What's New Friday February 27, 2009

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 27 Feb 09   Washington, DC 

1.  WEIGHT-LOSS:  SCIENCE CONFIRMS THE “PHYSICS PLAN“.
Atkins, Pritikin, Jennie Craig, South Beach, NutriSystem . . . all had one 
thing in common: they made their inventors very rich.  But how could it be 
that every diet plan seems to work?  It’s nothing but consciousness-
raising; any plan will make people aware of how much they’re shoveling 
in.  Nine years ago, however, WN came out with the “physics plan.”  The 
plan is based on the Conservation of Energy: “burn more calories than you 
consume”  http://www.bobpark./WN00/wn022500.html .  Don’t be fooled by 
cheap imitations.  On Wednesday, the New England Journal of Medicine 
published the results of a two year study of 800 overweight adults.  
Headed by Frank Sacks of the Harvard School of Public Health, the study 
confirmed that people lose weight if they cut calories; it doesn’t matter 
if the calories are fat, carbohydrates, or protein.  That, of course, is 
the WN "physics plan."

2.  THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE: COMPOUNDING A SUPREME ERROR.  
The establishment clause of the First Amendment sets the U.S. apart from 
every other country in the world.  It is the American gift.  The town of 
Pleasant Grove, Utah, however, has a monument to the Ten Commandments in 
the city park in obvious violation of the establishment clause.  The 
problem is that in 2005, the Supreme Court had declined to require Texas 
to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the grounds of the state 
capital.  The objection to the monument in that case had been raised by a 
homeless man http://www.bobpark.org/WN05/wn030405.html .  This prompted 
Pleasant Grove to erect a Ten Commandments monument.  But then a group 
called Summum proposed to erect a similar monument bearing its Seven 
Aphorisms; the city refused.  Summum may be a wacky religion, but after 
all, this is Utah.  The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which on 
Wednesday unanimously agreed with the city that religious displays on 
government property are “government speech” and under control of local 
government.  It seems all but certain that there will be more Ten 
Commandment cases.

3.  NASA: THINGS HAVE NOT GONE WELL IN CLIMATE OBSERVATIONS.
First there was the Bush Administration’s shameful cancellation of the 
Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) launch in 2000.  The only 
fingerprints on the cancellation belong to Dick Cheney.  It would by now 
have settled the critical issue of the role of solar variation in global 
warming.  Then, on Tuesday, the $278 million Orbital Carbon Observatory, 
designed to measure greenhouse gas emissions, crashed shortly after 
launch.  The good news is that the Omnibus Appropriations Bill that passed 
on Wednesday provides $9 million for NASA to refurbish DSCOVR, which has 
been shut up in a Greenbelt, MD warehouse for 9 years.  

4.  BEYOND MARS: JOVIAN MOONS CHOSEN FOR NEXT EXPLORATIONS.
Life to which we are not related remains the greatest quest in science.   
NASA and ESA have settled on two of Jupiter’s moons, Europa and Ganymede, 
as the next major exploration targets rather than Saturn’s moon Titan.  
Unless some trace of life or fossil life shows up on Mars, it’s time to 
extend the search to the outer planets.

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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