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What Intelligent Design Is— and Isn’’t

So what is ID, really? ID is not a deduction from religious dogma or scripture. It's simply the argument that certain features of the natural world — from miniature machines and digital information found in living cells, to the fine-tuning of physical constants — are best explained as the result of an intelligent cause. ID is thus a tacit rebuke of an idea inherited from the 19th century, called scientific materialism. Read More ›

Darwinists Snub Kansas, Refuse to Answer Questions About Scientific Problems with Evolutionary Theory

TOPEKA, KS – The Discovery Institute today faulted defenders of Darwin’s theory for refusing to defend their views before the Kansas State Board of Education and for being afraid to answer tough questions about the scientific problems of modern evolutionary theory.   “Darwinian scientists showed contempt for science and the citizens of Kansas by refusing to appear before the State School Board,” Read More ›

Business Week Online looks “Into the Gildercosm”

This article, published by Business Week Online, contains an interview with Discovery Institute Senior Fellow George Gilder:

George Gilder recently stopped by for a visit, and he’s worked up about the semiconductor industry. His language is as messianic as ever. Forget the telecosm. Get ready for the “planetary sensorium.”

By that, Gilder means a world dotted with billions of interconnected imaging sensors and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. A camera chip in every dark alley. An RFID tag on every piece of merchandise. Data whizzing around the globe to be correlated with other data. No crime unseen. No movement of goods undetected.

Right off the bat, let’s deal with the obvious: privacy.

Gilder: “Most of human history occurred in small villages where there were periodically wildfire rumors that ended in someone being burned as a witch. All this stuff makes it possible to document that you didn’t commit the crime.”

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TVW to Broadcast Discovery Institute Event

This week, TVW will broadcast a taped recording of Commander Steve Bristow’s May 5th discussion of his recent tour of duty on the USS Abraham Lincoln to tsunami-ravaged areas of Indonesia. In the program, Steve recounts behind-the-scenes efforts of the Lincoln Strike Group that assisted victims of the devastating December 26th tsunami. More generally, he discusses the qualities of the Read More ›

The Wrong Medicine

What would you think of someone who withheld curative medicine from a sick person?

Many governments are, in effect, doing just this. There are billions of people throughout the world suffering from various ailments who could be made well if only more money were invested in new drug research and development (R&D;). The reason this money is not invested is because all too many countries outside the United States have price controls on drugs, leading to under-investment in new and improved medicines. These same price controls also have the side effect of making drugs more expensive for U.S. consumers.

Many in Congress and the media demand more re-importation of U.S. made pharmaceutical products from countries with price controls, like Canada, or direct price controls in the U.S. These so-called solutions to the “high price of drugs’ problem” will, in fact, only worsen the situation. To solve the problem, it is important to first diagnose it correctly.

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TWG Final Report

Introduction to TWG Recommendations Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center has been advocating improvements in the transportation system that unites and serves the Cascadia region for more than 12 years. Within the region, Cascadia Center has given particular attention to the need for major changes in the way that transportation is planned, funded, and governed in Central Puget Sound, which is home Read More ›

Study strengths, weaknesses of evolution

Biology textbooks diligently paper over the fact that biologists have never observed or even described in credible, theoretical terms a continually functional, macroevolutionary pathway leading to fundamentally new anatomical forms. It seems the Darwinists in Kansas are living in the past. Not the past of, say, the fossil record. The history written there tells of the abrupt appearance of major Read More ›

PETA’s Non-Apology Apology

Ingrid Newkirk, the alpha wolf over at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), has just issued a classic non-apology “apology” for PETA’s odious “Holocaust on Your Plate” Campaign, which explicitly compared eating meat to participating in the gassing of millions of Jews. The purported equation between the Holocaust and normal practices of animal husbandry wasn’t presented between Read More ›

Snohomish County Confronts Growth And Opportunity

This article, published at The Seattle Times, mentions the Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute: Seattle’s Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute is helping promote expansion of train service to Vancouver from one run a day to as many as a half dozen.

Alice in Cableland; Grokster in Fableland

In this issue of Discovery Institute’s online technology newsletter, Senior Fellow John Wohlstetter addresses two decisions of the United States Supreme Court, both released June 27. The first held that cable providers, unlike telephone companies, cannot be forced to offer Internet access to their competitors. The second held that “peer-to-peer” network providers who knowingly aid copyright infringement can be held Read More ›