Discovery News

This week's conference in Rome on Darwin and evolution, nominally sponsored by the Gregorian University and Notre Dame "under the High Patronage of the Pontifical Council on Culture," has a public relations budget to promote some conclusions that would seem to vary from the positions of Pope Benedict. The Council on Culture has little or no funding of its own for such science conferences and has had to accept non-Vatican funding--and the guidance and other strings that go with it.

Intelligent design scientists not only are not present, as a consequence, but their views were misrepresented and trashed ahead of time by the conference organizers. Instead, alongside some rather interesting speakers, you will hear a parade of atheists, agnostics and theistic evolutionists whose common theme is that intelligent design is not science, not theology, nothing at all, really--merely a reactionary sociological phenomenon, a "Protestant" idea, as one source opined recently. This last will be news to the likes of biochemist Michael Behe, biologist Dean Kenyon and neuroscientist Michael Egnor. Such faithful, church-going Catholics "never got the memo," it seems.

But who sent the memo?

Certainly not Pope Benedict XVI. Easily obtained at dozens of kiosks around Vatican City are holy cards with the message from the Holy Father's very first homily as pope: "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution," it says. "Each of us is the result of a thought of God."

Later in 2005, Pope Benedict greeted one of his Wednesday audiences with a statement affirming our Earth as "this intelligent project of the Cosmos." (It was also translated as "this intelligent design of the Cosmos.") At the famous Castel Gandolfo meeting with his former theology students in 2006, the pope said that "...(T)he theory of evolution is still not a complete, scientifically verified theory."

Given the outstanding lectures on Creation and the Fall that he gave in Munich--printed in English as "In the Beginning..."not support some version of intelligent design. Of course, to define intelligent design accurately, you really ought to let scientists who support it explain it.

In contrast, brought together to attack ID this week are a number of experts in the erection of straw man arguments--and whose own, seldom inspected theological presuppositions are heterodox, to say the least. It shouldn't matter, of course, what they think about religion. But if it doesn't matter, as the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus of First Things asked last fall when he read about the conference plan, why hold the conference down the way from St. Peter's?

In the December First Things Fr. Neuhaus noted the organizers' statement that "proponents of 'creationism and intelligent design' will not be invited."

"The lumping together of creationism and intelligent design is telling," he continued. "They are quite distinct enterprises; the former is typically in defense of a literal reading of Genesis while the latter is a scientifically based theory of purpose or teleology in natural development."

In other words, the conference, Neuhaus went on to observe, will exclude "scientists who, on the basis of scientific evidence, contend, as the Catholic Church contends, for design and purpose in nature. The organizers seem to think they are being even-handed, but it is all quite confusing. One would not like to think that the purpose of the March conference is to secure for the Catholic Church a clean bill of health from (those) who condemn any deviation from scientistic ideology as anti-intellectualism."

Very droll and very correct.

The conference this week takes place in Rome, but it actually is a rally of the organizers, by the organizers and for the organizers. It will reflect their views, not the Vatican's. The issue of evolution and design is still very much alive in the Catholic Church, just as it is--if truth be known--in science.

Ted Van Dyk, a commentator with deep roots in the Democratic Party, is the latest to start tapping his fingers on the table: When is the Obama Administration going to realize that its fiscal program is bad medicine?

The economy may recover despite these policies, but it is not going to get better because of them, and it may get a lot worse. It is getting worse.

BY MIKE WUSSOW
You don’t have to be a rail expert or even a student of transportation to know that wholesale reform of America’s so-called passenger rail system is years overdue. The popular face of that system--the pseudo public-private entity that is Amtrak--now is approaching four decades of mismanagement and poor performance. Although ridership has been on the upswing for most of the last several years (it’s down now in part because of the economy), its growth trend still compares unfavorably with other transportation modes, especially airlines. Amtrak carries about 25 million passengers each year, not much more than the 21 million it did at the close of its first decade in 1979. On the other hand, during the same time period, airlines grew their numbers nearly five-fold, from 170 million passengers to close to 800 million.

The politics of rail is complicated, convoluted and not very pleasant. Into a political stew, it mixes entrenched freight and passenger interests, powerful committee chairmen in Congress and labor interests. Add side orders of inexact dictates and expectations from the beginning of Amtrak’s charter in 1971, congressional infighting, and competition from air and road vehicle travel. Even the heartiest soul might get a case of heartburn. It's no wonder that America can’t pull itself away from the dysfunctional rail table to create a real system that works to ease the nation's overall travel strains, reduces pollution and oil dependency and is moderately sustainable.

Enter President Barack Obama, the first president in decades whom rail advocates think actually cares about the issue enough to do something about it. (His decision to ride into Washington for his inaugural on a train from Philadelphia was quaint political theater, but it actually pointed out something more. One reason he probably didn’t ride with his family all the way from Chicago is because the rail system is too slow and the connections too unreliable.)

Mr. Obama supposedly knows about all this. So, too, does Vice President Biden, who has been riding the rails as a high profile commuter--from Wilmington to Washington--for decades.

On the campaign trail, President Obama spoke of investing in infrastructure, including rail. Using his gift for rhetoric, he made believers of rail advocates. And last month, as part of the $787 billion economic recovery package, $8 billion was put toward high-speed and intercity passenger rail. There are a few more billion slated for subsequent years. And in his 2010 budget proposal, President Obama has penciled in another $5 billion. Even in Washington and even amidst the biggest collective bailout this country has ever seen, that seems like real money.

But it is not all that much, really. The transportation elements in the stimulus bill are far less than states and localities expected, and it is doubtful whether there is enough there for rail--yet--to bring about a thriving passenger rail system in our lifetime. It would behoove the Administration to try to do a little reprogramming now to get this project on track.

It is precisely because of the tough economic situation that--maybe the first and last time--a modern American president has the opportunity to recreate a national passenger rail system. But to create a real system—one that connects the entire country and its municipalities, not just a handful of corridors pocketed in several continental corners—requires thinking much differently about how to invest in the "green" change the president says he believes in. Ironically, it is on such an initiative that he would be able to get some of the bi-partisan support he always talks about.

Rail advocates are probably not going to pressure him about this, however. They have gotten into the habit of thinking small. They spend years advocating simply for an additional line in one corridor or another, when they are not trying to stop further reductions in service. You can’t really blame them—that’s what they’ve known.

And what is now known of President Obama’s plan for rail money seems to enable that mentality by focusing on a few corridors in the country. By its design, that process doesn’t elevate discourse on national rail to a “national” challenge. It Balkanizes it instead.

But instead of thinking in terms of corridors that benefit only those regions savvy enough to scrounge for the money, President Obama should use the presidency and create a new approach and a new system.

That system should be dramatically ambitious, seeking to make a true increase in the amount of passenger trips that proceed by rail. In terms of development, it should draw lessons from the European model, especially the lesson that state-owned railroads cost too much and can’t keep up with the marketplace in carrying passengers and freight.

Because of inefficiencies in its state-owned systems, the European Union in the early 1990s set in motion a radical restructuring, separating infrastructure from operations, separating the passenger business from the freight business, and introducing competition to bring the private sector’s initiative, efficiency and bottom-line discipline costly rail operations. The results have been impressive and positive. Great Britain, for example, reorganized its national monopoly, British Rail, into a successful hybrid public-private rail operations that even labor unions favor. Government support now goes mostly into improvements in infrastructure managed by a not-for-profit government-chartered corporation.

The point? To change America’s system will require a radical restructuring, a new perspective, and political leadership unafraid of traditionally entrenched rail interests, of which there are plenty. (A larger program ultimately will bring them around.)

I regret to say too that it’ll require greater government investment up front. Except for national defense and foreign policy, I tend to look suspiciously at the federal government throwing money at problems; we live in the United States of America—not the United State of America. But another exception is transportation. A real national passenger and intercity rail system is like the interstate highway system, a valid public purpose. It will require a national perspective and federal money strategically invested not just regionally along certain corridors but nationally. It requires what the president's current strategy doesn’t yet provide.

The President still has a chance on this. He can set into action a transportation improvement long overdue, and one that helps address congestion, environmental concerns, business and commerce. Let’s hope that the economic challenges creating this opportunity never come again. If the President wants a transportation legacy, this could be it. Politics or not, it could be a change we could all believe in.

"Do you know who funded it?" asked the email from the AP reporter. She and a number of other people read my post from three days ago about the Darwin conference being held in Rome.

I took a deep breath and replied to the AP email, "Yes, I know who funded it." It was the Templeton Foundation.

I took a deep breath because Templeton is a powerful and well-connected. You don't want to cross Charles Harper of Templeton if you can help it. But in public and private Harper has attacked intelligent design and Discovery Institute. He is not just interested in discussion, but in molding the discussion in certain ways. To that end, Templeton funds go to many groups and individual writers who, perhaps coincidentally, could have an interest in how the Darwin versus design issue is discussed.

Here is today's AP story. Among other things, in my email last night to Nicole Winfield of the AP, I pointed out the following:

• The Pontifical Council on Culture has little money of its own for science programs. The staff explained this to me and so, too, did others in the Vatican. How much money Templeton is providing has not yet been reported anywhere.
  
• What you have in Rome right now is largely a Templeton-directed conference. There are many fine speakers. But not only were funds put up by the Templeton Foundation, but leading organizers and speakers and their organizations separately are recipients of Templeton grants. There's nothing wrong with that, but perhaps it does help explain the animus toward Darwin critics and ID supporters.

• At a June, 2007 meeting in the science office of the Council on Culture, Fr. Tomasz Tramfe acknowledged to me that there was a problem with inviting scientists who openly doubt Darwin and support intelligent design. When I asked further, he somewhat reluctantly advised me that the prohibition on scientists who support intelligent design came from the foundation that provided the funds, and he then acknowledged that that was the Templeton Foundation.
  
• As one official elsewhere quipped to me at the time, when it comes to conferences like these in Rome, "He who pays the piper calls the tune." Holding such a conference at the Vatican, however, doesn't commit the pope or the Church to the organizers' views.
  
• Templeton has done this sort of thing before, so I wasn't completely shocked. Still I was disappointed. The late Sir John Templeton accomplished much good and his foundation has been a positive force on other subjects, such as economics. My Discovery Institute colleague, George Gilder, was a speaker at a dinner honoring Sir John a few years ago. A couple of Discovery scientists once did get grants from Templeton Foundation.
  
• Therefore, I thought maybe we could talk to them about this conference. Last year I called another Templeton official I know slightly, who checked and told me that it was not the foundation's decision to exclude scientists who support intelligent design. But when I again talked (by phone) with Fr. Tramfe, he confirmed that, indeed, it was Templeton.
  
• I had even provided Fr. Tramfe with a list of scientists — many of them who happen to be orthodox Catholics — who would have been appropriate to invite. I understand that some of those scientists, such as Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, are being criticized at this conference, and, of course, they are unable to defend themselves.
  
• It is Templeton and its "advisors" (such as Francisco Ayala) who have the position that ID is not science and not theology.
  
• Ironically, Templeton itself is steeped in its own religious views and perspectives. I don't think the Catholic Church would embrace some of those views.
  
• It is surely another irony this week that some of those present who hold official advisory posts with Templeton and seem to be trying to pressure the Catholic Church — such as Dr. Ayala — are elsewhere prominently at odds with Catholic positions on social issues.
  
• This week's conference in Rome apparently is doing a good job of explaining how the Templeton Foundation, its grantees and chosen allies regard science. Some of the speeches undoubtedly are sturdy and sound. However, as I have been assured elsewhere, this conference should not be confused with the position of the Pope or of the Church as a whole, where evolution and design remain in serious and fruitful dialogue.

Fox runs a revised story from AP headlined "Creationists Blast Vatican...." The new lede changes the meaning (someone up there--in Rewrite--doesn't like us) and makes this out to be a story about "creationists" and has the target "the Vatican". The origin was my statement responding to the AP reporter about the role the Templeton Foundation had in shaping the conference and keeping out intelligent design scientists.

Here you have a conference set up largely to attack intelligent design, and that denies its targets the chance to defend themselves. The funder has called the shots. I point out that this represents Templeton policy.

I am not a creationist. i quoted Pope Benedict XVI extensively and positively.

So how have "Creationists Blasted the Vatican"?

When the president said he thought that the collapsing stock market now offers some potentially good buying opportunities, I could only think of that 1932, Depression Era song by Irving Berlin, inspired by the then-president's assurance that "Prosperity is just around the corner" --as he raised taxes on investors.
(Taken from International Lyrics Playground site.)

LET'S HAVE ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE

Just around the corner,
There's a rainbow in the sky,
So let's have another cup of coffee,
And let's have another piece of pie.

Trouble's like a bubble,
And the clouds will soon roll by,
So let's have another cup of coffee,
And let's have another piece of pie.

Mr. Herbert Hoover
Says that now's the time to buy,
So let's have another cup of coffee,
And let's have another piece of pie!

=====

"How's Tricks?" For more Depression Chic to help you smile through the gloom, see my January 15 post, "Things are Tough all Over" (in Archives, see right hand column).

Business people and foundations should be supporting efforts to teach young people the facts of economic life. Instead, most capitalists' educational charities over time devolve into sentimentalism and showboating. The schools certainly don't help, including the universities. As a result, very few young people understand anything of macro-economics (or micro-economics, for that matter).

Anne Neals' piece in the DC Examiner is worth examining.

Dr. Medved, Seattle, 2008

David Medved, RIP

By David Klinghoffer

Whether in science, politics, or religion, one of the qualities most lacking in modern culture is breadth of vision. This is the gift of being able to see and express the whole, not merely a part. In the fields of thought and endeavor that matter most, too many of our leading figures are caught up and blinded by the narrow view of their little area of interest. Such narrowness breeds timidity and a suffocating orthodoxy.

All too painfully, we were reminded of this with the passing of our friend Dr. David Medved, a model of broadmindedness, in Jerusalem this past Tuesday. He was 83 and, last time we saw him, admirably vigorous in mind and body. Scientist, entrepreneur, and man of faith, father of radio host and Discovery Institute senior fellow Michael Medved, who is no less a dear friend, Dr. Medved was an amazing gentleman.

Accompanied by Michael and his Michael’s wife Diane, David visited our Seattle offices last May to speak about his recent book, Hidden Light: Science Secrets of the Bible. A particular moment in his lecture seemed to crystallize much of what made him so special. There he was, tall and lean, standing in front of a huge map of the universe, displayed on the wall by a projector at the back of the room -- the famous WMAP picture of the cosmic microwave background radiation. What could be a more appropriate image, symbolizing breadth of thought?

DI president Bruce Chapman was standing to one side and gestured with a pointer to a spot in the upper left hand corner, noting dryly, “Seattle is right here.” Dr. Medved smiled indulgently and carried on, mapping his own vision of the oneness of Biblical and scientific wisdom, hints of which he found scattered through the Hebrew Scriptures. You didn’t have to agree with every detail of his interpretation to appreciate the major thrust of his perspective on the world.

That perspective was, in the words of the central Jewish prayer Sh’mah, that “the Lord is our God, the Lord is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4).
That kind of vision, increasingly rare today, is just part of what made David so unusual and so valuable. More personally, he was an exceptionally warm and charming man. A hero to his four sons -- Michael, Jonathan, Benjamin, and Harry -- he reminded other, younger fathers of the way we should hope to be regarded by our own sons and daughters some day.

He was a most kind and generous friend to the Discovery Institute. On trips to Israel, where he lived and worked, groups of DI-affiliated visitors David was our tireless guide, councilor, and chaperone. He seemed to know absolutely everyone, by whom he was held, without exception, in high and affectionate esteem.

David was, finally, an Orthodox Jew. From his viewpoint now in the supernal world, the Garden of Eden, he would no doubt be gratified if those he left behind would, according to Jewish custom, bless God in his merit with the brief prayer Baruch Dayan Ha’Emes, said upon hearing the news of a loved one’s death: “Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the universe, the true Judge.” May his family be comforted.

David Medved and The Israel Test

By Bruce Chapman

Friendships that suddenly arise late in a man’s life; what an unexpected blessing for all concerned! Such were the friendships that David Medved developed with George Gilder, me and several of the rest of us at Discovery Institute in recent years. A physicist, an inventor, a businessman, he was an early signer of the list of scientists who Dissent from Darwin, and that is how his name first came up here. But then we started learning about so many other facets of David’s remarkable personality and career. A resident of Israel, he described the best part of his daily routine as the prayers he he would offer on his terrace overlooking old Jerusalem as the morning sun broke through. That is the mental image of David I will always cherish.

David will also be recalled on the pages of George Gilder’s new book, The Israel Test, that appears later this spring. David truly helped inspire and foster it by his devoted sponsorship of George in Israel, by his descriptions of his life in science, technology and business, and especially by the example of his own aliyah—his personal rediscovery of Israel and its significance for the modern world. The memory of his generous smile brings a smile to me now, and my own prayer of gratitude.

The 1930s saw the beginnings of some of the worst violations of human rights in history, largely because the United States, Britain and France were distracted by economic problems.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, even though times were good, the evil of human trafficking--modern slavery--was under-reported and Western response was minimal. Now, as the economy preoccupies the new Administration, including the new Secretary of State--who barely mentioned the issue of human rights when she visited China recently--a few grim stories are coming out. Some are from China.

The Bobbi McCallum Fountain

Today's editorial in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ("Too Many Posers") assails the majority Democrats in the Washington State Legislature for not following through on their promise to adopt green "cap and trade" legislation. It would have been much better for them to respond to the recession by commiting political suicide, apparently.

It was a perfectly pitched swan song for the unfailingly liberal voice of Seattle's rainy, gritty (sometimes faux gritty) Left Coast culture. Tomorrow the 146 year old news organization ceases paper publication and goes solely online. I will miss the paper. http://www.seattlepi.com/business/403793_piclosure17.html

I don't want to belabor the failure of the paper to include more right wing commentary over the years, not to mention the failure to cover news that conservatives regard as important. But it is fair criticism. There may not be more than about a quarter of Seattle area readers who are right of center, but writing them off would seem to have been a publishing mistake. As is, I suspect that conservatives are giving up big city newspapers faster than anyone.

Likewise, as the downward trend of revenues reduced formerly standard features, business coverage was an especially unfortunate loss. Once the high end business reader decamps to, say, the Puget Sound Business Journal, the relevance of a metro daily declines in the minds of the very people an advertising salesman needs to reach. Or so it seems to me.

Regardless, let's be fair: a lack of balance didn't kill The P.I., and the decline of business coverage was more a symptom than a cause of collapse. Surely the Internet turned out to more deadly a foe than imagined. The cost of newsprint, meanwhile, rose high enough to absorb the entire expense that the subscriber pays, and more. And maybe, just maybe, our post-modern schools are producing readers with very short attention spans and relatively small understanding of how society actually works. You can't interest someone in the failure of the Legislature to pass cap and trade (to use today's editorial as an example) if they barely know what a Legislature does.

Resolute newspaper reader that I remain, and one-time editorial writer (New York Herald-Tribune in 1965-66, during my tender youth and the paper's final agonies) it is sad to witness this loss. As has been said before, while its product is almost always forgotten in a few hours, a great city newspaper is somehow a living creature. In a proper history of our era you would have a newspaper's account of what people at a certain time thought was important, but you also would have the paper's own role in those events, and behind that the people doing the writing, making the policy decisions (what's newsworthy, what's not, what's adequately sourced, what is hearsay). Someone realistic might even find some time to recall the poor souls in advertising and circulation who tried to make the money that allowed the paper to continue. Someone truly magnanimous might find some sympathy for the "suits" of management.

For myself this afternoon, considering the P.I., I recollect the roles the paper played in such seminal events as the Century 21 World's Fair that restored Seattle's Progressive Era ambitions, and the Forward Thrust bond issues whose enactment saw the city through the "Boeing Recession" of 1970-'72. The paper was criticized as a "booster" in those days, which criticism it usually ignored and which it always should have ignored. A newspaper that wants community support needs to support the community.

The P.I. was politically daring, in any case, often the chip-on-the-shoulder guy, the underdog. I think back, usually in rueful fondness, to a parade of political campaigns. The paper helped create Governor Dixy Lee Ray and then helped bring her down. Earlier its exposé of scandal in the Seattle Police Department contributed to the electoral defeat of County Prosecutor Charles O. Carroll and his replacement by the young, reform-minded Christopher Bayley. The comparable changeover in the City Council during the 1970s, led by C.H.E.C.C. ("Choose an Effective City Council"), also bore second hand finger prints from enthusiastic P.I. editors. That being true, the P.I. (and The Times) also can be said to have helped forge the changes that made Seattle one of the nation's "most livable cities."

I am recalling the bright young reporter of the 60s, Bobbi McCallum, who (it occurs to me now) was one of the trailblazers for female journalists. (May I also recall that she was lovely and fun?) Memory summons, too, the idealistic suburban mom, Ruth Howell, who worked her way into a great career as the P.I.'s devoted and provocative editorial page editor in the early '70s. Both these fine women were writing almost to the time they died, which adds a sharp poignance to their personal stories.

The roster of writers and editors is a bit painful to recall generally, because a number became friends. There was a time when, along with everyone else, my breakfast always included the droll gossip and wry opinions of the late Emmett Watson. Maybe in my time I even sent him a few items?

Other P.I. writers of note are still around. Shelby Scates, the Tennessee-born, corruption-scenting hound dog of the Legislature--who retired to write about some of the remarkable figures with whom his career intersected, such as Warren Magnuson and (an example of Scates' national reach), Maurice Rosenblatt. The latter, Scates explained, not only pioneered what became the modern political action committee (the Committee for a More Effective Congress), but also was an under-appreciated force in the anti-McCarthy movement. Committed reporter/columnists sniff out such unusual characters and stories and make journalism into history.

I could mention the conscientious, thoroughly professional Charles Dunsire, whom I met when he was covering the City Council and then again when he was editorial page editor in the early '90s. Chuck gave me a weekly column and defended it, even though it often surely grated on some of his colleagues. (His successor told me I would have to stop attacking scientific materialism, so I quit.)

Now, of course, you have Joel Connelly, columnist and former political reporter, who has been a scourge of Republicans for so long that some have developed a secret affection for him. Mere nodding notice from this redoubtable liberal is like a bouquet of roses from John Carlson (of KVI talk radio). For his part, Connelly can count on a number of legislative initiatives that were inched along their way over the decades by his advocacy at the P.I.--the North Cascades National Park comes to mind as one monument.

The sports reporter/philosopher Art Thiel, the ace business and technology writer Bill Virgin, the brilliant, and, of course, unfair, David Horsey, nationally admired editorial cartoonist--the roster goes on. It is going to be hard for them and others to turn the page. I know what closing a paper is like--saying goodbye to people like that. It's awful.

For what seems like decades I have sent op-ed drafts to Kimberly Mills, but truth is, it's been years since we actually have seen one another. I hope all good things happen to her, Mark Trahant and to all the other serious and talented people at The P.I.

A person's death often ends with an obit in the papers. In the case of a newspaper, it seems almost an afterthought that someone should have been celebrating the 146 years of The P.I before the end came. Love it, hate it, it's a real story.

When Bobbi McCallum died her friends commissioned a statue and fountain by the renowned sculptor, George Tsutakawa. It has welcomed visitors to the entrance of The P.I. at the old headquarters as well as the new. I wonder where it is going now.

When the president said that science would be respected again in the Obama Administration he obviously invited people to test that pledge. This same president promised to develop renewable energy sources.

Well, what about nuclear energy, one of most carefully tested technologies available to us to fight pollution and the tyranny of foreign oil? Josh Gilder of the White House Writers Group writes about it thus in The New York Post. (This is one of those gravely consequential developments that will cost America plenty, but in the midst of the histrionics over matters like the AIG bailout are lost to most news followers.)

Nixing Nuke Power
by Joshua Gilder
"New York Post" (Published 03/13/2009

When it comes to nuclear energy, settled science appears to count for little with the new Obama administration. This week, ostensibly "pro-nuclear" Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced the administration's decision to kill the nuclear-waste-storage site at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert.

Chu said we need to take a "fresh look" and that "we can do a better job." Good luck. The Yucca site had been studied for more than 20 years, undergoing $9.5 billion of tests by some 2,500 of the nation's leading scientists.

They gave the Yucca project a green light, for obvious reasons. Yucca Mountain is in an isolated desert region with ideal meteorological conditions for a nuclear-storage project. If we can't dispose of our nuclear waste there, we can't dispose of it anywhere, and we will never be able to build a new nuclear-power plant in America again.

So much hysteria has been generated on the subject of nuclear waste and radiation in general that it's worth taking a moment to put Yucca's supposed risks into perspective.

Those billions of dollars of studies determined that 10,000 years from now the greatest annual radiation dose near Yucca Mountain as a result of deteriorating storage canisters would be 0.24 millirem. In a million years, it might get up to .9 millirem. Yet normal cosmic radiation delivers a dose of 26 millirems a year at sea level. If you moved from Manhattan to Denver, you'd be about doubling that.

In other words, the residents of Denver (who, except when the Broncos win the Super Bowl, have never been known to sport two heads) are all getting more than 52 times the dosage of radiation that inhabitants of the Armagosa desert valley (which lies below Yucca) might get a million years from now.

Transportation isn't a problem, either. As Ted Rockwell (who helped build the first nuclear sub and commercial nuclear power plant) once said to me, you'd have to use a shaped charge to blow a hole in the canisters they ship the waste in, then stand next to it taking no precautions, for there to be any significant danger.

Energy Secretary Chu - a Nobel Prize winner and former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab - must know that Yucca is safe. What he may not understand is that his success or failure as energy secretary will be largely determined by his ability to find adequate energy sources for our economy's future growth - and he just appears to have cut off his one viable option.

There is plenty of carbon-based energy lying around, of course. But these sources are anathema to the global-warming worriers, and the Obama administration intends to impose a massive tax on their production and use.

And, though we hear endlessly about "alternative" or "green" energy, its boosters never mention that, despite massive subsidies, solar and wind today provide about one half of 1 percent of our nation's energy consumption. You could cover the nation over with windmills and solar panels (and then listen to the enviros scream about the destruction of habitat that entails) and still barely make a dent in our energy needs. Meanwhile, we are dismantling our dams and lessening our hydroelectric capacity.

Where are we going to get the power, all from biofuels? Every plausible national energy policy includes building many more nuclear plants.

Recycling nuclear waste is part of the solution, but we'll still need Yucca to store the waste byproducts. In the meantime, all that nuclear waste is sitting around in shallow pools or in above-ground containers next to nuclear-power plants in some of the most populated locations in the United States.

Chu said in congressional testimony that this is perfectly safe for now, and he's probably right. But it does beg the question why a theoretical danger a million years in the future - way out in the desert near where we once tested nuclear bombs - should be allowed to imperil our nation's energy future.

Is ignoring nuclear science what President Obama really meant by his inaugural pledge, "We will restore science to its rightful place"?

The salmon-colored Financial Times seemed for a while like a potential rival for The Wall Street Journal. Now it seems like Yesterday's Times.

Coverage of the AIG scandal and what the new American Administration's actions portend for world markets is an example of a business newspaper that swooned so hopelessly for candidate Obama that it cannot bear to look reality in the face. Investors of all income groups are sitting on their money, a vote of no-confidence in Obamanomics, but that is not the view that prevails in the FT's "leaders". The amateurish way Prime Minister Gordon Brown was treated at the White House recently didn't register much, either. The trade war Obama has provoked with Mexico is a setback for NAFTA, but apparently not worthy of reproach in liberal London. The near-unanimity of European leaders that the US is over-doing its stimulus programs and is over-reaching in calling on them to do the same--that, too, is not what the FT views as particularly instructive.

The paper's own core constituency surely must reside in London's "City", and those folks can read and figure things out. They, too, probably were ga-ga for Barack and the Democratic Congress a few months ago, but their revised opinions at least are beginning to be heard in news columns. And ever so slowly and mildly the editorialists are starting to come around.

Meanwhile, the slowness of the editorial columns seems to have seeped even into the circulation department. Finding the FT increasingly irrelevant this winter I tried to save time and money by canceling my subscription. Not only would the FT not accept the cancellation (twice), they started sending me two copies.

Victor David Hanson lets dismay get the better of him today.

Like Harry Truman from a still earlier generation, Hanson probably was raised to say, "Fine, thank you," whenever someone inquired how he was. Until today, it was regarded as impolite, after all, to burden others with one's own troubles. But, once in a while a person has to let the truth out, if only to make a larger point, and what Hanson sees in America today is genuinely and significantly depressing.

When you read about the fairy tale economy we have created you have only touched the broad surface of cultural decline. Hanson has opened a subject that invites many other examples.

This is a twilight age when people are out of work and pinching pennies, yet you have trouble finding a high school student to mow the lawn. The reason is that so many teens get whatever money they need from their parents. Is there a moment when that turns around?

The saddest thing for me is the coarsening of manners that Hanson describes, the way that spontaneity and candor have been elevated over reserve and consideration. What Hanson says about air travel and stores is simply obvious to anyone who grew up before the late 60s or had relatively strict parents.

He might have added that honest disagreements, which Americans never minded acknowledging, are now touted as justifications for shutting down contrasting opinions. The coercive atmosphere of universities, for example, seems to grow in proportion to the growth in doubt about old intellectual standard bearers like Marx and Freud and Darwin. Meanwhile, there is less civilized discussion about public issues on our 100 plus television channels and endless internet and iPod chat than was found on TV when it was live, black and white and arrived over only three stations.

Hanson might have written about the way the supposedly concerned, less formal society has ushered in presumptuous, slightly imperious impersonality, just as C. S. Lewis predicted. Think of the false familiarity that now poses as respect in dealing with strangers. In a clinic waiting room, for example, bored nursing assistants call out octegenarians by their first names--"Annie!", "Peter!" Doctors who think they are still entitled to be called "Doctor" apparently regard that kind of thing as a way to establish--what? "Intimacy?" "Friendliness!" Going to the doctor (some doctors, anyhow) is about as truly "friendly" as being hailed at a restaurant chain where a bumptious voice over a microphone announces, "Chapman, Party of Four!"

Former Senator Slade Gorton says that such eras of unapologetic rudeness eventually encounter backlash and the re-establishment of social sobriety. I am wondering when that will come about, and how.

When illegal immigration was the topic of the day, my email over-flowed with statements from supposed friends of Mexico demanding "reform". But now when the United States under President Obama has killed the use of Mexican trucks, driven by Mexicans, on U.S. roads, protests against such a patently anti-Mexican decision are noticeably absent.

Some people say that most Latino political groups in the U.S. are, in effect, arms of the Democratic Party that use the Latino label to cadge votes and little more. They will criticize Republicans, but not Democrats, no matter what. This issue--where the Mexican government is outraged by a clear violation of NAFTA, and in retaliation is damaging U.S. trade--would seem to be a test of that theory.

So far, the test is only validating the theory. The Obama Administration had to choose between Mexico (and NAFTA) and the Teamsters union, and it took the cheap political option. But if Latino political groups care, they aren't saying so.

Building a closer working relationship with Latin America should be a higher priority for the United States. But the Obama Administration failed to support the trade treaty with Colombia and now is rescinding the modest progress of the Bush Administration in allowing (safe) Mexican trucks to cross our borders.

Do we allow Canadian trucks? Of course.

Why not qualified Mexican trucks?

If the shoe were on the other foot and Bush, not Obama, had made this decision you would have a hard time avoiding the word "racism" all over the media and on the streets.

by John R. Miller

The brouhaha over Secretary of State Clinton’s comments on human rights in China has subsided but the question of what an American leader should say publicly on such subjects remains and, unless thought through, will bedevil Secretary Clinton and President Obama whenever they visit any nation with an abysmal human rights record.
The Secretary’s actual statement was less remarkable than that she made it publicly and in Beijing: “…our pressing on those issues [human rights] can’t interfere with the global economic crises, the global climate change crises and the security crises.”

Negotiating with foreign governments on multiple issues is hardly shocking; what shocked human rights groups and pleased the Chinese government was that Clinton publicly sent a signal that human rights might not be a high priority in Chinese-American relations—a reverse of the signal that all, including Chinese citizens and their government, expected. The Secretary’s later assurance that she had raised human rights issues with Chinese leaders in private meetings did not mollify her critics who professed “dismay” and “disappointment” that the previous loquacious Senator was now the reticent Secretary of State.

Now, few would question the bona fides of Secretary Clinton on human rights. As a U.S. Ambassador involved in international human rights, I found then Senator Clinton to be extremely knowledgeable and concerned about such issues, and particularly so with regard to China. But in the wake of her visit to China, Secretary Clinton should reflect less on the particular words she uttered and more on the broader challenge that has faced Presidents, Secretaries of State and American diplomats for decades: in future visits to authoritarian countries, does she both speak out publicly and engage privately with foreign leaders on international human rights issues; does she only engage privately on such issues; or does she do nothing at all?

The do nothing option, while it makes for pleasant meetings with foreign leaders, is not possible for an American Secretary of state, because of both American and foreign expectations. This nation has a long tradition of involvement in human rights issues abroad during both our internationalist and isolationist phases (although the extent of our involvement has obviously varied). This rests on a trait in the American character aptly illustrated by Norbert Vollartsen, the German human rights activist. Vollartsen says that when he describes human rights atrocities in China and North Korea to European audiences, the reaction is “so what?” When he describes the same situation to American audiences, the response is “what can we do to help?” He believes this is a uniquely American characteristic and it is nothing to be ashamed of. It derives from both our past when immigrants fled here to avoid genocide or political or religious persecution, and our defining prediliction for solving problems.

Moreover, as an American diplomat I found, perhaps surprisingly, that not only Americans but citizens, victims, NGOs and even most leaders abroad expect us to raise human rights issues. While sometimes annoyed, they realize that our character calls on us to do so; that international organizations which rely on consensus shy away from such issues; and that if the U.S. does not raise the banner of human rights, often no one else will.

This still leaves the choice of whether the human rights issue should be raised by the Secretary both publicly and privately-- or just privately. Of course raising the issue publicly can make the meetings with foreign leaders that follow not only less pleasant but sometimes frigid—the Chinese leaders were undoubtedly more ingratiating to Secretary Clinton than they were to Speaker Pelosi and me years ago on a Congressional visit to China when prior to a meeting with the Chinese foreign minister we raised the issue of Tiananmen Square with the news media. Agreeable meetings, however, are not the purpose of effective diplomacy. We must remember that public statements on human rights have three key audiences.

The first audience, if we want improvements, are the foreign leaders themselves. It may surprise some, but public statements by American officials on human rights do not always produce a backlash. To the contrary, in my experience such statements often bring attention and positive changes. True, the foreign leaders may feel forced to answer the criticism publicly by denying the problem or complaining about American “meddling”. But often this is followed by action. I found that with human trafficking, our public reports and my public statements delivered in the host country accompanied by private sessions might produce resentment but also produced results. And this was not just the case with friendly governments such as Turkey and Bangladesh; even governments such as China and Venezuela, while protesting, did not want to be “shamed” and spent hours lobbying me on the good things they were doing or promised to do in order to win American human rights plaudits—or at least less scathing criticism.

The second audience is the victims of human rights abuses. This audience takes heart from our public utterances and are inspired to continue the struggle. Once in Mumbai’s red light district several victims and their NGO advocates accosted me with praise for a speech President Bush gave to the UN General Assembly. The President devoted twenty per cent of a speech little noted in the U.S. to modern slavery. Waving copies they had printed off the internet, one victim exclaimed “Your President first world leader to speak out on slavery. Now he must speak out on slavery in India”. Unfortunately President Bush on his visit to india did not do so, but if he had, it would have inspired hundreds of thousands of sex and bonded labor slaves.

The third audience for public statements by American leaders abroad on human rights—and the one most oftern ignored-- is the American public. Public pussyfooting may temporarily play well with the Chinese and other authoritarian leaders, but it won’t play well in the United States. Americans do not want to be condescended to, and expect American leaders to say the same things abroad as they same as home. (This is another character trait that we need not be ashamed of.) Yes, our diplomats must remember that they represent the United States to foreign countries and not just the reverse. Besides, such statements are critical to maintaining support for American human rights initiatives and encouraging private and non-profit initiatives. American and foreign NGOs may not want to be agents of the U.S. government but they often do want to further American human rights ideals.
It may be argued that private engagement by itself also brings results but the examples I know of ranging from South African apartheid to Secretary of State Schultz’s interventions for individual “refuseniks” and Pentecostals were all complemented by supporting public statements.

The challenge that Secretary Clinton faced in Beijing, she will face again in different times and places. It does no good for either relations with a foreign government or the cause of human rights to speak one way in private and another way—or not at all—in public. Candor will serve both the cause of human rights and bilateral relations better than conduct which on the part of the United States is perceived as out of character. In the long term it is better to make one’s statements in public and private consistent; when it comes to human rights, not only do Americans expect that of our leaders but so does the rest of the world.

(John R. Miller served as United States Ambassador at Large on Modern Slavery and as a Congressman on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He is presently a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute.)

"Catch ya later, Chirac!"
It's Sarkozy, Mr. President...
"Yeah, that's what I said."

The French have so little humor! President Sarkozy is upset that President Obama wrote to his predecessor, Jacque Chirac, instead of him, pledging a close working relationship. Sarkozy seems to think it was a snub and not just another mistake made by the "pros" who finally are back in charge of American foreign policy.

To help out the overworked White House, we have drafted the following that they can patch things up:

My Dear Cozy,

I am mortified by the leetle error of sending a letter meant for you to someone else. I am only now checking my records to see if my letters to Prime Minister Konrad Adenauer and Czar Boris Yeltsin have gone astray, too.

Ever since someone from Great Britain named Brown showed up in my waiting room and took away the bust of my good friend, Winston Churchill, I have had trouble keeping straight who is who in Europe these days. Calls to Gloriana XII of the Grand Duchy of Fenwick (which I learned about in a film called The Mouse That Roared) have been unavailing. A wireless communication with the government of Freedonia met the same silent fate.

At least you are taking my correspondence seriously!

Please accept my apologies and let me know when you can drive in from Paris for lunch.

Yours truly,
Etc., etc., etc.

P.S. "French" fries are back on the White House menu!

Is Notre Dame for or against "dialogue," "conversation" and "debate" among different viewpoints? Yes, those are the standards on which university officials are defending the coming address by President Obama--a president whose decisions on behalf of abortion and embryonic stem cell research have been opposed by the Catholic Church.

But only two weeks ago Notre Dame was official co-sponsor in Rome of an international conference on Darwinian theory that specifically, publicly and energetically forbade participation by scientists who criticize Darwinian theory and support intelligent design. No "dialogue", "conversation", let alone "debate", for them!

So what is the lesson? Simply put, Notre Dame University supports openness to viewpoints that are supported by the Left and opposes openness to viewpoints supported from the Right. You can trash Catholic teachings on life issues at Notre Dame, but you cannot receive a hearing for scientific viewpoints that challenge scientific materialism.

I am for the free marketplace of ideas. But I also favor consistency, and Notre Dame flunks the test.

The New York Times got the preview story wrong, and the Washington Post editorial writer probably was too rushed to question the charges of "creationism" coming from the National Center for Science Education, the Darwin-only lobby. So this week's important decisions by the Texas State Board of Education (TSBE) on how to teach evolution were predicated in the media by the big question of whether teachers should provide both "strengths and weaknesses" of Darwin's theory. Those words might sound benign, readers were told, but they really are "code words" (take the press' word for it) for creationism and religion.

To the media left, any questioning of Darwin is reserved for denizens of Dogpatch.

So, what did the TSBE do? Well, it turns out that they are fairly adroit politicians. They did remove language providing for "strengths and weaknesses" and then added new language--quite a lot of it--providing that students will learn, for example, to "analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations…including examining all sides of scientific evidence… so as to encourage critical thinking by the student." Perfect! A policy distinction without a difference! In fact, the new standards are just fine, an improvement, in fact. Now teachers can tell the kids about the scientific evidence in a variety of fields that seems to contradict the Darwinian account as well as the supposed evidence in support.

Once again the NCSE was too-smart-by-half. It ran blogs making fun of religion, while organizing public speakers who gave fulsome testimony to their Christian faith and how compatible it is with "evolution" (meaning Darwinian evolution). To the purists like Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers it probably makes them look like toadies.

In the end, the rhetoric meant to evoke fundamentalist cranks was mixed with pious statements doing the very kind of religious posturing the Darwinists project onto their foes, and reminding me of the church scenes from Blazing Saddles. It all backfired.

By demonizing specific words--and making the elimination of them the test of "science"--the NCSE and its state distributor, the Orwellian-named Texas Freedom Network, simply allowed the Board to do the obvious word shuffle. Okay, no "strengths and weakness, " but instead, we'll pass similar ideas in different words, and everyone will be happy. Except, of course, the NCSE and the TFN.

Don't expect the media to figure this out from the NCSE Talking Points memo, but the insiders get the picture. Dawkins must be enjoying a caustic chuckle at the expense of the NCSE.

Bad legislation seldom gets attention unless is passes, but a dangerous bill in Idaho nearly passed and yet has received little attention. Discovery Sr. Fellow Wesley Smith is credited with alerting Idahoans with the actual content, as this astute state blog makes clear.

Professor Mansfield explains the Athenians and Machiavelli and the American Founders in wise ways that make you wish that he typified Harvard rather than stood against it so often. He also is droll as a philosopher having fun with a mere biologist.

If government makes you take money out of your paycheck and send it in, that is not a "contribution" on your part, it is a "tax," and if government tells you that you have to devote time to a government work project, you are not "volunteering", you are being "conscripted." In the name of George Orwell, Americans should get this straight.

The San Francisco Examiner seems to be the only media outlet to examine the actual bill. Where is the Republican leadership in the Senate on this bill? The cost--$5.7 billion--is preposterous, but the real problem is the language that would make voluntarism "mandatory", sliding us another distance down the slope to government control of everything.

My paper on this topic for The Brookings Institution a while back is here. In it, I point out--as I have been doing for literally forty years--that the agents of social engineering are never idle.

Senior Fellows David Berlinski and Bruce Gordon spoke last week at the ninth annual “Physics and the God of Abraham” conference, held at Gonzaga University in Spokane. The event was organized by Fr. Robert Spitzer, President of Gonzaga, physicist and adjunct fellow of Discovery Institute. This year’s theme, “Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions,” was taken from the subtitle of Berlinski’s latest book, The Devil’s Delusion (Crown Forum, 2008).

The conference was organized by the Faith and Reason Institute at Gonzaga, an organization dedicated to an integrationist understanding of faith and reason through a philosophical investigation into both the nature and results of scientific research, and through critical discussion and reflection on topics in philosophical theology. To this end, “Physics and the God of Abraham” focuses on the relationship between Judeo-Christian faith and the physical sciences, often dealing with the Judeo-Christian roots of modern science, the role that believers in the God of Abraham have played in scientific discovery, and the interpretation of modern physical theory in relation to philosophico-theological concerns.

In his lecture, “Naturalism’s Last Stand: Taking the Measure of the Multiverse,” Dr. Gordon explored the implausibilities and limitations of the speculative constructs offered by quantum cosmology, chaotic eternal inflation and the string-theoretic landscape to explain cosmological origins and fine-tuning. He argued that transcendent intelligent causation provides the only causally sufficient and metaphysically tenable explanation for what is known of the universe. Fr. Spitzer’s talk, “New Proofs for the Existence of God,” focused on evidence of creation and supernatural design in contemporary big bang cosmology, arguing for the inevitability of an initial singularity that requires a transcendent cause best described in the language of Thomistic apophatic theology. The final talk – entitled “Who’s Counting?” – was given by David Berlinski. Dr. Berlinski ventured beyond physical cosmology to the eternal verities of mathematics, examining the historical development of arithmetical conceptions from Euclid to Dedekind, and noting the independence of mathematical truth from physical reality; he thus ended his reflections with the provocative question, if 3+4=7 regardless of whether the universe exists, then who’s counting?

Further information about the conference may be found at:
http://www.gonzagafaithreason.org/physics-and-the-god-of-abraham.asp.

Bibi Netanyahu is now in charge in Israel and the contrast of his style with that of the new U.S. president, Barack Obama, could hardly be more stark.

Unfortunately, as the 1930s showed, tyrants will not give the democracies time to improve their economies before challenging them. The Obama Administration imagines that Iran can be maneuvered into a serious peace agreement that includes giving up development of nuclear weapons. But everything in their past suggests that the Iranian mullahs' word means nothing. They will build nuclear weapons when you are antagonistic and they will build nuclear weapons when you are trying to appease them.

Take your pick. But after either approach, action becomes painfully necessary.