Each candidate got what he wanted - mostly

kw: politics, debates

Mitt Romney knew you don't go head-to-head against a sitting President on foreign policy; Barack Obama has carried out foreign policy, and he hasn't. While he was able to claim a little territory by showing those aspects that have failed, and the President didn't have an effective counter-argument to that, the Governor simply performed verbal jiu-jitsu, over and over again, by agreeing with the policy where it has been correct (in his view). Then he steered the discussion to the weakness which has been pointed out by Iran's President Ahmadinejad, that the U.S. national debt would cripple us to the point we could be safely defied. I think it is getting pretty obvious to the American public that we need more tax revenues, and the best way to raise them is to raise the national private-sector payroll. Romney is by far more likely to be able to do that.

The President was on the attack, to the point of rudeness at times. He had to be. He also had to present himself as a successful "leader of the free world". That's what he set out to do, and for the most part, he was able to do it.

The Governor had a dual strategy, to fend off the attacks while making a few of his own, primarily on the economy, and to avoid any gaffe that would slow the momentum he attained in the first two debates. He was able to do that. He wisely avoided another set-to over Libya, knowing that we all know the President lied in the prior debate.

My wife and I listened to the first 20 minutes or so of the ABC commentary. I don't recall who said it, but I agree with the statement I heard that this will be a very close race, and is by no means decided yet. None of the commentators last night mentioned it (strangely), but some of the callers to the morning talk show on WPHT (1210 AM) this morning said that Mr. Romney's closing statement was inspiring and uplifting, setting a tone that Mr. Obama could not match. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Lying by covering all bases

kw: politics, debates, lies

Transcripts of President Obama's short speech in the Rose Garden on Sept 12, 2012 are being posted everywhere, by commentators all over the political spectrum, because of one exchange in last evening's debate. The President said he had called the attack an act of terror during that speech, which Mr. Romney disputed, but the moderator broke in to "confirm" that the President was correct, then cut off Mr. Romney by forging ahead with the next question. (In my post yesterday, I said the moderator seemed to cut both off equally. By a more careful count, the cut-offs were 28 against Romney and 9 against Obama.)

The 9/12/12 speech was short, just over 800 words in 13 paragraphs (as parsed in the transcript released to the media). In the fourth paragraph, the second sentence reads, "We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others." This is a reference to the video that supposedly induced an enraged crowd to attack the embassy. Everything the Obama administration said for the next two weeks was based on the supposition that there was an uprising because of the video. Only after two weeks did the State Department and a White House spokesperson acknowledge that there was no crowd, but rather a coordinated attack by heavily armed persons, in an assault that had clearly been planned long in advance.

The eleventh paragraph opens with these words: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation,…". This is the sentence that the President and the moderator were referring to. Of course, had there been a spontaneous demonstration that led to a crowd overwhelming the embassy and attacking the staff, it would have been an act of terror, though one of a general nature. But this sentence is much different from what would have been said if the true nature of the attack had been known to the President on 9/12/12. You could say that Obama was lucky he, almost accidentally, said these words. I think it more likely he said this, and a number of other quite general statements, so he could pick any tidbits he needed from the speech later, which is precisely what he did last evening.

Further, in the VP debate a week ago, Joe Biden was very vehement that he and Obama didn't know, that they had "poor intelligence". The President last evening was trying to say that he did know, the very next day. Either he was lying, or Biden was. They are both inveterate liars, so does it matter?

It matters a lot. The President has been hugely embarrassed by this, and he's trying to wriggle out of trouble. He cannot. First the administration, from Obama to Clinton and on down, were totally blind-sided. They had already declined to send extra security to the embassy when asked. Then the attack happened, and they were blind, intelligence-wise. It took them two weeks to figure it out! This is foreign policy by amateurs. Now he is trying to lie his way out of trouble. I certainly hope that at least 51% of voters decide that, this time, he cannot be allowed to do so.

A better debate

kw: politics, debates

The second Presidential debate finished a few minutes ago. I didn't stay on after the candidates finished, not wanting to hear the ABC commentators.

It was clear that both candidates were better prepared than they had been for their first debate. I am sure many will be saying the President "won" this one, because he did so much better than before. But the Governor also improved. There was a more even give-and-take.

While both candidates continued their attempts to frame their opponent, both had more to say about what they would do. As I expected, specifics were quite scarce. Mr. Romney spoke of his 5-point plan, and I suspect people are learning the points. Mr. Obama spoke of things he considers positive about his first term, and vowed to continue. He had little to say about the areas his opponent attacked, and that may be a strength; let the negatives just die away.

Both men were more combative than before, but the moderator, Candy Crowley, was much tougher than Jim Lehrer had been. I was expecting her to be more prone to cutting off Romney than Obama, but I found her pretty even handed.

I liked the questions coming from the audience members. There is no team of "preparers" who can do better than six dozen thoughtful citizens, often helped by their friends beforehand (as one questioner explicitly mentioned).

Whichever candidate you favored before, I expect you will still favor. Both did well. I wrote of the first debate that I thought it was pretty even. Lots of Democrats were shocked that the President didn't wipe the floor with the Governor, which is why there was so much buzz that Obama "lost". It was clear he would try to do so this time, but the Governor was ready for it. No floor-wiping this time, folks. Both men made points, and both absorbed a few blows. I eagerly anticipate the third and final debate in just six days.

Precisely what did Joe win?

kw: politics, debates

I had a long day in D.C. yesterday (more about that in another post), so I'd pre-recorded the Vice-Presidential debate and watched it late. That got me to bed pretty late, and I'm squeezing in a long coffee break at work to make a belated comment.

There is a funny old film in which a seasoned swordsman displays all kinds of exaggerated techniques and fancy footwork. Meanwhile, his opponent either parries or stands back to watch the show, before stepping in to behead him.

There is no doubt that Joe Biden is a seasoned debater. He is also a bully and a clown, but as Delawareans like to say, "Yeah, he's a buffoon, but he's our buffoon." And for close to forty years they have been voting for him over candidates who had the temerity to display a smidgen of intelligence.

In the few post-debate minutes that I watched, the ABC folk were all saying, "Oh, yeah, Biden won hands down." Really? If this had been a debate rated according to the rules of Toastmasters International, I suppose you could say he out-pointed Paul Ryan, in the narrow sense of asking more questions, but with Ms Raddatz continually cutting Ryan short, a wise debate judge would have replaced her in the first quarter hour with an unbiased moderator.

Then there was all the grinning and grimacing. Does Joe really think we fall for his hamming it up? Paul Ryan mostly ignored Joe Biden's antics, concentrating on making the points he could, but occasionally just "let Joe be Joe", before snipping off his head. The moderator complained that Ryan was short of specifics, but he actually did have some specifics, while Biden had none. And Ryan pointed out repeatedly that Biden was using empty attacks to cover a total absence of reason.

In the next-to-last exchange, Paul Ryan did miss an opportunity. Joe Biden made five quick complaints against Romney and Ryan. Ryan's best answer would have been, "You just heard five bald-faced lies", but perhaps he'd decided not to call Joe a liar outright. If you count blows thrown (ignoring that they all missed), sure you could say that Biden "won". He left the stage with a trophy in his hand, and his head on the floor.

A debate that promised more

kw: politics, debates

I have vacillated for most of the day over whether to write about last evening's Presidential Debate, the first meeting between Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama. I have read and heard a variety of opinions, including a headline "Romney Wins!", and a diatribe by former PA Governor Ed Rendell about how badly the President did. I judge that people of both political persuasions wanted to see blood run across the stage, and they didn't see it.

Firstly, the debate itself was much closer to a real debate than many I have seen in the 52 years since the original Kennedy-Nixon debate. I am partial to Gov. Romney, and I think he did well. I also recognize that the President did equally well, and I think Ed Rendell's comments are misguided. The President has two key advantages. He is a sitting President, and has experience being Commander in Chief. This played little part in this debate, but I expect it will come out in the future two debates. He also has a better poker face, an ability to appear unfazed no matter what his opponent says. This is something the Governor would do well to work on, if he can avoid looking stiff. However, he has his own advantage, an ability to make his points more succinctly, so he can get more said.

A key moment came after the debate (which I watched on ABC; I am not sure every network kept the cameras going as long). Michelle joined Barack on stage, and quite a gaggle of Romneys came up with Ann to greet Mitt. I could hear a commentator saying, "Mr. Obama requested that as many Romneys were welcome as he liked." I watched the whole group mingle. Mr. Romney introduced quite a number of his offspring to the Obamas, and I could see they all were relaxed and enjoying themselves. I can't read lips, but I wonder if either candidate said, "Boy, was that fun!" These men do not dislike each other the way some pairs of opponents we have seen in the past.

People, if you want to see blood, wait for a future debate (2016 or beyond). This is rightly turning into a battleground of ideas (finally!), and both candidates are working on presenting clear ideas to the American public, and particularly those who still can't make up their minds. They also both know that some who answered polls one way or another are likely to change their mind in the next few weeks.

I expect this election will be a squeaker, whoever wins. The next President is very unlikely to have the kind of mandate that Mr. Obama had four years ago. That's a good thing. He doesn't collaborate across the aisle as well as he claims to, so if he becomes a Lame Duck President, I think we are in for some surprises; he may become a better collaborator than before. And unless there is a strong mandate that sweeps Mr. Romney into office with a "turned" legislature behind him, he will be in for a first term very different from what he might expect. He'll need a heck of a mandate to be able to overturn "Obamacare" (which name the President now claims he likes), for example.

Do I expect more of the same for the coming debates? Only partly. The Vice-Presidential debate next week could be a very different affair. I don't yet have a feeling for whether Messrs. Ryan and Biden like or dislike one another. The coming two Presidential debates could be sharper and stronger, but I don't expect a "Mondale Moment" (when Ronald Reagan's one-liner about Walter Mondale's "youth and inexperience" cracked up Mondale, and effectively blew him out of the race). I do expect a heady set of comparisons between the ideas of two men who have quite different views of the direction America ought to go.

A standing O at a debate?

kw: politics, debates

I like Juan Williams, but he was at his smarmy worst last evening, trying to trip up Newt Gingrich. To his leading question, whether the Speaker's suggestions about working might constitute an insult to the poor and the blacks, Gingrich simply said, "No, I don't." The next question was booed, and Newt's answer received a standing ovation. Williams was down for the count, rhetorically speaking, though he didn't seem to notice.

Give him time to figure it out; he'll get the point. As the author of Muzzled, he ought to know better. The public is tired of people dancing around troubling issues. They want straight talk, and that want was amply satisfied by the Speaker.

By the way, all the candidates did well, even very well, but if you are looking for a clear winner, go with the "applause meter" and award it to Newt.

Countdown to New Hampshire

kw: observations, politics, debates

I watched the televised debate from New Hampshire last evening, among the Republican candidates. There are now six contenders, Michelle Bachmann having bowed out of the race: John Huntsman, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry. Although Romney, Santorum and Paul are the "front runners", in my view nobody is really out of the running yet.

I would not say there was a clear winner last evening. This was much closer to a real debate than the prior ones, with plenty of back-and-forth among men who had both good and bad things to say about one another. I would say, though, that these candidates are primarily laying the groundwork for most of them (perhaps all) to support whomever is nominated. At least three of them stated that any one of the six would do a better job as President than Barack Obama has been doing.

It is still early days. My own State's primary is not until April 24, by which time 34 States and Territories will have held their primaries or caucuses. Even at that point, I suspect there will be some fluidity and uncertainty about the eventual nominee.

Some have said or written that it might be best to replace this six-month mess with a single primary election date, to be shortly followed by the nominating conventions. I disagree. The present process may be a grueling multiple marathon, but it gives voters a much greater opportunity to get to know the candidates, most of whom visit nearly every State. Our remarkable democratic process probably engages more people than any other known. A single-day primary would force much greater reliance on media advertising, a detriment. There is too much already.

I initially favored Ms Bachmann, but now that she is out, I am still confident that the Republicans will nominate someone who can beat the incumbent, because I am pretty sure any of the remaining six can make a better case for becoming our President, than Mr. Obama can for remaining in his failed Presidency.

Finally, a word from the other side

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, global warming, debates, debunking, polemics

It is ironic that the prior book I reviewed is a vehemently pro-global-warming polemic, and this next is just as vehemently anti-global-warming, just as polemical. The new book is Heaven and Earth: Global Warming; the Missing Science by Dr. Ian Plimer.

The author knows he has a very tough row to hoe, so he goes the proverbial extra mile (or ten): Where most books of scientific popularization have 200 or fewer references, he has more than 2,000, which he has put in footnotes rather than endnotes. I am glad. I prefer footnotes; I am disinclined to keep paging to the back of the book, and tend to read endnotes, if at all, after the rest of the book. I don't mind glancing down now and again to see if a note has more material than just a bibliographic reference.

Long before the debate over global warning, when the term "greenhouse effect" was still in vogue, I read an article in which the author stated that even if CO2 were to rise to 1% the temperature would rise no more than 4°C or 7°F. That is a lot but it not great as some claims we are hearing.

A point which Dr. Plimer makes, which he supports with this chart, is that most of the greenhouse warming that CO2 can produce has been accomplished before the amount reaches 100 ppm.


We have here a classic situation of diminishing returns. It is one point in the book that I'll treat in some detail, then follow with a more general survey. The key to understanding it is to look at the way the spectrum of CO2 changes with its amount. The following chart shows the visible and infrared spectra of oxygen, CO2, and water. These spectra are all normalized to some specific depth of the pure gas, probably one meter (though the reference doesn't say).

See how the green line for CO2's spectrum has just a few bands, and only three that are "strong"? Let us suppose that this is for one meter of pure CO2. The atmosphere has just under 400 parts per million (ppm) at present, which is one part in 2,500. That means one meter of gas is distributed in 2.5 km of atmosphere. The effective thickness of the atmosphere is about 5 km, if you allow for the rapid thinning of air with altitude. So this line is probably quite close to the actual absorption spectrum of all the CO2 in the atmosphere between the ground and space.

Now, what happens as CO2 concentration changes? I prepared a simple spectral band absorption model to show this. First, a numerical example. Let us assume that the "standard amount" absorbs 75% of the radiation at a particular wavelength. What happens when there is three times that amount? The approach is to take the proportion that is transmitted (1-0.75 = 0.25), take it to the third power to get the new transmission (0.25³ = 0.0156), and subtract from 1 to get the new absorption (0.984 or 98.4%).

I prepared the chart below for an absorption band with a gaussian shape at low concentration, shown by the lower, black line. If the amount of gas is ten times as much, shown by the red line, there is a section with nearly 100% absorption, and the whole line is wider. With each increase by a factor of ten, the absorption band widens by a smaller and smaller amount. Going from the red line to the dashed orange line, though the amount of absorbing gas increases by a factor of 10,000, the total absorption increases only by about a factor of three.
I designed this example so that the red line approximates the absorption of CO2 near a wavelength of four microns, at 400 ppm for the full depth of the atmosphere. The solid lines above that one are for 4,000 ppm (0.4%) and 4%, at which point the amount of influence CO2 might have on the atmosphere is doubled. Four percent is also the level CO2 might conceivably achieve if we burn all known fossil fuels. This would also lower atmospheric oxygen by nearly 2%; how likely is that? Nonetheless, I show, with the two dashed lines, what the absorption would be if the atmosphere were 40% CO2, and if there were nothing but CO2 in an atmosphere with four times the density of today's atmosphere; a situation 1/10th as severe as that on Venus!

One might then ask, how can it be that Venus's temperature is 500°C? First of all, Venus receives twice the sunlight that Earth does. This means its equilibrium, airless temperature would be 65°C or 150°F. The airless temperature for Earth (experienced by the Moon) is 5.4°C or 42°F. Earth's actual equilibrium temperature is about 15°C or 59°F, mainly due to water vapor.

Take a look at what water vapor (the blue line) does in the 4-line chart above. It absorbs all wavelengths longer than 10 microns, and about half of radiation longer than 1 micron. If water were a much larger amount of the atmosphere, it would absorb so much of the outgoing radiation that a much higher temperature would be needed to move the thermal radiation to a short enough wavelength to escape to space.

CO2 has a very low absorption band longer than 6 microns, which in a very thick atmosphere absorbs everything. The "valleys" between the peaks shown also "fill up", absorbing everything from about 1.5 microns on. It requires a temperature of about 500°C to overcome this absorption, for an atmosphere such as that on Venus.

This, then is the physical explanation of the "greenhouse effect". Greenhouse gases such as water, CO2 or methane allow most incoming, shortwave radiation to reach the ground. Radiation in the absorption bands of these gases just heats the gases themselves, and the air they are part of. For the heated ground to radiate its heat back into space, it must emit enough radiation to get through the greenhouse gases. The warmer the ground is, the shorter is the effective wavelength of its thermal radiation. Longwave energy absorbed by the greenhouse gases heats up those gases, and about half of that is radiated back to the ground, so the more absorption there is, the warmer the ground has to get to achieve thermal balance. Of course, all this is complicated on a real planet because much of the heating goes into producing wind, but all energy turns into heat sooner or later.

The final point on this subject is this. At the concentrations CO2 has ranged within throughout history, its greatest effect has probably never been greater than about 3 times its present value. In the distant past, it reached concentrations as great as 1% (10,000 ppm). During one such time there was an ice age! It is never likely to come anywhere close to 1% again. Now for a summary of Dr. Plimer's message.

He is called a "denier" by some, those he might call "warmists". He makes the point that a belief in global warming has become like a religion to some. No matter what people call themselves, even atheists have strongly held beliefs about something, which they hold with religious fervor. Everybody believes in something, particularly those who deny it the loudest.

The little chart above shows average global temperatures for the past 2,000 years. I deliberately went to a source different from the ones Dr. Plimer uses. If you click on it to see the larger version, you'll be able to read the reference. This prominently shows the Medieval Warming, which was warmer than 1998, the warmest year since the Industrial Revolution began in the 1800s. With this and similar data, Dr. Plimer asks the questions, "How did it get so warm in the years around 900 and 1000, when CO2 was so much lower than it is today?" and "Why were the Little Ice Age of 1400-1850 and the late Roman period before 800 so much colder?" Unless these questions can be answered, his point is that temperature is not controlled by CO2.
Then he shows the comparison graph above, on page 89. The lower half is a similar, but smoothed, chart showing the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age as they have been understood by climate scientists for many years. The upper chart is the infamous "hockey stick" chart produced by Michael Mann and his colleagues. This chart has been totally discredited by several scientists, but is the one used by the IPCC to base its conclusions that we are all in grave danger. Is it any surprise that Dr. Plimer and others deny there is much to worry about? or that they question the motives of the leading authors of the IPCC Report?

The structure of the book echoes its short title. The Sun (Heaven) has by far the greatest influence on weather and climate. Its variation due to the sunspot cycle and longer cycles (which periodically eliminate sunspots for 50-100 years) has a significant, well-measured effect on climate. After an introductory chapter and one on history, the Sun and influences on solar influx to Earth fill one large chapter. Other heavenly influences include cosmic rays; when the sun is weaker, its reduced magnetic field lets more cosmic rays get through, and average cloudiness increases, further reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground. Cooling ensues. Warming follows a strengthened sun, amplified by a reduced cloud cover. The Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period almost without sunspots, was the coldest part of the Little Ice Age.

In his History chapter, he makes the point again and again that warming periods have been periods of increased productivity and expansion of species, and that cooling periods are marked by desertification, loss of species or mass extinction, and (in the Holocene at least) crop losses leading to reduction in human numbers. He repeats these points throughout the book, particularly in the Sun chapter, where he asks, if global warming was good for the early Romans, and even better for the late Medieval Europeans, why do IPCC scientists claim it will be bad for us?

The fourth chapter, also a long one, is "Earth". While he hits a lot of points, a big one is volcanoes. Mass extinctions seem to have occurred in sychrony with extra-large "supervolcano" eruptions that took thousands of years to burn themselves out. Each such episode produced millions of cubic kilometers of lava, and thousands of cubic kilometers of "stuff" was put into the atmosphere. A characteristic of volcanic activity is that it produces lots and lots of CO2, yet because of Sulfur oxides and solid matter also blasted into the sky, cooling is the result. By the time the cooling is over, earth processes have usually absorbed all the extra CO2 as well. But there is another, continuous source of volcanic activity, which arises in the Water chapter.

Before Water he spends a chapter on Ice, primarily the Snowball Earth period in the late Precambrian period about 700 million years ago (and perhaps another one 2,000 million years ago). Both occurred when CO2 was many times denser than it is today.

In the Water chapter he addresses the question, "Will the seas become acid?" If you measure the acidity of soda, water with a few percent CO2, it is definitely a weak acid. Not as strong as vinegar, but acid nonetheless. However, if you put almost any common kind of crust-forming rock, such as granite or basalt, in the soda, and cap it for a few weeks or months, the acidity will reduce and eventually turn to alkali. Even though granite is called an "acidic" rock, that is only with reference to basalt, which is more strongly alkaline.

Guess what forms the sea floor? Basalt. What is going on deep under the sea? For one thing, CO2 in sea water quickly hydrolyzes to bicarbonate (HCO3- ion), which is less acidic. Then bicarbonate reacts with basalt to change silicates to carbonates, except that much of it is captured by snails, clams and other growing sea critters to make their carbonate shells also. All these processes result in a sea that is distinctly alkaline.

There is a greater source of CO2 under the sea, however. The Mid-Ocean Ridge is an 80,000-km system of "spreading center" volcanism that runs through every ocean basin. The average spreading rate is 5cm/y. That results in 4 cubic km of new lava produced every year (that is 30 million tons per day). These sea-floor basalts erupt at a temperature near 1000°C. It takes a lot of water to cool them down to the 0-5°C temperature of the deep ocean. Many cubic km of water are heated continuously by this outflow. Each cubic km of lava has a lot of CO2 in it, which dissolves in the deep water. This water has been measured to have the capacity to hold a lot more CO2 than what these Mid-Ocean Ridge produces. This amount is much greater than what we are producing with all our industry. The fresh basalt reacts with some of it to keep the oceans alkaline.

A short chapter on Air challenges the entire notion of the "greenhouse effect". The radiation-in-radiation-out definition I gave above is different from what the author espouses. I don't stand with him on that one. I understand the term is a metaphor that isn't supposed to exactly equate CO2 or any other gas to the glass in a greenhouse. We all know greenhouses are more for keeping freezing or drying wind off the plants, and often have to be either heated or cooled, but they do tend to gather heat by differential radiation absorption, and this is the part of the metaphor that is useful.

In his final chapter, "Et Moi", he recapitulates his main points, and closes by asking "What if I am wrong?" Only the "wildest" of the "warmers" will claim that during the present century warming will be greater than 3°C, yet the Medieval Warming was 3°C warmer than today, with very salutary effects on all. The sea didn't wipe out coastal settlements and crops boomed. He winds up with 18 "even if" points, the last being, "Even if mitigation were as cost effective as adaptation, the public sector, which emits twice as much carbon as the private sector, must cut its own emissions by half before it preaches to us."

He started that chapter by stating, "...the greatest threat...is from policy responses to perceived global warming and the demolishing of dissent." I agree with him on this. Is he wrong, folks? Prove it. Use real data, not Mann-style "hockey stick" fraud. But I have skimmed the internet and seen mostly ad hominem fallacies against him in response to the points in this book. Their authors are a shame to the profession of science.

The God wars, round n

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, religion, faith, debates

The cultural pendulum has swung so far in the anti-faith direction that apologia becomes necessary. Some pretty big names have published books based on the premise that religion is evil. Now, thankfully, a credible witness has arisen in David G. Myers, writing A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists: Musings on Why God is Good and Faith isn't Evil.

Though the book has nineteen chapters, the author has three basic points. Firstly, that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. That is, it is historically true that some great evils have been perpetrated in the name of religion. However, let us not forget that the greatest evils known, in terms of mass destruction of human life and human habitat, were perpetrated by avowed atheists such as Stalin and Mao. Let us agree leave both kinds of extremism out of the debate as aberrations, and instead discuss the historical facts and current events as they impact the daily lives of people who have one or another belief, acknowledging that atheism also is a belief system.

Secondly, that having faith is good for those who have it, particularly those who actively follow their faith. Faith and its impact in people's lives has been studies a number of different ways, in many, many studies. "Statistical theology" has admittedly returned a null result, meaning that there is no statistical evidence for miraculous answers to prayer. For example, there have been studies of how well people did if they were prayed for and either knew it or didn't, compared with people who weren't prayed for. What confounds such studies is that a great many of the subjects of the study were being prayed for by people unknown to those who conducted the study, so the results don't allow us to untangle the known from the unknown effects. In other studies of subjective experiences, it has been consistently shown that people of faith are consistently more content.

Certain studies that seem to show better health or longevity in places with fewer numbers of people of faith, are shown in a new light. The better health, wealth and longevity are found to correlate best with greater levels of general education. Even the more, though education and religious practice seem to be anti-correlated, the faithful in those more educated places are more likely to be praying for the multitudes of the non-religious around them. Which brings up the third point.

Thirdly, living among the faithful is better, even for those who are not. Those countries or states that are so prosperous are enjoying the fruits of an earlier culture built on living faith and a religious culture of responsibility, self-control and hard work. Those areas in which faith has been largely abandoned are going downhill, becoming less congenial places to live. Those social experiments in which a serious attempt was made to abolish religion all turned into failures, and became miserable places. I think particularly of Russia and Eastern Europe, of people who are rekindling faith in huge numbers, even as they rebuild societies destroyed by official atheism.

The book closes with an appendix, "International Society for Science and Religion Statement on Intelligent Design." The crux of the statement is the sentence is, "We believe that intelligent design is neither sound science nor good theology," to which I say, "Amen." Let's stop arguing side points, and focus on the key issues. Author Myers has done much to clear away the underbrush of side points. People of faith and people without any faith deserve the chance to discuss their views without the dishonest historical clutter that has grown up around the entire arena.