What does "septalingualism" mean, a colleague asked in the hallway after seeing the following article about New York Mayor Blomberg's latest costly idea. It means you have a pompous vocabulary, was my reply.

Columnist Deroy Murdock gives Discovery senior fellow Yuri Mamchur the main rebuttal in this excellent story.

Seattle is one of the few big cities with continuing economic prosperity. Building cranes fill the sky and unemployment is still only 3.9 percent.

But, unfortunately, both state and local governments appear to have used the good times to expand government growth far beyond the dictates of prudence, and the results are now in. Even without an economic downturn, new taxes and fees are "necessary".

In Seattle garbage rates are going up 29 percent, water 18 percent (though there is no shortage of natural water in Seattle) and bus fare increases are anticipated at seven percent.

Local governments also will ask the voters this fall for approval of three new property taxes to support repairs to the beloved Pike Place Market, maintain city parks and expand rapid transit. Such a heaping plateful would be be seen by voters as overfeeding even in the most optimistic of times. Seattle is very liberal, but even the digestive capacity of liberals may have a limit.

But now I turn to the real argument clincher, the kind of new tax that is mainly show and therefore truly annoying. The mayor and City Council have just approved a 20 cent tax on each paper bag and plastic bag used at supermarket checkout counters. A nickel will go to the grocers and 15 cents to the City. Supposedly, this will encourage people to use canvas shopping bags brought from home and thereby save the world from global warming.

But will it do any good at all? Many people line their kitchen garbage cans with the plastic or paper bags they get from shopping. As of January, 2009 they will simply have to purchase plastic bags--also at the grocer--to take over the task. Is this a big help to the environment? There may even be a net increase in plastic bags in this town.

Of course, the people who will get clipped by the grocery bag tax meanwhile are the poor and improvident who don't keep a stash of cloth bags to use for shopping, plus anyone who suddenly finds himself needing to stop for milk or bread on the way home from work (the home where the cloth bags are kept).

The beneficiaries of the new bag tax are the grocers--who didn't ask for this tax but are keeping very quiet--and the City Government that (I think I mentioned) is on the lookout for new revenue sources. Oh, and the environmental showmen who often seem more interested in putting other people in the wrong and reordering other people's habits than in doing any well-researched good. Recently some unknown source put up a lot of money to promote this bag tax idea with costumed dancers and bands at public events this summer. "Polar bears" flounced and a giant revolving globe was displayed at one such parade I watched a couple of weeks ago. It reminded me of the hoopla of the anti-WTO demonstrations in 2000. I wonder who paid for this campaign. I wonder why the media don't bother to find out.

I have to add now that the local Seattle Times has backed the new bag tax, at least, on its editorial pages. I was thinking how odd it is that they would take such a position, since every single day their own product arrives on my porch placed inside a plastic bag. Unlike the ones at the grocery check out stand, moreover, these plastic bags have no secondary use. They are inconvenient for garbage cans, packing lunches or picking up dog poop.

And on Sunday the news folks deliver 500,000 of these plastic bags in Western Washington, along with about three inches of printed flyers with ads that instantly go into the trash and, presumably, contribute to global warming. Today, however, the paper contained an Office Depot ad that I actually saved. It was a garbage pail sized paper bag with their ad copy written on it. Very useful. A real 20 cent gift from the Seattle Times.

One writer among the Soviet dissidents did the most to force Western awareness of the true nature of the communist regime during our complacent years of the 60s and 70s, and he was the same writer who did a huge service to the West in 1978 when, accepting an honorary degree at Harvard, he had the courage to tell the truth about Western materialism and spiritual decay. He was sage yet again in his characterization of the new Russian Federation in recent years. He was a stern but enormously good prophet.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's death at 89 was just announced.

His last interview, with Der Spiegel, was discussed on Discovery Institute's Russiablog only a year ago.

It is outrageous! David Klinghoffer is interviewed by Kathyrn Lopez for National Review on the political implications of the Bible and how God would vote. The nerve! Even worse, both Lopez and Klinghoffer manage humor while discussing a serious topic. Surely this is not allowed?

The Chronicle of Higher Education shows courage in publishing a non-P.C. article by Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars that describes the real, as opposed to the putative, obstacles to increasing the number of American-born and educated scientists. Anti-intellectualism is a big part of it.

There is a problem, however, that Peter Woods overlooks, either because it doesn't occur to him or because he doesn't wish to spur the science establishment to even more outrage by mentioning it. That problem is the contemporary hostility that many committed Christian young people, and perhaps other religious youth, encounter in the sciences these days. Even those who have not experienced it become alert to it and, in turn, may be discouraged.

Darwinists can deny that this is the case, but a serious study, I submit, would show that it is so. Asked in private, when their words can't be twisted and asked in a neutral manner, many religious students report a classroom environment that demeans religious belief and demeans religious people. If it is known that they do not accept Darwinian accounts of the rise and development of life, or even the development of universe before life arose on Earth, students know that they could be graded down in some classes (a certain University of Minnesota biology class comes to mind, but it is unusual only in the professor's lack of subtlety). If they decide to seek an advanced degree the opposition will be stronger and they normally dare not express their convictions. If they somehow get a doctorate, they cannot expect a teaching position, or recommendations, once any serious dissent from Darwinism is detected. And if they secure a job they will not get tenure if word leaks out (see Expelled). Even after they have tenure they can still be maligned and harassed and even effectively demoted.

Does anyone at CHE or the National Association of Scholars wish to contest either that many religious students are aware of this situation or that it can be a disincentive for a career in science? Or that in many cases their apprehensions are well-justified? Articles can be written that pooh-pooh what I have just written. But many youth know otherwise. Anecdotal evidence perhaps, but I have talked to a number of them.

How many students might we be talking about? Probably a minority.

But possibly a big minority. It's part of the group that loves science at first, and then is turned off.

Lost in some cases to contemporary dogmatism and bigotry. A country that really cared to raise up a larger community of scientists would address it.

"Truth is the first casualty of war," as is always said about now,
because that statement is almost always right. And the second casualty
is surely civilized restraint. Wars are easy to start, hard to contain,
let alone end.

Right now, the surprising events in South Ossetia and Georgia
represent a clash of information and interpretations. This is getting sorted out,
but slowly. However, the events themselves are agonizingly speedy.

For a couple of years now Discovery Institute's Russia Blog has been almost unique in presenting otherwise ignored news about Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Often we provide access to news about business, culture and social developments
that are occurring in a region that the West--including the USA--has tended to neglect since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now we are faced with a war in Georgia that is as big a surprise to most people (diplomats, too, it appears) as it is an obvious catastrophe for the peoples involved and an historic setback for Russian/Western relations. The complications for other regions will soon develop.

The most we can hope for would seem to be an immediate cooling-off period. After that must come some sober investigation of how things got out of hand. Then how to find a way ahead.

Our first task at Russia Blog has been to try to get out facts and responsible opinions, letting readers sort them out. We do not want to promote some of the incendiary options being proposed and don't want to give them space. Our second task is to help air alternatives that stand some prospect of establishing peace. in this case, people who think the solutions are simple probably don't understand the situation.

Let's just say, because we are part of the small minority that still likes the President , that this situation disappoints. Would it kill the White House staff to consult their friends?

The Swiss, who gave us the cukoo clock (as Harry Lyme famously pointed out in The Third Man) now offer a great medical advance: death. Wesley Smith, our senior fellow on bioethics, is quoted:

By Mike Wussow and Bruce Chapman

(Note: Some of the issues described in this post - particularly U.S. oil dependency and energy security - will be the focus of a major conference hosted jointly by Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center and Microsoft on September 4-5, 2008. Participants will include Anne Korin and James Woolsey, both of whom are also referenced in this post. Details are available here.)

The Russia-Georgia conflict brings uncomfortably to the surface the question of energy security. Like much of the rest of the world, America is addicted to oil, most of it now imported. We rely on petroleum to fuel just shy of 100 percent of our transportation. America imports from its neighbors, Canada and Mexico mainly, but almost as much from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria. Russia supplies 762,000 barrels each day to the U.S. according to numbers released by the U.S. government in June.

Europe imports far more from Russia, of course. That has Europeans quaking in the aftermath of the war in Georgia and makes it difficult for NATO to speak with one voice.

It is hard to see how we will be able to work through the present crisis so long as the West seems irresolute about reducing its dependence on oil, especially oil from Russia. Even those of us who are optimistic that the long term interests of Russia and the West are reconcilable must face the fact that oil and gas pose a Western vulnerability in any negotiations.

Georgia has three major pipelines. Its two oil pipelines are capable of transporting millions of barrels of oil a day. by the country's current hostilities that it suspended some operations earlier this week. And although unsubstantiated still, as was noted on Russia Blog, an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal said Russian bombs hit one of the pipelines.

During the 110th Congress alone, more than 350 measures were introduced related to energy efficiency and renewable energy. President Bush has cleared the path for the U.S. to tap its own off shore resources to fill in the gaps while other options are perfected and made more available. But energy action has been stalled by the Congress and half-measures are all that are being considered now, anyhow.

Off shore drilling is needed as a national policy, not just a state option, and both parties need to get realistic about drilling in ANWR. New drilling will take time, but deciding to do so would send an immediate signal of American seriousness about our security. Environmentalists at home should recognize that we are going to use oil for years to come, no matter what, so the real question is whose oil we use.

But everyone also should be able to agree that the government and private sectors should be increasing energy conservation to lower to overall use of oil. Perhaps the war clouds in Eastern Europe can spur us to take the dramatic efficiency efforts that have been obviously needed for years.

Among the best long-range collective options is the electrification of transportation through the use of innovative vehicle technology, including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. It's an idea that is at last taking hold in addicted America, but it is still an unimplemented idea. (Discovery Institute--www.discovery.org--has pushed the issue for years.)

According to the Set America Free Initiative , an alliance of security, environmental, labor and other groups promoting ways to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, "If by 2025, all cars on the road are hybrids and half are plug-in hybrids, U.S. oil imports would drop by 8 million barrels per day." In 2006, according to the Initiative, the U.S. imported $309.4 billion in oil. At the very least, supporting the development and use of vehicles that, with the flip of a switch, dramatically reduce dependence on oil for transportation is perhaps the single best option America and Europe have for throwing off the yoke of oil dependence. Some, such as former U.S. Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, and Anne Korin, of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, say the key is for governments (the U.S. from in this case) to take steps that eventually diminish oil's status as a strategic commodity.

Although oil-dependent nations will the charge for change, this issue is by no means only about America, which consumes 21 million barrels a day. Global consumption of oil, especially in fast-growing China and India is only expected to rise. Global demand is at about 86 million barrels a day and rising. And this does (or should) matter to Russia too; although it currently has all the oil it needs for itself and for export, many reports say that its production has already peaked.

Energy may not seem to be at the heart of the clash in Eastern Europe, but lowering the significance of the oil pipelines there--and elsewhere--is very much a factor in any increase in the prospects for peace. It wouldn't hurt our security situation in the Middle East either, would it?

The Washington Post has perhaps the best report so far on how the war in South Ossetia and Georgia got started. It is astonishing how this episode ignited a torrent of abuse and prejudice, second guessing and histrionics on both sides (you should read our email).

Those in Congress and the Justice Department who think that human trafficking has little to do with the United States and less to do with prostitution, and that it should just be regarded as a local and state issue, might read about what is happening in San Francisco. Debra Saunders bravely nails it (as usual).

This should be a wake up call for any one who sincerely cares about human rights.

Euthanasia cuts short more than a life, it telescopes the process by which a dying person comes to terms with death and the ways families handle it. As Wesley Smith of Discovery Institute's Center on Human Rights and Bioethics points out, it makes death seem tacky, even banal.

Death is natural, euthanasia (and assisted suicide) unnatural. One supposedly gains a momentary feeling that he is in control, when, in truth, we never are fully in control, especially at death. There is dignity in giving in to Death, but only bathos in trying to force Death's approach.

Worst of all, euthanasia often leaves scars on the living. They will not have had the kind of tender death bed scene I witnessed recently with a family member, nor, therefore, the kind of memory that, frankly, gives great comfort and consolation. Instead there may well be shooting pangs of recollection, guilt and perhaps even the horrifying sense that something perverse and absurd was done with one's own passive or active involvement.

In time one reconciles to the inevitable death of a family member or friend. There is completion in it. But death by assisted suicide or euthanasia hangs around. It haunts.

The New York Times unwittingly serves the cause of science and education with its tendentious front page article today.

Start with the Mickey Mouse analogy. Mickey's change in appearance over the decades doesn't provide an example of "evolution," folks. Mickey was intelligently designed. (Walt Disney drew him.) This is an elementary mistake in logic by the teacher that the reporter--and The New York Times--not only bought, but used to highlight their story.

Then there is the ridiculous peppered moth case that is supposed to show students how evolution takes place. (Light moths that dwell on dark trees' trunks are more likely to be seen and therefore eaten, etc.) But even if the peppered moth experiments had been valid they only would show micro-evolution, not macro-evolution (new species). Hardly anyone disputes micro-evolution. Talking about it is mainly a way to confuse people about the real issues and impute to critics as criticism they don't advance. But, in any case, the peppered moth experiment results themselves were not valid. They were discredited years ago (the moths were pinned to the trees, and, furthermore, the peppered moths live in tree canopies, not on the trunks). The scientific literature has been clear on this for years. Yet, as we all fear about the schools, they continue to cite evidence that even scientists who are Darwinists no longer cite.

The students in Florida were skeptical about the teacher's "facts". Good for them. They were right, and their teacher, who may be a fine fellow in other respects, abused their trust with his heavy ideological hand. Thanks, New York Times, for showing how it is done.

European papers have the story of their continent's continuing decline in birth rate.

The United States is slated to continue to grow, but, when you look close, our growth now is mostly from immigration.

The demographic story deserves a great deal more attention, partly because it is not at all clear what the numbers mean for the future of civilization. People in the higher income brackets, I think some investigation would show, are not reproducing themselves almost anywhere in the West, and their counterparts in the rest of the world are probably not much different.

An Italian friend despairs of the trend, saying he feels that he lives in a "museum country." (He does acknowledge that it certainly is a beautiful museum.) Young people in Europe have no optimism that they can get ahead in an "exhausted" culture that lacks self-confidence. Or is the reality, rather, they just want to enjoy their youth without the annoying burden of children? Or is all this hand-wringing overlooking the fact that somehow "the rich get rich and the poor get children" generation after generation and still the standard of living keeps going up?