2005 Samaritan award applications open

The Center for Effective Compassion has opened its 2005 Samaritan Award applications. The survey and instructions are available from May 2 through June 30. First prize is $10,000; nine runners up will receive grant writing assistance, information technology support, Web site support, and much more from nationally-acclaimed consultants. Continue Reading...

Challenging the Micah Challenge

There’s a big, fairly new, global effort by Christians to cut worldwide poverty in half by 2015. Just what is this effort? A new giving initiative? A new network connecting churches in the first world with churches in the third world? Continue Reading...

Blog market

In traversing the World Wide Web, I’ve happened across BlogShares, “a fantasy stock market for weblogs. Players get to invest a fictional $500, and blogs are valued by incoming links.” As the Acton Institute PowerBlog heads toward its one month anniversary, check out it’s BlogShare value. Continue Reading...

Law signed protecting filtering industry

President Bush signed a bill into law yesterday that exempts companies such as ClearPlay from litigation for copyright infringement. ClearPlay, for example, offers a DVD player that will filter out “objectionable” content. Continue Reading...

Immigration confusion

There’s been a lot of talk in recent days about the question of immigration, both legal and illegal. A number of issues are involved, including questions about national security, economic concerns, and cultural values. Continue Reading...

NAS releases guidelines

The National Academies of Science has issued a set of guidelines for human embryonic stem (ES) cell research. The guidelines also address the chimera phenomenon. The guidelines open a path for experiments that create animals that contain some introduced human embyronic stem cells. Continue Reading...

Power Ball

Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs in 1998.An article in The New York Times magazine over the weekend provides an up-close look at the stories of two men impacted by the burgeoning problem of steroid use in baseball. Continue Reading...

Free and fair trade

S.T. Karnick at Signs of the Times passes along the words of Dr. Sean Gabb, an English Libertarian author, on the debate about fair trade, which is driven in large part by Christian groups (see Acton Commentaries here and here). Continue Reading...