Discovery Institute | Page 645 | Public policy think tank advancing a culture of purpose, creativity, and innovation.

This article is forthcoming in Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres. It is available in the meantime on astro-ph at:http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0503298

William Tucker is a Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute

End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America’s Passenger Trainsby Joseph Vranich
(AEI Press, 204 pages, $25)

Once again, Amtrak is before Congress asking for another handout. Having lost $600 million last year — about average for the 34 years of its existence — the company is once again begging Congress for money.

This time, however, the Bush administration plans to end the charade that Amtrak will one day become profitable. It wants to end the handouts, making Amtrak compete like any private company. Democrats, of course are opposed. They love any government program — even those created by the Nixon administration. Before they begin their annual last-ditch stand, however, they would do well to read Joseph Vranich’s new book.

A former public affairs spokesman at Amtrak, Vranich has one thing to say about Amtrak — it’s a rolling disaster. The government-owned corporation now regularly requires nearly $1 billion a year in subsidies. It is drowning in debt. Two years ago it mortgaged New York’s Penn Station for $300 million to pay three months’ operating losses.

Nearly empty trains roll through Iowa and Montana, subsidizing passengers at a rate of $300 per ride. Meanwhile New York’s cross-Hudson tunnels are a disaster waiting to happen because Amtrak won’t spend the money to improve fire protection and escape routes.

Nature magazine for May 19 has published a number of letters responding to their recent coverage of intelligent design. When science meets religion in the classroom Jerry Coyne Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA Sir: In the Editorial “Dealing with design”, Nature claims that scientists have not dealt effectively with the threat to evolutionary Read More ›

This article, published by The Seattle Times, references a study done by Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center:

According to a study published by the Cascadia Center of the Discovery Institute, Metro in 1988 studied passenger-ferry service on Lake Washington but concluded that the service would be too slow to compete with buses, that it would be hard to build ferry terminals and that the market was questionable.

YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T HEAR ABOUT IT, since it received such little media coverage, but last week, by a nearly 3-1 vote, the United Nations General Assembly urged the world to “prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.” True, “The United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning,” is not Read More ›

Publishers Weekly published a review of Discovery Institute Senior Fellow George Gilder’s book The Silicon Eye.

Known for weaving engrossing stories from material knotted with numbing complexity, Gilder (Telecosm; Microcosm) delves once again into the world of high-tech business, this time focusing on the company Foveon and its efforts to develop a device that will allow digital machines to see as the human eye does. “Computers can perform instantaneous calculus… and search the entire contents of the Library of Congress in a disk-drive database,” he writes. “But they cannot see. Even today, recognizing a face glimpsed in a crowd across an airport lobby, two human eyes can do more image processing than all the supercomputers in the world put together.” The book traces a circuitous path in its investigation of Foveon’s “silicon eye” — leading through discussions of the magnetic codes on paper checks and of notebook computer touchpads — but Gilder is a competent, eloquent guide.

Gamal al-Alusi was born to Iraqi exiles in Germany and grew up in Hamburg. One of his longtime German friends described Gamal as an intelligent young man who liked to play basketball and take flying lessons. He was also social and humorous, and served as a peacemaker among his friends.

Like other teenagers, he sneaked around with his girlfriends behind his traditional parents and had future plans that changed from week to week. As is also fashionable among many European youths, his political views during early years were characterized by the friend as being “radical” and even “anti-American.”

Nevertheless, Gamal apparently felt having a “normal” job in Germany would not give him the satisfaction of having done something meaningful with his life. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, he left Germany and went to Iraq with his father, Mithal al-Alusi, an Iraqi native who had been a vocal critic of the Ba’ath regime.

Original Article A plan to start a commuter bus line linking Bellingham to Mount Vernon is an idea with promise but also one that raises some serious long-term questions for our community. MOUNT VERNON BUS SERVICE IS TOPIC Whatcom Transportation Authority board members will consider bus service to Mount Vernon during their Wednesday meeting, which starts at 8 a.m. in Read More ›