From Mustafa Akyol, the Burke-loving Turkish Muslim who writes about the spiritual necessity of liberal ideals for serious Muslims. I call on my fellow Muslims to embrace three basic freedoms:First, “freedom from the state,” or the acceptance of secular (not secularist) governments. Yes, Prophet Muhammad happened to be the head of a state, but none […]

This fall you can take a course in artificial intelligence from Stanford and you won’t have to sell your kidney to pay the tuition, reports Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution. Stanford’s ‘Introduction to Artificial Intelligence’ course will be offered free to anyone online this fall. The course will be taught by SebastianThrun (Stanford) and PeterNorvig […]

Two books I’ve been reading recently that Via Meadia readers might like.  One is Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch, an extraordinary tour de force that offers a readable and fair minded story of the story of Christianity.  It is unusually perceptive about and sympathetic to Orthodox Christianity for a book from […]

Business Insider has a who’s who of the leaders behind yesterday’s Texas prayer rally.  A must read to see who the current evangelical political leaders are — and what they want.  Significant name not on list: Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback.  Rick seems to be sticking to his desire to, in his words, “not be […]

The foxhole atheist community is alive and well at Fort Bragg and is getting ready to hold an event on the central parade ground. Rock Beyond Belief, an organization of atheist soldiers, after long bargaining has gotten permission to hold a kind of atheist Woodstock on March 31. “This just might be the turning point […]

The governor of Texas spoke for 13 minutes at a “prayer rally” in a half-empty Texas football stadium, and the New York Times is troubled.  Deeply troubled. In many ways, the rally was unprecedented, even in Texas, where faith and politics have long intersected without much controversy — the governor, as both a private citizen […]

Remember carbon trading, the new ‘market-friendly’ approach to environmental regulation that was going to save the planet and earn money for traders?From the Wall Street Journal: IntercontinentalExchange Inc. told traders Friday that it would shut down its U.S. emissions derivatives platform, a year after acquiring its parent only to suffer sparse trading as the prospects […]

The jobs of the future are already popping up.  Taskrabbit is a San Francisco-based startup, with operations in Boston, LA, and soon, New York, that organizes people to run errands. For a fee, the company’s ‘taskrabbits’ will pick up busy people’s laundry, groceries, set up Ikea furniture, paint your house, and more.There are other start […]

With all the doom and gloom in world financial markets, it’s good to know that some things are still holding their value.  Despite the challenging economic environment and, worse, questions about whether there were enough insects at the right time to fatten up the chicks, prices for grouse shoots are at record levels, chirps the […]

It’s one thing when Russia’s ‘bad cop’ Prime Minister Putin smacks you around.  That’s to be expected.  But now instead of offering us cigarettes and a cup of coffee, President Medvedev,  Russia’s ‘good cop’, is taking out the rubber hose.Read it all in the New York Times. In an interview Friday that was timed to […]