Rumsfeld’s Revolution
Court defends free speech, not ‘schoolhouses of worship’
Free speech, not forced religion, lies at the heart of the Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding the use of public school buildings by religious groups after school hours. But you might not glean that fact from comments by the ruling’s critics, who seem determined to depict the court’s decision in Good News Club v. Milford Central School as an invitation Read More ›
Off with his head
Letting CT Scans Out of the Bag
Rumsfeld-Style Military Reform
Are We Spiritual Machines?
In the closing session of the 1998 Telecosm conference, hosted annually by Gilder Publishing and Forbes at Lake Tahoe, inventor and author Ray Kurzweil engaged a number of critics. He advocated “Strong Artificial Intelligence” (AI), the claim that a computational process sufficiently capable of altering or organizing itself can produce “consciousness.” The session had an unexpectedly profound impact, not least Read More ›
The Ethics of Organ Donation
Support for organ donation in this country is, as the clich has it, a mile wide and an inch deep. This is understandable. Most people favor the concept of giving “the gift of life” in the abstract. But when it comes to permitting their own loved ones’ body parts to be “harvested” for transplantation — a decision families must make Read More ›
The Enemy of Abortion
Looking back, it’s clear that abortion and adoption are issues that cannot be separated. But the link wasn’t necessarily evident when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled abortion legal in 1973. It took three decades for bipartisan consensus to emerge that abortion was unlikely to be declared illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court and that efforts to promote adoption were the Read More ›
Government Prestige Masks Scientific Incompetence
If “to err is human,” is being a member of the Institute of Medicine’s, “Committee on the Quality of Health Care,” really divine? We don’t think so! Historian Daniel Boorstin once wrote of the “self-deceiving magic of prestige,” of using aura to cover inadequacy and other sins. The prestigious Institute of Medicine, part of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, Read More ›