Ecology
SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA–For 2 months earlier this fall, University of Washington, Seattle, grad student Amanda Stanley sifted through reams of documents–from dense scientific articles to denser federal reports–bearing on the fate of northern spotted owls, marbled murrelets, and other imperiled icons of the Pacific Northwest. Her task was to assess the quality of the science underpinning the state of Washington’s Read More ›
The Idea Behind the Internet Law Task Force (ILTF)
The idea for creating a legal analog to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) occured to Peter Harter while writing an essay criticising Senator Exon’s “Communications Decency Act of 1995” (S.314). Click here to see this unpublished essay.) The following is a brief idea outline for the Internet Law Task Force , written prior to the launch of the task force in October of Read More ›
George Gilder and His Critics II
Every now and then, timing is all. Take George Gilder’s Aug. 28 Forbes ASAP piece, “The Coming Software Shift.” Lucky Forbes readers got their copies in mid-August, smack between the year’s two biggest technology events — Netscape’s record-hot IPO and the release of Windows 95. Gilder used the timing to explain why creative energy and profits in desk-top software would Read More ›
Endangered Salmon
PORTLAND, OREGON–For years the Army Corps of Engineers has been chewing over the best way to bring back endangered populations of salmon and steelhead along the Snake River. The most controversial proposal –embraced by environmentalists and bitterly resisted by many local residents–is to breach four hydropower dams on the Snake River, a tributary of the Columbia River in Idaho and Read More ›
United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Drinking Water, Fisheries, and Wildlife
United States SenateCommittee on Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Drinking Water, Fisheries, and Wildlife Hearings on the Reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act July 13, 1995 Comments of Mark L. Plummer, Ph.D. Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute In 1973, when Congress passed the Endangered Species Act, its members believed the goal of banishing extinction was imperative and within quick reach. Read More ›
Public needn’t fear budgetary ‘train wreck’ rhetoric
The noise you hear coming from Washington, D.C. is not the screeching prelude to a budgetary “train wreck.” It’s only the noise of a rhetoric wreck. There is nothing at all unusual about the failure of Congress and the President to reach agreement on a budget by the formal deadline, October 1 (this Sunday). And the “crisis” over the debt Read More ›
Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology
Contemporary science presents us with the remarkable theory that the universe began billions of years ago with a cataclysmic explosion, the “Big Bang.” But was this explosion created by God? The question of whether Big Bang cosmology supports theism or atheism has long been a matter of discussion among the general public and in popular science books, but has received Read More ›
Tithing tax break offers better reform
Wailing critics in Washington, D.C. would like you to believe that America’s poor are about to be devastated by plans to block grant welfare funds and send them to the states. The House of Representative’s desire to add specific mandates to that approach simply raises the wailing to a higher pitch.But the truth is that 70 of the 80 major Read More ›
Endangered Species and the Profit Motive:
“My own gropings come to a dead end,” the conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote more than forty years ago, “when I try to appraise the profit motive. For a full generation the American conservation movement has been substituting the profit motive for the feat motive, yet it has failed to motivate. We can all see profit in conservation practice, but the Read More ›