Author Archive

My favourite mag Salvo has sent round a free article – which turns out to be one I wrote in 2006 – Less than Zero – the drive to be impossibly thin: Last October, there were some unaccustomed hisses on the Madrid catwalk—directed against gaunt girls. Size 0 scored 0. One in three models, at... »

This was my most recent ChristianWeek column (December 15, 2008), on Bill Maher’s anti-traditional religion film, Religulous, to which I am not especially kind: Tuesday, I taped an iChannel @issue program about Bill Maher’s new film Religulous (religion = ridiculous). The other guests were Chad Derrick, an Orthodox Jew who is W-5’s assistant producer and... »

(Note: This was my ChristianWeek column, published in print as “Neuroscience hits the junk science circuit” November 15, 2008) Methods of probing the brain at work – while communicating with the research volunteer – have made neuroscience a very cool toy indeed. Functional magnetic resonance imaging has done for brain studies what the diving bell... »

by Denyse O’Leary In “Political Science: What Being Neat or Messy Says about Political Leanings” (Scientific American, October 13, 2008) Jordan Lite tackles the “hard science” question, “Do genes determine whether you’ll be liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican?” What if they did? Then we could dispense with elections in favour of DNA tests. Anyone who... »

According to a recent Technorati study, blogs have become mainstream: So says Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer, citing a study by Decipher, done for Technorati: “Blogs are now mainstream media,” said Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati, in an interview with eMarketer. “We’ve certainly seen that with the number of professional, semiprofessional and passion/enthusiast bloggers who... »

Apparently, it does. A recent study from Baylor University suggests that the answer is yes. In “Look Who’s Irrational Now” (Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2008), Mollie Ziegler Hemingway notes, “What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy... »

George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty Four, a post-World War II novel that tried to describe a Britain in which fascism had won, explains that the death of intellectual freedom changes the language: Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In... »

People who have been following the upcoming American election will know that last week featured a sustained media hit on Republican Veep nominee Sarah Palin’s family. Some of the visceral hatred of Sarah Palin is, of course, completely understandable. As commentator Bill Whittle perceptively noted, Sarah Palin has done more than unify and electrify the base.... »

Science Daily informs us that religion may make teens from certain races more depressed: Previous research has shown that teens who are active in religious services are depressed less often because it provides these adolescents with social support and a sense of belonging. But new research has found that this does not hold true for all... »

In “If there is no God, Dennis Praeger notes, We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of religion — intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of “heretics,” holy wars. Though far from the whole story, they are, nevertheless, true. There have been many awful consequences of religion. What one almost never hears described are the deleterious... »

Agnostic retired Australian political science prof Hiram Caton has recently been tackling the huge industry of pious legends and ridiculous reverence around Charles Darwin. I also happened to mention to him the frothier bits of speculation about the multiverse, and he replied, Your comments and criticisms of the ‘multiverse’ speculation are well taken; basically it’s gibberish.... »

(Note: This was my science column for Canada’s ChristianWeek for August 15, 2008) Science writer Marc Kaufman informs us in “Search for Alien Life Gains New Impetus” (Washington Post, July 20, 2008) that Few believe that the discovery of extraterrestrial life is imminent. However, just as scientists long theorized that there were planets orbiting other stars... »

My op-ed piece published in The Calgary Herald, Saturday, August 16, 2008, responding to radio host and commentator Rob Breakenridge, with links to sources: In rebuttal – Theory needs a paramedic, not more cheerleaders Denyse O’Leary Re “What is it about evolution theory that Albertans don’t get?” (August 12, 2008), Rob Breakenridge has cobbled together key talking... »

“Many recent discoveries do not support a materialist position, but increasingly that position is enforced as an orthodoxy” by Denyse O’Leary Yesterday a friend told me about a new movie he thought I should see. Starring comic Ben Stein, it shows how dangerous it is for a scientist today to say that there is evidence of... »

The more people sift through the sands of the Holy Land, the more artifacts they turn up – silent witnesses to the lives and times of the razor-thin slice of humanity captured in the Bible. But also there is more opportunity than ever to generate meaningless but lucrative controversies by pretending to dig up... »

Recently, a clever ad campaign flooded the Toronto transit system. We were told that the makers of WhyBecauseISaidSo had put out a new pharmaceutical product called OBAY, which eliminates the dangerous tendency of teenagers to think for themselves. One of my special favourites shows a middle-aged dad hugging his cute—but now idea-free—teenage son, positioned... »

Nineteen fifty-four was a great year for new directions in medicine. At least, according to the traditional script. American physician Joseph Murray transplanted a kidney from recently discharged soldier Ronald Herrick to his identical twin Richard, who was dying of kidney disease. Richard, fearing for his brother’s life, wanted to call off the operation. But... »

If you have a kid who wants to go into science, you and the kid had better see this documentary, to be released in April. Either your kid should just sell out now and become an atheistic materialist or your kid needs a strategy to survive an astoundingly hostile atmosphere. Recently, theExpelled movie’s line ... »

Abstinence education programs have been in the news a lot lately because there are a lot of them out there, and they seem to be having an effect. And, predictably, efforts are made to discredit them. After all, early teen sex is an excellent business op for venders of hookerwear (for every day, not... »

Levant is the Alberta-based publisher who printed the Danish cartoons that sparked a furore in some majority Muslim countries, where mocking Islam or the Prophet is not permitted, and he now faces human rights charges in Alberta: Some excerpts: When the Western Standard magazine printed the Danish cartoons of Mohammed two years ago, I was the... »