OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2015
Look to whiny dogs, science for hope
W
hen my dog emits a long, high-
pitched hum from his nose, I often
tell him, “Use your words.” (He hasn’t yet,
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well worth the years of encouragement.)
When he hums around others, I explain
he’s so packed with goodness that it comes
seeping out like sweat from a ballerina, except
in the form of a rather annoying noise.
Or if he has a partic-
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blame it on the unbear-
able lightness of being
Duncan.
If it seems I spend an
unusual amount of time an-
alyzing my dog’s thought
processes and emotional
well-being, well, maybe
so. He intrigues me.
Duncan and other
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Matt
ed in the moment they’re
Winters
in. They are predisposed
to happiness. If they’re feeling sorry for them-
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UHDVRQDEVHQFHRIDIDYRULWHSHUVRQRUDKXPDQ Duncan, when in a pensive mood, wears the coffee tablecloth like a droopy hat.
pack member’s unwillingness to share his dark
chocolate marzipan bar.
Unburdened by complicated expectations,
they are content with companionship, clean wa-
ter, decent food and a warm place to sleep. All
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think, should we. Considering how seldom most
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past, they might just as well be dogs. But those
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If appalling cruelties like the Paris attacks
make us feel insecure, it should not be because
they are some horrifying new thing. Humanity has
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ly, local authorities would hunt them down, hang
them from the city gate, and chances are good that
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Seattle and breakfast the next day on Rue Cler in
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We can’t afford to be quite as carefree as a dog.
But that’s why we’re spending $65 billion on the
Department of Homeland Security this year. I’m
content to pay them to do a lot of the worrying
for me.
A
good reason to be optimistic about humani-
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come, and how quickly. The literally teetering
stacks of books by my autumn bedside include
2008’s The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Gen-
eration and the Discovery of the Beauty and Ter-
ror of Science by Richard Holmes. For anyone
lucky enough to know the Aubrey-Maturin se-
ries by Patrick O’Brian, called in The New York
Times³WKHEHVWKLVWRULFDOQRYHOVHYHUZULWWHQ´
Age of WonderSURYLGHVDVSLULWHGVXUYH\RIWKH
actual “natural philosophers” upon whom Ma-
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Recently rereading O’Brian’s last eight books
in combination with Holmes’ Age of Wonder was
like taking a time machine back to when Ben
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non, Joseph Banks was botanizing the South Pa-
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Matt Winters/EO Media Group
In 1830, safety lamps, like the one pictured here, were considered one of the greatest
lifesaving inventions of the modern era, allowing miners to carry open flames for illumi-
nation in underground coal workings without setting off methane explosions. It is pic-
tured with a bison skull and a few other objects in Matt Winters’ “cabinet of curiosities.”
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tually unknown to me until Age of Wonder; an
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which a quarter of my male forebears worked.
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cabinet piled with obscure historical and family
objects, including my grandfather’s safety lamp,
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45 years ago, but it was always a minor mys-
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through methane without something blowing up.
Thanks to Age of Wonder, now I know.
S
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ning conductor, the lighthouse lens, iodine and
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commonplace, some entirely outmoded by sub-
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Matt Winters/EO Media Group
Humanity has
always had its
mad dogs.
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today would exist if our great-grandmothers’ in-
fected scratches had not been cured by iodine, or
great-great-grandfathers’ boats weren’t kept off
the rocks by a friendly Fresnel lighthouse lens,
piercing the darkness 20 miles out at sea.
Quoting Shakespeare, in 1830 Herschel
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in trees, books in the running brooks; sermons
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wonders.”
If there is any good reason to be discouraged
with our times, it may be that so many politicians
and citizens willfully reject science and all the
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sion, deliberately ignorant of the hard work of
generations that it took to put them there.
Closing Age of Wonder, Holmes writes this
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DQGWKHYLYLGEXWquesting belief in a future for
the globe.”
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be optimistic about the human race.
— M.S.W.
Matt Winters is editor and publisher of the
Chinook Observer and Coast River Business
Journal.
Seven strikes: Obama’s phony war
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
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a suicide bomber doing with a
passport?
He’s not going anywhere.
And, though I’m not a religious scholar, I
doubt that a passport is required in paradise for
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A Syrian passport was found near the body
of one of the terrorists. Why was it there? Un-
doubtedly, to back up the Islamic State boast
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not. They match those of a man who just a
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way to kill Frenchmen in Paris.
If the other goal of the Paris massacre was
to frighten France out of the air campaign in
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War after the terror attack on its trains in 2004
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serious post-colonial power, as demonstrated
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Indeed, socialist President Francois Hol-
Obama’s priorities lie elsewhere.
lande has responded furiously to his country’s
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dreds of raids on suspected domestic terrorists,
a state of emergency and proposed changes in
the constitution to make France less hospitable
to jihad.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama, titular head
of the free world, has responded to Paris with
weariness and annoyance. His news confer-
ence in Turkey was marked by a stunning tone
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pounded by impatience and irritability at the
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be failing.
The only time he showed any passion was
in denouncing Republicans for hardhearted-
ness toward Muslim refugees. One hundred
and twenty-nine innocents lie dead but it takes
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The rest was mere petulance, dismissing
criticisms of his Syria policy as popping off.
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per-offers is Dianne Feinstein, the leading
Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Commit-
tee. She directly contradicted Obama’s blithe
assertion, offered the day before the Paris at-
tack, that the Islamic State (aka ISIL) was con-
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been more concerned,” said Feinstein. “ISIL is
not contained. ISIL is expanding.”
Obama defended his policy by listing its
multifaceted elements. Such as, “I hosted at the
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after ISIL.” Yes, and what would we do with-
out Luxembourg?
Obama complained of being criticized for
not being bellicose enough. But the complaint
is not about an absence of bellicosity but
about an absence of passion, of urgency and
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cess.
Obama’s priorities lie elsewhere. For ex-
ample, climate change, which he considers the
greatest “threat to our future.” And, of course,
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sacre. He is passionate
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great terrorist recruiting
tool, he repeatedly ex-
plains. Obama still seems
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Charles
as the Islamic State has
Krauthammer
produced an astonishing
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ment with a campaign of brutality, butchery
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Obama’s other passion is protecting Islam
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extremism.” The Islamic State is nothing but
“killers with fantasies of glory.” Obama can
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ical Islamist millenarianism that is purposeful,
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Hollande is trying to gather a real coalition
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touts his phony 65. For 11 post-World War II
presidencies, coalition leading has been the
role of the United States. Where is America
today? Awaiting a president. The next pres-
ident.
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher • LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
• CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
• DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Founded in 1873