What's New July, 11 2008

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

1.  SPIRITUAL REALITY:  TEMPLETON PRIZE FOUNDER DIES AT 95. 
John Templeton, raised in the Bible-Belt town of Winchester, KY, was a 
devout Presbyterian whose middleclass parents stressed the virtues of 
thrift and compassion.  He learned both lessons so well that in 1968 he 
renounced his U.S. citizenship, moving to the Bahamas to avoid the income 
tax, and in 1987 was knighted for his philanthropies by the Queen.  
Believing spiritual understanding to be more important than understanding 
nature, he created the Templeton Prize for Spiritual Realities, directing 
that it be adjusted annually to be larger than the Nobel Prize.  Now about 
$1.5 million, it was first awarded to Mother Theresa in 1973.  In recent 
years the Templeton Prize has been awarded almost exclusively to 
physicists who dream up connections between science and religion.

2.  MALTHUSIAN REALITY: POPULATION GROWS GEOMETRICALLY.
Last year Russia established September 12 as Family Love Day, a holiday 
for people to stay home and do their part to halt population decline.  
Maternity wards were braced for business on June 12, but it was just 
another slow day.  Just give women control over their own reproduction, 
and populations will stabilize.  Food production, Thomas Malthus observed 
in his 1798 essay, grows arithmetically; without effective contraception, 
or war, or pestilence, he warned, world famine is inevitable.  Government 
and business leaders were horrified at this negative thinking, not to 
mention the Church.  Governments need armies, business needs workers, 
religion need souls to save.  Malthus was vilified, and accused of 
favoring war and disease.  The world population in 1798 was less than 1 
million.  

3. UNREALITY: ONLY CHINA SUPPORTS POPULATION CONTROL.
The world population today is 6.7 billion, in spite of pandemics and 
almost continuous warfare.  The closest the U.S. government has come to 
investing in population control is to fund Gerard O’Neill’s loony 
fantasies of space colonies.  Malthus is rarely mentioned today, and 
almost never favorably.  Much is made of the fact that in industrialized 
countries the population is stabilized or shrinking as it is in Russia.  
Alas serious food shortages are growing, famine is widespread in Africa, 
shortages of clean water are on the increase, fuel costs are rising 
rapidly and ocean fisheries are declining.  Energy shortages make all the 
other problems more difficult to deal with.  Overpopulation is never 
mentioned as the cause, but the world population may already be 
unsustainable. 

4.  GASOLINE SCAMS: ABOUT THOSE VOODOO FUEL SAVINGS.
Last week we called attention to the Hydro Assist Fuel Cell and the Pre-
Ignition Catalytic Converter advertised in mainstream magazines by the 
same company.  Where to send your money was clear from the ads, but who 
was getting your money was not.  Eric Krieg, www. phact.org/hafc.htm , 
perhaps the world’s top debunker of perpetual motion and free energy 
scams, has tracked it down and tells me it was none other than Dennis Lee, 
who now uses the company name of Dutchman Industries.   WN has followed 
Lee and his perpetual motion machines for eleven years 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN97/wn071897.htm .

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