A new interactive video sharing site for activism and “ideas,” Big Think (HT), including entries from experts like Niall Ferguson, Jagdish Bhagwati, Paul Krugman, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (along with the requisite spate of politicians).

Read more on Check it Out: ‘Big Think’…

I’m a big fan of Touchstone’s blog and the posts of senior editor S. M. Hutchens in particular. A very deep guy. That’s why I was intrigued when I found a book review of his in the New Atlantis entitled "The Evangelical Ecologist" while googling myself (if that doesn’t sound too crude).*

Read more on The Evangelical Ecologist on “The Evangelical Ecologist”…

A noteworthy quote on voluntary poverty from Thomas C. Oden. Oden has consistently articulated the concern that modern Christian theology is often tainted by political agendas, such as the radical elements of liberation theology. Here, Oden rebuffs the myth that a historic and conservative Christian theology has been anything less than strong in its identification and assistance in defense of the poor. Oden is a United Methodist theologian who is also an emeritus professor at Drew Theological Seminary. In addition, Oden is general editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture.

Read more on Thomas Oden: The Tradition of Voluntary Poverty…

Today’s post will look at the Hendrickson Publishers Academic Catalog 2008 and the Brill Biblical Studies & Religious Studies 2007 catalog (series index):

Titles from Hendrickson:

• Marty E. Stevens, Temples, Tithes, and Taxes: The Temple and the Economic Life of Ancient Israel (2006).

Read more on Books of Interest: Hendrickson & Brill…

Rev. Robert A. Sirico joined host David Asman tonight on America’s Nightly Scoreboard on Fox Business Network to discuss The Call of the Entrepreneur. If you missed the appearance, you can catch the video below:

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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse at today’s Acton Lecture Series event.

The 2008 Acton Lecture Series kicked off yesterday in Grand Rapids, Michigan with an address by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse entitled “Freedom, the Family and the Market: A Humane Response to the Socialist Attack on the Family.”

Read more on Updated: Freedom, the Family and the Market: A Humane Response to the Socialist Attack on the Family…

Having been informed that my evaluation of George Weigel’s new book was posted a few days before it went on sale, I gladly give notice once more, this time with a link to Amazon. Well worth a look.

Read more on Weigel on Jihad II…

A few years ago I asked the question: “Just how many unjust acts can a just war encompass before it ceases to be a just war?” This question assumed the connection between what scholars have defined as a distinction between ius ad bello and ius ad bellum, justness in the occasion for or cause of war and justness in the prosecution of war.

Read more on Suarez on Just War…

What a perfectly optimistic way to begin the new year, via Hampton Univeristy Professor Cuker in Dailypress.com:

Jesus shared the earth with no more than 400 million other souls, Thomas Jefferson with about 1 billion contemporaries, and at projected population growth rates, our children will live with 9 billion others by mid-century. Such rapid population growth can not go on endlessly. Humans, like all other species, can only populate up to the carrying capacity of the environment. Carrying capacity is set by availability of resources (food, water, places to live) and sometimes by the build-up of toxic metabolic wastes. However, as populations approach their carrying capacity, growth often slows as a consequence of increased mortality and lower birth rates due to disease, competition and malnutrition. And for humans we can add the scourge of wars fought for controlling limited resources.

Read more on A Plea for Population Control…

The University Bookman, a publication of the Russell Kirk Center, reviews Dr. Samuel Gregg’s The Commercial Society: Foundations and Challenges in a Global Age in its Fall 2007 issue. Actually, the Bookman reviewed it twice.

Read more on Commercial Society reviewed on University Bookman…