It doesn’t often get banner headline treatment in the American press these days, but Christianity remains a brutally persecuted religion throughout the world. For a sobering reminder of this fact, one need only look to Melissa Kimiadi’s examination of Bali’s small but rapidly growing Christian community in Christianity Today, where converts on the predominantly Hindu island have […]

President Obama’s decision to leave Syria to fester has already done much to destabilize neighboring Iraq. But if this morning’s veiled threats from the president of Iraq’s Kurdish region Masoud Barzani is taken at face value, things are about to get much more serious and complicated: “If the reports are true, showing that citizens, women […]

Here at Via Meadia we’ve long been awaiting the days when people can lay into a shamburger cooked entirely from fake meat. That day finally arrived last week when scientists cooked the world’s first entirely synthetic burger. While the taste left something to be desired, and the price was a somewhat steep $330,000, the burger already […]

Arnold Schwarzenegger is worried. The man has faced predators and murderous cyborgs, but right now he’s more troubled by America’s energy future. In a fuzzy, poorly considered opinion piece earlier this week for the Financial Times, the former governor frets that the EU and Algeria (two places he’s recently visited) are going to out-innovate the US.The Governor’s specific concerns […]

People may disagree on just how higher ed is going to change in the coming years and decades and about just what might replace it. But one thing is for certain: this change is assured.Here’s another cut at the problem: Minerva, a new project of Silicon Valley CEO Ben Nelson, is a new university that […]

Many of our peers in the blogosphere and in the media seem to be enjoying jeering at President Obama for announcing new oversight measures for the NSA’s far-reaching surveillance programs under some duress. “Whistleblower Wins” screamed the Huffington Post headline. Drudge ran with “Stared Down By Snowden”. Snowden made him do it, the thinking seems to go, […]

When you think of thousands of stray dogs on the streets you might think of the Soviet Union, or Peru, or any number of struggling, poor societies. What you probably don’t think of is Detroit.But you should. Rolling Stone reports on Detroit’s exploding canine homeless population: Estimates vary, but groups place the number of strays […]

The leader of Egypt’s Coptic Christians, Pope Tawadros II, has decided to cancel his weekly sermons and other public events at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo. In explaining the decision, Pope Tawadros cited the worsening security situation in Egypt. Copts, who make up about ten percent of the country’s population, have been targeted by Islamist […]

The gloat factor is high in China these days, where many nationalists believe a Sino-Russian tag team has Uncle Sam flat on the mat. According to the ultra-nationalist Global Times newspaper in Beijing (sometimes called the Fox News of China), the world sees the Kremlin as the “winner” and the White House as the “loser” […]

Just a couple years ago, it looked like Turkey was ascendant in the Middle East. It had a booming economy, and Prime Minister Erdogan expressed hopes of reclaiming the dominant position it had enjoyed during the days of the Ottoman Empire. For a while, it looked as if Turkey could become a model and power-broker […]