Here are a smattering of headlines about a study which purports to measure the effect of intercessory prayer by strangers on the recovery of patients from heart surgery:
Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer, New York Times
Prayer Doesn’t Aid Recovery, Study Finds, Washington Post
Study shrugs off prayer’s power to heal, USA Today
Study: Prayer Has [...]

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig today announced that he will open an investigation on the alleged steroid use by several prominent major leaguers, most notably Barry Bonds. In case you don’t follow baseball, Bonds is on the cusp of passing Babe Ruth on the list of most all-time Home Runs, and has a [...]

I would encourage all of you to check out the Democratic Party’s new National Security Agenda, which they announced yesterday. I have very mixed feelings about the contents of the plan. It seems like a smart tactical move, to take some of the teeth out of critiques that the Democrats don’t provide enough [...]

A professor at University of Memphis has recently banned laptops from her classroom. This action provoked outrage from the students, who are, among other things, planning on sending a petition the American Bar Association and threatening to transfer schools if this policy is not changed. This brings several points to mind.
1) How quickly [...]

Five years ago, as President Bush was just getting comfortable in the White House, he made two proposals which I actually applauded. One was streamlining the military, to take into account new communication technologies, new weapon systems, and the changing nature of American conflicts and peacekeeping obligations. While I still think that such [...]

The United States has an insanely inefficient health care system. We pay more than anyone else in the world, for which we get sub-standard care and coverage. Furthermore, the system is getting worse: costs are skyrocketing, employers are cutting back coverage, the government is cutting back eligibility for Medicare and Medicaid, and President [...]

A couple years ago, when the Iraq war was just entering its pubescent period and we were only beginning to realize the extent of the insurgency, I saw a debate on FOX News Sunday on the progress of the war. One of the conservatives–I think it was Britt Hume–was trying to argue that [...]

Is it just me, or does the whole Zacarias Moussaoui prosecution seem to be pretty iffy? Let’s ignore the whole witness tampering incident, and just focus on the prosecution itself. More disturbingly, the entire prosecution case seems to rest on Mr. Moussaoui’s refusal to waive his fifth amendment rights.

According to the Boston Globe, the Greater Boston Food Bank released a report yesterday that detailed the demographics of those who seek emergency food assistance. Here are some statistics that jumped out at me, both from the article and from the Food Bank’s website:

One third come from households with at least one working adult, [...]

Today is one of the final days of the world water conference, where policy makers are trying to determine what to do about the fact that much of the world’s population doesn’t have access to sustainable clean water supplies . Interestingly, one of the things that is holding up negotiations is the question of [...]