Though I was later to appear on “Firing line,” write for his magazine,and find myself embroiled in his public diplomacy, my first meeting with Bill Buckley was by far my warmest. It was the morning of the Apollo 11 moon launch, and the July temperature and humidity at Cape Canaveral were both approaching 100 as the Saturn V smoked cryogenically on … [Read More]

Karl Ernst Ritter von Baer, Edler von Huthorn was arguably the first proponent of what has recently been revived under the rubric of ‘intelligent design’.  Yet he doesn’t even get a walk on in Expelled. What gives?  In his last book,  Studien auf dem Gebiete der Naturwissenschaften,  this utterly respectable Victorian scientist took a swipe at Darwin’s newfangled evolutionary theory: “for … [Read More]

In 1880, the myopic captain of one of America’s first polo teams was almost killed galloping headlong into his opposite number at the kamekazi start of a match in Dedham, Massachusetts. Given a telescope to gaze through as a convalescent pastime,  recent Harvard graduate Percival Lowell soon thought that he saw not just canals on Mars but greenery. His enthusiasm grew … [Read More]

Several readers responses to my last article demand that I engage them on turf of their choosing, ranging from the specifically doctrinal to the broadly metaphysical. The same is true elsewhere in the Blogosphere, this articles self -evident connection to Ben Stein having ignited brushfire science wars on sundry Pro and Contra Darwinista biology sites, much to the amusement of this … [Read More]

The Law of Unexpected Consequences knows no national boundaries. Rural Mexican belts have come in a notch as tortilla prices rise in response to gasohol demand driving corn above a peso a pound on world commodity exchanges. Now the national staple of a Caribbean neighbor is threatened as well.  Beer still flows freely in Saint Vincent, and the Grenadines have weathered … [Read More]

  As neoconservatism ascended, its regard for science slipped to the brink of open contempt, for it owed much of its political traction to social conservatives apt to dismiss science as corrupt as literary theory, only more materialistic, and a born-again Base defensive of Biblical authority. Both seemed to worry little about what children needed to know about science as technological … [Read More]

National Review assistant Editor Robert VerBruggen has taken the Justice Department to task in The American Spectator, for firing off a brief in the matter of guns being banned in DC . He thinks it displays less verve than say, the Vice President shooting quail. Having defended Mr. Cheney’s shooting manners in the pages of the London Review Of Books , … [Read More]

“Climatic Zones” writes NASA’s James Hansen “have been shifting poleward for the past thirty years ... If this movement continues ... it will become the predominant cause of extinction of species, many already threatened.” Climatic zones are indeed moving steadily north. But what consequences can be expected from a rate of poleward climate shift that Hansen calls “unprecedented ?”  The answer … [Read More]

One wonders what John Zmirak will dream of as jet engines humming incandescently waft him through the Atlantic night on his first pilgrimage to Rome. In the aftermath of jet liners truncating Manhattan’s image of itself, many neoconservatives are rightfully obsessed with the consequences of modern weapons falling into the hands of medieval-minded Islamic fanatics. It is a nightmare that troubles … [Read More]

in New Hampshire, Canadian National  National (and New York)  Post neocontent provider Mark Steyn has  distracted me from Bill Kristol’s New York Times debut by going  postal at a Jersey paper’s illiberal ‘complaint that half of Rudy Guiliani’s  neoconsigleri are Canadian: They’re Fencing the Wrong Border "Forget Walt and Mearsheimer and the Israel lobby. That’s just a front for the … [Read More]