WHAT'S NEW Friday, April 08, 2005

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 8 Apr 05   Tucson, AZ

1. PROLIFERATION: JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS, MORE RELIABLE NUKES.
Three years ago, Pentagon planners hatched the infamous Nuclear
Posture Review, a secret plan to publicly oppose nuclear
proliferation, while developing a new class of small nuclear
weapons meant to blur the line between nuclear and conventional
http://www.aps.org/WN/WN02/wn031502.cfm. However, free people
don't do secrecy well, and the plan was leaked, killing it.  No
matter, Linton Brooks, the head of the National Nuclear Security
Administration, the designated Dr. Strangelove, keeps trying new
plans looking for ones he can sell to David Hobson (R-OH), the
powerful chair of the House Energy and Water Appropriations
Subcommittee, that rarest of fiscal conservatives who will block
a dumb weapons program.  A year ago it was a new pit facility
that can make pits for a new nuclear bunker-buster.  Brooks is
now pushing for a warhead so reliable that it could be deployed
without testing.  This is the old Reliable Replacement Warhead
plan proposed 30 years ago.  It's hard to oppose reliability but
the first atomic bomb used in anger was an untested design.

2. MARS: SPIRIT AND OPPORTUNITY JUST KEEP GOING, AND GOING... 
NASA is pushing on with plans to stick the next president with a
pointless trillion-dollar mission to put humans on Mars or be
remembered for ending human space flight.  Locked in space suits,
astronauts would have only the sense of sight.  Meanwhile
operations of the twin rovers have been extended another 18
months.  They don't need air, water, or space suits.  They live
on sunlight, never rest, never complain, and have better eyes
than humans.  When they finally wear out, their switches will be
turned off.  Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be remembered as the
President who led America into an era of truly modern space
exploration where no human can ever set foot.

3. 2005 TROTTER PRIZE: AN AWARD FOR OVERLAPPING THE MAGISTERIA.
In February http://www.aps.org/WN/WN05/wn022505.cfm, WN commented
on a session at this year's AAAS meeting in Washington DC devoted
to the proposition that science and religion are "non-overlapping
magisteria."  But at Texas A&M they see it a little differently:
the Trotter Prize is awarded for "illuminating the connection
between science and religion."  How better to illustrate the
overlap than to give the award this year to one of the nation's
top pseudoscientists, Dr. William Demski, a senior fellow of the
Discovery Institute, often regarded as the leading intelligent-
design theorist.  The Intelligent-Design movement seeks to
portray intelligent-design as science.  However, by resorting to
a supernatural explanation it clearly belongs in some other
magisteria.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.  
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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