Every year I host a conference on the future of the Internet in a world of bandwidth abundance. On the last day, I hold a debate or panel on the religious significance of the technological disputes. Every year, some attendees object to this insertion of theology into the midst of a meeting otherwise devoted to the higher vocations of microelectronics Read More ›
In The Design Inference (Cambridge, 1998), I argue that specified complexity is a reliable empirical marker of intelligent design. A long sequence of random letters is complex without being specified. A short sequence of letters like “the,” “so,” or “a” is specified without being complex. A Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified. Thus in general, given an event, object, Read More ›
Books reviewed The Natural Law:A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy by Heinrich Albert Rommen, Liberty Fund, 306 pp., $27. In Defense of Natural Law by Robert P. George, Oxford University Press, 354 pp., $65. Aquinass Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction by Anthony J. Lisska Oxford University Press, 336 pp., $24.95. Natural Law in Judaism by Read More ›
Anti-WTO demonstrators continue to get the benefit of the doubt from many in the media and even from some public officials. That benefit consists of a supposed distinction commonly made between the ‘bad’ WTO protesters who broke windows, assaulted policemen and set fire to dumpsters, and the ‘good’ protesters — supposedly everybody else in the anti-WTO ranks. The ‘bad’ protesters, Read More ›
The gas is gone. The glass and graffiti are going. The media harvest of shocking images will remain available. The lawsuits will drag on for years, and it’s at the very least likely the 500 people arrested at the Battle of Seattle (ahead of, urban legends) will be compensated nicely for their moment of righteous incarceration. A new paradigm in Read More ›
It is hard to tell the truth about assisted suicide. Or rather, it’s hard to get people to listen. Folks generally are about as eager to delve into the issue of assisted suicide as they are to work out the details of their own funeral. It’s a delicate and unnerving subject, involving the ultimate issues of life: the reality of Read More ›
The satirist Tom Wolfe coined the term “radical chic” to characterize the way certain stylish New Yorkers in the 1960s fawned over, and financed, law-breaking groups like the Black Panthers. Just as the New Left attempted a “baby-boomer” imitation of real revolutionaries from still earlier eras, something like a Brand New Left is attempting to be born during the World Read More ›
In 1995 the National Academy of Sciences, through its National Research Council arm, issued a set of national science education standards calling for “dramatic changes” in the way science is taught in grade schools and high schools. Several years later the Kansas State Board of Education appointed a panel of scientists and academics to advise it on bringing state guidelines Read More ›