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Fiber Fables II

Press reports this year have been replete with tales of the great “fiber glut” that leaves long distance carriers with vast unused bandwidth — Merrill Lynch estimates that only 2.5 percent of fiber capacity is currently used. By this reasoning the telecom revolution is drowning in a surfeit of supply and a dearth of demand. But the true story is nearly the polar opposite — yet another example of a telecom fable — a failure to distinguish between unused bandwidth and unusable bandwidth. To grasp this we must venture out into the often arcane world of telecommunications parlance, and translate nerd-speak into plain-speak. Read More ›

Darwin and the Descent of Morality

An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications. Does evolutionary theory undermine traditional morality, or does it support it? Does it suggest that infanticide is natural (as Steven Pinker asserts) or is it a bulwark against liberal relativism (as Francis Fukuyama argues)? Does it rest on a universe devoid of Read More ›

Call Them The Evangelical Alpha Males

Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) teaches at Palm Beach Atlantic University and is senior fellow for journalism at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. He writes this weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.There’s Chuck Colson and James Dobson, James Kennedy and Robert Schuller, and Paul Crouch and Pat Robertson. There are many more. They are 60 years old or Read More ›

Kiss Patients’ Rights Goodbye?

Civilization is a tricky affair. It depends on two opposite conditions. One is our ability to live and work together – especially under conditions of common danger and stress. The other is our ability to get some distance from each other. Physical space is good – we all need our personal bubbles. But even more important is a certain kind Read More ›

National Center For Science Education’s Shrill Campaign In Defense Of Evolution

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a lobbying group whose self-described mission is to "defend evolution," has responded to scholarly criticism of the recent public television series Evolution with a series of shrill web postings that rely largely on mudslinging rather than science. Read More ›

Lunar Secrets

Original Article and Online Interview It’s hard to know exactly when or how life began on Earth; there are very few rocks and fossils left over from the planet’s early days. The Earth has swallowed some of its crust, and water has worn away its surface. Now a team of researchers has discovered a place where early signs of life Read More ›

Preventing Cyber-Terror

The atrocities of September 11 brought home to Americans the vulnerability of a high-technology information society. Collapsing with the twin towers that topped the Manhattan sky-line was a veritable Mother-lode of network communications equipment. For want of communications alone the New York Stock Exchange could not have opened that terrible week. Read More ›

Ending Fiscal Fluster…and Anxiety

A broad coalition of representatives of many major economic policy organizations came together in late September with a common message and program for economic recovery. The political establishment now favors economic “stimulus.” Stimulus is a nice, positive sounding (in most cases) word, but it doesn’t tell us with any specificity what we should do for the economy. Those of us Read More ›