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A Run on the World Bank

If you were a stockholder of a bank and its managers kept telling stockholders they would have to “write off” the loans they had made because the borrowers were in no position to repay them would you fire the management for incompetence? If you are a taxpayer, particularly an American taxpayer, you are a stockholder in such a bank — the World Bank.

The World Bank was set up in 1944 (along with the International Monetary Fund) to assist with post-World War II reconstruction. Its mandate is to reduce world poverty and promote economic growth but, in fact, many of its activities have had precisely the opposite effect. It now has 184 member countries, but most of the $400 billion it has dispensed in loans, grants and credits have been underwritten or guaranteed by the taxpayers in a few rich nations.

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Doctors Doubt Darwinism

Original Article If you believe you are just a blob of cellular tissue, please raise your right protoplasm. Does your own doctor treat you like a human being, or just an accidental collection of chemicals, haphazardly arranged by dumb chance? A recent poll by the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Social and Religious Research suggests an answer. The poll finds that Read More ›

Open Debate on Intelligent Design

Original Article In the game of politics, the side that doesn’t show up forfeits the match. That’s why it’s hard to understand what science groups hoped to achieve by boycotting the recent Kansas State Board of Education hearings on how evolution is taught in public schools. Hearings were held in early May to consider competing recommendations from a committee of Read More ›

Assistant Professor Premiers Film at Institute

The work of an Iowa State University assistant professor has made its way into the Smithsonian Institute. A 60-minute documentary titled “The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe” will premiere at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History on June 23. The film is based on a book co-authored by Guillermo Gonzalez, an ISU assistant professor of Read More ›

The Final Evolution

Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany, is a Fellow of Discovery’s Center for Science and Culture From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germanyby Richard Weikart(Palgrave Macmillan, 312 pages, $59.95)Reviewed by Tom Bethell I FOUND MYSELF WONDERING what the late Stephen Jay Gould would have made of this Read More ›

Efforts To Disarm Hezbollah Must Be Allowed To Go Forward

Original article On Sept. 2, 2004, the U.N. Security Council passed a little-noticed resolution sponsored by the United States and France calling for all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon, disarmament and disbanding of Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias, and for free, fair presidential elections. In the following 10 months, to nearly everyone’s surprise, two of the three major directives Read More ›

Nearly Two-Thirds of Doctors Skeptical of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

SEATTLE, WA – A recent poll by the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Social and Religious Research finds that 60% of doctors reject Darwinism, saying that they do not think humans evolved through natural processes alone. Only 38% of the doctors polled agreed with the statement that “Humans evolved naturally with no supernatural involvement.” The study also reported that 1/3 of Read More ›

The Quantum Enigma

Quantum physics is not usually accessible to the lay reader. In this case, Discovery Institute Fellow and physicist Wolfgang Smith provides a treatise that can be read not only by scientists but also by readers unacquainted with the technical literature on quantum reality. One would not accept such an accessible book from an author who graduated from Cornell University at Read More ›