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What's New | 5 Jun 2009 23:30

What's New Friday, 5 Jun 05 Washington, DC

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 05 Jun 09   Washington, DC

1. NIH DIRECTOR:  WHY THE DELAY IN NAMING FRANCIS COLLINS? 
Unlike previous administrations, the Obama White House has been swift and 
wise in filling the major science posts.  Only the $30 billion National 
Institutes of Health, flush with stimulus money, remains without a 
permanent leader. The President lifted Bush administration restrictions on 
stem cell research early in March, http://bobpark.org/WN09/wn030609.html .  
It would have been natural to name Francis Collins as director at that 
time.  Until his resignation a year ago, Collins led the National Human 
Genome Research Project in its successful race against maverick Craig 
Venter.  Collins is expected to be named NIH Director any day, but why has 
it taken so long?  Many scientists are uncomfortable with Collins’ 
outspoken position on the God issue.  On questions of scientific fact, 
Collins invariably sides with science.  However, he is founder and 
president of the BioLogos Foundation, which emphasizes the compatibility of 
Christian Faith with the findings of science.  In "The Language of God," 
Collins describes his parents as only "nominally Christian" and says he 
regarded himself as an atheist through graduate school.  He attributes his 
conversion to the same reasons cited by each of the physicists who have won 
the Templeton prize: the moral law and the anthropic principle, 
http://bobpark.org/WN09/wn030609.html . Toward the end of his book he 
describes a moving religious experience with a young farmer in Nigeria who 
was dying of tuberculosis; he interpreted it as a vision of God's purpose. 
As Park noted in "Superstition," that an M.D. with a PhD in chemistry could 
not distinguish a hormone rush from an encounter with God is troubling. 

2. GENDER BIAS: NAS REPORT FINDS NONE IN ACADEMIA.
It is undeniable that there has been enormous progress in recent years, not 
just in academia, but in industry and government as well.  I note that for
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What's New | 12 Jun 2009 23:21

What's New Friday June 12, 2009

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 12 Jun 09   Washington, DC

1.  CARBON DIOXIDE: IAP STATEMENT ON OCEAN ACIDIFICATION.
At a departmental colloquium 30 years ago the speaker assured the audience 
that carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere would be buffered by 
absorption in the ocean.  I kept waiting for that to happen. Of course, it 
was happening. According to a statement issued this week by the 
Interacademy Panel, whose 60-some members range from the Albanian Academy 
of Science to the Zimbabwe Academy of Science, a quarter of the CO2 
produced by human activity in the last 200 years has been absorbed in the 
oceans.  Unfortunately, excessive CO2 in the oceans is no more benign than 
that in the atmosphere.  Marine life that depends on calcium carbonate is 
particularl.  Moreover, ocean acidification is irreversible on a timescale 
of thousands of years.  The only way to mitigate ocean acidification is to 
reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.  Sequestration, that will at best affect the 
second derivative.  We must reduce reproduction.

2.  TOBACCO: SORRY, IT DOESN’T SEEM TO REDUCE REPRODUCTION.
Are there still people who smoke? One in five actually, and President Obama 
is one of them.  He has, however, promised to sign a bill giving the 
federal government sweeping powers to oversee tobacco products, just as 
soon as it reaches his desk.  You might think smokers would at least have 
the decency to die young from their addiction, thus helping to hold down 
the population. Not so, it can take years to kill them, and meanwhile they 
keep multiplying.

3.  LIBEL: BRITISH SCIENCE WRITER IS SUED BY CHIROPRACTORS.
Simon Singh, award-winning science writer and author of "Fermat’s Enigma," 
is being sued under UK libel laws for an article in the Guardian in which 
he called the claims of chiropractors "bogus." That sounds pretty tame for
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What's New | 19 Jun 2009 23:01

What's New Friday, 19 Jun 09 Washington, DC

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 19 Jun 09   Washington, DC

1.  THE COPENHAGEN CONSPIRACY: IS QUANTUM MECHANICS WRONG? 
Today's issue of Science has a NewsFocus article about physicist Anthony 
Valentini of Imperial College London and his attempt to straighten out the 
mess left by Bohr and Heisenberg 80 years ago.  Valentini is co-author with 
Guido Bacciagaluppi of "Quantum Theory at the Crossroads," to be published 
later this year.  It continues a debate that has gone unresolved.  It was 
put on hold because scientists were just too busy using quantum mechanics, 
to worry about why it works.  Measured by the incredible range of phenomena 
it permits us to calculate and the technologies it has spawned, quantum 
mechanics must surely be the most successful scientific theory in history.  
It is, unfortunately, also wrong.  Valentini's theory could spawn a 
revolution in physics. 

2.  PEOPLE: ALMOST 7 BILLION IS ALREADY WAY TOO MANY.
When was it that the media stopped mentioning “population”?  We read almost 
daily headlines about global warming from CO2 in the atmosphere.  It's our 
own fault, we’re told; we caused it by burning fossil fuels; we should have 
been driving fuel-efficient automobiles, living closer to work, and using 
nuclear and solar power generation.  That's all true, but it won't help if 
we just let the population grow.  Name a single world problem that isn't 
made worse by population growth.  Biologist Paul Ehrlich shook us awake in 
1968 with "The Population Bomb," but in 1980 he lost a public wager with 
University of Maryland economist and libertarian Julian Simon over the 
price of minerals. Ehrlich lost. Today, although population has risen to 
double that in 1968, the media avoids even mentioning it.   The June issue 
of Scientific American, however, has "Population and Sustainability" by 
Robert Engelman of Worldwatch.  Everyone should read it.
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What's New | 27 Jun 2009 08:15

What's New Friday 26 April 09 Washington, DC

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 26 Jun 09   Washington, DC

1.  ENERGY: IF YOU CAN MAKE ENERGY, IT CAN GET LOOSE.
According to Jim Glanz in Wednesday’s New York Times, an earthquake shook 
Basel, Switzerland on December 8, 2006, damaging buildings and terrifying 
the residents.  It had been 650 years since an earthquake toppled the 
towers of the Basil cathedral.  This time at least it was not the hand of 
God.  In an effort to produce almost limitless clean energy, a hole had 
been drilled 3 miles deep, fracturing the bedrock that separates Earth's 
crust from its molten interior.  Water was heated by passing it through the 
fractured rocks.  The project shut down immediately, but many smaller 
quakes continue to rattle the residents.   A similar project to harness 
geothermal energy is underway in Sonoma County, CA. 

2.  NO ENERGY: THERE ARE MANY IDEAS, BUT SOME WON’T WORK.
Orbo, a perpetual motion machine promised by the Steorn Company in Dublin, 
is one of them. You will recall that Orbo was to be demonstrated a year ago 
at the Kinetica Museum in London www.bobpark.org/WN07/wn070607.html.  It 
didn't work.  Steorn blamed the air-conditioning, and said the 
demonstration would be delayed a few weeks.  Well, 50 weeks later, Steorn 
says they fixed the problem.  Not unless they’ve changed the first law of 
thermodynamics. Meanwhile, a jury of scientists convened by Steorn has 
issued a unanimous verdict: Steorn had "not shown the production of energy."

3.  POPULATION:  THE BOMB IS STILL TICKING.
Libertarians are fond of pointing out that John Holdren, the President's 
science adviser, collaborated with Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich (The 
Population Bomb).  Shocking!  Ehrlich’s best-selling 1968 book predicted 
mass starvation by the end of the 20th century due to unconstrained 
population growth.  Ironically, the major health problem in the US today is
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