These fundamentalists crusade against religion, and they call others delusional
I briefly saw Richard Dawkins on BBC News this morning, talking about his favorite subject these days: The God Delusion, his book on why we must abolish religion. I didn't listen long-I'll explain why in a moment-
War is always a shock to the heart, but it should not be a shock to the mind.
In the past few days, war has broken out between Russia and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, a shocking yet somehow predictable outcome. Right after the collapse of the USSR,
Evil is real, and so are evil genes.
Today I stumbled on a C-SPAN presentation by Barbara Oakley about her book Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend. I haven't read the book, but it evidently overlaps with many things I've long thought and written myself, in The Tangled Wing and elsewhere.
An excellent new study once again takes us back to the future.
Last week's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine carried another powerful vindication of The Paleolithic Prescription, a book co-authored by Boyd Eaton, Marjorie Shostak and me just twenty years ago. Boyd and I fired the first salvo in the same journal in 1985, with an article called "Paleolithic Nutrition."
Want to make your life better with the help of medical technology? It might be between you, your doctor, and the President's Council on Bioethics.
Bioethics has become a booming industry, and it goes way beyond conventional medical ethics. But what exactly do bioethicists do? Are they just a bunch of self-appointed moralists who want to tell everybody what to do? Are they representatives of particular churches or religions?
A year or so ago
Scientists should lose the hype and just get on with the work
This week I went to the funeral of an unsung great man of math education, Steve Sigur, who taught at a local school for thirty-five years. He was always described as a gentle bear of a man, and that he was.
With his great height, huge belly, and big red scraggly beard, he looked like a mountain man,
Low fertility helps the species but threatens cultures and some dreams.
Weddings get me thinking about reproductive success. I went to two this week, both outstanding professional couples, and I couldn't help wondering if and when they might make a contribution to the next generation's genetic and cultural mix.
And I do mean "if."
Genes in chocolate trees, cancers, and sea water are confirming Darwin and changing the world.
I knew genomics had come of age when I heard they were sequencing the chocolate genome-or the tree chocolate comes from, anyway. That's Theobroma ("food of the gods") cacao, which is so beset by diseases that the world's chocolate addicts, me included, could lose our fix.
"Maladaptive" habits help the poor cope with their stressful lives, and the best healers don't blame them.
I recently had the privilege of "shadowing" one of the best docs I know as she made hospital rounds at Grady. Grady is one of those places-like Los Angeles County Hospital, Cook County Hospital in Chicago, and Kings County in Brooklyn where I volunteered as a high school kid-
Obama and McCain have different ideas about war. Neither may be able to prevent it.
Is war a permanent part of the human condition?
I've been interested in this question since high school, when an inspiring teacher named Dora Venit spent two years confronting me with the grotesque facts of history. It was not very long after the Holocaust, and the height of the Cold War.
If you are interested in Dr. Konner's views on Jewish subjects, visit www.jewsandothers.com
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