Politicians of religious right threaten American democracy

posted 11:45 PM 05/08
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Presidential candidate Mitt Romney was recently seen assuring his supporters of his anti-abortion stance with the standard line: it’s a “biological fact” that the fertilized egg is alive and that life begins at the moment of conception.

Sorry, Mitt, but when your mama or your daddy told you the “facts of life,” they got them wrong. Let’s get the biology straight, OK?

Life doesn’t stop and start. In all living organisms that reproduce sexually, life continues through the stages of a sexual cycle. Some cells in our ovaries or testes carry out a special kind of cell division (meiosis) to produce egg and sperm cells; and under the right conditions a sperm and an egg combine to produce a zygote, which then normally develops into a mature person who produces more sperm or eggs.

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Only science can give us reliable, useful knowledge about the world

posted 11:46 PM 03/27

The democratic spirit embodies the principle that all people have equal rights – to justice, to protection under the law, to the pursuit of happiness, and so on. But this principle makes some people think there’s equality in everything and that all ideas are just a matter of opinion, so Joe Blow’s ideas are just as good as Jefferson’s or Einstein’s. Some students, for example, have asserted their “right” to spell words any way they please. In ethics and morality, this becomes the attitude that there are no objective standards for behavior, so – as one of my colleagues put it – “Mother Teresa does her thing and Hitler does his thing, and it’s all cool.”

Wake up – your planet is dying from rampant consumerism

posted 02:15 AM 02/15

Deep in conversation, cellphone pressed to her ear, the lady walks along staring at the ground ahead of her, oblivious to her surroundings. A common sight these days, you say. Yes, but this lady is walking in one of the most beautiful wildlife refuges in North America. She has no interest, however, in the gorgeous plants and birds around her. She lives in a modern electronic world.

It’s time to move forward on the next generation of plastics recycling

posted 01:47 AM 01/11

Ah, dear recycler. We bless you and thank you for helping to reduce the waste flooding our land and filling up our landfills.