Veritas Forum

Hat tip to Jimmy Akin for highlighting this story about scientists working to create sperm out of women's bone marrow.

"British scientists are ready to turn female bone marrow into sperm, cutting men out of the process of creating life.

The breakthrough paves the way for lesbian couples to have children that are biologically their own.

Gay men could follow suit by using the technique to make eggs from male bone marrow."

"Greg Aharonian, a U.S. analyst who is trying to patent the technologies behind female sperm and male eggs, said he wants to undermine the argument that heterosexual marriage is superior because it is aimed at procreation. "I'm a troublemaker," he said."

Here's an interesting item, "Is There Anything Good About Men?" Psychologist Roy F. Baumeister delivered this speech at the American Psychological Association meeting this year. While he comes from a naturalist perspective I think he largely makes accurate observations and gives a compelling case for the existence of and benefits of sex differences. Of course I think Christian ontological understandings, namely the doctrine of the Imago Dei, offer a better explanation for the existence of such differences. But that's a longer discussion.

Skull and crossbones tattoo? How about a Miacis gracilis fossil tattoo instead? Clicky clicky.

If you've read your H.P. Lovecraft (specifically, At the Mountains of Madness), you'll know why this is a very bad idea.

As anyone of our three or so readers on this happy blog know, I don't like macs. Really, really don't like them. And iPods are the death of civillization. But...the iPhone looks really, really, really cool.

Men and women process pain differently.

There are a number of significant differences between men and women (regardless of whether feminists want to admit it). Here's one that we rarely see intelligent discussion about: clicky clicky.

Men may have developed a psychology that makes them particularly able to engage in wars, a scientist said on Friday.

No. Freaking. Duh.

In The Everlasting Man, Chesterton observes that part of the allure of cruel gods (those of the Aztecs, Moloch of Carthage) is the belief that because they demand horrid things from us (human sacrifice), they must be an effective means of gaining what we want. Sacrificing a bull is all well and good, but if you really want to get something, throw your baby into the fire.

The Faustian bargians that became a staple of literature, drama, and folk-lore are variations on this theme. In The Devil and Daniel Webster, the Devil delivered on his end of the bargain (and then the great orator got the fellow out).

The human mind seems to have deeply embedded the notion that bargians with darkness are effective. I'm starting to think that this is part of the motivation for embryonic stem cell research. The amount of hype it generates is far in excess of the scientific situation; people are convinced that if only we started killing human embryos more rapidly, then their afflictions would quickly be cured. People who are utterly ignorant of the prospects and the obstacles sound like faith healers as they blither about how federal funding for embryonic stem cell research will salve all ills. Read the editorials and op-eds, listen to the speakers and talking heads, and it's clear that they are not basing their views on a calm look at the science and metapphysics, but a quasi-religious impulse.

Good article.

"From time to time, we are all confronted with the disconnect between how we see ourselves and how others see us. I've always seen myself as a responsible, law-abiding citizen. I recycle, I vote, I don't drive a Hummer. But I've come to realize that many in the scientific and medical community view me as grossly irresponsible. Indeed, in the words of Bob Edwards, the scientist who facilitated the birth of England's first test-tube baby, I am a "sinner." A recent book even branded me a "genetic outlaw." My transgression? I am one of the dwindling number of women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome and choose not to terminate our pregnancies."

My final Townhall piece never was published (I'm currently looking into new places to write), but there's some parts in it (mostly quotes) that I'd like to put up for your consideration now.

Suffering is seen as the greatest of evils in the modern world, which proclaims, along with mercy-killing enthusiast Doctor Cors of Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, that “pain is the only evil I know about. It’s the only one I can fight.”
...
In Miller’s novel, Abbot Zerchi observed the natural end of this thinking:
“Really, Doctor Cors, the evil to which even you should have referred was not suffering, but the unreasoning fear of suffering. Metus doloris. Take it together with its positive equivalent, the craving for worldly security, for Eden, and you might have your ‘root of evil,’ Doctor Cors. To minimize suffering and maximize security were natural and proper ends for society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law – a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimal security.”

And we are finally back. It's a small little blog, without many readers, but I'm happy with it.

So, as Angie noted before the site died, I'm working with the American Life League (and living in VA) for the time being. I'll avoid discussing the good or the bad on here. I've had one piece for them published so far, which was picked up, among other places, by Human Events Online.

Also, I'm no longer writing for Townhall, which is a story in itself, and I'll explain in another post soon enough.

For now, it's good to be back.

From Slashdot:

"The Sheriff's Department in Douglas County, Colorado says it's going to start warning computer users that their networks may be vulnerable to hackers. It plans on equipping its patrol cars with devices that detect unprotected computer networks, and distributing brochures to computer users in vulnerable areas, instructing them on how to password protect their networks."

Having your ISP warn you of such things makes sense, but police wardriving seems a bit of an overkill.

This is pretty cool. "Mr. Klemm, director of cocktail development for B. R. Guest, which owns Primehouse, is one of a handful of freethinking bartenders who have taken to the idea of employing the techniques of avant-garde cooking to their work behind the bar, a trend that's being called 'molecular mixology.'"

For those interested in the early Christian heresies and how they relate to modern thought, the Gospel of Judas has been translated.

First, Mark Steyn's column is great: "The line here is "respect." Everybody's busy professing their "respect": We all "respect" Islam; presidents and prime ministers and foreign ministers, lapsing so routinely into the deep-respect-for-the-religion-of-peace routine they forget that cumulatively it begins to sound less like "Let's roll!" and too often like "Let's roll over!"...Government leaders are essentially telling their citizens: Who ya gonna believe -- my platitudinous speechwriters or your lyin' eyes?"

George Will has a damning send-up of the global warming alarmists by bringing up a bit of history: "Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age." The Christian Science Monitor ("Warning: Earth's Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect," Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers "have begun to advance," "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter" and "the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool." Newsweek agreed ("The Cooling World," April 28, 1975) that meteorologists "are almost unanimous" that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said "may mark the return to another ice age." The Times (May 21, 1975) also said "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" now that it is "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950.""

An interesting response to my column is below.

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Arguing with Nathanael is like wrestling with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig loves it :-) Since everyone else is jumping into the fray, I might as well join them. I haven’t played in the mud since I was eight anyway. So, here are a few criticisms and suggestions.

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20 years ago the first computer virus was discovered. If you're so inclined (or just bored), here's a brief article on Brain.A and its successors.

Murmurings of plans to offer free wireless internet in several major cities has been growing for a while. Frankly, it's a terrible idea.

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Organizations that exist solely to make money off of lawsuits ought to be *insert violent acts*.

Lawsuit over Google Talk.