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The Red Planet

I’ve always thought there’s an easy way to sidetrack the redefining of human nature by biotechnology. All we have to do is revive the space program and promote the colonization of space. All we have to do, in other words, is offer a different temporal purpose and a more exciting goal.An . . . . Continue Reading »

Stork Economics

If you ask a child where babies come from, you can get a lot of interesting answers, but traditionally the most common answer is that they come by stork. Children tend to have a similar understanding of economics. If you ask them where their allowance comes from, the two most likely responses are . . . . Continue Reading »

The Great Debate

I say we must have change. Our changes will consist Of things you may find strange. I have a little list Of things we plan to change. I too say we should change, Change but not too much. We’ll simply rearrange Some agencies and such, Which means we will have change. Of course by . . . . Continue Reading »

The Giving Society

Anyone traveling to Europe this summer will surely marvel at how different it is from the United States¯and how Europeans have trouble understanding the difference. “Individualists,” they call Americans, but the facts show far more personal social concern in the United . . . . Continue Reading »

Stop Reading This Now

What are you doing looking here on the Fourth of July? Go away. Set off some firecrackers. Recite some patriotic speeches. Watch the rockets’ red glare. Read about how the Peterkin boys , Solomon John, and Agamemnon made their disaster of “fulminating paste” from iron-filings and . . . . Continue Reading »

The Pregnancy Pact

Last month saw a flurry of interest in the reproductive goings-on in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Time magazine reported a spike in teen pregnancies at Gloucester High School¯from 3 or 4 last year to 17 this year (see June 18, 2008, “Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High”). That’s what . . . . Continue Reading »

The Human Experience

“If he wakes me up today, God has something he wants me to do.” “I’m your sister, you’re my brother.” “We are all the same”that’s why we need to love everybody.” Truisms get their name because they are, well, true. But not the sort of truth that is . . . . Continue Reading »

Scalia and the Lure of the Natural Law

Scenes from a dinner in Washington ten years ago: Irving Kristol: “What was in the Second Amendment, again?” Paul Cantor: “Irving, you don’t remember? You wrote it.”There has often been a faint recollection of the Second Amendment, because it had rarely been before the courts. The rights . . . . Continue Reading »

A Pilgim’s Progress: Corpus Christi 2008

An excited group of girls behind me—ages five to eight, I think, walking with their mothers: some of them dribbling, others flinging, handfuls of rose petals drawn from their little white baskets. Next the censers, wafting smoke, and then the Sacrament itself, in its monstrance: a great golden sun . . . . Continue Reading »

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