What's New Friday January 11, 2008

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 11 Jan 08,   Washington, DC

1.  MERRY CHRISTMAS: 2008 BUDGET SIGNED ON DECEMBER 26.
DOE will pull the plug on the PEP-II collider at SLAC on March 1, seven 
months ahead of schedule, resulting in the layoff of 125 employees.  To 
keep the Tevatron at Fermilab going in the search for the Higgs, all 
employees will take 2 or 3 days a month of unpaid leave.  Work on the 
International Linear Collider was terminated.  The U.S. reneged on its 
commitment to the international fusion energy program, ITER.  Other DOE 
programs were also cut along with NSF and NIST.  

2. BLINDSIDED: APS PRESIDENT ASKS MEMBERS FOR HELP.
Why did the basic science budget, which was sailing smoothly six months 
ago, hit an iceberg?  And why was high-energy physics thrown overboard?  
We can worry about laying blame later, but nothing is ever quite final in 
Washington.   Right now we have to start swimming.  Yesterday, APS 
President Arthur Bienenstock issued an urgent appeal to members to write 
to their congressional delegation and to President Bush to urge emergency 
supplemental appropriations.  He included a sample letter making the 
connection between basic research and economic growth - even as the 
morning papers were using the word "recession."  My advice is not to 
agonize over language.  Your letter is more likely to be counted than 
read.  Just make it clear what you want in the first sentence.

3. PERSONHOOD: THE NEW RIGHT-TO-LIFE STRATEGY.
Forget Roe v. Wade; according to U.S. News, an initiative expected to be 
on the 2008 ballot in Colorado would amend the state constitution to 
declare a fertilized egg to be a person.  This one-celled person would 
then be granted a soul by heaven and citizenship by the state.  Would the 
sensuous twisting together of chromosome strands to form a zygote mark the 
legal date of birth?   And what of the 500,000 or so frozen embryos stored 
in fertility clinics?  Do they age in the frozen state?

4. GARBLED: LAST WEEKS WHALE STORY IS BEST FORGOTTEN.
It’s not what I forget that bothers me - it’s what I remember that never 
happened.  Last week, to protect whales, a federal judge imposed 
restrictions on the Navy’s use of active sonar in training exercises off 
Southern California.  Late getting WN out, I relied on memory, badly 
garbling a story about sonar and whales.  I misremembered an item I wrote 
in WN 18 years ago about a proposed Heard Island Experiment to look for 
evidence of ocean warming by monitoring the travel time of sonar signals 
around the world.  I even misspelled the name of the island 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN90/wn112390.html .  

5. INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION:  OK, SO GIVE IT TO BRITAIN.
I have always admired the British for remaining aloof from the ISS.  Now, 
however, a group in the UK proposes a project to build and launch what 
they think the ISS needs most: a spacious common room where they can all 
sit around the table.  I now add them to the list of countries we should 
offer to give the ISS to.  Perhaps we could pay them to take it.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
---
Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org
What's New is moving to a different listserver and our
subscription process has changed. To change your subscription
status please visit this link:
http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1