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Thank you for contacting me about the President's executive action on immigration. On November 20, 2014, President Obama announced unilateral executive actions regarding the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. Among other provisions, these actions seek to postpone the deportation of the parents of children who are either U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents and provide them with a work permit. The criteria for those eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that allows certain illegal immigrants who entered the United States before their sixteenth birthday and before June 2007 to receive a work permit and temporary authorization to...

In Tucson, on Wednesday evening, we saw President Barack Obama in his full Chauncey Gardiner mode. After the drubbing of November 2010, Obama's handlers have come to understand that Obama does best when, like Chauncey, he says nothing at all. Chauncey Gardiner, the reader may recall, is the protagonist of Jerzy Kosinski's 1971 prescient satire, Being There, which was later made into a movie of the same name, co-scripted by Kosinski. As the plot goes, Chance the Gardener, a sheltered simpleton, finds himself thrust into the world upon the death oh his wealthy protector, his name now misinterpreted as "Chauncey...

In my previous post I mentioned work by Pablo Debenedetti on ‘toy models’ of water. The places to look are: Buldyrev et al., PNAS 104, 20177 (2007) (here) for the solvation thermodynamics of ‘spherical’ water; and Patel et al., Biophys. J. 93, 4116 (2007) (here) and J. Chem. Phys. 128, 175102 (2008) (here) for water-explicit lattice models of proteins. And in discussing recent work on the mechanism of urea-induced protein denaturation, I neglected to mention Bruce Berne’s PNAS paper from late last year with Ruhong Zhou, Dave Thirumalai and Lan Hua (105, 16928; paper here). That paper on MD simulations...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- At some Presbyterian churches the Holy Trinity -- "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" -- will be out. "Mother, Child and Womb" is in. Delegates to the national assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted yesterday to "receive" a policy paper on sex-inclusive language for the Trinity, a step short of approving it. Church officials are enabled to propose "experimental liturgies" with "alternative phrasings" for the Trinity, but congregations won't be required to use them. Besides "Mother, Child and Womb" and "Rock, Redeemer, Friend," options include: • "Lover, Beloved, Love" • "Creator, Savior, Sanctifier" • "King of Glory,...

JOHN Howard believes the postmodern approach to literature being taught in schools is "rubbish" and is considering tying education funding to ending the "gobbledegook" taught in some states. The Prime Minister made the threat after accusing the state education authorities of "dumbing down" the English syllabus and succumbing to political correctness. "I feel very, very strongly about the criticism that many people are making that we are dumbing down the English syllabus," Mr Howard said. Australia's most distinguished literary scholar, Leonie Kramer, yesterday agreed with the Prime Minister's criticism of how English is taught in high schools. Dame Leonie, professor...

Here's a prediction. Politics in the 21st century will cut across the traditional political left/right rift of the last two centuries. Instead, the chief ideological divide will be between transhumanists and bioconservatives/bioluddites. James Hughes, the executive director of the World Transhumanist Association, explores this future political order in his remarkably interesting yet wrongheaded, Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future. Hughes, who lectures on health policy at Trinity College in Connecticut, defines transhumanism as "the idea that humans can use reason to transcend the limitation of the human condition." Specifically, transhumanists welcome the...

A single lawn placard, the only one thus far on my side of North High Street, is plainly visible from my front door. As I leave my home in the morning and make my way back in the afternoon, its message never fails to provoke a sense of fleeting happiness; it simply reads in all upper case and navy blue letters: "NO IRAQ WAR." I notice how the letter "O," akin to the shape of an open mouth, encases a single white star, one reminiscent of the Stars and Stripes. According to the Flag Resolution of June 14, 1777, it...