Science
I remember when President Bush made his announcement about the ban on federal financing of embryonic stem-cell research. He held an evening address, at his desk, and took the time to explain some of the science, present the opposing arguments as he saw them, and explain his decision. You can think what you like about…
Stanley Aronson writes reasonable, interesting columns for the Providence Journal, but I often get the impression of an underlying scientism. By that relatively new coinage, I mean the tendency — a system of belief, really — to treat scientific answers as complete grounds for defining one’s life. So, in context of an essay about doctors’…
Jeff Jacoby has some suggested questions for U.S. Senators to ask Obama’s nominee for director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren. The last one gives a sense of Jacoby’s general concern: 8. You are withering in your contempt for researchers who are unconvinced that human activity is responsible for global warming,…
Back in my proofreader days, I happened to catch a major error simply because the graphs didn’t make sense. According to the document handed to me that day, the United Arab Emirates ranked much more highly than the United States in various measures of freedom. As it turned out, a row had been transposed on…
One can say with some certainty that there will always be something new to discover in reality: On the outskirts of creation, unknown, unseen “structures” are tugging on our universe like cosmic magnets, a controversial new study says. Everything in the known universe is said to be racing toward the massive clumps of matter at…
The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland suffered some sort of electrical malfunction yesterday and is out of commission for two months as repairs are effected. The first beams had been successfully sent round the Collider ring about ten days ago but protons have yet to be smashed together.
In addition to the areas that Marc mentioned, members of the Projo editorial board (and some other organs of the MSM) are playing fast-and-loose also with their description of Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s position on stem cell research. Here’s the the unsigned editorial from Saturday… Governor Palin didn’t mention…that she opposes stem-cell research.…and the…
Just a pause to affirm that one doesn’t have to push the boundaries of ethics to extend the boundaries of medical science: The cell identity switch turned ordinary pancreas cells into the rarer type that churns out insulin, essential for preventing diabetes. But its implications go beyond diabetes to a host of possibilities, scientists said.…
It occurs to me, while reading through the comments to last week’s post on religion and evolution, that a bit of common, subconscious legerdemain infects those making the secularist argument. By way of context, here is my lone statement of intentions with respect to my own voting intentions: I’ll vote every time for children to…
Andrew’s disagreement with John West, it seems to me, comes down to a single word: “directs.” In essence, West presents two opposing possibilities: “God… intentionally directs the development of life toward a specific end.” “God himself cannot know how evolution will turn out.” Andrew’s hypothetical of God’s experimenting with “multi-creation,” picking “the one He likes…
