Earlier this week a fossil Darwinus masillae (nick-named “Ida”) created a bit of a stir and sent creationist websites into deny-everything-about-everything mode. The media has also been pretty unhelpful with it’s “missing-link” labeling and over-hyped rhetoric [...] Ida is NOT: * THE missing link. (Every fossil is transitional in some way; Ida is one link in a very long evolutionary chain.)
* The only example we have of a transitional fossil. (There are so many … to store and categorise)
* An example of scientists trying to deceive you.
* A much needed piece of evidence for the theory. (There’s a mountain of evidence that overwhelmingly supports evolution by natural selection. We don’t even need fossils due to: vestigial organs, embryology, morphological similarities, genomic similarities, observable evolution of micro-organisms and virtually every other discovery in biology over the 150 years.)
* The work of Satan (!)

Wall Street is bankrupt. Instead of trying to save it, we can build a new economy that puts money and business in the service of people and the planet—not the other way around. [...]The world of our shared human dream is one where people live happy, productive lives in balance with one another and Earth. It is democratic and middle class without extremes of wealth or poverty. It is characterized by strong, stable families and communities in which relationships are defined primarily by mutual trust and caring. Every able adult is both a worker and an owner. Most families own their own home and have an ownership stake in their local economy. Everyone has productive work and is respected for his or her contribution to the well-being of the community.

Watch as Professor Richard Wolff breaks down the root causes of today's economic crisis, showing how it was decades in the making and in fact reflects seismic failures within the structures of American-style capitalism itself. Wolff traces the source of the economic crisis to the 1970s, when wages began to stagnate and American workers were forced into a dysfunctional spiral of borrowing and debt that ultimately exploded in the mortgage meltdown. By placing the crisis within this larger historical and systemic frame, Wolff argues convincingly that the proposed government "bailouts," stimulus packages, and calls for increased market regulation will not be enough to address the real causes of the crisis, in the end suggesting that far more fundamental change will be necessary to avoid future catastrophes. Richly illustrated with motion graphics, this is a superb introduction designed to help ordinary citizens understand, and react to, the unraveling economic crisis.

This can be especially hard for Christians to grasp, since a very deep part of our moral formation has been the belief that human identity is ultimately wrapped up in the suburban bliss of family life. (On which, see the TV series Mad Men…) This is also why our churches are often so strangely inhospitable to “single” (read: pre-married) people. We simply can’t really believe that these people are fully formed human beings. And so we treat them with all the sympathy or suspicion or indifference that their estate demands; our charity might even compel us to subject them to the peculiar indignity of a “singles” social event, all in the hope that the bright truth of sex will at last dawn in their dark lives.