Bill's Comments

I am on the road starting tomorrow until Saturday. I will not be able to deal with mail from my blog until then. I also have a broken PC, and unless I can get the repair parts sent to me in Canada, will be offline this week as well. I won't even be able to keep up with anyone else's blog or news. If the world ends, I will be the last to know.

I have been thinking further about the power of prayer. I know from personal experience that prayer has power. (And no, this could not be described to either coincidental occurance of a desired happening nor to psychological suggestion. I am enough of a skeptic to check for these first.) Some questions occurred to me today.

1. Is prayer more powerful spoken or silent?
2. Is prayer more powerful when spoken with a group?
3. Is prayer more powerful when the group speaks the prayer?

Here are some approaches to answers, based on my earlier comments (can't provide the link, my main PC is broken.) that prayer is powered by our internal emotional state.

1. Spoken prayer is more powerful when we are alone, because the act of speaking focuses our thoughts and reveals any conflicts. As evidence I claim that part of the value of confession or therapy is that whatever is troubling has to be spoken openly for forgiveness or progress to be made. If we can say the prayer openly it is real.

2. Only to the degree that the members of the group are in harmony with the prayer and in a prayerful emotional state.

3. The group speaking the prayer should be more powerful, BUT, only if it is not as a rote recital of liturgy. Meaningful recital of liturgy is powerful. or meaningful recital of original prayer is meaningful.

Just as a side note, I do not give any credence to Buddhist prayer wheels as providing effective prayer. It qualifies as magic or superstition. This is not to condemn the rest of Buddhism, but that particular behavior is valueless, according to my theological views.

Ally Eskin at Who Moved My Truth? has been especially eloquent these last couple of days. See what she has written on education, here and here, and also here comments on teenage sexual behavior, here.

When the arguments for the Constitution were being conducted Alexander Hamilton wrote this:

"We may safely rely on the disposition of the State legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 85

Sometime later after the ratification of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson wrote this:

"The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone." --Thomas Jefferson

And it continues so today.

The SoDAkMonk has posted a reply to my comments of disappointment on his post on Intelligent Design Theory. I perhaps wasn't sufficiently clear. Though I do not subscribe to Intelligent Design Theory, I was not disappointed in his presenting it. He made some specific statements that I quoted that I did not think were of the same quality as his usual thinking. His comment on Genesis being true and accurate when properly understood has underneath it a circular argument, because "proper understanding" makes Genesis true and accurate. I do not disparage the Bible, Old or New Testaments, and am in an interim during an intense study of the last days of Jesus as reported in the Gospels. Genesis is myth and useful myth in that it provided a grounding of man's relationship to God in the early days of Judaism. I have,in the past used the exact same arguments as the SoDakMonk to rationalize Genesis with my scientific knowledge, though I no longer believe them.

Fr. Kowalsk makes this statement:

"Science and religion are both subject to philosophy, it is true, but there is one important exception. A religion that was revealed by the God who is the personal, transcendent creator of the universe is based on the human experience of that revelation. This experience, if accurately passed on to succeeding generations, is intrinsically different from any other religious beliefs, and not subject to philosophy."

He is right in that the belief is not subject to philosophy. However, I would consider the results of that belief as revealed in action in the world to definitely be the subject of philosophy. Philosophy cannot attack any belief in God as a belief. The belief is a starting point of any analysis or discussion. It can however determine if the results of the belief are consistent among themselves and with the belief.

Reading his final comment, "In any case, I'm surprised someone dead set against ID would have ever liked this blog," I feel sad. Belief or non-belief in ID or any other theory of God, or for that matter any particular theory of anything, is not a litmus test for accepting or rejecting someone's sincere writings. Though my blog is conservative/libertarian in flavor, and certainly non-traditional in its theology, that does not mean I reject ideas that are not totally in agreement with mine. Nor does it mean I cannot appreciate the quality of an argument or discussion even if I do not agree with the conclusions or the viewpoint. I have only unlinked from one website, and it was not because of the liberal politics. In fact, I had linked to it because it appeared to be a fairly rational exposition of the liberal point of view. My reason for unlinking was that the expression of that viewpoint became particularly personal and nasty towards the President and Secretary Rumsfeld, with attendant irrational comments. I didn't wish to indicate approval of such.

I read daily every blog on the list to the right. I do not agree with everything I read, but I enjoy reading it because it is well stated. When I post expansions on what I have read or disagreements with an idea, it is not with a view to attack the author, but simply to raise a discussion point. I am more than willing to continue a discussion as long as it appears fruitful. As evidence I would suggest that SoDakMonk look at the beginning of my April Archive and read the exchange with Dr. Carrier.

The SoDakMonk offers an insight into an otherwise unknown territory, that of the Roman Catholic Benedictine Order and its view of he world, and in this alone he provides great utility in his blog. That it is clearly written and interesting to read adds further pleasure. I hope that he and I will have other dialogs in the future.

For all the baseball fans, especially the AnalPhilosopher, here is an interesting article that states and explains why, more home runs are hit on curve balls than fast balls.

(Link via Sigma Xi's daily email, "Science in the News")

I just read this .in the 04-22 Brief from the Federalist.

""You've probably seen the bumper sticker somewhere along the road. It depicts an American flag, accompanied by the words 'These colors don't run.' I'm always glad to see this, because it reminds me of an incident from my confinement in North Vietnam... Then a major in the U.S. Air Force, I had been captured and imprisoned from 1967 to 1973. Our treatment had been frequently brutal. After three years, however, the beatings and torture became less frequent. During the last year, we were allowed outside most days for a couple of minutes to bathe. We showered by drawing water from a concrete tank with a homemade bucket. One day, as we all stood by the tank, stripped of our clothes, a young naval pilot named Mike Christian found the remnants of a handkerchief in a gutter that ran under the prison wall. Mike managed to sneak the grimy rag into our cell and began fashioning it into a flag... He made red and blue from ground-up roof tiles and tiny amounts of ink and painted the colors onto the cloth with watery rice glue. Using thread from his own blanket and a homemade bamboo needle, he sewed on stars. Early in the morning a few days later, when the guards were not alert, he whispered loudly from the back of our cell, 'Hey gang, look here!' He proudly held up this tattered piece of cloth, waving it, as if in a breeze... When he raised that smudgy fabric, we automatically stood straight and saluted, our chests puffing out, and more than a few eyes had tears... Now, whenever I see the flag, I think of Mike and the morning he first waved that tattered emblem of a nation. It was then, thousands of miles from home in a lonely prison cell, that he showed us what it is to be truly free." --Leo K. Thorsness, recipient of the Medal of Honor"

"Greetings!

Read your post on Intelligent Design...

You state,
"My first question is, 'OK, suppose there is a designer. So does He do anything else? Is there any reason to worship him? Do we have to take Him into account now that the design is up and working?' "

Slightly more on point for science is:
If there is a designer, how does this designer implement his, her, or its design? By what processes is this design carried out?

Where can we see these processes in action today?

Can we find any evidence that such processes ever took place in the past?

Then there's the issue of falsifiability. Scientific theories are never proven true -- merely shown able to explain all the available observations. An observation that doesn't fit the theory will cause the theory to be modified, or in extreme cases, junked altogether. (They may still be kept for some uses. Newton's laws of motion have been superseded by Einstein's theory of relativity, but Newton's equations are still used for practical purposes, up to and including the calculations that send space probes bouncing around the solar system.) "Falsifiability" means the theory sticks its neck out. There is some observational consequence -- some possible observation that follows from adopting the theory as a premise in a deductive argument -- which can be either true or false. If this observational consequence is looked for and not seen, either we didn't look in the right place after all, or the theory
-- used as a premise -- is false.

What possible observation could conceivably prove Intelligent Design Theory false?

(Answer: There is none. Therefore, Intelligent Design Theory is not
science.)"

The Maverick Philosopher has provided an indepth commentary on the ACLU suit concerning the cross on the Seal of Los Angelos County, that I posted on a few days ago. His comments are certainly better. Go read them.

If you don't read Texas Conservative every day, you should. The link is in this post and to the right. In the last two days, he has linked to some great sites, and pre-empted a link I was going to post. The breadth of his coverage is awesome.

An article in the Washington Times is an excellent post script to my post on Privacy.

Thanks to Drudge for the link.

Due to customer work and travel, I was unable to even check news or other blogs yesterday, much less post to my own blog. Of course now I see that all sorts of things occurred and I have much to catch up on. Somehow it figures....

Greta Van Susteren, the legal commentator that made her name analyzing the OJ Simpson trial, and now comments for Fox News has written an excellent book, "My Turn at the Bully Pulpit."* Tonight I offer her thoughts on zero tolerance in the schools. It says some things I haven't seen or heard before.

"Who suffers when the school community becomes a virtual police state? We all do. The biggest casualty will be education itself. Say goodbye to excellence. Zero tolerance, by definition, is not a preventative; it’s a reactive measure. Zero tolerance does not ensure education or guidance. It does not support better teachers or foster opportunity for kids to build relationships with positive role models. It does nothing to assist kids in dealing with unsupervised free time. At the end of the day, it encourages kids who misbehave to get a whole lot worse, to have more opportunity to hang out with other “bad” kids, and to model their behaviors in increasingly antisocial ways.

Zero tolerance tells kids, “Do as I say, not as I do.” But everyone knows kids watch what we do more than what we say—they model themselves after us. Kids will, in essence, do as zero tolerance does and become better bullies. They will learn that justice is meted out by force. They will learn to avoid authority. They will not struggle to form their own values. They won’t learn how liberty come in the asking of questions, and they won’t strive to be entrusted with that liberty." P 122-3


"Education reform won’t happen by trying to restructure school bureaucracies and by getting tough on students. It will happen through teachers’ and parents’ fierce advocacy of better education. School administrators and parents have to give teachers support, government has to give them the resources, and all of us have to care." P 123-4

*My Turn at the Bully Pulpit, Greta Van Susteren and Elaine Lafferty, Crown Publishers, New York, New York, 2003. (I bought it on a remainder table, so it would most likely be available used or at the library)

Gosh, Norm, I thought it was shaped like a cross between a doughnut and a pretzel!

John Ray in his PC Watch blog, has posted an item on the Canadian Parliament's passing of an increase in the scope of anti-hate law. It resonates with my earlier post this evening on tolerance of religious belief.

The Maverick Philosopher (Dr. Bill Vallicella) has posted a long and excellent review of a new book supposedly refuting this idea. The reviewer did a better job than the book.

It takes great courage of one's convictions and a belief in the rightness of honest discussion to do what my friend Keith Burgess-Jackson, aka AnalPhilosopher, has just done. He has started a new blog on the Ethics of War and invited Dr. LS Carrier to participate. My hat is off to Keith and I wish him every success in this new blog. I will be looking forward to all the posts, his and Dr. Carrier's. I had my own exchange with Dr. Carrier, and though we arrived at no common conclusion, I will be very interested in what he posts as well as Keith. I also like the appearance of the blog -- it has the proper gravitus, parchment, old books, and serious discussion. Good luck Keith!!

I am not a standard Christian, nor even a standard theist. But I firmly believe in tolerance of all peaceful forms of religion, agnosticism, and atheism. Like I said in an earlier blog, I don't think God cares whether you believe in him or not, he simply wants us to be good to one another. So this mention on Fox News of the ACLU suing Los Angelos County because a small cross appears in the seal (here) smacks of intolerance and persecution. The County replies it is a reflection of the heritage of the area. This is true the entire Southwest was colonized with Spanish missionaries. It is ridiculous when the so-called separation of church and state leads to distortions of history.

While looking for my birth certificate for this trip I am on, I found a partly read, year-old copy of Scientific American. I brought it with me and continued reading. One of the articles was by Robin Marantz Henig called Pandora’s Baby. It was a combination of the history of in vitro fertilization and the coming techniques in cloning.

The author describes the hysteria that accompanied the first IVF, the result of which is now a 26-year old woman. She goes on to say that it is estimated that a million babies have been born this way. After a bit on the controversies, she states:

“And so many newer, more advanced methods of assisted reproduction have been introduced in the past decade that the “basic IVF” that produced Louise Brown now seems positively routine.” Then she states, “…the way of IVF, which has been a hodgepodge of unregulated activities with no governmental or ethical oversight and no scientific coordination. Ironically, the reason IVF became so ubiquitous and uncontrolled in the U.S. was that it opponents, particularly antiabortion activists, were trying to stop it completely. …Accordingly they thought that their best strategy would be to keep the federal government from financing IVF research. … This lack of government involvement—which would have served to direct the course of IVF research [emphasis mine, bk]—led to a funding vacuum, into which rushed entrepreneurial scientists supported by private money. These free agents did essentially whatever they wanted and whatever the market would bear, turning IVF into a cowboy science driven by the market place and undertaken without guidance.” (Enough at this point, her Leftism is getting blatant)

Notice that in twenty-five years this is routine with major advances, yet she doesn’t see that there is a correlation with no government involvement and its success. In fact she then on the next page that IVF children are at greater risk for birth defects and possible genetic problems. No numbers given, and she of course doesn’t deal with the fact that these are children born to parents that would otherwise never have children. If they can provide the necessary extra care then this is no worse than a child born with these problems that was not IVF.

She tries hard to be “reasonable” but basically she is adopting a watered-down version of the Precautionary Principle, with government oversight as the “protector.” The lesson was in plain sight and she missed it. She was blinded by her own ideology.

My sincere apologies to the Maximum Leader. As he noted, I did not have a link to his blog, Naked Villainy. It was once there. It was one of my earlier links. However, in my zeal to add to the list, I must have inadvertently copied over his link. I have just corrected this. I beg his forgiveness. At the coming of the Mike World Order, I do not want to be on the Maximum Leader's S* list.

(Thanks for calling it to my attention)

The SoDakMonk posted another statement in favor of Intelligent Design, this time quoting the work of Dr. J Shapiro of the University of Chicago. Dr. Shapiro is using data from genetic alterations with retroviruses and viruses and additional work to argue against Darwinism. SoDakMonk uses this as well as some selective extraction and quoting to defend his view.

"I've read the most diehard Darwinists admit that natural selection appears "counterintuitive", which is a fancy way of saying it doesn't make sense. Another slogan of the Darwinists, when they try to explain the absence of transitional forms; "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". A wonderfully circular argument that could be used by creationists or even UFO cultists to defend whatever they cannot prove."

I disagree that the second statement is a circular argument. It is an exact logical conclusion. As for the first, counterintuitive does not mean, not making sense, and for that matter, not making sense is not the equivalent of falsity.

His reason for following evolutionary biology:

"My interest is more than a hobby:a popular misunderstanding of evolutionary theory has done much to undermine religious faith since the 19th Century....The Book of Genesis is true, and accurate, when properly understood. []emphasis mine, bk]...The concept of God will forever be outside the realm of science. And science will always be subject to philosophy, because a scientist's philosophical beliefs will always shape his science."

God is outside the realm of science, but just as science is subject to philosophy, so is religion. I continue to read SoDakMonk. He has much to offer. It just is disappointing to see the loss of criticality in his thinking.

This is most useful and I strongly recommend following this link. Thanks to Old Benjamin at Advisory Opinion for the link.

This post was to have been my Sunday Theological post. I am running a day late it seems.



In a post over the weekend, Matthew, the SoDakMonk, discussed the Intelligent Design Theory of the creation of the Universe. Of all the theological theories on the origin of the Universe, this is the most common and the most persistent. Most of the scientists who support or are supported by the Templeton Foundation ascribe to this theory in some form. In a nutshell, the theory says that since every thing is of such complex and exquisite design, there must be a designer, since it could not have arisen spontaneously.

My first question is, “OK, suppose there is a designer. So does He do anything else? Is there any reason to worship him? Do we have to take Him into account now that the design is up and working?” As I see it, the first problem of the argument from design is that it leaves no reason to have any religion. All it does is push one step back the answer to the question, “Where did the Universe come from?” “It came from God.” “OK, and where did God come from?”

There are some less theoretical arguments against it as well. There are papers on the self-organizing of collections of molecules. I have seen the results of the Urey and Miller experiments that create amino acids, nucleotides, and sugars from carbon dioxide, methane, water, and ammonia, by passing an electric arc through mixtures of these gasses or heating them or both. As early as the 1930’s there were observed coacervates, protein shells in water that behaved much like modern cells. Experiments are continually on-going that demonstrate the potential chain of events that could lead to living organisms from inanimate chemicals.

If one looks at the scientific believers in a God, they are almost always physicists, mathematicians, or social scientists. Chemists, and even more so biologists, tend to be atheists. That is because the chemists and the biologists see the steps that the others are not aware of. From before I was in graduate school, I thought that once a living cell was formed, the rest was easy. I have no problem at all mutating a single cell into the full panoply of living creatures today. The issue is getting from inanimate chemicals to living things without invoking vitalism or an external director.

I have spent years following the progress in this field. Lately there has been little published, because our current funding priorities are in neuroscience and health science. But from what I have read, and given the number of years available (which is actually incomprehensible though we can talk about it), it is conceivable that the steps are there. What we need to realize is that arrival at where we are today on this planet took 4.5 billion years. That is really a long time, and the first organisms probably appeared over 4 billion years ago.

Much as there is an appeal to the argument from design, I reject it. I would rather simply say, I don’t know what occurred before a certain point in time, or say I don’t know where the Universe came from, than to say, I know, and then give a made-up answer.

Yesterday I said I would discuss Ally Eskins post in response to my post on having children and the rights and obligations related to it.

Ally argues quite compellingly for sterilization of proven incompetent parents. I fully understand and appreciate her thoughts on this. However, I would propose that rather than sterilization, which I consider too fraught with potential evil, let us incarcerate these people that have children after proving they cannot care for them. Once they are convicted of negligence, BY A COURT OF LAW, NOT A SOCIAL WORKER, they should be monitored and incarcerated if pregnant to assure proper prenatal care. The child is to be put up for permanent, anonymous adoption, and the mother to remain in prison for a set period of time. I think five years is appropriate. After that the same cycle starts again. I personally would rather pay for their incarceration than to take the risk of laws allowing sterilization.

Ally's points are well-taken. In this case I am concerned with the protection from the government as well as protection of the unborn and new-born child.

Naked Villiany is a most interesting blog. A joint effort of a group of friends, it has a broad political spectrum, and covers areas of interest to me that don't show up anywhere in my usual reading. One exception, Smallholder posts on animal ethics which my friend Keith Burgess-Jackson does also. Today I am specifically thinking of the multiple posts on alcoholic beverages. I love wine, beer and distilled beverages (That pretty well covers it doesn't it?) I will need to remember to refer back to this blog for new distillations and beers to try.

When I lost my son, my whole world and attitude changed. I was devasted by the loss of life in the WTC destruction. I am devasted every time I read about Iraqis finding the bones and bodies of loved ones killed by the Butcher of Baghdad. I know what it feels like for a loved one to be killed. And I tell you that all it does is reinforce my opinion that we need to completely remove (translation: kill) all the slimy bastards that think the wanton killing of innocents will accomplish their aims. Grief like money makes a person more of what they really are. The 9/11 widows were unprincipled money and attention grabbers before they lost their husbands in the destruction of the WTC. It just gave them an opportunity to be more of same. I still am what I was before my son was killed, but like a Samurai warrior I have lost my fear of the trivial. All my feelings and thoughts are intensified. I am more of what I am, and less afraid to show it. What can the world do to me that is worse than what has happened? I am too old and fat to be a soldier, but I would be a good one. I am calculatedly fearless. I am not reckless with my life, but if I had to sacrifice it, I'd have a payoff. I'd be with my son.

The problem with liberals is that they imagine what life is like and then make claims to know someone's pain. If they would get a life they would shut up. Try poverty, try welfare, try really having to work for a living. It opens the mind. They are weak, and their stridency reveals their weakness. If this country succombs to the liberals in November, it will be as T. S. Eliott said, "So the world ends, with a whimper not a bang."

If you don't read anything else from a GI in Iraq, read this.

Thanks to Old Benjamin at Advisory Opinion.

I am on the road until late Thursday evening. Until that time I will be unable to answer email to the blog. However, please do not let that discourage you. I will read and answer my mail when I return.

Texas Conservative has posted an extract of and a double link (part 1, part 2) to an essay entitled "Strength" at EJECT!EJECT!EJECT!. It is long but well worth reading. I have read part of it, will read the rest later.

Since I have taken a stand on this issue, it behooves me to report important posts I read on it. The Weekly Standard online edition has a report today on the impact of same-sex marriage on the number of children born out of wedlock and the apparent collapse of traditional marriage in the Netherlands. It presents a very detailed history of the issue and shows the arguments that created the situation. It does not sustain what I have posted, but I recommend reading it.

Way back, when the Supreme Court declared a stripper was practicing her First Amendment rights, there was a lot of ridicule on the decision, especially from the right side of the political spectrum. That decision could play a part in protecting our right to political speech. WSJ Opinion Journal has an essay on the FCC and the clamp-down on "indecent" speech over the radio. The article spells out a very plausible link between this clamp-down and regulation of political speech. Read it and see. I believe it requires registration.

Having just posted my essay on fuel efficiency last night, the WSJ Opinion Journal publishes an editorial on gasoline prices and availability. Some quotes:

"And in spite of what you read in the paper--outrageous gasoline prices entered into Google gets you 15,000 links--its current inflation-adjusted price of $2 a gallon is about its median price over its 85-year existence, and with the exception of the 1980s spike, it has been steadily declining over the decades. "

"The bad news is that the number of refineries producing petroleum products has dramatically declined...."

"Worse, America built its last oil refinery in 1976, and there are no current plans to build more...."

"The reason no new refineries have been built is the burden of regulation,...

"

Read the whole thing. I believe you have to register.

I was talking with some acquaintances and the topic of the current cost of fuel came up. One of them said that the automakers had acquired patents on special carburetors that could get super economies of fuel and buried them. He also said that we needed to develop new sources of energy and use hybrid cars.

There are four errors here, of which I dealt with three at that time. However, I realized that these ideas are very widespread, and much of it is due to lack of knowledge of economics and science. I’ll deal with the economic issues first because they are fairly straightforward and fairly easy to see. Then I will discuss the science of fuel economy. (Besides, it is more fun for me to talk about)

There is a pervasive urban myth that some technology or other that is expensive is that way because those in control have purchased and suppressed superior technology in order to prevent their current scheme from losing money. To my mind, that plain doesn’t make sense. If I had a superior way to do something, in this particular case improve fuel efficiency, I would market it, cut the bottom out of my competitors and laugh all the way to the bank.

If alternative forms of energy are desirable, why aren’t they here? It’s because they are uneconomic. The energy cannot be produced in sufficient quantities, cheaply enough to make them competitive. For that matter, hybrid cars have been in the news recently, and they don’t deliver as promised, and cost far more besides. Anyone owning a hybrid car has a higher price tag, despite the $4000 subsidy on every car from the government, higher maintenance, and they don’t get the supposed economies projected. Besides that, I think they are ugly, which is important in marketing.

Having dealt as much with the economics as much as I want to, let’s get into the science. Actually, the issue on carburetors is an engineering issue. A carburetor is simply a way to convert liquid gasoline into a fine mist that will burn rapidly and efficiently inside an internal combustion engine. (There are no carburetors on diesels.) It also meters the amount of gasoline so that it is as close to optimal for the load as possible. New cars don’t have carburetors, they have electronic fuel injection (EFI). EFI calculates the exact amount of fuel needed for each piston stroke, and injects it as a fine spray just as the intake valve for the cylinder opens to pull it in. This calculation goes on for every stroke of a piston and leads to the new fuel efficiencies we are seeing today. It can also lead to more powerful engines for a given amount of fuel and engine size with the optimizing of the mixture for power.

But carburetion is the icing on the cake. It is the last thing dealt with in tuning a car and has the least impact on running efficiency. When I was an auto mechanic, I became a top trouble-shooter with a high success rate with a very simple formula. Until the valves are right, don’t bother with ignition. Until the ignition is right, don’t bother with carburetion. Only when there is nothing else to be done, deal with carburetion. This is true whether the car has a carburetor or fuel injection. Without going into the details it can be fairly easily shown that the later items have no impact on the former, but the opposite is not true. The former do affect everything later.

The most fundamental constraint on fuel economy is tied up in the physical chemistry of the internal combustion engine. There is only so much energy in gasoline when it is converted to carbon-dioxide and water. This is theoretically easily provable, or experimentally easily provable. The total available energy is the heat that is released when all of the fuel is converted to carbon dioxide and water. The challenge is to convert that heat into usable work.

What occurs inside the cylinder of an internal combustion engine (ICE) is an adiabatic system. Adiabatic systems are ones that effectively do not exchange heat energy with the outside environment. [Nuclear explosions are an example of adiabatic processes, but that is for another post ] In the case of an ICE it is because the processes are too rapid for effective heat exchange. The isolation is not perfect, that is why there must be a radiator and cooling system, but for purposes of our discussion we can ignore those losses. The whole process is explained by the relationships in the ideal gas equation, PV=nRT, where P is pressure, V is volume, n is the quantity of gas, R is the gas constant (a proportionality constant) and T is the absolute temperature. It is important to note that it is the absolute, not Celsius or Farenheit temperature. Absolute temperature is measured from absolute zero (273 degrees, Celsius) in the same increments as Celsius temperature. The equation says that if Temperature is constant, for a given quantity of gas, Pressure goes up as Volume decreases, or vice versa. If Volume is held constant, Pressure goes up and down with Temperature. If volume is held constant, Temperature goes up and down with pressure.

Now we can describe what happens inside an ICE. The piston moves upwards inside the cylinder after a mixture of air and fuel has been introduced. The temperature remains essentially constant, so the pressure goes up. The fuel is ignited, and the flame quickly passes through the mixture. It is sufficiently faster than the piston movement so that we can say that the volume is constant while the temperature climbs rapidly. This leads to a great increase in pressure. The pressure pushes against the piston when then moves downward converting the pressure into physical work via the crankshaft and transmission. As the pressure decreases and the volume increases, there is a slight cooling of the waste products. Once the spent gasses are exhausted and the new fuel-air mixture is brought in, the process repeats. The only difference between a two- and four- cycle engine is that a four-cycle engine has a separate up and down movement to expel exhaust in bring in new fuel-air mixture. On the two cycle the exhaust occurs at the end of the power stroke, and intake at the beginning of the compression stroke.

The amount of effective work that can be gotten from this process is determined by the temperature at which the fuel burns and the compression of the engine. Higher compression engines are more efficient and more powerful than lower ones – ask any hot-rodder, or former one. Diesel engines at a 23:1 compression and using higher energy fuels, get far more work from a gallon of fuel than an automobile at 10:1 compression ratio. (compression ratio is the ration of the full stroke downward volume of the engine cylinder to the full stroke upward volume). The compression of the engine determines the efficiency of converting the heat in the fuel into work, and there are theoretical limits on the process. Most automotive engines have long ago approached the limit as closely as possible. This is why every time the EPA mandates better gas mileage, the power of the engine goes down and the weight of the body goes down. (And cars become less safe).

At this point someone will say, “Yes, but, increasing the compression ratio increases the power, which should reduce the amount of fuel required for a workload and therefore increase gas mileage.” Absolutely right from an engineering standpoint. And that is how the muscle cars were built in the 50’s through 70’s. But this is the world of political wishes as dictates, and there is a problem here. It is true that the higher the compression ratio, the more power is obtained from the fuel, and not only that, the more completely the fuel burns. Great! We can solve pollution problems and fuel efficiency at the same time. One kink in the works – the hotter the temperature of combustion the more oxides of nitrogen occur. Huh? At high temperatures, nitrogen which is normally very stable and forms 80% of our atmosphere will burn, producing nitrous oxides. The EPA in its wisdom has decreed that nitrous oxides are a major cause of smog, in particular, photochemical smog, and are to be minimized. This means backing off the compression ratio. At the same time the amount of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons emitted from the vehicle is supposed to go down. The lower compression ratio increases them. Thus we have catalytic converters to reduce them as well as exhaust gas recirculation, timing changes, and very lean burning engines. All of which reduce available power.

Now it can be seen why carburetion is not the biggest concern. However, there are improvements in burning to be made with better dispersement of the fuel and better metering of the quantity of fuel. Thus has arisen electronic fuel injection.

Now if the politicians would just let gas prices stay high, they would get their wish, fewer “gas guzzlers”, less gasoline consumption, and less pollution, because people would buy smaller cars to save on fuel costs. But they will insist that the high gas prices are hard on people. So are politicians that want to violate the laws of physics.

Peggy Kaplan has replaced an outdated link in her post on having children as a right or privilege that I used as the starting point for my post on Friday.

My ox is gored. I have been found out. I will confess -- I am guilty of sloppy writing. The AnalPhilosopher's Peeve #6 lists my errors. I shall attempt to mend my ways.

AnalPhilosopher just posted an entry in the Encyclopedia of Ethics on the difference between ethics and morals. It would appear that I do not have it right in my statement of the difference. I implied that morals were more general, but the article indicates that ethics is more general. So the question becomes whether my usage is more common or the usage presented in the article. It was based on the literature in this area rather than usage. Something else to consider in my spare time :-)).

Steve at JusTalkin, has posted an excellent expansion on my discussion of removing children from inadequate homes. Ally Eskin at Who Moved My Truth? has also posted a thoughtful response, which I will discuss further tomorrow. I thank both of you for your responses.

I was unable to make a post yesterday. We had company last night, and too much preparation had to be done to make the time to blog. However, I was able to begin these comments on privacy.

The latest issue of “Reason” magazine had 40,000 custom-printed covers were created for the run of 60,000 issues. My cover had an aerial picture of my neighborhood, the inside had some statistics about my community, the inside back cover had a plea to write to my Congressman by name who had voted no on the medical marijuana bill, and the back cover had a bulldozer with the caption “condemned” with my address. The point was to make visible the amount of information that was available publicly about me. The theme was that the loss of privacy was good. I think there is an internal contradiction here, with libertarian philosophy, and I want to expand on the types of privacy and who should or should not have access to information.

First of all there are two types of information gatherers, commercial/private and government, and they must be treated separately. Much of the press condemns private information and then accepts government information when they should be doing the opposite. The crucial difference is that private information is gathered from voluntary submissions and generally is used only for the purpose gathered. On the other hand government information is gathered under law (ultimately this means at the point of a gun. A topic for another post sometime), and there is only the choices of providing it or going to jail. Oversight of private information is relatively easy, if it is misused, lawsuits result. Oversight of government information is next to impossible. Security concerns, bureaucratic delays, and the general acquiescence of Congress guarantee that government information will be used arbitrarily in addition to the proposed uses.

The remainder of this essay is at Bill's Big Stuff, due to its size.

friend, Peggy Kaplan, at What If?, posed a difficult question earlier this month: “Is the ability to procreate a right? Or a privilege?” Just to quibble a bit with the English, what I think she is asking is, “Is having children a right or a privilege?” I posted some related material on this back in April.

As best as I can deduce from her post, which uncharacteristically did not give a link, a couple addicted to cocaine, and ordered to counseling, had conceived another child, with three at home, all testing positive for cocaine, and the judge jailed the mother, stating, "This court believes the constitutional right to have children is overcome when society must bear the financial and everyday burden of care."

Peg’s well-placed concern is for the rights of the children and the unborn child. This is quite a can of worms, but I think an interesting can of worms. We have the rights of the children, who are innocent, conflated with the crimes and sins of the parents.

An underlying assumption in all the following discussion is that abortion as an option has either been refused
or is not to be considered. This discussion deals with full-term babies. Abortion does an end-run around all this, but it has so many difficulties that I want to leave it alone for now. Also I don’t think the state has the right to command a woman have an abortion – it would be state sanctioned murder to too many people, myself included.

Ultimately the question becomes where does the ability of the state to protect the rights of the defenseless, in this case unborn and born children, end and the right to have children begin? I am not sure there is one single answer to fit all situations but I think there are some possibilities to discuss.

The remainder of this post is large and can be found here in Bill's Big Stuff.

The Maverick Philosopher has classified linkage patterns. I think I am a partially reflexive, non-symmetrical linker. I got a great chuckle from this. Like the AnalPhilosopher says, "Who says academics don't have a sense of humor."

Chalabi's arrest is generating a lot of comment, most of it negative. How quickly we forget that Chalabi was not a particularly favorite person of the Iraqis at the beginning of the war. WSJ Opinion Journal essentially considers his arrest a big mistake. The US knew the possible repercussions going in. There must be serious evidence that he was spying for Iran. Even the conservative press can act like liberals sometimes. Let's see what develops before taking a stand.

Donald Luskin has a great post on the economics of gasoline and the actual situation.

I highly recommend the last three days' of posts by JoanneJacobs. Education is her specialty and this group of posts is particularly interesting.

Soundfury has posted his Carnival of the Liberated. It is a good overview of Iraqi thought and also provides links directly to the blogs for those who want more. Thanks to Begging to Differ for the link.

Dr. Rusty Shackleford over at mypetjawa has published an extensive answer to the critics of his proposal to implement wartime censorship as was done in WW II. Whether you agree with him or not, the post has a lot of additional arguments worth reading and he does a very good job of making his point. He has a link to the original post which you should read first.

Texas Conservative has the funniest post I have read in a long time. Go see it. Telling would lessen the impact.

One of the pleasures of browsing the web for news is to read Victor Davis Hanson at the National Review Online. He writes clearly and logically. His views are definitely conservative, but never unthinking. Read today's essay on Apologies.

I heard yesterday that four people had been arrested in connection with the murder of Nick Berg. Now it has disappeared off the radar. Chalabi was arrested yesterday, but more press is still being given to other things.

For once someone wrote something very nice about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Go read it. It reflects well upon the man and also upon President Bush who appointed him.

I just read the first item in the "Grapevine" page from Fox News. Senator Ernest Hollings stated that he believed we went to War in Iraq so that President Bush could steal the Jewish vote from the Democrats by securing Israel. He was immediately described as "crude, ugly, and classically anti-Semitic" by the Anti-Defamation League.

I just read a blog post, (sorry, I can't find it now) discussing that a way to stifle dissent is to accuse some one of being a *phobe (* in computer text is a wild card that means any text is an automatic match).

This is one more example of the behavior described in the post I can't find. What's more, it is incorrect. Senator Hollings made a political assessment of President Bush's motives, not a denunciation of Jews. I don't agree with the Senator, but he has every right to say what he did. It certainly is far less rabid than the garbage the liberal left puts out daily and think they have a right to say.

An item in today's Fox News web page makes a very focused example of the problems with encouraging multiculturalism. Essentially it isolates everyone from everyone else and destroys any sense of unity in this country. Note that this trend is being pushed as a liberal idea that is supposed to show sympathy and "understanding" to immigrants.

First of all manny immigrants push their children to learn English as early as possible and in some cases take difficult emersion courses in English themselves. As far back as 1965, Dr. Hayakawa from the University of California at Berkeley was warning against bilingualism. The province of Quebec is constantly torn because of the creation of French (Quebecois version) as an official second language.

As for the cultural aspects, if the culture was so important, why did immigrants come to America in the first place, and who says that they have to abandon their culture just because they have to speak English? If over time they drop their culture and assimilate to the general American culture, that is their choice. The old culture must not have been that important.

I see multiculturalism as another way for the liberal elitists to remain aloof and able to patronize someone. Basically underneath it all they want immigrants kept down, not brought into our society. In the meantime, employers hire people who can't communicate with customers because they 1) can't get Americans to do the job, and 2) they are afraid of some do-gooder coming down on them with a discrimination suit.

This country has been a melting pot, and in the process the things that have lasting value have remained. We can trace much of popular music to Latin and African rhythms and harmonies; we have St Patrick's Day Parades; there are Polish festivals, Lithuanian festivals, etc., etc. Isolating us from one another in pockets of cultural uniformity is a good way to destroy this country.

I wanted to add some further comments to my post on gay marriage. Specifically I would like to look at civil marriage a bit more. One of the common objections to gay marriage is that it starts down a slippery slope to allowing the return of polygamy, the introduction of polyandry, the condoning of incest, and so-called marriages between humans and non-humans and even dead people. If the states are allowed to define marriage without falling under the full faith and credit provisions, then much of that can be prevented.

One way to define marriage as a legal, civil marriage would be to define it as the union of two persons, a man and a woman, a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. All other constraints would still apply, with respect to age, etc. By requiring that both be capable of swearing before an official their agreement to the civil marriage provisions, such things as marrying dead persons (supposedly occurring in France) or animals, or minors, who cannot legally swear would be prevented. Any other loopholes could be plugged as well. The whole point is that marriage would be what the people of that state wanted it to be. Over time we would find out whether the supposed problems with homosexual marriage are real or not.

I also wanted to comment on a Libertarian position I saw in Reason magazine or from one of the Reason contributing editors. They explicitly stated that all the various feared forms of marriage were alright and to let them happen. I would hope this was simply for shock value and not a serious position. If it were a serious position, then it does make a mockery of all the marriage stands for. In my earlier post, I admitted homosexual marriage as a civil ceremony justified for romantic reasons. In that, it is parallel to the marriages between men and women that do not procreate.

(I know my friend, the AnalPhilosopher, has posted an excellently nuanced and reasoned essay on why he thinks only a man and a woman constitute marriage (Sorry, I don't have the link). I may yet come to his position, but for now I am staying with allowing homosexual marriage)

However, “marriages” between people and animals or people and dead people are one-sided and do not have the aspect of romantic love and mutual and equal adoration that a marriage is to recognize. Marriages between adults and minors, fall into the same category. A minor simply does not have the life experience or the ego development to be able to love in the same way as an adult. The risk of mental or physical abuse is great. In the case of incestuous marriage, humans long ago realized that that lead to serious problems over the long haul. In fact, biologically there appears to be some inborn resistance to this idea. Though the Pharaohs formalized incest as the only legitimate method of succession, there are suspicions that a number of them were not really the offspring of incestuous relations. Incest is a crime independent of marriage, so that would automatically protect from such marriages.

The only potentially difficult issue is polygamy, polyandry, and group marriage. We can eliminate group marriage as a civil marriage and binding on employers and public services for married couples, because there is no defined responsibility relationship. If it is truly a group, then all are responsible for all, or else, no one is responsible for anyone else and why have the “marriage”? Part of marriage law is the definition of new legal responsibilities, each partner being equally responsible for the other. In a group of four, it would not be feasible to say each is 33% responsible for each of the others. What constitutes each 33%?

I do not think that polygamy and polyandry fit the romantic definition of marriage. At one time when women were worked to death and spewed out babies from menarche to menopause, there might have been some survival advantages to polygamy. Basically it was a group of women who were interdependent for help and totally dependent on the husband. It did apparently work in some environments. Willard Marriott, the older, in his autobiography revealed that his father had three wives and families. They all interacted, but I had the idea that one wife was favored emotionally over the others. In a description of a polygamous South Pacific culture, the headman had a favorite wife. To me this indicates that for polygamy and by implication polyandry is not romantic in nature. Only the relationship with the favored spouse has any resemblance to romance.

If a Constitutional Amendment removing the full faith and credit requirement for marriage between the states is passed, I don’t think many states will allow homosexual marriage. The few that do will be watched carefully. I think that when all is said and done it will be seen as a tempest in a teapot, and little was gained that was not already had.

Many blogs have open comments. Radly Balko today showed the upside of this. Right Wing News showed the downside today. To avoid the downside I would either have to moderate the comments or not have them. I do not have the time to moderate the comments so have chosen not to have them. However, the email link is just to the right, under the site counter.

I will read all email and will post the most notable of those discussing one of my topics, whether with me or agin me. If you do not want your name mentioned, say so and I will be glad to oblige. The default is to leave the name on.

I will answer all sincere email. (Flames, unreasoned attacks, and things such as RWN showed will be treated as spam) It may take a while. When I am on the road, I cannot receive email from my blog. I will post when I am on the road so there will be reasonable expectations.

Hello from the Land of the Pharaohs has just posted a very eloquent message. Well worth reading, especially since it comes from the Middle East.

I have just put three new links to good blogs on the right. Thanks to AnalPhilosopher for them.

Old Benjamin of Advisory Opinion
Donald L. Luskin of The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid
Dr Bill Vallicella of Maverick Philosopher

It finally struck me why the press and the liberals cannot let go of Abu Ghraib, when so many other more important things are going on. Their minds are too small to grasp the reality of a beheading, or of 9/11, even when they see it. It is beyond their comprehension so they block it out. They can carry on about Abu Ghraib, because they know it is something they are capable of, not that they would necessarily do it, but that they can conceive of doing it themselves. Beheading someone, killing in self-defense, dying for a cause are all beyond them. Coupled with this limited mental capability is the full-blown, unrestrained emotional state of the spoiled, as Keith Burgess-Jackson so well exposed yesterday in TCS. So they pounce on the only victims they can comprehend, President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, the troops, etc. And apologize for that which is beyond them -- "It can't possibly be that bad, and besides they have a reason."

It really is pathetic. It is like hyenas snarling over a left-over carcass because they are incapable of obtaining their own food.

This is the second in the series on foundations of our society. The first post discussed the basic premise of the series and some working definitions of religion, politics, and science. It also laid out the main program that I would explore the relationships between the three. This is a discussion of the relationships between religion and politics.

Religion and politics have been closely intertwined since civilization began. Rules that were found to work in groups of people became part of the commands from whatever gods were being worshipped. In addition fear of the unknown made people more inclined to propitiate such gods, thinking that it would buy them safety. With power given to the gods for such things as weather, the ocean, the seasons, and actually anything that was not understood, it would be natural for politicians to want some sort of power. There were two ways to obtain this power, ally oneself with a god or set of gods, or declare oneself a god. I think the former is more common than the latter.

However, in allying ones rule with the dominant religion, the ruler becomes actually subject to the ruling priest. Thus we have the creation of theocracies. In the case of the Roman Empire, from time to time the Caesars demanded to be worshipped as Gods. After the fall of Rome, the Bishop of Rome, in time, gained tremendous power over the rulers of medieval Europe through the threat of excommunication. Thus Europe came to be a theocracy. One of the first major cracks in this scheme of thing was the Reformation headed by Martin Luther. Luther presented a way for rulers to remain faithful to God yet not be threatened by the Pope.

When England split from the Roman Catholic Church, it retained everything except the Papacy. However, nominally the King or Queen of England became the ruler of the church as well. Thus the Church of England, from which came the American Episcopal Church, became the official church of state, i.e., it was established. It was to escape the evils of the established church that Puritans, Quakers, and others came to this country, to practice their religion freely. Interestingly enough, with the exception of Rhode Island, none of the early colonies tolerated other than their particular founding religion. So instead of one established church, we had several.

As was noted in an earlier post, separation of church and state is built into Christianity with the quote from Jesus to “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto God that which is His.” (The quote may not be perfect but it is accurate in meaning) This obviously was ignored for 1800 years until the Founding Fathers created the Establishment clause. This is the operational guarantee of religious freedom in this country which supports the stated freedom in the Bill of Rights. Truth to tell, its origin is not scriptural but political from the abuses of the C of E.

For most of our history, religion and the state have remained completely separate in trying to control each other. With a predominately Christian society, there was little furor when public functions opened with a prayer, and generally the honor of giving the prayer rotated among the available ministers. In spirit, there was no establishment of a religion. However, as time has gone on, with the subsuming of education by the state, there are now legitimate and non-legitimate conflicts of church and state, as well as each trying to control the other. It is interesting that it is in the area of education that the battle seems to be most frequently joined.

However, the first instances were actually religion co-opting the state. The first result the Scopes trial in 1925. This link gives an excellent overview of the trial and the fact that it was purely an attack by fundamental religion on school teachings that had been proscribed by law. The laws were religious in origin. In an echo of that past time, two years ago, the Kansas State Board of Education stated that evolution could not be taught in Kansas schools. Here was a case where religion and state had joined together to suppress science as had the laws in the 1920’s.

One other instance is the insertion of the words “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance. When I was an agnostic, I refused to say those words, yet remained a devout patriot (but not chauvinistic patriot). To me the Pledge has always had great significance and meaning, but I refused to accept a phrase that I did not believe in. Now there has been a suit to remove the words from the Pledge, but it is now in the Supreme Court and how it is resolved may have less to do with the Constitutional issue than a legal detail of who has standing to bring the suit.

More recently the bulk of the news concerns efforts by the state to restrict or even control religion and promote a secular agenda at religion’s expense. There have been reports that in California, the Roman Catholic Church must offer birth control to employees that are ostensibly working in secular jobs. Of course this runs completely counter to church doctrine. Any mention of religion in school systems is being proscribed as counter to the Establishment clause. However, there is a notable bias here, in that the proscriptions are focused almost entirely on the expression of Christian religion. Any program supported with state funds in a parochial school has to be implemented in vans and trailers outside the main school building lest a religious artifact be visible during a state-sponsored program.

I had an occasion to read several hundred Federal District, Appellate, and Supreme Court decisions on prayer in school and the Establishment Clause. Actually, the study expanded a bit, and I found I was reading cases that were dealing with other aspects of the Establishment Clause interpretation. As it turned out Establishment Clause law is some of the most tortured and inconsistent I have run across. It wasn’t OK for the town of Pawtucket, MA, to have a crèche scene on public property, but it was OK for the Nebraska legislator to open with a prayer from the same minister for 15 years. In such a vacuum, political correctness substitutes for law and reason. . Any governmental organization is now being accused of encouraging or sponsoring religion merely by tolerating displays of religious ideas. Note that this is a generalization from establishing A religion to tolerating religion in general, and from Congress to any government function. (Governments shall make no law or regulation that tolerates religion).

Even individuals have been persecuted for their personal expressions of religious belief in a school setting. Religious student groups are forbidden equal access to school facilities after school hours, just because they are religious. Such a difference fifty years makes. When I was a page in the Nevada State Senate, one Senator was quietly held in contempt by others because he was not respectful in his behavior during the daily invocation. In the process much has been lost. When I was in the school chorus, we sang a large number of works from the classical composers that were religious in nature, but were not sung for religious reasons. The only time the high school choir sang a religious work for religious reasons was when it sang the oratorio, “The Seven Last Words of Christ” on Palm Sunday. We gave a concert of carols on the local television station at Christmas.

As I stated in an earlier post: “This country was founded on tolerance for all religions as well as for atheists and agnostics. It is becoming intolerant of religion, and in some cases vehemently so. In other cases it is a strangulation by bureaucratic fiat, bit by bit. E.g., children no longer have a Christmas break; it is a winter holiday. These attempts at secular purity make a mockery of the actual motives and history of this country and erode bit by bit our heritage. Without a knowledge of the role religion played in the lives of our forefathers, how can we understand why they did what they did?”

So what would be the proper relationship between religion and the state? The state should adopt a completely hands-off attitude towards religious institutions. To dictate what benefits an employer can and cannot offer is to intrude into the choices of both the employer and the employee. Employees sign on knowing the picture, if they accept it then let it be. There is no right to a job, only the right to pursue one. With respect to education, nothing short of a major destruction of the public school system will work. I am a great believer that Thomas Jefferson’s ideals aside, public education, i.e., government-provided education is doomed to constant conflict. Every taxpayer is contributing to the schools, yet it is impossible to accommodate all views and still provide a basic education. One can reasonably argue that if a taxpayer’s views run counter to what is being taught, he is being forced to sponsor his enemies. This is manifestly wrong. Yet escaping paying the taxes is next to impossible. (Or let us say the consequences are generally highly undesirable.) Physical churches and church organizations should be treated equally and equal to the equivalent secular institutions. There have been cases where churches or their publications receive tax abatements, just for being churches. This burdens everyone else, including atheists and agnostics, to make up the difference. This is another version of taxation to support ones potential enemies or at least beliefs that one does not agree with.

Obviously, I have no real answers at this point, but I am greatly concerned with the situation. At sometime in history every group eventually becomes marginal and persecuted. Eventually the situation will turn and secularists will become the persecuted instead of the persecutors. Memories are long, and there will be vengeance. I don’t wish to see that happen. We are seeing some of the results of that type of thinking in the Middle East today. They still hold the Crusades against us. Fundamentalist intolerance is equally as bad as secular intolerance. We need to ignore the screams of both and find a more tolerant way to deal with each other.

The AnalPhilosopher, once again in his disguise as the philosophy professor, Keith Burgess-Jackson, has written a very penetrating essay on why liberals stay liberal for TCS. It actually explains why the very wealthy, who one would think would understand where money comes from, form their unholy alliance with the poor to rape and pillage the middle class.

If any of you do not read TCS regularly, then please see this post by Gordon Cucullu. He makes a good case for the true nature of our enemies (for those of us who still don't realize).

US atheletes are being told not to wave the flag at the Olympics this summer to "avoid being confrontational." BULLSHIT. Shame and restraint never gained friends nor influenced people positively. I hope they all ignore the advice and proudly wave it as high and as long as they can.

Randy Johnson threw a perfect game last night. I am not a big baseball fan, but I sort of pay attention. This is a great accomplishment. Here is the Fox News article I read on it. The background is as interesting as the accomplishment.

Garry Kasparov, the world champion chess player, has posted a superb essay in the WSJ Opinion Journal. One of the most succinct and well-written articles on the subject I have read.

I recently finished reading a book by Greta Van Susteren, called My Turn at the Bully Pulpit. There were a number of interesting observations in the book, some of which I will comment on in the future. One of the cases she discusses is the MacDonald’s coffee suit. As it turns out there is a lot more there than was reported in the press, as usual. But what struck me was that coffee will keep at 185 degrees but not at a cooler temperature. This runs counter to intuition so I thought it would be interesting to discuss this.

This phenomenon of coffee staying fresher at a higher temperature is an example of kinetics and its impact. In the day to day world kinetics is fairly intuitive, billiard balls, crashing automobiles, baseballs and bats, golf balls and clubs all are kinetic phenomena in which energy is transferred from one object to another. When we get to the world of chemistry, things change considerably. Here we have things like bond energy, meta-stable states, colloids, hydrogen bonds, and molecular bonds. Fortunately there are day-to-day analogs for these things, so if you stick with me, I’ll explain it. The important thing to remember that all we want to do is explain why coffee stays fresh at a high rather than low temperature.

Lets start with some things that are intuitive. If we cook meat, it changes and the higher the temperature, the more it changes in a given length of time. What happens in meat is that the heat excites the molecules of the meat and causes it to break and remake molecular bonds. A molecular bond is the strongest bond between two atoms, and is analogous to holding things together with glue. Just as we can use glues that melt and re-solidify, so chemical bonds can break and reform. Only there is a rule on the combining of atoms. They will combine in ways that give up the most energy, which leads to the most stable bond.

Energy is contained in all molecular bonds. It is the breaking of the bonds between carbon atoms and carbon and hydrogen atoms with the recombination with oxygen that produces the power in a car. The amount of power is the difference between the energy in the carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds and the resulting bonds between carbon and oxygen and hydrogen and oxygen. This example is an extreme case. When things cook, the excited atoms and molecules don’t combine with oxygen since that is only available at the surface, they combine with their nearest neighbors in a way that gives off energy. When cooking, the more heat we provide, the more bonds become excited, break, and recombine.

But why do they not break and recombine in the refrigerator or at room temperature? This is because the bonds are stable at room temperature and below. In one sense this is a version of the next term we need to know, a meta-stable state. A meta-stable state is one that requires an energy input to change but when it changes it goes to a lower energy, more stable state. It is like a marble on a saucer. It will stay there until the saucer is sufficiently jiggled, at which point it rolls out and falls to the floor. So with meat, the molecules of protein are meta-stable in that heating them will cause them to change to a lower energy content.

If you are still with me, there are only two more concepts to introduce, hydrogen bonds, and colloids. Hydrogen bonds are like static electricity. They occur when a hydrogen atom of one molecule has a slight positive charge (Please trust me here, explaining that is much more complicated) and a nitrogen or oxygen has a slight negative charge. Since opposites attract, this causes an attraction between the two molecules. In very large molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins, these bonds also can form within the molecule and cause it to take a particular shape. The shape of hair is controlled by a combination of hydrogen bonds and molecular bonds. When you wash your hair, the water breaks up the hydrogen bonds, and will allow the hair to become softer and more relaxed. This is how women in the past created spit-curls. They would wet a lock of hair to soften it, then pin it in a curl. When the curl dried, new hydrogen bonds were formed that held the lock in place. This is similar to a curling iron or steam curlers. Both operate the same way. However, a permanent breaks and remakes molecular bonds which hold the hair much more firmly.

Finally let’s talk a bit about colloids. The closest thing to a colloid we see in everyday life are dust-motes in the air. If you watch them they bounce around in seemingly random paths. What they are doing is responding to very fine currents and turbulence in the air. Now if we reduce the size of this system to where you need a microscope to see it you have colloids. These are particles that remain suspended in a liquid even though they are solids and are not dissolved. We sometimes speak of a colloidal solution, which is an oxy-moron, but do so because colloids are so fine they cannot be seen with the naked eye, so the liquid appears clear – a solution. The correct term is a colloidal suspension. One application of a colloidal suspension is colloidal gold which has been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

Finally we are ready to think about coffee. Coffee is a colloidal suspension. It looks perfectly clear when fresh brewed, but it is a combination of dissolved and suspended material. When the temperature is very high, say near boiling, or 185 degrees, in our earlier example, the colloids move around vigorously and when they bump into each other, they recoil rather than stick. The same may be true for the dissolved material as well. If the temperature is reduced, say to 140 to 150 degrees, then because the energy of the particles and molecules is less, when they make contact, the energy is low enough that a hydrogen bond can form, holding them together. Over time more and more of these occur, and the colloids start to clump forming a more opaque solution. At the same time the dissolved compounds will also clump or cling to the colloids. Much of the flavor of coffee comes from the dissolved compounds and the feel and part of the flavor comes from the colloids. As these change their nature, combining and clumping, they may also undergo reactions, that were not possible earlier, due to their prolonged proximity. So after a while the coffee tastes old. Interestingly enough, coffee will still go stale when left cold. However, a slight revival can occur when it is reheated. That is because the clumping may not be as irreversible, since the clumps formed at low temperature rather than high. In such a case, fewer reactions will occur.

So in our example, kinetics drove the economics of serving coffee, which led to the great coffee suit.

Fox News posted the following article.

PHOENIX — Thirty years ago, homeowners just outside of Phoenix bought 250 acres at the top of Black Mountain to keep developers out.

The government sold it to them with the understanding that it would remain open for the public to enjoy. Now, many of those same homeowners are working to keep out nature lovers, claiming they trample vegetation and compromise local residents' privacy.

The homeowners consider themselves conservationists.

"Preservation means you close the land and people don't have access to it," said resident Robert Carsia.

But outdoor enthusiasts disagree, saying they are conservationists.

"Preservation means preserving the land in good condition while still allowing people to visit it," said hiker Paul Diefenderfer.

A recent newspaper article rated Black Mountain the best hike in the Northeast Valley. Hikers say if the city and county don't allow a hiking trail on Black Mountain, they'll sue. Federal law clearly favors the hikers, leaving many legal experts to say the question isn't whether they'll get a trail, but how wide it will be.

So basically the people thought they were buying control, i.e., property rights. As usual with any deal with the government, it only holds until a new pressure group has a stronger say.

My friend, Peg Kaplan, at What If? just posted a very well stated argument on gay marriage to both Keith, the AnalPhilosopher, and Ally at Who Moved My Truth? I think Peg did a good job of answering the specific arguments that Keith and Ally put forward, but I think the fundamental problem here is not really discussed directly.

The problem as I see it is that the concept of marriage in our society conflates three separate concepts of marriage, religious, romantic, and legal. The romantic argument is the easiest to accept and argue for. Peg's reply to Keith and Ally is essentially a romantic argument for marriage, and she does an excellent job of presenting that argument. With notable exceptions in the history of monarchies, societies with arranged marriages, and marriages that are for money or convenience, romance is the primary motivator for marriage. What is important here to understand is that what is being desired is a public joint acknowledgement of the intensity of the relationship and an acceptance by the public of that relationship, henceforth treating the two persons as a couple. Around that desire for acknowledgement has grown up a whole host of traditions and behaviors that add nothing to the original commitment but can provide social enhancement for either the families or the couple.

The legal aspect of marriage is also easily discussed and dealt with. Married couples have special privileges under law that other people don't. They obtain special considerations on taxes, estate law, and are protected constitutionally from testifying against each other. In addition there are protections in law for partners if the marriage breaks up. Employers also provide benefits to the spouses of employees equivalent to the employee (except for life insurance in most cases) for a less than marginal cost additional fee. I see this as an acknowledgement of both the state and employers that being married is desirable. For employers this is obvious, married employees are more stable and generally more productive. For the state, it is not an explicit decision, but has grown out of our traditions and it is here that the confusion starts. However, before the confusion can be discussed, we need to look at the religious side of marriage.

Religions institute marriage for two purposes, to safeguard the children of couples and to ensure the propagation of the faith. Religious acknowledgement of a couple’s desire to live together also contains a mandate from God to remain married and to bring any children up in the faith. Such ceremonies also came to be celebrations, even large public spectacles, from a simple awning to a large cathedral, with feasting and dancing. In addition to the mandate there is also the belief that the blessing of God on the union will foster it and help it to be stable and raise children. It is this vision of marriage that has been instituted in the United States rather than the European civil contract.

So the problem arises from the state promulgating marriage law and definition from a religious background. When the US was young and Christianity was the predominant belief this created no problem. Even as non-Christian faiths became more numerous, it was still not a problem because they also had a belief in the basic structure and purpose of marriage. Where we now have the problem is that essentially secular couples want all the emotional recognition as well as the civil recognition that accrues to religious marriage. The problem is that the courts are not parsing the emotional from the legal benefits. (This is typical of most liberal positions anyway) The state has no business in the emotional/religious side of marriage. What has grown up, that makes the issue more confused, is that ministers become ex officio officers of the state when performing marriages. Their pronouncements of husband and wife have the full force of law.

In looking at what to do with this, I think first of all we need to acknowledge that there are two forms of marriage, civil and religious, and that neither should be binding on the other. In the area of civil marriage, we do need to adopt the proposed Constitutional Amendment that protects states from having to accept gay marriage under the full faith and credit clause. Also we should allow all legal benefits within a state to accrue to those married in a civil marriage. Every state would define civil marriage by law not by judicial fiat. Second we should withdraw the declaration of legal marriage by clergy. Clergy should perform religious weddings. These may be the full celebration that is generally thought of with the term wedding. A civil wedding would essentially be a swearing before an official of agreement with the terms and laws relating to civil marriage. Then secular groups could repair to a social hall to celebrate, and religious groups, first to the church to be married in the sight of God, and then to where ever the celebration is to be held.

I am a romantic. I am also a nit-picky legalist sometimes, and an off-beat theist. I want everyone to have the necessary emotional satisfaction of their (hopefully) life-time partnerships, but I don’t want the rest of our society threatened by the change. Both secularist and Believers who wish to impart their vision of reality on the other need to back off. There is room for both, and not at the exclusion of the other. With my proposal, religious groups are not required to acknowledge a gay marriage unless they choose to, within the confines of the church. At the same time gay marriages would have the same civil stature as heterosexual marriages. I think that the proposed Constitutional amendment would allow the states to tailor their marriage statutes to avoid all the slippery-slope arguments over gay marriage that indicate a risk of allowing all sorts of strange couplings.

Steve at JusTalkin has a good post on the FairTax, a national sales tax. I agree with the value of having such a tax.

[The problem is Steve, what will you do with all the out of work tax collectors? I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy, let's bring back stoning.]

RUN do not walk to Ally Eskin's Who Moved My Truth?. Her current post on homosexual marriage says it better than any carefully nuanced, thoughtful piece on either side. Her site continues to amaze me with her ability to combine a youthful passion with clear logic and a strong command of the language.

Once again Peg Kaplan at What If? has said it so eloquently. See her current post on Michael Moore's reception at Cannes.

The following quote appeared today in the Founders Quotes email of the Federalist. It is a good follow up to the previous post on the Second Amendment.

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free." --John Adams

I have read recently a number of posts and essays pointing out that property rights are one of the foundations of a free society. Without the protection of property there can be no commerce and trade, nor any security of person. The hypocrisy of liberals with respect to property is sickening. It is OK to steal some property by law, just leave mine and the causes I support alone.

In the previous post I pointed out that defense of property in Canada is a criminal offense. It is slowly becoming so in this country as well. We can still protect ourselves at the personal level, but when the government under the eminent domain powers takes our possessions we have little or no recourse. Look at the screams of anguish every time there is an attempt to subject environmental projects to consideration as takings. Or for that matter try to fight the oldest rape and pillage around, the Income Tax. Its purpose is not to provide revenue, there are better and simpler ways to do that, its purpose is social engineering, the redistribution of money. All the exceptions in the law that make is so complicated are simply ways to provide just enough relief to prevent an all out tax revolt.

Personally, I can be a pretty revolting guy. I think we need another Boston Tea Party.

[OK I can’t resist the cheap shot, what happened to Boston (and Massachusetts as well) between 1776 and today? They certainly wouldn’t lead a tax revolt. One could consider them revolting, however.]

Today the AnalPhilosopher published a link to a Canadian essay called, “A Knock on the Door”. Keith pointed out that the Canadians had become effeminate. Yes, that is a good first response to the essay. The guy really had no “cajones”. However, my response is that, here is what the liberal gun-control crowd is really after – a police state. Please go read the essay, and note that near the bottom, he points out:

“There is no danger if you live next door to a police station? The truth is that a peaceful and independent individual now has reasons to fear a knock on the door from cops as much as from bandits. For both groups are up against our liberties.”

Do not kid yourself, what was once taken as paranoid ravings by the militant right-wing and the NRA has come true in both Canada and Great Britain. By controlling guns, the government has secured itself against the citizens. There are two ultimate safeguards against tyranny. One is a jury, the second is a fire-arm. Good police are perfectly happy to see citizens armed; it makes their job easier. (One of my protégés is a cop.) Please also note that the defense of property and person are now a criminal acts in Canada.

The bumper sticker is true: “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”

The last paragraph of the essay says it well with a quote from George Orwell:

George Orwell, the author of 1984, wrote (with his underlines): “The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do [read in the sense of, ‘dare not do’]: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle hanging on the wall of the working class flat or labourer’s cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”

I am adding an new blog to the right, Iraq The Model. It is one of the ways we can obtain better and different information from the press. I think this is one of the Iraqi blogs that Texas Conservative has quoted in the past. I got this link from Naked Villainy.

Michael J Totten, whose blog link is to the right, has written an excellent overview of our current relationship with Saudi Arabia and what we should do with it, in TCS. I highly recommend reading it.

Another perfect quote from The Federalist, from one of its readers.

"I can't imagine any torture more inhumane than leaving an innocent young woman to slowly drown in a sinking automobile in the dark, cold waters off Chappaquiddic."

I think this says it well, from a man who has the right to say it.

An open letter to some political partisans, especially certain politicians and people in the media: "I have a son who is an American soldier in Iraq... I am not fooled, when you partisans spew propaganda that helps our enemies and harms our soldiers, then tell us you support our troops. I am not fooled, when you focus on, highlight, and exaggerate the negative things that happen in Iraq, while ignoring our positive accomplishments, then tell us you support our troops. I am not fooled, when you focus attention on American soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq, to use these brave patriots as an anti-Iraq-war political football, then tell us you support our troops. I am not fooled, when you keep criticizing why and how we invaded Iraq -- that is done; our troops are there -- then tell us you support our troops. I am not fooled, when you engage in constant, carping criticism of what the U.S. has done and is doing in Iraq, then tell us you support our troops. I am not fooled, when you search for and trumpet to the world anything that will diminish respect for our soldiers and their leaders -- even when it endangers greatly their lives, then tell us you support our troops. I am not fooled, when you tell our soldiers and the rest of us that they are stuck in a 'quagmire' and will suffer a Vietnam-type defeat, then tell us you support our troops. I am not fooled, when you spout propaganda that undermines the morale of our soldiers and the American public and boosts the morale of our enemies, then tell us you support our troops. You are giving aid and comfort to our nation's deadly enemies! They know they cannot defeat us militarily in Iraq. However, you cause them to think they can win here politically by breaking our will, if they kill and wound enough of our soldiers. You despicable partisans! You are stimulating our enemies to attack our soldiers and the people working with them. The blood of many Americans and Iraqis is already on your hands. And your hands collect more blood every day! You are determined to regain the political power you have lost, and you believe your presidential candidate and congressional candidates will win, if the U.S. fails in Iraq. If your anti-American propaganda contributes to the deaths of many Americans and Iraqis, that is a price you are willing to make them pay. You are pathetic and dangerous!" --Proud Father of a Decorated Army Officer serving in Iraq

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