What's New October 30, 2009

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park    Friday, 30 Oct 09   Washington, DC

1.  CAUSALITY: CALIFORNIA COURT VINDICATES THALES OF MILETUS.
For eight years WN has tracked the case of the infamous Columbia Prayer 
Study http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN01/wn100501.html in which it was 
claimed that intercessory prayer doubled the pregnancy rate of women 
undergoing in vitro fertilization.  It was, of course, a scam.  A 
California physician, Bruce Flamm, thought Columbia should disavow the 
work, and the Journal of Reproductive Medicine should delete the clearly 
fraudulent paper; neither happened.   The response of one of the authors, 
the wealthy owner of several fertility clinics in the US and Korea, was to 
sue Flamm for everything he had.  Flamm never blinked.  This week the Court 
of Appeals affirmed a lower-court decision tossing out the lawsuit.  In 
doing so, the Court also vindicated Thales of Miletus, who in the course of 
explaining a total eclipse of the sun in 585 B.C. concluded that every 
observable effect has a physical cause.  

2.  CHINA: SOMETIMES, LESS IS MORE.
When China introduced its One Child per Family policy 30 years ago there 
were gasps of horror from the religious right.  Although there were many 
exceptions to the one child rule, the policy was indeed draconian.  The 
utterly mad policies of Mao Zedong left few options if a humanitarian 
catastrophe on a scale not seen on Earth were to be avoided.  The result 
was an economic miracle and perhaps a human rights miracle as well.  
According to a new study by the London School of Economics for the Optimum 
Population Trust of Great Britain, the policy resulted in the avoidance of 
something like 300 million births – the population of the United States. 
The Chinese argue that over the long run their avoided births will 
contribute more to reduction of carbon emissions than any amount of carbon 
sequestration. They’re probably right.

3.  POPULATION:  THE EXPERIENCE OF CHINA SHOULD BE A LESSON. 
A paper in the Journal of Environment and Urbanization on Sep 28 points out 
that one sixth of the world's people are so poor that they produce no 
significant CO2 emissions.  Is anyone surprised?  The lesson many people 
have drawn from this is that because the poor are not contributing to 
global warming we don't need to trouble ourselves with their fecundity.  
Well, so much for trying to raise the wretched masses to a higher level.  
We must keep them poor lest they start polluting like the rest of us. What 
happened to raising them up?

4. CELL PHONES: CANCER IS THE ONLY THING THEY DON’T CAUSE.
A call to 911 on a cell phone saved my life when a tree fell on me, but I 
still refuse to carry one of the damned things. They are rude and obtrusive 
and they go off in my class when I'm lecturing - but they don't cause 
cancer.  Yes, I know¸ there’s another study that says they do.  Cancer can 
result from mutant strands of DNA caused by radiation, but not by radiation 
in the microwave spectrum. It's not nearly energetic enough, and that's 
that.  These are not studies done in a laboratory; they are statistical 
studies cooked from phone-company records and seasoned with a handful of 
celebrity anecdotes.  Almost everybody uses a cell phone today.  Is brain 
cancer a new problem?

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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