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Alvaro Uribe

2007-06-12T23:07:13Z

CanadianScientist:

'''Alvaro Uribe Velez''' (July 4th, 1952 - ) is the President of the [[Republic of Colombia]]. Alvaro Uribe was born in Medellin, capital of the department of Antioquia in Colombia. Uribe holds a degree in law from the Universidad de Antioquia and a post-graduate degree in Management and Administration from Harvard University. From 1998 to 1999 after being awarded the [[Simon Bolivar]] fellowship by the British Council in Bogotá, he worked as an associate professor at Oxford University.

==Early career==

In 1976 he became head of the Real Estate Department of the city of Medellín's Public Works. From 1977 to 1978 he was Secretary General of the Labor Ministry and from 1980 to 1982, head of the Department of Civil Aeronautics. He was the mayor of his native city of Medellín in 1982 and later, from 1984 to 1986, he was elected as city counselor.

Uribe was elected governor of the department of Antioquia for the 1995-1997 period, during which he developed a model of communal participation in key government decisions such as the creation of new jobs, education, the granting of official state contracts and public safety, which he called Community State. During his term as governor, Alvaro Uribe sized down the number of government jobs by 34% and the number of official vehicles by 35%. Such savings in government spending meant schooling for 103,000 new students. As governor he also devised a program by which, 40,000 people received training in the peaceful negotiation of conflicts. 200,000 of Antioquia's poor became eligible for free health care under the nation's subsidized health insurance System.

Uribe was also responsible for the paving of 939 kilometers of roads. More than double the amount of paved roads in all of Antioquia's history. And extensive repair work was done on the roads which link Antioquia with the nation's capital, Bogotá. The number of kidnapping cases in the department, went down by 60% thanks to the cooperation of the community with the local authorities.

He was elected Senator for the periods 1986-1990 and 1990-1994, terms during which he received the Star Senator, Senator with the Best Programs and Best Senator awards.
==Opposition to Alvaro Uribe==

Although Uribe was democratically elected with 62 per cent of the vote and has built roads and lowered crime rates in major cities, he has been harshly criticized by human rights groups for blatant violations of human rights. There are accusations that Uribe has personal connections to the right-wing terrorist group the AUC (United Self-Defence group of Colombia). The Colombian military is known to work hand-in-hand with this terrorist group because they share a common enemy, the leftist FARC, which is also a terrorist group.[http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia236.htm]

==Source==
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia236.htm

[[Category:Heads of state]]
[[Category:Dictators]]

Alvaro Uribe

2007-06-12T23:05:07Z

CanadianScientist: /* Opposition to Alvaro Uribe */

'''Alvaro Uribe Velez''' (July 4th, 1952 - ) is the President of the [[Republic of Colombia]]. Alvaro Uribe was born in Medellin, capital of the department of Antioquia in Colombia. Uribe holds a degree in law from the Universidad de Antioquia and a post-graduate degree in Management and Administration from Harvard University. From 1998 to 1999 after being awarded the [[Simon Bolivar]] fellowship by the British Council in Bogotá, he worked as an associate professor at Oxford University.

==Early career==

In 1976 he became head of the Real Estate Department of the city of Medellín's Public Works. From 1977 to 1978 he was Secretary General of the Labor Ministry and from 1980 to 1982, head of the Department of Civil Aeronautics. He was the mayor of his native city of Medellín in 1982 and later, from 1984 to 1986, he was elected as city counselor.

Uribe was elected governor of the department of Antioquia for the 1995-1997 period, during which he developed a model of communal participation in key government decisions such as the creation of new jobs, education, the granting of official state contracts and public safety, which he called Community State. During his term as governor, Alvaro Uribe sized down the number of government jobs by 34% and the number of official vehicles by 35%. Such savings in government spending meant schooling for 103,000 new students. As governor he also devised a program by which, 40,000 people received training in the peaceful negotiation of conflicts. 200,000 of Antioquia's poor became eligible for free health care under the nation's subsidized health insurance System.

Uribe was also responsible for the paving of 939 kilometers of roads. More than double the amount of paved roads in all of Antioquia's history. And extensive repair work was done on the roads which link Antioquia with the nation's capital, Bogotá. The number of kidnapping cases in the department, went down by 60% thanks to the cooperation of the community with the local authorities.

He was elected Senator for the periods 1986-1990 and 1990-1994, terms during which he received the Star Senator, Senator with the Best Programs and Best Senator awards.
==Opposition to Alvaro Uribe==

Although Uribe was democratically elected with 62 per cent of the vote and has built roads and lowered crime rates in major cities, he is not without critics in his country. The opposition is concerned that economic growth is not trickling down to the masses and that human rights abuses are occurring under his watch. [http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia236.htm]

==Source==
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia236.htm

[[Category:Heads of state]]
[[Category:Dictators]]

Alvaro Uribe

2007-06-12T23:04:36Z

CanadianScientist:

'''Alvaro Uribe Velez''' (July 4th, 1952 - ) is the President of the [[Republic of Colombia]]. Alvaro Uribe was born in Medellin, capital of the department of Antioquia in Colombia. Uribe holds a degree in law from the Universidad de Antioquia and a post-graduate degree in Management and Administration from Harvard University. From 1998 to 1999 after being awarded the [[Simon Bolivar]] fellowship by the British Council in Bogotá, he worked as an associate professor at Oxford University.

==Early career==

In 1976 he became head of the Real Estate Department of the city of Medellín's Public Works. From 1977 to 1978 he was Secretary General of the Labor Ministry and from 1980 to 1982, head of the Department of Civil Aeronautics. He was the mayor of his native city of Medellín in 1982 and later, from 1984 to 1986, he was elected as city counselor.

Uribe was elected governor of the department of Antioquia for the 1995-1997 period, during which he developed a model of communal participation in key government decisions such as the creation of new jobs, education, the granting of official state contracts and public safety, which he called Community State. During his term as governor, Alvaro Uribe sized down the number of government jobs by 34% and the number of official vehicles by 35%. Such savings in government spending meant schooling for 103,000 new students. As governor he also devised a program by which, 40,000 people received training in the peaceful negotiation of conflicts. 200,000 of Antioquia's poor became eligible for free health care under the nation's subsidized health insurance System.

Uribe was also responsible for the paving of 939 kilometers of roads. More than double the amount of paved roads in all of Antioquia's history. And extensive repair work was done on the roads which link Antioquia with the nation's capital, Bogotá. The number of kidnapping cases in the department, went down by 60% thanks to the cooperation of the community with the local authorities.

He was elected Senator for the periods 1986-1990 and 1990-1994, terms during which he received the Star Senator, Senator with the Best Programs and Best Senator awards.
==Opposition to Alvaro Uribe==

Although Uribe was democratically elected with 62 per cent of the vote and has built roads and lowered crime rates in major cities, as well as overseeing a booming economy, he is not without critics in his country. The opposition is concerned that economic growth is not trickling down to the masses and that human rights abuses are occurring under his watch. [http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia236.htm]

==Source==
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia236.htm

[[Category:Heads of state]]
[[Category:Dictators]]

Charles Darwin

2007-06-12T22:53:21Z

CanadianScientist:

[[Image:darwin.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Charles Darwin]]
'''Charles Robert Darwin''' (12 February 1809 - 19 April 1883) was a famous naturalist born in [[England]]. He is best known for the [[Theory of Natural Selection|theory of natural selection]] which has since been almost universally accepted by biologists as the major mechanism for [[Theory of Evolution|evolution]]. The concept is that biological species develop over time via natural selection, branching from common origins. Outside of evolution in particular, he was regarded as an expert on barnacles, as well as being credited with discovering how coral atolls were formed.
==Early Life==
Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England in 1809 to his parents Dr. Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgewood. Darwin's mother was very religious but his father was a freethinker and wasn't as constricted by the repressive religious beliefs that existed at that time. Despite his lack of religious belief, Darwin's old man allowed Charles to be baptized into the Anglican Church. Darwin's mother died when Charles was very young. After his mother died, Charles attended a nearby Anglican school in 1818. In 1825 he helped his father treating poor people in Shopshire and went on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He was turned off by the brutality of surgery and neglected his medical studies. At the university he learned taxidermy from a free black slave named John Edmonstone. John also told the young Charles exciting tales about the South American Amazon and also about the brutalities of slavery. Because of this experience, Darwin went on to hate slavery.

==Religious Beliefs==
[[Image:CharlesDarwin.jpg|thumb|150px|left|Charles Darwin in 1880 at the age of 71.]]
Charles Darwin was a Christian up and through his famous five year voyage on the ''HMS Beagle''. But in the ensuing two years after returning to England (1836 to 1839; and in his late twenties) Darwin abandoned Christianity (1) and had become an agnostic (2). About twenty years later in 1859 (at the age of fifty) Darwin published his famous book ''The Origin of Species''. "In order not to hurt the feelings of his friends and wife, Darwin often used deistic language in his publications" (3). According to Darwin the "manifestly false history of the world" (4) as recorded in the Old Testament and New Testament miracles led him to reject Biblical veracity (5). Eminent Darwin biographer, Professor Janet Browne, sums up Darwin's views concerning religion: Darwin "mapped out a comparative evolution of the religious sense, proposing that religious belief was ultimately nothing more than a primitive urge to bestow a cause on otherwise inexplicable natural events...In short, he made no secret of his view that he did not believe religion to have any rational foundation at all" (6). When he died in 1882 at the age of seventy-three, Darwin was buried at Westminster Abbey next to Sir [[Isaac Newton]].

Though Darwin wrote of religion as a tribal survival strategy, he still believed that God was the ultimate lawgiver. His belief dwindled, and with the death of his daughter Annie in 1851, Darwin finally lost all faith in Christianity. He continued to help the local church with parish work, but on Sundays would go for a walk while his family attended church. He now thought it better to look at pain and suffering as the result of general laws rather than direct intervention by God. When asked about his religious views, he wrote that he had never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God, and that generally "an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind."

It is interesting that ''both'' of Darwin's grandfathers (the physician and poet Erasmus Darwin, and the pottery manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood) were members of the [[Lunar Society]], a private club devoted to science, philosophy, and free thinking based in [[Birmingham]], [[England]], which was largely responsible for starting the industrial revolution, and also numbered amongst its members the American scientist and politician Benjamin Franklin.

There is a false rumor that on his deathbed Darwin recanted his theory. This is a myth supposedly started by Sir James Hope's widow. Darwin's daughter, Henrietta, said that, "Darwin never recanted any of his scientific views, either then [on his deathbed] or earlier. <ref> [[Exploring Creation with Biology]], by Dr. Jay L. Wile and Marilyn F. Durnell, Apologia Educational Ministries, Inc., 2005. </ref>

== References ==
# Mayr, Ernst ''Growth of Biological Thought'' (1982:402).
# Mayr, Ernst ''One Long Argument'' (1991:75).
# Ibid. (1991:75).
# Barlow, Nora (editor) ''The Autobiography of Charles Darin'' (1958:85).
# Ibid. (1958:85-87).
# Browne, Janet ''Charles Darwin The Power of Place'' (2002:341)
# Kevles, B., Females of the Species: Sex and Survival in the Animal Kingdom, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 8, 1986.
<references/>
[[Category:Naturalists|Darwin, Charles]]
[[Category:Biologists|Darwin, Charles]]