A nice Op-Ed on evolution.

There are very few conservative commentators that I can stand to read regularly. Charles Krauthammer is one of them. I usually don't agree with him when it comes to the issues (his recent article on gas prices was an exeception), but his presentation is usually reasonable in tone and his arguments well-presented. That is much, much more than I can say for the bulk of the right-wing echo chamber.

His most recent column addressed the topic of Intelligent Design. The conclusion of the article is an absolutely beautiful description of why evolution is compatible with a theistic worldview:

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.

The laws of peer review:

Law Number One: For any manuscript or proposal subjected to peer-review, the minimum number of comments (C) can be determined using the following equation:

C = N^R+1

where N is equal to the number of paragraphs in your manuscript, and R is equal to the number of reviewers.

Law Number Two: The only point of agreement shared by all of the reviewers will be that you are somehow wrong.

Plan B, the FDA, and "controversial"

As many of you probably know, the Government Accountability Office released a report yesterday outlining their conclusions following an investigation into the FDA's initial decision to deny Over-The-Counter (OTC) status to the emergency contraceptive "Plan B". The GAO concluded that the decision to deny approval for OTC sales of the drug was unusual for several different reasons. The involvement of high-level FDA officials was unusual, as were reports that the decision to deny approval was made prior to the conclusion of the review process. The decision to overrule lower-level FDA offices was unusual, and the justification that was used in denying approval was "novel and did not follow FDA's traditional practices" (GAO report, page 1).

All of those things are troubling, all of them indicate a level of political involvement in a medical decision that is totally unacceptable, and all of them demand further investigation, particularly in light of the foot dragging that is still going on at the FDA.

Here's the part of the GAO report that I find most troubling:

In its comments on a draft of this report, FDA disagreed with three of our findings. First, FDA disagreed with our finding that the involvement of high-level management in the Plan B decision was unusual because their involvement is likely in high-profile and controversial regulatory decisions. (p.6)

The Plan B OTC request was controversial - politically controversial. It was not scientifically controversial. The joint advisory committee and lower ranking FDA officials from three offices that normally would have had the final say on approving the application were all in agreement that the application should be approved. In such cases, it is the job of the FDA management to insulate the approval process from political pressure. It is not their job to bow to it.

Another couple of weeks, another Tangled Bank...

...and I forgot to submit something again. Damn. That's the downside to this whole grad school thing. You can goof off for a while, and you can try to evade doing real work, but sooner or later something is going to catch your interest, and you'll find yourself actually working. Worse yet, you'll find yourself actually forgetting about your favorite ways to goof off.

Anyway, the latest Tangled Bank is up over at Flags and Lollipops. Enjoy.

A quick note on Katrina

A professor in my department, Bob Kinzie, just forwarded me an interesting quote from Simon Winchester's book on the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. The contrast between this and what happened in New Orleans after Katrina is really quite pitiful:

"Just after 5 in the morning of April 18, 1906, a massive tremor picked up San Francisco and shook it like a rug. Within 90 minutes, solders had surrounded the Hall of Justice. By midnight, aid had arrived from Los Angeles. And by 4 AM the next morning, Washington had authorized every possible assistance, dispatching solders, rations and the longest hospital train ever assembled. All this had been done be telegraph and Morse code."

Is it really too much to expect for the Federal Government to be no worse at responding to disasters now than they were 99 years ago?

Applications of Evolution 1a - Hopelessly Watching Extinction

A few months ago, I wrote an article on this blog about the plight of a genus of trees out here in paradise that are being decimated by an accidentally introduced wasp. The trees targeted by the wasps include several species of trees from the genus Erythrina, which includes a species that is unique to Hawaii - the Wiliwili (Erythrina sanwichensis). This tree has a great deal of cultural significance to native Hawaiians, who have traditionally made use of the wood in many areas of their culture.

Just to review, the parasitoid wasp attacking the trees was first spotted back in April in Manoa valley, but has since spread to all of the main Hawaiian Islands. It attacks the trees by laying eggs in the leaf tissues, creating a bump in the leaf called a "gall," which looks like this:

Here's a close-up: The holes that can be seen on the leaf to the right are emergence holes, where adult wasps have emerged from the leaf after maturing.

Too many galls on the same leaf can kill the leaf, and too many dead leaves can kill the tree. These gall wasps can also invade the leaves just as they are starting to open. When this happens, the leaves do not develop normally, but instead form twisted, malformed masses of tissue, like this:

If the wasps are still around once all of the leaves are dead, they can apparently continue this process as long as the tree is able to continue to attempt to put out new leaves:

At the beginning of October, I took pictures of trees from a number of Erythrina species that are found around campus, and on a couple of other places on Oahu. The pictures are not pretty. I've waited this long to post them because I was holding out hope that the leaves might still come back - the trees of this genus are deciduous, and some drop their leaves during the summer. They have not. All of them look worse now than they did when I took the pictures.

There are "before" pictures available for a couple of the same trees that I photographed, via Dr. Gerry Carr's website at UH. As you can see, the differences are drastic:


The two pictures above are of a "Column Tree" (Erythrina sp.). Both pictures are of the same tree, one of three planted in front of Webster Hall on the UH Manoa campus. All three of those trees have been decimated, and I have seen other trees of this species in the same shape at Hickam Air Force Base.

The three trees in this picture are all Wiliwili trees (Erythrina sandwichensis). As you can see, they have been hammered as hard as the column trees. I've seen Wiliwili in this condition as far as the Leeward Coast. The area on the leeward coast is a good 20 miles away from Manoa, as the wasp flies, and the insects have only been known to be on the island for about six months. That's a terrifying rate of spread. If it continues, the extinction of the Wiliwili is all but inevitable.

The Washington Post misses the point

An editorial in today's Washington Post discusses the school board election in Dover, Pennsylvania. The editorial makes a number of excellent points about the nature of the Intelligent Design controversy. They point out that getting thrown out of office is one of the risks you take when you play politics, and that the Intelligent Design movement relies entirely on politics to get their material into schools. They also point out that while the Discovery Institute claims to lack religious motivation, many of the people pushing Intelligent Design at the local level are clearly religiously motivated.

Those are all very good points, and it is definitely nice to see a newspaper like the Washington Post take an editorial position that favors teaching real science. Unfortunately, this editorial also makes a fundamental mistake when it discusses an issue related to the history of Intelligent Design, and this mistake leads to a conclusion that ends up just a bit wide of the mark.

The Post's mistake in relating the facts of the ID movement comes in the second paragraph of the editorial, when they say:

"Because advocates of intelligent design have never been able to convince scientists that their theory has scientific merit, they've relied on political methods to get it into school curriculums."

Both clauses of this sentence are pretty much accurate. Intelligent Design proponents have not convinced scientists that their theory has any merit (scientific or otherwise), and they have in fact relied entirely on political methods to wedge their "theory" into public school science classrooms. The problem with the statement rests with the choice of conjunction. Had the Post joined the clauses with "and," they would be entirely correct. Unfortunately, they chose "because" instead.

The Intelligent Design proponents were using politics to push their material long before they ever even attempted to convince scientists of anything. In fact, they have put virtually no effort whatsoever into arguing for Intelligent Design within the scientific community. In science, you convince other scientists that your ideas have merit by devising experiments to test them, carrying out those experiments, and publishing the results in the peer-reviewed literature.

The Intelligent Design advocates did not shift to using political methods to advance their agenda because they tried and failed to convince scientists that they were correct. They used political methods to advance their agenda instead of trying to use scientific methods to convince scientists that their ideas have merit. This is still the route that they are taking. There are individual graduate students who have managed to exceed the peer-reviewed journal output of the entire Intelligent Design movement this year.

The editorial concludes:

"[Elections are] a strange way to resolve a scientific controversy, but once that controversy has been politicized, it's hard to see how it can be resolved any other way."

I absolutely agree that elections are a strange way to resolve a scientific controversy, but that is not what is happening here. Intelligent Design is not a scientific controversy. For Intelligent Design to be a scientific controversy, they would have had to actually make an effort to do science, and they would have had to actually try to convince scientists that their ideas have some merit. They have done neither.

What they have done is to make a strong effort to use political tactics to push their platform into the schools, and to use public relations tactics to convince people that their ideas represent a scientific controversy. Fortunately, the voters of Dover rejected their political tactics. Unfortunately, their public relations strategy appears to have worked on the editors of the Washington Post.

An update on Robertson

Earlier today, I posted some comments about Pat Robertson's statements regarding the school board election in Dover, PA. Later in the day, Robertson issued a clarification. In the interests of fairness, balance, and full disclosure, I thought it best to make sure I give the clarification as much attention as I did the original statement. The clarification reads as follows:

"I was simply stating that our spiritual actions have consequences and it's high time we started recognizing it. God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in His eye forever. If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin…maybe he can help them."

I hope that clears up any confusion that you might have had about his statements earlier today.

Two views on war

This Veterans' Day, we find ourselves, yet again, a nation divided over whether or not the war we are fighting is just. These divisions stand out the most clearly when you look at the differing views held by families who have lost loved ones in the conflict. Some feel that we are not fighting for a cause that is worth even one more life. Others believe that abandoning the fight would be the same as abandoning those who lost their lives in it.

Veterans' Day is observed on the anniversary of the armistace that ended World War I, the War To End All Wars. That was eighty-five years, too many wars, too many deaths, and too many dashed hopes ago. Even then, the same differences about the worth of war were present.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
-John McCrae
(1872-1918)

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
-Wilfred Owen
(1893-1918)

No matter what our opinion of the war may be, I think we all hope that we will be at peace next Veterans Day.

Some new Dover follow-up

As I'm sure you'll recall, the (outgoing) Dover School Board swore up and down that they wanted to add a mention Intelligent Design to their science classes in the interests of science. The fact that someone died on a cross really had nothing to do with that decision. Religion had nothing to do with it. The fact that the people who wanted it were creationists was purely a coincidence.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the voters disagreed with that decision, and tossed every member of the board who was up for reelection out of office. Apparently, their decision to do this wasn't based on an opinion of bad science, but on a rejection of God. That's the view of Pat Robertson, anyway. The right wing "Christian" wingnut, whose most recent brush with notoriety came when he suggested that the US should assassinate the president of Venezuela, had this message of Christian love and tolerance for the voters of Dover:

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”

A videoclip of Robertson's statement can be found via People for the American Way. PZ Myers, as usual, also has a take on this one. Frankly, I think his comparison of Robertson's twisted brand of Christianity with a Mafia extortion racket is a bit over the top. He really owes the mob an apology.

Once agan, Pat Robertson proves to be an embarassment to Christianity. I really don't know whether to laugh about this, or get mad. It's so over the top, it's just impossible to really believe.

I'm a little late getting on the bandwagon here...

...but let's talk about torture and secret prisons.

It would appear that The Republican leadership is up in arms over the leaking of classified information to the Washington Post, which resulted in a page-one article about secret prisons that the CIA has apparently been running overseas since 9/11. Their demands for an investigation into this particular leak, at this particular time, strike me as being mostly in the interests of politics, following the indictment of Libby for lying to FBI agents and a grand jury during an earlier leak investigation, but that's beside the point.

Also beside the point, at least at the moment, is how this particular leak illustrates the need for a shield law that would allow reporters to keep their sources secret. Some things need to be made public, particularly when the government wants to hide them. Yes, such a law would almost certainly have prevented the special prosecutor from finding the evidence necessary to indict Libby, and it will make it harder for police and prosecutors to investigate crimes. That's a price I'm willing to pay to know that there is something out there that is independent of the government, but can still keep a close eye on the actions that the government takes, and report on misdeeds at high levels within our country's leadership. In the finest American traditions, I don't trust the government, and I like the idea that someone is watching it. But as I said, that is beside the point right now.

This issue marks the first time I have been entirely in agreement with Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina: "Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. The real story is those jails."

That's for damn sure.

It boggles the mind. Our government has joined a long and upstanding tradition of fascists, communists, and miscellaneous tinpot dictators in creating a system of jails that operates under so much secrecy that almost nobody knows who is incarcerated in them. The prisoners in those jails have absolutely no rights, and the CIA can do unto them whatever they want. The vice-president is lobbying Congress to preserve the right for the CIA to torture prisoners. He says that removing that right would restrict the president's flexibility in conducting the "War on Terror". It would remove one of the tools that can help us fight the terrorists.

Personally, I don't think thumbscrews should be in our toolbox.

Never before in my life have I been ashamed to be an American. I have disagreed with policies of our government, to be sure. There have been individual acts of our government that have outright disgusted me, both at home and abroad. Never before, however, has our government done something that has made me feel this unclean. Secret prisons and unpersons are supposed to be the things that we fight against. They used to be the things that we fight against. Friday, we stop to honor our veterans, many of whom fought against regimes that did things like that. Today, we don't fight against it - we've become it, instead.

Secret prisons and unpersons. The very thought, the very concept is UnAmerican. It runs counter to everything that we have ever stood for. But it is being done, and it is being done in the name of protecting American citizens from terrorists. Personally, I would rather die an American than live in a nation that holds even its deadliest enemies as secret prisoners, devoid of all rights. That is not the nation that our founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to establish.

A clean sweep in Dover

The York Dispatch is reporting that eight out of the eight incumbent school board members in Dover have lost their bids for re-election to pro-evolution candidates. Wes already gave the preliminary results in an earlier Panda's Thumb post. What I'd like to do is talk about the implications a bit.

First, it's worth noting that voter turnout was higher in Dover than in other school districts, and that the school board was the reason. If you look at the official election results page for the county, you will see that voter turnout for the county was about 20%. (This speaks rather poorly for us as a country, even if it is an off-year election, but that's another issue.) The turnout in two of the four Dover districts hit the 40% mark, a third district was at 35%, and the last 23%. People care about this issue.

It is also worth noting that this was a hotly contested election. If I've done the relatively simple math correctly (not necessarily a safe assumption at this time of night), it looks to me like the Dover CARES candidates won 52:48. That's actually a lot more significant than it looks at first glance. Dover is heavily Republican, as the rest of the results indicate, and the Dover CARES candidates were running as Democrats. They may have only gotten 52% of the vote, but the Democrats running for County Commissioner and Inspector of Elections each only managed to get 35% of the vote.

People do care about this issue, and it appears that they care about good education for their children. The candidates from Dover CARES have managed to demonstrate, once again, that getting up off of your ass and doing something can really make a difference. Don't ever underestimate that.

If you are reading this, and you are not already doing something offline, start. Talk about the issues with your friends and neighbors even - especially - if they are on the other side. If you can, host something like Cafe Scientifique. Get involved with the local school board or PTA, particularly if you have children in the district. Sure, it requires time, and who has time. Sure, it is inconvenient. But it is the right thing to do.

Now comes the hard part: once you get involved, stay involved. The fight over whether science education in America should be governed by science or religion is one that is not going away any time soon.

Let's take the news from Dover not just as a sign that it is possible for people who get involved to make a difference. Let's take it as a sign that we can make a difference - if and only if we get up, get involved, and stay involved.

Wells, and the future of ID

Jonathan Wells just reposted an article over at ID: The Future that he wrote about a year ago. The article is a fictional account looking at the history of the ID movement from now until 2025. Here's what Wells thinks will lead (or will have lead - I never can keep track of the right tense in these future history pieces) to the downfall of Darwinism:

Surprising though it may seem, Darwinism did not collapse because it was disproved by new evidence. (As we shall see, the evidence never really fit it anyway.) Instead, evolutionary theory was knocked off its pedestal by three developments in the first decade of this century-developments centered in the United States, but worldwide in scope. Those developments were: (1) the widespread adoption of a "teach the controversy" approach in education, (2) a growing public awareness of the scientific weaknesses of evolutionary theory, and (3) the rise of the more fruitful "theory of intelligent design."

For the moment, I will ignore the first two points. The entire "Teach the Controversy" approach at the moment is built around Well's book Icons of Evolution, which is about as misleading and incorrect a book as I've ever read. If you want more information on that, there is a nice collection of material available at the TalkOrigins Archive.

Instead, I am going to look at his predictions regarding the rise of Intelligent Design. After all, teaching that evolution is wrong might make legions of religiously motivated anti-evolutionists happy, but it does nothing on its own to advance Intelligent Design. A negative argument against evolution might show that evolution is wrong, but it does nothing to show that any alternative is right. At the moment, the ID movement only has a negative argument. They have not defined the "theory of Intelligent Design," and they have not tested it. In fact, one of the witnesses for the pro-ID school board in the recently concluded Dover Trial testified that he thought ID was "too young" to have developed testable hypotheses yet.

Since this is the case, I think it might be interesting to see what Wells thinks ID will be able to do (someday in the unspecified future):

The third and perhaps most decisive development was a series of breakthroughs in biology and medicine inspired by the new theory of intelligent design... For years the controversy remained largely philosophical; then, in the first decade of this century, a few researchers began applying intelligent-design theory to solving specific biological problems.

I'm not sure exactly what "intelligent-design theory" is just yet, and I doubt that anybody else is either. There definitely didn't seem to be much of a concensus about it during the defense's case in Dover. That makes it a bit more difficult for me to figure out how this "theory" is going to lead to advances. Let's see what Wells thinks:

Darwinists immediately declared the other 95 percent "junk"-molecular accidents that had accumulated in the course of evolution. Since few researchers were motivated (or funded) to investigate garbage, most human DNA was neglected for decades. Although biologists occasionally stumbled on functions for isolated pieces of "junk," they began to make real progress only after realizing that the DNA in an intelligently designed organism is unlikely to be 95 percent useless. The intensive research on non-coding regions of human DNA that followed soon led to several medically important discoveries.

We will ignore the fact, for the moment, that Wells is misrepresenting the current state of scientific research in this area. There is actually plenty of work being done on "junk" DNA, and that there are actually some evidence-based reasons to think that at least some of the junk DNA is junk. We also know that some of the non-coding regions do have functions. In many cases, for example, the regions of DNA that code for proteins are separated by a certain distance from regions of DNA that regulate the gene. The length of the separation is important, but the sequence is not.

Scientists do not believe that some of the DNA is junk because we are "committed Darwinists". We believe that some of the DNA is junk because there is evidence that indicates that some of the DNA is junk. The accumulation of non-functional DNA in the genome can readily be explained as the byproduct of common descent, but that is not the reason that we think it's junk.

But let's set that aside for the moment. Where's the "intelligent design guided" research? Where are the preliminary results? What is the methodology? Where's the Beef?

If you think that there will be massive benefits to study in this area, why aren't you out doing it?

Wells goes on to talk about another area of study:

Another insight from intelligent-design theory advanced our understanding of embryo development. From a Darwinian perspective, all the information needed for new features acquired in the course of evolution came from genetic mutations. This implied that all essential biological information was encoded in DNA. In contrast, intelligent-design theory implied that organisms are irreducibly complex systems in which DNA contains only part of the essential information. Although a few biologists had been arguing against DNA reductionism for decades, biologists guided by intelligent-design theory in 2010 discovered the true nature of the information that guides embryo development.

This is another misrepresentation of the state of science. The role of environmental factors in development has been under investigation for quite some time, and I doubt that there are very many scientists around right now who think that DNA determines everything. In fact, I was at a seminar on Friday that discussed experiments conducted on the development of some fish in an environment designed to simulate microgravity. The effects were quite noticable. Of course, it sounds like Wells is suggesting something more than genotype-environment interactions here, so it will be interesting to see what his scientific research demonstrates.

You are doing scientific research, aren't you, Jonathan?

You do have experiments running, don't you? You have projects ongoing in your lab righ now, right? You do have a lab, don't you? So where are the preliminary results? What is the experimental design that you are using? What methods of data collection are you using? Where is that beef?

All three of these developments-teaching the controversy, educating people about the lack of evidence for evolutionary theory, and using intelligent-design theory to make progress in biomedical research-were bitterly resisted by Darwinists in the first decade of this century. Defenders of the Darwinian faith engaged in a vicious campaign of character assassination against their critics in the scientific community. Meanwhile, their allies in the news media conducted a massive disinformation campaign, aimed primarily at convincing the public that all critics of Darwinism were religious zealots.

For crying out loud, Jonathan, WHERE'S THE DAMN BEEF? What you've just put up there sure isn't beef - it's a low quality, vinegary wine.

Let's be clear. We are not opposing you because of our ideology. We are opposing you because we think that you are wrong. In fact, you are wrong on several different levels. Your positive evidence for Intelligent Design is absent. Your negative arguments against evolution are incorrect and misleading. If you want us to stop opposing you, show us the beef.

And don't even try whining about evil Darwinists refusing to fund or publish your stuff. All new hypotheses face uphill battles for funding, but you folks have it easy. All you've got to do is divert some of that money the Discovery uses to push it's message into the schools into bench research. The annual budget there could fund a couple of reasonably good labs.

So why isn't this being done? What's the excuse this time? When are you going to stop talking about your vision of the future of ID research and start doing ID research?

No bucks, no Buck Rogers

Money makes science go. Without money, we cannot conduct experiements, and without experiments, you have no science. On a more personal note, without money, I can conduct no experiments, and without experiments, I can get no degree. This is why I was so stressed out a couple of weeks back when I was hammering out my proposal, and that was why I was so happy today to find out that I've been granted some funding from the agency I submitted the proposal to. It's only about 2/3 of what I asked for, but every dollar helps.

Some (beter late than never) Carnival Barking

New editions of both Circus of the Spineless and Tangled Bank were published this week. Enjoy.

The Dover Case - Closing Arguments

The closing argument delivered on behalf of the plaintiffs in the Dover, PA Panda lawsuit by Eric Rothschild is available via the ACLU of Pennsylvania's website. It is a powerful argument, and it is well worth reading in full.

Maui Pictures 1: Haleakala Silverswords

Now that I've had a few days to get caught up on work, I've finally got a little time to sit down and go through some of the pictures from my Maui trip. I'm going to post some of the more interesting ones here from time to time.

The first picture, below, was taken on 30 October 2005, on the Sliding Sands Trail inside Haleakala Caldera. Haleakala Caldera really cannot be adequately described. It is an almost completely alien place, a landscape that looks more appropriate to a Sci Fi movie than to anything on Earth.



The plants in this picture are Haleakala Silverswords (Argyroxiphium sandwicense ssp macroencephalum). This subspecies is only found high on the slopes of Haleakala, and within Haleakala Caldera. It is federally listed as an endangered species.

The plants in the lower left of the photo show the normal form of the plant. The silvery appearance of the leaves is due to fine, reflective hair-like projections that cover the leaves. These reflect light, protecting the plants from the high intensity solar radiation that they receive, growing as they do at high altitudes and tropical latitudes. The individual leaves are small and narrow, minimizing water loss in this dry, windy environment.

The Haleakala Silversword has what is known as a monocarpic life history. This means that the plants grow for several years (up to 20 in the case of the silversword) before producing a single flowering head. After flowering once, the plant dies. Several of the plants in this picture have recently flowered, and are dead or dying.

A. sandwicense is part of a group of endemic Hawaiian plants known as the Silversword Alliance. This group consists of the genera Argyroxiphium, Wilkesia, and Dubautia, all of which are the descendents of a single species that arrived in the Hawaiian Islands, probably from North America, millions of years ago.

More information on this species can be found at Wikipedia.

Losing what little respect I had left for Kerry.

For the record, I voted for Kerry. I wasn't thrilled with the man, but I thought he was a far better choice for president than Bush. I really, really, really wish he had won the election, and the fact that I have lost a great deal of respect for Kerry since then should not be taken in any way, shape, or form as implying that I am supporting Bush in any way, shape, or form.

Since the election, I have been steadily losing respect for Kerry. I donated a small amount of money to his campaign, and as a result, I am on an email list for direct email from him. The fact that he lost has not discouraged him from sending repeated emails out to this list in recent months. For some reason, the emails since the election seem to be pushing views that are a bit to the left of where he was when he was running. More and more, he strikes me as a politician in the mold of the legendary French radical who saw the crowd go by and said, "There go my people. I must find out where they are going so that I can lead them."

Of course, that description fits damn near every politician in the country right now.

Today, I got an email from Kerry that put out a proposal that really made me wonder what the man is smoking. He is proposing, and asking people to sign a petition supporting, a "plan" in which 20,000 US troops are withdrawn from Iraq following the December elections there. I don't care what side of the debate you are on when it comes to troops in Iraq. That plan is not only stupid, it is downright dangerous, and the man should know better.

The "premise" of the plan appears to be that elections in Iraq make things better when it comes to dealing with the insurgency. Personally, I think that the insurgents have done a reasonably good job of disproving that. They are more active some months than others, but there doesn't seem to have been any long-term trend toward a drop in their activity since the last elections there. Elections per se do very little to help the immediate security situation (the long term effects may be different, but that is yet to be seen). Using the election as a reason to pull out a limited number of troops makes no sense at all.

That's why the idea is stupid. It's also dangerous. In fact, it's even more dangerous than pulling out all of our troops. If we do that, I personally feel that we will be immorally reneging on the responsibility that we have to leave Iraq no worse off than when we started. However, American troops will no longer be at risk under that plan. Under the Kerry proposal, we will be left with a security situation that is probably no better than it was when we pulled out the 20,000 troops, but there will be fewer Americans on the ground. This, in turn, will place the troops that remain at an even more elevated level of risk than they are now.

Kerry, being both a veteran and a man who aspired to be Commander-in-Chief, should know better.

The Air Force Academy and Religion

A first ammendment lawsuit has been filed against the Air Force, over the issue of proselytizing. The plaintiffs in this case, including four active-duty officers who are recent graduates of the Air Force Academy, feel that they have the right to not be exposed to proselytization while on duty. The same set of guidelines that lead to the lawsuit have also come under fire from Christian Evangelicals, who feel that the guidelines go too far in restricting their rights to spread their religious message.

The relevant portion of the first amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;". The problem in this case is that it isn't possible to satisfy both clauses at the same time.

On one side, there is the issue of establishment, and the issue of coercion. Senior officers in the military have extrordinary power, particularly over those who want to be career military. A single bad performance review from a superior can totally kill any chances for future advancement. Not pissing off the boss is hugely important. Under those circumstances, it is difficult to see how an "invitation" by a commanding officer to pray at the start of a staff meeting could be seen as something akin to an order, or why subordinates would be very reluctant to say anything if the religious statements of a superior were making them feel uncomfortable. The commanding officer is the representative of the government, and given the nature of the military it is difficult to see how the governmental function could be overlooked, particularly during duty hours. That is a de-facto establishment of religion. On the other side, there is the issue of free excercise. Evangelical Christians believe that it is their religious duty to evangelize. If you tell a commanding officer that he cannot tell his subordinates about his religious beliefs, you are restricting his right to freely excercise his religion.

This is going to be an interesting case to follow.

I'm back.

The trip to Maui was very interesting. I didn't actually get to collect anything, but I now have a much, much better idea of what not to do next time. In science, that can sometimes be almost half the battle right there. I'm wading through hundreds of inbox messages, but might have something worthwhile to post later today.