What's New for Aug 30, 2002

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 30 Aug 02   Washington, DC

1. LANCE BASS: "GONE-GONE CLUBBIN', I'LL BE BACK LATE."  At the
Johnson Space Center in Houston yesterday, singer/astronaut Lance
Bass mugged for the cameras and responded to questions from an
audience of 9 to 12-year olds.  Bass's $20M fare on the Russian
Soyuz vacation-special will be picked up by commercial sponsors
lined up by Destiny Productions, a Hollywood entertainment
company.  His trip will "inspire the next generation of space
explorers," NASA explained, but the real message was "skip the
hard stuff like math and science; be a pop singer and you can do
anything you want."  It all seemed so "right" for a space station
that had no serious purpose in the first place.

2. THE PEACE BUSINESS: EARN MONEY WHILE CREATING WORLD PEACE. 
Have I got a deal for you!  The stock market tanked, interest
rates bottomed, municipal bonds were gobbled up, but how about
"peace bonds"?  Two weeks after 9/11, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
ran a full-page ad in major papers across the nation appealing
for donations of $1 billion to fund an elite corps of 40,000
trained Yogic Fliers to "generate a powerful, scientifically-
proven unified consciousness field," that would create permanent
world peace (WN 28 Sep 01).  To say he was disappointed by the
response would seriously understate his reaction, but he has
forgiven us.  He now plans to fund the project with bonds issued
by the Global Country of World Peace, a virtual nation he founded
last year.  It's a powerful concept.  Imagine 40,000 Yogic Fliers
in the lotus position, launching themselves a few inches off the
floor by constricting their sphincter muscles in unison. 

3. R&D: PANEL URGES "RE-BALANCING" OF LIFE AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES.
It is a measure of the graying of Congress that funding for those
programs directly related to extending life rose dramatically in
recent years relative to funding for programs in the physical
sciences.  The number of engineering, physical and environmental
science degrees has been falling since the early 1990s.  Harold
Varmus, former director of NIH, observed that "scientists can
wage an effective war on disease only if we harness the energies
of many disciplines, not just biology and medicine."  A panel of
the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
seems finally to have taken notice of what Varmus was saying.  In
a draft report now undergoing final revision, the panel concludes
that: "Given the decreases in the physical sciences over the past
decade, the focus must be to achieve a re-balance by increasing
these disciplines and not by decreasing the life sciences."  The
report calls for bringing the physical sciences into "parity"
with the life science over the next 5 budget cycles.  It also
calls on the Office of Science and Technology Policy to monitor
basic and applied research levels, ensuring that they don't slip
from their present level as a percent of total U.S. R&D.

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.