More on Why I’m not a Libertarian — Or, When Belief in “the Market” is just risible, sad, and disgusting

1. Sitting in peculiarly busy traffic in downtown Baltimore this afternoon, I read, on the news monitor wrapped around a trashily modern glass building, a headline from the Baltimore Sun that informed me that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) has proposed a bill to create a new government agency “that could stop lenders from offering mortgages [...]

Some News That’s Fit to Print

*With a tip of the hat to The Western Confucian, “Results, not Bush, slowed embryonic stem cell research”:
But many private companies have been reluctant to fund embryo research because it involves morally controversial techniques and, so far, has shown few signs of success. Most preliminary research indicates that adult stem cells are the key to [...]

Neil Postman, Delivering on Technology

My apologies for the absence. The last few weeks of the semester have been particularly brutal; it all ends soon, though, and within a week, I’ll be back in Indiana, for a good month!
Some time ago, the wonderful Brian Kaller suggested to me that I might enjoy the writings of Neil Postman. I’ve yet [...]

Induced pluripotent stem cells

Today’s Washington Post reports encouraging news from the stem cell front:
Scientists reported yesterday that they have overcome a major obstacle to using a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells, bolstering prospects for bypassing the political and ethical tempest that has embroiled hopes for a new generation of medical treatments.
The researchers said they found a safe [...]

“The Icarus Syndrome”

Jim Manzi proffers provocation of thought respecting peak oil, global warming, and preparing sensibly for what may come.

On battling the errors of modernity

From Fr. John Augustine Zahm, c.s.c’s 1896 Evolution and Dogma, a passage that gave pause to me:
To attempt to cope with the modern spirit of error by means of antiquated and discarded weapons of offense and defense, were as foolish as to pit a Roman trireme or a medieval galley against a modern steel cruiser [...]

Brooks, Larison, gadget fads

Daniel Larison, spot-on, as always, commenting on David Brooks’ “Lord of the Memes”, from the 7 August edition of the New York Times
I know David Brooks can’t really be serious when he says things like this, but this is at least the second grand pronouncement this week* and it’s getting out of hand:
But on [...]

Don’t get me wrong: I think that Mahmoud puts the “mad” in “Ahmadinejad”, but

[W]ell, I can’t blame him for refusing to give up “a single iota of [Iran's] nuclear rights”, despite the threat of further sanctions against Persia.
While stating that the Iranian nation “will not give up a single iota of its nuclear rights,” he also said any participation in international talks on the nuclear issue would [...]

“New houses are universally horrible, and eco-houses are the most horrible of the lot”

With regard to the British Guardian, I generally hold ambivalent, tending toward moderately disdainful, feelings. Via Arts & Letters Daily, though, I discovered a stupendously honest, spot-on piece, from Germaine Greer, lamenting the grotesqueness of the (European) homes that herald modern prosperity and “escape” from the drudgeries of Arcadia.
Vernacular building had the advantage that [...]

The moral relativism of the e-book reader

That’s a strange title for a post, isn’t it? More important, I allow, it’s mis-leading. How-ever, this line I scribbled on a sheet of paper after I engaged, during the mid-class break, this evening, in a not-yet-(and, probably, perpetually un-)settled debate on technology, progress, autonomy, and, as I accused my class-mate, Charles, of, ultimately, advocating, [...]