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Information from some sites may not be reliable, or may not be vetted.
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from BBC News (UK)
The death and funerals industry is due for a shake-up, a growing number of tech start-ups believe.
After you die, how do you fancy springing back to life in the form of a digital avatar? Your digital ghost could jump onto Facebook and join in a light-hearted argument about Friends, or post Instagram updates reminiscing about that Italian road trip you took with an ex-lover. Living a digital afterlife might sound strange - a possible episode of satirical TV show Black Mirror perhaps - but some start-ups are investing serious time and money in the concept.
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from Christianity Today
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from The Federalist
Americans’ Declining Interest In History Is Hitting Museums Like Colonial Williamsburg Hard
Americans know little about their own country’s past—and they’re not expressing interest learning more about history in places like Colonial Williamsburg.
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IT'S A CULTURE WAR, STUPID
Canada’s vulnerability to the culture of death is exacerbated by Canada’s single-payer, i.e. state-funded and state-run, health care system. And the brutal fact is that it's more “cost-effective” to euthanize patients than to treat secondary conditions that could turn lethal or to provide palliative end-of-life care. But in Canada, a mature democracy, that utilitarian calculus among government bean-counters wouldn’t survive for long if a similar, cold calculus were not at work in the souls of too many citizens. And that is one reason why the Church must engage the culture war, not only in Canada but in the United States and throughout the West: to warm chilled souls and rebuild a civil society committed to human dignity. Then there is the civic reason. To reduce a human being to an object whose value is measured by “utility” is to destroy one of the building blocks of the democratic order—the moral truth that the American Declaration of Independence calls the “inalienable” right to “life.” That right is “inalienable”—which means built-in, which means not a gift of the state—because it reflects something even more fundamental: the dignity of the human person. When we lose sight of that, we are lost as a human community, and democracy is lost. So the culture war must be fought. And a Church that takes social justice seriously must fight it.
from First Things
Canada’s vulnerability to the culture of death is exacerbated by Canada’s single-payer, i.e. state-funded and state-run, health care system. And the brutal fact is that it's more “cost-effective” to euthanize patients than to treat secondary conditions that could turn lethal or to provide palliative end-of-life care. But in Canada, a mature democracy, that utilitarian calculus among government bean-counters wouldn’t survive for long if a similar, cold calculus were not at work in the souls of too many citizens. And that is one reason why the Church must engage the culture war, not only in Canada but in the United States and throughout the West: to warm chilled souls and rebuild a civil society committed to human dignity. Then there is the civic reason. To reduce a human being to an object whose value is measured by “utility” is to destroy one of the building blocks of the democratic order—the moral truth that the American Declaration of Independence calls the “inalienable” right to “life.” That right is “inalienable”—which means built-in, which means not a gift of the state—because it reflects something even more fundamental: the dignity of the human person. When we lose sight of that, we are lost as a human community, and democracy is lost. So the culture war must be fought. And a Church that takes social justice seriously must fight it.
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from The Heritage Foundation
[Information from this site may be unreliable.]
Why Bernie Sanders’ Single-Payer Health Care Bill Would Be a Disaster
Senate Republicans’ failure to enact a health reform bill has created a big policy vacuum, and liberals in Congress and elsewhere are eager to fill it. Their solution: Move to a “single-payer system.” That anodyne term actually means a government monopoly over the financing and delivery of health care. If they succeed in imposing a federal monopoly on health care, no American would escape the damage.
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Why Bernie Sanders’ Single-Payer Health Care Bill Would Be a Disaster
Senate Republicans’ failure to enact a health reform bill has created a big policy vacuum, and liberals in Congress and elsewhere are eager to fill it. Their solution: Move to a “single-payer system.” That anodyne term actually means a government monopoly over the financing and delivery of health care. If they succeed in imposing a federal monopoly on health care, no American would escape the damage.
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from Mises Institute
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]One of the leading policy guideposts for central banks and many monetary policy proponents nowadays is the idea of “inflation targeting.” Several major central banks around the world, including the Federal Reserve in the United States, have set a goal of two percent price inflation. The problem is, what central bankers are targeting is a phantom that does not exist.
Why Was Ancient China so Good at War, and so Bad at Commerce?
China’s rise to the status of global economic power has invited enormous interest in its cultural and political heritage. Historians tend to be fascinated by China’s erratic economic progress and rich history of innovation, each of which have, at different times, both outpaced and lagged behind developments in Western Europe. By providing rewards for bureaucrats and punishments for merchants, many rulers destroyed interest in entrepreneurship and innovation outside the state.
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from New York Times
The Solar Eclipse: Highlights From Its Path Across the United States
For the first time since 1918, an eclipse traveled across the entire United States. Where the weather cooperated, those in the path took in a remarkable show.
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from SHTFplan.com
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]
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from The Spokesman-Review
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