David N. Bass

I recently had the pleasure of reading Marvin Olasky’s book on present-day news media entitled Telling the Truth: How to Revitalize Christian Journalism (available online at no cost here). Olasky is best known as the editor-in-chief of World magazine. His insights on journalism are particularly noteworthy because he happens to have two descriptive characteristics that are rarely put together nowadays – “Christian” and “journalist.” The current climate of journalism dictates that all who write must be “objective,” which has come to mean possessing a strong enough left-wing bias to please the editors at the newspaper or magazine you happen to be working for. Olasky trumps that by showing just how a reporter can be both an unequivocal Christian and a professional journalist at the same time.

I found particularly interesting an essay in Appendix C called “The Decline of American Journalism.” Did you know that, once upon a time, the New York Times was not only conservative, but unabashedly Christian? Apparently, much of the shift to liberalism at the Times occurred during the 20th century. Prior to that, the newspaper was owned and operated by Christians. Read the rest of this entry »

Yet another story emerged this week detailing the unfortunate after-shocks of winning the lottery. Excerpted from the article:

Jaun Rodriguez wanted nothing more than to be one of the guys in rural South Texas where he was raised. And he was — until six years ago, when he had the misfortune to acquire almost $9 million in the Texas Lottery. Today, he’s lost his anonymity, his buddies, whatever girlfriends he once had and most of his family, whose members he no longer trusts. He rarely ventures outside the trailer here where he lives alone. Booze and the four dogs he keeps chained outside are his main companions. “To tell you the truth, I wish I didn’t win,” he said from his living room one recent evening, nursing the first of nine Michelob Ultras he would drink by 10 p.m.

Such is the tragic reality of lottery winners that politicians and the gambling industry who peddle state-sponsored gambling never admit. Read the rest of this entry »

An August 11 Washington Times story highlights the findings of a new health study – the last 14 years have seen a 13 percent drop in the number of sexually experienced teens. Conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the study found “that the share of teens who acknowledged ever having had sexual intercourse dropped from 54.1 percent to 46.8 percent” from 1991 to 2005. Good news overall, but teen sexual activity is still a problem of epidemic proportions. Alarmingly, the study found that in 2005, “28.2 percent of black teens said they had experienced four or more sex partners during their lives” (emphasis mine), compared to 11.4 percent for whites and 15.9 percent for Hispanics.

Does anyone remember the good ol’ days in America when you could count the number of sexually transmitted diseases on one hand? Today, over 30 such diseases exist. Read the rest of this entry »