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.

Read more on Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments…

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.

Read more on ‘Great Firewall’ Not Great Enough…

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. government to prepare Americans for going to war against Iran.” (HT: Disorganizational Behavior)

Read more on Turnabout is Fair Play?…

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. Johnson writes, “Yes, hundreds of millions of people will face water shortages and starvation by 2080 — but only if those hundreds of millions of people are alive in the first place.”

Read more on Global Warming and Population Control…

In this week’s Acton Commentary, I examine recent events surrounding the conflict amongst evangelicals over global warming political activism. In “Evangelical Environmentalism’s Moral Imperative,” I compare the shape of the argument to the debate over the last decade on the topic of poverty.

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The title of this post is not intended to imply anything by way of comparison between Smith and the American gentlemen. It is only to report that the United Kingdom has launched a new 20£ note sporting the visage of the Father of Economics.

Read more on Adam Smith, the British Grant (or Jackson)…

Check out the links from this piece by Joe Knippenberg at No Left Turns, which make the case that “small-scale support for private slum schools—through scholarship programs, backing for school-voucher schemes, or subsidized microfinance—might do far more good than a big aid push directed at government-run education.”

Read more on Private Education and Global Health…

The Acton Institute won first place in the Free Market Solutions to Poverty category in the 2007 Templeton Freedom Awards competition. The award, managed by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, recognized Acton for its use of the “power of the popular media to challenge common beliefs about how to alleviate poverty.”

Read more on Acton Wins Third Templeton Freedom Award…

Speaking of a “red-letter hermeneutic,” for which I criticize Vince Isner of the National Council of Churches, Tony Campolo says that the new group of evangelical activists, who “transcend” partisan politics, has decided to go by the name of “Red-Letter Christians.”

Read more on A ‘Red-Letter’ Hermeneutic…

John Henry Newman called him “by far the greatest thinker America has ever produced,” but I venture to say very few Americans have ever heard of Orestes Brownson. (Acton devotees, of course, are unusually well informed and have seen him featured among our “Liberal Tradition” biographies.)

Read more on Orestes Brownson Revisited…