Science and Technology
Items related to technology and science
Me Me Me Me!
Thu 26 Jun 2008 by Mark Meador
Jennifer Byrne, in her recent column at PopMatters, posted an excellent piece on the “My” phenomenon that has taken hold of the Internet. The ubiquity of the word struck her as she navigated a “My UPS” page to track a package.
“Out of curiosity, I decided to do a search under the word 'My', just to see what came up. Here’s just a smattering of what I found: My T-Mobile, My New York Times, My Widgets, My Feeds, My Tupperware, My Anime, My Netscape, and My Monster.”
Firm Foundations?
Sun 27 Apr 2008 by Pete Peterson
Is there a difference between earthquake-proofing and terrorist-proofing our buildings?
The next steps in the eventual building of One World Trade Center were taken last month in a desolate patch of the New Mexico desert about ninety miles south of Albuquerque with little media fanfare, but a large bang. There, the building’s architects from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill witnessed the explosion of a three-story replica of the structure’s aluminum and glass casing. The test was a success as only few of the glass panels were smashed in the blast.
In a post–9/11 world, that’s how we must design and build the skyscrapers of the future: capable of withstanding acts of God and man. Here in California, earthquake-testing our tall buildings has been a mandated practice for decades, and in other regions of the country, formalized tests for withstanding high wind and rain are not only well-known, but are a required part of architectural education.
The Pursuit of Science in a Christian Context
Thu 14 Feb 2008 • Responses: 2 • by Randy Isaac
Modeling Dialogue Rather than Warfare
Physicist Randy Isaac, executive director of the American Scientific Affiliation, argues that the prevailing public view of the relationship between science and faith as a conflict is sadly incomplete. He offers another model of dialogue and integration based on the experience of his colleagues.
The Elusive Goal of Mastery
Tue 11 Dec 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Wilfred M. McClay
The Shadow Side of Technological Control
Senior Fellow Wilfred M. McClay recently had a friend die of cancer. It got him to pondering again about the implications of our ever-expanding control of our bodies and our world. In this essay, originally presented at an October meeting of the Trinity Forum’s Senior Fellows, he looks at the inescapable ironies of our quest for control. Progress is good, right? Longer lives and less suffering is good, right? Sure. But all treatments have side effects and every advance has unintended consequences.
Attention Deficit Disorder
Wed 21 Nov 2007 • Responses: 10 • by Fred Harburg
The blinding pace of our world makes it tempting to split the signal rather than to give our full attention to the people with whom we are engaged at any given moment.
Increasingly common stories of traffic accidents involving people “texting” while driving add poignancy to the epidemic of fractured attention in our world. There is a presumption that multitasking is a necessary, even admirable skill in our hyper-speed age, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
As an Air Force instructor pilot one of the first myths I had to dispel for aspiring young pilot candidates was the idea that good pilots are multitaskers. Research supports a different conclusion. The best pilots are excellent at rapid sequencing. They give full and complete attention to a visual indication, an aural signal, or a kinesthetic sensation, interpret it accurately, act on it effectively, and then move to the next appropriate point of focus. Scientists from the NASA Ames Research Center conclude that attempting to split attention is deadly for a pilot.
Redeeming the City
Fri 10 Aug 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Dan Russ
In the city, then, the human tendency is to use technologies to create a way of life that ignores the existence or need of either Creator or of creation.
In the biblical tradition, man as maker and as city builder is seen as both the only creature that bears the image of the Creator and the only creature that dares to usurp the Creator and devour the creation. Humanity, therefore, either blesses or curses the creation. In the context of Genesis, the great book of origins, God created all things, including that strangest of all things, humankind in his image, and pronounced them good.
The Woman and the Petri Dish
Mon 23 Apr 2007 • Responses: 6 • by Monica Slinkard
While abortion is an issue deserving thorough consideration by people of faith, it must not monopolize discussions about reproductive issues.
Louise Brown, the first person conceived through in vitro fertilization, turns twenty-nine this year. Since her birth the field of assisted reproductive technologies has marched ahead with little regulation and, until recently, little discussion in either the public square or religious circles.
Emerging reproductive technologies range from the various types of in vitro fertilization—joining sperm and egg in a Petri dish and introducing the resulting embryos into the uterus or fallopian tubes—to experiments with full ectogenesis, that try to accomplish everything from conception to birth outside the body. In the U.S. the President’s Council for Bioethics has recently been addressing these technologies and has recommended regulation and further research, but overall policy is still lacking.
Thoughts on Global Warming
Wed 07 Mar 2007 • Responses: 9 • by Al Sikes
Our dominion over the earth is a gift from God. Indifference is not an option.
In a grim and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate scientists had concluded for the first time that global warming is “unequivocal” and that human activity is the main driver, “very likely causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950” (New York Times, February 3, 2007).
The most recent global warming report—this one from the United Nations Environment Program’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—escalated the forecasts of damage while concluding that humans could still act in amelioration. In the weeks following this report disparate dissenters renewed their claims that the warming changes are part of nature’s cycles. The dissenters declaim as reports, movies, papers, and the like rise like the proverbial flood tide.
The Problem with the News
Wed 21 Feb 2007 • Responses: 5 • by David Aikman
“A picture of humanity that is relentlessly colored by its most gruesome crimes is as unrealistic as one that ignores such crimes altogether.”
As a journalist for many years (full-time for more than two decades), I’ve acquired a compulsive addiction to TV and radio news bulletins. If I’m driving a car and the time approaches the “top of the hour,” I’m quite unable to resist tuning the radio to the local full-time news network. If I’m watching TV (a fairly rare event), no matter what the program is that I might have intended to view, within a few minutes I find myself switching to CNN, or FOX, or MSNBC.
It was thus with utter dismay that I watched, on one of the news channels (for propriety’s sake I won’t say which), on a single middle-of-the-evening news bulletin quite recently, the following items: (1) a woman who thought she was a vampire had tied a man up, slashed him with a knife, and drunk his blood (presumably, he thought she had other things in mind when he submitted to being tied up); (2) a mother in a private home was barely prevented from drowning all of her children; (3) an 84-year-old woman was jailed for three years for having sex with an 11-year-old in her foster care.
More Than Human
Tue 23 Jan 2007 • Responses: 3 • by David Cook
“Research is too important to be left to big business and scientists on their own.”
A new face transplant is but the latest in the never-ending search for cures for the diseases and accidents that plague humankind. But what begins with the best of intentions in relieving pain, distress, and suffering can be abused and used for other ends and purposes than originally intended.
