Not much, evidently. Giant pandas only eat bamboo, a low-nutrient food they can barely digest. So how can these massive creatures exist on such a terrible diet? By being big ol’ sacks of lazy, basically. That’s at least the prism from which I view the latest findings on giant panda metabolism researchers published this week in the journal Science. (Disclosure: I have feelings on giant pandas.) The researchers tracked the daily energy expenditure (DEE) of five captive and three wild giant pandas, and found the creatures don’t move around much. The giant pandas’ energy... Read more

Marriage, Homosexuality, and Heaven by David Opderbeck I wonder if my personal feelings about the U.S. Supreme Court’s gay marriage case are common among Christians of my age and social location:  ambivalence, uncertainty, discomfort, regret . . . . Some of this is unsurprising, I suppose.  As a lawyer, with a bent towards judicial restraint, I can’t fully endorse Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion.  I’m no expert on all the nuances of substantive due process, but I am, I confess, of... Read more

This post continues Jeff Cook’s series on universalism. To repeat something I have said before, I’ve become convinced this year that the traditional view of hell will not last as a dominant theory among scholars for much longer. The arguments for the traditional hell fail so spectacularly and their conclusions are so repugnant that the traditional view is only carried in the popular mind by assumption and convention. No, the conversation about hell in the 21st century among those who study... Read more

Peter Holley: When Roeland Park police officer Mark Engravalle was dispatched to a local Wal-Mart after a woman was caught shoplifting on Monday, he could have treated the incident like any other petty theft. Instead of handcuffing Sarah Robinson and taking her to jail, however, he started a conversation with the mother of six, who told him that her family had struggled since the drowning death of her husband in 2011. Now Robinson and her daughters — 5-year-old Emily, 13-year-old... Read more

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. BCP Read more

Source: INTERVIEWER Do you feel like there’s something you’ve missed out on in life? ROBINSON There’s always something that I feel I’ve missed. I should travel more, for instance. I went to Paris last fall, which was a great departure for me. I flew Air India, which in itself was quite remarkable. I had a lovely time in France and I thought, I should do this more often. But then I come home and I think, I have all of... Read more

Books not bullets! By Malala Yousafzai The Education For All Global Monitoring Report found it would take $39 billion annually. It seems like a big number, an impossible number. In reality, it represents what world governments spend on their militaries in just eight days. In eight days we spend as much on making war as it would take to ensure that every young person can receive 12 years of quality education…. That is a choice. Our leaders are choosing bombs and bullets... Read more