CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 26, 1991
Teacher John Peloza (Commentary, "Debate on Life's Origin Is Really on Philosophies," May 21) is not writing about his right to discuss different theories of creation nor is he even talking about his right to share a belief in God. Mr. Peloza is arguing that he has the right to promulgate his belief in the "absolute inerrancy of the Bible"--a dimension of the Christian faith that is based on a narrow interpretation of biblical Scriptures that...
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
August 6, 1991
In your editorial of July 25 ("When Political Ideology Is Unhealthy"), you note that the Bush Administration had made a decision regarding federal funding that was "contrary to the recommendation of a prestigious scientific panel"--as though this were the only voice that needs to be heard in such a life-or-death issue. It seems we're well on the road to the creation of some kind of Orwellian society in which "science" decides all. Maybe it's too late. Maybe we're already there.
December 1, 1989
The article discussing the views of biologist Stephen Jay Gould ("The Cosmic Lottery," Nov. 28) portrays man's existence as a mere happenstance. Gould displays the point of view characterized by the weakness of specialists in general: studying a part of the whole and extrapolating a conception of the whole based on an intensive, detailed knowledge of the part studied. The article refers to two other recent books, "Chaos", and "A Brief History of Time." These books develop some important concepts that, taken together, provide some important supplements to Gould's point of view.
May 17, 1992 |
Ultra-Orthodox rabbis are objecting to a Pepsi-Cola ad campaign that runs counter to the biblical account of creation, Pepsi's Israeli distributor said. Pepsi's ad plays on the theory of evolution, which Orthodox Judaism rejects as counter to the biblical account of humans being descended from Adam and Eve. The ad shows two apes and the inscription "B.C." With the slogan "The Choice of the New Generation," the ad implies that Pepsi stands at the pinnacle of evolution.
December 7, 2008
The longevity of satellites ("Satellites' longevity limits sales," Dec. 1) comes as no surprise to those of us who take utmost pride in the pioneering work of having designed, built, tested, launched and operated these unique and complex machines. It is extremely unfortunate, however, that a revisionist history continues to be perpetuated that fails to acknowledge that all of these long-lived satellites were actually the creation of Hughes Space and Communications, which was acquired by Boeing in 2000.
August 30, 2008 |
UC Irvine astronomers believe they have discovered the minimum mass for galaxies in the universe: 10 million times the mass of the sun. The team analyzed 18 dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, expecting to find a wide variation in sizes. Instead, they reported Thursday in the journal Nature, they found that all were the same size, suggesting that is the minimum mass needed for creation of a galaxy. Because the dwarf galaxies are composed primarily of dark matter, they suggested that the minimum mass is the size of the smallest known "building block" of dark matter.
February 18, 2003
In her Feb. 13 commentary "The Weapons of Mass Creation," Caroline Wagner worries that the same technology that may soon allow us to prevent many genetically based diseases may also allow us to create "smarter, more creative" children. This statement occurs in a piece positioned just below one about the Bush administration's attempts to do away with America's civil liberties [in the Justice Department's proposed Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003]. It occurs inside a newspaper detailing an obviously choreographed attempt by that same administration to sow panic among the American people -- to rush into a war whose unknown consequences could have a devastating effect on thousands of lives, to pursue an economic policy being completely discredited by almost everyone who knows anything about economics and to do its best to undermine worldwide gains in environmental protection.
February 27, 2006
Re "Lawmakers Call for FEMA Restructuring," Feb. 20 Is there anything more obscene than watching Congress shred its own creation, the Department of Homeland Security? To hear the lawmakers tell it, it's all President Bush's fault. Or Michael Brown's. Or an act of God. The department's failures had nothing to do with Congress, which wrote the law that created what it now calls "a joke." The Times tells us that homeland security was a cornerstone of Bush's response to 9/11. But the Bush administration opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, accepting its formation only when it became obvious that these same grandstanding members of Congress would keep grandstanding until they had rammed it down its throat.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 29, 1995
Re "Faiths Unite to Oppose Patents on Life Forms," May 18: At the end of your article, readers were invited to answer the question "creation or invention?" referring to human and animal life forms. Evidence and data convince me and most educated people that the answer is that life is the result of evolution! Not human invention; not divine creation. Natural selection and evolution! Images of wild-eyed scientists and Frankenstein monsters feed into the anti-intellectual atmosphere that allows people to deny or dismiss hard evidence in the O.J. Simpson trial.