Category Archives: Science

How about that zero? THAT was something, huh?

I have two things to say about this brouhaha over Charles Bolden saying he was told to help Muslims feel good about their culture’s historic contributions to science, and the White House denial of such a brief.

First, the silly thing: I have trouble picturing the no-nonsense Marine on a self-esteem-building mission. When I try, my imagination comes up with something really goofy, like:

Hey, guys and how about the concept of zero? That’s a biggie! I don’t know what we’d do without it! Why, back in the Middle Ages, sports fans all over poor, benighted Europe didn’t know how to keep up with what was happening on the field when their team hadn’t scored (which is a big disadvantage when you’re soccer-crazy — you could spend the whole game in the dark!). They had to make up lame alternative words, like “zip” and “nil.” The guys who kept the medieval scoreboards would just be standing up there scratching their heads wondering what to put up until somebody finally scored… Boy, I’m glad I wasn’t trying to follow sports back then…

And that just doesn’t sound like Gen. Bolden.

Now, to my serious point: If Charles Bolden says that the White House told him it wanted him to make the Muslim world feel warm and fuzzy about itself, that’s what happened.

Charles Bolden is one heckuvan impressive guy, and a squared-away Marine. If he says those are his orders, those are his orders, and don’t get between him and his mission.

Anyone at the White House who says otherwise either isn’t in the loop, or is lying.

And that’s the name of that tune.

Play it safe; drink your water from the tap

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Did you see this today?

Bottled water contains more bacteria than tap water

…some brands found to harbour levels 100 times above permitted limits, according to new research.

A team of scientists found that 70 per cent of popular bottled water brands available in shops had high levels of bacteria.

The researchers from Ccrest Laboratories in Canada found that tap water had less bacteria than bottled water.

Microbiologist Dr Sonish Azam, of Ccrest Laboratories, said bottled water did not live up to its claims or purity.

She said: “Heterotrophic bacteria counts in some of the bottles were found to be in revolting figures of one hundred times more than the permitted limit.”

Yet another reason to stick to drinking straight from the tap. But use a glass, please — preferably a clean one.

‘Ideas… having sex with each other:’ The collective, interactive nature of human progress

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There was a fascinating piece in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend, which I particularly enjoyed because of the way it cut across the way we tend to group ideas, particularly political and philosophical ideas, in popular dialogue.

In particular, I liked the way it applied economics to evolution to explain how human progress — innovation, wealth production, and other blessings of modernity — is a collective, interdependent process:

The answer lies in a new idea, borrowed from economics, known as collective intelligence: the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural change of a population is the amount of interaction between individuals. Even as it explains very old patterns in prehistory, this idea holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead—because ideas are having sex with each other as never before.

The piece started wondering why our ancestors, who could make tools for a couple of million years, didn’t really start to take off technologically or culturally until 45,000 years ago. The answer is that we are dependent on each other to move forward, and there have to be enough of us to reach critical mass if we’re really to take off.

The best part was right here:

But the sophistication of the modern world lies not in individual intelligence or imagination. It is a collective enterprise. Nobody—literally nobody—knows how to make the pencil on my desk (as the economist Leonard Read once pointed out), let alone the computer on which I am writing. The knowledge of how to design, mine, fell, extract, synthesize, combine, manufacture and market these things is fragmented among thousands, sometimes millions of heads. Once human progress started, it was no longer limited by the size of human brains. Intelligence became collective and cumulative.

In the modern world, innovation is a collective enterprise that relies on exchange. As Brian Arthur argues in his book “The Nature of Technology,” nearly all technologies are combinations of other technologies and new ideas come from swapping things and thoughts. (My favorite example is the camera pill—invented after a conversation between a gastroenterologist and a guided missile designer.) We tend to forget that trade and urbanization are the grand stimuli to invention, far more important than governments, money or individual genius. It is no coincidence that trade-obsessed cities—Tyre, Athens, Alexandria, Baghdad, Pisa, Amsterdam, London, Hong Kong, New York, Tokyo, San Francisco—are the places where invention and discovery happened. Think of them as well-endowed collective brains.

I like the way this celebrates human achievement — from science to culture to capitalism — while at the same time blowing apart the fantasy that so many (the Mark Sanfords of the world) harbor: That we function best as little individual islands left alone by society at large. We are all in this together, or we simply don’t progress.

I don’t know about you, but I find it far more elevating to think about ideas having sex than certain, um, people:

The process of cumulative innovation that has doubled life span, cut child mortality by three-quarters and multiplied per capita income ninefold—world-wide—in little more than a century is driven by ideas having sex. And things like the search engine, the mobile phone and container shipping just made ideas a whole lot more promiscuous still.

Reading all this caused me to have a depressing thought, however. I think these ways of looking at human progress may help explain why political ideas in this country seem so counterproductive, so mutually canceling, like intellectual dead-ends, with the so-called “liberals” and “conservatives” locked in perpetual battle with each having a slight majority for a time, but no progress ever being made (by anyone’s notion of “progress”)…

I think it’s because our political ideas no longer “have sex” with one another, borrowing memes from each other and changing and producing new, more vibrant and robust, hybrid ideas. Not only do the ideas of today’s so-called “liberals” and so-called “conservatives” not only don’t jump into the sack together, they don’t hold hands, or even look at each other across a crowded room. They don’t even listen to each other, much less join to be fruitful and multiply productive new ideas.

Our political system, centered around a legislative process that depends on deliberation — with real debate between people listening to each other in good faith — can’t function with all the dancers standing on opposite sides of the dance hall and refusing to speak to each other.

Maybe I should start marketing my UnParty as a political/intellectual fertility cult, and sponsor monthly idea orgies. Or something.

Just a thought.

Anybody just a little worried about this “synthetic cell” thing?

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There’s this joke… you’ve probably heard it. Basically, scientists tell God they don’t need him any more because they’ve figured out the secrets of life, from DNA to cloning to whatever, and they know how to create a man from scratch. So God says, let’s see. And the scientists say OK, we just need to gather up the right minerals and chemicals to synthesize what we need, and… God says, “Hold on, there: Use your own dirt.”

Anyway, they’re still using God’s dirt for raw material, but science moved a little closer to making the joke’s scenario a reality, with the announcement of the first “artificial cells.”

The Church (on this blog, The Church is always the Roman Catholic Church) has weighed in on the subject already, with a basic This all sounds very well and good, but do you really know what you’re doing? (“Church warns cell scientists not to play God”) Which I think has merit, as reactions go.

To put it another way, in hyping what a big deal this is, one of the science boffins said the following:

“This is a tour de force and a landmark paper … that is akin to Jurassic Park or Frankenstein,” said Dr. Anthony C. Forster, a molecular biologist at Vanderbilt University who is an expert in the field of artificial life forms. “I think it will probably be regarded as the dawn of synthetic genomics.”

Yeah. Exactly.

I’m not worried about an 8 foot tall guy staggering around with a bolt through his neck. I’m more concerned about a microbe with unintentional effects — saying, wiping out all life on the planet, or other inconveniences.

Oh, I’m sure the scientists are all being careful and oh-so-responsible. But… do they really know what they’re doing? And as the knowledge spreads, and more and more people learn to do it and try different tricks with it, and the probability that someone will screw up majorly increases….

Maybe I’m just a worrier. Maybe I should just adopt Alfred E. Neuman‘s stance, since the toothpaste is already out of the tube.

Making Innovista work going forward

Women are just nicer than we are

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Yesterday at Rotary, I noticed a stark example of something that we all know, but don’t often see demonstrated this clearly. The speaker at the podium was recognizing a member — Crawford Clarkson — for having belonged to the club for 63 years. We were all duly impressed, and offered applause, even a standing ovation, because we all like Crawford.

But at some point, when Crawford was offering his acknowledgments, or when another speaker was talking about him with him standing there, and the crowd had sat back down, I looked around and noticed something.

All of the women whose faces I could see were smiling. We’re talking maybe six or seven women whose faces were clear to me from where I sat, without craning my neck. It was that sort of smile that makes women the wonderful beings that they are, a sort of Mom smile, the sure sign of a warm heart. They were pleased, on a fundamental level, for Crawford, and the pleasure radiated from them visibly.

Then I made myself look at the men. There are still far more men in Rotary than women, so in a few seconds I checked the faces of maybe a couple of dozen men. All but one was impassive. They might have been pleased, they might not have been pleased; they weren’t going to show it either way. They had stood up and clapped, dammit, so what more did you want from them? What do you expect a guy to do?

Note that I said “All but one.” That one had a slight smile. But for all I know, he was thinking about something else.

I remember hearing something on NPR a few years ago about some women who took a class in which they learned to impersonate men (don’t ask me why). One of the participants interviewed explained that the hardest thing, for her, was to keep herself from smiling. You’ve perhaps noted that most women, if you make eye contact with them, smile (at least, they smile at me; I don’t know about you). Men, perhaps regarding it as a sign of weakness, generally do not. I think there’s something about survival hard-wired into us.

Anyway, I am reminded of a recent case in which I demonstrated what jerks we men can be. Remember when I complained back here that some young woman I’d never heard of had 100 times as many Twitter followers as I did? Well, she certainly told ME off, but in a nice way:

Hi Brad,

Just read your post. Thanks for the mention, or rather, the criticism. I have so many friends because I talk a LOT and I’m always happy for other people’s successes. I hope you find your own comfort zone soon.

Thanks again,

Gerri

Ow. She’s right, of course. Women are just so much readier to be pleased for other people than we are. Guys are always trying to figure out what’s in it for US.

Are these critters weird, or what?

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They sound weird, and they look like they’re from another planet.

That’s about all I’ve got to say about these things, except to explain that I was happy with the way the autofocus on my camera actually focused on what I wanted it to for a change, so that I could blow this up and still have it look like something.

Also, I figured y’all were tired of looking at that picture from the Sanford press conference, hence the new header…

If I’d invented this, I wouldn’t be looking for job

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Prof. Stanley Dubinsky, a purveyor of cool links (more than I have time to read, but keep ’em coming, Stan), passes on this gee-whiz development:

A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference.

The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices over many metres.

Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford.

He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.

“There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power,” he said.

Trillions of dollars, he said, had also been invested building an infrastructure of wires “to get power from where it is created to where it is used.”

How does “Witricity” work? It “exploits the resonance of low frequency electromagnetic waves.” Duh.

Contemplate the implications. Your electronic stuff just recharging itself where it is. Imagine the eventual implications for electric cars. I don’t know what the range is for this transfer (it seems to suggest about 100 feet), but I expect it will get longer with development. Or maybe not. Still, a car that recharged itself in your driveway without having to be plugged in would really be something.

Wow.

What kind of flowers are these in my yard?

As you may or may not know, I’m not a work-in-the-yard kind of guy. I’m not one of those guys who gets pleasure, or even relaxation, from mowing the yard, trimming the azaleas, raking the blasted pinestraw, sodding the bald spots, washing the car, rearranging the garage, repairing the steps to the back porch, and on and on and on and…

Hold on, and let me breathe through a paper bag for a moment…

I’m kidding here, but only a little. The truth is, I feel guilty about the fact that I go months and months without doing anything in the yard. Which is not good when you have almost an acre of land in a well-kept neighborhood, and a house built in the mid-70s. We started paying someone to do the yard a couple of years back — in fact, I sold my riding John Deere to the yard man for $400 and a couple of months free yard care — after I had to go on prednisone for six weeks after my last time stirring up great clouds of dust in the yard, I mean, cutting the grass.

But mostly with me, it’s not a health thing. It’s an aversion, and I know it’s a disappointment to my poor wife.

Anyway, though, I actually DID some things in the yard today. I actually nailed down some steps that were loose on the aforesaid back porch — which led to a great excuse to run to Lowe’s when I ran out of 16d nails. And then, a crew of men came to the door saying that they’d sprig the bald spots on our lawn with some centipede leftover from a job down the street, charging just for the labor, because otherwise the grass would die anyway. So we agreed to that.

This led to another trip to Lowe’s (the best part of working in the yard, especially if I can linger a bit in the tool section; I may hate actually working with tools, but I love looking at new ones) to get a Y-valve for my garden hoses so I could water two areas of the yard at once when the guys were done sprigging it.

Anyway, bottom line — when I was done moving the hoses a few minutes ago, on my way in, I noticed this plant in bloom. I had never seen it before. Now with me, it could have been there forever. My wife might have been slaving over it for years, because she actually enjoys working in the yard (she’s a sunshine person; I sometimes wonder where she got those genes, since she’s Irish).

But not even she knew what it was. All she knew was that it was beautiful.

Apparently, it’s a volunteer. Anyway, I felt smart for asking what it was, since she didn’t even know. For once, not knowing about something in our yard was not a faux pas on my part.

Do y’all know what it is? Looks kind of like a climatis (is that how you spell it?) — I’ve bought some of those for her before, and these flowers look kind of like that. Vaguely. But that’s a climbing plant, and this is bush-like. So what’s the verdict?

Perspectives on hydrogen

Here’s something that struck me as interesting this morning. Did you read the op-ed piece by my friend Kevin Dietrich, arguing — as you would expect someone at the S.C. Policy Council to argue — against our state’s investment in hydrogen research? An excerpt:

In the past few years, taxpayers have poured tens of millions of state and local tax dollars into hydrogen research even though multiple experts question how viable the technology will be in offsetting U.S. reliance on foreign oil or reducing carbon emissions.

“A hydrogen car is one of the least efficient, most expensive ways to reduce greenhouse gases,” said Joseph Romm, a physicist in charge of renewable energy research during the Carter administration. Asked when hydrogen cars will be broadly available, Romm replied: “Not in our lifetime, and very possibly never.”

The Los Angeles Times was blunter in assessing the future of hydrogen-powered vehicles: “Hydrogen fuel-cell technology won’t work in cars…. Any way you look at it, hydrogen is a lousy way to move cars.”

What struck me about it was that, without naming the author, Kevin was quoting the very same L.A. Times column by Dan Neil that I was praising yesterday. (Now I know why Cindi Scoppe happened to run across the Neil piece and bring it to my attention yesterday — she was doing her due diligence as an editor in checking Kevin’s source material, and recognized the piece as something I’d be interested in.)

The difference, of course, lies in the degrees to which Kevin and I considered the full text of the piece to which we referred. I was up-front with y’all about Neil’s arguments against hydrogen as a fuel source for cars. I didn’t blink at that at all. But I also emphasized the very positive things he said about Honda’s hydrogen car project, on my way to making some positive points about why hydrogen research is worthwhile.

Kevin, in standard S.C. Policy Council “if it involves the government spending money, it’s bad” style, cited ONLY the negative. Kevin’s a good guy, and he’s completely sincere about the things he says. But I ask you — given what I got out of the Neil piece and what Kevin got out of it — who has his eyes completely open? Who explored the full implications of the piece (which I again invite you to go read for yourself)?

I raise this point not to criticize Kevin, but to praise our state and community’s commitment to this research. From what I’ve seen and heard, the hydrogen researchers are very realistic about the limitations of H as a fuel source for cars from where we stand at this moment. But their eyes are open to what this research DOES offer South Carolina, Columbia and the nation.

A “garnet-red teardrop falling from the cheek of the future…”

Dan Neil won the Pulitzer in 2004 for his automotive column in the L.A. Times, and you can see why in his piece earlier this year about Honda’s hydrogen car, the FCX Clarity. A colleague shared it with me today, and I just had to share it with y’all — both in the interests of promoting talk about hydrogen and alternative fuels, and just to celebrate the words. A sample:

Perhaps obscured by questions of practicality and cost is the fact — and it is a fact — that the FCX Clarity is the most beautiful car to ever wear the big H on the nose. It’s just gorgeous, a big garnet-red teardrop falling from the cheek of the future, a sweet stanza of robot-written poetry.

You might be able to infer from that passage that Mr. Neil was essentially trashing the practicality of hydrogen elsewhere in his piece. His objections ranged from the general — the energy cost of producing hydrogen to start with — to the specific, which in this case involves pointing out that each one of these little beauties costs Honda $2 million to make. He reckons that a large part of Honda’s motivation is simply to reach California’s quota for emission-free cars sold by 2014.

But not entirely. As he acknowledges, Honda is learning some practical lessons from this exercise. Mr. Neil argues that the future is more likely to involve plug-in electrics (and I find that persuasive, which is why I’m anxious for Detroit to start mass-producing the affordable electrics it already knows how to make, and for clean nuclear plants to start popping up to power them). But Honda is learning a lot about how to better make those from making these:

The second reason Honda might have had for building the FCX Clarity: Nothing invested in this project goes to waste. The car’s state-of-the-art fuel cell can be amortized in Honda’s portable power generation division (the company makes awesome generators). And since a fuel-cell vehicle is essentially an electric vehicle with a hydrogen heart, all the technology — the glossy aerodynamics; the powerful, quiet and compact 100 kW (134 hp) electric motor; the new space-saving coaxial gearbox — can be rolled into future electric and plug-in electric projects.

And it has loads of interior space and a huge trunk.

Me, I’m all for efforts such as Honda’s, and if it takes a little utopian prodding from California to make it happen, then great. The Left Coast has gotta be good for something, right? What I generally hear from hydrogen experts is that automobiles are unlikely to be the most practical application, but they do dramatize the possibilities. And you learn from trying to build them.

Beyond that, I’m reminded of something I learned at Rotary Monday. Our speaker was the manager of the new Starbucks roasting plant in Sandy Run. He explained why Starbucks uses only arabica beans grown above 4,000 feet — such conditions make the plant work harder to grow and produce “cherries,” and that makes the coffee better.

The harder we push on hydrogen and every other promising source of power other than oil from countries run by tyrants, the better the result is going to be. So we need to keep pushing. In California, that means making “unreasonable, impractical” demands on automakers. (And maybe it will soon mean the same thing in Washington, with the gummint taking a big role in running Detroit.) And in South Carolina, it means continuing to push to be at the fore of hydrogen and alternative fuel research.

Just for fun, while we’re on the subject, here’s a link to one of my most popular videos ever, the one I shot in Five Points on St. Patrick’s Day 2007, the critically acclaimed “Who Resurrected the Electric Car?”

Who’s going to tell Al Gore?

I see in the Spartanburg paper that the “Father of the Internet” spoke to some students in the Upstate yesterday, and then I found to my surprise that his name is Leonard Kleinrock:

Speaking to the 18 students in Adriana Ahner’s Web page construction class — appropriately, via a 90-minute Webcast from his home in southern California, UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock spoke of how he overcame humble beginnings to eventually develop the mathematical theory of packet networks that became the foundation of Internet technology.

“I had a background of curiosity, independence and trying to make new things happen,” said Kleinrock, the son of Polish immigrants who was born and raised in New York City. “When I got to (Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a graduate student in the early 1960s), I decided not to follow the pack. I noticed that we were surrounded by computers that were full of information and interesting applications and capabilities and services, but they couldn’t talk to each other, and I figured that sooner or later that’s going to happen.”

Which makes me wonder — if this Kleinrock guy is the father of the Internet, then the Mother of the Internet needs to have a long talk with Al Gore.

Seriously, though, apparently the headline meant A father rather than THE father, because there were a number of guys involved in siring the ARPANet. Apparently, Mr. Kleinrock is actually the father (or a father) of packet switching, which I don’t really understand any more than I do the rest of how the Internet works; I just know it does.

But all this reminds me of the irony of the Internet — the most open, vulnerable (in a security sense) invention in the history of the world — starting as a defense thing. As we learned from the recent intel breach story regarding the Joint Strike Fighter, the LAST thing you want to put on the Internet is defense secrets. And yet, that’s now the whole thing started.

Stem cells and the Kulturkampf see-saw

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Here's a place for those of you who are so inclined to comment on the Obama administration's new policy on stem cells. That is to say, the latest tilt in the Kulturkampf see-saw. Republicans get in charge, it tilts one way. Democrats get in charge, it tilts the other. And so it continues, even in the "post-partisan" era.

I don't know what to say about it myself because … I don't know; I guess I haven't thought about it enough or something. The partisans seem REALLY sure of their sides, and personally, I don't know how they can be. But maybe it's something missing in me.

I suppose I was relatively comfortable with the Bush position because, near as I could tell, it was a compromise. But then, if I'm reading correctly, the Obama position is ALSO to some extent a compromise, because some restrictions will remain. And yet it is touted as a total reversal, which perhaps it is. I find it confusing.

It's not something we have a position on as an editorial board, because on these culture war things we are often genuinely conflicted. Many editorial boards are quick to sound off on these things because they are more ideologically homogeneous than we are. For us, it's not so simple, and we generally prefer to use up our political capital with each other struggling over the very difficult issues facing South Carolina, which are tough enough.

Anyway, if you read the editorials of most newspapers on the subject, you might think that there is no controversy at all, that the Obama position is of course the right and true one, and you need to be awfully backward to think otherwise — nothing short of a triumph of science over the forces of darkness. Some examples:

The New York Times: "We welcome President Obama’s decision to lift the Bush administration’s restrictions on federal financing for embryonic stem cell research. His move ends a long, bleak period in which the moral objections of religious conservatives were allowed to constrain the progress of a medically important science."
The Boston Globe: "We applaud President Obama's executive order reversing the ban on
federal stem-cell research, and the return of science unhobbled by
political or religious considerations." (Actually, that quote is not from the editorial itself, but from the blurb summarizing it online.)
The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Americans are understandably divided over President Obama's decision to lift restrictions on federal funding of human embryonic stem-cell research. But he took the course that promises the greater medical benefit. In reversing a funding ban imposed by President Bush, Obama yesterday also took a welcome step toward restoring the rightful place of scientific research in guiding public policy."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Federal funding is no guarantee that embryonic stem cell research will provide hoped-for cures to dreaded diseases like diabetes, let alone guarantee that any cures might come soon. But the executive order that Mr. Obama signed on Monday will clear away bureaucratic and procedural hurdles that have hampered that research. It provides an important new source of funding. Perhaps most important, it signals a new commitment to science ideals, free inquiry and open debate in American public policy."

The relatively "conservative" Chicago Tribune was more muted in its praise and even-handed in its presentation, but nevertheless expressed approval for the Obama move, saying the Bush policy had been too restrictive:

Sensible barriers to federal funding for cloning and the creation of embryos for research purposes remain in place. On Monday, Obama asked lawmakers to provide the support that will put the country at the forefront of vital stem cell research. It's now up to Congress to get behind the scientists. All Obama did was get out of their way.

And The Wall Street Journal? No editorial. But they did run an op-ed piece criticizing the new policy, headlined, "The President Politicizes Stem-Cell Research," with the subhead, "Taxpayers have a right to be left out of it."

That last point is one that one doesn't see emphasized enough, which is that this is not about whether research is allowed, but whether we the taxpayers will pay for it. And that's a legitimate conversation to have.

Another point that I would appreciate being updated on, and that seems to get ignored in the shouting matches, is the idea that the science has made the political argument moot, in terms of moving beyond the need for embryonic cells. That was the point made in this Krauthammer column a while back:

A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells.
Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful. The embryonic stem cell debate is over.

Was that wishful thinking on Krauthammer's part? Did that turn out to be a dead-end? Maybe some of you who follow the issue more closely than I do can point to something I should read to that effect.

Anyway, I'll be interested to see what Krauthammer says about it, if he addresses it. He has an interesting perspective for someone wearing the "conservative" stamp. First, to my knowledge he's not anti-abortion. Also, he is a physician by training, and he served on the Bush administration's Council on Bioethics, which HE maintains (and I'm sure some of you will disagree, although I just don't know) was…

… one of the most ideologically balanced bioethics commissions in the
history of this country. It consisted of scientists, ethicists,
theologians, philosophers, physicians — and others (James Q. Wilson,
Francis Fukuyama and me among them) of a secular bent not committed to
one school or the other.

Anyway, that ought to be enough fodder to get y'all started, if you want to discuss this.

Happy birthday, Abe and Chuck

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So, if you were invited to simultaneous birthday parties today, for Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, and the actual honorees would be there alive and participating in the celebration, which one would you go to?

Me, I'd pick Lincoln. They say he was a lot of fun at parties. Also, I look up to him and what he did more.
Nothing against Darwin, but I suspect that if he hadn't worked out natural selection, someone else would have. But if Lincoln hadn't been president, the union would have fallen apart — nobody else would have been as single-mindedly stubborn about holding it together. I mean, why do you think so many of my fellow South Carolinians are still ticked at him? And even though all of my ancestors that I know about fought for the opposite outcome (five great-great grandaddies that I know about), this Southern boy is glad that the U.S. of A. is still around. So it all worked out well in the end.

All of which reminds me that I need to get back to reading Obama's favorite, desert-island-must-have book, Team of Rivals. I've let myself get sidetracked with re-reading O'Brian, and reading Moby Dick for the first time, so I need to buckle down and get back to Goodwin.

As for Darwin, I thought I'd share this interesting piece that I saw in The New Republic, headlined "Charles Darwin, Conservative?"

Basically, it examines the great irony of modern politics, which is that conservatives tend to snub Darwin, even though his idea of order arising from nature without a guiding plan fits THEIR ideas about how society can produce civilization without guiding government.

Meanwhile, liberals who honor Darwin act as though they don't believe in that principle one bit, since they think you need a strong guiding hand of government to have order.

George Will made much the same point in his column that we ran Sunday, but I think the point is made more clearly in the TNR piece.

By the way, I side with the modern-day liberals on this point: I don't think you can have order without
government. Take away the guiding hand, and you get Somalia — warring militias running around firing AK-47s at everybody. But you know already that I thought that. I'm a rule-of-law guy.

As for the thing that everybody fights about over Darwin… Well, I'm a Catholic, and I hear the pope made peace with Darwin awhile back.

You know what I think about evolution, and natural selection? I think that is just exactly the way God would create the world. I don't see Him doing it like Cecil B. DeMille, six days and abracadabra, here's the world. I think He'd do it the slow, majestic, complicated way. Evolution seems just His style, to me. But what do I know?

(Now watch this: The controversial part of this post won't be the Darwin stuff; it'll be that I said nice things about Lincoln.)

It’s not a scientific fact that peas and carrots go well together

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For some time, I've gotten these regular e-mails called "Peas and Carrots Reports" from a South Carolina-oriented group called "Citizens for Sound Conservation." (Get it? Citizens for S.C.? I assume that's intentional.)

I've never had time really to look into what sort of group this is, or even read these reports, but I gather that it's one of those groups whose philosophy can be summed up as "Protecting the environment is great and all, but let's not get carried away." You know — we can have all the growth we want without really seriously hurting the environment. Which I don't necessarily disagree with, although I find that folks who start from that proposition generally drift more and more toward the growth, and farther and farther from the environmental protection.

No, what has vaguely bothered me about these reports is the "Peas and Carrots" part. It apparently arises from what I take to be the group's motto, "Because growth and protection go together — just like peas and carrots." The irritating thing about this to me is that I always thought the line was dumb when Forrest Gump said it, and I'm pretty sure it was meant to sound dumb, Mr. Gump being, you know, the way he was. Sort of an endearingly goofy thing to say. It was sort of meant to suggest that since peas and carrots were often packaged together and (I guess) his mama served them to him that way, he thought there was some sort of inherent connection. But there isn't, not really. Root vegetable and legume, green and orange — not a whole lot of similarities that I can see. And personally, I never thought they tasted good together. At best, an odd combo.

Anyway, that's about as far as my analysis of these reports had gone until the one I got today, which said the following (the boldfaced emphasis is mine):

Despite the near 24-7 coverage focusing on how cool President Obama is and how his wife has already become a fashion icon, there was a good bit of news on the environmental front. First, it’s becoming more and more apparent that Americans are skeptical of global warming – which means any state and federal policies being based upon that theory must be re-evaluated. Second, while the causes of climate change continue to be debated our dependence on fossil fuels remains strong. As such, support for more offshore exploration for oil and natural gas continues to grow. And last, the private sector continues to embrace and transition into a more green economy – but government doesn’t need to overstep its bounds. That’s the big question for 2009.

Come again? You say polls show that the propaganda campaign to cast doubt on global warming has gained some traction, so since more Americans doubt the science on this, we should change our policies?

Say what? Does that mean that if a majority of Americans comes to believe that the Earth is flat and you'll fall off if you go too far, the U.S. Navy should stay in the Western Hemisphere. (Yeah, some of our isolationists would love that, but it would still be nuts.)

I tend to get impatient with liberals who rant about how policies should be based in sound science and nothing else. Not that I've got anything against science, but because their real point is that our policies in no way should be based in deeply held values (specifically, religion-based values). Take that far enough, and you get eugenics or something equally horrible and "scientific." So when Obama said "We will restore science to its rightful place," I winced, because I know among Democrats that's code for "We'll do stem cell research whether you think it's morally right or not." That made it my second least-favorite part of a speech that on the whole I liked a lot.

But the idea that we should reverse policies meant to protect the Earth (not that we have many such policies to any serious extent) because a poll shows the average person doubts the science (never mind what the doubt is based in) is crazy.

Our republic is based in the notion that our elected representatives study issues and become more knowledgable about them than the average poll respondent. It too seldom works that way as things stand, with the ubiquity of polling and other pressures on elected officials to do the popular thing whether it's the right thing or not. This takes it to an absurd degree.

As to the larger point: Doubt is cast on global warming by people who simply do not want to do what it would take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I have gathered that they would not want to do it whatever the science is, and therefore they have resolved not to believe the science, and to cling to anything that might cast doubt on it.

I have a very different attitude: The way I look at it, even if there were only a 10 percent chance that our emissions were causing global warming, and that that was a bad thing, I say why the hell not reduce our emissions — especially since there are so many other good reasons (such as our strategic position in the world) to burn less gasoline, and to move past coal to nuclear, and all that other good Energy Party stuff.

And yeah, the fact that it MIGHT help the planet is an additional reason to do things that ought to be common sense.

Here's the thing — I'm pretty much open to any good argument. And I'm concerned enough about economic development that I still haven't made my mind up about that new coal-fired plant proposed for the Pee Dee.

What IS that heavenly body?

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Any astronomers out there, amateur or otherwise? I feel really stupid asking this question — in earlier centuries, any educated person would have known the answer to this, but in our light-polluted modern era, we take too little note of the heavens — but I'm going to ask it anyway. After all, the valedictorian of my high school class used to ask the stupidest questions I ever heard — our physics teacher's jaw would actually drop with incredulity — but those of us who were too cool to ask dumb questions didn't get to be valedictorian. (My wife says her class valedictorian, her friend Mary, was the same way. And look at her today; she has a giant flat-screen HDTV and I don't.)

Where was I? Oh yes — what in the 'verse is that superbig, superbright, object in the sky at about 30 degrees elevation, a little south of west as of 8 p.m. Eastern? Is it Mars? Venus? Some other planet, that has just wandered closer than usual? (I'm thinking Mars, because it seems to have a bit more of an orangish cast than the other, far less bright, stars and planets.)

It's the biggest, brightest thing I can ever remember seeing in the sky aside from the sun and moon.

Who can tell me what it is?

Make that TWO pings, Vasily…

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You probably saw that the Supreme Court sided with the U.S. Navy against the whales off Southern California. While I don’t have all that much to say about it, I thought it would be of interest to some of y’all to discuss the ruling here.

Whales are great, but I thought what Chief Justice John Roberts wrote made sense:

“The lower courts failed properly to defer to senior Navy officers’ specific, predictive judgments,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., joined by four other justices, wrote for the court in the first decision of the term.

For the environmental groups that sought to limit the exercises, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “the most serious possible injury would be harm to an unknown number of marine mammals that they study and observe.” By contrast, he continued, “forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained antisubmarine force jeopardizes the safety of the fleet.”

Contrasting with that snappy salute to the brass, Justices Ginsburg and Souter luridly dissented:

“Sonar is linked to mass strandings of marine mammals, hemorrhaging
around the brain and ears” and acute effects on the central nervous
system as well as “lesions in vital organs,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.

And
though the Navy has said it can find no previous documented case of
sonar-related injury to a marine mammal in such exercises, Justice
Ginsburg said the service had predicted that a current set of exercises
off the California coast would cause lasting injuries to hundreds of
beaked whales, along with vast behavioral disturbances to whales,
dolphins and sea lions.

The majority was overturning a ruling by the — you guessed it — Ninth Circuit.

And yes, that headline is a reference to Tom Clancy, who, were he an appeals judge, would be more of the Fourth Circuit variety.

Sonar2

I forgot my hat, which shows I have an efficient brain

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Over the weekend I finally got a long, long-overdue haircut, consequently causing me to think several times on Monday, "My head is cold."

So this morning I put on my fedora that I usually only wear with an overcoat (not cold enough for that yet, of course), and that made me more comfortable — until I went downtown for breakfast, and put it in the cloakroom at the Cap City Room. Where it remains. So now I’m going around with hat head, and no protection from the chill breezes that will be blowing when I leave work tonight.

But that’s just a tribute to my wonderfully efficient brain, according to this piece in the WSJ, which I ran across while fetching a link for an earlier post:

Neuroscientists say forgetting is crucial to the efficient
functioning of the mind, to learning, adapting and recalling more
significant things.

"We focus so much on memory that forgetting has been maligned," says
Gayatri Devi, a neuro-psychiatrist and memory expert in New York City.
"But if you didn’t forget, you’d recall all kinds of extraneous
information from your life that would drown you in a sea of
inefficiency."

So I have an efficient brain — inside my cold hat head.

Since when do stem cells top the agenda?

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So Obama’s hitting the ground running — jawboning Bush about Detroit, and so on — and that’s a good thing. Actually, he’s running BEFORE he hits the ground, which doesn’t happen until Jan. 20, but that’s good too. The nation needs leadership in a time of economic trouble, and it hasn’t had any lately.

Team Obama is also turning to some other priorities, such as shutting down Guantanamo (which, if and when it happens, will likely be cheered by John McCain as well — even if he may quibble over what happens with regard to trying the prisoners), and signaling that it is NOT going to dismantle our intelligence apparatus (much to the consternation of Obama’s base). All to the good, and all appropriate.

But one thing that the new team is signaling as a priority puzzles me. I first ran across it in the WSJ‘s weekend interview piece with Rahm Emanuel. Headlined with the quote, "Do What You Got Elected to Do," it looked at first as though it would make eminent good sense, invoking such themes as, "Barack Obama’s message of change and Bush and the Republicans’ record of incompetence." Fine. But then I got to this:

Asked what Barack Obama was elected to do, and what legislation he’s
likely to find on his Oval Office desk soonest, Mr. Emanuel didn’t
hesitate. "Bucket one would have children’s health care, Schip," he
said. "It has bipartisan agreement in the House and Senate. It’s
something President-elect Obama expects to see. Second would be [ending
current restrictions on federally funded] stem-cell research. And third
would be an economic recovery package focused on the two principles of
job creation and tax relief for middle-class families."

At this point, I got whiplash. Say what? Hey, I’m all for Schip and all that — for starters (it doesn’t get us to a National Health Plan, but it’s something). But I don’t recall it being, specifically, a main topic in the election. But let it pass; it fits under the umbrella of a topic Obama DID talk a lot about.

But stem-cell research? You’re kidding me, right? An issue from the very heart of the Culture Wars, the second priority of the new president? In what universe, other than that occupied by the NARALs on one side and the Right to Life lobby on the other?

Why would this supposedly pragmatic, triangulating new chief of staff choose such a pointlessly divisive cultural issue as Priority Two for a president who so famously wants to end divisiveness in the country? Does he want to make the biggest mistake since Bill Clinton, after winning as a Third Way Democrat, both lifted regulatory restrictions on abortion and tried to eliminate the barrier to gays in the military in his first days in office?

Obama making stem cells a top priority would be like … I don’t know… like a Republican getting elected and announcing that one of the first things he’ll do is intervene in something like the Terri Schiavo case. One can quibble all day about the efficacy of different approaches to research in this field — but lifting the very narrow restriction that exists on federal funding of this activity (not on whether the research will take place, but on whether we the taxpayers will pay for it) is all about bragging rights in the Culture War. It’s a big deal to the left to lift the restrictions and a big deal to the right to keep them in place, but it doesn’t bear much on the price of fish for the rest of us. In fact, the technology may be on the way to making the political argument moot.

At first I attributed this to some sort of misunderstanding. After all, this interview was conducted on the fly, in an airport, before Mr. Emanuel had even been officially offered the post of chief of staff. And it WAS couched in terms of what Obama’s "likely to find on his … desk soonest" from Congress, which is different from what his own priorities might be.

But then I started seeing other references to this Kulturkampf issue, references that indicated this would be a priority for the new administration. And I had to wonder why. Is this a sop Obama would throw to his base so they get off his back on intelligence matters? Maybe. And maybe it’s just some partisans on his transition team getting carried away with themselves.

But it gave me pause.

Obamarun2

Photos I did NOT use with ‘Palin and sexual attraction’ column

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Being a responsible editor and all, I resisted the temptation to choose any of these pictures when I was looking for art to go with Kathleen Parker’s column on the theory that McCain picked Palin because… well, because guys can’t think straight in the presence of a good-looking woman.

An excerpt from the column in question:

As my husband observed early on,
McCain the mortal couldn’t mind having an attractive woman all but singing arias to his greatness. Cameras frequently capture McCain beaming like a gold-starred schoolboy while Palin tells crowds that he is “exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief.” This, notes Draper, “seemed to confer not only valor but virility on a 72-year-old politician who only weeks ago barely registered with the party faithful.”

It is entirely possible that no one could have beaten the political force known as Barack Obama — under any circumstances. And though it isn’t over yet, it seems clear that McCain made a tragic, if familiar, error under that sycamore tree. Will he join the pantheon of men who, intoxicated by a woman’s power, made the wrong call?

Had Antony not fallen for Cleopatra, Octavian might not have captured the Roman Empire. Had Bill resisted Monica, Al Gore may have become president and Hillary might be today’s Democratic nominee.

Palinsex3 But they didn’t — resist those women, that is. Guys seldom do. Certain things make us stupid, and
Kathleen maintains this was one of those things.

Hey, but at least I resisted using these pictures, right? That shows that there’s still such a thing as decorum in a family newspaper.

Of course, I did save them, to share with y’all. Don’t tell the ladies, though, guys…

Palinsex4

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