Monthly Archives: July 2017

U-CF School District will spotlight strengths in six new videos – Chester County Press

Posted: July 25, 2017 at 12:24 pm

By John ChamblessStaff Writer

The best way to reach an audience online is with a compelling video, and the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District will be putting itself in the spotlight with six videos that will be filmed during the coming school year.

The U-CF School Board approved the $20,000 proposal as part of their brief meeting on July 17. Allied Pixel, a company based in Media, will produce six videos, which will run three minutes each, between September 2017 and May 2018.

Dave Listman, who leads the district's communications efforts, said that while the district has its own video production capabilities, Allied Pixel can easily produce a higher-quality result with a sleek, engaging, professional look.

The series of videos will complement our 'Success for All' presentation, Listman said. That helps us to achieve some of our communication goals specifically, more effectively engaging with our community. We have a goal to enhance communications within the community, targeting the taxpayers who are not parents. These folks pay for our program, and we all benefit by working closely together.

The videos will feature students, teachers and administrators, Listman continued. We expect the first video will focus on our shift to earlier school start times. The videos will be used on our websites, in emails and throughout social media. We plan to send a postcard mailer to the community that will focus on topics from our 'Success for All' presentation.

District superintendent John Sanville, who has shown the Powerpoint presentation to several groups around the school district this year, said, Responses to the presentation were great, and the initiative will grow in the coming year, enhanced and supported by these videos. 'Success for All' tells the story of the district as a place focused on its mission to empower students for success in life, while at the same time understanding its obligations to the community and respecting taxpayer support.

We excel in academics and we excel as good stewards of taxpayer dollars and operate in a transparent manner, Sanville said. The 'Success for All' initiative backs all of this up with numbers and with stories. The video pieces will enhance our ability to tell the stories.

Listman added, We know that video is an effective communications vehicle, and personal stories are better than charts and numbers.

Allied Pixel is owned by a local community member, and the business focuses on telling the stories of educational organizations and non-profits. They have a great portfolio and have previously done pro-bono work for one of our schools, Listman said.

The district has approved spending no more than $20,000 for the six videos, which Listman said is a considerable discount and a great value to the district. The company is discounting its usual costs by at least 25 percent. For its high-definition editorial work alone, the cost would normally be $16,200. The company has cut the cost by 65 percent, to $5,670, for that line item.

To contact Staff Writer John Chambless, email jchambless@chestercounty.com.

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Rogers County sheriff discusses ‘politically correct’ culture | KTUL – KTUL

Posted: at 12:22 pm

It's a three page letter with a one sentence summary, political correctness has gone off the rails when it comes to policing (KTUL).

It's a three page letter with a one sentence summary. Rogers County Sheriff Scott Walton states political correctness has gone off the rails when it comes to policing.

"I guarantee you, the good, hard working people in Tulsa want to be protected, they don't want the cop that shows up, that's scared to death to do his job, because he'll be prosecuted," he said.

And Walton points out the recent Betty Shelby case as yet another blow to the confidence of law enforcement.

"When the deadly force decision is made and an officer has to use that deadly force, it shouldn't come with an immediate thought of, 'Now, can I withstand the prosecution of that?'" he said.

Walton says the group We the People helps spur an atmosphere of officer apprehension.

"I think it's the most close-minded group of people that exist," Walton said.

"It's unfortunate that he would feel, as if, that we're part of the problem," said Marq Lewis.

From Lewis' perspective, they're simply seeking accountability.

"I think what has happened in the past is that police officers did not have accountability, now we have social media, we have body cameras, we have accountability of people [who] are also watching the police, they're policing the police," he said.

"If you want to get into survival mode as a police officer, you'll be a lot less proactive and the old policeman will tell the young policeman, 'Look junior, if you don't want to get sued, prosecuted and do anything, you hide and wait, and if they call you, go take care of it with the minimum amount of effort and you'll save us all a lot of problems,' and that's pathetic because that's when it's a good day to be a thug," Walton said.

"Any time organizations are holding elected officials accountable, they're always perceived as a problem," said Lewis.

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Trump to Boy Scouts: ‘We could use some more loyalty’ – CNN

Posted: at 12:22 pm

"I said, who the hell wants to speak about politics when I'm in front of the Boy Scouts?" Trump said.

Trump went on to dive into politics anyway -- blasting the media, pushing for the repeal of Obamacare and making a pointed remark about "loyalty."

Listing off the virtues of Boy Scouts at the West Virginia speech, Trump said: "As the scout law says, a scout is trustworthy, loyal," Trump said, before adding, "We could use some more loyalty, I will tell you that."

At the event, Trump also warmly recalled his victory against Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.

"Do you remember that famous night on television, November 8?" Trump asked.

He told the Scouts that Republicans had a tremendous disadvantage in the Electoral College and that the popular vote, which he lost to Clinton, "is much easier." He went on to tell the Scouts his victory was "an unbelievable tribute to you and all of the other millions and millions of people that came out and voted for Make America Great Again."

The Boy Scouts of America issued a statement in response to Trump's appearance on Monday, clarifying that the Scouts did not endorse Trump nor did the group support a particular "position, product, service, political candidate or philosophy," and that the group simply always extends invitations to sitting presidents.

It concluded, "the sitting US president serves as the BSA's honorary president. It is our longstanding custom to invite the US president to the National Jamboree."

Trump said many of his advisers were Boy Scouts, as were 10 of his Cabinet members. "Can you believe that? 10," Trump said.

Two of those former Boy Scouts and now-Cabinet members, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, joined Trump onstage. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who made it to Eagle Scout and was the group's president from 2010-2012, addressed the jamboree Friday.

Trump said several times the media would downplay the size of the audience at the Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve, which the Boy Scouts in a news release prior to the event said they anticipated would be more than 40,000 people.

When Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price came out onstage, Trump took the opportunity to mention an impending vote in the Senate that could mean the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature domestic legislation.

"Hopefully he's going to get the votes tomorrow to start our path toward killing this horrible thing known as Obamacare that's really hurting us," Trump said.

He went on to say that if they didn't get votes, "I'll say, 'Tom, you're fired,'" prompting laughter as Trump reached out to Price. He also told those gathered that Price needed to get Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, to support him on health care.

As he went through the speech, talking about the importance of scouting and the lessons the Scouts were learning, Trump continued to toss barbs at "the fake media, fake news," amid more traditional fare, with Trump remarking at length on the importance of scouting and the values one needs to live a successful life.

"As much as you can," Trump said, "do something that you love, work hard and never, ever give up and you're going to be tremendously successful, tremendously successful."

At one point, Trump made reference to Obama not having attended a jamboree.

"By the way, just a question, did President Obama ever come to a jamboree?" Trump asked, turning around and reaching out his hands.

And during this speech, Trump offered some of his classic talking points from the campaign, including one aimed at political correctness.

"Under the Trump administration, you will be saying 'Merry Christmas' again," Trump said.

CNN's Eugene Scott contributed to this report.

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The unspeakable evil of the Tennessee eugenics program – The Week – The Week Magazine

Posted: at 12:22 pm

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Under existing asset forfeiture laws, it is legal for government officials to seize your gambling winnings, your Dan Brown paperbacks collection, your Lucky Charms collectible cereal bowl and spoon sets, or a bag of paper clips you might have lying around. If you want to get out of jail early in White County, Tennessee, you might have to let them take your fertility too.

I wish I were joking. But there is actually nothing amusing about Judge Sam Benningfield's standing order signed on May 15 awarding inmates 30 days worth of credit toward their jail sentences if they agree to undergo a sterility-inducing procedure a vasectomy for male offenders, a Nexplananon implant for females. Both procedures are available free of charge courtesy of the Tennessee Department of Health.

This is not some kind of innovative crime-reduction plan. It is eugenics.

How exactly it is possible for a judge in a general sessions court with juvenile jurisdiction to impose this order and arrange the gratis performance of these operations with state funds is a question best left to legal experts. The ACLU has released a statement denouncing the program as "unconstitutional." The local district attorney has called it "concerning," citing the difficulties of reversing a procedure undergone by impressionable young offenders looking for a speedy way out of their difficulties. But I am not interested in the constitutionality of the program.

It is evil.

Benningfield says his decision followed conversations with the health department, and that he hopes offenders will "make something of themselves." He claims that too many "drug addicts" have come to him unable to pay court-mandated child support. "I understand it won't be entirely successful but if you reach two or three people, maybe that's two or three kids not being born under the influence of drugs. I see it as a win, win."

A win-win for whom? For a young man who on the spur of the moment and for understandable reasons wants to get out of jail but decades down the line finds himself unable to have a family? For a young woman unaware of the long-term consequences for her fertility posed by having an implant? For the taxpayers of Tennessee who would rather pay for one snip or rod than look after children and the poor and the marginalized? For the children who will now never be born?

It has been decades since this country has had anything resembling a serious public debate about the morality of contraception. Even conservative Catholic politicians with rare exceptions feel comfortable not following the logic of the church's teaching about life to its explicit and logical conclusion. Instead their focus tends to be on abortion, something that most evangelical Christians in this country oppose.

The closest we ever come to having it out about birth control is when the question of eugenics is raised. But the two questions cannot be separated from one another given the history of what used to be the contraceptive movement in this country. I will never understand why reputable mainstream politicians eagerly receive awards from Planned Parenthood, an organization founded by a woman who explicitly recommended the enforced sterilization of those she considered "unfit" or "feeble-minded" or "idiots." It would take an act of willful obtuseness to pretend that the practice of hawking free contraception and abortion today can be neatly separated from the ideology out of which the practice arose. Contraception and sterilization are eugenics.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, would certainly agree with Judge Benningfield about our moral duty to prevent those convicted of crimes from having children. "I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically," she once told an interviewer. "Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin that people can commit."

The lack of charity involved in the assumptions that people who have been convicted of crimes are incapable of repenting and that being parents can only abet their seemingly innate criminality, and that their children are predestined to commit crimes as well, is horrifying. People are not machines. Birth is not a technology that can be harnessed by the state for its sinister purposes. Nor is it a privilege that must be earned by supposedly upstanding citizens, revocable upon the first instance of bad behavior.

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HRBooks review: ‘Imbeciles’ takes deep dive into Virginia’s role in America’s eugenics – Daily Press

Posted: at 12:22 pm

Before I tell you about this historical, shocking and true story of eugenics in the United States, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, let me tell you about the author.

Adam Cohen is a former member of "The New York Times" editorial board, a former senior writer for "Time" magazine, author of several books and a graduate of Harvard Law School.

"On May 2, 2002, the governor of Virginia offered a sincere apology for his state's participation in eugenics, Cohen writes.

With the support of medical personnel, lawyers, academics and the courts, Virginia forced the sterilization of more than 7,450 citizens between 1927 and 1979. They were considered unfit, feeble-minded, criminals or epileptics. In the court case "Buck versus Taft," the United States Supreme Court approved the sterilization of Carrie Buck, with some of the most important names in America presiding, including William Howard Taft, Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. The vote was 8-1. Buck was from Charlottesville and taken in by a foster family. When she became pregnant out of wedlock, she was declared feebleminded."

Eugenics is the science of improving the human population by controlling breeding, thus improving the chances of what are considered desirable traits. In the 1920s, the U.S. began its drive to improve the population. Its model came from England and the writings of Charles Darwin. John D. Rockefeller Jr., Alexander Graham Bell and Theodore Roosevelt were among the supporters of eugenics. The methods to improve the U.S. population included changing immigration laws and keeping those deemed unfit from reproducing. In the end, sterilization became the chosen solution.

Virginia was cautious about eugenic sterilization and did not enact it until 1924, 17 years after the first state, Indiana, had started to use the practice. Four of the nations most respected and powerful professions supported eugenic sterilization medicine, academics, law and the judiciary. The U.S. sterilized 60,000 to 70,000 citizens during this manic time in history, according to Cohen.

The Nazi Party used U.S. laws as a model for its own eugenic sterilization program. Buck vs. Bell has never been overturned. There was a tendency to favor the powerful in American law.

This book covers in great detail the famous men who influenced eugenics and the ultimate support of Buck vs. Bell.

The list includes Albert Priddy, Harry Laughlin and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. As you read this book, consider what was occurred during the years of eugenics, how many citizens of Virginia had their lives turned upside down. They lost their right to choose where they lived, their ability to have children and ultimately, the course of their lives.

This country stands for freedom, but where is the freedom here?

Adam Cohen ends this unforgettable book with a long list of acknowledgments and 323 notes and references. This 402 page book includes eight pages of historical pictures. It can be found at Amazon in paperback for $12.14 and in Kindle for $11.99. It can also be reached at Powells Books for $18 in paperback, $19.50 in hardcover, and $45 on CD.

Vicky Coiner has been a school nurse in Hampton for more than 19 years. She has a master's degree in psychology and is working toward a Ph.D.

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Antibiotic resistance driven by intragenomic co-evolution – Phys.Org

Posted: at 12:20 pm

July 25, 2017 by Alistair Keely Different coloured proteins allow scientists to carry out 'bacterial time travelling'. Credit: University of York

Scientists have discovered bacteria are able to "fine-tune" their resistance to antibiotics raising the possibility of some superbugs being resistant to drugs which they have never even been in contact with.

Bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics in several ways. One really fast and effective way is by gaining extra DNA, called a plasmid, from other bacteria.

The plasmid provides bacteria with the genes needed to become resistant to specific antibiotics.

E.coli

Scientists know that in hospitals bacteria can spread resistance through these plasmids, but don't know much about how the plasmids and the bacteria form a relationship with each other.

Using a technique called experimental evolution, the scientists from the Universities of York and Sheffield, controlled the environment the E. coli were exposed to and allowed them to grow and evolve.

The bacteria were grown for 80 days (about 530 generations) exposing them continuously to an antibiotic.

During the 80 days the bacteria were exposed to the antibiotic, first they gained additional resistance mutations themselves, but this meant that the resistance provided by the plasmid was now somewhat redundant and could therefore be tuned down.

This produced a plasmid and host that were now dependent upon each other when exposed to this antibiotic.

First author Michael Bottery, from the University of York's Department of Biology, said: "Gaining resistance plasmids is just the start of the bacteria's journey to become resistant; the marriage between plasmid and bacteria is a complex one, involving both compromise and changes in behaviour.

"It is a relationship we need to unpick further in order to best preserve the use of the antibiotics we have for use in both critical and routine medical procedures.

"The experiment has shown that if you stop giving antibiotics, resistance won't go away. If you keep using the same antibiotics the bacteria will just get better and better by fine-tuning their resistance.

"And we have also shown if you give the same antibiotic over and over again it could also become resistant to completely different antibiotics which they have never seen before."

Co-dependent

Dr Jamie Wood, Senior Lecturer in Biological Modelling at York added: "The hosts have taken advantage of the plasmid resistance to evolve their own resistance and become co-dependent on each other.

"What we are really showing here is the relationship between the bacteria and these plasmids is a really complicated situation and we might be able to find better ways of managing it.

"Antibiotic resistance is a huge global threat - the UN has put it as equal threat as climate change.

"We need to gain this kind of basic scientific understanding of how bacteria become resistant, but also how they maintain resistance and how resistance changes over time."

Explore further: Antibiotic resistanceit's a social thing

More information: Michael J. Bottery et al. Adaptive modulation of antibiotic resistance through intragenomic coevolution, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0242-3

Trace concentrations of antibiotic, such as those found in sewage outfalls, are enough to enable bacteria to keep antibiotic resistance, new research from the University of York has found. The concentrations are much lower ...

A new study led by scientists at the University of Oxford has found that small DNA molecules known as plasmids are one of the key culprits in spreading the major global health threat of antibiotic resistance.

In recent years, scientists, clinicians and pharmaceutical companies have struggled to find new antibiotics or alternative strategies against multi-drug resistant bacteria that represent a serious public health problem. In ...

New research suggests it is possible to quickly and accurately diagnose some the most dangerous and drug-resistant types of bacterial infections, using equipment already owned by most hospitals.

Plasmids are pieces of independent DNA that often carry multiple antibiotic resistance genes. Plasmids can jump from one bacterium to another, spreading that resistance. A team of French investigators now shows that bacteria ...

An international group of researchers, including Professor Michael Gillings from Macquarie University, have reported that pollution with antibiotics and resistance genes is causing potentially dangerous changes to local bacteria ...

Researchers from Monash University's Biomedicine Discovery Institute have helped solve the mystery of how emus became flightless, identifying a gene involved in the development and evolution of bird wings.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have found that microbial species living on cheese have transferred thousands of genes between each other. They also identified regional hotspots where such exchanges ...

Our bodies are composed of trillions of cells, each with its own job. Cells in our stomach help digest our food, while cells in our eyes detect light, and our immune cells kill off bugs. To be able to perform these specific ...

Scientists have discovered bacteria are able to "fine-tune" their resistance to antibiotics raising the possibility of some superbugs being resistant to drugs which they have never even been in contact with.

Humpback whales learn songs in segments like the verses of a human song and can remix them, a new study involving University of Queensland research has found.

A team of scientists from the Kunming Institute of Botany in China and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena has discovered that parasitic plants of the genus Cuscuta (dodder) not only deplete nutrients from ...

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‘Scopes monkey trial’ town erects evolution defender Clarence Darrow statue – Durham Herald Sun

Posted: at 12:20 pm


Durham Herald Sun
'Scopes monkey trial' town erects evolution defender Clarence Darrow statue
Durham Herald Sun
On July 14 at the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton the public beheld a 10-foot statue of the rumpled skeptic Clarence Darrow, who argued for evolution in the 1925 trial. It stands at a respectful distance on the opposite side of the courthouse from an ...

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Former DOJ Official on Evolution of Corporate Compliance | Big Law … – Bloomberg Big Law Business

Posted: at 12:20 pm

ByYin Wilczek, Bloomberg BNA

Hui Chen recently left the Justice Department after almost two years as the departments first-ever compliance counsel. While at the Criminal Divisions Fraud Section, she helped prosecutors evaluate corporate compliance programs in areas such as securities and financial fraud, health-care fraud, and foreign bribery. Her cases at the DOJ included BP PLCs Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Volkswagen AGs emissions scandal, and Odebrecht SAs Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations. Those prosecutions garnered some of the largest corporate fines ever levied by the DOJ. Chen, now a private compliance consultant, speaks to Bloomberg BNA about her former role, and what lies ahead for the Fraud Section.

Hui Chen.

Bloomberg BNA: When you left, what was the state of corporate compliance programs?

Hui Chen:For me to render an assessment on that, essentially youre asking a probation office who handles drunk driver cases how many people drive drunk. If youre not a company thats being investigated, I wont see you in that role. I saw presumably some of the worst, so thats not a representative view.

What I would say is that there is great variation in corporate compliance that goes from companies in large part doing a pretty good job but occasionally slipping, to companies that completely dont get it. There are companies that should be seeing the risk but arent doing anything about it, which I think would be a little bit surprising to some, and I think thats particularly true for companies that operate mainly outside the U.S.

I also think that many companies that are relatively small arent attuned to the risks they face when they expand. So lets say they found a niche market in the U.S. They then jump into opportunities for their niche business in other markets without giving enough thought to what that might mean in terms of business and people risks.

I also see companies that are obsessively focused on their particular regulated risks but are not attentive to fundamental risks.

BBNA: What sorts of fundamental risk?

Chen:Take financial services. There are companies that say, Were going to dot all the `is and cross all the ts, but they dont think that lying to customers is a problem. I think that problem is more widespread than Wells Fargo. So the fundamentals are lying, cheating and stealing, things your mother would have taught you when you were five.

BBNA: In a sense, your role at the DOJ was a sop to business because you once worked in-house and can represent the corporate view. Do you think you were effective in that role?

Chen:I dont see myself as representing the business view. I see myself as representing the business reality. So I think I was quite effective in working with the prosecutors to bring that reality to the discussion. Again, I cannot say better things about the prosecutorstheyre smart people with common sense. What most of them dont have is that experience of working in-house. And Im able to bring that reality to the table, and they very much get it and they appreciate it.

One of the results of that, for example, is that companies used to bring in binders full of their policies. Pretty early on at DOJ, I started asking the prosecutors to tell companies not to bring their policies to compliance presentations. I said to them, I really dont care what the policy says because I challenge them to show me a single employee who sat there and read them. I can tell you right now that nobody in the company reads the policies except for the people who drafted them. Im more interested in how the policies actually operate.

And the reaction from the prosecutors was, this was what we always thought but we just didnt feel like we had the credibility to say it because we havent been in the companies. Now, I think they routinely tell companies not to bring their policies in.

BBNA: So youve left a legacy?

Chen:I think so. TheEvaluation of Corporate Compliance Programsdocument I authored really reflected a lot of that view. The work that Ive been doing with monitors, and really, the most important thing is, the monitors got it, the prosecutors got it. We want to see evidence, we want to see data, of effectiveness.

BBNA: Under the new administration, how do you think the DOJ will operate? Were you already seeing changes when you were there?

Chen:Thats not an easy question to answer, only because I think people dont really appreciate how a large agency

works. Changes can come in very subtle ways; changes can happen very slowly. I know there are people out there who count the number of resolutions and say, oh my gosh, this is the first year under the Trump administration and the numbers either went up or went down, whatever it is.

White-collar cases take a long time. The cases that are being resolved now are cases that started years ago. You want to see the Trump administrations impact, you should look four years from now, not now. What I would watch is how theyre allocating resources. When Trump came in, he put a freeze on hiring but various agencies and their components got exemptions. I was a former Justice Department prosecutor when the administration transitioned from Bush I to Clinton. My impression is that the Criminal Division traditionally got an exemption, and its usually not impacted by political transitions.

Now, the Fraud Section, to my knowledge, hasnt got an exemption for hiring. And a number of people have departed. Ive been going to one departure party after another, including my own. So how are they replacing these people, and what happens when you go from, lets say, 40 prosecutors to 10?

BBNA: After your experience at the DOJ, what tips can you offer compliance officers who are interacting with the department?

Chen:Use common sense.

Make sure your program produces actual results that are measured thoughtfully.

Do assume the prosecutors are smart people with common sense who can see through charades. Prosecutors can detect the difference between a program thats designed to satisfy them versus a program thats designed to work.

BBNA: How do you think the Fraud Section will evaluate corporate compliance under the Trump administration?

Chen:I dont not see the Fraud Section changing one bit. All the current leadership are people who have been there for the past several years and so long as they stay in placeand as far as I know, none of them is planning to go anywherethe current acting chief and the acting deputy chief, and all the unit chiefs, theyre dedicated, committed, smart people, and I dont see their approach changing one bit.

Now, going forward, would they have to engage in more battles with their upper management? Thats to be seen. Again, once you get above the Fraud Section, youre dealing with political appointees, and who they are and what their priorities are will change things.

We all understand, anybodys whos worked in large organizations, if you have upper management that is generally supportive of what you do, then it makes your job so much easier. You know somebodys got your back and you go do what you believe is the right thing to do. If you have an upper management that is constantly challenging you, then youre going to have to pick your battles because you cant battle with them 100 percent of the time.

That does impact how effective you are and how far you can go. Right now, they still dont have a Criminal Division chief, and the acting chief is a career narcotics prosecutor, I believe. I do not know if hes ever handled a white-collar case. That will impact things; its a different set of assumptions that you have to carry into your meetings.

To contact the reporter on this story: Yin Wilczek in Washington atywilczek@bna.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Seth Stern atsstern@bna.com

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Wisconsin company to offer staff microchip implants: ‘The next evolution in payment systems’ – Washington Times

Posted: at 12:20 pm


Washington Times
Wisconsin company to offer staff microchip implants: 'The next evolution in payment systems'
Washington Times
Wisconsin-based Three Square Market will soon offer its employees the option of having microchips implanted under their skin. The technology will work in tandem with computers, allow employees to pay for food, and open doors. (KSTP-TV ABC-5 Wisconsin ...

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Why Aristotle and Aquinas? – Discovery Institute

Posted: at 12:20 pm

Heres a fair question: Why do I prattle on so much about scholastic philosophy? Of what genuine relevance is it to intelligent design, and how is it of help in our twilight struggle with Darwinism and materialism?

My quick answer (and quite honest) is that I love it. The metaphysical perspective of the great scholastic philosophers hylomorphismis the best idea anyone ever had. At least, the best secular idea anyone ever had. There is a deep beauty and encompassing rationality to the Aristotelian-Thomist way of understanding the world. It can be said that Aristotle was the last man to know everything that could be known in his time, and that Aquinas was the last great systematic philosopherthe last philosopher/theologian to put together a coherent system for understanding all of reality. It is a way of understanding the world that is at once true and beautiful (and St. Thomas would say that truth and beauty are really the same thing). And I think that he pretty much got it right.

How does this help in the struggle between design and Darwinian materialism? Do beauty and truth really play a role in this fight in the trenches of 21stcentury science and culture? I think they do, in a practical way.

The fundamental modernist error is Nominalism. Nominalism, which is a philosophical school that had a foreshadowing in antiquity but fruition in the 14thcentury, is the belief that universals dont exist independently of the mind. It is the view that such general things as justice or humanity or mathematics are merely concepts, with no real instantiation in the extra-mental world. Nominalism is the view that universals are just names, without instantiated reality. It is a view in contrast to the radical realism of Plato, who believed that universals existed in perfect Forms in a realm more real than our own, and to the moderate realism of Aristotle, who believed (in characteristically moderate fashion) that universals had an extra-mental reality in this world, but not in the Platonic world of Forms.

The problem with Nominalism is that it detached and eventually isolated the mind from the world, and evolved over time into the Cartesian dualist model of the mind that man was a composite of two separate substances, mental and physical. Modern materialists simply discarded Descartes mental substance, and built their metaphysical structure (tottering as it is) on matter merely a substance extended in space. It is through matter, and matter alone, that materialists try to explain the world. And of course stuff extended in space left no necessary room for God, which pleased newly emboldened atheists no end.

Materialism, the witless spawn of Nominalism and Cartesian dualism, provided passable grounding for some aspects of modern science, especially after Bacon discarded teleology as a principle of nature and Newton developed a rather successful cosmology based on the analogy of nature to a machine. Mechanical philosophy, the ideological substrate of materialism, became the default metaphysical stance of modern science.

But an explanation for life seemed beyond the reach of even most passionate materialist. Stuff extended in space seemed (to the unreflective atheist) adequate to investigate rocks and such, but living things manifest a breath-taking complexity and purpose that no one in their right mind could attributed to just extended stuff. Richard Dawkins got it right: materialism left an atheist intellectually unfulfilled.

Fulfillment came in 1859. Darwins survivors survived theory put life into the machine of nature, and seemed (if you dont really think about it) to explain the uncanny adaptation of living things to the natural world. If they didnt adapt, theyd die! thats how it all happened! The non-adaptive ones are dead, the adaptive ones are alive! Biology is explained! Atheisms shiny new creation myth put out pseudopods into science and culture, degrading both in ways painful to examine. Fairy tales became scientific explanations, and they werent even nice fairy tales. In the Darwinian myth, mans highest attributes evolved due to his lowest dispositions. Eugenics was and is the inevitable outcome of Darwins sanguinary anthropology.

If we are to defeat this madness, for the sake of science and culture and humanity, we must do more than grind Darwinism to dust, as necessary (and satisfying) as that is.

We must replace it. And the replacement must be something true and moral. Hylemorphism, the metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas, is the metaphysical system that Nominalism and Mechanical Philosophy and materialism and Darwinism replaced, yetit remains the one metaphysical system utterly opposed to the idiot and ugly errors of Darwins fairy tale.

My hope is that the ID movement can move toward an Aristotelian and Thomist critique of Darwinism. It is the most effective way I think the only really effective way to kick out the foundation of Nominalism and Mechanical Philosophy on which Darwin and his children built their fiction.

Photo: Carving of Aristotle, Chartres Cathedral, by Wellcome Images, via Wikicommons.

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Why Aristotle and Aquinas? - Discovery Institute

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