What's New Friday January 18, 2008

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 18 Jan 08,   Washington, DC

1.  GLOBALIZATION: U.S. DOMINANCE IN SCIENCE CHALLENGED.
Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, the biennial report of the 
National Science Board, came out this week.  It’s not going to make the 
best-seller list, but with the economy in free fall even as President Bush 
signed a crushing 2008 science budget, it’s a good idea to see where we 
stand.  The conclusion to the Overview chapter notes a rapid "shift in the 
epicenter of world S&T activities, toward several rapidly growing Asian 
economies."  The shift was led by the emergence of China as the world’s 
second largest economy.  By comparison, the report said, the EU’s position 
has degraded in high-tech trade, while "Japan appears stagnant and has 
lost market share in a number of areas.  The U.S. is holding its own."  I 
don’t know how "holding its own" and "stagnant" differ, and the Board 
might ask Ford about market share.  But this is not a race.  If we are 
ever to have world peace, everyone must share in the benefits of science.  
Saddled with the Iraq War and years of neglect of science, the huge U.S. 
economy could pull everyone down.

2. STIMULUS: HERE’S AN IDEA, LET’S CUT LAST YEARS TAXES.
Bernanke: Uh, but Mr. President, we’ve already spent those taxes on the 
Great War to stop Iraq’s WMDs.   Bush: Yes, and the War was a great 
success; it ended the WMD problem, so taxpayers can be reimbursed.  
Bernanke: Why not cut the taxes they haven’t paid?  Bush: Oh, cut those 
too; you can’t cut too many taxes.  

3. INTERFERENCE: ASTRONOMY IN THE THIRD MILLENIUM.
At a dark energy workshop in September, Steve Weinberg talked about 
an "infantile fixation on putting people into space."  At the American 
Astronomical Society meeting in Austin last week, an angry Mike Griffin 
showed the astronomy community what Weinberg meant.  "I hope this is what 
you want," he sneered, referring to a congressional edict requiring NASA 
to spend $60M on the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), rather than the 
$22M it had planned.  Griffin promised steep cuts in: the James Webb space 
telescope, dark-energy searches, x-ray astronomy and gravity waves in 
return.  The most exciting discovery in astronomy in this century has been 
the abundance of extra-solar planets, even as hope of finding extra-
terrestrial life in the solar system fades.  Most of the extra-solar 
planets have been huge or we couldn’t see them, which would make life as 
we know it impossible.  With an interferometer baseline of 9 meters SIM 
should easily detect Earth-sized planets.

4. EXPELLED:   NO INTELLIGENCE EXHIBITED.  
In September, WN wrote about production of a documentary "Expelled: No 
intelligence allowed," featuring creepy narrator Ben Stein.  It’s the 
story of poor Guillermo Gonzalez, denied tenure at Iowa State 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN07/wn092807.html  just because he learned 
nothing in college.  Gonzales coauthored "Privileged Planet," a screwy 
take on the screwy anthropic principle: "If things were different, things 
wouldn’t be the way things are."  He got $58,000 from the Templeton 
Foundation for this kind of deep thinking.

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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