How Far We've Come

It was 100 years ago this month that the world changed forever. Actually, it didn't change, but our understanding of it did. It was 1905, and the German physics journal Annalen der Physik was about to publish its volume 17. This would become perhaps the most famous physics publication in history, containing three essays from the patent clerk, Albert Einstein, including one that spelled out his special theory of relativity. He later added an additional essay, a footnote basically, that described the equation, E=mc².

The astonishing implications of this weren't clear at the time, though a former student described how Einstein, in 1907, said that his realization that all mass was essentially untapped energy would probably be the most important consequence of his theory. It couldn't even be tested until 25 years later, but Einstein was proven right. In fact, his theory has been proven correct time and time again, though we still can grasp only some of the implications it has for the universe as a whole.

Einstein's theory came about like so many do. He saw a problem in our perception of the world as outlined by Newton. Nothing that was Newton's fault -- he just didn't have to deal with the concept of the speed of light being a universal constant. Einstein lived in a world with two basic concepts of physics -- Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell's equations -- that were incompatible. There had to be a way to reconcile them. After a despondent conversation with his friend Michele Besso, in which Einstein admitted defeat, he had a sudden moment of brilliance on the streetcar trip home. He realized that time can flow at different rates throughout the universe, depending on how fast you move.

It solved the problem neatly, even though the basic concept (and many concepts it spawned) seemed irrational. Over the following decades, Einstein's theory has been tested, confirmed and refined through the scientific process. This process demands continual testing of our theories so that we can discover all their implications and, if the theory fails, throw it out completely.

Now let's turn to our time. Right now, a group of parents are in a Pennsylvania courtroom, fighting to protect their children from the forces of fear and irrationality. Their school district has decided to require that students be told about intelligent design, the idea that life on Earth could only have originated or developed without the assistance of some unidentified intelligent force. Proponents of this belief say that there are some things the theory of evolution doesn't explain, and so this must mean that that there is an "intelligent designer" at work there.

It's a debate that scientists don't enjoy having (but they do in some cases), not because they fear being proven wrong, but because intelligent design does not represent science. It is an attempt to point out perceived holes in the theory and proclaim, "Ha! That's where God is!" It does not offer a scientifically testable alternative. Proponents cringe from that, in fact.

There are certain aspects of intelligent design that a lot of people find attractive. The general public and ID proponents have an inaccurate understanding of the word "theory" in the scientific sense. They throw the word around in phrases like, "It's only a theory." But evolution is "only" a theory in the sense that gravity is "only" a theory. In science, a theory is an explanation of observed phenomena that can be tested and stands up to rigorous testing. That's what evolution has done. It has been experimentally proven both in the real world and the lab.

Now let's look at ID. It offers no explanation, only saying, "Well, if you can't explain some aspect of what we see, it must mean God's doing it!" That, frankly, is stupid. There's no other way to describe it. You don't even have to mention the fact that a lot of what the ID proponents use as "evidence" of things that can't be explained are actually explained quite nicely by evolution. They take advantage of a gullible public and pandering school boards to squeeze religion into science classes. It dumbs down our children by undermining the bedrock of the scientific method, the same method that has raised us up from medieval squalor and allows us to glimpse the basic structure of reality.

It is disheartening to compare the story of Einstein with what's going on in that Pennsylvania courtroom. One hundred years after his eureka moment, we're still fighting the battle between superstitious belief and reason. Anyone who has some understanding of Einstein's theories and the discoveries that have come after can stare up at the night sky and feel the wonder of knowing what lights those stars. You can have some grasp of the majesty of our world when you know something about what it consists of and how it developed. All of this has been given to us by science. But some want to extinguish as much of that light as possible, overturning the pillars of science and reason in the process. It's disgusting, and it must be stopped.

Another Test Blows In

We're now getting another chance for our government officials to show whether they can protect people under the worst conditions. Of course, everything is a bit different this time.

On the news the other night they put up population totals of Texas cities in the possible path of Hurricane Rita. Before Katrina, that would have come off as crass and sensationalistic. Now, it's an important piece of the pre-hurricane planning. Katrina also has primed people to be extra cautious. The highways out of Houston have been jammed for over a day now as everyone tries to evacuate. There have been tragic side effects to this already. People are turning back from the crowded, gas-depleted roads and returning home in the hope of waiting it out.

Watching the chaos of a failed evacuation, it would be tempting to label this second test a failure. But that's not indicated right now. Even as the highways were completely impassable, officials were still calling for evacuations. It's just something that the roadways were not designed to handle. It's difficult to determine how it could have been better. Ideally, you could have a controlled evacuation, with residents of specific areas moved out at an orderly rate, followed by other areas. But that wouldn't have worked, would it? There's no way that you can evacuate that many people quickly and safely.

If anything, this shows, in part, the limits of what we can accomplish. It simply becomes impossible at some point to completely control the situation. But again, this is a wildly different situation, so far, than Katrina was. In that case, people prepared just the same as they always prepared for a disaster -- some left, others hunkered down. The government failed at various levels in its preparation. It didn't preposition crews and supplies in the area to the extent that it should have. It didn't have a plan to deal with its own worst-case scenario.

With Rita, we can likely expect all of that to be better. But the difference this time is that people are preparing differently. Instead of hunkering down, the vast majority are clearing out. And that's something that our infrastructure can't handle. The fear is that people will remain trapped out on the highways when the hurricane arrives -- no gas, little shelter.

Both Katrina and Rita show the need for two things -- emergency officials must plan for the worst and be prepared to deal with the worst when it arrives, and they must still be flexible enough to deal with situations when they change. The government will hopefully do better with the first part. We'll see if they do better with the second.

Warnings Ignored

While President Bush may finally be accepting responsibility for the federal government's failings in the response to Hurricane Katrina (though both overt and subtle finger-pointing among all levels of government continues), we're still hearing more about how truly awful the planning was inside FEMA for this event.

As I commented earlier, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff either lied or was incredibly poorly informed when he claimed that no one could have predicted what would happen because, clearly, many people actually did predict it. Former FEMA chief Michael Brown seemed to be saying in all his public statements that Katrina magically blossomed into a Category 4 storm off the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi in mere moments, giving them no time to prepare.

Now comes a story from National Public Radio that shows some of the information that Chertoff, Brown and other officials were given by the people responsible for informing them of disaster potential. Leo Bosner is an emergency management specialist at FEMA in Washington, D.C. It's his job, along with his crew, to alert officials of impending disasters. As early as Friday, Aug. 26, Bosner was warning Chertoff and Brown of the potential devastation Katrina could cause. By Saturday, Bosner was specifically warning of "dire predictions" of what could happen to New Orleans.

In the NPR interview, Bosner said he and his crew were shocked that Saturday's note seemed to get no response from FEMA or Homeland Security. They expected to go into the office and see dozens of people scrambling to position food and water supplies, activate the National Guard and provide transportation to those in New Orleans who would be unable to evacuate. Instead, they found the same 12 or so people there.

By Sunday, Bosner's note had taken on a much more urgent tone, reminding officials of Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago, which put half of New Orleans under water and killed 74 people. It talked about the 100,000 people in the city with no transportation to evacuate. Still, Bosner said, that urgency did not seem to be felt at FEMA. It wasn't until Tuesday, when it was too late, that the level of mobilization reached what it should have been on Saturday.

Keep in mind that Bosner's job is not to suggest policy, but rather to inform those who do. His missives are the way in which the emergency management chiefs get the information and decide what to do. They're sent by e-mail to the important people, who get them on their Blackberrys. They had this information and they didn't act on it.

There's always enough blame to go around, of course, but it's becoming increasingly clear that if the federal government had simply acted as it should have based on the information it had, it could at least have been able to get more people evacuated and provide food and water to people in the affected area immediately. It would have done its job. Much earlier planning and money would have been needed to prevent the flooding of New Orleans, but at least more people would have been saved, and the government would not have to be ashamed of its failure.

A cynic might look at today's national day of prayer and point out Bush's past unwillingness to place science and information over religion and "gut feelings." That cynic might wonder if this irrational thought process has permeated throughout the administration and other federal agencies. It might, after all, explain the way the facts and warnings were ignored. Maybe officials weren't being lazy or irresponsible, but rather they were just convinced that "everything would be all right." Yes, something that a cynic might bring up...

Brown Out

Mike Brown just resigned as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It looks like he's taking on the scapegoat role he said last week was being foisted on him by the media.

Just like my post below on Chertoff, I think Brown should have been fired before he had the chance to resign. But in a way, he kind of was. He was moved off of the Hurricane Katrina relief project last week after receiving near-universal criticism. Time magazine also reported on possible problems with his résumé, though much of that really seemed to be pretty minor points or legitimate matters of interpretation. Still, it was a fact that Brown had little if any experience dealing with a disaster or any special knowledge about how to deal with a disaster. He was simply the wrong person for the job.

Here's Brown's complete written statement:

Today I resigned as Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As I told the President, it is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA.

It has been an honor and a privilege to serve this President and to work shoulder to shoulder with the hard working men and women of FEMA. They carry out an unusually difficult task under the harshest of circumstances. My respect for these dedicated professionals and this organization is unyielding.

There is no other government agency that reaches people in a more direct way. It has been the best job in the world to help Americans in their darkest hours.

Unfortunately, when something like this happens, you don't really know if you have the right person for the job until it's too late. Some people can rise to the occasion, like President Bush did immediately following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he talked to recovery workers with a bullhorn. Some people fail miserably under pressure, like President Bush did in the days following Hurricane Katrina.

In other Katrina news, it's also just been reported that 45 bodies were recovered from a New Orleans hospital that was abandoned more than a week ago. Health officials said that the bodies were patients, but there was no other immediate information. This brings the death toll to 279 in Louisiana, and officials are still hopeful that the final tally will be lower than they originally estimated.

Chertoff's CYA

Politicians are excellent at trying to deflect blame. It's a necessary survival technique. If they screw something up, they need to be able to blame someone else or they run the risk of getting voted out of office by a public who only sees the mistake and won't take the time to figure out if there's a reasonable explanation. That's a pretty patronizing view of the American public, of course, but it might not be that far off base for the majority out there.

At any rate, I can understand when politicians reflexively try to deflect blame in light of the devastation of New Orleans. I don't agree with it, because especially in this situation, the American public is voraciously consuming anything they can get about the disaster. They're very well informed on this. Any cover-your-ass maneuvering will instantly stink to the vast majority of people out there. It doesn't work.

That's why it's stunning to see what Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff is saying. This guy actually has the gall to come out and blatantly lie about whether government officials had predicted whether such a disaster could occur:

That "perfect storm" of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight.

Unbelievable. As the CNN article goes on to report, this exact scenario had been brought up many times, by government officials, scientists and journalists. They had even war-gamed the situation back in 2004.

Chertoff also claims that they didn't have enough specific warning that this storm would hit the area with such force, saying they only had "a day, maybe a day and a half" of warning. But the National Hurricane Center was predicting as early as the Friday before that the storm could be Category 4, with New Orleans in its path. The prediction was almost perfect.

So it sounds like Chertoff is lying and hoping desperately to not get caught. Or maybe he actually believes what he's saying. In that case, he has been stunningly misinformed, especially for the director of Homeland Security. In either case, the president should do something right in all of this and not wait for Chertoff's inevitable resignation, but fire him as soon as there's some stability to the situation.

The Value Of A Single Person

In an effort to address the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, Congress will meet for an emergency session either tonight or Friday morning. Needed is an immediate infusion of cash to keep up with the $500 million a day FEMA is pouring into efforts to stop the flooding and provide relief to the tens of thousands of homeless. More than $10 billion will likely be approved just for the immediate costs. Many billions more will be needed in the future.

It's quite noble for our legislators to interrupt their vacations to make sure this money is available. Not all of them need to be there, since the measure can be approved by unanimous consent, but still, just four or five days after the hurricane hit, Congress is swinging into action to help people out.

This reminds me of the last time Congress was called into emergency session. It wasn't for a hurricane or other disaster relief, though. It was Sunday, March 20, 2005. That Friday, the husband of Terri Schiavo won a court case allowing him to remove Terri's feeding tube. By Saturday, Schiavo's parents asked the federal government to intervene. Lawmakers flew back from their Easter vacation (again, not all of them, but enough to pass a bill), and on Sunday, passed a bill to transfer jurisdiction to the federal courts. Bush signed it Monday morning.

So, when distraught parents were desperately trying to keep nutrients flowing into a dead woman, Congress snapped into action in a day. When a major American city is close to being wiped off the map, when tens of thousands of people are suffocating together in the stench of shelters, when looters are ransacking businesses (some to get what they need to survive, others to get merely what they think they want), when we witness on television civilization for these people falling away -- it takes five days for Congress to respond.

I guess we all have our priorities.