WHAT'S NEW Friday, 28 Mar 03

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 28 Mar 03   Washington, DC

1. SECRECY: WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE IS HIDDEN IN THOSE DOCUMENTS? 
Last week WN reported on the draft of new rules for the release
of secret documents (WN 21 Mar 03).  Under an executive order
signed by President Clinton in 1995, most government documents
more than 25 years old were to be automatically declassified on
April 17, 2003.  The new executive order, signed on Tuesday by
President Bush, postpones automatic declassification to December
31, 2006.  Under the new order, information supplied in
confidence by a foreign government will be born classified, and
classifiers are instructed that, "when in doubt, classify,"
reversing the policy that has been in place for decades.  Even
the signing was announced somewhat surreptitiously, coming at the
very end of a day dominated by news of the war in Iraq.

2. SPACE SHUTTLES: TAKING CREW REDUCTION AS FAR AS IT CAN GO. 
Progress of any society can be measured by the extent to which
technology rather than humans performs those tasks that would be
dangerous or menial.  The manned space program has therefore been
the antithesis of progress.  With the International Space Station
now in orbit, the plan is to use the Shuttle just to ferry
supplies and crew.  But according to a New York Times article,
consideration is now being given to using the shuttle as an
unmanned supply vehicle, with crew replacement dependent on the
Russians or eventually a new space plane.  This would require
little Shuttle modification, since it is already controlled by
the computer over almost the entire flight, and the Russian
version, Buran, made its only flight unmanned.  On the ISS, the
crew will soon be down to two (WN 14 Mar 03).  If nothing more
meaningful than sniffing flowers or watching spiders spin webs in
microgravity is found for them to do (WN 7 Feb 03), still more
social progress may be on the way, with the ISS crew cut to zero.

3. BIOSPHERE-2: ACRIMONY THRIVES IN THE GIANT TERRARIUM.  When
the crops failed, Columbia University stepped in, promising to
find an educational use for the costly project.  Its owner, Texas
billionaire Ed Bass, got educated in January when Columbia
announced it was bailing out (WN 24 Jan 03).  Bass, described by
the New York Times as an "environmentalist," began the project
thinking a colony on Mars might offer an alternative to life on
an Earth headed for social disaster.  $200M later, the message
was that we'd better save Earth; there's no place else to go. Now
Bass is suing Columbia for "bad faith" in abandoning the project.

4. WORLD PEACE: "UNIFIED CONSCIOUSNESS FIELD" IS NOT WORKING.  In
September of 2001, John Hagelin, string theorist and perennial
presidential candidate, held a press conference in Washington to
call for donations of $1B to train a corp of 40,000 Yogic flyers
to go forth and meditate in unison, thus creating permanent world
peace (WN 28 Sep 01).  Judging from the news out of Iraq, he must
have come up a little short.  Last week, Hagelin issued a press
release announcing that he won't be a candidate in 2004.  Instead
he is throwing his support behind Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH).

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND and THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY.  
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the
University or the American Physical Society, but they should be.
---
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