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From Scholarship to Huckstership

The remainder of Issue 74 is about something completely different, Stanley Mattson’s latest fundraising projects. His new phone number for potential donors is 1-888-CSLEWIS. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the launching of his C. S. Lewis Foundation, Mattson arranged a banquet and auction in a posh Orange County hotel and sent out formal invitations (with Frenchified spelling for an Read More ›

The Message in the Microcosm

Traditional approaches that fail to take account of new findings in molecular cell biology cannot survive the present day. Materialistic explanations for the origin of information have been systematically eliminated over the past forty years. Has origin-of-life research brought us to the brink of a new scientific revolution? Despite the now well-documented influence of Christian thinking on the rise of Read More ›

Will Java Break Windows?

THE CROAK ON THE END OF THE LINE came from a fitness center. Huffing and puffing away on his cellular phone and exercycle was Jim Rogers, famous Alabama hick centi-millionaire motorbiker, Columbia professor of finance, and dreadnought plunger into the world’s most porcupinous stockmarkets and briar-patch bourses. From Botswana to Sri Lanka, Rogers waits till there is blood in the Read More ›

Will ‘smart growth’ prove to be smart political topic?

Vice President Al Gore stopped in Seattle yesterday to pitch the administration's "livability agenda," a plan to help cities and counties battle the ills of urban sprawl. It's a subject folks around here know something about. Development has created one of the worst traffic problems in the country, helped transform the chinook salmon from a symbol of abundance to an endangered species, and steadily eroded the rural farms and forests. Across the country, sprawl has spawned a potent political issue that has leapt from the domain of cities and counties to a place of its own on the national stage, a move welcomed by some and worrisome to others. There is no denying the appeal of Gore's proposals, particularly to suburban voters. If political analysts are right, the battle for the White House next year will be won or lost in places such as Issaquah, Federal Way and Shoreline, suburban cities where voters have been feeling the effects of growth for years. Read More ›
male-hand-holding-tv-remote-control-stockpack-adobe-stock-109426750-stockpack-adobestock
Male hand holding TV remote control.
Image Credit: M-Production - Adobe Stock

Omigod, Norman, what is that man doing on channel 29?

Just when you thought you had seen it all, so to speak, there is Seattle public access star Troy J. Williamson engaged in what appears to be an oral sex act on TV. Suddenly, the screen goes fuzzy as the police raid the program and cart him off. An historic day for common sense in public access TV, some would Read More ›

Amtrak speeds up with ‘Acela’

In the Pacific Northwest, Amtrak is employing European-style Talgo tilt trains to incrase speeds between Eugene, Ore., and Vancouver B.C. The $10 million Northwest trains, called the Amtrak Cascades, are designed for speeds upto 125 mph, but will poke along at a more modest clip - up to a legal limit of 79 mph - until track, rail crossing and signal improvements have been made. The work could stretch out over 20 years. Read More ›
Peace Monument in Washington, DC
The marble Peace Monument, dedicated to those in the US Navy who died in the Civil War, located on Capitol HIll in Washington, DC. Sculptor Franklin Simmons completed it in 1878.

Ronald Reagan deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

On a pleasant October day in 1982 the Theodore Roosevelt Association was in Washington, DC to place on permanent display in the White House the medal for the Nobel Peace Prize that TR was awarded in 1906 for mediating the Russo-Japanese War. Welcoming a commemorative luncheon group to the Roosevelt Room, President Ronald Reagan quipped that as he had earlier Read More ›

Second Amtrak Run Not In Budget

Plans to run a second Amtrak passenger train between Vancouver, B.C., and Seattle fell out of the House Transportation budget Friday. Now local hopes ride on the Senate revising the budget and including $6.3 million toward operating the train. The stakes are high for Skagit County, the region and the sate. A lone Amtrak train current streaks passengers daily between Seattle and Vancouver, stopping in Mount Vernon. The second train would leave British Columbia early in the day, allowing passengers who hop aboard in Mount Vernon to make day trips to Seattle. The train also opens up possibilities for travelers between Canada and Oregon. Read More ›

Officials try to save second rail to Canada

A proposed second daily Amtrak train from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C., touted as an important transportation choice up and down the line, may be derailed. If it is, the consequences are all bad, warned Bruce Agnew, director of the Cascadia Project and a former Snohomish County Council member. "A second train would really make the corridor work. It wouldn't be a novelty, it would be a transportation option," he said Thursday. "If the (second) train goes a lot of things go as well." A second train, leaving Vancouver every morning, would allow passengers to make a one-way trip to Portland, Ore. As it is now, the run to Oregon requires an overnight stay in Seattle. Amtrak runs one train a day from Seattle to Vancouver, stopping in Edmonds and Everett on its way north in the morning and in the evening on the return trip. Read More ›
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Business accounting concept, Business man using calculator with computer laptop, budget and loan paper in office.
Image Credit: Jirapong - Adobe Stock

Budget deal bottom line is grotesque absence of leadership

There before the cameras in Washington, DC were Republicans and Democrats, their grins so big their fillings were showing as they cheered the tax cut deal. Oh, boy, we’re all going to get re-elected in ’98, those wild smiles said. The exuberance points either to the finest accomplishment of political compromise in our time, or to a grotesque absence of Read More ›