Two things have become clear in the last few days.

Two things have become clear in the last few days.

As is often the case with tales of great discovery, the details of how buried treasure came to be found beneath the rolling countryside of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, have grown a little gauzy over the last 30 years. But here is the story as the prospectors tell it. One day, in March 1979, a man named Byrd Berman, a geologist by training, was driving down a road through cattle pastures when the scintillometer sitting on the dashboard of his Hertz rental car began to beep.

Max Boot is among the conservative columnists I esteem the most. One reason is that he has to be more than a bit brave because the right is not ordinarily cordial to those who dissent on its keystone issues. Of course, he is not the only conservative to be sensible on gay matters. Still...

National Review editor Rich Lowry makes the case that Republicans can repeal health care reform if it passes:

The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in The American University
By Louis Menand
(W.W. Norton, 174 pp., $24.95)

It didn't get a lot of fanfare, but January 31 was the deadline under the Copenhagen accord for the world's countries to formally submit their plans for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and helping to address climate change. So what happened? Well, the deadline came and went, and the vast majority of nations (roughly 130) didn't submit anything at all. On the upside, though, the handful of countries that actually pump out most of the world's carbon-dioxide did submit plans. Here were the major pledges for cutting emissions:

I last wrote in this space about American universities in the Arab oil orbit on April 23, 2008. That Spine was called “The New Colonialism, Education Division,” and it focused on the exploits of New York University in Abu Dhabi. Now, in matters like these, N.Y.U. is really in the business of whoring.

Once again, Australia is getting criticized at Copenhagen, only this time it’s not for its weak climate targets—it’s about how the country hopes to achieve those targets.

Once again, Australia is getting criticized at Copenhagen, only this time it’s not for its weak climate targets—it’s about how the country hopes to achieve those targets.

Given that there's virtually no chance a finished climate treaty will come out of the upcoming talks in Copenhagen, one might be forgiven for asking what, exactly, the world's diplomats are actually going to do these next two weeks in Denmark. Already, further talks are scheduled for next year—including yet another big climate summit in Mexico City in 2010.

The debate over climate-change legislation in Australia has been a tangled and raucous tale, and it culminated yesterday with the Senate finally voting down Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's plan for a cap-and-trade system. The 41-33 vote against came shortly after the opposition Liberals ousted their pro-cap leader for arch-conservative Tony Abbott.

The debate over climate-change legislation in Australia has been a tangled and raucous tale, and it culminated yesterday with the Senate finally voting down Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's plan for a cap-and-trade system. The 41-33 vote against came shortly after the opposition Liberals ousted their pro-cap leader for arch-conservative Tony Abbott.

I don’t oppose what Barack Obama plans to do in Afghanistan. I don’t know enough, and from what I know, I don’t have an alternative to propose. I would have preferred he find a way to achieve American objectives without escalating the war, but I agree with his objective of denying al Qaeda a home in Afghanistan through a Taliban victory, and I hope that his strategy will achieve it. Still, I have my doubts.

Conservatives have been quick to blame the administration for the slow delivery of H1N1 vaccine. Not long after Obama declared the swine flu pandemic a national emergency last month--a measure that cleared the way for hospitals to make special preparations for infected patients--Missouri Representative Roy Blunt pounced on the administration’s “onerous regulatory and legal environment” as a cause for the vaccine delays. In the Weekly Standard last week, Bill Kristol held up the swine flu response as an example of the coming “big government health care” boondoggle. “Surely this spectacle, happening in real time before us, will give even more Democrats pause. Do they really want to be known as the Swine Flu Democrats?” Earlier this month, Rush Limbaugh declared that the problem was on par with the Bush administration’s disastrous federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

But how much blame should the government really get for the shortage? Late last month, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported on the administration’s efforts to respond to the threat of a pandemic. From the start, she reported, Obama seemed determined to put forth a coordinated plan for dealing with the outbreak, studying past government responses to flu epidemics with the help of former administration officials and adding swine flu updates to his regular intelligence briefings. The administration created a government website and public service campaign to inform the public of precautionary measures they could take to avoid the flu. And, most importantly, they moved swiftly to contract with a roster of vaccine manufacturers and got the first doses out to high-risk patients earlier than every country but Australia and China. “[T]he Obama administration left little to chance,” she notes.

One thing they didn’t fully appreciate, however, was the inherent unpredictability of the vaccine manufacturing process. Flu vaccines are typically prepared by injecting the virus into fertilized chicken eggs and incubating them until they become infected. The egg fluid is then harvested and mixed with an embalming fluid, which prevents the virus from causing illness but triggers a response from the immune system that will prevent a future infection. As Allison Bond explained in Discover, there is ample opportunity for the process to become complicated if the egg rots, or the virus grows slowly or produce a weak vaccine. (As Bond notes, HHS devoted $1 billion in funds to develop new vaccine-making technology in 2006, but those technologies weren’t ready for use when H1N1 started spreading earlier this year.)

It is a sign of our weird political moment that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama will probably hurt him among some of his fellow citizens.

His opponents are describing the award as premature. The deeper problem is that the Nobel will underscore the extent to which Obama is a cosmopolitan figure, much loved in European capitals because he is the change they have been looking for.

It is a sign of our weird political moment that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama will probably hurt him among some of his fellow citizens.

His opponents are describing the award as premature. The deeper problem is that the Nobel will underscore the extent to which Obama is a cosmopolitan figure, much loved in European capitals because he is the change they have been looking for.

A few Vine-esque stories from around the intertubes:

— In recent weeks, a bunch of electric utilities have left the Chamber of Commerce due to its opposition to action on climate change. So, today, the Chamber felt the need to clarify: "We've never questioned the science behind global warming." It's a nice sentiment, but as Brad Johnson documents, it's not even sort of true.

In The New York Times today, James Kanter checks in on Europe's foray into carbon trading. In particular, he hears Jürgen Thumann, the president of BusinessEurope complain that it's been rather costly for Europe to be the only entity that's put a hard cap on greenhouse gases so far. If the United States, Australia, Japan, and other nations would only join in on the fun, then cutting carbon emissions would be much, much cheaper for everybody.

Earlier today (or maybe it should be later today, what with time zones and all), Australia's parliament rejected a climate bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse-gas emissions. Conservatives in the Senate teamed up with Greens and independents to nix the measure, which aimed to reduce coal-heavy Australia's carbon-dioxide emissions a relatively modest 5 percent below 2000 levels by 2020.

Earlier today (or maybe it should be later today, what with time zones and all), Australia's parliament rejected a climate bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse-gas emissions. Conservatives in the Senate teamed up with Greens and independents to nix the measure, which aimed to reduce coal-heavy Australia's carbon-dioxide emissions a relatively modest 5 percent below 2000 levels by 2020.

"I mean, in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above--above the world, he's sort of God." These drug-addicted words come from Evan Thomas, a longtime editor at Newsweek. He uttered them on Chris Matthews's MSNBC show. Such words would wreak havoc on any person's ego, even Barack Obama's. It also would enrage his enemies.

After all, the president has told us that he is a mere student of history, and that he is.

Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution By Karl W. Giberson (HarperOne, 248 pp., $24.95)

Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul By Kenneth R. Miller (Viking, 244 pp., $25.95)

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