“Throughout history, shortages of vital resources have driven innovation, and energy has often starred in these technological dramas. The desperate search for new sources of energy and new materials has frequently produced remarkable advances that no one could have imagined when the shortage first became evident.” So says Stephen L. Sass, a professor of materials science and engineering at Cornell, in today’s NYT op-ed, “Scarcity, Mother of Invention.”

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US News and World Report has a little feature on a drapery company that has expanded into more distant markets and thereby grown. The article identifies trade agreements and technology as paving the way for such expansion by many small, local businesses.

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In this week’s commentary, “Protestants and Natural Law: A Forgotten Legacy,” I ask the question: “So, why don’t Protestants like Natural Law?” The short answer is: There isn’t a short answer. Tracing out the reasons that twentieth-century Protestants have given for why natural law is off limits is complicated and can take a person in many different directions.

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CRC has made two good articles available recently (these are Adobe .pdf linked documents) that dispell the myth that large corporations are conservative monoliths supporting anti-environment causes.

The first is Funding Liberalism with Blue-Chip Profits; Fortune 100 Foundations Back Leftists Causes. The other is called The Price of Doing Business: Environmentalist Groups Toe Funders’ Lines. Both have page after page of data on the amounts that organizations like Earth Justice, Nature Conservancyਊnd Sierra Club are getting from big business and billion dollar charitable trusts.

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More news on the campus that may disturb those who are already hyperventilating about corporate involvement in higher education: university newspapers are receiving increasing corporate attention.

In an article in today’s WSJ, Emily Steel writes, “Hip, local, relevant and generated by students themselves, college newspapers have held steady readership in recent years while newspapers in general have seen theirs shrink. Big advertisers are going on campus to reach these young readers. Ford Motor Co., Microsoft Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have all placed recent ads in college newspapers.”

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Unlike the flooded market for conventional coffee products, the specialty coffee market enjoys increasing demand along with limited supply. This means that the potential exists for developing countries to increase the quality and quantity of their coffee production to meet the demand.

Read more on Rwandan Coffee Competes and Wins…

I saw a post on the Web somewhere in the last few days (I can’t recall where), about the trend toward worshiping human life itself as the highest principle…detached from recognition of any higher theological realities. Then I ran across this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that struck me as especially relevant, and so I wanted to pass it along:

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“I’ve got a bunch of government checks at my door / Each morning I try to send them back / But they only send me more.”

–Nelly Furtado, “Hey Man,” Whoa, Nelly! (Dreamworks, 2000).

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The Acton Institute’s Jordan Ballor was a guest on the Michigan Gaming and Casino Show on the Michigan Talk Radio Network on Sunday afternoon to discuss his March 3rd, 2004 article, “Perpetuating Poverty: Lotteries Prey on the Poor”.

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As a brief follow up to my last post and the point about nationalism, see the Liberty Bible offered by the American Bible Society. The Kruse Kronicle passes along some more partisan options for those of us who put being a Republican or a Democrat above being an American (which are both above being a Christian). For my use of the quote appearing on the GOP Bible, go here. I’m willing to bet that the Liberty Bible will sell pretty well.

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