What's New Friday September 28, 2007

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 28 Sep 07   Washington, DC

1. SUBSIDIES: FARMERS GET FAT WHILE LIVESTOCK GO HUNGRY.
The price of corn is the highest in a decade.  Ethanol plants are 
sprouting up in the corn fields.  Land prices are turning farmers with 200 
acres into millionaires.  And yet, they still get direct government 
subsidy checks to "save the family farm."  "We’re harvesting the sun," one 
of the new breed of business-man farmers boasts to Dan Morgan in today’s 
Wash Post.  Maybe "harvesting moonshine" would be more accurate.  There is 
no credible study showing that ethanol is saving one drop of oil.  

2. EARMARKS: SENATOR VITTER (R-LA) BATTLES DARWINISM. 
Poor Larry Craig (R-ID) fumbled.  Busted for foot tapping in the men’s 
room, he first pled guilty and then denied it.  But when the phone number 
of "moral-values" Senator David Vitter showed up in the "client" book of a 
D.C Madam, he knew just what to do: he immediately repented.  He 
understood, as Craig did not, that fundamentalist Christians love a sinner 
who repents; the more times they sin and repent the better.  As a token of 
repentance, Vitter earmarked $100,000 of taxpayer’s money for the 
Louisiana Family Forum "to develop a plan to promote science education."  
That’s Family-Forum talk for "get Darwin out of the schools."  Ironically, 
Darwin’s theory explains why Vitter sinned.

3. LIES: EVOLUTIONISTS ARE VICTIMS OF A "BAIT AND SWITCH."  
A story by Cornelia Dean in yesterday’s NY Times described the production 
of a documentary titled "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."  Leading 
Darwinists were interviewed, but they had been misled about the name and 
purpose of the film and they’re pissed.  The film, set to open in 
February, is described as "a startling revelation that freedom of thought 
and inquiry have been expelled" from public educational institutions.  It 
cites the case of Guillermo Gonzalez, author of The Privileged Planet 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN05/wn060305.html .  The book is a daffy 
twist on the already daffy anthropic principle.  To paraphrase: "If things 
were different than the way things are, things would not be the same."  
Gonzalez was denied tenure at Iowa State for the reason anyone is denied 
tenure: department members didn’t want him as a colleague.  They made a 
good decision.  

4. BALANCE: CLIMATE FEEDBACK MAY NOT BE AS BAD AS THOUGHT.
One of the global warming nightmares is that thawing permafrost might 
release methane, a potent greenhouse gas.  This positive feedback would 
accelerate warming.  A group led by M. Turetsky of Michigan State found 
that new plant growth in thawing Canadian peat bogs more than offset the 
release of methane.

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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