Plead the First

Watching Thomas the Tank Engine today with my 3 year old, it occurred to me that something’s not quite right on the Island of Sodor. No, it’s not the fact that the trains talk — although it is a little weird that their mouths don’t move. In the episode we watched, Sir Topham Hatt finds that there are too many passengers on the island, but not enough trains to carry them, so he presses Bulgy the double decker bus into service. And that’s where it gets weird.

Apparently, Bulgy got stuck under a bridge a few years back, and since then he’s been relegated to being a henhouse, sitting in a field all day as a home for chickens. This normally wouldn’t be disturbing, except for the fact that Bulgy, like all the other vehicles on the island, is a sentient being, aware of his surroundings and capable of thought and emotion. Imagine if you had a small fender bender, and as punishment you were forced to sit in a field for several years with only the clucking of some egg-laying hens to console you.

Further adding to the insult, consider that Bulgy has a driver. Does he share no responsibility for this? If not, then why does Bulgy even need a driver?

Too many questions. I think I need to hide the Thomas DVD and cue up The Incredibles for the 73rd time.

Sunday’s News and Record had a set of columns on the opinion page debating the implications of peak oil. On the “Pro” side, Steve Yetiv argued that we need to start working on alternatives now to stave off the worst effects of the decline of oil production. Scott Tinker argued the “Con” side, saying that yes, we will run out of oil, but it won’t be “doomsday”.

I found it interesting that both sides appeared to see the same problem. However, the pro side had some specific suggestions to begin addressing it now, while the con side seemed to advocate letting the market address the problem as necessary, and not worrying so much in the meantime. It’s true, the end of oil probably won’t be the end of the world. But doesn’t it make more sense to start working now to minimize the pain of the transition?

Oh, and there’s one other thing I’d like to know: Why didn’t either of them say anything about plastic? It’s not just about energy. Plastic is used just about everwhere, and we need oil to make many of the most useful forms of it.

Ed Cone brings us some excerpts from Krugman’s latest article, which talks about the ongoing Republican car wreck as it relates to helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Update: Ed also has a great takedown of Bush’s handling of Al Qaida in a response to this letter in the News and Record’s Letters to the Editor blog.

Pharyngula has an interesting article about mice that have developed the power of regeneration.

Lance Mannion nicely sums up the Republican Modus Operandi (via Science and Politics):

It’s another old song from the Republican repertoire. The poor are poor because of their own bad character, goes the chorus, of course, but the verse is like this: Liberal government programs encourage, foster, and make virtues out of the vices that keep the poor poor. You know, because not letting their children starve, not leaving them to attend rotten schools, not letting the old and young die of treatable diseases, not forcing them to live in squalid housing, all that just makes them lazy and dependent and (shhhh) shiftless.

At this point, a good small-government conservative who knows his hymn book will sing out that after all these years of Liberal social programs, poor children still go hungry, their schools are still rotten, the young and old still have no reliable medical care, and their homes are often squalid, no better than shacks in some places, lost amid noxious slums in others …

The argument depends on ignoring the fact that over the last 40 years the Republicans have either run the government or had a strong enough hand in the running of it that they have been able to thwart, sabotage, stymie, underfund, pervert, or plain mismanage just about every meaningful large-scale “Liberal” big goverment social program …

If the Goverment is a car setting out to give every one a ride to work, then for 40 years the Republicans have been puncturing the tires, pouring sand in the gas tank, stealing the distributer cap, and, whenever they can get their hands on the wheel, driving it straight into the nearest ditch and then, pointing to the wreckage as the tow truck backs up to it, saying, See, this proves that people were meant to walk.

And they do this so that they don’t have to chip in on gas.

In the article, Lance quotes Matt Yglesias:

This is the basic dilemma the right faces. It’s committed to the view that the government shouldn’t help poor people. But things happen from time to time that make it politically imperative to do something to help poor people. And if the government responded to those circumstances in ways that were efficient and effective, that would generate more political momentum for further poor-helping measures. Thus, the right finds itself forced to implement policies it knows to be ineffective.

The Katrina aftermath is providing us with an opportunity to view this in action. From the LA Times:

As President Bush tackles the monumental task of easing the social problems wrought by Katrina, he is proving deeply reluctant to use some of the big-government tools at his disposal, apparently out of fear of permanently enlarging programs that he opposes or has sought to cut.

Instead of depending on long-running programs for such services as housing and healthcare, the president has generally tried to create new, one-shot efforts that the administration apparently hopes will more easily disappear after the crisis passes. That has meant relying on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has run virtually all of the recovery effort.

The LA Times article talks about how the administration is working to “derail” a bipartisan proposal to expand Medicaid to provide healthcare for storm victims, instead seeking to implement a narrower plan to avoid “covering certain groups of evacuees”. The White House is also pushing for government-built trailer parks to house evacuees rather than providing financial aid to help with rent for existing housing. Trailer parks would concentrate the poor in one area — a very bad idea, as even some Republicans, including Newt Gingrich, admit. In short, the Bush administration seems to be pushing for inefficient, inadequate solutions rather than using or strengthening existing programs that are already in place for these purposes.

The hurricanes may be over for now, but we need to keep an eye on the car wreck that the White House may be bringing to Louisiana.

Artwork from a children’s puzzle belonging to one of my kids.

Update: For those of you who are unfamiliar with the reference of this post’s title, take a look here.

Starting today, the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania begins defending its decision to bring Intelligent Design into their biology classes.

The school district’s policy is being challenged by eleven parents of students attending one of their high schools who assert that intelligent design is “unscientific and has no place in a science curriculum”.

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, which … is defending the school district, said Dover’s policy takes a modest approach … “All the Dover school board did was allow students to get a glimpse of a controversy that is really boiling over in the scientific community,” Thompson said.

Boiling over in the scientific community? Hardly. The Institute for Creation Research, one of the proponents of ID has a list of scientists who disagree with evolution. I count about 127 scientists on their list. Granted, their list is “partial” since “Nobody has ever taken a comprehensive survey of the world’s universities, research organizations, etc. to find out who is an evolutionist or creationist.”

However, Project Steve over at the National Center for Science Education gives us a list of over 600 scientists named Steve who support evolution.

Of course, the truth isn’t decided based on the number of people adhering to a given position, but when the list of scientists supporting ID is one-sixth the size of the list of just the Steves who support evolution, I think Thompson’s picture of a controversy that is “boiling over” is stretching it, to say the least. The controversy about intelligent design isn’t in the scientific community — it’s in the school districts and courts, largely due to the PR efforts of ICR and similar organizations.

Strobel’s The Case for a Creator, claims to present scientific evidence for a creator. Before evaluating this claim, I think it will be useful to have a working definition of “science”. This one seems pretty straightforward and to the point:

The study of the material universe or physical reality in order to understand it. This is done by making observations and collecting data about natural events and conditions, then organising and explaining them with hypotheses, theories, models, laws, and principles.

A definition of “material” might be in order as well, since that term is used in the definition, and since “materialism” was a concept that ECUMAN took issue with in our original discussion:

Consisting of matter; not spiritual; corporeal; physical; as, material substance or bodies.

I may return to this post to add other definitions if necessary. In the meantime, I’ll be working on the next post, which should address Strobel’s take on the first item in ECUMAN’s list, “The evidence for the Big Bang”.

Posts in this series:

1. Introduction
2. Definitions

Alabama and Mississippi are under consideration as potential locations for a new nuclear power plant:

A consortium of utilities has picked two sites in Alabama and Mississippi as possible locations for what could be the first nuclear power plant built in the United States in more than three decades.

The consortium emphasized that no decision had yet been made on whether to seek a license for a new plant from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The group is developing an application for advanced approval of the two sites, which would allow for quicker completion of the project if a go ahead is given.

I think it’s definitely worth taking another look at nuclear power. I only hope that some consideration is given to more safety-conscious designs, such as pebble bed reactors, and that security is taken seriously, with an eye towards the reactor as a potential terrorist target.

Its consequences are deadly. Its reach was unforseen. Luckily, it’s not happening in real life:

Players of Blizzard’s incredibly popular World of Warcraft are reporting the outbreak of a virtual plague that is spreading across major cities in the virtual land of Azeroth, infecting player characters at an alarming rate.

The trouble started when Blizzard programmers added a new instance [dungeon] … One of these instances, Zul’Grub, contained the god of blood, Hakkar. Hakkar was a powerful foe that could cast spells of his own, including a spell called Corrupted Blood. This spell did a large amount of damage to any player within the vicinity of the casting, and the effects lingered on after the spell was over.

What happened next was something Blizzard did not expect. Some of the players who had gone into the instance emerged back into the main world of Azeroth, and started spreading the Corrupted Blood disease to others who they came into close contact with. The infection soon spread into many of the cities and towns in the virtual world. Since the disease was intended to be a danger to powerful players, it tended to kill those less than level 50 almost instantly.

I play WoW, and it’s a very rich and detailed game. The amazing thing about this is that it’s an event that affects the entire game in a way totally unforseen by the developers, but it’s not a result of a bug or glitch. The game is working as intended, and one aspect of it has taken on a life of its own, unintentionally bringing even more realism to the game.