Thursday's News & Ideas
The black church is dead -- Long live the black church
Religion Dispatches: Historians, religious scholars, and other interpreters of the black church respond to a recent article detailing the death of the black church.
More on the heat & Pope Benedict
America: “What did the Pope know? And when did he know it?” That’s the wrong question, says Michael Sean Winters.
The (London) Times: Abuse scandal may be Pope Benedict's defining moment
Catholic News Service: Abuse cases show need for greater women's role, Vatican newspaper says
LOL @ work
Business Week: If no one in your organization ever laughs out loud, you've got a deep problem: a lack of trust.
Dutch plan to let healthy elderly people commit suicide
The (London) Telegraph: Proposed legislation in Holland would allow healthy elderly people who are simply "tired of living" to end their lives with a lethal injection.
Florida GOP to filmmakers: No family values, no tax credit
Politics Daily: It'll be interesting to see how Fla. Republicans figure out which films will be "family friendly" enough to qualify for a tax credit proposal the state GOP is pushing.
The Spark
The overpopulation myth
Many of today’s most-respected thinkers argue that population growth is the driving force behind our wrecking of the planet. But this is nonsense, contends an article in Prospect magazine. In fact, the greatest threat, far outstripping population growth, is rising consumption -- most of which happens in rich countries that have long since given up adding substantial numbers to their population. By almost any measure, a small proportion of the world’s people take the majority of the world’s resources and produce the majority of its pollution. It’s not growing human numbers that will destroy the planet. It’s over-consumption.
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