The 25-year Chinese boom is no longer a secret. But the reasons for that boom are still poorly understood. Most observers point to a general “opening up,” meaning free trade, low-cost labor, and the emergence of a non-state business sector. These factors are correct as far as they go, but their vagueness shows that Western economists and business leaders still Read More ›
Ever since embryonic stem cells were first extracted from human embryos in 1998, biotechnologists, abetted by a compliant media, have promised they would soon lead to miraculous medical cures for degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. First, we were told, all that would be needed were stem cell lines extracted from “surplus” embryos “left over” from in vitro fertilization Read More ›
The Design Revolution by mathematician and philosopher William Dembski is perhaps the best “bang for your buck” treatment on intelligent design. Dembski is a leading design theorist and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute. This popular work serves almost as an “FAQ” on intelligent design. It is ideal for the layperson who would like to understand intelligent design and see how Read More ›
How are design hypotheses properly inferred – simply by eliminating chance hypotheses or by comparing the likelihood of chance and design hypotheses? Behind this question are two fundamentally different approaches about how to reason with chance hypotheses, one friendly to intelligent design, the other less so. The friendly approach, due to Ronald Fisher, rejects a chance hypothesis provided sample data Read More ›
original article (need subscription to access) Never mind the war on terror or the economy. AT&T has convinced some in the White House that the November election will be about . . . phone rates. How else to explain the Bush Administration’s anticompetitive approach to telecommunications, an industry that inside of four years has lost an estimated 900,000 jobs, $2 Read More ›
While the national press obsessed over the “jobless recovery,” the U.S. economy quietly received a major shot in the arm last week. This happened when a U.S. Court of Appeals ordered the Federal Communications Commission to scrap regulations that are holding back the spread of the broadband economy. Will the Bush administration finally embrace this victory for telecom deregulation and Read More ›
Original Article If there’s anything an election year teaches us, it is that even the truth, in the wrong hands, can be spun into almost anything. This isn’t much of a surprise for politicians. But scientists? The legendary astronomer Carl Sagan once claimed, “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are Read More ›
Most people prefer to live in rich neighborhoods rather than poor ones — why is that? Perhaps they notice rich neighbors tend to keep the environment cleaner, respect property rights of others and do not engage in criminal activities threatening lives of their neighbors. The same is true of countries. We don’t fear rich countries — such as Japan, Germany, Read More ›