The thinness of the Democratic stable is illustrated by the fact that the two most talked about candidates for their party's nomination for president in 2008 are a one term senator, Hillary Clinton, and a two year senator, Barack Obama. Neither has ever been a governor and neither has really explained why voters should pull the lever for them. Yet they have been all but canonized by the media.
Bob Gorrell depicts how peculiar this phenomenon is:
This should just about do it for the Durham District Attorney who refuses to drop charges against three Duke students accused of raping an "exotic" dancer:
The head of a private DNA laboratory said under oath today that he and District Attorney Mike Nifong agreed not to report DNA results favorable to Duke lacrosse players charged with rape.
Brian Meehan, director of DNA Security of Burlington, said his lab found DNA from unidentified men in the underwear, pubic hair and rectum of the woman who said she was gang-raped at a lacrosse party in March....Meehan said the DNA did not come from Reade Seligmann, David Evans, or Collin Finnerty, who have been charged with rape and sexual assault in the case.
Meehan struggled to say why he didn't include the favorable evidence in a report dated May 12, almost a month after Seligmann and Finnerty had been indicted. He cited concerns about the privacy of the lacrosse players, his discussions at several meetings with Nifong, and the fact that he didn't know whose DNA it was.
Under questioning by Jim Cooney, a defense attorney for Seligmann, Meehan admitted that his report violated his laboratory's standards by not reporting results of all tests.
Did Nifong and his investigators know the results of all the DNA tests? Cooney asked. "I believe so," Meehan said.
"Did they know the test results excluded Reade Seligmann?" Cooney asked. "I believe so," Meehan said.
Was the failure to report these results the intentional decision of you and the district attorney? Cooney asked. "Yes," Meehan replied.
Meehan's testimony differed from a statement Nifong made at the beginning of today's hearing. "The first I had heard of this particular situation was when I was served with this particular motion" on Wednesday, Nifong told the judge. After court, Nifong clarified his remarks to say that he knew about the DNA results.
"And we were trying to, just as Dr. Meehan said, trying to avoid dragging any names through the mud but at the same time his report made it clear that all the information was available if they wanted it and they have every word of it," Nifong said.
Joseph B. Cheshire V, a lawyer for Evans, said he was troubled by today's testimony. "If any of the lacrosse players were excluded, they simply wouldn't put it in the report," he said. "It raises some troublesome questions about (Nifong), who has an obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence and turn it over to the defense."
So Mr. Nifong had strong reason to believe that the alleged victim was concocting the whole story of her sexual assault at the hands of the Duke students, but chose, against the obligations of his office, not to make exculpatory evidence public.
If the events of this prosecution are as they seem then Mr. Nifong is one despicable human being. He has made these boys' lives a living hell for the past year, he has harmed them financially, caused their and their teammates' lacrosse season to be forfeit, and allowed their reputations to be completely ruined while all along knowing that he had no case against them. We may sincerely hope that when the charges against the Duke students are eventually thrown out, as they will be by any judge with even the slightest trace of human decency, these young men will be able to sue Nifong for every penny he owns.
Joy Behar gives us a glimpse of what passes for humor among a certain kind of liberal by suggesting that the Republicans somehow caused senator Tim Johnson's brain hemorrhage.
It's beneath tasteless, of course, to try to squeeze a cheap laugh out of a man's misfortune, but it's evidently not so far beneath as to be too low for Behar and her audience.
Mike Gene at Telic Thoughts offers a taxonomy of the various species of critics of Intelligent Design. You'll find it interesting if you follow the ID/Darwinism controversy at all.
My son passed along this beautiful shot reportedly taken by a hunter in Montana:
Quick Quiz: There are two birds in the picture. Can anyone identify them both?
All correct responders will receive a free subscription to Viewpoint.
Our friend Byron at Hearts and Minds bookstore passes along this paean written by C.S. Lewis in "praise" of evolution:
Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there's always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we're going,
We can never go astray.
To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.
Ask not if it's god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.
Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature's simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
'Goodness = what comes next.'
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.
Oh then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be).
Very clever, but of course one expects cleverness from C.S. Lewis.
John Hinderaker at PowerLine offers the president some advice. Warning: It is not for the faint of heart, but it is advice that should have been acted upon long before now. Hinderaker begins with an historical analogy:
Most of our readers know the story of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at Gettysburg. Ordered to hold Little Round Top at all costs, Chamberlain's 20th Maine fended off one attack after another. Finally, Chamberlain's men were nearly out of ammunition and it was clear they would not be able to withstand another assault. Prudence counseled retreat, but Chamberlain's orders forbade it. The Maine regiment could neither fall back nor stay where it was, so Chamberlain took the only course open to him: he told his men to fix bayonets and prepare to charge.
It strikes me that you, President Bush, are in a similar situation in Iraq.
Read the rest. It may be prophetic.
An AOL feature lists ten career fields which will be all but gone by 2012. They are:
Read their reasons for selecting these ten for extinction at the link.
First they came for the Jews. Then they came for the IDers. Or they will if commenter Steve B. at the anti-ID blog Panda's Thumb has his way. Read his clarification of a previous suggestion that Darwin's survival of the fittest idea be pursued to its logical conclusion:
Dayan,
NO it wasn't a parody - here let me try again.
Roughly:
1) Evolution is objectively real.
2) IDists deny the reality of evolution which makes them unfit.
3) It follows that since IDists are unfit they should not survive because they hinder evolutionary progress. (I think that We Need To Own This.)
Implementation:
A) How far is one willing to go to act on #3?
a) For the most part PT exists is to act on #3.
Example:
Participants on PT routinely use justifiably hateful and dehumanizing language to describe IDists or anyone who even suggests that TOE may not be correct.
Question:
With this much intensity why not advocate carrying our efforts to their fullest extent since doing so is consistent with the reality of evolution?
Now I know that anyone can write a comment to a blog, and this guy sounds like one of the Boys From Brazil, but...his argument is illustrative of a serious problem that naturalism cannot escape. If naturalism is true there's no reason why someone should not accept the implications of his argument, i.e. start killing off the IDers. If the people at Panda's Thumb, who are mostly atheistic naturalists, are correct then although they may be repelled by the Steve B.'s among them, they really have no answer to them. In a world without God surely might makes right, and in a world wherein the supreme law is the survival of the fittest, killing those who are deemed in whatever way unfit makes perfect sense. Steve B. just sees this more clearly than do his pals at PT.
HT: Uncommon Descent
This isn't the first echo of a Darwinian night of the long knives that we've had occasion to post about. See here for another.
Here's a fascinating story out of the Vatican:
Vatican archaeologists have identified a sarcophagus under Rome's second-largest basilica as the tomb believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul. But they still don't know what's inside, experts said on Monday.
The Vatican does hope to be able to examine it more closely and maybe even to open it. But Vatican archaeologist Giorgio Filippi said the researchers' first concern now is to free it from centuries of plastering and debris, in the hope of finding other clues on the sarcophagus itself.
Then they will look for ways of getting inside. "We cannot make a hypothesis, it is useless to ask if there is the body of a woman inside, of two men, of three men or whatever. It is useless to ask because we have not seen inside. The sarcophagus has never been opened," said Filippi.
According to tradition, St Paul, also known as the apostle of the Gentiles, was beheaded in Rome in the 1st century. The sarcophagus, which dates from AD 390 and is buried under the main altar of St Paul's Outside the Walls Basilica, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and ended last month.
"This is not a discovery for us. We know and we have always known this sarcophagus contains St Paul's tomb." Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, head of the basilica, told reporters. The project's original purpose was to make the sarcophagus, buried under layers of plaster and further hidden by an iron grate, more visible to pilgrims and tourists visiting the basilica.
Work in the small area under the altar, to clear the debris and insert a transparent glass floor for better viewing, unearthed new evidence of the authenticity of the sarcophagus, said Filippi, who headed the project. "There are no doubts that this is St Paul's tomb. We do not know what it contains, we have never explored it, but at least pilgrims can now see it," Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo added.
I don't know how they know it's Paul's sarcophagus, but if they're correct about that it would be an astonishing find.
A friend once asked why I don't like Big Government. Government does many good things, he opined, and we need more of it. Well, I don't think so. There are lots of reasons why bloated governments are undesirable in themselves and some reasons why they are undesirable as symptoms or side effects of forces which are doing harm to our nation. One example of the latter is that Big Government is a necessary enabler to forces currently degrading our natural heritage. Let me explain.
I'm deeply saddened by the loss of our fields and forests and natural places which are being gobbled up by developers at a gluttonous pace. I believe that one of our obligations as stewards of the earth is to protect our open spaces and wildlife habitat and to preserve them for future generations to enjoy.
This is a futile enterprise, however, as long as our population continues to expand. People need jobs and places to live and thus more and more land will need to be paved over and dug up and open spaces will become increasingly more scarce as we continue to grow.
Conservation is incompatible in the long term with population growth and thus if our natural beauty is to be saved we have to limit the size of our national population which means reproducing at the replacement level of approximately 2.1 births per woman and limiting immigration to a few thousand people per year.
So what does this have to do with Big Government? Government grows as entitlements grow. A vast entitlement system requires a vast bureaucracy to administer it. The most obese of our entitlements are social security and medicare. As the baby boomers grow into their golden years the demands on these entitlements will expand rapidly. In order to continue funding them at present levels we must expand the size of our wage-earning population, which is one reason why both Republicans and Democrats are loath to do anything about immigration reform. They see immigrants as the solution to the social security crisis looming on the near horizon.
Native-born Americans are reproducing just about at the replacement rate which means that we must import tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of new taxpayers every year to insure that revenues will continue to meet the needs of the older generation who will demand all the benefits promised to them.
As the population expands, however, it puts enormous stress on both wildlife and the land. These are subjected to cumulative insults that gradually diminish the diversity of the former and the quality and quantity of the latter. Housing, malls, roads all consume vast quantities of acreage every year in this country, permanently wiping out habitat and scenic beauty that nourish the human soul.
A better solution from a conservationist point of view would be to limit immigration, raise the age of eligibility for entitlements, cut back on some benefits, and thus reduce the size of the bureacracy that manages the system, but these measures no politician who values his or her job has the audacity to propose. The easy way out, which is too often the preferred egress for our political leaders, is to maintain the entitlement status quo, thus keeping government big and keeping the population growing, which means opening the borders to anybody who wants in. Thus our numbers burgeon and more and more of our natural lands get turned into asphalt and endless seas of housing developments to accomodate the growth.
It all seems terribly myopic, but to those who think only in terms of political expediency and economic profit the beauty of our countryside is an expendable resource there to be exploited.
Stephen Carter reviews C. John Sommerville's Decline of the Secular University at Christianity Today:
A few years ago, while visiting an explicitly Christian university, I met two students who said they had been ridiculed for raising a biblical perspective in the classroom. Their travails remind us how diligently most contemporary scholars struggle to separate their pedagogy from their religious faith. American universities are famously in love with the ideology of secularism. On the flip side, they are notoriously skeptical or even hostile toward religion. In his masterful Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, John Milbank defended the primacy of theology for the Christian scholar.
Since Milbank's call, unfortunately, the situation on campuses has worsened. C. John Sommerville, in The Decline of the Secular University, warns that campus life is swiftly bypassing secularism in favor of post-secularism. That is, the appeal to reason is being replaced by the appeal to fashion. The secular university, says Sommerville, "was a flawed concept from the beginning," because it focused on the education of young people without any sense of why they were being educated.
Worse still, to the extent that the university becomes post-secular, it will hopelessly flounder at preparing students to use the knowledge they gain. The modern campus, Sommerville says, does nothing to help students ponder the most significant questions in life-that is, the categories that religions believe they can address. Religious studies departments at most major universities do nothing to improve matters. He says professors prefer not to do theology and thus study religion from the outside rather than the inside. As for scientists, Sommerville is troubled by their refusal to take up the questions he finds truly interesting-for example, the ability of some part of the universe (us) to become "aware of itself."
Although Sommerville's concerns might be exaggerated, most of his criticism hits the target. We are questioning, wondering creatures, and Sommerville wants universities to help us question and wonder better. Because the secular project demanded "destroying traditions," it kicked away the props on which might rest answers to the great questions. As the university now becomes post-secular, it replaces those props with a celebration of feeling and "fashionable moralizing."
My date book contains cartoons first published in the New Yorker. One shows a young boy in front of his class, doing arithmetic at the blackboard. He has just written "7 x 5 = 75" and says to his astonished teacher, "It may be wrong, but it's how I feel." There, in a nutshell, is the problem with the post-secular university. Faith is dead, reason is dying, but "how I feel" is going strong. Should we ignore warnings like Sommerville's, "how I feel" will be all there is.
Indeed, in a secular setting nothing students study has any real meaning or significance. All that matters, in many cases, is having the right attitude about things, holding fashionable opinions, achieving status among one's peers, projecting a proper image, having sex. The knowledge content students are tested on in their classes is so much background static in their lives. It means nothing to them in any life-enriching sense. It's just a hoop they have to jump through in order to get a degree and get a job. This is certainly not true of all students, but it's true of many, maybe even most, and the secular university offers nothing that can help fill a student's emptiness except the opportunity to participate in weekend bacchanalia with other similarly emotionally and intellectually deracinated young people. It's all quite sad.
Tom Wolfe captures, perhaps unintentionally, the hollowness of campus secularism and the spiritual impoverishment which results with especial skill in his novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. It's a book every parent should read before sending a son or daughter off to a secular college.
This article by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post is as clear a call to face up to the peril we are in as any we're likely to hear from anyone, especially from our political leadership. This is a must read essay. It begins with an indictment of the foolishness that is the Iraq Study Group report but moves quickly into what Israel must do to meet her responsibility to protect her people from the madmen in Iran:
When the history of our times is written, this week will be remembered as the week that Washington decided to let the Islamic Republic of Iran go nuclear. Hopefully it will also be remembered as the moment the Jews arose and refused to allow Iran to go nuclear.
With the publication of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group chaired by former US secretary of state James Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the debate about the war in Iraq changed. From a war for victory against Islamofascism and for democracy and freedom, the war became reduced to a conflict to be managed by appeasing the US's sworn enemies in the interests of stability, and at the expense of America's allies.
Baker and his associates claim that the US cannot win the war in Iraq and so the US must negotiate with its primary enemies in Iraq and throughout the world - Iran and Syria - in the hopes that they will be persuaded to hold their fire for long enough to facilitate an "honorable" American retreat from the country.
Like his unsupported assertion that the US cannot win in Iraq, Baker also asserts - in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary - that Iran and Syria share America's "interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq." Because of this supposed shared interest, Baker maintains that with the proper incentives, Iran and Syria can be persuaded to cooperate with a US withdrawal from Iraq ahead of the 2008 presidential primaries.
Unless something is done in the next six months, Glick believes, both we and Israel are almost certainly headed for a nuclear attack on our homelands. Don't miss the rest of her disturbing but important essay.
A friend passes along this parody of what modern liberalism has done to Christmas:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all...
And a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "AMERICA" in the Western Hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual preference of the wishes.
(By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.
This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.)
Past performance does not guarantee future results.
And Happy HannuKwanzmas to you.
John Podhoretz skewers the ISG and its hapless report in an essay in the New York Post. The whole column is worth reading but especially the beginning and the end. He starts with this:
The profound quality of the suggestions offered by the Iraq Study Group - the panel headed by former Secretary of State James Baker that presented its report with such fanfare to the president yesterday morning - can be inferred from the following passage on page 60:
"RECOMMENDATION 19: The President and the leadership of his national security team should remain in close and frequent contact with the Iraqi leadership."
Truly, a grateful nation should fall on its knees and thank the benevolent Creator that the nine wise men and one woman who comprise the Iraq Study Group were willing to sacrifice themselves and come together so that such a recommendation could be placed before our leaders and the world.
The nation's capital hasn't seen such concentrated wisdom in one place since Paris Hilton dined alone at the Hooters on Connecticut Avenue.
After all, only genius approaching the level of Paris could have written this sentence: "The Support Group should consist of Iraq and all the states bordering Iraq . . . and, of course, Iraq itself." Yes, that's some Support Group, what with Iraq and Iraq in it together to support, um, Iraq.
And ends with this fine summary of the ISG's findings:
Oh, and what about that war in Iraq, the ostensible subject of the Study Group's work?
Well, we're losing it, and there's no way we can win it, and we don't have enough troops to do it, and we can't get any more troops, and the ones we can get will be tired and mad, but we shouldn't pull out of Iraq because, after all, that would be a disaster. But don't worry, everybody! Iran and Syria will save our bacon! All that needs to happen is for Israel to cease to exist!
This report has been catnip to the liberal media but other than the fact that it's critical of the Bush administration I can't see why. Reading through the full report one is struck by how many of the 79 recommendations are either redundant, irrelevant, banal, or impractical. I guess it doesn't take much to gain applause from the left as long as it's possible to portray the object of their ovation as a slap in Bush's face.
If there has been a failing--obviously, for the last several weeks and months we have been talking about the failings of the administration with respect to the policies within Iraq--I would make the argument that the larger failing, not just of the administration but of the Members of Congress and leaders in this country, is that we have not had the courage to stand up and define the enemy as to who they are and study and understand them and explain to the American people who they are.
I defined the enemy back at the National Press Club speeches as Islamic fascism. I said that is the biggest issue of our time, this relentless and determined radical enemy that is not just a group of rag-tag people living in caves but, in fact, people with an ideology, a plan, and increasingly the resources to carry out that plan, as well as, increasingly, a bigger and larger presence throughout the Islamic world, these radical Islamic fascists.
Whether we know it or not, they have been at war with us, and the State of Iran specifically has been at war with us, since 1979 when they declared war against the United States. They have not rescinded that declaration. So when we talk about engaging Iran as the Secretary, the new, future Secretary of Defense has talked about, we are talking about engaging someone who is at war with us, who has declared war with us, and who has been at war and, and as I will talk about here, and I think it has been widely reported in the press, has been doing a lot to substantiate the claim that they have been at war with us.
The question is, are we at war with them? What are we doing to insure that they don't win? Take the time to read Santorum's entire speech. It's crucially important.
I came across this passage earlier this week and thought it dovetailed nicely with brother Dick's earlier post The Heavens Declare.
...
Providence
Christ is the ruler and preserver of creation. This is the work of providence. The Westminster Larger Catechism offers a succinct definition of God's works of providence: "God's works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures; ordering them, and all their actions, to his own glory" (question 18). The key words are preserving and governing. Providence is the necessary corollary to creation. Because God is the creator, He owns creation and has the authority to rule it and keep it according to His own purpose. Let us be careful here not to equate a belief in divine providence with a "whatever happens happens" theology. That is fatalism and fatalism is paganism. There is a world of difference between believing in an uncontrollable operation of blind fate and believing that all things are working together toward a prescribed and purposeful end by One who is infinitely wise, infinitely good, and infinitely powerful so that His purpose cannot be threatened, frustrated or jeopardized. It ought to be most comforting for believers to know and rest in the constant truth that they are part of God's unfailing purpose.
The same two New Testament texts that declare Christ as the Creator also prove that the Lord Jesus is engaged in the ongoing work of providence. Creation and providence are inseparable truths. In Colossians 1:17 Paul says about the pre-eminent Christ, "He is before all things, and by him all things consist." The word "consist" means "to cohere or stand together." It is by Christ that the created world stands or sticks together. Hebrews 1:3 tells us exactly how Christ not only makes things stick together but moves them along to their prescribed end. The apostle says that He upholds all things by the word of His power. The word "uphold" means literally "to bear or carry along." The word "word" refers to an individual spoken word. The word "power" speaks of ability. As the Lord spoke the world into existence, so his spoken word ably and successfully keeps and directs the world. An interpretative translation of this text, then, would sound like this: "By speaking an irresistible and unfrustratable word, He carries everything along."
Beginning At Moses - A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament
By Michael P.V. Barrett
pp.66-68
What I find truly amazing about all of this is that such a Being could care so much for you and me that He took human form as a man and became the ultimate sacrifice to God for the sins of man and in so doing makes reconciliation with God possible for those who believe.
Here's an interesting illustration of the law of unintended consequences, a law that seems to attach like velcro to liberal legislation:
At the time, it was common for Aborigines...to work in the Australian cattle industry as cowboys etc. They were however viewed as unreliable employees (principally because of their custom of "going walkabout" (decamping) at unpredictable and inconvenient times) and were paid less than white employees. It was however one of the few employment avenues open to many of them because of their low levels of education etc.
Subsequently, empoyers were forced by law to pay Aborigines at the same rate as white employees -- thus bringing to an almost total end Aboriginal employment in the cattle industry. They are now heavily dependant on welfare payments from the Federal government.
What makes this piece of social engineering especially pernicious is that the judges who handed down the equal pay ruling said at the time that they knew that the Aborigines were less valued employees and that the ruling would throw most of them out of work.
Nevertheless, they chose to consign the Aborigines to abject penury in order to save them from the "injustice" of an unequal wage scale. Classic. In order to satisfy the liberal hunger for socio-economic egalitarianism they made a bone-headed ruling that they knew was going to harm the poor and help them not at all. This is a fine example of piling malevolence on top of stupidity in the name of ideological principle.
According to this NPR All Things Considered report some very reputable physicists are toying with the notion of actually building their own universe in the laboratory. Here are some excerpts:
Is this a joke? No, say a bunch of physicists. One day, it may be possible for a person to create a universe!
This is not going to happen tomorrow. Not even close. But according to Columbia University physics professor Brian Greene, it is theoretically not impossible (which is his way of saying the possibilities are not zero) that one day, a person could build a universe.
The very idea is so startling it's hard to know what this means. Think about it this way: One day (far off, no doubt), it may be possible to go into a laboratory on Earth, create a "seed" -- a device that could grow into a universe -- and then there would have to be a way to get that seed, on command, to safely expand into a separate, infinite, unexplorable but very real alternate universe.
In the July 8, 2006 issue, New Scientist writer Zeeya Merali put that question to Stanford cosmologist Andre Linde. "I sat down and really thought about why we should even care about creating a universe in the laboratory, " he told New Scientist, "We don't seem to be able to communicate with it at all."
Once it's formed, the inventor couldn't meet its inhabitants, mine its minerals, collect souvenirs or judge his or her success. The biblical god who many believe created our universe inspected us on the first through sixth day and decided that what He'd done "was good."
That's not an option for the human scientist who creates. So why do it? Well, Greene says given the chance to make a universe of his own, "I might have a little trouble resisting this possibility. Just because it's so curious, this idea that because of your volitional act, you are creating a universe that could give rise, perhaps, to things we see around us."
Linde seconded that in his New Scientist interview. "Just imagine if it's true and there's even a small chance it really could work," he said. "In this perspective, each of us can become a god."
Yikes! Isn't that what they were saying back when they were building the Tower of Babel?
Cynthia McKinney is an embarassment to politicians everywhere and to Democrats in particular. Other than those who have been amused by her antics, few will lament that she'll be gone from Congress in January. As if to confirm the wisdom of the voters who elected her opponent in the Democratic primary, she has introduced, as her parting shot, a bill calling for the impeachment of President Bush.
This is the same woman who accused President Bush of knowing ahead of time of the terrorist attack on 9/11 but keeping quiet so that his rich friends would somehow profit from the destruction. This is the woman who introduced a bill to create a collection at the National Archive for the art of rapper Tupac Shakur, who called for a federal investigation into his murder, who punched a Capitol policeman who insisted she pass through the security apparatus at the Capitol building like everyone else, and who accuses everyone who disagrees with her and/or who thinks she's minus a few million synapses of being a racist.
Her bill has no chance of ever even coming to a vote which is a fitting epitaph to her congressional legacy.
