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Healthcare Reform Is a Victory for Conservatives, Not 'Progressives'

Assuming that the House progressives fold, and the healthcare reform legislation resembles the Senate's (and why wouldn't one assumes this), let's not mistake what this is: a victory for conservatives. As I've argued before, this legislation is better than no legislation (probably), and, at this point, we should take what's possible. But we never should have reached this point. While I agree with Amanda Marcotte about the legislation (pass what you can), I'm far less sanguine about what this means. Amanda (italics mine): If we want better legislation, we need better politicians. And if…

Have No Doubt, the Theopolitical Right Can Be a Buzzkill for Any Circumstance

This is the kind of story that makes me sick to my stomach--soldiers stateside were expected by their base commander to applaud for Pastor of Evil Rick Warren: The following is an email from one decorated combat officer, a man with the courage to repeatedly put his life on the line on the battlefield, being wounded twice, but who could not muster the courage to resist the pressure of his "serious and committed born again Christian" commanding officer to applaud Rick Warren. The author of this email is typical of the majority of servicemen and servicewomen who contact MRFF for assistance. Like…

Birdbooker Report 103

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books "How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird literature." --Edgar Kincaid The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…

The emaciated model/occupational health debate

Lindsay at Majikthise raises in interesting point about a new Spanish law that requires fashion models to attain a certain Body Mass Index before being allowed to take to the catwalk. The intent is to project a healthier image for young girls who emulate the newest fashion modes and ideal bodies. Lindsay raises the question whether such a rule is justified on these grounds. Amanda at Pandagon has raised this as an occupational health problem for women. The new requirement of a BMI of 18 are in line with a World Health Organization guideline for a minimum health weight. Amanda's position: At…

Public health's elder sibling, Big Brother?

In China, "sudden events" like disease outbreaks or chemical spills are state secrets. That's not good for China's health or the health of the world. I'm glad that's not US policy. Not yet, at any rate. But a new bill introduced by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel is a step in that direction. S. 3898 was introduced on September 14 to little notice. It is a Bill to amend the Homeland Security Act "to provide for the health of Americans by implementing a system that detects and identifies in a timely manner diseases, conditions, and events that represent a threat to humans, animals, food…

Surgeon General fades away . . .

The very first post, ever, on Effect Measure, "The Surgeon General as appetite suppressant" was posted in the morning of Thursday, November 25, 2004. I did it on a lark. Mrs. R. was preparing Thanksgiving dinner and my presence in the kitchen was declared unwanted if not a health hazard. What else was there to do but start a blog? Since the Surgeon General has just resigned, quietly and without explanation, we bring you some nostalgic excerpts from that very first post and some remarks on his departure: The United States Surgeon General has a new approach to the obesity epidemic specially for…

From the Manchineel to the Yew, Trees are a Source for Good or Evil

Guest Blog by Festival Nifty Fifty Speaker Joe Schwarcz PhD According to Talmudic tradition, a wise rabbi once proclaimed that if a person planting a tree were told that the Messiah had arrived, he should finish planting before going to greet him. That of course was long before there was any awareness of the important role trees play in generating oxygen and soaking up carbon dioxide. Neither was there any knowledge about trees preventing soil erosion, absorbing air pollutants, preventing water runoff or controlling climate by moderating the effects of the sun, rain and wind. Nevertheless,…

Bird flu in water. How big a problem?

One of the unanswered questions about the transmission of influenza H5N1 is the mode. We presume, probably correctly, that person to person spread is the main mode, mediated by coughing, breathing, sneezing. Whether the infective material is small enough to remain suspended in the air for long periods or whether it is primarily in large droplets that settle out quickly is a matter of importance still under debate but both possibilities pertain to person to person spread via the respiratory tract. Then there is the question of the role of inanimate objects, like door knobs, arm rests or…

Annals of peanut butter: learning lessons

People who make products containing peanut butter are seeing a dramatic drop in sales because of the salmonella problem (other posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here). That includes jarred peanut butters found in supermarkets (down 22% over the same period last year), although none are known to be contaminated. The Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) only sold peanut butter in bulk, to institutions and as an ingredient (peanut paste). Consumers aren't differentiating. This seems like a fairly prudent behavior, since everyday new products are being recalled, now surpassing a stunning…

Shadows in my younger days (medically speaking)

In my younger days I was quite enamored of radiology as a specialty. I published some papers in that area and enjoyed reading x-rays, quite a complex task, requiring the reader to integrate three dimensional anatomy with two dimensional shadows and relate that to physiology, pathology, surgery, medicine and who knows what else. It was interesting and it was fun. The field has changed a lot since those days. For one thing, the pictures are not all two dimensional any more. First CAT scans and the MRIs have made it possible to reconstruct the two dimensional shadows, taken at a bunch of angles…

Why should the military get a scarce pandemic flu vaccine before almost everyone else?

The headline said, "Vaccination plan puts health care workers first," but you had to read the article to find out who goes next: the military. This according to the Guidance on allocating and targeting pandemic influenza vaccine released yesterday by the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The guidance is premised on the assumption that in the early phases of a pandemic, any vaccine will be in short supply and will need to be rationed. The document gives "strong advice" on how DHHS thinks this rationing should take place, although much is left unexplained. Since the allocation…

Amylase and human evolution

I made a mistake that was quickly corrected by a correspondent. Yesterday, in writing about copy number variants in human genes, I used the example of the amylase gene on chromosome 1, which exists in variable numbers of copies in human populations, and my offhand remark was that the effect is "nothing that we can detect", but that maybe people with extra copies would be "especially good at breaking down french fries". Well, it turns out that we can detect this, that there was even a very cool study of this enzyme published last year, and that the ability to break down complex starches…

From Two Cells To Many: Cell Differentiation and Embryonic Development

It's Thursday, so it is time for the next portion of my BIO101 lecture notes (May 15, 2006). As alway, I'd appreciate corrections of errors, and suggestions for improvement. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cell Differentiation and Embryonic Development BIO101 - Bora Zivkovic - Lecture 2 - Part 2 There are about 210 types of human cells, e.g., nerve cells, muscle cells, skin cells, blood cells, etc. Wikipedia has a nice comprehensive listing of all the types of human cells. What makes one cell type different from the other cell types? After all,…

Swine flu: (unfinished) story of the year

It's the end of the calendar year and the traditional time the media looks back on "the biggest stories of the year." There are websites about almost any subject (even one on a particular model of running shoe, I am told), but those of us who write specialized blogs (as opposed to ones about politics or current events) rarely expect our subject matter to show up on one of those lists. We've been writing about flu for over five years, here, and while re recognized the possibility our subject would come into vogue -- that's indeed why we were writing about it -- it still took us and everyone…

The Tamiflu doesn't work non-story

The other day the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a clutch of articles about whether Tamiflu was as useful a drug as some have touted. I read the main article, another one of the Cochrane Collaborative meta-analyses of the studies they deem useful about any particular subject, and it didn't seem to make much news. It confirmed what their previous review had said about the neuriminidase inhibitor antivirals for influenza (Tamiflu and Relenza): these drugs work but their effect is modest. We've been saying the same thing for years here, not because we did a fancy meta-analysis, but…

Report: Little progress in adult obesity rates and significant disparities persist

During the past year, not one state experienced a decrease in adult obesity rates and, in fact, six states are home to even higher rates than before, according to a new report released today. This morning, Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) released “The State of Obesity: Better Policies for a Healthier America,” finding that adult obesity rates rose in Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, New Jersey, Tennessee and Wyoming. Mississippi and West Virginia tied to take the unenviable top spot, both with an adult obesity rate of 35.1 percent, while Colorado is…

Snake segmentation

Life has two contradictory properties that any theory explaining its origin must encompass: similarities everywhere, and differences separating species. So far, the only theory that covers both beautifully and explains how one is the consequence of the other is evolution. Common descent unites all life on earth, while evolution itself is about constant change; similarities are rooted in our shared ancestry, while differences arise as lineages diverge. Now here's a new example of both phenomena: the development of segmentation in snakes. We humans have 33 vertebrae, zebrafish have 30-33,…

ExSSII: Earths, Super-Earths and Habitability

Final session of ExSSII on Earths, Super-Earths and Habitability liveblogging: Dimitar Sasselov - high density exoplanets HAT-P-20b - 14 gm/cc - hot 7 M_J giant planet, no prob modeling as degenerate H/He core Kepler-10b - 9 gm/cc - rocky Earth's central density 13 gm/cc Super-Earths expected to have central densities > 20 gm/cc update on model progress for moderately high densities, but not degenerate, reviewed at Extreme Solar Systems I in Santorini in 2007. Experiments at Z-machine - pulsed 10 TW/cm^2 laser compression toy zap rocks. mmm, toblerone diagram Diana Valencia -…

Interpreting sampling data from Gulf Coast to assess workers' exposure

Both OSHA and BP have set up webpages that offer their air monitoring procedures and results related to the Gulf oil disaster. Several worker health and safety experts have examined the data and offered interpretations of the results, including Eileen Senn, a former OSHA inspector. She reviewed BP's June 9, 2010 Personal Exposure Monitoring Results Summary, which includes a graphical analysis of 2,100 personal samples collected to-date for benzene, total hydrocarbons, and 2-butoxy ethanol, an ingredient in the dispersant Corexit EC9527A. Senn notes: "The document provides no information on…

Revolutionary medicine

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure One of the premier and earliest flu bloggers and co-founder of Flu Wiki, DemFromCT is also a doctor. Not a young doctor, either, although somewhat younger than I am (most people seem to be, these days). In our young professional days, the American Medical Association was a real political power. When it spoke, politicians listened. Hell, everyone listened. Now? Well, who cares? Dem has a really excellent post up at DailyKos looking at the AMA's opposition to the "public option" in the Obama health care plan. I'm not so crazy about a public option…

Too Many Grieving Families from Dixie Crystal Explosion

The final deceased victim of the February 7 explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery has been recovered from the scene, and a ninth victim, Mr. Michael Fields, 40, succumbed to his severe injuries earlier today at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia.  U.S. Senators Johnny Iasakson (R-GA) and Saxby Chamblis (R-GA) met today with victims' families as well as about 200 employees from the plant.  Senator Isakson's news release said: "On my visit this morning, I saw the absolute devastation of the tragic explosion at the Imperial Sugar facility.  ...We pledged to them our…

Big Questions, Little Answers: the debate over autism

This is the second of 6 guest posts on infection and chronic disease. By Rachel Kirby In light of April being Autism Awareness Month it is only natural that certain topics be brought about in the media. Until now I was not aware of the controversy behind the "risk factors" of autism. Let's begin with the basics. Autism is a brain development disorder that impairs social interaction and communication, and causes restricted and repetitive behavior, all starting before a child is three years old. Having autism may or may not involve all three characteristics. Some may even have symptoms that…

CPSC: The Toy Chickens Come Home to Roost

By David Michaels In a few short months, the country has awakened to several potential hazards associated with Chinese toys. Mattel and other manufacturers have already recalled millions of toys, some for lead paint and others because they contained magnets that, if swallowed, could cause severe injuries. Now, Louise Story of New York Times reports that the Walt Disney Company will conduct lead tests on 65,000 toys and other childrenâs products made by 2,000 companies that license Disney characters. Things have gotten so bad that toy manufacturers are actually asking for federal regulation…

User Fees for Expedited Drug Reviews: Part of the Problem, not Part of the Solution

By David Michaels In the wake of the debacles involving Vioxx, Ketek, and other dangerous drugs that should never have been approved in the first place, Congress is about to take up reauthorization of the user fee system that funds the Food and Drug Administrationâs drug review process. The system is governed by the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), which will expire this year. The FDA has asked Congress to reauthorize the program for five more years. Yesterday, a group of 22 experts on drug safety and regulation issued an open letter to lawmakers asking them not to reauthorize the…

Emerging disease and zoonoses #7--reporting on emerging diseases

In addition to all the science of H5N1, several presentations were given discussing communication between scientists and the public (or those who more often communicate with the public--science journalists). As I've written on here before, it's not an easy dance to figure out, for a variety of reasons discussed below. As anyone who follows science reporting in the mass media knows, it can seem at times that each new study contradicts the last. Something is good for you; yesterday it was bad for you. Something is the new treatment of tomorrow based on early studies; but sorry, it was…

Introduction to emerging diseases and zoonoses, part 2

I'd like to continue the overview of emerging infectious diseases (part one is here) by discussing some reasons why diseases "emerge." Obviously, this will be somewhat of a simplification; many diseases may emerge due to a combination of the topics mentioned below, or may have factors involved that I don't mention, so these should be considered broad categories rather than an all-inclusive list. So, one reason: climate change. An obvious example of this are diseases borne by arthropods, which live in a fairly narrow range of temperatures or environments. Global warming or cooling may…

Bad News for Uncommon Descent

In my ongoing search for bad math, I periodically check out Uncommon Descent, which is Bill Dembski's blog dedicated to babbling about intelligent design. I went to check them today, and *wow* did I hit the jackpot. Dembski doesn't want to bother with the day-to-day work of running a blog. So he has a bunch of bozos who do it for him. Among them is Salvador Cordova, who can almost always be counted on to say something stupid - generally taking some press story about science, and trumpeting how it proves intelligent design using some pathetic misrepresentation of information theory. [That's…

i : the Imaginary Number

After the amazing response to my post about zero, I thought I'd do one about something that's fascinated me for a long time: the number *i*, the square root of -1. Where'd this strange thing come from? Is it real (not in the sense of real numbers, but in the sense of representing something *real* and meaningful)? History --------- The number *i* has its earliest roots in some of the work of early arabic mathematicians; the same people who really first understood the number 0. But they weren't quite as good with *i* as they were with 0: they didn't really get it. They had some concept of…

Dembski notices GM/BM, and he's not happy!

Apparently William Dembski, over at Uncommon Descent is *not* happy with my review of Behe's new book. He pulls out a rather pathetic bit of faux outrage: "Are there any anti-ID writings that the Panda's Thumb won't endorse?" The outrage really comes off badly. But what's Debski and his trained attack dog DaveScott try to smear me for my alleged lack of adequate credentials to judge the math of Behe's argument. This is rich. Michael Behe, a *biochemist*, writes a book that makes sloppy mathematical arguments - which is, in fact, built around a primarily mathematical argument. But there's…

I get email — from Peter Heck

Yesterday, I tore into a reeking pile of creationist bogosity by Peter Heck. This morning, he sends me email. Dr. Myers, Someone sent me a nasty email that included a link to your blog. I found it a pretty thorough shallacking! Not that I'm opposed to that. If I put arguments out in front of people, I have no problem when they're hacked up by the experts. I actually sent the column to three biologists I know and trust before it was published. They don't agree with my views on some of these issues, but I knew they would challenge my science. They all recommended I take out the first…

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Carlos Hotta

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January. Today, I asked Carlos Hotta from the Brontossauros em meu Jardim blog to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background? I am the community manager of ScienceBlogs Brasil, the former blog network called…

Court Date

I know that there are hundreds of people out there who are wondering what happened regarding today's court date because I have been innundated with comments and email -- all of which I love!! -- so I'll give you the short news and then provide more detail: The hearing was postponed for one week. We -- the team leader, who is a shrink, my own shrink, who is a resident, my medical student, and a mental health aid along with a security guard and me -- left the nuthouse at 930 am. We drove across Manhattan to Ward's Island in a state van to a large and truly scarey-looking high-security…

The Biology of Politics: Is It For Real?

tags: political views, politics, physiology, threat response, psychology, philosophyfight or flight, nature versus nurture Most Americans have been actively engaged in the frustrating sport of arguing about politics, which often leads to the common refrain; "You just don't get it!" So this made me wonder why people who seem to have similar life experiences can end up with such dramatically different personal philosophies -- philosophies that ultimately affect their political views and voting behavior. Apparently, I am not the only one to wonder about such things, because a paper was just…

How and Why Species Multiply: The Radiation of Darwin's Finches

tags: How and Why Species Multiply, evolution, ecology, Darwin's finches, Rosemary Grant, Peter Grant, book review Peter and Rosemary Grant have been studying the phenomenon of speciation in Darwin's finches for 35 years, using every technique available to them from molecular biology to population ecology. They have written several books about various aspects of their work and even were the focus of a Pulitzer-prize winning book. But there has not been a comprehensive yet scholarly book that has captured the essential highlights of their lifetime work, until now. How and Why Species Multiply…

Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land

tags: book review, Unholy Business, religious antiquities, biblical antiquities, fraud, Christianity, Judaism, Nina Burleigh There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe. -- Friedrich Nietzsche In November 2002, an ancient carved limestone burial box designed to hold the disarticulated skeleton of a dead person was put on public display in Canada's Royal Ontario Museum. Although common throughout Israel, this particular box, known as an ossuary, was unusual because it was inscribed. Even more remarkable, its ancient Aramaic…

Study: ACA-backed efforts to reduce hospital readmissions also reduced mortality

With the future of the Affordable Care Act still up in the air, most of the news coverage has gone to insurance coverage, premiums and Medicaid. And rightly so. But also included in the massive health reform law were a number of innovative measures to improve the quality and value of the medical care we actually get in the doctor’s office. With repeal still on the table, those measures are at risk too. One of those ACA efforts is the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, which reduces Medicare payments to hospitals with relatively high rates of often-preventable hospital readmissions. The…

County Health Rankings: Drug overdoses driving turnaround in premature death rates

To get a clearer sense of just how bad our drug overdose problem has gotten, look no further than this year’s County Health Rankings. The annual report found that after years of declining premature deaths, that rate is on the rise and due primarily to overdose deaths. It means we could be seeing the first generation of American kids with shorter life expectancies than their parents. “We often think of the opioid crisis either as happening in very rural communities or as an urban issue,” Kate Konkle, Action Center Team director for County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, told me. “But this is…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Atlantic Monthly, Alana Semuels interviews David Weil, who served as administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division under President Obama, on his time at DOL and the future of labor under Trump. On Obama’s effect, Weil told Semuels: Semuels: What specifically changed in the Department of Labor under Obama? Weil: One of the things Obama did from the beginning was to fight hard to get resources for his enforcement agencies. He came in and the number of investigators in the Wage and Hour Division was barely 700 nationally—and it is responsible for 7.3 million workplaces…

Inspired by the modest mussel, scientists discover a naturally derived flame retardant

Flame retardants aren’t just found in your furniture. It’s likely you also have detectable amounts of the chemical in your body too, which is pretty worrisome considering the growing amount of research connecting flame retardants to serious health risks. Researchers have linked to the chemicals to reproductive health problems, adverse neurobehavioral development in kids, and endocrine and thyroid disruption. And so the question arises: Do the risks of today’s flame retardants outweigh the benefits? Chemical engineer Christopher Ellison, an associate professor in the University of Texas-Austin…

Hansen et al.: RIP

[Update: Or, maybe not.] Via twitter comes news of the sad demise of "Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming is highly dangerous"; Review status: This discussion paper has been under review for the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP). A final paper in ACP is not foreseen. My view at the end of August was that Peter Thorne's review was "substantially negative about the paper"; it looks like the editor has gone with that and similar views. In essence, its a sad train-wreck; only…

Is Risk of Theocracy Overblown?

Ken Brown has a post pointing to Joe Carter's essay on the subject of theocracy and the fear of it that is often expressed by those on the left. Carter argues that accusations that the religious right is pushing for theocracy are empty political rhetoric. While he admits that "some conservative Christians in our country do want to establish a theocracy" he also argues that their numbers "are rather negligible and their political influence almost non-existence (sic)". I'm going to agree in part and disagree in part. Yes, I think the left often exaggerates the risk of theocracy and applies the…

The Day-Age Theory

Prior to my break, there was some discussion, in the comments to this post, about the Day-Age Theory. This refers to the idea that the “Days” in the first chapter of Genesis actually refer to very long periods of time. This is a desperation move made by Biblical literalists who are uneasy rejecting the considerable evidence in support of an ancient Earth. During my break I started reading The Challenge of Creation: Judaism's Encounter With Science, Cosmology, and Evolution, by Rabbi Natan Slifkin. I'm currently about half way through it, and I expect to have a great deal to say about it in…

Last Round on Methodological Naturalism

Over at Telic Thoughts, macht has posted this reply to some of my earlier posts on the nature of science. I believe he is still missing most of the important points. But in the interest of making this into something constructive I will eschew a point-by-point rebuttal. Instead let me emphasize what I believe the key points to be, and clarify some things that may have been left unclear in some of my earlier posts. First, science is not something that exists “out there,” with properties and characteristics that we come to know by experiment and hard work. Rather, science is a human…

On Feelings and Votes

This is going to be a bit of a rant, because there's a recurring theme in my recent social media that's really bugging me, and I need to vent. I'm going to do it as a blog post rather than an early-morning tweetstorm, because tweets are more likely to be pulled out of context, and then I'm going to unfollow basically everybody that isn't a weird Twitter bot or a band that I like, and try to avoid politics until the end of the year. Also, I'll do some physics stuff. This morning saw the umpteenth reshared tweetstorm (no link because it doesn't matter who it was) berating people who write about…

A new novel, Star Wars: Dark Disciple

A Guest Review by John Abraham Wow! I just put down the best science fiction book I’ve read in a long time, and certainly the best Star Wars book I’ve ever read. Just like Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones have made fantasy stories hip, the rebooted Star Wars franchise is making science fiction cool again for audiences of all ages. The new book, which goes on sale today (July 7th), is called Star Wars: Dark Disciple (written by Christie Golden). It is part of a new series of stories that are part of the Star Wars canon and it involves nearly all of the characters we’ve come to cherish…

Have we Discovered New Physics?!?!!

"Although important nuclear physics work was to go on in laboratories such as ours had become - and we had to cut down to a lower energy group - it was not fundamentally opening up new insights on the structure of matter. That required you to be in a higher league." -John Henry Carver Okay, before we get into speculating, the short answer is maybe. And that's amazing! Let's recap the basics, and bring you up to speed of what could be the Tevatron's last -- and possibly greatest -- hurrah. Image credit: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, a.k.a. Fermilab. This is the Tevatron. For decades…

The Presidential Race Tightens Even As Many Assume It Is Over

A Trump-Kaine presidency is now on the table. It ain't over 'till the lady in the pantsuits wins. Or looses. Imagine Debbie Downer and Chicken Little have an offspring. It would be me. Or at least, that's how I've felt over the last few weeks as the only person in the Free World who seems to have noticed that the gap between Trump and Clinton is closing, and in fact, was never really that large to begin with. It only appeared large because a fluctuation occurred at about the same time everyone was hoping for a fluctuation, so it became more real than it should have been. The race has…

Beckwith on the Dover Ruling

Frank Beckwith, a friendly rival on the question of intelligent design and the law, was a speaker at the Greer-Heard Forum that included many other prominent peopel on both sides of the ID question. The Baptist Press News has a report on his presentation, which a reader emailed me this morning. Beckwith, for those who may not know, is the associate director of the Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor and, as such, his views deserve to be taken seriously. And if you're beginning to suspect that my praise is setting him up for criticism, you're correct; I like Frank, but I really…

Kerby Anderson on ID

I've just received an email with another batch of those delightful Worldview Weekend essays. Sadly, there are none by Kirk Cameron this time, but the other authors put together a strong effort to be as ridiculous as he is. This essay by Kerby Anderson, president of Probe Ministries, on the "myths about intelligent design" was good for 10 minutes of chuckles over toast and tea this morning. Let's have a little fun with this one. First, proponents of intelligent design are not trying to smuggle religion into the classroom. While that may have been the intent of some of the Dover school board…

Was American Founded on "Christian Principles"?

One of the arguments heard often, especially lately in light of the situation with Judge Roy Moore in Alabama, is that the US was "founded on Christian principles". Whenever I hear this argument, I counter with this challenge - point to specific provisions within the constitution, the founding documents of the United State, the basis for the entire American system of government, that have an analog in the bible or in standard Christian theology. The response is usually silence. The major principles found in the constitution - separation of powers, checks and balances, limited government,…