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Earth day activist: Group of people protests for climate change in the city - Global warming demonstration concept

Only Feminism Can Prevent Global Warming

About a month ago, some bioethicists claimed that bioethics should prevent climate change. My eyes had finally stopped rolling when lo and behold, I learn from three UN Women researchers — in Scientific American, no less — that feminism holds the real key to preventing the planet from cooking. As you would expect, the opinion piece is a godawful mess that attacks capitalism and the use of fossil fuels, in other words, its authors disdain prosperity. From “How Feminism Can Guide Climate Change Action:” The current economic system that underpins that status quo is rooted in the extraction of natural resources and exploitation of cheap or unpaid labor, often done by women and marginalized communities. This system therefore drives the climate crisis while perpetuating inequalities based Read More ›

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City of San Francisco Ca. Downtown business district seen through the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge

2024: The Year “San Francisco Values” Finally Failed


San Francisco was once a conservative city. Oh, sure, it had its bohemian side. The Beats of the ’50s were at home in North Beach, and Harry Bridges, the suspected communist who served for years as head of the longshoremen’s union, had a definite influence. But for the most part, San Francisco was well within the cultural mainstream. Indeed, the city was so staid that the Republican Party’s nominee for mayor won landslides in 1955 and 1959, and the GOP nominated the archconservative Barry Goldwater as its presidential candidate from the Cow Palace in 1964.

Then, San Francisco changed. Radically. In 1964, the University of California, Berkeley, a few miles across the bay, became the center of the “free speech” movement. Civil rights and then militant anti–Vietnam War advocacy found great sympathy. The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood became a hippy haven and the focus of a growing drug culture. The gay-rights movement sprang energetically out of the Castro District, and the once predominately Italian working-class neighborhood was transformed into a radical front of the sexual revolution. By the 1980s, the term “San Francisco values” — wielded by conservatives to describe the cultural and political radicalism of the Bay Area — had turned the city into something of a national joke.

Over the years, policies enacted by the city’s ever more extreme progressive leaders slowly destroyed San Francisco. I lived in and around the city for almost 25 years, starting in 1992, and saw the decline happen in real time. It broke my heart.

Read More ›
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Israel-Gaza: London protesters take to the streets in support of Palestine

“Nature” Promotes Views of Anti-Israel Demonstrator

Nature is supposedly the most respected science journal in the world. But its reputation is sinking because it has become so overtly political, as with its decision last summer to endorse Kamala Harris for president. Now, in the mushiest softball Q&A one can imagine, the journal is boosting an anti-Israel protester and promoting her views on Israel’s war with Hamas. What’s the science hook? Well, there isn’t one beyond the protester’s being a doctoral student at MIT. From “Why this PhD candidate joined campus protests against the Israel–Hamas war”: Jessica Metzger, a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, researches non-equilibrium statistical physics — the study of how matter, especially living matter, behaves. Metzger traces her love of scientific exploration to Read More ›

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Young scientist looking through a microscope in a laboratory. Young scientist doing some research.

Scandal! “Science” Busts Allegedly Bogus Neurological Science

This is how the scientific method is supposed to work. For years, a neuroscientist and National Institutes of Health official named Eliezer Masliah led the field in researching dementia, Parkinson’s, and other neurological diseases. His work became primary bases for developing experimental treatments, offering hope for these scourges of human aging. But now, Science reports that much of this research was mistakenly compiled — or worse. From “Picture Imperfect:” Over the past 2 years questions have arisen about some of Masliah’s research. A Science investigation has now found that scores of his lab studies at UCSD and NIA are riddled with apparently falsified Western blots—images used to show the presence of proteins—and micrographs of brain tissue. Numerous images seem to have been inappropriately reused within Read More ›

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Various groceries in shopping cart

Medical Journal Article: Replace SNAP Benefits with Cash

Continuing my discussion of how ideological medical and science journals strive to redefine almost every public policy controversy into matters of public health to push leftwing agendas: An article in the notoriously woke New England Journal of Medicine argues that rather than give SNAP benefits to poor people — what used to be called food stamps — cash transfers should be provided to improve the “health” of the recipients. Read More ›
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Smart technologies in your smartphone, collection and analysis of big data

I Was Told the Internet Would Make Life Easier: Now, It Is “Personhood Credentials”

Rather than simplifying our lives, the internet has made our lives more complicated, what with having to continually change passwords, the use of multiple security levels, the threat of hacking, and the like. Now, with the threat of AI creating fraudulent content, some technologists are proposing “personhood credentials” to thwart incursions and impersonations. Read More ›
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Close-up of a petri dish in a lab setting containing a developing piece of lab-grown meat with a microscope in the background highlighting the cellular structure and the process of culturing meat

DeSantis Wrong to Criminalize Lab-Grown Meat

Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that makes the manufacture and sale of lab-grown meat (made from meat cells) in Florida a misdemeanor. I agree with DeSantis that our would-be woke overlords want to destroy animal agriculture internationally. But freedom is the solution to those threats, not neo-Luddism. Read More ›
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Man in prison

Mass. Democrats Propose Turning Prisoners into Organ Farms

This proposal suffers from the same fatal ethical flaw. Prisoners are hardly in an equal bargaining position. Nor should they be induced to turn themselves into a natural resource ripe for the harvest. Read More ›
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A transgender flag being waved at LGBT gay pride march

Unleash the Trial Lawyers to End Mutilation of Gender-Dysphoric Children

The Biden administration, many state governments, and the medical establishment are all pushing “gender-affirming care” as the only humane means of treating children who believe they are not the sex they were born. This so-called care includes radical interventions such as puberty blocking, mastectomies, facial surgeries, and even genital removal for teenagers. Read More ›
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Homemade sign at environmental rally. A colorful cardboard placard is viewed close up, saying the climate is changing, why aren't we, in the hands of ecological activists as they protest in the city

Progressivism Colonizes the Science Journals

The scientific establishment moans that it is no longer trusted. True. But there is good cause. The leadership of the hard-science sector has grown increasingly ideological — undermining the science’s overall credibility. Read More ›