Last week some readers of this blog had a hard time accepting that the rabbinic term “apikoros,” a kind of heretic, denotes someone who rejects — if I may use the contemporary term — intelligent design. One fellow, by a rigorous Google search, even believed he’d found Internet-based proof that an apikoros designates a Christian! Um, no. The Mishnah uses Read More ›
In pop culture, images of wealthy executives usually connect the execs with yachts and swimming pools, golf-courses and ski lodges, Gulfstreams, and absurdly expensive restaurants. A more accurate portrayal would emphasize long hours, BlackBerry interruptions, punishing stress, lost sleep and missed family occasions. In ground-breaking work, Dalton Conley, chair of the sociology department at New York University, reveals that “it Read More ›
The current federal surface transportation funding bill expires this summer. A crucial revenue source is the federal gas tax trust fund, now chronically insolvent. The federal gas tax hasn’t been raised in 16 years, and it isn’t indexed to inflation. A highway system built in the 1950s and 1960s continues to wear down under heavy use, increasing funding needs for Read More ›
My sister nailed it many years ago when she said, “Your basic human is not such a hot item.”
Keep that filed in your head as I tell my little tale.
About five or six years ago, roughly, I was solicited to write a column every two weeks for the Sunday New York Times Business Section. I was really thrilled. I have written for the Washington Post (when I was a teenager), for the Wall Street Journal edit page under the legendary Bob Bartley, for Barron’s, under the really great Alan Abelson and Jim Meagher, for my beloved American Spectator, under the great Bob and Wlady, and now having a regular column at the Times was going to be great stuff.
The column went well. I got lots of excellent fan mail and fine feedback from my editors, who, however, kept changing.
The first real super problem I had was when the movie I narrated and co-wrote, Expelled — No Intelligence Allowed, was in progress. A “science writer” for the Times blasted the movie on the front page and noted that I, whom she repeatedly called “…a freelance writer…” (not a columnist) for the Times, was somehow involved. That was followed by a really fantastically angry blast against the movie by a reviewer who really hated it a lot. (I note that the Times also disliked Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Hmm.)
Expelled was a plea for open discussion of the possibility that life might have started with an Intelligent Designer. This idea, that freedom of academic discussion on an issue as to which there is avid scientific disagreement has value, seems obvious to me. But it drives the atheists and neo-Darwinists crazy and they responded viciously.
Read More ›The Israel Test By George Gilder (Richard Vigilante Books, 296 pages, $27.95) This latest book from one of the planet’s intellectual titans of the past generation is one of his most important. Given George Gilder’s astonishing range and foresight — including family structure, welfare, the practical and moral case for enterprise capitalist wealth creation, the transformation of the computer and Read More ›
This article, published by The Telegraph, contains a review of Discovery Institute Senior Fellow George Gilder’s book The Israel Test: The unpredictable, sometimes zany, but often brilliant conservative writer George Gilder has just come out with a new book, entitled The Israel Test. The rest of the article can be found here.
Dr. David Berlinski notes some very frank realities about the scientific world and the scientists who make it up today. Learn more about David Berlinski at www.davidberlinski.org and www.devilsdelusion.com. Read More ›
I served on the Alaskan Way Viaduct Stakeholders Committee that studied options to replace the Viaduct. After conducting 16 meetings and hearing from 23 expert witnesses, a large majority of the stakeholders recommended further review of, or outright support for, the deep bore tunnel. The stakeholders also studied the “surface option” favored by City Council candidate Mike O’Brien, and then the Read More ›
As physicians, we are excited by new medical advances undreamed of only a few decades ago. Scientists are now creating advanced and truly individualized medicines that work with a person’s unique set of bodily components, such as DNA. Many of these new medicines – “biologic” drugs – are much more complicated than previous generations of medicines. Biologics are large, complex Read More ›