Near Death Experiences

In my class yesterday we talked a bit about NDEs (Near death Experiences) so I thought it'd be helpful to rerun a post from a couple of years ago on that topic:

A discussion at Mind Matters between Robert Marks and Walter Bradley, both of whom are scientists, focuses on the phenomenon of Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and contains some interesting insights into these events.

The term "Near Death" seems to be misleading. Scientists have documented over 3500 cases over the past several decades in which people have been not just near to death but completely, clinically dead - no heartbeat or brain waves - but from which they returned to life.

More astonishing, upon regaining their life they were able to relate to their medical staff what had happened while they were dead.

In the past, these sorts of accounts were dismissed as hallucinations, wishful thinking or even fabrications, but so much evidence in support of their veridicality has accumulated over the last thirty years that they're being taken much more seriously today. The question contemporary researchers are trying to answer is not whether the experience is genuine but rather what exactly is going on when someone has one of these.

So far any natural, physical explanation has proven elusive. NDEs remain a mystery.

To the extent that NDEs are indeed genuine, they constitute a powerful argument for two claims that are incompatible with materialism.

First, if someone is having an experience which includes thoughts, sensations and recall while his or her brain is completely shut down - dead - it strongly suggests that more than the brain is involved in thinking, sensing and remembering. NDEs are an emphatic pointer to the existence of an immaterial mind or soul.

Second, NDEs offer a compelling reason to believe that physical death is not the end of our existence, that there's more beyond this life and that death is a bridge to that further existence, much, perhaps, like childbirth is a bridge between two separate existences.

This short video offers a fascinating example of an NDE. A woman born blind lost her life, temporarily, in an accident and recounts what happened in the hospital. If she's telling the truth then it certainly detracts from the credibility of materialism's claim to be an adequate account of what it is to be a human being:

Plot to Poison Putin

There've been a number of stories in the media of late discussing what's claimed to be a plot to poison Vladimir Putin. According to one of the articles, the plot was discovered by Ukrainian intelligence.

However the plot was discovered, and by whomever, I can't imagine that if there were such a plot it would be leaked to the world. Why would the Ukrainians want to alert Putin to an attempt on his life by publicizing the plot if it were indeed genuine?

In any case, here are some excerpts from the article:

The Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine has said that "a group of influential" Kremlin insiders have been plotting to oust Putin. The goal of the "Russian elite" is to supposedly remove the president from power as soon as possible before restoring economic ties with the West.

According to the brief, the Ukrainian intelligence service also claims that a successor to Putin has already been lined up in the shape of FSB director Oleksandr Bortnikov, reports The Mirror. Powerful insiders are allegedly dismayed at the ramifications of the war and the sanctions imposed on the Russian economy.

The Chief Directorate of Intelligence said: "It is known that Bortnikov and some other influential representatives of the Russian elite are considering various options to remove Putin from power. "In particular, poisoning, sudden disease, or any other 'coincidence' is not excluded."

There's more at the link, including links to other sources. As I indicated above, I'm skeptical about this report which appears to be tabloid sensationalism, but it could nevertheless have the effect of stoking a lot of suspicion and paranoia among Putin's inner circle.

It has been reported previously that Putin already uses food tasters to make sure his food isn't tainted, so suspicion of his colleagues is apparently already well-advanced.

But whether the plot is genuine or not, I have a question for my pacifist friends who believe that killing someone is always wrong. If the story were true, and the plot succeeds, would the plotters have been wrong to murder Mr. Putin?

In other words, is it wrong to murder in order to save the lives of innocent people? If the reader of this post is a pacifist or knows someone who is, this question might lead to an interesting ethical conversation.

The Gorgeous Peacock Spider

There's a fascinating article at Evolution News about a taxon of spiders endemic to Australia called the Peacock spider. There are some 60 species of Peacock spider, and they're gorgeously patterned.

The colors are produced not by pigments but by tiny scales with microscopic curves and gratings that refract and diffract light to separate and reflect various wavelengths. This works somewhat in the same way that a film of oil on a surface produces an array of iridescent hues.

Studying the color-producing structures in these arachnids has given scientists ideas for new color technologies.

Here's a video of the mating displays of several species of these spiders set to music. It's astonishing to consider that these spiders are less than 5 millimeters in size and that the information that directs their displays, plus all the other behaviors in which the spider engages, as well as the production of the vari-colored abdomens is all packed into a brain that's smaller than a pinhead:

Here are a few more interesting questions and points raised in the article:

The artistic patterns on the males’ abdomens seem gratuitously beyond anything necessary for mating. Drab animals get by just fine; why the excessive color and beauty? And why the dozens of variations among different species? We could be forgiven for imagining a designing intelligence with an artist’s eye.

Aesthetic considerations, furthermore, lead us to ask why human beings are the only ones who get excited about the mating dances of an unrelated species. Does that speak to human exceptionalism? We don’t see any other animals, except the female spider, watching the performances, but people by the millions are fascinated by these tiny animals that have nothing to do with their own “fitness.”

What is the evolutionary explanation for the quality of charm? Of humor? Or enchantment? We don’t eat them or train them to do our work. How did our curiosity, sense of humor, and love for beauty “evolve”?

“Who knew that such a small critter would create such an intense iridescence using extremely sophisticated mechanisms that will inspire optical engineers,” said Dimitri Deheyn, Hsuing’s advisor at Scripps Oceanography and a coauthor of the study.

“As an engineer, what I found fascinating about these spider structural colors is how these long evolved complex structures can still outperform human engineering,” said Radwanul Hasan Siddique, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech and study coauthor. “Even with high-end fabrication techniques, we could not replicate the exact structures. I wonder how the spiders assemble these fancy structural patterns in the first place!”

We might all wonder this as well. Especially might we wonder "how the spiders assemble these fancy structural patterns in the first place" if we limit ourselves to thinking that this amazing creature must have evolved these gaudy patterns and complex behaviors through an unguided, random process like Darwinism.

Our Amazing World

Here's a brief video from Lad Allen that presents some amazing facts about the number of stars in our universe, the number of grains of sand in the world and the number of molecules of water in a single drop.

Whether you're inclined to agree with the conclusion of the video or not, the physical facts it presents are not in dispute, and they are mind-blowing.

The video is only five and a half minutes long, but it will surely fill you with a sense of wonder at the size of the universe, both astronomically and microscopically:

Trying to Play it Safe

Is China abandoning its "limitless" partnership with Russia? In one sign that Vladimir Putin has "jumped the shark" It seems that his erstwhile Chinese BFFs are having second thoughts.

An article by HotAir's Allahpundit certainly suggests that China is reassessing its betrothal to Russia and Mr. Putin:

— On Monday, the Chinese ambassador to Ukraine met with authorities in Lviv to say that China “will respect the path chosen by Ukrainians because this is the sovereign right of every nation.” He also promised Chinese help with Ukrainian economic development after the war.

— The same day, Jake Sullivan held “intense” talks for seven hours with a Chinese official in Rome warning Beijing of consequences if it rescued Russia’s war in Ukraine by supplying Putin with military and economic aid.

— Last night, a German paper reported that the Russian foreign minister was en route to China for a visit when his plane mysteriously made an about-face and returned to Russia. It’s unclear why, but some speculate that Chinese officials may have decided they didn’t want the bad optics of meeting with him at the moment.

— This morning, the White House announced that Biden will speak with Xi Jinping directly tomorrow about the prospect of China providing Russia with aid.

— Today, a change has been detected in the tenor of Chinese media’s coverage of the war. CGTN is a state-run network with chapters in the west, a sort of Chinese version of RT. They ran multiple segments about Ukrainian civilians being killed within the past 24 hours and made no bones about who was responsible.

A cynic might say that it's not the human rights abuses and atrocities perpetrated by the Russian forces in Ukraine that have the Chinese feeling a bit anxious. After all, their own record with regard to the horrors perpetrated on the Uyghurs and others in China is not particularly heartwarming.

Rather, China is probably upset that the Russian invasion appears at this point to be an abject failure. The Chinese don't want to be associated with a fiasco, but neither do they want to file for divorce from their incompetent significant other just yet.

On the other hand, if it looks to them like Ukraine might actually prevail in this war they don't want to completely alienate themselves from Mr. Zelenskyy either.

The Chinese are walking a geopolitical tightrope, and they doubtless realize that a single misstep will be most unfortunate for them.

Read the HotAir article for more on China's predicament.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave

In his great work The Republic the Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 B.C.) relates an allegory that is doubtless the most famous tale in all of Western philosophy and probably discussed in every introductory philosophy course.

In the allegory Plato invites us to imagine a cave in which prisoners have been chained since childhood. Behind them is a fire and between the fire and the prisoners there are men walking back and forth carrying burdens. The fire casts shadows of these men on a wall which the prisoners have all their lives been facing.

The prisoners see the shadows and hear the echoes of the men's voices and they mistakenly believe that these shadows and muffled echoes are reality. It is, after all, all they've ever known. They confer honors on each other for their ability to contrive clever interpretations of the shadows.

One prisoner, however, is released from his chains and dragged up and out of the cave where he beholds the world in the light of the sun. At first he can scarcely open his eyes, accustomed as they are to the darkness, but gradually he's able to see that a world that's infinitely richer than the world of the cave.

He won't believe his eyes but gradually he realizes that the world of the cave is all illusion, that the world he sees in the light of the sun is the true reality.

He would take pity on his comrades still chained in the cave. He would care nothing for the honors they value. He would count it all so much empty and meaningless chatter. All that would matter to him is the brilliance of the sun and the beauty and variety of the world.

He might even return to the cave to tell his fellows what he has seen, but they wouldn't believe him. They'd think he'd lost his senses, and if he tried to persuade them to join him outside the cave they may even kill him.

Plato's parable works on many different levels. For Plato the man who escapes the cave is the philosopher who escapes the realm of darkness and shadows and apprehends the world in the light of the Good, the Beautiful and the True. When the philosopher returns to the cave to seek to enlighten his fellow prisoners they refuse to listen to him and, perhaps like Socrates, he may even be put to death.

For Christians for two thousand years the cave represents the present world with its empty and meaningless pursuits and illusions. The sun is the absolute Good, Beautiful and True, i.e. God, and the world illuminated by this "Sun" is the really real.

When the "prisoner" seeks to persuade his fellows that they're wasting their lives debating about shadows when there's a beautiful, meaningful life awaiting them outside the cave, they often think he's gone insane, and, as has happened to millions throughout the last two millennia, they may even kill him.

Plato's allegory of the cave has endured for 2300 years because, whatever his original intent, it neatly captures a deep truth about reality and the human condition.

Why St. Patrick Is Celebrated

Millions of Americans, many of them descendents of Irish immigrants, will celebrate their Irish heritage by observing St. Patrick's Day today. We're indebted to Thomas Cahill and his best-selling book How The Irish Saved Civilization for explaining to us why Patrick's is a life worth commemorating.

As improbable as his title may sound, Cahill weaves a fascinating and compelling tale of how the Irish in general, and Patrick and his spiritual heirs in particular, served as a tenuous but crucial cultural bridge from the classical world to the medieval age and, by so doing, made Western civilization possible.

Born a Roman citizen in 390 A.D., Patrick had been kidnapped as a boy of sixteen from his home on the coast of Britain and taken by Irish barbarians to Ireland. There he languished in slavery until he was able to escape six years later.

Upon his homecoming he became a Christian, studied for the priesthood, and eventually returned to Ireland where he would spend the rest of his life laboring to persuade the Irish to accept the Gospel and to abolish slavery.

Patrick was the first person in history, in fact, to speak out unequivocally against slavery and, according to Cahill, the last person to do so until the 17th century.

Meanwhile, Roman control of Europe had begun to collapse. Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410 A.D. and barbarians were sweeping across the continent, forcing the Romans back to Italy and plunging Europe into the Dark Ages.

Throughout the continent unwashed illiterate hordes descended on the once grand Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books. Learning ground to a halt and the literary heritage of the classical world was burned or moldered into dust. Almost all of it, Cahill claims, would surely have been lost if not for the Irish.

Having been converted to Christianity through the labors of Patrick, the Irish took with gusto to reading, writing and learning. They delighted in letters and bookmaking and painstakingly created indescribably beautiful Biblical manuscripts such as the Book of Kells which is on display today in the library of Trinity College in Dublin.

Aware that the great works of the past were disappearing, they applied themselves assiduously to the daunting task of copying all surviving Western literature - everything they could lay their hands on.

Book of Kells

For a century after the fall of Rome, Irish monks sequestered themselves in cold, damp, cramped mud or stone huts called scriptoria, so remote and isolated from the world that they were seldom threatened by the marauding pagans. Here these men spent their entire adult lives reproducing the old manuscripts and preserving literacy and learning for the time when people would be once again ready to receive them.

Irish scriptoria

These scribes and their successors served as the conduits through which the Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures were transmitted to the benighted tribes of Europe, newly settled amid the rubble and ruin of the civilization they had recently overwhelmed.

Around the late 6th century, three generations after Patrick, Irish missionaries with names like Columcille, Aidan and Columbanus began to venture out from their monasteries and refuges, clutching their precious books to their hearts, sailing to England and the continent, founding their own monasteries and schools among the barbarians and teaching them how to read, write and make books of their own.

Absent the willingness of these courageous men to endure deprivations and hardships of every kind for the sake of the Gospel and learning, Cahill argues, the world that came after them would have been completely different. It would likely have been a world without books. Europe almost certainly would have been illiterate, and it would probably have been unable to resist the Muslim incursions that beset them a few centuries later.

The Europeans, starved for knowledge, soaked up everything the Irish missionaries could give them. From such seeds as these modern Western civilization germinated. From the Greeks the descendents of the Goths and Vandals learned philosophy, from the Romans they learned about law, from the Bible they learned of the worth of the individual who, created and loved by God, is therefore significant and not merely a brutish aggregation of matter.

From the Bible, too, they learned that the universe was created by a rational Mind and was thus not capricious, random, or chaotic. It would yield its secrets to rational investigation. Out of these assumptions, once their implications were finally and fully developed, grew historically unprecedented views of the value of the individual and the flowering of modern science.

Our cultural heritage is thus, in a very important sense, a legacy from the Irish - a legacy from Patrick. It's worth pondering what the world would be like today had it not been for those early Irish scribes and missionaries thirteen centuries ago.

Buiochas le Dia ar son na nGael (Thank God for the Irish), and I hope you have a great St. Patrick's Day.

Just War Theory

I thought it it might be helpful to look at the current war in Ukraine in terms of what philosophers and theologians call Just War theory.

From the time of Augustine (c.400 A.D.) many Christian philosophers and theologians have thought about the question of the demands and restrictions the Gospel imposes on the use of force.

One result of that thinking has been a list of criteria that must be satisfied in any situation in which force, particularly military force, is contemplated. This is called jus ad bellum (justice in going to war).

These criteria generally include the following:

1. Just cause. Examples of a just cause for the use of force include: Defense against an unjust invader; Protection of family, home, or other innocent victims from direct harm; Recovery of goods unjustly taken; Protection of constitutional rights and liberties from government encroachment; Defense of allies who have been unjustly attacked, etc.

2. Just intent. The purpose of the war must be to establish peace or to protect the innocent. Hatred, economic gain, or the exercise of power are all illicit reasons for using force against another.

3. Legitimate authority. The war must be declared/waged by a legitimate government authority. A war declared by a terrorist organization like ISIS is by definition unjust.

4. Reasonable prospect of success. Deliberately protracted wars or wars initiated with no reasonable hope of success are unjust.

5. Last resort. When it's clear that no measure short of the application of force will avail, or that an attack upon one's nation is imminent, war is justified provided the other criteria are met. This requirement is problematic in that it's always possible to imagine yet another set of peace talks, etc. that could be embarked upon and which would delay war indefinitely.

Thus, governments have to exercise reasonable judgment in determining whether they have actually exhausted all practical options and have been left with no realistic alternative to war.

Just War theory also requires that wars not only be warranted by these stringent criteria (jus ad bellum) but that when fought they be conducted according to certain guidelines (jus in bello: justice in war). The two chief criteria of jus in bello are:

1. Discrimination. Civilians should never be deliberately targeted. This follows from the Christian imperative to be compassionate and merciful. It entails that prisoners not be mistreated and that property and livelihoods not be unduly or unnecessarily damaged.

2. Proportionality. The means employed must be no more brutal or violent than what is necessary to secure victory. It would be unjust to slaughter defeated and retreating enemy soldiers if they no longer pose a threat. It would be a disproportionate response, and therefore unjust, to respond to a cross-border raid with nuclear weapons.

As is no doubt obvious, the heat and stress of war and incipient war may create a lot of gray areas for those seeking to hold to the criteria of Just War, and there's often much room for differences in interpretation. Nevertheless, those who wish to wage war justly will strive to hew as closely to these principles as the exigencies of war permit.

Even so, I think it's clear to anyone who's been following the war in Ukraine that Russia is waging an unjust war. They fail the jus ad bellum test, particularly criteria #1,2 and 5, and they also fail the first criterion of the jus in bello test. The response of the Ukrainians is compatible with criteria #1,2,3, and 5 of the jus ad bellum test and #1 of the jus in bello test.

None of the other criteria really apply to their struggle.

The Russians from Vladimir Putin on down to those infantry troops who are shooting and raping civilians are war criminals, and one hopes that the world will not forget their crimes and return to the status quo ante once this conflict is over.

Those responsible for the death, terror and destruction visited upon the Ukrainian people should remain international pariahs as long as they live and as long as history is written.

Valor on the Cheap

One of the uglier and more irrational responses to the Russian atrocities in Ukraine is the attempt by people here in the West generally and the U.S. in particular to vent their frustration and anger by punishing anyone in any way associated with Russia.

Sometimes this nonsensical reaction is borne of righteous indignation, but often it's merely an attempt to showcase one's own moral righteousness.

It's an attempt, at least by some, to affirm their own valor without ever having to risk anything.

Tommaso Dorigo discusses some such efforts in a column at Science 2.0. He writes:

What reason can there be for firing an artist based on his or her nationality? .... given the presently ongoing prosecution of opposers of the Russian regime, who are we to blame anybody who refuses to publicly proclaim they disagree with their country's actions?

Musicians, athletes, para-olympiad atlethes - there seems to have been an escalation, a competition for the most absurd ban....

But we have reached the top with the recent suggestions, now circulating in the world of fundamental research, that scientists should stop collaborating with Russian colleagues, stop publishing papers with them, etcetera. What nonsense! Science unites countries - are we now going to take that attitude back, and create a divide?

Who do we think we are hurting if we stop collaborating with our Russian colleagues, if not the whole world?....

There are hundreds of Russian colleagues who are just as sorry as we are for the recent events in Ukraine, if not more. Many of those colleagues have even signed a letter that condemns the actions of their government, and in so doing they have exposed themselves to the risk of being fired, or even imprisoned.

And what is our attitude now - do we stop working with them? What do we think we are going to achieve by cutting ties with people who, exactly like us, consider the progress of human knowledge their mission in life?....

If we consider ourselves above the idea of countries having the right of invading other countries, if we believe that women and men are equal on both sides of the border, if we believe that what unites us (humanity, and love for knowledge and art) is more than what divides us (language, habits); if the feeling of wasting lives of Ukrainians as well as of Russians makes us weep the same tears, we have to stop this....

If we are against war we cannot be in favor of cutting collaboration and positive interaction among peoples, which can and should exist regardless of the decision of a warmonger that happens to rule one of these peoples....

What matters is what you can do to stop the war. If you can't do anything of that sort, then sit down and stop taking decisions that have nothing to do with that, and all to do with petty revenge.

The attempt to punish people who have nothing to do with Putin or his crimes, just because they are Russian, is inhumane and stupid. Even many of those boys who were sent to Ukraine by Putin didn't want to go, they don't want to be where they are nor doing what they're doing. Whether they survive or die their fate is tragic.

Those who seek to put on display how much they despise the horrors Putin is inflicting on both Russians and Ukrainians by punishing those who are completely innocent are behaving like brutish primitives. They need to be made to realize that wisdom and justice consist in judging people as individuals and not as members of a particular race, nationality or religion.

Faith and Reason

We often hear that there's a dichotomy between reason and faith. Reason, we're told, gives us a solid basis for our beliefs whereas faith yields beliefs that have no basis whatsoever.

This claim, however, belies a very shallow understanding of the relationship between faith and reason. Indeed, unless one has faith they have no ground for trusting their reason to lead them to truth.

By the term "faith" is meant "belief or trust despite the lack of proof." We have faith in this sense when we entrust ourselves to the surgeon to perform the operation skillfully and successfully or when we entrust ourselves to the competence of the flight crew when we board a jet.

We tacitly believe the surgeon and the pilot are competent even though we may not have proof that they are.

Modern Neo-Darwinian theory tells us that our reason, like all our cognitive faculties, has evolved to suit us for survival, not for finding truth. It needs be kept in mind that the survival of an individual or a species is only coincidentally related to truth.

If, for example, a belief exists that the more offspring a man has the greater will be his reward in an afterlife, that belief, if it's genetically based, will proliferate throughout the society with every subsequent generation since anyone holding it will doubtless have, on average, more offspring than those who lack the belief.

The belief has wonderful survival value for those who hold it, or at least for their genes, but the belief is false.

Another example: Atheists tell us that religion evolved because it offered comfort and solace and that due to these advantages religion has spread everywhere around the globe. Yet despite the acknowledged survival value of these religious beliefs atheists nevertheless believe them to be false.

In other words, evolutionary success often has nothing to do with truth, so why do we believe that reason has evolved as a reliable guide to truth? The answer is that we have faith that it is.

If it takes faith to believe that reason is trustworthy, what is that faith based upon? Some say it's based on the laws of logic which are independent of human reason, but as Michael Egnor points out in an article at Evolution News, it requires a measure of faith to think that the laws of logic are trustworthy.

Take Descartes' maxim that thinking proves the thinker's existence - "I think therefore I am." It would seem that there's no faith involved in this succinct proof, but as Egnor points out, that's not quite so. He writes:

For example, even Descartes’s assertion, “I think therefore I am,” is not something we can prove without faith. The problem lies in the “therefore.” We must tacitly assume the validity of logic — specifically the logic of non-contradiction — to link “I think” to “I am.”

If we do not have faith in logic, then it would be possible to think but not to exist. Of course we find this possibility absurd, but it is only absurd because of our profound faith in the validity of logic — in this case, the validity of the logical principle of non-contradiction. That is the principle inherent in the belief that thinking presupposes the existence of the thinker.

If logic were not reliable, there would be no logical connection between thinking and existence. Thinkers could think without existing.

We can't prove the axioms of logic. We accept them on faith. Nor can we prove that reason is trustworthy for to attempt to do so requires us to rely on a rational argument which itself requires us to use our reason. But to use our reason to prove that our reason is reliable is to commit the fallacy of begging the question.

The secular man and the theist are in the same boat here. Both must exercise faith in the trustworthiness of their reason, but the secular man must have faith that blind impersonal forces serendipitously gave rise to a cognitive faculty that purely by coincidence turns out to be a reliable guide to knowledge.

The theist has faith that his reason is a generally reliable guide to knowledge because she believes it to be the gift of a rational and good God who gives us this cognitive faculty for the express purpose of discovering truth.

I leave it to the reader to decide which option is a priori more reasonable to believe.

Putin, MiGs and Corn Pop

Journalists as of Friday were reporting that the Russians were maneuvering heavy artillery into firing positions aimed at Kyiv in Ukraine, apparently with the intent of leveling the city.

Right now the Ukrainians could certainly use the 28 MiG fighter jets that Poland was planning on delivering until President Biden personally nixed the deal. The plan was to fly the jets to a U.S. airbase in Germany so that Polish jets would be transferred to Ukrainian pilots at an American base on German soil.

It would be a thoroughly NATO operation. Those fighters would be helpful in neutralizing Russian artillery, but Mr. Biden canceled our role in the process at the last minute for fear that delivering the jets would anger Vladimir Putin.

As the Wall Street Journal (paywall) opines this is a fiasco that's going to result in the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians, and the president's thinking on this matter seems incoherent:

The logic seems to be that sending lethal anti-aircraft and antitank weapons won’t provoke the Russian, but 28 fixed-wing aircraft would. That distinction is hard to parse, especially when the Pentagon is also saying that the Ukrainians don’t need the jets because their other weapons are more effective.

So sending less lethal aircraft will lead to World War III, but not arms that are really deadly?

Evidently, all Mr. Putin has to do is threaten nuclear war and Mr. Biden hastily and shamefully retreats:

The bigger problem is the message this fiasco sends to Mr. Putin about NATO. The essence of credible deterrence is making an adversary believe that taking certain actions will draw a response. By so ostentatiously not sending the fighters, and saying the reason is fear of escalation, Mr. Biden is telling the Russian what he doesn’t have to worry about.

Instead of deterring Mr. Putin, Mr. Biden is letting the Russian deter the U.S.

Mr. Biden likes to talk like a tough guy but has repeatedly shown himself to be, as the Texans say, all hat and no cattle. When our military proposed an operation to get Osama bin Laden, then Vice-President Biden advised against it.

As president he ordered the disgraceful evacuation of Afghanistan leaving dozens, if not hundreds, of Americans behind, as well as thousands of Afghans who helped us in our war against the Taliban. Because he didn't want to provoke the Taliban most of those Afghans are likely dead by now.

And, as the Journal reports, this month the Administration stopped the scheduled test of a U.S. nuclear missile after Mr. Putin issued a vague nuclear threat. The test had nothing to do with Ukraine, and Russia knew about it, but the Biden Pentagon stopped the test anyway.

Meanwhile, as the White House dithered over those MiGs, reports have it that Russia has been preparing to use chemical weapons on Ukrainian troops.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, tough-talking Joe from Scranton told a cringe-worthy and rather dubious tale of his encounter with a "bad dude" of his youthful acquaintance named "Corn Pop." It's too bad for the Ukrainians that Mr. Biden isn't as steely-spined with Vladimir Putin as he claimed to have been with old "Corn Pop."

How the Javelin Works

Journalists reporting on the war in Ukraine frequently mention the use by Ukrainian forces of a weapon called the Javelin which has been very effective, apparently, against Russian armored vehicles like tanks and armored personnel carriers. Ross Pomeroy at RealClear Science writes a helpful explanation of how the missile works. Here are some excerpts from his piece:

"This weapon allows a single soldier to target and destroy even the most heavily armored main battle tank with an almost guaranteed kill rate, at great range and with minimal risk," Army Capt. Vincent Delany wrote of the Javelin for West Point's Modern War Institute.

With the Javelin, a soldier using the portable, reusable Command Launch Unit (CLU) looks through an infrared sight to locate a target up to an incredible 2.5 miles away.

When the user spots a target, he operates a cursor to set a square around it, almost like cropping an image. This is then sent to the onboard guidance computer on the missile itself, which has a sophisticated algorithmic tracking system coupled with an infrared imaging device.

When the missile locks on to the target, the operator can launch the self-guided weapon and quickly relocate or reload to fire another missile at a different target.

The Javelin originally debuted in 1996, bearing a couple remarkable innovations. For one, it offers a "soft launch." David Qi Zhang of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute explained what that means in his Master of Engineering thesis on the Javelin.

"The first motor... produces enough thrust to launch the missile out of the tube and a safe distance away, but is completely burned before the nozzle left the tube, leaving no exhaust to hit the operator. The flight motor then ignites to propel the [missile] along its attack path," he wrote.

A second innovation of the Javelin is that it strikes from above. The missile rises high into the air, up to 490 feet, then blasts down on its target from a steep angle, striking the top of an armored vehicle or tank, where the armor is typically weakest.

Russian tanks are not helpless against the Javelin. Most are equipped with explosive reactive armor. When struck by a penetrating weapon like a missile, the armor detonates, blasting a metal plate outwards to damage the missile's penetrator and prevent it from piercing the tank's main armor.

The Javelin overcomes this by having tandem warheads, one to deal with the reactive armor plate, and the second to impact the tank's armor itself.

Modern Russian tanks are also equipped with a radar system called Arena, which detects incoming missiles and automatically fires a wide burst of projectiles to destroy or redirect them. But here, again, the Javelin reigns supreme, Delany says.

"The Javelin can defeat Arena while in top-attack mode, due to the missile descending from too steep an angle for the system to engage properly," he wrote.

Ukraine had been shipped roughly 77 launchers and 740 missiles before Putin invaded. Many, many more of each are now on the way courtesy of the U.S. and European allies. According to an article at NDTV as of a week or so ago at least 280 Russian armoured vehicles had been destroyed with the American Javelin missile, out of 300 shots fired.

By now thousands of these weapons are in the hands of the Ukrainian armed forces, which is one reason why the Russians aren't advancing very quickly on the ground but are instead bombarding cities either from the air or from a safe distance away with artillary.

Here's a chart released by Ukraine showing Russia losses thus far in the war. Whether the Ukrainians have inflated the numbers or not is hard to tell:

The chart appeared in an article in The Sun which has some other information on the war.

The Arctic Tern

The Arctic tern is a remarkable bird. It flies from the Arctic circle to the Antarctic and back again every year. The amazing thing is that it makes each trip entirely over the ocean without stopping anywhere to rest. It even sleeps while airborne.

This brief but beautiful video explains some of the remarkable abilities of this bird and suggets that those abilities and structures are better explained as a product of intelligent design than blind, mechanistic processes. Give it a look:

Progressivism's Book of Genesis

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English thinker who wrote during the turbulent period of civil strife and struggle for power between King Charles I and Parliament.

His thoughts on the best political system for avoiding the calamitous consequences of war were put down in a book titled Leviathan (1651).

Leviathan is one of the first books of modern political philosophy. Hobbes' central concern was peace, more specifically how to avoid the calamities of civil war. He began with two principles or axioms from which all else follows:

1. Men are all engaged in a constant struggle for power over others.
2. Men try to avoid death with all their might.

The word "leviathan" means great beast and is used to describe the state or commonwealth as Hobbes saw it. Hobbes' book, historian Peter Ackroyd observes, has been called "the only masterpiece of political philosophy in the English language."

Be that as it may, Hobbes wrote that the worst calamity to befall men is war. In one famous passage he wrote these lapidary words:

In such condition [i.e. civil war], there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

In a primitive state of nature, He argues, in which there is no government, the condition of man ...

...is a condition of war of everyone against everyone, in which case everyone is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body.

And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live.

And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason: that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.

Men in a state of nature are in a constant struggle each with every other for power and each lives in constant fear of violent death. Hobbes' solution is for all men to yield their own individual sovereignty and rights to that of one sovereign (or a committee) of rulers, whose will would govern all.

Once yielded that sovereignty can never be rescinded. There would be in Hobbes' state no such thing as liberty of conscience, which only leads to conflict and violence. The state will determine what religion people will follow. Justice and truth are whatever the sovereign determines them to be. Nothing the sovereign does can be said to be unjust.

This, of course, is big government on steroids. It's the blueprint for the totalitarianisms of the Nazis and communists of the 20th century, and it's the logical endpoint of contemporary liberal progressivism, even if many modern progressives would balk at going so far.

Progressivism is a faith that a government run by highly educated elites will naturally be the best way to prevent conflicts and protect individual rights. The bigger, more massive the bureaucratic state the more power it has over individual lives, the better able it will be to provide for the security and welfare of its citizens.

Government is the progressive's religion, and its book of Genesis is Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.

What Will Break First?

Jim Geraghty has a fine column today at NRO in which he asserts that: The Russian invasion of Ukraine will end when one or more of four things breaks:

• the Russian supply lines;
• the Ukrainian ability to effectively resist;
• the Russian economy;
• the patience of some armed individuals around Putin.

The explanations he gives for each of these four are interesting, and readers following what's happening in Ukraine will want to read his entire piece. I'll just highlight what he says about his first point.

He writes:

On Friday, there was a rumor that “Russia has resources left for the war until Sunday, after which they will collapse.”

There are numerous reports of Russian attacks as of this morning, so that rumor sounds like an exaggeration of a real phenomenon — that Russia invaded with far too few resources, that frontline Russian units are stretching their supply lines thinner and thinner, and that many Russian units are getting literally and metaphorically stuck in a quagmire.

Trent Telenko, a retired technical analyst at the U.S. Defense Contracts Management Agency, offered another fascinating assessment of the logistics and terrain challenges Russian forces are facing over at the ChicagoBoyz blog:

The head and first dozen or so kilometers of the southernmost column north of Kiev have been stuck there for EIGHT DAYS. The Russians have since rammed more and more vehicles into this monster traffic jam (idiotically “following the plan” Soviet-style) so the whole thing is now 65-70 kilometers long (almost 40 miles).

And, because the trucks can’t go off-road due to the Rasputitsa mud and tire problems, they’re stuck on the roads and the roads’ shoulders three vehicles wide for the whole 40 miles. That means fuel and resupply trucks can’t move on or off road to deliver anything to anybody.

So all the columns’ heads are now out of fuel and battery power. They can’t move north, south or sideways, and everything behind them is stuck because of the mud, and rapidly running out of fuel and vehicle battery charge too (assuming they haven’t already).

Nor can any of those columns defend themselves because they’re too densely packed. They’re just targets waiting for the Ukrainians to destroy them.

Only the Ukrainians had something better to do. They opened the floodgates of reservoirs around those columns to flood them and turn the surrounding areas into impassable quagmires for months – probably until July or August.

Probably several thousand Russian vehicles in those columns will be irrecoverable losses. Hundreds of Russian soldiers might have drowned.

This was not just a debacle, but an EPIC one. About one-fifth of the Russian force in Ukraine is now flooded or trapped and are definitely out of the war for good.

There's more:

In a November 2021 essay, Alex Vershinin of War on the Rocks explained why the Russian army would face intensely challenging logistical problems if it invaded, and why each Ukrainian attack on Russian supply-chain trucks would exacerbate those problems:

As a result of extra artillery and air defense battalions, the Russian logistics requirements are much larger than their U.S. counterparts. If an army has just enough trucks to sustain itself at a 45-mile distance, then at 90 miles, the throughput will be 33 percent lower. At 180 miles, it will be down by 66 percent.

The further you push from supply dumps, the fewer supplies you can replace in a single day. . . . The Russian army does not have enough trucks to meet its logistic requirement more than 90 miles beyond supply dumps.

To reach a 180-mile range, the Russian army would have to double truck allocation to 400 trucks for each of the material-technical support brigades.

We’ve already seen videos of Russian soldiers looting shops and grocery stores for provisions. This is day twelve of the war; numerous reports indicate Moscow expected Ukraine to capitulate within a couple of days.

The longer Russia takes to subdue the Ukrainians the more their supply chains will be harassed and degraded. Not only is more weaponry entering the theater from the countries to Ukraine's west, but it looks like Poland will also soon be delivering Russian-made MIG fighter jets, which will further increase the hazards to Russia's supply lines.

When this war started twelve days ago all the experts were saying that the Ukrainians were fighting valiantly but that an eventual Russian victory was inevitable. Yet if Ukraine can hold out for another week or two the number of Russian troops who surrender may well turn into a flood, and if that starts happening there may be reason to hope that the whole Russian miltary effort will collapse.

Experts are often, if not usually, wrong.

Read the rest of Geraghty's analysis at the link.

No Promissory Notes, Please

One of the profound mysteries in biology that no materialistic theory like Darwinian evolution has ever been able to explain is how an organism develops from a fertilized egg. The video below shows the development of a chicken embryo, and as you watch it ask yourself how the cells know where to migrate to and what structures to form when they get there.

Ask yourself, too, how these cells know when to move, when to divide and when to differentiate.

What controls and choreographs all of this and how did that control system evolve?

A computer programmer can program a computer to control machinery in a factory so that it performs specific functions in a specific sequence in a very rudimentary version of what's happening in the embryo, but then the computer programmer is an intelligent agent.

How does all that happens in an embryo come about by undirected, mindless chance? I wish someone who thinks it did would explain it to me because the only explanation of these sorts of biological mysteries I've ever found are along the lines of, "It just did, somehow, and someday we'll know how."

Perhaps, but scientific promissory notes, especially notes whose maturity date is never specified, are very unconvincing as reasons for believing something that's otherwise very difficult to believe.

Here are a few other mysteries that seem to defy any materialistic or naturalistic explanation. I'd like very much to have someone explain how any of these could've evolved by those blind, mindless purposeless processes. And no promissory notes, please: Animal migration and navigation, insect metamorphosis, sexual reproduction, the first living cell, and human consciousness.

There are lots more, but those would make for a good start.

Anyway, here's the video:

The Incredible Maiden Voyage of the Barnacle Goose

I thought it might be well to take a break from the terrible events occurring in Ukraine this week, and inject a little awe and wonder into our day. To that end, I chose to write about the incredible manner in which young Barnacle geese leave their nest.

The Barnacle goose is a resident of Greenland but occasionally wanders south in the winter into the Middle Atlantic states of the U.S. It's perhaps the most handsome of all the geese seen in North America.

One thing that makes Barnacle geese especially interesting is the manner in which their young are fledged. They're hatched on ledges high up on cliff faces, but their natural milieu lies in the water hundreds of feet below.

Watch this video to see the remarkable manner by which they get from the ledge to the water:

That any of them survive this first "flight" is surely one of the wonders of the animal kingdom.

A Few Thoughts on How Things Stand, Nuclear - Wise

Vladimir Putin recently ramped up Russia's nuclear readiness status which raises a lot of questions about nuclear weapons. Moreover, some in the U.S. in Congress and in the media have called for the introduction into Ukraine of American air power which could certainly escalate to a nuclear exchange.

The Heritage Foundation's policy analyst for nuclear deterrence and missile defense, Patti-Jane Geller, has been asked by The Daily Signal to give her thoughts on these matters, which she does by answering six questions posed to her by the Daily Signal.

I've listed the six questions she addresses in bold along with one or two of her sentences that give a succinct summary of her more detailed answer. If you're interested in her more extensive responses I encourage you to read the whole article:

1. Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert during the invasion of Ukraine. What is the likelihood he would use nuclear weapons, and on who and what? "The simplest answer to this question is that while the likelihood is not high, it is not zero either."

2. A nuclear attack by Russia on the United States seems extremely unlikely. But what should be the U.S. response, and that of NATO, if Russia hits Ukraine with a nuclear weapon? "Ukraine is not a NATO member, and therefore the United States does not extend its nuclear umbrella over Ukraine. Nor are the United States and NATO currently involved in the conflict militarily, so they have no obligation to respond using military force."

3. Just out of curiosity, how much of the United States could be reached by a Russian nuclear attack? "All of it."

4. Does the United States have an adequate missile defense system in place under the worst-case scenario to defend itself or to defend allies from a Russian nuclear attack? Do Eastern European allies have adequate missile defense systems? "Many Americans find it hard to believe that we have no way to defend against a major Russian nuclear attack."

5. By most counts, Russia has several hundred more nuclear warheads than the United States. How relevant is this? Or would such a conflict bring such annihilation that it almost wouldn’t matter? Concerning strategic warheads [warheads mounted on ballistic missiles which could travel thousands of miles] there's a rough parity. Concerning non-strategic "battlefield" weapons [nuclear weapons of relatively shorter range and lower blast yields designed for use on the battlefield] the Russians have a 10 to 1 advantage over the U.S. (2000 to 200)

6. Anything else about Russia’s nuclear capabilities that Americans should keep in mind as Putin’s rhetoric harshens? "As much as U.S. policymakers might like to wish away nuclear weapons from existence, unfortunately, the enemy gets a vote. Putin’s recent inflammatory rhetoric, nuclear saber-rattling, and military actions in Ukraine are proof of the need for a strong, modern U.S. nuclear force."

"Basically, That's Wrong"

Vice-preident Kamala Harris was asked recently to explain in layman's terms what's going on in Ukraine. Her answer indicates that she has a pretty low opinion of the intelligence of the average layman:

OH… MY… GOD

Q: “What’s going on in Ukraine?”

Kamala: “Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine so basically that’s wrong.”
pic.twitter.com/gDJDJQVsWb

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 1, 2022

We've arrived at another distressing point in our cultural decline when our highest political officials talk to Americans as if they were talking to a class of pre-schoolers.

Or, and I just had this depressing thought, maybe that's how Ms. Harris talks to everybody!

In any case, I'd like to ask her what she means when she characterizes one country invading another, deliberately killing and terrorizing its citizens and destroying its cities, by saying that "basically, that's wrong."

Is that the strongest censure she can think of? Would she say that "basically," child abuse is wrong or that "basically," the holocaust was wrong?

Thankfully, she didn't use the one timorous construction so popular today among those who can't bring themselves to condemn any behavior, no matter how iniquitous or vile - she didn't say that killing thousands of civilians, including untold numbers of children, is "inappropriate" or "not okay."

Even so, must our leaders speak about right and wrong, good and evil in such milk-soppy language as Ms. Harris did employ? Why is she - and not just her - so reluctant to say categorically that what the Russian political leadership and many in the Russian military are doing in Ukraine is pure, unadulterated evil?

Why are so many so reluctant to speak as if evil really does exist?

Do They Really Want a Nuclear Holocaust?

I find it beyond shocking that there are calls on Twitter and even in the halls of Congress to introduce American fighter jets into Ukraine to establish a no-fly zone (NFZ).

I'm stunned by this because surely they understand what they're calling for. A no-fly zone is not like some invisible force field over the country, it's an edict that requires enforcement.

If a NFZ were declared NATO aircraft would have to patrol the skies over Ukraine and shoot down any Russian aircraft that entered that airspace. They would also have to take out any ground-based radar and anti-aircraft missiles systems manned by Russian troops.

This would entail the loss of a lot of Russian lives at the hands of NATO, which would certainly elicit a Russian declaration of war against Europe and the U.S. That war might start out with conventional weapons, but it wouldn't stay that way. It would quickly escalate to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, intermediate range nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.

It would be mutually assured destruction. Our cities would be blasted into smoldering, radioactive piles of rubble. It astonishes me that anyone could seriously want this.

The Biden administration has a lot to be held accountable for in this current war. They waited too long to try to arm the Ukrainians, they passed on an opportunity months ago to build up the Ukrainian air force, and they waited too long to impose sanctions.

When the sanctions did come, they were too mild and the administration inexplicably delayed in targeting the right people and institutions and still haven't targeted Russia's petroleum and gas industry.

Nevertheless, they've done the right thing in refusing to heed the calls for a no-fly zone. Ukraine is not Iraq in the 1990s, the Russians aren't the Iraqis and Putin is not Saddam Hussein. Hussein could do nothing about our no-fly zone over the Kurdish areas he wanted to obliterate. Hussein didn't have nuclear weapons. Putin does. A couple thousand of them.

Arm the Ukrainians, demoralize the Russian army, but don't introduce American or NATO forces into this war unless Putin attacks a NATO country. To do so would be to invite a nuclear exchange nobody would win and everyone would lose.

How Far Will He Go Before...?

If there was any doubt about the evil of Vladimir Putin and his henchmen the last day or so should've dispelled it. In the last 48 hours the Russians have tacitly and explicitly threatened nuclear war with the West, attacked civilian sites with rockets, allegedly employed a type of bomb called a vacuum bomb that's banned by international law, and dropped cluster bombs on a school, among other places.

Russia appears to have used banned cluster munitions to indiscriminately shell civilian areas in Ukraine's east that had stood up to Vladimir Putin's invasion in what would constitute a war crime.

Kharkiv, which has witnessed some of the heaviest fighting of the war so far, was hit by rockets fired from Russian positions on Monday - with video showing a shopping centre in the Serpnia area blanketed by explosions. A military source told MailOnline that the videos showed 'cluster' munitions had been used.

'The BM-21 Grad is a multiple launch rocket system used for 'area denial', dropping cluster bombs on a concentrated area,' the expert said. 'It's mainly used on enemy troops before an offensive. Used against civilians, it's not only a war crime, but has only one purpose – to spread terror and alarm among the civilian population.'

Graphic images and video revealed streets littered with the bodies of dead and badly wounded civilians, with other images showing spent BM-21 Grad rocket cartridges laying in the streets and having fallen through apartment roofs.

Cluster munitions were also used to destroy a school in Okhtyrka, activist group Amnesty said, in which three people including a child were killed. The attack 'appears to have been carried out by Russian forces, which were operating nearby, and which have a record of using cluster munitions in populated areas,' Amnesty said.

'There is no possible justification for dropping cluster munitions in populated areas, let alone near a school,' secretary Agnes Callamard added.

The Russians have also deployed hundreds of assassins from a private militia run by an oligarch and Putin crony. These killers are tasked with killing Ukrainian officials and particularly President Volodomyr Zelensky:

More than 400 Russian mercenaries have been flown in from Africa to assassinate Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, it was revealed last night.

A private militia known as the Wagner Group allegedly has orders from Vladimir Putin to take out Zelensky - and 23 other government figures - to allow Moscow to take over its eastern European neighbour.

According to the Times, the army-for-hire, run by oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin - a close ally of the Russian president who is often dubbed 'Putin's chef' - was flown in five weeks ago and is being offered a huge sum for the mission.

The highly-trained operatives are said to be waiting for the green light from the Kremlin to pounce, with their hit list also including Ukraine's prime minister, the entire cabinet, mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko and his brother Wladimir - both boxing champions who have become iconic figures on the front lines of the capital.

One wonders how far Putin will go before someone in his government or military decides that he simply can't be allowed to go any further and acts to put an end to the misery this man is inflicting on Ukraine, Russia and possibly upon the rest of the world.

Deliver Them from Evil

When the Taliban were closing in on Kabul Afghanistan's president absconded with his family and his wealth. Not so the courageous president of Ukraine, Volodomyr Zelensky. He and many members of his administration and Parliament are not just ordering the Ukrainian people to fight, they're fighting alongside them in the streets even though Zelensky knows he's marked for death by Vladimir Putin.

When the Americans offered to spirit Zelensky out of Ukraine he responded that what he needed was ammunition, not a ride.

The stories of incredible courage coming out of Ukraine are as heart-breaking as they are inspiring. A Ukrainian soldier blew himself up on a bridge to slow the Russian advance.

Thirteen Ukrainians on an island in the Black Sea refused to surrender to a Russian warship and were all killed in the subsequent bombardment (although see here).

Middle-aged women are taking up rifles in Kyiv to fight the Russians in the streets. Unarmed citizens are standing in front of tanks to block their advance.

The stories of heroism are everywhere in Ukraine.

In the Lord's prayer is the petition to God to "deliver us from evil." May God deliver the brave Ukrainians from the evil that has come upon them, delivered by a man who will doubtless go down in history as one of the most evil European leaders of the last one hundred years.

Ukraine's Resistance

Television news reporting on the war in Ukraine has been a bit short on the details of the fighting. Strategy Page, however, has an extended column on the war in Ukraine, and one part provides some particularly interesting insight into what's going on outside Kyiv.

This is an excerpt from their column dated February 25th:

As expected, not a lot of the nearly 200,000 Russian troops now near the Ukraine borders actually entered Ukraine. All, or most appeared to be volunteers, rather than the one-year conscripts that comprise half the strength of the armed forces. Few of the conscripts and even fewer of their parents are eager for the conscripts to be fighting neighbors.

Russian airborne forces managed to take an airport ten kilometers outside Kyiv. Efforts to use that airport to bring in additional troops were disrupted by the Ukrainian use of Stinger portable anti-aircraft missiles as well as rifle and machine-gun fire at low flying aircraft.

The airport was quickly attacked by a Ukrainian army rapid reaction force organized and trained for retaking key locations seized by Russian airborne forces.

While the area around the airport was soon surrounded by regular reservists and armed volunteers, the Rapid Reaction unit retook the airport before the Russians could use larger transport aircraft to bring in more troops. [Today's news brings word that the Ukrainians have shot down at least two Russian transport planes, each capable of transporting up to 150 troops].

Russia appears to have underestimated the preparations Ukraine has made since 2014 to deal with this kind of invasion. In addition to 150 local defense units (of at least battalion size [400-800 troops]) arrangements were made to quickly arm, train and deploy volunteers, which includes all physically able males aged 16 to 60.

The regular army obtained more portable anti-aircraft weapons and trained special units to deal with any Russians that seized key objectives. All those armed Ukrainians were more of an obstacle than the Russians expected.

The invaders are using about a dozen main roads from the border to objectives inside Ukraine. Within hours all those roads were under fire from the armed locals. Even convoys with numerous armed escorts were fired on and the Russians did not have enough troops to clear the roads of armed hostiles.

Some convoys were halted by roadblocks, and at least one Russian reconnaissance platoon was captured.

While the Russians control most Ukrainian airspace and coastal waters, land areas remain under Ukrainian control. An amphibious assault on the major Black Sea port of Odessa failed and most ground advances appear to have stalled as well.

The Ukrainian newspaper, The Kyiv Independent, reports that as of February 26th the Russians have lost 3500 soldiers, 102 tanks, 536 armored vehicles, 14 fighter jets, and 8 helicopters.

I don't know how trustworthy those numbers are, but if they're in the ballpark it seems that Vladimir Putin is so far paying a steep price for his decision to invade Ukraine.

Mystifying Policy

As readers of Viewpoint can discern, I'm not a fan of President Biden. Now's not the time to get into the reasons, but I did hope that he would do all he could to make war in Ukraine such an ugly prospect for Vladimir Putin that the Russian president would find some way to save face and back out.

I thought that the best way to do this was to arm the Ukrainians with such an arsenal of defensive weapons that Mr. Putin would count the cost and choose not to invade. I have to say that Mr. Biden has deeply disappointed. However much he equipped the Ukrainian military, and that seems to be a classified secret, his use of sanctions is mystifying.

He has sanctioned several big Russian banks which means that the Russian people, already poor, will be made a bit poorer, but he has declined to sanction Mr. Putin himself, and worse, he has declined to sanction Russia's oil and gas industry.

Even as he's ostensibly trying to cripple Russia's economy we and our NATO allies are still buying Russian fossil fuels! Gas and oil make up 50% of the Russian economy, but Mr. Biden has decided that neither Americans nor Europeans are willing to pay $4.00 or $5.00 a gallon for gasoline in order to help the Ukrainian people.

Of course, had he not turned us from being a net exporter of fuel to being a net importer reliant on Russian petroleum for 10% of our fuel, we'd still be energy independent, as we were under Mr. Trump, and Mr. Biden wouldn't be in the ridiculous position of allowing Russia to continue to sell its chief export while also seeking to stifle the Russian economy.

Nor is it clear that the sanctions Mr. Biden unveiled on Thursday will do much to help the Ukrainian people in any case. He admitted as much himself when he said that we'll have to wait a month or so to see if they're working.

The Ukrainian people don't have a month to sit around waiting to see how Mr. Putin's Russia is holding up under Mr. Biden's sanctions. I'm sure they'd like a bit more help this afternoon rather than next month.

I also don't know why, if the sanctions won't bite for a month, they weren't imposed a month ago. Nor is it clear why they were imposed at all if, as Mr. Biden acknowledged, they weren't intended, contra Vice-President Harris, to be a deterrent.

If they weren't a deterrent then they're just punishment, but why not save thousands of lives and do something before Russia launched its invasion to perhaps make them reconsider?

I'm not a military expert nor am I a statesman steeped in international finance, but none of what President Biden has done in Ukraine, just like none of what he did in the Afghanistan pullout, nor what he's doing on our southern border, makes any sense to me.

I don't think it makes any sense to many other people either, least of all the Ukrainians.

Ukraine

Ukraine had been part of the old Soviet Union until the dissolution of the Union that occurred from 1988 to 1991. As part of the U.S.S.R. some 1800 nuclear weapons were situated on Ukrainian soil, and when the Soviet Union disbanded Ukraine became a sovereign nation in possession of all those nukes.

These weapons included short-range tactical missiles and air-launched cruise missiles. The U.S. wanted to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons, so in 1994 The U.S., U.K. and Russia signed an agreement in Budapest to guarantee Ukraine that their sovereignty would be protected if they gave up their nuclear weapons, which they did, returning them all to Russia by 1996.

In 2014 Vladimir Putin abrogated the Budapest agreement by invading Crimea, a part of Ukraine. The Obama administration responded by sending the Ukrainians blankets when they needed weapons with which to defend themselves.

Now the Russians want all of Ukraine back and have launched an attack against the rest of the country. This is an historic betrayal on the part of Russia, but the question for Americans is what we will do this time to help Ukraine. So far, President Biden has announced only sanctions against Russia, but what the Ukrainians need are munitions.

To fail once again, to refuse weaponry and other resources to Ukraine now, would be another betrayal on our part of the Budapest memorandum. Mr. Biden has already betrayed Afghanistan, and it would be a terrible thing if he compounded this stain on our national reputation by also abandoning Ukraine.

Perhaps we have indeed been quietly sending Ukraine the resources they need with which to resist the Russians. Mr. Biden hasn't said, but one thing is clear: if we haven't a lot of countries are going to take some lessons from this.

Taiwan and South Korea are going to wonder how steadfast the U.S. will be in honoring the security agreements we have with them.

Countries like North Korea and Iran are going to justify continuing their nuclear programs by pointing to what happened to Ukraine when they gave up their nukes. Other nations like Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Taiwan are going to want to obtain their own nuclear deterrents if they have reason to conclude that the U.S. is not a dependable ally.

By trying to limit nuclear devices and being unable or unwilling to enforce the security guarantees made to Ukraine, we've actually made it more likely, apparently, that those weapons will proliferate.

America is at what scholars call an inflection point. It falls to Mr. Biden to demonstrate to the world that we are not, to paraphrase one letter writer to the Wall Street Journal, a soft, self-obsessed consumer society whose primary concerns are the weather a few hundred years hence, transgender bathrooms, and systemic racism. We must demonstrate that we really do consider ourselves bound by our commitments and that our guarantees really are reliable.

This emphatically does not mean that we should put troops in Ukraine or go to war with Russia, but it does mean that we should do everything else in our power, including arming Ukraine, to dissuade Russia from doing what Putin obviously wants to do. It's still not too late.

China is doubtless watching to see what we'll do, and if we waver, if we shrink from the challenge, Taiwan will surely be next to suffer.

Mr. Biden's Silly Question

In his speech announcing the sanctions that the U.S. and its allies will be imposing on Russia for their incursion into eastern Ukraine President Biden asked, "Who in the Lord's name does Putin think gives him the right?" The right, that is, to invade another country:

This is, unfortunately, a very silly thing for our president to have said. In a secular world there are no rights except what the strong deign to grant to the weak. In the world of Vladimir Putin, might makes right. Mr. Putin may well answer Mr. Biden with the riposte that he gives himself the right, and what would our secular leaders have to say in reply?

They might respond that Mr. Putin is violating agreements and U.N. rules and whatnot, but Mr. Putin would doubtless reply, "So what?" Why can't he break those agreements if he has the power to do so? Who will hold him accountable?

The fact is we live in a secular world, a world in which there's thought to be no relevant transcendent ground for human or legal rights. If God exists in this secular world, He doesn't matter. Only what happens in this world matters. Indeed, that's the meaning of the word secular.

In such a world the state becomes the arbiter of rights and the stronger states get to impose their will on the weaker. To do so isn't "wrong," it just is. We may not like it, but unless we believe rights, like the right not to be invaded by another country, are granted by God, we just have to recognize that there's really no use asking the question that Mr. Biden asked.

To someone like Mr. Putin the question is risible. He has stolen millions from the Russian people and murdered hundreds of his countrymen along his road to power. He's not likely to be impressed by President Biden's implicit protest that he had no right to invade Ukraine.

Right and wrong, human rights, ultimately reduce to a question of who has the power. Only if there's a God who grants people rights and holds accountable those who violate them can it be otherwise.

I'm reminded of a passage in a book by the mathematician David Berlinski. The book is titled The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions and in it Berlinski describes a scene in the early years of WWII. An elderly Jew is being made to dig his own grave while an SS officer stands by holding a rifle. At length the Jew stands erect, faces the German, looks him in the eyes and says, "God is watching what you are doing." With that the SS officer shot him dead.

Berlinski goes on to say that,

what that officer did not believe, what Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that God was watching what they were doing.

And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either. That is, after all, the meaning of a secular society.

And I doubt that Putin believes it either.

Quitting Tik Tok, Reading Books

The Federalist's Zsanna Bodor offers some hopeful news amidst these grim times. According to Ms. Bodor Gen Zers are leaving social media and turning to, of all things, reading books!

She writes that, "Personalities like Timothée Chalamet, Kaia Gerber, and YouTube sensation Emma Chamberlain have promoted reading as a way to relax, learn, and escape the toxic world of social media."

I have no idea who these people are, but if they're promoting books instead of mindlessly grazing through the various social media sites, they have something to say that's worth listening to. Bodor goes on to tell us that,

In her YouTube video, titled “Reading Makes You Hot,” which has more than 3.8 million views, Chamberlain describes how reading alleviates her anxiety and depression. She explains, “Reading is harmless. Going on social media is not harmless. It makes you sad, it makes you compare yourself to other people, it makes you depressed.”

Since this video was released, Chamberlain has quit TikTok entirely and limited her Instagram usage, citing mental health reasons.

Millions of teens and young adults can relate to Chamberlain’s experience, and research has found a definite causal relationship between social media and depression. A study conducted by the University of Arkansas found that young adults who spent more than 300 minutes a day on social media platforms were “2.8 times as likely to become depressed within six months” than those who spent 120 minutes or less on social media.

According to Nicholas Carr’s bestselling book, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” the exhaustion many users experience after engaging with social media stems from the fact that “our social standing is, in one way or another, always in play, always at risk. The resulting self-consciousness — even, at times, fear — magnifies the intensity of our involvement with the medium. That’s true for everyone, but it’s particularly true for the young.”

Thus, trying to relax through social media is a contradiction of terms. A social media user is not only subject to the myriad auditory, visual, and somatosensory cues put forth by the medium (think of TikTok’s addictive combination of music, fast-paced video content, and “swiping up” to see more), but is also perpetually conscious of his own status and social perception.

In a virtual world governed by likes and dislikes, the danger of being ignored or even “canceled” is an ever-present threat.

There's much more at the link on Bodor's view of the harm social media is doing to our young people's brains and bodies, and it's all worth taking the time to read. Here's one excerpt:

Reading comprehension has been declining in America for years, and lockdowns only exacerbated the situation. But Carr reassures us that rewiring your brain is possible. With enough training, those skills of deep concentration and focus can be relearned, or developed for the first time.

Just make sure to hide your smartphone while you practice. A 2017 study at the University of Texas found that students whose phones were in plain sight performed more poorly on a series of tests than students who left their phones in a bag or in a different room altogether. “As the smartphone becomes more noticeable, participants’ available cognitive capacity decreases,” explained Adrian Ward, one of the study’s authors.

In her last section she says this:

If you want to incorporate leisure reading into your routine, classical literature is a great place to start. When you read the classics, you interact with the ideas of the greatest minds in human history.

Spencer Baum declares classical literature “essential medicine in the age of social media.” He explains, “When you read Melville (or Hugo or Austen or Tolstoy or Plato or Shakespeare) you are sharing headspace with someone who is much better at slow, deep, meaningful thinking than you are because they’ve never lived in the shallows like you do.”

I agree. Reading the classics is not easy, it takes time and effort, but the rewards make the effort worth it.

I've acknowledged in other posts that I'm very reluctant to recommend particular books to people because what appeals to me usually doesn't appeal to others, but if I were asked what my favorite classical novels are, I'd probably list the following (although there are a lot of others that are really hard to leave off the list.):

• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
• Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• 1984 by George Orwell

They're all wonderful, albeit for different reasons, but none of them are easy reads. If you tackle any of them, though, and persevere to the end, you will have undergone an intellectual growth spurt.

No Ordinary People

C.S. Lewis, the author of The Narnia Chronicles among many other works, delivered a sermon/lecture in 1942 titled The Weight of Glory in which he concluded with words that, though they were delivered to a Christian audience and have a Christian resonance, might be meditated upon with profit by anyone of any metaphysical persuasion.

C.S. Lewis 1898-1963

Our society would certainly be better off if all of us, even those who disagree with Lewis' religious beliefs, nevertheless lived as if what he says here is true:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit— immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner....

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

If we take Lewis' words seriously and look at others not as merely transient clumps of mortal flesh but as creatures whose destiny it is to exist forever, one way or another, it certainly does alter, or should alter, how we view them and how we act toward them.

Greenland's Ice

One of the concerns with global warming is the rise in sea levels due to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. In an article at the Wall Street Journal (paywall), New York University theoretical physicist Steven Koonin argues that the situation is not nearly as dire as many make it out to be.

Here's his lede:

One of the most sacred tenets of climate alarmism is that Greenland’s vast ice sheet is shrinking ever more rapidly because of human-induced climate change. The media and politicians warn constantly of rising sea levels that would swamp coastlines from Florida to Bangladesh. A typical headline: “Greenland ice sheet on course to lose ice at fastest rate in 12,000 years.”

With an area of 660,000 square miles and a thickness up to 1.9 miles, Greenland’s ice sheet certainly deserves attention. Its shrinking has been a major cause of recent sea-level rise, but as is often the case in climate science, the data tell quite a different story from the media coverage and the political laments.

Referring to the following chart, Koonin declares that the amount of ice Greenland has lost since 1900 averages about 110 billion tons per year, which sounds like a lot but which has resulted in a rise in sea level of about one fifth the thickness of a dime.

On the other hand, the IPCC projects a more dramatic rise over the next 80 years:

In contrast, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that for the most likely course of greenhouse-gas emissions in the 21st century, the average annual ice loss would be somewhat larger than the peak values shown in the graph.

That would cause sea level to rise by 3 inches by the end of this century, and if losses were to continue at that rate, it would take about 10,000 years for all the ice to disappear, causing sea level to rise more than 20 feet.

However, according to Koonin, the ice melt is not increasing steadily each year. The graph shows that it's fluctuating, and in fact the ice loss today is not significantly larger than it was in the 1930s when human influences made much less of an impact.

"Moreover," he notes, "the annual loss of ice has been decreasing in the past decade even as the globe continues to warm."

His takeaway is this:

While a warming globe might eventually be the dominant cause of Greenland’s shrinking ice, natural cycles in temperatures and currents in the North Atlantic that extend for decades have been a much more important influence since 1900.

Those cycles, together with the recent slowdown, make it plausible that the next few decades will see a further, perhaps dramatic slowing of ice loss.

That would be inconsistent with the IPCC’s projection and wouldn’t at all support the media’s exaggerations.

For my part, I wonder why a gradual loss of ice in Greenland would be catastrophic. To be sure some coastal areas and islands may be rendered uninhabitable by a rise in sea levels of three inches, but if the rise was gradual enough many areas would be able to adjust.

Just as importantly, vast tracts of land in Greenland (and Siberia) would become available for human and wildlife habitation and resource mining. The loss of ice cover could well be a boon to humanity, so why do we assume that it would necessarily be a disaster?