Hot Accessory for 14-year-olds: A Real Baby!

"When my friends see my bump they say they wish they could have a baby, then three weeks later they're pregnant and don't know what to do.

"Teenage girls think babies are cute, but they forget the physical side of being pregnant, then having to give up your own childhood to look after a baby.

"It seems to be fashionable to get pregnant."

Family campaigners said her comments showed how the Government's sex education policy had left teens with the "ridiculous but extremely worrying" misconception that having a child was no different to getting a new handbag.

The father of the pregnant British 14-year-old quoted above blamed the rise in underage pregnancies on "gang culture", media influence, parents, schools and the local authority, concluding that "it's a social problem". The mother blamed her daughter for the situation.

It seems to me that we should spend less time teaching children to "be true to themselves" and more time teaching kids the difference between right and wrong, healthy and unhealthy, and smart decisions and stupid ones.

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Little Dancer Boy

This one is for the Official Sister of the Brink, a player of Dance Dance Revolution and a pincher of the cheeks of five-year-olds.

Texas GOP Seeks National Voice

This one goes out to official Friend of the Brink Tom, as pertaining to our conversation about party politics and the fact that it has no direct connection with actual legislative action.

The article describes a new event to be held this summer and open to past participants in Republican State Conventions. These former delegates will gather, listen to GOP presidential candidates, and then vote on them in a completely meaningless election--except to the candidates, who will surely trumpet a positive finish in the "straw poll" to residents and media on other states to bolster their campaigns. It is an attempt by the Texas Republican Party to influence a national election.

Like the conventions themselves there is no legislative significance to this event, but there will be plenty of political significance if it leads to a change in the national perceptions of candidates jockeying for the highest office in the land.

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Bible, Meet Web

Speaking of the Bible, here's a cool, free site that has the whole thing--readable, searchable, and in several versions. So the next time you need to know if a phrase like "Spare the rod, spoil the child" is from the Bible you know where to turn. (It isn't.)

Click on the title above to go to the site...

Longevity and the Bible

An interesting article here positing the theory that, as God decreed the maximum age of humanity to be 120 years in the book of Genesis, the ages given in subsequent genealogies drop significantly (but not immediately) due to a supernatural adjustment to their DNA which is still measurable today.

Notable for, if nothing else, the ages compiled from the Bible showing spectacular lifespans (900+ years) of early humans dropping significantly toward more familiar lengths.

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What Science Doesn't Know

Wired Magazine's current issue (February 07) has a very interesting cover story about the limits of current scientific knowledge. As I read it I realized that the gaps in our scientific knowledge receive very little press, while scientific achievements are shouted from the mountaintops. While this is certainly understandable, it's good to realize the very real limits of what we know.

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Secular Humanism: Defined

Secular Humanism is the dominant western viewpoint of our day--but what is it, exactly? This question is answered in detail, with quotes from humanists and a bibliography, by the attached article.

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Dolly The Cloned Sheep Died Young

Am I the only one who missed this? Dolly, the famous sheep product of cloning, died young of a disease that usually afflicts older animals and was found to have aged prematurely... Hmm. Maybe cloning is still a bit more complicated than we thought.

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This Just In: President Found on Dollar

After two failed attempts to interest the American public in dollar coins, the U.S. Mint is getting away from female/native American empowerment icons (Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea) and going back to the well with two proven formulas: 1) A huge series of collectible designs and 2) dead presidents.

Will it work? Will America make room in its pockets for a different type of change? Will we flip for this new coin? Only time will tell.

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Cat Nurses Puppy; Nature v. Nurture Debate Erupts

A 6-day-old Rottweiler puppy rejected by its mother and taken in by the Humane Society has been adopted by a family of cats. Treated as a brother by the kittens and a kitten by their mother, we here at The Brink hope that little Charlie will become a powerful advocate for his adopted species and known across the planet as the world's largest house cat. Alternatively, he will grow up to be a dog.

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Paradigm: The Story of the Creationist/Evolutionist

A very interesting story here, and with some personal relevance: Dr. Michael Dini, who made national news for refusing to write letters of recommendation for graduate study for creationist students, is referenced in this story and has come up in discussions with friends recently.

KINGSTON, Rhode Island : There is nothing much unusual about the 197-page dissertation Marcus R. Ross submitted in December to complete his doctoral degree in geosciences here at the University of Rhode Island.

His subject was the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago. The work is "impeccable," said David E. Fastovsky, a paleontologist and professor of geosciences at the university who was Ross's dissertation adviser. "He was working within a strictly scientific framework, a conventional scientific framework."

But Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a "young earth creationist" — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.

For him, Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one "paradigm" for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, "that I am separating the different paradigms."

For the rest of this story click on the headline above...

Underwater Logging

It turns out logging has sunk to a new low, literally speaking: harvesting underwater trees. Turns out that there is billions of dollars of lumber preserved under lakes made by dams, and one company has designed an underwater remote-controlled logging robot to go get them. As an added bonus, there is no forest wildlife or neighbors to disturb, and since the trees are dead anyway it's a home-run with conservation activists. The wood can be sold for a premium as "green", environment friendly, and it turns out it's actually cheaper to harvest this way. Gotta love free enterprise. (Click the headline above for the full story.)