What's New Friday February 1, 2008

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 1 Feb 08,   Washington, DC

1. FURLOUGH: WHAT’S NEW WILL HAVE TO TAKE A BREAK.
It will start next week.  Issues of support need to be resolved.  Except 
for the week the tree fell, it will be the first break WN has taken in 25 
years.  We’ll be back when we can.  I appreciate all 1274 opportunities 
I’ve had to share my concerns with you - there is much to be concerned 
about.  

2. OTHER DIMENSIONS: THE GOVERNMENT’S UFO COVERUP.
I was invited this week to join a panel of "experts" on "It’s Your Call 
with Lynn Doyle," an Emmy Award-winning, viewer-interactive news talk show 
on the Comcast Cable Television Network.  The subject was "Are we alone?"  
The object was to increase advertising revenue by pandering to a public 
that lives in a mythical world.  I was the token scientist; Ted Schick, a 
philosophy professor from Muhlenberg, was the other rationalist.  Then 
there was a delusional M.D. who saw lights she couldn’t explain over 
Phoenix, and the delusional head of the Paradigm Research Group, devoted 
to exposing the imaginary UFO cover-up.  But the "experts" hardly 
mattered; the stars were the callers, with tales of strange lights and 
space aliens who can walk through walls.  Is that really possible?  "Of 
course it is," a caller explained, "quantum physics has proven it."  The 
aliens, another cautioned, may be in another dimension - "there are eleven 
you know."  What have we done?

3. DSCOVR: INFORMATION EMBARGO BREAKS DOWN.
An extensive study relating the information that could be obtained from 
the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) to that from the National 
Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) has 
just found its way into the sunshine.  This hugely-important study not 
only confirms the Earth-observation potential of the Lagrange-1 vantage 
point, it’s the first crack in the wall of secrecy that has kept the 
DSCOVR scandal hidden from the public.  Eight years of critical data on 
global warming has already been lost while DSCOVR languishes in a 
Greenbelt, Md dungeon.  Its sin was a thing with Al Gore.  Another 
unreleased study finds the cost to launch DSCOVR, already built and paid 
for, would be a small fraction of NASA estimates.   

4. SCIENCE DEBATE 2008: IT’S TIME TO TALK ABOUT ISSUES.
Launched in December, more than 12,000 people and 57 organizations signed 
on to urge that science be the subject of a presidential debate 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN07/wn121407.html .  On Monday, the 
Council on Competitiveness joined the AAAS in becoming an official 
cosponsor of Science Debate 2008.

5. MIRACLES: THERE ARE NONE IN SCIENCE. 
The morning ABC News had an a commercial for the Oprah Winfrey Show about 
a guest on her show today, an NFL player who had a serious injury and was 
told he would never walk again.  He now walks fine.  She said it was 
a "miracle."  She uses the word a lot, but there are no miracles in 
science.  The correct word is "misdiagnosis."

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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