The CS Monitor has an article today talking about the state of “second wives” in France.[1] Apparently France only very recently outlawed polygamy, and a number of African men have come to France bringing multiple “wives” and the children of both “wives.” The article highlights the problems that come from lack of enforcement since the 1993 outlawing, and the unwillingness of the government to deal with those polygamous families it allowed in before outlawing polygamy. While the outlawing of polygamy is both rational and moral, it is immoral to treat these women as somehow neither married nor single and thus allow them to fall through the cracks. Naturally, they cannot be married as a marriage is between one man and one woman, so they must be single with children, and should be legally so treated. Worse, I am sure this sort of thing will be used by liberals world-wide to try to pressure France to repeal the law. This would be an unmitigated disaster, with the marriage under attack from so many other angles as well.

[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0525/p16s01-woeu.html

Ars is talking about a flash hard drive from Samsung.[1] At 16Gb max, it is, by today’s standards, too small for most desktop use. We are all spoiled by the massive 40Gb, 80Gb, and bigger hard drives available now, and most people would have trouble getting accustomed to having “only” 16Gb of space now. After all, my old desktop from college even had something like 13Gb. Still, with 16Gb available now (or rather, in August or so), it is only a matter of time before these drives start reaching the sizes we are accustomed to. In many modern systems, the disk i/o is a significant choke point, so a 150 percent performance increase here will certainly be noticeable, and few people (who don’t download lots of movies) will notice if the high end of these drives starts to compete (size wise) with the low end current drive, so long as the price wise is competitive with other drives (not necessarily of the same size).

[1] http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050524-4939.html

Congress is trying to push through a bill to create federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.[1] This move comes with lots of promises of future cures, at the cost of lives, but no results at all so far. The promising treatments from stem cells to date come from adult stem cells and from umbilical tube stem cells, neither of which cost a life to obtain. This is then thus simply an attempt by materialist and atheist scientists to further desensitize to death.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4576407.stm

I no longer read as much as I once did. I finish perhaps little more books each year than I once read in a month. This is somewhat depressing, but also reflects a life in which I am out more. I did not have a computer when I read that much, I rarely went out with friends (really, did not at all). Still, George Weigel reminds me how much there is still to read, and gives a nice set of names and a few titles as a starting place.[1]

[1] http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2350/pub_detail.asp

The National Catholic Register reports the good news that the new California center for embryonic stem cell research has hit a snag: the bill authorizing it may be unconstitutional.[1] Hopefully this case will prevail, and the needless and senseless slaughter of 5 day old babies will be prevented.

[1] http://www.ncregister.com/current/0522lead1.htm