Free Republic

The general mindset of the political left is similar from country to country and even from century to century. The softness toward dangerous criminals found in such 18th century writers as William Godwin and Condorcet has its echo today among those who hold protest vigils at the executions of murderers and who complain that we are not being nice enough to the cutthroats imprisoned at Guantanamo. The specific issues change from place to place and from time to time but the mindset remains remarkably similar. What is also different from country to country and from one era to another is...

Let me speak to you about dumbness because that is what schools teach best. Old-fashioned dumbness used to be simple ignorance: you didn't know something, but there were ways to find out if you wanted to. Government-controlled schooling didn't eliminate dumbness - in fact, we now know that people read more fluently before we had forced schooling - but dumbness was transformed. Now dumb people aren't just ignorant; they're the victims of the non-thought of secondhand ideas. Dumb people are now well-informed about the opinions of Time magazine and CBS, The New York Times and the President; their job is...

Intelligent Design is only one of many “alternatives” to Darwinian evolution There is rich irony in how the present battle over Creationism v. Darwinism has taken shape, and especially the ways that this round differs from previous episodes. A clue to both the recent success — and the eventual collapse — of “Intelligent Design” can be found in its name, and in the new tactics that are being used to support its incorporation into school curricula. In what must be taken as sincere flattery, these tactics appear to acknowledge just how deeply the inner lessons of science have pervaded modern...

Germany and Adolph Hitler didn't have WMDs Saddam Hussein had weapons more lethal and destructive than anything Hitler had.So do the industrialized countries. The difference being that some leaders are evil and/or insane. Thus, they can't be trusted no matter what weapons they own. Evil leaders are weapons of mass destruction. Ever since terrorists flew jet planes into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon terrorists have been recognized as WMDs.It's only fitting that evil leaders be labeled as weapons of mass destruction.To the main stream media: spin your wheels proclaiming that Hussein isn't evil. 

A few years ago, promised cures for baldness, impotence, and old age shared a common image as fraudulent and vaguely pathetic, the illusory straws grasped at by the desperate and gullible. Now, with Rogaine and Viagra offering relief to the hairless and the limp, it's even starting to look as if treatments for aging may offer hope to the wrinkled. That has produced both excitement and, from some, unhappiness. I've written columns on the subject over the past couple of weeks. Recently I interviewed (via email) the influential Cambridge University biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey. De Grey is working on what...

Contact: Jade Boydjadeboyd@rice.edu 713-348-6778Rice UniversityNanoshells cancer treatment proves effective in first animal test Laser treatments eradicate all tumors from mice in trial HOUSTON, June 21, 2004 -- A revolutionary new form of cancer therapy in development at Rice University and its licensee, Nanospectra Biosciences Inc., has proven effective at eradicating tumors in laboratory animals during the first phase of animal testing. The noninvasive cancer treatment uses a combination of harmless, near-infrared light and benign, gold nanoshells to destroy tumors with heat. The treatment does not affect healthy tissue. "We are extremely encouraged by the results of these first animal...

Indian doctor duo make DNA horoscopes at birthTrivandrum | June 23, 2004 8:58:14 PM IST  A doctor duo from Trivandrum have developed a technique to map the DNA sequencing of human beings so as to predict their future tendencies and also help fight diseases. Ajit Kumar and Arun Kumar, both genetic experts from the city's main state-run hospitals, have developed the "Nano Geneseq Chip", which analyses the entire future genetic proposition of a human at birth itself. In layman terms the computer can, to almost 100 percent accuracy, predict how a child will grow-right from its height, colour and...