The federal landlord map

A short time ago I posted a bit about the amount of land owned by the US government. My blog colleague, Jordan Ballor, located a lovely map displaying graphically the amount of land owned by the government in each state. Continue Reading...

Acton USB flash drive

The Acton Institute is branching out into the technology sector with its new Acton branded flash drives. We initially offered these drives to attendees of Acton University where they were received with cheers from bloggers and others who still remember—with a shudder—the horrors of the old 3½ floppies (remember the good old “tape hack” you could use to trick your computer into thinking that it was a DD and not an HD disk?) Continue Reading...

Interventions target people, not robots

Shankar Vedantam on the problems of “social” governmental intervention, including increased moral hazard (HT: Arts and Letters Daily): While it seems like common sense to pump money into an economy that is pulling the bedcovers over its head, the problem with most social interventions is that they target not robots and machines but human beings — who regularly respond to interventions in contrarian, paradoxical and unpredictable ways. Continue Reading...

Acton University 2008 audio

Update – Tuesday, 5:00 PM: The full menu of lecture recordings is now available. We’ll likely post some video of the evening speakers as well sometime this week. Enjoy! — It’s hard to believe, but AU 2008 has come to a close. Continue Reading...

Canada’s faltering freedom

The problem is not unique to Canada, nor entirely absent from the US, but our neighbors to the north seem to be doing their best at the moment to lead the so-called free world in denying what Americans call the First Amendment rights (speech, religion, etc.). Continue Reading...

AU08 blogger wrap-up

We had a very active week on the blogosphere during this year’s Acton University. The daily round-ups are linked below, as well as updated links to summary and reflective posts written after the conference’s completion. Continue Reading...

Encouraging a true culture of thrift

Picking up on themes we’ve touched on here, here, and here, last week NYT columnist David Brooks weighed in on the culture of debt in the United States. “The social norms and institutions that encouraged frugality and spending what you earn have been undermined,” he writes. Continue Reading...

J. K. Rowling’s view of tyranny

Here’s some insight into J. K. Rowling’s perspective on tyranny, in the words of Albus Dumbledore, speaking of the arch-villain of the series: Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Continue Reading...