The Journal of Markets & Morality is one of eight journals that has been selected for indexing in the seminally important ATLA Religion Database in 2007. The American Theological Library Association (ATLA) is a professional association of theological libraries and librarians, with almost 300 institutional and 600 individual members.
Read more on Journal of Markets & Morality on ATLA Religion…
The newly released Charlie Wilson’s War is a film based on a book that chronicles the semi-secret war that led Afghan freedom fighters to defeat the Soviet military during the 1980s. Tom Hanks plays former Democratic Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, who is also known as “Good Time Charlie” for his womanizing, drinking, and recreational drug use. The viewer is led to believe Congressman Wilson is not serious about his elected position until he takes up the cause of the Afghan people, who suffered immensely under Soviet aggression. Other starring roles are Julia Roberts as Christian “right wing” financier Joanne Herring, and the late CIA officer Gust Avrakatos, played by actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The dialog between the main characters is intense and entertaining.
Acton Research Fellow and Director of Acton Media Jay Richards joined the Fox and Friends crew on Fox News Channel this morning to kick off this presidential election year with some analysis of the role of religion in the Republican presidential primary. For those of you who missed it, here’s the clip:
Read more on Acton Media Roundup: Jay Richards on Fox and Friends…
I guess I’ll do the honors for first post of the year once again…
An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse. The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational motives: Individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance. Availability entrepreneurs-activists who manipulate the content of public discourse-strive to trigger availability cascades likely to advance their agendas.
John Tierney notes that while 2008 may just be underway, we’re smack dab in the middle of a global warming cascade:
Read more on Global Warming Consensus Alert – Consensus Breach at the New York Times…
