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Planned Parenthood is in trouble in Kansas, where the state's lawmakers voted on a budget amendment that ultimately defunds the organization. Eleven hundred miles away, President Obama's 2010 budget would nix abstinence-only education in public schools, and put the money into "comprehensive" sex ed programs. Politicians can talk about policy until the end of the world, but ultimately, it's what they fund that affects our daily lives.

The Kansas state House passed a bill May 1 that will make it more difficult for Planned Parenthood to get grants for family planning. The $2.4 million in federal aid would instead go to hospitals, clinics and public health departments, pretty much leaving Planned Parenthood in the cold. The funds would still go toward "family planning" – but Planned Parenthood would have a harder time getting a share. Concerns over Planned Parenthood's ethics and respect for law have dampened the legislature's willingness to fund the abortion organization.

State Republican Senator Tim Huelskamp pushed for defunding in the Senate. He said, "They were charged in the last year with 107 counts of violations of our late-term abortion laws."

Huelskamp was also displeased by Planned Parenthood's failure to protect underage girls who get pregnant by adult men. The organization's employees have demonstrated a marked reluctance to report statutory rape. "The Planned Parenthood employee actually suggested, yes, your boyfriend, who is actually the perpetrator of the crime, actually could come in and pick up contraceptives to continue the sexual abuse," Huelskamp added.

While the budget amendment has passed both the state House and Senate, it may not get a stamp of approval from Kansas' new governor.   The people of Kansas still have time to contact the governor's office regarding the bill.

In the meanwhile, President Obama's budget would pull money from abstinence-only programs for states and would dump it into comprehensive sex programs instead. The amount of federal money given to abstinence-only programs has not been very large, only about 1/12th of what has been regularly doled out to comprehensive programs. Yet, even that little bit of funds is being taken away.  It is now up to the states whether they will independently fund abstinence education in their own school districts.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) was pleased with the cuts, and said, "For too long we wasted money on programs that are proven to be ineffective. We are finally putting sound science ahead of politics."

Ms. Slaughter echoes the opinion of many liberal politicians, but "science" may be more supportive of abstinence programs than she realizes.  The National Abstinence Clearinghouse cites two studies - one by Dr. Stan Weed of the Institute of Research and Evaluation, as well as a review by Christine Kim and Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation - on 21 abstinence and virginity pledge programs, which demonstrate that a majority of these programs do have success in encouraging teens to remain abstinent longer. The teens may not all wait until marriage, but they are definitely holding off longer than teens in other sex ed programs. They are therefore protecting themselves from a host of problems in the meanwhile, and giving themselves more time to mature before engaging in sexual activity.

A great deal of attention has been given to criticizing abstinence programs, yet contraceptive programs continue to receive funds without a reasonable amount of scrutiny. "I challenge contraceptive programs to conduct the same rigorous studies of their programs as abstinence programs do" said Leslee Unruh, President and Founder of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse. 

Teen pregnancy, disease, and single parenthood are not new problems in the United States. While the Sexual Revolution promoted freedom and the power to fulfill basic desires without the chains of repressive Victorian or Christian morality… the results have been pretty dismal. Millions of children are now raised by overworked single mothers. Chlamydia and HPV are frighteningly common diseases that can cause, respectively, sterility and cervical cancer. One-in-five Americans has contracted herpes, and in New York City, that number rises to one-in-four. A vast amount of children have been aborted with the help of "family planning" organizations like Planned Parenthood.

It's no longer a matter of what happens in your bedroom stays in your bedroom. What people do in private affects the entire country, as we all deal with the major social problems that the Sexual Revolution has brought us. In the end, our children have to pay for the mistakes we make. We need to make sure that our funds go to organizations that will help our children to make better decisions, and not to those programs that will encourage them to continue in a downward spiral.

From Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon to Captain Kirk and the Starship Enterprise, science fiction movies have made us believe that travel at-or-above the speed of light is possible. At least, we wish it were. Now, two physicists at Baylor University have thrilled the hearts of sci-fi fans around the world by arguing that warp speed travel is more plausible today than ever before.

According to Einstein, traveling at light speed is impossible, because it would require an infinite amount of energy to move an object that fast and… infinite amounts of energy are not available to us. However, there are always ways to get around tricky problems in theoretical physics. Dr. Gerald Cleaver, associate professor of physics at Baylor, and Dr. Richard Obousy, a Baylor post-doctoral student, have theorized that space itself could be manipulated to create a bubble that would move at velocities above light speed, and a spacecraft on that bubble could just go along for the ride – like a surfer riding a wave.

The key is the manipulation of the 11th dimension. Physicists have long theorized that there are 10 dimensions – length, width, height, and time, as well as six additional dimensions we can't see. While we cannot directly experience these other dimensions, particle physicists have detected evidences for them. According to the new M-Theory, these dimensions vibrate in an 11th dimension.

According to Cleaver and Obousy, the 11th dimension might be manipulated to create a bubble, and if space-time could be expanded behind the bubble, and contracted in front of the bubble, it would shoot through space faster than the speed of light.

"In modern string theory, dark energy [also called the cosmological constant] is the energy stored in empty space, where pairs of matter and anti-matter particles are spontaneously created and annihilated," said Dr. Cleaver. "When the cosmological constant is positive, dark energy is literally pushing space itself apart. When it is negative, then space is contracting. So by arranging the cosmological constant to be positive behind the ship and negative in front of the ship, it should be possible to travel distances that would ordinarily need faster-than-light speeds, even though the ship itself does not exceed the speed of light."

Physicists are quick to point out that this would technically not violate Einstein's faster-than-light rule. Still, it would take massive amounts of energy to accomplish this space-manipulation – as much energy as is found in the mass of Jupiter. Still, that's not an infinite amount of energy. In the future, physicists may figure out how to bring the amount of required energy down to something more manageable.

"When people first started calculating the amount of energy that would be required for a warp drive, it was more than what was contained in the entire known universe," said Dr. Obousy. "Later it was brought down to about the amount contained in a typical galaxy. Now, our work has brought it down to be only an amount equal to the mass of Jupiter. This gives us hope that it can be brought down much much further, eventually to the amount that can be generated by a star ship."

The nature of space-time and of the true essence of the universe is still a mystery to physicists. While nothing is known to be faster than light in a vacuum, there are evidences that the speed of light was once faster in the distant past. Light can now be manipulated to slow down and even stop. By splitting particles to their smallest sizes, it has been discovered that the universe is actually digital in nature. It is a mysterious, fascinating world the Creator has given us, and the more we discover, the more we cannot help be astonished at how much more we still have to learn.

Like... how to get Scotty to beam us up.

Rather than depending on the newest pharmaceutical drugs, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have been getting historical in their hunt for superior medicine. They are using chemical tests to rediscover the herbs used medicinally in ancient Egypt. By studying the residue of ingredients added to wine in ancient clay jars, these researchers hope to unlock some of the medical understanding held by physicians thousands of years ago.

The Egyptians loved to write things down, and the ingredients to sought-after remedies were recorded in hieroglyphics. Unfortunately, modern Egyptologists have struggled to translate some of the specific ingredients included in these remedies. Residue from a 5,000 year old jar showed that Egyptians made use of coriander, senna, germander, balm, and savory, among other herbs. A 1,500-year-old jar included compounds that researchers believe included rosemary.

These studies stem from more than just historical curiosity. The Penn researchers hope to find out if the Egyptians had some clue about real cures for serious illnesses – cures that work. After all, the Egyptians built the pyramids; they weren't complete fools. Researchers at Penn's Abramson Cancer Center hope to find possible "new" ways to battle cancer through the use of remedies and herbs known by the ancients.

"I think people should be open-minded" about ancient remedies, said Wafik S. El-Deiry, a Penn professor of medicine, genetics, and pharmacology, "because there may be hidden treasures."

At the same time, the Eygptians also had some real doozies. They worshipped the dung beetle, and coincidentally included a lot of animal and human waste in some remedy recipes. While the Egyptians did have some medicines that appeared to work – for instance, fennel was used to cure indigestion – they also had some remedies that could have killed their patients.

As medical doctor S.E. Massengill stated:
"The early Egyptian physicians made considerable use of drugs. Their drugs were of the kind usually found in early civilizations; a few effective remedies lost in a mass of substances of purely superstitious origin. They used opium, squill, and other vegetable substances, but also excrement and urine. It is said that the urine of a faithful wife was with them effective in the treatment of sore eyes."

Pig dung, donkey dung, lizard dung, dried children's excrement were all included in the ingredients of various cures. Blood from a variety of animals was also used, and the Egyptians seemed to be pleased with creating puss (which is the result of an infection.)

It is noteworthy that Moses was raised by the royal family of Egypt, and afterwards wrote the five books of the Torah. Yet, while Moses' works include a great deal of information on how to deal with illnesses, his works do not draw on Egyptian medical practices. He also avoids the harmful practices of the other nations in the area. In fact, the first five books of the Bible are far more sanitary and medically sound than the medical practices of the ancient Egyptians and, if followed, would have protected the ancient Israelites from spreading many harmful diseases.

For instance, while the Egyptians used dung and human feces as remedies, Deuteronomy 23:13 instructs the people to dig holes outside the camp to relieve themselves, and to cover it up afterwards. The Israelites were told not to touch animals that had died of themselves or were torn by wild beasts (Lev 22:8). The sons of Aaron were considered unclean if they touched a dead human or a creeping thing or if they had a skin disease or a running sore (Lev 22:4-5). The Israelites were instructed not to eat a variety of animals that were "unclean" (Lev. 11), which indeed were not as safe to eat as "clean" animals like sheep and cattle. Moses gave instructions for dealing with people who had potentially communicable skin diseases, including quarantine (Lev 13:45-46), and even described how to deal with the clothing of diseased people (Lev 13:47-59).

The ancient Egyptians had a great deal of knowledge based on centuries of learning – and centuries of superstition. Moses, on the other hand, was taught by God Himself, who already knew about the microorganisms that cause disease, and how to best protect His people from them.  The researchers at the University of Penn might turn their attention to the Scriptures.  The Bible may not hide the secret to the cure for cancer.   But... then again... it might.