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Upset about Big Brother's ban on incandescent bulbs? Buy a heatball!

This is just too good.

Many of you know that the federal ban on conventional incandescent light bulbs recently went into effect. And while House Republicans included a provision in a recent spending bill that will block funding for the ban's enforcement, it's said that it will have little effect; manufacturers have prepared for the new standards and will no doubt abide by the law. So does this mean we'll be forced to buy more expensive LED (light emitting diode) or CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulbs, the latter being those squiggly things said to be loaded with mercury? Not if we follow the lead of German businessman Siegfried Rotthaeuser.

Mars Attacks: Scientists Say Aliens May Destroy Mankind Over Global Warming

By Selwyn Duke

Three years after the release of the remake The Day the Earth Stood Still, a team of American researchers has made the film’s theme a scientific theory: They are suggesting that an alien race might destroy man to stop our release of greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming.

Writes Fox News:

The thought-provoking scenario is one of many envisaged in a joint study by Penn State and the NASA Planetary Science Division, entitled "Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis."

It divides projected close encounters into "neutral," those that cause mankind "unintentional harm" and, more worryingly, those in which aliens do us "intentional harm."

While the idea of meeting our end at the green hands of anti-CO₂ aliens may be more laugh-provoking than thought-provoking, another scenario in the harmful category is only slightly less amusing. Writes The Guardian, “They [the extraterrestrials] might invite humanity to join the 'Galactic Club' only for the entry requirements to be too bureaucratic and tedious for humans to bother with.”

Call this the Barack Obama Scenario.

Read the rest here.

Defend It Like Beckham: Soccer Star Condemned for Having Too Many Children

By Selwyn Duke

Adorning an article in the Guardian is a picture you might think represented a prototypical family: a handsome couple standing behind three healthy, well-grown children. But according to the British paper, the parents — soccer star David Beckham and his wife, Victoria — are to be condemned. The problem is that, with the birth of a fourth child, the Beckhams have become “bad role models and environmentally irresponsible,” writes Guardian scribbler Tracy McVeigh.

In reality, though, the irresponsibility lies with McVeigh.

It’s hard to write an 850-word piece in which virtually every sentence serves to deceive, but McVeigh might have birthed just such an illegitimate bit of childishness. She quotes “campaigners,” environmentalists, a Green MP, and others who all bleat the same message: The sky is falling due to overpopulation. And we’ll all end up languishing in a Soylent Green sewer of endless humanity unless, as zoologist David Attenborough says, we eliminate the “absurd taboo” against discussing family size.

Okay, let’s discuss it.

Attenborough is right: There is a population problem in the world.

It is that birthrates have been collapsing for decades, a phenomenon that has grave implications for society.

Read the rest here.

Researchers Concerned About Creation of Human/Animal Hybrid "Monsters"

By Selwyn Duke

When we hear about the implantation of human genes in animals, it may conjure up images right out of the story The Island of Dr. Moreau. Of course, present-day experiments of this kind take a more modest form, such as the Chinese’s introduction of human stem cells into goat fetuses or U.S. scientists’ proposal to create a mouse infused with human brain cells. Yet the possibility that H.G. Wells’ nightmare could one day be made reality is troubling some researchers, prompting them to ask for new regulations governing the humanization of animals. Writes Reuters:

Scientific experiments that insert human genes or cells into animals need new rules to ensure they are ethically acceptable and do not lead to the creation of "monsters," a group of leading British researchers [from Britain's Academy of Medical Sciences] said on Friday.... Extreme scenarios, such as putting brain cells into primates to create talking apes, may remain science fiction, but researchers around the world are constantly pushing boundaries.

The academy also conducted a poll showing that the general public shares their concerns. As Reuters reports, “There were serious concerns voiced [by the respondents] about experiments involving the brain, the potential fertilization of human eggs or sperm in an animal, and giving animals human characteristics such as facial features or speech.”

Read the rest here.

The Great Race Deception

By Selwyn Duke

Just about two years ago, people were speaking of a new era: post-racial America. Well, it occurs to me that if we get any more post-racial, we’ll have a race war. And the latest on this front is a new exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science (MOS) called “RACE – Are we so different?” Reports American Thinker’s Peter Wilson:

The exhibit offers a fascinating window into the fun-house mirror world of race theorists, racial "scholars," and a good part of the anthropology profession.  Even a sympathetic reviewer in the Boston Globe admits that "there's a wearying didacticism to the show," and it's no surprise that the didactic lessons about race are all slanted toward the left.

As for that Globe reviewer, Mark Feeney, he writes:

Stinking in America: Is Not Washing the New PC Trend?

By Selwyn Duke

People such as me are often accused of wanting to return to the 19th century. But, if the New York Times is right about a new trend, some on the Left want to go back to the Middle Ages. What is that trend? Avoiding soap, deodorant, and even bathing regularly. Today, though, it’s often for environmental reasons.

It seems that top-notch Western hygiene has now joined SUVs, Wal-Mart, tobacco (not the wacky kind — it’s in fashion), guns, McDonald’s, and white males in the Museum of Politically Incorrect Persons, Places, and Things.

For example, Guardian writer Kira Cochrane tells us about 51-year-old environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy, who boasts that he’s gotten his water consumption down to about “20 litres a day,” that he’s “as clean as everyone else,” and that he’s trying to reduce his “carbon footprint.”

If I were Donnachadh, I’d be more concerned about my stink footprint.

Read the rest here.

Engineering Oblivion: Eugenics, the Remaking of Man and Unmaking of Morality

By Selwyn Duke

The year is 1941, and the Nazis are in the midst of their Lebensborn program. Men of pure Aryan stock — especially members of the Waffen-SS, thought the cream of the crop — have a special purpose. In many occupied countries, they are encouraged to mate with blonde-haired, blue-eyed women — those reflecting the very picture of the Aryan ideal themselves. And “mate” is the word; romance is not necessary here, nor marriage, nor moral constraints. For the program is to serve as a baby factory that will produce future Aryan supermen for the Third Reich.

Lebensborn grows out of what is central to the Nazi philosophy: eugenics, which is the improvement of the human race through the process of selective breeding. And the Nazis embrace it for a very interesting reason: They have a penchant for indulging ancient myths, and one of these is that they are descended from a race of Aryan supermen who lost their superhuman capabilities because they procreated with inferior races, thus visiting upon themselves a kind of biological devolution. And they aim to reverse the process by jump-starting and accelerating evolution in a sort of hothouse environment.

Read the rest here.

Drill, Baby, Drill . . . Still

By Selwyn Duke

The gulf oil gusher is a disaster of great proportions. We’ve all seen the pictures of petroleum-soaked birds and dead fish, and the area’s economy is on life support. The mishap truly is a tragedy for all, from Gulf residents to English pensioners to marine wildlife to, yes, BP itself. As bad as this is, however, there’s a way to make the situation worse: by compounding it with another tragedy, one both foreseeable and preventable.

Following the Emanualesque motto “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” some would use the Deepwater Horizon accident to push an anti-oil agenda. And given people’s tendency toward emotional reactions, millions of others are willing to support them. It’s much as how there was a hue and cry for gun control after the Columbine and L.I.R.R. massacres. Passion may not govern wisely, as old Mr. Franklin warned, but she sure does govern.

Read the rest here.

Scientists One Step Closer to Creating “Artificial Life”

Hailed as a breakthrough, a cell driven by synthetic DNA has been created. But what are the implications for science, man and faith?

By Selwyn Duke

In a development that has alarmed and excited many, scientists have brought the world one step closer to creating what’s known as “artificial life.” The breakthrough is the handiwork of Dr. Craig Venter, a 63-year-old biologist and billionaire entrepreneur who has long been pushing back frontiers in the field. BBC News reports on the story, writing:

He and his colleagues had previously made a synthetic bacterial genome, and transplanted the genome of one bacterium into another.

Now, the scientists have put both methods together, to create what they call a "synthetic cell", although only its genome is truly synthetic.

Read the rest here.

Revolutionary Nanotech Energy Source Discovered

By Selwyn Duke

Could you imagine a laptop battery that lasted for 500 hours? How about an electric car that boasts a range many times that of a gasoline vehicle? For that matter, think about environmental sensors that could be scattered into the air like dust and collect data. While the last thing might not exactly be what you want for Christmas, a breakthrough in energy production made by MIT researchers could make such technology a reality during the next few years.

The process, dubbed “thermopower waves” by its discoverer, MIT’s Dr. Michael Strano, does nothing less than open up “a new area of energy research, which is rare,” says the scientist. MSNBC’s Michelle Bryner describes the phenomenon and its applications in brief, writing:

Read the rest here.