Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

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According to an insert in my city water bill,

• A third of Texas residents admit to littering in the past month.
• Millennials (age 16-34) have a much higher incidence of littering compared to older adults.
• Fast food, cigarette butts, beer cans, water bottles and soda cans are the items most frequently found on Texas highways.

I'm shocked and disturbed by the second of these. Why would young people, after years of being bombarded with information about the damage being done to the environment, be so cavalier about littering? Maybe this is a Texas thing. I grew up in Michigan and was taught to revere nature. From kindergarten on, we were taught that we have a beautiful state (with five Great Lakes, lush forests, and clean rivers) and that we must take pride in it and never sully it.

Once again, the Republicans have failed in their attempt to sink President Obama. Their main focus since 2009 has been to defeat Obama, even if they took the country down with him. Regarding the Supreme Court ruling on the ACA (Obamacare), the Republicans have tried every trick in the book to defeat the ACA, just like they did Medicare in the 1960s, and Social Security in the 1930s. And as before, they failed in their deception. Their main reason for the fight against the ACA: the desire to defeat Obama, no matter what it took.

My prediction: The resistance to the ACA will diminish as time goes on. A few years from now, likely by the election of 2020, the ACA will be in force, it will be a good thing to have, people will like it, and the Republicans will claim it was their idea.

Allan Miller, Springfield

Note from KBJ: Thanks, Allan, for telling us the "main reason" for opposition to ObamaCare. How charitable of you. It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that ObamaCare will bankrupt the country, reduce the quality of medical care, and deprive individuals of choice. By the way, what was the "main reason" for opposition to the war in Iraq? Was it by any chance "the desire to defeat Bush"? Progressives are masters of projection.

Great minds think alike.

Just as religion must bear the cross of its hard-liners, I have some scientific colleagues, including a few prominent enough to wield influence by their writings, who view this rapprochement of the separate magisteria [of science and religion] with dismay. To colleagues like me—agnostic scientists who welcome and celebrate the rapprochement, especially the pope's latest statement—they say: "C'mon, be honest; you know that religion is addle-pated, superstitious, old-fashioned b.s.; you're only making those welcoming noises because religion is so powerful, and we need to be diplomatic in order to assure public support and funding for science." I do not think that this attitude is common among scientists, but such a position fills me with dismay—and I therefore end this essay with a personal statement about religion, as a testimony to what I regard as a virtual consensus among thoughtful scientists (who support the NOMA principle as firmly as the pope does).

I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have enormous respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution, paleontology, and baseball). Much of this fascination lies in the historical paradox that throughout Western history organized religion has fostered both the most unspeakable horrors and the most heart-rending examples of human goodness in the face of personal danger. (The evil, I believe, lies in the occasional confluence of religion with secular power. The Catholic Church has sponsored its share of horrors, from Inquisitions to liquidations—but only because this institution held such secular power during so much of Western history. When my folks held similar power more briefly in Old Testament times, they committed just as many atrocities with many of the same rationales.)

(Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," Natural History 106 [March 1997]: 16-22)

There was a horrific crash during today's stage of the Tour de France (in Belgium), which I watched live starting at six o'clock this morning. Here is video. Here are images. Danish rider Jakob Fuglsang said after the race that the riders were going 80 kilometers per hour at the time of the crash, which is 49.7 miles per hour. The race was stopped for about 20 minutes to allow doctors to tend to the injured. Race leader Fabian Cancellara broke two vertebrae in the crash. Though he finished the stage, he dropped out afterward. The winner of today's stage, Joaquin Rodriguez, averaged 28.7 miles per hour for 99.1 miles.

Addendum: This story describes the carnage.

Defying Gravity (1981).

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