Science & Technology

As I mentioned in a recent post, medical researchers are revolutionizing healthcare through personalized medicine based on knowledge of the individual's genetic makeup. In one instance of this advancement, according to the Associated Press, “doctors are reporting unprecedented success by using gene therapy to transform patients' blood cells into soldiers…

Although the moral justification for capitalism is not that it helps the poor—but that it protects the rights of all—a major consequence of capitalism, where and to the degree it is legalized, is that it lifts people out of poverty. One area in which this can be readily seen is…

Biotechnology is on the verge of revolutionizing medicine by enabling doctors to tailor therapies to the individual patient’s genetic makeup. But, as George Gilder explains: Obscuring the huge opportunity of new knowledge in pharma . . . is the obsolete apparat of government power. . . . [I]n the face…

After barbarians destroyed the towering, 110-story World Trade Center towers on 9/11, some people wondered whether Americans would continue to regard outstandingly tall buildings as practical and worth the newly-realized risk. American developers are putting that wonder to rest, with a burgeoning new era of skyscrapers in New York City.…

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that Texas energy business produced 2.7 million barrels of oil in September—the highest volume since the EIA began tracking the data. Economist Mark Perry notes that “oil output has doubled in only 29 months” there; this is due mainly to advances in horizontal drilling…

Today Congressman Jared Polis of Boulder lambasted the Colorado Oil and Gas Association for seeking to legally protect its members’ rights to produce energy in the face of fracking bans approved by voters in two Colorado cities. (The Denver Post reports the details of the legal battle.) The timing of…

Examples of sticker shock among former and current supporters of ObamaCare—once they find their insurance rates going up—keep piling up. (See also my previous posts.) Nurse Cathy Wagner “championed Obamacare, until she received a letter from her insurance company saying it was canceling her policy,” Denver’s CBS affiliate reports. “I…

American energy producers have rapidly expanded their output of oil and natural gas in recent years—thanks to the advancing technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking). For an indication of the difference these technologies make, consider some figures regarding the Eagle Ford Shale formation in Texas. The energy company…

In response to the recently “celebrated” America Recycles Day, the Property and Environment Research Center promoted its 2010 publication, “Recycling Myths Revisited.” The report’s author, Daniel K. Benjamin, does a good job of reporting the history of trash collection and busting a variety of myths about recycling—such as that it…

Surveys the life and accomplishments of this remarkable scientist, who, “once internationally revered, is now largely unknown—remembered, if at all, only for his invention of pasteurization”; shows why “Pasteur deserves to be remembered as more than a portmanteau on the side of a milk jug” and why he ought to be remembered instead as an “adventurer of science” and as “a light that brightens more and more.”