What's New Friday January 25, 2008

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 25 Jan 08,   Washington, DC

1.  STIMULUS: HOW COME NOBODY THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE?
In case you didn’t notice, your 401k is shrinking.  Don’t worry – 
President Bush has a plan: send a check to every family in America.  
People are supposed to spend it on the shoddy merchandise they didn’t buy 
at Christmas.  Where is the money coming from?  From taxes we paid to end 
Iraq’s WMD program.  It worked perfectly; there is not a WMD to be found 
in Iraq.   No one could think of anything except war to spend the stimulus 
money on (like maybe health insurance for children, or fusion energy, or 
the International Linear Collider) so Congress agreed to the President’s 
plan to write everyone a check.  After decades of public-service 
announcements telling people to save, we can now expect to be told the 
opposite.  So much for the laws of economics.  The program would be more 
environmentally friendly if they cut out the middleman.  Instead of every 
family, send checks to every business.  Operating on a government subsidy 
would free business from the need to produce more useless crap to sell.

2. LA SAPIENZA: POPE CANCELS VISIT AS SCIENTISTS PROTEST. Benedict XVI had 
been invited to lecture at Rome’s most prestigious university to mark the 
start of the academic year.  Sixty-seven professors protested, led by 
particle physicist Marcello Cini.  In a 1990 visit to La Sapienza, the 
Pope, then Cardinal Ratzinger, supported the trial of Galileo by quoting 
oddball science philosopher Paul Feyerabend: "The trial against Galileo 
was reasonable and just."  Using a quote to make his point is a standard 
ploy of the Pope to preserve deniability. "The pontiff didn’t say it," the 
Vatican will explain, "he was quoting someone else."  The protest led 
Prime Minister Romano Prodi, to pontificate, "No voice should be stifled 
in our country."  He’s right, and that includes the voices of protestors.  
Yesterday Prodi lost a vote of confidence in the Senate and must resign.  
In any case, the Italian Government denied any role in pressuring the 
Vatican to cancel the talk, as Benedict XVI implied.  

3. SCIENCE ON THE ISS: A LOT OF PAPERWORK IS INVOLVED.
Expectations for the $100B International Space Station were high in 1998 
when on-orbit assembly began, but recent collaborations put it in 
perspective.  An Aeronautics professor at the University of Tokyo and the 
Japan Origami Airplane Association expect astronaut Koichi Wakata to 
launch a heat-resistant paper plane back to Earth from the ISS later this 
year.  It’s expected to survive reentry.  Another Japanese astronaut is 
training with the world-champion boomerang thrower to find out on the ISS 
if a paper boomerang can circle in zero gravity.  It can't.

4. MIRACLE STUDY: LEGAL NIGHTMARE GOES ON.
For seven years WN has reported on the infamous Columbia prayer study, 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN07/wn100507.html , exposed as fraud by 
Bruce Flamm at UC Irvine.  Flamm is now being sued for defamation by one 
of the authors. He doesn’t deny the study was fraudulent, but claims Flamm 
defamed him by persisting.  Initially dismissed by the court under an anti-
SLAPP law, the suit against Flamm has been reinstated on appeal.

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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