What's New Friday January 23, 2009

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 23 Jan 09   Washington, DC 

1.  SUSTAINABILITY: DENNIS MEADOWS WINS 2009 JAPAN PRIZE.
In 1972, the boundless technological optimism generated by the Apollo Moon 
landing got a cold shower of Malthusian reality therapy.  "The Limits to 
Growth," a report prepared for the Club of Rome warned that depletion of 
resources and destruction of the environment by industrialized nations 
would lead to disaster unless policies of austerity and birth control were 
adopted.  Dennis Meadows was the research director of the project.  
Business and religious leaders were horrified; growth is their measure of 
success.  But there was no denying that our planet is finite.  In 1992, 
Limits was updated by the same authors in "Beyond the Limits."  World 
population has grown from about 4 billion in 1972 to 6.5 billion, and 
though we are still well on our way to the disaster Limits foretold, 
increased use of "the pill" has brought fertility rates down to "2" and 
even lower in Europe and other nations in which women have equal rights.   
And then there’s Afghanistan.

2.  AFGHANISTAN: TALIBAN SEEKS TO KEEP GIRLS IGNORANT.  
A Sunni Islamist movement that governed Afghanistan from 1996 – 2001, the 
Taliban implemented the strictest version of Sharia Law ever seen in the 
Muslim world.  Now out of power the Taliban, armed with weapons the CIA 
gave them when they fought the Russians, seeks to prevent girls from 
learning to read by bombing schools and disfiguring school girls with 
acid. The result is that the average of births per woman in Afghanistan is 
almost "7".  Are we pulling out of Iraq only to get in deeper in 
Afghanistan?

3.  PRESIDENT OBAMA:   THE WORK OF REBUILDING AMERICA.
"We will restore science to its rightful place."  After eight years of 
suppression, those words from President Obama’s inaugural address produced 
a hormone rush that lifted the spirits of every scientist.  Just hours 
later the President warned that, "the challenges we face are real; they 
are serious and they are many.  They will not be met easily or in a short 
span of time,"  but there was no dampening the shear joy of scientists.  
The President has since been busy undoing policies from stem cells to 
torture.   

4. OTHER MOONS: WHERE SHOULD WE LOOK NEXT?
Nature this week examined the question of where we should go next in the 
solar system, Europa or Titan.  We don’t get many major missions to the 
outer planets and their Moons, although 3 or 4 billion dollars no longer 
sounds like much.  It would hardly allow a banker to redecorate his 
office.  In an editorial, Nature came down slightly on the side of Titan.  
Hey, I’m just a subscriber, but while the lakes of Titan are nice, the 
search for life to which we are not related has got to be the greatest 
quest in science.  Is there another way evolution could have done it?    

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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