WHAT'S NEW Friday, 16 May '03

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 16 May '03   Washington, DC
                                                       
1. BABY NUKES: DO WE REALLY NEED A NEW LOW-YIELD NUCLEAR WEAPON? 
US policy has been to maintain existing weapons with the Science-
Based Stockpile Stewardship Program.  But a year ago, The Nuclear
Posture Review, a classified Pentagon report, sprang a massive
leak (WN 15 Mar 02). The report outlined a plan to use the war on
terrorism to justify development of a new class of small nuclear
weapons.  "Low-yield" weapons, defined as less than 5 kilotons,
would still be powerful enough to blow up the Non-Proliferation
Treaty.  Super hawks have always longed for such weapons as a way
to make the use of nuclear weapons seem acceptable.  But first, a
decade-old ban on R&D of low-yield nuclear weapons has to be
lifted.  Last Friday, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted
by a narrow margin to end the ban, but Democrats vowed to take
the fight to the Senate floor.  By Tuesday night, a Dilbertesque
compromise in the House severed R&D: research is allowed, while
development is still banned.  Both sides are claiming victory. 
Democrats insist that a ban on development preserves the test
moratorium, while Republicans shrug that research can get started
now and the issue revisited when its time to test.  From outside
Congress, it looks more like everybody lost.                

2. TIAA-CREF: CAN ANTIGRAVITY KEEP YOUR RETIREMENT FROM FALLING?
A lot of us in this business are relying on TIAA-CREF to sustain
us in our declining years.  They must be pretty savvy to manage
all that money, huh?  In the May issue of Participant: Quarterly
News and Performance from TIAA-CREF,"a leading researcher in the
cutting-edge field of gravity control," Ning Li, is profiled.  A
Ph.D physicist, she did research for NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center and now has her own company, AC Gravity.  The article,
Will Antigravity Change the World?, begins: "Imagine a world in
which cars fly, oil is obsolete, and space travel is effortless
as the flight of birds."  Yes, it's the famous Podkletnov gravity
shield again (WN 2 Aug 02); you can't keep a good man down.  WN
revised the beginning: "Imagine a world in which the impossible
claims of an obscure Russian physicist fail every test, the laws
of physics are obsolete, and bull shit flies effortlessly."  So,
who wanted to retire anyhow?

3. COLUMBIA: INVESTIGATION BOARD FOCUSES ON ACCOUNTABILITY.  The
much delayed Senate Commerce and Science Committee hearing on The
Space Shuttle Columbia Investigation and Future Space Policy was
held Wednesday, without testimony from the panel on space-based
research.  The chief investigator, Adm. Harold Gehman Jr.
testified that the refusal to seek photographs of the damaged
shuttle in orbit was a grave error.  He speculated that a rescue
mission could have been launched.  NASA Administrator O'Keefe
agreed, and said he was infuriated by the way it turned out.  The
Committee Chair, John McCain said, "it's equally infuriating that
no one is responsible."  O'Keefe vowed to determine who was at
fault. But Congress seems to have little interest in determining
responsibility for the decision to send Columbia's crew into
space on a mission of questionable scientific importance. 

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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