Tim Harford writes a long but interesting explanation of why poor countries remain so poor. In a nutshell, it's bad government and corrupt institutions:

It is not news that corruption and perverse incentives matter. But perhaps it is news that the problem of twisted rules and institutions explains not just a little bit of the gap between Cameroon and rich countries but almost all of the gap.

G. Jeffrey MacDonald writes this about the Church's stance on immigration, an issue I have mentioned before:

The Christian right says it has other issues at the moment, such as the battle against same-sex marriage.

Now if this is true it is tragic. But "the Christian right" is not an organization that has a spokesperson, or that issues press releases; who exactly is MacDonald citing here? If it's the American Family Association or Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, he should say so. But I think the reporter's just making it up because it goes along with the story he wants to tell.

I doubt the so-called Center for Reason is a completely objective group, but I wouldn't be surprised if their report was true.

Nerve regeneration: today it's hamsters, tomorrow, who knows.

Islamic Calvinism.

Philip Blond and Adrian Pabst argue that relativism is the cause of fundamentalism and that together they give Bush and Blair moral authority, causing the war in Iraq:

Once all things are equally valid, the only way to attain supremacy is through war and power. Thus does liberalism make fundamentalists out of us all.

On the other hand, Robert Jensen offers a sort of confessions of a Christian atheist in which he claims that the more relativism we have in religion, the better

The task of Christians -- and, I would argue, all religions -- is to make themselves more relevant in the short term by being a site of such political and moral engagement, with the goal of ensuring their ultimate irrelevance.

What it's like to stop buying things for a year.

Successful insertion into orbit around Mars.

Education would be better if we could just go back to the days when college admission was based on essay tests in Latin.

Good news about measles.

Forwarded to me as a joke, this article is well worth reading. Allow me to cherry pick two quotes; this one

Mr. Henderson asked Mr. Mehta to score the priest, on a scale of one for boring to 10 for "off the charts." Mr. Mehta gave him a three. "More stories" in the sermon, Mr. Mehta suggested -- and less liturgy.

and this one

Mr. Henderson, who was a member of the Association of Vineyard Churches, a nondenominational ministry, says he preached for 25 years, but says he grew disenchanted because many of his peers were obsessed with gathering more believers and increasing their budgets.

So Henderson dislikes the idea of church marketing, but is using Mehta as a kind of focus group to rate the church experience and describe how it could be improved.

Cubicles, "the Fidel Castro of office furniture." I have one now, and I have to say, it's not as bad as I expected.

If you didn't already think fair-trade shade-grown organic coffee was just a little ridiculous, here's a thirty page article to persuade you. Maybe weddings are a better target if you want to encourage socially responsibile behavior.

The best science books of 2005, nominated for some prestigious prize I've never heard of. I haven't read any of them but they almost all look interesting.

Now we can recycle styrofoam.

The problem with American education:

The reason so many U.S. students are "falling short of their intellectual potential" is not "inadequate teachers, boring textbooks and large class sizes" and the rest of the usual litany cited by the so-called reformers — but "their failure to exercise self-discipline."

It's articles like this that make me think it's just not worth it.