“Let us be able to lose gracefully and to win courteously; to accept criticism as well as praise; and to appreciate the attitude of the other fellow at all times.” That timeless advice was offered by James Naismith, a young gym instructor for the Young Men’s Christian Association in Springfield, Massachusetts, who invented the sport known as basketball in 1891 – looking for a way to channel the energies of young men between baseball and football seasons. He had no idea what he had started. Albert Mohler considers the significance of basketball fever in “March madness, the Big Dance, and the Meaning of Sport.” Read it here.

Christianity Today offers additional coverage of issues related to The End of The Spear film. The coverage includes an interview with Steve Saint and an article in which he explains the hiring of Chad Allen in the movie’s lead role.

The death of Yasser Arafat brings to a close one of the most tumultuous and tragic lives of our times. The man William Safire would label “the only lifelong terrorist to win a Nobel Peace Prize” was a man of contradictions and controversy from the very start, and his death raises many questions about the future of the Palestinian people he led for almost forty years.

The history of the last century demonstrates that Western governments are exceedingly slow to respond to mass murder and genocide. This was true in 1915 when former President Theodore Roosevelt and American ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr. attempted to convince President Woodrow Wilson to intervene as the Turks were slaughtering Armenians. Western nations stood by and allowed Rwandans to slaughter each other in 1994. “The only thing President Clinton did for Rwandan genocide victims was to issue a magnificent apology after they were dead,” Nicholas Kristof recalls. Now, genocide is unfolding in the Darfur region of Sudan, and Western governments still debate whether or not the atrocity should rightly be called genocide.

Historian Niall Ferguson warns that the situation in the Middle East is growing more and more dangerous — especially with the development of nuclear weapons in Iran. Indeed, he sees the real possibility of nuclear catastrophe and a possible world war within the next ten years.

Robert H. Bork offers his list of the five most important books on the U.S. Constitution in “We The People,” published in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal. His list:

“I have a dream,” declared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as he addressed a crowd of several hundred thousand gathered on the Mall around the Washington Monument. The date was August 28, 1963, and America was a cauldron of social unrest.

Martin Peretz is worried that liberalism has no future in America. Editor-in-Chief of “The New Republic,” Peretz writes of his concern in a major article published in the 90th anniversary issue of his magazine. “Not Much Left,” is a cry from the heart, offered by Peretz to what remains of a liberal movement in America. Peretz begins by arguing that, in the 1960s, it was conservatism that was devoid of ideas and facing a dismal political future.

George Melloan, an influential columnist and international deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal, offers a most interesting perspective of the Israeli-Arab conflct in “Reviewing the Hundred Years’ War,” published in today’s edition of the paper.