It’s a Sunday morning in January and inside Stanford University’s Memorial Church, the Rev. Scotty McLennan - immortalized by former Yale roommate Gary Trudeau as the radical minister in ‘Doonesbury’ - is bashing intelligent design. Rather than weaving divinity into the fabric of the universe, intelligent design diminishes God by wedging religion into the gaps of scientific theory, he tells congregants. Not by coincidence, McLennan’s message was repeated five weeks later from more than 300 other pulpits nationwide that day by clergy participating in ‘Evolution Sunday.’ The newly organized event, held to coincide with the 197th anniversary of naturalist Charles Darwin’s birth, served as an exclamation point to a yearlong - and oft-times political - campaign to show that science and religion are not at odds. It included The Clergy Letter Project, a public declaration signed by McLennan and 10,300 other priests and pastors that their faith squares neatly with Darwin’s theory of evolution. It was no Sunday drive. The campaign was launched at a time when the fight between biology and biblical creationism is at the center of public school court cases in a half-dozen states. It highlights broader tensions between religious conservatives and both progressive Christians […]
Monkeys are able to string together a simple ‘sentence’, according to research that offers the first evidence that animals might be capable of a key feature of language. British scientists have discovered that the putty-nosed monkey in Nigeria pictured above sometimes communicates by combining sounds into a sequence that has a different meaning from any of its component calls, an ability that was thought to be uniquely human. Although many animals communicate with one another using calls that have a particular meaning - usually a warning signifying the presence of a certain predator - none has been known to combine these alarm calls into sequences similar to those of human language. The findings suggest that the rudiments of syntax, a basic component of human language, may be more widespread among primates than is generally thought, and could ultimately shed light on the evolution of this most distinctly human of traits. The putty-nosed monkeys, Cercopithecus nictitans, of the Gashaka Gumti National Park, have two main alarm call sounds. A sound known onomatopoeically as the ‘pyow’ warns other animals against a lurking leopard, and a cough-like sound that scientists call a ‘hack’ is used when an eagle is […]
NEW YORK — For the week of the broadcast network upfront presentations, Bolt Media hopes this stat delivers a bullet to TV: Only one in four 12- to 34-year-olds can name all four major broadcast networks: ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. Teens may not be able to name the big four, but they know MTV, Cartoon Network and Comedy Central. Teens may not be able to name the big four, but they know MTV, Cartoon Network and Comedy Central. The finding comes via an online poll conducted by Bolt Media, a 10-year-old Web site that six weeks ago relaunched itself as a place for users to upload videos and photos. About 400 members responded to the questions, including one that asked how respondents spent their free time. The top networks The most popular activity? That would be surfing the Internet, which 84% said they did during their idle periods. Hanging out with friends came in second at 76%, watching movies third at 71% and TV viewing fourth at 69%. The five most-watched TV networks were Fox, Comedy Central, ABC, MTV and Cartoon Network. ‘There’s a massive movement going on in people under 30 and […]
The answer to Canada’s health-care woes does not lie in the ‘insane’ system in place south of the border, former U.S. president Bill Clinton said last night. Speaking in Toronto, Mr. Clinton said that reform may be needed in Canada, but he argued forcefully that the U.S. model is a ‘colossal waste of money’ that is ‘killing’ his country competitively. ‘It’s a good thing, your health care system, with all of its problems,’ Mr. Clinton told supporters of the inaugural World Leaders Forum, which he co-headlined with Israeli Vice-Premier Shimon Peres. Mr. Clinton said that he was familiar with the Chaoulli decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, in which the justices ruled that the public system was too slow and struck down a Quebec prohibition on private health insurance. Arguing that the United States had made a mess of health care, he encouraged Canadians to study instead how other countries have tackled these issues. ‘Conduct a public set of hearings on every other advanced health-care system and see who solved that problem best,’ he said. ‘Surely there’s somebody who has figured out how to solve this problem.’ Mr. Clinton, who failed in his own […]
Karen Hughes talks fast. She talks a lot, zipping from point to point. She’s a hybrid, one motor or another always running. She gives the impression of a woman racing against the tide. The tide in question is anti-Americanism, perhaps the fastest-growing force in the world today. Hughes’s job is to stem it, sap it, stop it. That’s a big job. In fact, no bigger one exists for the United States. Hughes, whose official title is under secretary of state for public diplomacy, and whose task Orwell would have characterized as chief propagandist, says she doesn’t do spin, only facts. ‘Now, of course I try to portray the facts in the best light for our country,’ she adds, ‘Because I believe we’re a wonderful country and that we are doing good things across the world.’ That’s called spin. And the world isn’t buying it. The image of the United States is in something close to a free fall. There are lots of reasons, beginning with the fact that any elephant this big bestriding the world’s stage is going to irk people, especially when George W. Bush is riding it. But I suspect a basic cause […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
