By 2050, the global population is predicted to hit 9 billion people, and demand for agricultural crops is expected to double. Could catastrophe be looming as population growth finally outstrips our ability to feed all these new mouths? A study published in Nature last month is adding grist to the alarmist mill (read excerpts on […]

As 2013 gets underway, many of us are now back at work, or back to searching for work, having spent the previous week with family and friends. No doubt many around the country suffered delays, traffic, and disruptive weather along the way. Via Meadia knows that few things in life are as frustrating as delays, lines, and […]

This is the twelfth day of Christmas and so the Yule Blog is drawing to a close for another year. As always, it’s a nice break from the regular blogging and a way to mark the holidays.The Christmas season ends on a high note, with the Feast of the Epiphany — also known as Three […]

From the FT, reporting on the consequences of the fall in the Egyptian currency: At a central Cairo produce market, vendors have increased prices for green beans by 33 per cent, tomatoes by 50 per cent and zucchini and bananas by 100 per cent. Imported coffee prices have risen more than 20 per cent. The […]

President Obama was officially re-elected by the electoral college yesterday, but as he turns toward a new term, he is still haunted by one of the biggest failures of the first four years of his presidency: Israeli-Palestinian peace relations. At Via Meadia, we think that the President needs a better approach to get better results.Israeli-Palestinian peace […]

Thanks to a leak from an anonymous insider, we learned Thursday that a report commissioned by the State of New York has given fracking a clean bill of health. The insider “did not think it should be kept secret” and released the document, which is now nearly one year old, to the New York Times, […]

It’s long been conventional wisdom in the media and the chattering classes that average Americans reject realism, the approach to foreign policy that prioritizes the power games nations play to protect their interests in a world without a global government. But according to a paper by Daniel Drezner, Americans are more realist than people think: Americans […]

One of the final obstacles to the Keystone pipeline has just been cleared: A report released yesterday by Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality found that building the pipeline would not pose a threat to any of the state’s environmentally sensitive areas. The Wall Street Journal reports: The much-anticipated final review of the pipeline found that a […]

In California, a massive fight between two of the country’s largest and most active labor unions offers a look into the dynamics of the deepening crisis of the American labor movement.Globalization and automation first began to challenge the American labor movement in the 1970s and since then labor’s record has been one of almost uninterrupted […]

As the Christmas season draws to a close and the return of regular blogging looms, I’m looking back over this short period of intense religion writing and thinking about how writing on religion is and is not like writing on other controversial topics.There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s important to write about religion.  […]