tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11 2010-09-02T22:12:09Z covers politics, foreign policy, science, technology, media and culture with an eye toward issues of conflict between worldviews. It reports otherwise under-represented developments and discovers facts and points of view that otherwise might be missed in public dialogue. Contributors include former Discovery News ambassadors and elected officials, public policy fellows and writers nation-wide. Movable Type 5.02 tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37871 2010-09-02T22:02:40Z 2010-09-02T22:12:09Z

Enacting speech codes on college campuses is one of those causes that leftists pursue to win arguments on which they cannot prevail democratically. It all sounds so reasonable and humane, avoiding "hurtful words", based on race, gender, etc., etc. But,...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 courts are now weighing in, and not a moment too soon. The Alliance Defense Fund deserves special congratulations for its leadership on these matters. A victory in the Third District court can now be applied elsewhere in the country.]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37801 2010-09-01T21:41:51Z 2010-09-02T00:08:30Z

It was both scary and pathetic at the Discovery Channel in Maryland today when an environmental terrorist took hostages in an attempt to force the television network to show more programs on Malthus and Darwin and to rail against over-population...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 initial news accounts was any mention of Darwin. But, in James J. Lee's manifesto, emerges this clear demand: "Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains until they get it!!" Another odd thing is that the Discovery Channel probably runs more programs about Darwinian evolution than any other network, even PBS. Indeed, if I close my eyes and try to visualize "Discovery Channel" the image that forms is of a cartoon amphibian crawling out of the primordial pond, growing simian legs, making fire and developing into a TV news anchor. In the news stories of the Columbine massacre several years ago the Darwin angle also was missed, though it had been explicit in the rants of the young killer/suicides. Now it's Mr. Lee's turn to have his message revised.]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37711 2010-09-01T03:29:18Z 2010-09-01T05:51:45Z

Isn't it time to "follow the money" on science scams in academia? In the end, taxpayers are the suckers and that is a fit subject for public inquiry. For example, evolutionary psychology includes the assertion that Darwinian evolution accounts for...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 a hard blow last week when one of its leading exponents, Prof. Marc Hauser of Harvard, was exposed as a fraud. The monkey research he conducted didn't show at all what what he said it did. This isn't Climate Gate, but it's a scandal. Dr. Hauser probably can escape permanent damage to his employment prospects if he explains that his genes made him cheat. In the history of hominids, after all, shaking down taxpayers is a well-established behavior to enhance reproductive advantage. What no one in the media apparently bothered to check was the cost of Prof. Hauser's bogus research. Looking at National Science Foundation grants online, it seems to have been $504,000. Shouldn't the Inspector General at the NSF be asking Harvard for the government's money back? The follow-up question is, how much of this goes on in academia? And why does Big Science, alone among American institutions, get to police itself? We have headline investigations if some Congressman misuses his per diem allowance on a junket to Ouagadougou. Total waste, maybe $300. In comparison, is 500K for rigged university research merely chimp change?]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37741 2010-08-30T00:54:49Z 2010-08-30T17:02:30Z

There are still cars zipping around America's bluer neighborhoods with bumper strips from way back in 2003: "No War for Oil." That was the Iraq war, of course. There is no need to belabor the memories of the marches,...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 There are still cars zipping around America's bluer neighborhoods with bumper strips from way back in 2003: "No War for Oil." That was the Iraq war, of course. There is no need to belabor the memories of the marches, the snide TV and radio commentaries, the alternative media fits about the supposed conspiracy. The idea that George W. Bush and his evil buddy, Dick Cheney, were sending American boys to die for oil was simply taken as a proven truth. Only now, seven years later, as US combat troops leave Iraq, is oil production in Iraq finally back to its pre-war levels of production of 2.5 million barrels a day and easing upwards. Electricity production is doing better, but not great. And the US oil companies that benefitted? Well, Exxon is there, but the biggest players are the Chinese. Does anyone remember the Chinese sending any troops to Iraq? Or the Russians? Hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars have been spent on the Iraq war. By no conceivable accounting will anyone in the U.S. get that much back in Iraqi oil revenue--ever. The Iraqis, meanwhile, do have oil as their big economic hope. The country's reserves are nearly those of Saudi Arabia and already supply 90 percent of government revenue. The big danger, simultaneously, is that oil will corrupt a country already steeped in traditions of corruption. But it is long past time for those "No War for Oil" bumper strips to come off, don't you think?]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37671 2010-08-27T20:38:06Z 2010-08-27T21:50:42Z

(George Gilder addresses Wired's September cover story, "The Web is Dead", by Chris Anderson and Michael Wolf.) May I be so bold as to contradict my old friends at Wired? I would suggest that they have the picture wildly upside...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 (George Gilder addresses Wired's September cover story, "The Web is Dead", by Chris Anderson and Michael Wolf.) May I be so bold as to contradict my old friends at Wired? I would suggest that they have the picture wildly upside down. What is dying is not the Web but television and the Internet. The onrush of video bits as a share of traffic is irrelevant to the prospects of the web, which is measured not by bulk traffic but by information entropy: by impressions, transactions, and servers. The video flood, however, is deadly to the Internet with its ungainly TCP aks-naks, buffers and security patches, multi-layered latency and dropped links. It is the Internet that must die as a result of the dominance of video traffic. Video will kill the cumbrous, porous seven layer Internet model just as the rise of voice killed the old best efforts, asynchronous, non-deterministic telegraph network. As my friend Henry Gau ingeniously explains, the rise of voice communications with their needs for deterministic synchrony required a new Bell infrastructure to replace the old Western Union tap-tap. Similarly video's needs for deterministic synchronous delivery precisely parallel the previous demands of voice streams when they became the prevailing form of traffic early in the last century with the rise of telephony. Who will build this network remains in question but the floods of video all the way down from the server through the living room to the desktop to the handset cannot be handled by some Microsoft, Symantec, or Cisco patch on the old Internet.]]> As for Google, its goofier-than-Gore postures against life giving CO2 and bizarre drive for a network neutrality litigation carnival in Washington make it easy to make fun of. But contrary to all Wolff and Anderson's disparagement of the company and its allegedly obsolescent open Web model, Google is becoming more central than ever to the new era and is emphatically on the right side in the wars over the future of the Internet. While Wired touts the end of the Web, Google is unleashing a program to mash all TV and other video onto the Web. It is producing ingenious end-of-TV software that transforms any Android or iPhone into a Web browser remote control for capacious big screens or even uses the Android or iPhone screens themselves (and soon their onboard projectors). Its new Native Client software, already manifest in its Chrome browser and coming OS, trumps Apple's Objective C language (Jobs' mandatory apps legacy from his old NeXt machine), that Wired trumpets a super now force on wireless phones. Thus Google promises to fulfill at last my Life After Television dream of a teleputer in every pocket (or bioslot), with access not to a hundred channels but to a 100 million interactive sites on any display. At the same time, Facebook, a Website with no significant new technology, does not "control" the future as Wired imagines. Like AOL, MySpace, and Twitter, it will have its day in the sun before falling into the gap between a social playground and a commercial hustle. The death of the Web? Apple uber alles? Giant monopolies closing off the world in a cutesy Farmville cartoon garden? That's Weirdsville. The flood of video will indeed require a simpler, synchronous, secure and deterministic replacement for the current Internet. But the Web will thrive for decades to come and if Google can break away from its silly medieval green politics, it may well lead the Web's victory parade. tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37631 2010-08-26T23:46:02Z 2010-08-27T00:15:11Z

Amtrak not only has had a monopoly on passenger rail in America, it has abused the franchise. The problem now is so serious that many observers have grown skeptical about any realistic future for passenger rail in this country. But...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 Amtrak not only has had a monopoly on passenger rail in America, it has abused the franchise. The problem now is so serious that many observers have grown skeptical about any realistic future for passenger rail in this country. But don't give up. It is legal now for private companies, in certain circumstances, to bid against Amtrak management, and that is beginning to happen. Don Phillips, in the new Trains magazine (I cannot find the link; sorry) has the story from Virginia. An old-fashioned rail battle erupts in the nation's capital Boardman admits he was asleep at the switch By Don Phillips The great railroad battles of the last 180 years have been etched into the American consciousness. High school and college students know the names: Gould, Rockefeller, Huntington, Brosnan. There was the first railroad battle, over whether the new Baltimore & Ohio or the C&O Canal would get through the narrow gap at Point of Rocks, Md. There were numerous bitter strikes, including the great Pullman strike and a nationwide railroad strike that began at the still-standing roundhouse at Martinsburg, W.Va., both in the 19th century. ]]> Now another great battle has been fought, and I think I can persuade you that it might be a turning point in American passenger railroading. No guns were fired, but this battle had threats, bitterness, and ruined work lives. And it appears to have awakened Amtrak from a long and arrogant sleep. I can't claim it will ever rise to the legendary status of the Pullman strike, but it will be worthy of more than a footnote in the history books. I'm talking about the battle between Amtrak and the French company Keolis for the contract to run the Virginia Railway Express commuter service. Surprised? You never heard of this nasty fight? Even if you did, you will probably be surprised to learn how vitriolic it got behind the scenes. Amtrak ran VRE for all of its 18 years, and apparently assumed it would continue running VRE, even as other companies lined up to bid for a new contract. That assumption was fed by arrogance and a certain level of incompetence among the Amtrak group in charge of the VRE contract. But on Oct. 16, 2009, the hammer fell. The VRE Operations Board recommended Keolis. "I think they were blindsided," says Dale Zehner, chief executive officer of VRE. He says Amtrak had been informed of the bidding schedule more than a year earlier, and had spent more than a year negotiating a new agreement to operate trains into Union Station in Washington. But VRE officials say the Amtrak contract proposal was far more costly than the Keolis contract, and did not meet many of VRE's requirements. What's more, the Amtrak group that presented its bid to VRE obviously had not read the agency's requirements. For example, VRE specified that no more than seven officials could officially present the contract and answer questions. Amtrak showed up with eight. And that group had no answers to many VRE questions. "Their proposal didn't respond to what we wanted in a service," Zehner says. Meanwhile, Keolis mounted a masterful campaign to win the bid and actually listen to VRE. "First you've got to ask the client what he wants, and then listen," says Steve Townsend, executive vice president of Keolis' VRE operation. Keolis won. Amtrak protested, but only after the 10-day time limit for protests had expired. The battle then turned bitter, and Amtrak and its unions turned nasty. Union officials made it clear to employees that if they signed with Keolis, they would be fired immediately by Amtrak and permanently blacklisted. Crews who agreed to stay with Amtrak not only received a $5,000 bonus but were guaranteed a job. Amtrak, meanwhile, even tried to hire crews laid off from New Jersey Transit who had been approached by Keolis. The idea was to prevent Keolis from hiring enough crews to run the system by takeover day, June 28. The reason for this strategy was made clear in a note tacked to a crew bulletin board by a union official, calling on members to be respectful of Keolis officials who recruit them. "We are trying to get this contract back, and we cannot be seen as interfering with them doing their job or harassing them in any way," the note said. When that failed, Amtrak did everything possible to harass Keolis. Amtrak refused to allow newly hired VRE engineers to ride with Amtrak crews to familiarize themselves with the route. Keolis and VRE struck back by operating non-passenger "qualification trains" on weekends, a costly process. Even when the Federal Railroad Administration asked Amtrak to allow Keolis engineers in the cab just before takeover day, most of the Amtrak engineers on the Manassas Line refused, and Amtrak would not order them to comply. Rumors spread like a grass fire after a drought. "I was surprised by the number of false rumors," Zehner says. In the end, only one senior Amtrak engineer hired on with Keolis. Amtrak President Joe Boardman, in an interview, acknowledged that he hoped Keolis would fail and Amtrak would have another chance. But, five days after the July 12 launch of Keolis operations, Boardman says he believes Keolis will keep the VRE contract for the full 15-year term. He suspects Keolis may have underbid to get the contract (something Keolis strongly denies), but he has no proof of that. "We'll wait and see what the real cost is for this service," he says. Despite his misgivings, Boardman was tougher on himself and Amtrak. "We know we did not provide the right answers," he says. Boardman considers the battle over VRE a wake-up call. "I see a lot more competition coming forward," he says. Boardman also decided to drop out of the bidding for operating the old B&O Maryland diesel commuter service between Washington and Baltimore and between Washington and Frederick, Md., and Martinsburg, W.Va., over CSX lines. He says Amtrak was dissatisfied with the liability provisions of the proposed MARC contract. Keolis might well have won the MARC contract by the time you read these words. (Amtrak did win the Washington-Baltimore- Perryville, Md., MARC contract last year, operating over the Northeast Corridor.) Nevertheless Keolis, which runs commuter rail and bus systems around the globe, now has a firm anchor in the United States, in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. This is a bitter loss for Amtrak. However, if Amtrak really has awakened from its sleep, it might also be one of the best things ever to happen to Amtrak and to Joe Boardman. DON PHILLIPS, a newspaper reporter for more than four decades, writes this exclusive monthly column for Trains. tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37591 2010-08-25T22:01:58Z 2010-08-25T23:05:29Z

The New York Times, as usual, leads the attack on the federal court ruling Monday against US Government funding for embryonic stem cell research (mainly through the National Institutes of Health), and as usual the reporting is tendentious. "This decision...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 The New York Times, as usual, leads the attack on the federal court ruling Monday against US Government funding for embryonic stem cell research (mainly through the National Institutes of Health), and as usual the reporting is tendentious. "This decision has the potential to do serious damage to one of the most promising areas of biomedical research," says Dr. Francis Collins, director of NIH. In a companion article ("The Two Plaintiffs at Center for the Ban on Stem Cell Use"), the Times employs innuendo to raise personal questions about the lead researchers who brought the case, Dr. James L. Shirley and Dr. Theresa Deisher. It is one of those stories that sounds worrying until you read it again and realize how empty the charges are. (Basically, the plaintiffs have had disputes with colleagues. Big surprise.) In other words, just because the Times runs a negative article about someone doesn't mean there is any content to the charges. The truth is that the scientists who are plaintiffs have put their careers at risk by taking on the Government and especially the likes of powerful funders at NIH--not to mention biased journalists. They are, in short, very courageous. In a third article, "Stem Cell Biology and its Complications," way down the page, long after we read how people with diabetes and other ravaging diseases are distressed by possible funding cuts for cures, the Times admits, "Yet despite the high hopes for embryonic stem cells, progresss has been slow--so far there are no treatments with the cells." (Emphasis added.) After all these years and who know how much much money: "no treatments with the (embryonic stem) cells." Finally, the Times leaps in with a fourth article, an editorial deploring the decision, "Wrong Direction on Stem Cells." Expect attacks by columnists to follow. The plaintiffs would have no chance against that kind of stacked journalistic deck. Fortunately, they apparently have a better case in court. Ideology is largely responsible for the insistence on embryonic stem cell research to the relative exclusion of other stem cell approaches. It is another case of Big Science and its journalists enablers acting like Big Brother.]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37541 2010-08-24T23:00:56Z 2010-08-26T00:06:58Z

Talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas supposedly are going to take place shortly. Poor Benjamin Netanyahu has to behave as if he really believes success is possible, even if, in truth, the possibility is slight to...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 The Israel Test, spoke a few days ago upon return from a recent trip. This short video is part of of his trip report. ]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37531 2010-08-24T19:09:42Z 2010-08-24T19:54:21Z

The news about the court victory for critics of embryonic stem cell research is huge, though it is not being played that way. You can be sure it would have been a bigger story if the case had been won...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 page one of the Wall Street Journal (above the fold). Theresa Deisher of Seattle is one of the plaintiffs who sued the Obama Administration over the matter. She kindly sent us a copy of the ruling, found here. Obviously, the Administration will appeal. But they have been called out and the pro-life issues now have a legal force lacking before. It is amazing and grand that Deisher and company have shown what citizens can do--on the right side. The Journal story says the ruling "was cheered by some Christian groups as a defense of human life" (imagine that), but "denounced by scientists who called it a major setback for medical research." But it is not a setback for science. Deisher is a scientist in the field and Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow of Discovery Institute, has pointed out repeatedly that you don't need human embryos to get scientific progress using stem cells. Furthermore, evidence suggests that human embryos are bad candidates for research in the field. Embryonic Stem Cells are wonderful candidates, of course, for the effort to pit human life defenders against people who long for medical advances. Judge Royce Lambert of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. has thrown a monkey wrench into that strategy.]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37281 2010-08-11T23:50:16Z 2010-08-12T00:52:28Z

The Screwtape Letters, a novel of C. S. Lewis, is both satirical and instructional, maybe at once the funniest of Lewis' works and also the most trenchant. It has converted people, and amused many more. How many works of...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 The Screwtape Letters, a novel of C. S. Lewis, is both satirical and instructional, maybe at once the funniest of Lewis' works and also the most trenchant. It has converted people, and amused many more. How many works of theological interest can say as much? (Just now I can't think of any). Published during World War II, Screwtape seems to remain fresh and accessible--and every few years its schema is reused for some other purpose, the sincerest form of flattery, as they say. Screwtape seems like a natural for stage adaptation and has been performed by several writer/producers/actors before Max McLean. But it is McLean who has excelled. He presently has a bravura, small cast performance at the Westside Theater Off-Broadway in New York. The production has been favorably noticed in the World and The Wall Street Journal ("One hell of a good show"), among other places. But I particularly enjoyed a recent sizable back-story treatment by Retta Blaney in the estimable high church Anglican (Episcopal) journal, The Living Church (July 25 issue). For what is worth, my opinion is that Screwtape would make an outstanding film and gain millions of new fans where it now wins thousands. The letters from the minor devil, Screwtape, to his agent, Toadpipe, are an indirect means to describe for us sympathetically and humorously the devil's "patient", a young man whose soul Screwtape intends to corrupt. It could be entertaining to follow the patient on the big screen. There are at least two or three friendly film makers who should be looking at the possibility. McLean, who himself plays Screwtape on stage--in a gaudy gold and red brocade smoking jacket--says his greatest difficulty was getting Lewis' long sentences into script bites that won't gag an actor on stage. He seems to have pulled it off and also to have reduced what would have been several hours of drama into a lively 90 minutes. "We have twice as much content as most shows and we're half as long," he says. "I feel audiences want to delve into the meatiness of the piece." The play has been extended in New York into October. I am going to try to see it before then, but if I (and you) can't, McLean will have another national road show this winter (he's had at least one before the New York opening). Then maybe a movie?]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37251 2010-08-11T03:52:12Z 2010-08-11T17:20:13Z

Former Senator Ted Stevens, killed in a tragic plane crash in his beloved Alaska, is going to be the source of a great deal of sadness and regret in his home state tonight. It should induce some soul searching...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 Former Senator Ted Stevens, killed in a tragic plane crash in his beloved Alaska, is going to be the source of a great deal of sadness and regret in his home state tonight. It should induce some soul searching in Washington, DC. Before Sen. Stevens was killed in real life he was ruined in political life by unscrupulous federal prosecutors. He finally was able to clear his name in court, but the indictment that preceded the 2008 election was timed so it would be all but impossible for him to be re-elected. Even so, he nearly was re-elected. The final vote margin was small. Clearly he would have returned to the Senate had it not been for the malign political activity of the federal prosecuting team. Ted Stevens will be hailed correctly as one of the greatest sons of our fiftieth state, a giant of the Senate, a remarkable, durable public servant. I hope his life story also will help speed reform of the judicial system that allowed rogue prosecutors to play politics with his honor and, frankly, with the democratic rights of Alaskans and the political well-being of the country.]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37241 2010-08-09T22:16:16Z 2010-08-10T22:30:22Z

The special army of 2010 Census workers is still being demobilized, but we already know that the south (including Texas, of course) is going to gain a lot of new Congressmen and certain northern states are going to lose. You...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 You can chart the way various states are faring by examining the various counties within them. It was clear even from figures from the boom times of a couple of years ago; I expect that the trends are stronger now. With the exception of the political swing state of Ohio, almost all the states that have backed liberal candidates for the White House and Congress lead those losing Congressional districts. It's a blue state phenomenon. But it is not politics that characterizes this decline, but public policies. States (including Ohio) that have over-spent and over-taxed are hurting most. The new "civil war" is really a struggle over those public policies. California, which since statehood never before failed to gain Congressional representation, is not going to gain any after this Census. The once-Golden State actually is losing people by the hundreds of thousands as punitive taxes and regulations destroy manufacturing and agriculture. People who own or run factories and farms are being hurt, but so are their workers. The Central Valley is being literally decimated.]]> the "War Against Strivers". Word about the real war finally has reached the fancy precincts of Manhattan, home to The New Yorker. In that journal's August 15 number James Surowiecki comes up with a typical mugged-liberal solution: tax the very rich even more heavily than those striving to get rich or, in New York, just trying to cover private school costs for kids and meet the rapacious taxes of Gotham City and The Empire State. (New York heads the list of depopulating states along with California, New Jersey and Michigan--all high taxers.) It has not yet dawned on The New Yorker types that high public spending and taxes kill the prospects of the great majority of people at all levels of income. The peculiarity of our system is that someone making two hundred thousand dollars a year and someone making two hundred million dollars a year pay at similar tax rates." As I have said, the very rich are slow to get the point. Most don't really mind very high taxes because they are beyond caring about such things. Once you have a yacht, a private jet and several vacation homes, adding more only complicates your bookkeeping and saps your time with management details. You can enjoy giving your surplus away through a foundation, and beyond that you will be tempted to support tax increases to promote through government all the good things your philanthropy supports. There are still many unrepentant capitalists among the very rich, but, for the first times in 2006 and 2008, a majority of voters in that elevated status supported Democratic candidates. (The numbers of the very rich who think it important to support efforts to instill the values of thrift and entrepreneurism in the next generation is a tiny subset of even those who do support free market capitalism.) If you want to know where misguided socio-economic attitudes and alliances lead, look to California. Joel Kotkin at Chapman College in Orange, CA writes in City magazine about "The Golden State's War on Itself". It is indeed a peep into the larger war between the strivers and the privileged insiders--the government operators and their allies among the very rich. California shows that you can't run a country on high spending, high tax, high regulatory policies forever. Before long, everyone--including what become the "formerly very rich"--are sucked down.]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37181 2010-08-04T17:42:01Z 2010-08-04T23:01:53Z

The Tower of Babel was a human impertinence that caused God to fasten on humanity many languages, a contribution to the confusion and disagreement that have become characteristic of human nature. Today we have the Internet. The American Spectator, a...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 A Classic Evolution Policy Blunder.. It is instructive to see the numerous comments that follow it. From the same article various respondents decided that I am anti-science, anti-Bible, anti-reason and pro-liberal judges. I am denounced as a creationist by one reader and an anti-creationist by another. (I am none of those things.) Soon enough, as is typical, some of the commenters are denouncing each other, often behind the protection of made-up names. We now live in a media environment that is like a restaurant where all the patrons are shouting at the same time. The louder your neighbor, the more you raise your own voice. The more competitive the din, the more nuance and extended argument are cast aside in favor of sloganeering and insults. In such an environment, one probably should lower his voice rather than raise it. It should be obvious that just because I am aware of the disposition of federal courts on the subject of religion in public school classrooms I do not necessarily favor it. In the instance of Judge Jones in Dover, PA, I think the judicial opinion is poorly reasoned as well as unfair. Regardless, in real life, school leaders must deal with the law as it is, not as they would like it to be. In the case of Dover, some members on the local school board defended their actions on religious grounds and not only had their policy thrown out by Judge Jones, but also got themselves thrown out of office. In addition, they at least temporarily made the work of intelligent design scientists and other Darwin critics more difficult. The issue was not theirs to misrepresent and endanger, properly speaking, but they did it anyhow. I hope that doesn't happen in Louisiana. The state government has a fine law that will allow controversial scientific subjects to be taught objectively on their scientific merits. It should be obvious (again) that no one denies that there are religious implications to Darwinian evolution and also to its rejection. But there also are religious implications, for example, to such topics as cloning. And there are political implications to global warming. But most people probably, upon reflection, can find common ground on teaching only science in public school science classes and leaving religion and/or politics at the door. Science should not avoid controversy, but it should respect its own limits. Within those limits there is still plenty to discuss.]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37121 2010-08-03T18:12:39Z 2010-08-03T18:55:11Z

Americans' superstitious belief in the assured blessings of a college diploma is waning. A degree by itself does not mean someone is well-educated, in the classic sense of, say, 100 years ago. If it did, there still would be an...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 new book by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Breifus that is reviewed today in the Wall Street Journal. Before readers complain that the article and the book (and my comments above) constitute an overly sweeping indictment, let us all acknowledge that there are some fine colleges and that even the bad ones have a some good professors. A few professors can even be called outstanding, whether on teaching or research grounds, or both. Okay? But let the reader also acknowledge that the institution of college education is ripe for reform. If nothing else, the customers will demand it. ]]> tag:www.discoverynews.org,2010://11.37111 2010-08-02T23:25:39Z 2010-08-03T00:02:27Z

In the deconstructionist critical age it is hard to assert the truth about anything, especially something that used to be thought tautological: "science". What Discovery Institute has been saying for years is that the guardians of big science, cocooned in...

Bruce Chapman http://www.discovery.org/p/7 The New York Times. What she finds is not science, but self-referencial sophomoric pranks, vitriol and cavil. That world, also amazingly, seems to be fraying badly.]]>