No. 9Summer 2005
No. 9
Summer 2005
Essays
Playgrounds of the Self
Christine Rosen on video games and modern identity
The Real Meaning of Genetics
Eric Cohen on the false fears and genuine dilemmas of modern genetics
The Computerized Academy
Matthew B. Crawford on information technology and the life of the mind
Technology and the Spirit of Ownership
Paul J. Cella III on private property as a cure for the ills of the technology age
Science, Technology, and The Public Interest
Excerpts from forty years of “a middle-aged magazine for middle-aged readers”
State of the Art
How We Measure Up
Is American Math and Science Education in Decline?
Shooting Not to Kill
America’s Development and Use of Non-Lethal Weapons
The New NASA
Mike Griffin Takes the Helm and Transforms the Agency
To Boldly Go
The end of Star Trek and Star Wars
Checking Terrorists at the Door
Small Hopes for The Real ID Act
‘An Unknowable Atom of Human Flesh’
Henry Hyde and Joe Barton on the Ethics of Stem Cell Research
Notes & Briefs
Russia’s Blackout, Los Alamos Woes, Paris Hilton, etc.
No. 10Fall 2005
No. 10
Fall 2005
Essays
Conservatives, Liberals, and Medical Progress
Daniel Callahan on politics, death, and the future of modern medicine
The Moral Education of Doctors
Philip Overby on shaping the souls of aspiring physicians
The Image Culture
Christine Rosen on Photoshop, PowerPoint, and our perception of reality
Buggy Software and Missile Defense
Mark Halpern on writing code and protecting the country
Love in the Age of Neuroscience
Mickey Craig and Jon Fennell on Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons
Reconsideration
Francis Bacon’s God
Stephen A. McKnight reconsiders the religious foundations of the “New Atlantis”
Excerpt
The Aging Self
A selection from Taking Care, a report by the President’s Council on Bioethics
State of the Art
The Lessons of Katrina
Natural Horrors and Modern Technology
Relaunching NASA
Back to the Moon by 2018—Or Sooner
Bush-League Science
Are Republicans Conducting a “War on Science”?
Cicely Saunders, RIP
Remembering the Founder of the Hospice Movement
Hollywood’s Fertile Imagination
Baby-Making Goes Prime Time
Chief Justice at the Bedside
John Roberts and the End of Life
No. 11Winter 2006
No. 11
Winter 2006
Essays
The Age of Neuroelectronics
Adam Keiper on neural implants, brain-machine interfaces, and cyborg fantasies
The Trouble with the Turing Test
Mark Halpern on the fallacy of thinking computers
The Rhetoric of Extinction
Charles T. Rubin reviews four recent books on transhumanism
Are We Worthy of Our Kitchens?
Christine Rosen on expensive appliances and modern families
Who Owns the Genome?
Misha Angrist and Robert M. Cook-Deegan on intellectual property and genomics
Excerpt
The Rise of Guerrilla Media
Glenn Reynolds on blogs, Big Media, and the future of journalism
State of the Art
Human Cloning and Scientific Corruption
The South Korea Scandal and the Future of the Stem Cell Debate
The U.N.’s Net Gambit
Internationalizing Internet Governance
The $100 Laptop
A Flawed Plan to “Save the World”
Morals and the Mind
Michael Gazzaniga’s Ethical Brain
‘No Nation Can Afford to Ignore This Threat’
America Prepares for Avian Flu
Notes & Briefs
Science Education, Wikipedia’s Accuracy, Mozart’s Skull, etc.
No. 12Spring 2006
No. 12
Spring 2006
Essays
Biotechnology and the Spirit of Capitalism
Eric Cohen on the new commerce of the body
The Promise and Perils of Synthetic Biology
Jonathan B. Tucker and Raymond A. Zilinskas on regulating designer microbes
The Mislabeled Child
Brock L. Eide and Fernette F. Eide on the failure of kindergarten neurochemistry
The Many Casualties of Cloning
Richard M. Doerflinger on the lessons of the South Korean fraud
Reviews and Reconsiderations
The God Meme
Charles T. Rubin on Daniel Dennett’s unconvincing theory
Jules Verne: Father of Science Fiction?
John Derbyshire on Verne’s lesser-known works
Polio Stories
Philip J. Overby on the meaning of a forgotten epidemic
The Age of Female Computers
David Skinner on the burdens of pre-machine mathematics
A Clone’s Lament
James Bowman on life as a useful pre-cadaver
State of the Art
Censoring Scientists?
Lessons of the James Hansen Affair
Stem Cell Spin
The Bush Policy and Its Unreasonable Critics
Stuck with the Old, In with the New
NASA’s Budgetary Balancing Act
Addicted to Bad Data
Getting the Facts Straight on Ethanol
Apocalypse Averted
The BlackBerry Settlement and Patent Reform
‘Predators Are Becoming More Sophisticated’
Pornographers and Pedophiles Online
No. 13Summer 2006
No. 13
Summer 2006
Essays
Shop Class as Soulcraft
Matthew B. Crawford makes a case for the manual trades
Gifts of the Body
Gilbert Meilaender on organs, markets, and the ethics of transplantation
The Self-Portrait of a Scientist
Christine Rosen on wonder, mastery, and fame in scientific memoir
A Third Way on Network Neutrality
Robert D. Atkinson and Philip J. Weiser on the battle over broadband
The First Fourteen Days of Human Life
Patrick Lee and Robert P. George on the biology of the early embryo
The Myth of Thomas Szasz
Jeffrey Oliver on the legacy of psychiatry’s forgotten critic
Reviews and Reconsiderations
The Methanol Alternative
Robert Zubrin on how to alleviate our energy problems
Medicine Without Limits
Daniel P. Sulmasy on therapy, enhancement, and sophistry
Babies for Sale
Cheryl Miller on buying and selling our offspring
On the Shelf
Quick Takes on The Father of Surgery, Box Boats, Cloning and the Law, etc.
State of the Art
China’s Phony Science
Exposing Corruption, Plagiarism, and Fraud
Rethinking Peer Review
How the Internet is Changing Science Journals
Cyber-Insecurity
Computer Theft Puts Veterans’ Data at Risk
Sexist Science?
A “She Said, He Said” About Discrimination in the Lab
‘Stumbling into a Powerful Technology’
Baroness Greenfield on New Media and Young Minds
Notes & Briefs
Sex Selection, Chernobyl, Bottled Water, etc.
No. 14Fall 2006
No. 14
Fall 2006
Correspondence
The Beginning of Life; An Unbalanced Diagnosis; The Enhancement Wars; Three Cheers for Craftsmanship
Essays
The Paradox of Military Technology
Max Boot on American power and American vulnerability
The Moral Challenge of Modern Science
Yuval Levin on politics, ethics, and the scientific worldview
The Case for Kidney Markets
Benjamin Hippen on how to solve the kidney shortage
Is the Body Property?
Peter Augustine Lawler on rights, dignity, and organ sales
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Beyond the Right to Life
Wilfred M. McClay on the “Party of Death”
The Agony of Atomic Genius
Algis Valiunas on the tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Cloning’s Apologist
Caitrin Nicol on Ian Wilmut’s defense of research cloning
C. S. Lewis Goes to the Laboratory
Thomas W. Merrill on the science and faith of Francis Collins
State of the Art
Too Speculative?
Henry Sokolski
The Dotcomrade
Brian Boyd
The Touchy-Feely Laboratory
Christine Rosen
Space Deals
Rand Simberg
Eco-Censorship
Iain Murray
Techno-Horror in Hollywood
Sonny Bunch
‘Oblivious’
Rush Holt on Science, Technology, and Congress
Notes & Briefs
Healthier People, Sicker Oceans, Electronic Books, etc.
No. 15Winter 2007
No. 15
Winter 2007
Essays
The Hydrogen Hoax
Robert Zubrin on energy charlatans and the politicians who love them
In Whose Image Shall We Die?
Eric Cohen on living well and dying well
The Language of Nature
Steve Talbott on how science drains meaning from experience
The Scientific Mind of Ben Franklin
Jerry Weinberger on America’s first Baconian
Reviews and Reconsiderations
The Red Plague
Cheryl Miller on how China bungled SARS
Psychiatry’s Healer
Philip J. Overby on the medical humanism of Paul McHugh
Our Childless Dystopia
James Bowman on P. D. James’s The Children of Men, as novel and film
Immortality Lite
Ross Douthat on the sublime and the foolish in Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain
Theory Wars, Again
Matthew B. Crawford on reason and relativism in the academy
State of the Art
Sucker-Me Elmo
Christine Rosen
The Electoral Politics of Stem Cells
Yuval Levin
Cloning Down Under
Michael Casey
Dead Body Porn
Thomas S. Hibbs
Back to the Moon, To Stay?
Jeff Foust
Bioethics and The Public Interest
A Journal’s Lasting Legacy
No. 16Spring 2007
No. 16
Spring 2007
Essays
China’s Space Ambitions—and Ours
Jeff Kueter on the Chinese threat to American space assets and what to do about it
The Right to Life and Human Dignity
Leon R. Kass on Thomas Hobbes as a teacher of dignity
Brave New World at 75
Caitrin Nicol on reading Aldous Huxley’s novel as its first readers did
Nanoethics as a Discipline?
Adam Keiper on the proliferation of professional nanotechnology criticism
Reviews and Reconsiderations
What’s Ailing Health Care?
James C. Capretta on markets, medicine, and the limits of government
The Half-Bound World
John Derbyshire reviews Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle
The Greening of Capitalism
Nick Schulz on environmentalism as corporate exhibitionism
The Problem with Plagiarism
Jeremy Lott on the timeless drama of the copycat
Political Pseudoscience
Matthew B. Crawford on why political science is not physics
State of the Art
Reforming NIH
Yuval Levin
Energy Incrementalism
Stephanie Cohen
Seeing and Believing
Peter Suderman
What Lies Within
Christine Rosen
Digilante Justice
Ruth Martin
‘A Critical Part of the Solution’
Al Gore and the Nuclear Debate
Notes & Briefs
Sonofusion, Burnt Sponges, Smelling Technosexual, etc.
No. 17Summer 2007
No. 17
Summer 2007
Essays
Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism
Christine Rosen on MySpace, Facebook, and the costs of social networking
Human Dignity and Public Bioethics
Gilbert Meilaender on dignity as a useful concept
Melancholy’s Whole Physician
Algis Valiunas reads Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy
Heroism, Modernism, and the Utopian Impulse
James Bowman on cowboys, communists, and dreams of perfection
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Drug Addiction and the Open Society
Lee Harris on freedom and self-mastery
Parenthood at Any Price
Cheryl Miller reviews Liza Mundy’s Everything Conceivable
Intimations of the Soul
Paul J. Cella III on idolatry in the Age of Machines
Devaluing Science
Jonathan H. Adler on scientists and politics
State of the Art
‘Less Morally Problematic Alternatives’
Yuval Levin
Soldiers for Rent
Habib Moody
The Man in the Moon
Stephen Bertman
Faces Disappearing
Richard W. Sams II
‘For Better or Worse’
Tony Blair on Politics and the Media
Notes & Briefs
Live Earth, Mr. Wizard, Solving Checkers, etc.
No. 18Fall 2007
No. 18
Fall 2007
Essays
Achieving Energy Victory
Robert Zubrin on how to win the war on terror by breaking free of oil
Ghosts in the Evolutionary Machinery
Steve Talbott on digital organisms and disembodied science
The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man
Hannah Arendt on scientists, common sense, and man’s limitations
Nature, Man, and Common Sense
Patrick J. Deneen
Science and Totalitarianism
Rita Koganzon
Thumos in Space
Charles T. Rubin
Chariots in the Sky
Stephen Bertman
Our Proud Human Future
Peter Augustine Lawler
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Launching the Space Age
James E. Oberg on the dramatic story of Sputnik
The New Pioneers
Rand Simberg on the burgeoning private space industry
The Evangelical Ecologist
S.M. Hutchens on E. O. Wilson’s Earth-piety
The Painless Peace of Twilight Sleep
Cheryl Miller on an overlooked Edith Wharton gem
State of the Art
Shot in the Dark
Caitrin Nicol
Science Warrior
Yuval Levin
Unclassifiable
Christine Rosen
Card’s Game
Peter Suderman
‘Americans Will Not Like It’
Michael Griffin on the Global Space Economy
Notes & Briefs
Blackwater Fallout, Caves on Mars, Missing Mass, etc.
No. 19Winter 2008
No. 19
Winter 2008
Essays
Science and the Left
Yuval Levin on the past and future of the “party of science”
Neuroimaging and Capital Punishment
O. Carter Snead on brain scans and the conflicted aspirations of neuroscience
The Limits of Neuro-Talk
Matthew B. Crawford on the dangers of a mindless brain science
Blogging Infertility
Cheryl Miller on the lively and fractious community of “infertiles”
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Masters and Possessors of Nature
Thomas W. Merrill reads Descartes’ Discourse on Method
Shop Till You Drop?
Jeremy Lott on suburbs, bomb shelters, and bottled water
Sick and Famous
Christy Hall Robinson on celebrity patients as advocates
State of the Art
The Clipboard of the Future
James C. Capretta
Till Malfunction Do Us Part
Caitrin Nicol
The Moral Life of Cubicles
David Franz
‘The Steroids Era’
George Mitchell on Drugs in Baseball
Notes & Briefs
Green Collars, Plastic Bags, MySpace Gangsters, etc.
No. 20Spring 2008
No. 20
Spring 2008
Essays
In Defense of Biofuels
Robert Zubrin on ethanol and its critics
Health Care 2008: A Political Primer
James C. Capretta on how and why McCain's health care plan might work
Public Opinion and the Embryo Debates
Yuval Levin analyzes a revealing new poll on bioethics
Technology and Authenticity
Bruno Macaes on enhancement, action, and truth
Biotech Enhancement and Natural Law
Ryan T. Anderson and Christopher Tollefsen on distinctions in an age of novelty
The Myth of Multitasking
Christine Rosen on doing too much at once
The Technology of Memory
James Poulos on forgetting how to remember
The Motives That Ought to Encourage Us to the Sciences
A discourse by Montesquieu translated for the first time into English by Diana Schaub
Montesquieu’s Popular Science
Diana Schaub on the study of science and the life of the mind
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Einstein’s Quest for Truth
Algis Valiunas on the mind of the man behind relativity
At Home with Down Syndrome
Caitrin Nicol reads memoirs of gratitude
No. 21Summer 2008
No. 21
Summer 2008
Essays
Nuclear Policy and the Presidential Election
Henry Sokolski on nuclear matters and why they matter
Conservatives, Climate Change, and the Carbon Tax
Jim Manzi on the cost of thinking impractically about potential risk
Donated Generation
Cheryl Miller on releasing the identities of egg and sperm donors
Rethinking Public Opinion
Thomas Fitzgerald on the problems of polling
Technology, Culture, and Virtue
Patrick J. Deneen on Wendell Berry’s unnatured man
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Is Stupid Making Us Google?
James Bowman on the “Dumbest Generation”
We Are the Change We’ve Been Waiting For
Sebastian Waisman on the “Millennial Generation”
The World Made New
Rita Koganzon on Second Life and real life
The Brat Pack of Quantum Mechanics
John Derbsyhire on a pivotal year for modern physics
The Prudence of Neuroscience
Ivan Kenneally reviews The Heart of Judgment
State of the Art
An Animal to Save the World
Jonathan H. Adler
Taking the Earth’s Temperature
Jordan R. Raney
Pipeline Diplomacy
Adam Blinick
‘Leadership from the Bottom’
Wendell Berry on Rural Revival
Notes & Briefs
Chocolate DNA, Prozac for Puppies, ELIZA, etc.
No. 22Fall 2008
No. 22
Fall 2008
Essays
Petrodollar Science
Waleed Al-Shobakky on research and education in the Arab world
People of the Screen
Christine Rosen tells a tale of two literacies
Ten Years of “Death with Dignity”
Courtney S. Campbell on Oregon’s experience with physician-assisted suicide
Fixing American Health Care
Joseph V. Kennedy on cost, quality, and competition
Health Care with a Conscience
James C. Capretta on protecting Catholic hospitals
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Beyond Mankind
Charles T. Rubin on John Harris’s “sanshumanist” project
The Confused Congresswoman
Yuval Levin on Diana DeGette’s assault on reason
Green Bridge to Nowhere
Jonathan H. Adler on Gus Speth’s unsustainable environmentalism
State of the Art
Capturing Carbon
Jordan R. Raney
Staying Afloat
Peter Suderman
‘Categories of Warfare Are Blurring’
Robert Gates on the Tactics and Tools of Tomorrow’s Battles
Notes & Briefs
Eco-Vandalism, Noise Laws, the Billion-Dollar Click, etc.
No. 23Winter 2009
No. 23
Winter 2009
Essays
The Ethics of Counterinsurgency
Keith Pavlischek on irregular warfare and international law
Military Robots and the Laws of War
P. W. Singer on how unmanned systems are transforming armed conflict
Why Minds Are Not Like Computers
Ari N. Schulman on fundamental confusion about artificial intelligence
Reality and the Postmodern Wink
James Bowman champions curmudgeonliness as an antidote to cynicism
Nations, Liberalism, and Science
Peter Augustine Lawler on civil theology and civil biology
Socialism and Cancer
David Gratzer on how government ruins medicine
Reviews and Reconsiderations
The Great Breath of Hell
Algis Valiunas on the modern way of madness
Making Men Modern
Wayne Ambler on reform and recalcitrance in Twain’s Connecticut Yankee