The news from Kansas is so silly. In its retrograde insistence that "Intelligent Design" be taught alongside with the theory of evolution, the religious luddites fail to realize how damaging this all ultimately will be to religious freedom for the mixing of politics with religion inevitably leads to a form of official recognition for a particular orthodoxy that enlightened religious leaders fear. (An excellent book on the subject of religious orthodoxy and heresy is Blasphemy by Leonard Levy.
For recent articles related to science, evolution, intelligent design, and the appaling unintelligenc e of the American People see (link).
"It is impossible to underestimate the intelligence of the American People." H.L. Mencken
For a Link to National Science Foundation response to the soon-to-be-published Kansas Board of Ed. Report.
Blogger's comment:
: "This grows more depressing. As a National Merit Science Scholarship finalist during the heyday of science in the classrooms, it never occurred to me that the United States educational system could revert to a 15th century religious tapestry.
Is it purely a lack of the ability to think (47% Americans think that the sun revolves around the earth), or is it due to the fear of the consequences and difficult choices science can bring -- a desire to return to the Luddites?"
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Sunday, October 23, 2005
U.S. Comptroller Warns the Deficit Could be Worse than a Category 6 Hurricane
David Walker, The U.S. Comptroller has been speaking across the country about the looming scenario that the federal debt could reach 600% of the GNP in 40 years. Audio and story are available from Minnesota Public Radio. (Link)
WMD analysis and the media elite
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Some Nifty Thrillers
I actually don't like the term thriller to describe a book, but when books don't seem to fit in the "mystery" category, there doesn't seem to be a sensible option for three books I very much enjoyed.
Zero Option by P.T. Deutermann describes massive governmental screw-ups that come close to causing a chemical weapons disaster. Dave Stafford, a Department of Defense Criminal Investigator, has been sent to investigate irregularities at a DMRO (place where old weapons are sent to be destroyed or rendered useless.) He stumbles on a frightening scenario. A cylinder containing "wet-eye" has been sent in error to the DMRO. The manager there, Carson, seeing a way to make a huge pile of money has removed the cylinder from the inventory list and offered it for sale on the black market. "Wet-eye" is a chemical and biological mix that does not kill, but renders blind anyone who comes in contact with it; their eyes melt in a rather horrible manner.
The army can't reveal it has lost a chemical weapon and the FBI we later learn was proposing to buy the item in a sting operation. No one can tell anyone else what is going on. Soon we have interlocking cover-ups and it all gets quite confusing. I suspect, the lack of inter-agency cooperation portrayed by Deutermann probably reflects reality, a truly scary thought. My only complaint with this page-turner is the use of a "psychic" teenager as a plot device, a cheap way and convenient device. Good book, nevertheless.
Blood Work by Michael Connelly, one of my favorite authors, brings back Terry McCaleb, ex-FBI agent who discovers a link between the murders of three individuals. He is brought into the case by the sister of one of the victims. McCaleb has a special interest in finding her killer because her death resulted in a heart becoming available for him; he was the recent recipient of a heart transplant.
Connelly has created a new character for his most recent work, Lincoln Lawyer, which, according to reviews, is first-rate. I'm looking forward to it.
P.T. Deutermann has also written Darkside, an excellent legal mystery. A midshipman at the Naval Academy is found dead, an apparent suicide, having jumped from a six-story window. He was wearing the panties of Julie Markham, a senior about to graduate. Her father, a history professor at the academy hires a sharp criminal lawyer, Liz DeWinter, to defend Julie when the Academy investigators begin to wonder about the connections she might have had with the deceased. Jim Hall, Annapolis security chief, begins a parallel investigation into weird events in the steam tunnels. Soon the investigations converge leading to an unlikely suspect. "Darkside" is the nickname given by plebes to the administration; it's also a metaphor for other goings-on. . .
Zero Option by P.T. Deutermann describes massive governmental screw-ups that come close to causing a chemical weapons disaster. Dave Stafford, a Department of Defense Criminal Investigator, has been sent to investigate irregularities at a DMRO (place where old weapons are sent to be destroyed or rendered useless.) He stumbles on a frightening scenario. A cylinder containing "wet-eye" has been sent in error to the DMRO. The manager there, Carson, seeing a way to make a huge pile of money has removed the cylinder from the inventory list and offered it for sale on the black market. "Wet-eye" is a chemical and biological mix that does not kill, but renders blind anyone who comes in contact with it; their eyes melt in a rather horrible manner.
The army can't reveal it has lost a chemical weapon and the FBI we later learn was proposing to buy the item in a sting operation. No one can tell anyone else what is going on. Soon we have interlocking cover-ups and it all gets quite confusing. I suspect, the lack of inter-agency cooperation portrayed by Deutermann probably reflects reality, a truly scary thought. My only complaint with this page-turner is the use of a "psychic" teenager as a plot device, a cheap way and convenient device. Good book, nevertheless.
Blood Work by Michael Connelly, one of my favorite authors, brings back Terry McCaleb, ex-FBI agent who discovers a link between the murders of three individuals. He is brought into the case by the sister of one of the victims. McCaleb has a special interest in finding her killer because her death resulted in a heart becoming available for him; he was the recent recipient of a heart transplant.
Connelly has created a new character for his most recent work, Lincoln Lawyer, which, according to reviews, is first-rate. I'm looking forward to it.
P.T. Deutermann has also written Darkside, an excellent legal mystery. A midshipman at the Naval Academy is found dead, an apparent suicide, having jumped from a six-story window. He was wearing the panties of Julie Markham, a senior about to graduate. Her father, a history professor at the academy hires a sharp criminal lawyer, Liz DeWinter, to defend Julie when the Academy investigators begin to wonder about the connections she might have had with the deceased. Jim Hall, Annapolis security chief, begins a parallel investigation into weird events in the steam tunnels. Soon the investigations converge leading to an unlikely suspect. "Darkside" is the nickname given by plebes to the administration; it's also a metaphor for other goings-on. . .
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Train Driving and John McPhee
John McPhee has long been one of my favorite essayists. He just seems to write about things of interest to me. You may remember a review I wrote several months ago about his article in The New Yorker about barge traffic on the Illinois River. Apparently, that article, one I just finished related to coal trains (The New Yorker, October 3 and 10, 2005,) and several others with a transportation theme will be published as a book in the spring of 2006. I can hardly wait.
I have always been consumed by curiosity about what it's like to do different things so Driver: Six Weeks in an Eighteen-Wheeler, reviewed previously, and McPhee's coal and barge articles have been difficult to put down.
Driving a train would seem simple enough: you push the lever forward and off you go. Not so. Coal trains, of which just one power plant in Georgia requires 3 fully loaded trains per day to keep running, are usually more than one and one-half miles long and weigh 34,000 tons. They are by far the heaviest trains on the rails. The train is so long that the engine in front (these trains must have engines in front and back and often in the middle as well to adjust the strain on the couplers) will often be applying the brakes going down hill while the engines in back are pushing the cars still going up the other side of the rise. They can't go up hills, per se. A slop of even 1.5% makes the engines work hard.
Twenty-three thousand coal trains leave the Powder River basin every year; that's thirty-four thousand miles of rolling coal in a never ending stream of coal for power plants. The Powder River basin coal generates less heat, i.e. fewer BTU's than eastern coal, but it has a much lower sulfur content so following stricter environmental regulations eastern mines have been dying while western ones are thriving. That's where the railroads come in.
Plant Scherer in Georgia, a large power plant, usually has a one-million-ton pile of coal in reserve. To understand the revived interest in nuclear power, that pile generates the equivalent of one truckload of mined uranium. "To get a million BTUs, fuel oil costs nine dollars (before recent price increases,) natural gas six dollars, coal one-dollar-eighty-five, and nuclear fifty cents."
"Plant Scherer burns the contents of thirteen hundred coal trains per year -- two thousand miles of coal cars, twelve million tons of the bedrock of Wyoming." The plant requires twelve thousand acres to store, process and burn the coal. Think about that the next time you turn the lights on.
For an interview with McPhee see (link.)
I have always been consumed by curiosity about what it's like to do different things so Driver: Six Weeks in an Eighteen-Wheeler, reviewed previously, and McPhee's coal and barge articles have been difficult to put down.
Driving a train would seem simple enough: you push the lever forward and off you go. Not so. Coal trains, of which just one power plant in Georgia requires 3 fully loaded trains per day to keep running, are usually more than one and one-half miles long and weigh 34,000 tons. They are by far the heaviest trains on the rails. The train is so long that the engine in front (these trains must have engines in front and back and often in the middle as well to adjust the strain on the couplers) will often be applying the brakes going down hill while the engines in back are pushing the cars still going up the other side of the rise. They can't go up hills, per se. A slop of even 1.5% makes the engines work hard.
Twenty-three thousand coal trains leave the Powder River basin every year; that's thirty-four thousand miles of rolling coal in a never ending stream of coal for power plants. The Powder River basin coal generates less heat, i.e. fewer BTU's than eastern coal, but it has a much lower sulfur content so following stricter environmental regulations eastern mines have been dying while western ones are thriving. That's where the railroads come in.
Plant Scherer in Georgia, a large power plant, usually has a one-million-ton pile of coal in reserve. To understand the revived interest in nuclear power, that pile generates the equivalent of one truckload of mined uranium. "To get a million BTUs, fuel oil costs nine dollars (before recent price increases,) natural gas six dollars, coal one-dollar-eighty-five, and nuclear fifty cents."
"Plant Scherer burns the contents of thirteen hundred coal trains per year -- two thousand miles of coal cars, twelve million tons of the bedrock of Wyoming." The plant requires twelve thousand acres to store, process and burn the coal. Think about that the next time you turn the lights on.
For an interview with McPhee see (link.)
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