored Pope Benedict’s first encyclical – the subject of which came as a surprise to many – and delved into the background of the pope’s encyclical on Christian love, outlining its implications for the Church’s social teaching and its engagement with the world.

Read more on Why Love Matters: Understanding Pope Benedict XVI’s First Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est…

From the “why didn’t we think of that first” department:

The trade which can lift peoples out of poverty is assailed from many directions. A motley assortment of protectionists and anti-capitalists use every argument they can lay their hands on to protect their interests. From the CAP to ‘food miles,’ the effect is to deny poorer people the chance to gain wealth by selling us what they produce. Those who embrace free trade as an instrument of good can now express their support for poorer peoples by proclaiming an intention to buy their produce.

Yes, you can now have your own trendy wristband to show your support for free trade, courtesy of the Adam Smith Institute.

Read more on “I Buy Goods from Poorer Countries”…

The Acton Institute was not making animated films in 1948, but if we were, this might have been what we came up with. Though it starts out a bit slow, keep with it; it’s actually a pretty coherent defense of the free market.

Read more on Cartoon Capitalism: A Primer…

In the midst of rising oil prices, massive energy bills, speculation about our supplies of oil – not to mention global warming – a small beacon lights up in Ireland. A technology company named Steorn has made an announcement that it has discovered free energy. I’ll admit, like most others probably will at this point, that I’m a little skeptical, but Steorn says that it has created “test-rigs” that use only magnetic fields (with no electromagnetic components) to create energy out of nothing. This, of course, breaks the first law of thermodynamics, and if this does turn out to be true, many hours that I spent studying physics will have turned out to be a waste of time, as one of the main premises of those hours was that the first law holds. (On the other hand, I can justify now why some of it didn’t make much sense to me.)

Read more on Breaking Physics…

Did you know that there is legislation in the works that would set up a databse making it possible for you and me to track how the federal government is (mis)spending our money? It is the subject of a mystery over at WSJ:

Read more on A Google for Pork?…

Here’s a summary of a piece over at Forum 18:

Economics has a large effect on China’s religious freedom, Forum 18 News Service notes. Factors such as the need of religious communities for non-state income, significant regional wealth disparities, conflicts over economic interests, and artificially-induced dependence on the state income all provide the state with alternative ways of exercising control over religious communities. Examples where economics has a noticeable effect on religious freedom include, to Forum 18′s knowledge, the Buddhist Shaolin Temple’s business enterprises, clashes between Buddhist temple personnel and the tourism industry, the demolition of a Protestant church in Zhejiang Province, the expropriation of Catholic properties in Xian and Tianjin for commercial development, the dependence of senior state-sanctioned religious leaders on the state for personal income, and competition between and amongst registered and unregistered religious groups. Perhaps the greatest beneficiary of economic clashes is the state, which can use both control of income and also favouritism in economic conflicts to restrict religious freedom.

The Voice of the Martyrs News & Prayer Update also passed this along from the China Aid Association:

Read more on China: The Economics of Religious Freedom…

How different is this…

In a recent WSJ story, “A Novel Way to Reduce Home Energy Bills,” Sara Schaefer Muñoz writes about the possibility of adding windmills to homes in order to cut down on the cost of utilities.

Read more on Wind Power: Not So Novel After All…

“Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear / And it shows them pearly white…
Ya know when that shark bites, with his teeth, babe / Scarlet billows start to spread…”

Read more on Sharks for Social Change…

I have previously commented on the failure of Republicans in Congress to exert any semblance of fiscal discipline, and have suggested that limited government principles do better when governmental power is divided rather than being dominated by one party, whether Democrat or Republican.

Read more on Republicans Gone [Buck] Wild…

Sadly, my lame attempt to teach myself German (“eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf…”) has thus far yielded little to allow me, unaided, to enjoy the Holy Father’s television interview for German broadcast. Luckily, it has been transcribed and translated to English here and the audio dubbed over in English here.

Read more on I Want My Pope TV…