A criticism has been posted on several places on the Internet concerning our claim in The Privileged Planet that total solar eclipses were important to the confirmation and rapid acceptance of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Critique The basic criticism is as follows. Observations of the deflection of starlight near the Sun during total eclipses were not very important for Read More ›
When as a boy I read “The Scouring of the Shire” near the end of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, I could not understand why Tolkien felt the need to tack on such an anti-climactic and shabby bit of evil. Only later, as I began to notice modernity’s penchant for ugliness in the world beyond Middle Read More ›
There are a lady barber and a finance minister, both of whom, in very different ways, are making their homelands better, in part, because of their American experience. It has long been recognized the remittances foreign workers send to their homelands dwarf official foreign aid in both size and effectiveness. What is often not recognized is how foreign visitors and Read More ›
IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND trial lawyers like John Edwards, you have to recognize their one enduring fantasy. They are knights in shining armor rescuing damsels in distress. They’ll tell you they’re “standing up for the little guy” or “enforcing the Constitution” or “sending a message” or “teaching the big guys a lesson.” But at bottom there’s always that one Read More ›
Original Article Basking in the sun by the Al Hamra Hotel swimming pool, a Spanish journalist complained to me that “all my editors want is blood, blood, blood. No context. No politics.” Such editors are cruising to be scooped by such local Iraqi blogs as Iraq the Model, which last summer debunked a Los Angeles Times story on the departure Read More ›
Preaching Eugenics Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movementby Christine RosenOxford University Press, 296 pp., $35 EUGENICS—now, there’s one of those words that has a dated, distant sound: a remnant of Victorian arrogance that got taken up by the Nazis and made an excuse for murder. But that is ancient history. We would never stoop to such evil. We have Read More ›
John Kerry has a well-deserved reputation for waffling and attempting to get on every side of every issue. Now, he’s done it again by signing up as a co-sponsor (along with Senators Orin Hatch and Dianne Feinstein) of what could be called the Human Cloning Legalization and Legitimization Act of 2003 (S. 303). The legislation isn’t really called that. Such Read More ›
In this issue of Bandwidth, Senior Fellow John Wohlstetter reviews new figures on broadband deployment and how President Bush’s policies on telecom may affect the industry. Mr. Wohlstetter also reviews telecommunications policies under President Reagan.
SEATTLE, OCT. 13 — Wired has now gone where no pure science magazine has gone before. In an apparent effort to boost the magazine’s sex appeal, the latest issue wades into the imaginative world of science fiction. “We applaud their move into Sci-Fi,” says Rob Crowther, director of communications for the Center for Science & Culture at Discovery Institute, referring to Read More ›