WHAT'S NEW Friday, May 27, 2005

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 27 May 05   Washington, DC  

1. SPACE: VOYAGER 1 REACHES THE LIMIT OF BUSH'S ATTENTION SPAN.
It's been traveling for 28 years and is now 8.7 billion miles
from Earth.  It just reported that it has entered the region of
the heliosheath, where the solar wind begins to dissipate.  It
may be in this region another 10 years.  Its Pt-238 radioisotope
thermoelectric generator (RTG) should keep operating until about
2020.  When Voyager 1 crosses that final boundary, becoming the
first human artifact to enter interstellar space, Earth won't
know.  Communications with Voyager will be cut off to save $4.5M
of NASA's $16.5B budget (.025%), for Bush's Moon/Mars "vision."

2. ETHANOL: RUM JOINS BOURBON AT THE ENERGY-INDEPENDENCE PARTY. 
In the name of energy independence, the government has required
that five billion gallons of ethanol be blended into gasoline
each year.  Every gallon gets a 51 cent subsidy.  And yet, we
still seem to need a lot of Arab oil.  So the Senate adopted an
amendment to the energy bill raising the mandate to eight billion
gallons of ethanol.  To get support for the amendment, they gave
the sugar industry $8M for a pilot program in Hawaii to make
ethanol from sugar cane.  Will that reduce the need for Arab oil? 
No, but we won't mind as much.  Brazil, which has no oil, began
using ethanol from sugar cane.  Friends at the University of
Campinas told me the energy balance is positive only if the cane
is grown and harvested manually, condemning a portion of the
population to serfdom.  It also pollutes rivers with alkanes. 

3. HYDROGEN: PRESIDENT BUSH PUMPS HYDROGEN AT FILLING STATION.
Speaking of energy balance, here's one that is guaranteed by the
Second Law of Thermodynamics to be negative.  With a security
cordon disrupting traffic for blocks around, the President held
the nozzle at the sole hydrogen pump in Washington, DC at a Shell
station www.bobpark.org/WN04/wn111204.html.  It proves: you can
make hydrogen, you can put it in cars, and you can drive the
cars. Is it practical?  No!  Will it diminish oil dependence? 
No!  Will it cut pollution?  No!  Will it happen?  Not this way!

4. STEM CELLS BILL: PRESIDENT'S FIRST VETO WOULD BE A BAD ONE. 
In spite of a threat to cast his first-ever veto, 50 Republicans
broke ranks as the House voted 238 to 194 on Tuesday to repeal
the President's restrictions on federal funding for embryonic
stem cell research.  As is now so often the case, debate was
filled with biblical references.  But Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO)
asked: "Who can say prolonging life is not pro-life?"

5. SEARCHING WHAT'S NEW: OUR NEW SEARCH ENGINE IS WORKING GREAT. 
We apologize to those who tried to use the WN search engine in
recent weeks, but now it's working better than ever.  Our tight
format (500 words) limits the amount of background we can
provide, but by using the search engine at www.bobpark.org you
can now get more than two decades of background.

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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