Accurate teaching of evolution (along with the continuing debate) could be improved greatly by educating students about the important difference between microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution refers to variation within a species. There is 100 percent consensus in this “fact of evolution,” as we see it every day in instances like the breeding of dogs and the creation of hybrid corn Read More ›
original article (requires subscription) A phony theory of federalism may paralyze the Federal Communications Commission’s halting movement toward deregulating the telecom industry. The battle cry of the faux federalists is “states’ rights,” which is not the first abuse of that term, or of the federalist principle. Like similar abuses, this one deserves to fail. The flashpoint is whether the FCC Read More ›
Original Article Several officials say they are united behind rescuing a 40-mile railroad corridor snaking from Renton’s Gene Coulon Beach Park through the heart of the Eastside to Snohomish. While the route does a pretty good job of hitting major job centers, state and local officials say the rail line misses the biggie: Downtown Bellevue. “As a high-capacity transit line, Read More ›
Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human, by Matt Ridley (HarperCollins, 336 pp., $25.95) This is a very strange book, and I am not quite sure what the author is attempting to achieve. At the very least it appears that he wants to shore up genetic determinism as the key factor in understanding human nature and individual Read More ›
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Ageby Bill McKibben Times, 255 pp.,$25 PEOPLE AREN’T SMART ENOUGH, strong enough, pretty enough, healthy enough, talented enough, or agile enough the way we are. Worse yet, our miserable lives are over far too soon. The human condition stinks, and then we die. That seems to be the vague despair that drives the partisans Read More ›
Human cloning: it’s the public policy issue with the greatest potential to define the morality of future generations. The science may be complicated, the very premise appear a futuristic fantasy, but the moral questions we now face with the emergence of this new technology are clear: Does human life have ultimate value precisely because it is human? Will society be Read More ›
“It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).” Leading Darwinist Richard Dawkins The wicked and insane will presumably have to fend for themselves, but for the rest of us, PBS has undertaken a massive new Read More ›
Does God exist? You can answer that question in at least two ways, including, notably, “yes.” But how do you argue for that particular answer? A new cottage industry among the religiously minded is the re-articulation of the so-called “cosmological argument” for the existence of God. Its proofs work backward. They start with visible creation and reason that it can Read More ›