>From: "What's New" <whatsnew@bobpark.org>
>Reply-To: whatsnew@bobpark.org
>Subject: WHAT'S NEW Friday, April 08, 2005
>Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 15:42:53 -0500
>
>WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 8 Apr 05 Tucson, AZ
>
>1. PROLIFERATION: JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS, MORE RELIABLE NUKES.
>Three years ago, Pentagon planners hatched the infamous Nuclear
>Posture Review, a secret plan to publicly oppose nuclear
>proliferation, while developing a new class of small nuclear
>weapons meant to blur the line between nuclear and conventional
>http://www.aps.org/WN/WN02/wn031502.cfm. However, free people
>don't do secrecy well, and the plan was leaked, killing it. No
>matter, Linton Brooks, the head of the National Nuclear Security
>Administration, the designated Dr. Strangelove, keeps trying new
>plans looking for ones he can sell to David Hobson (R-OH), the
>powerful chair of the House Energy and Water Appropriations
>Subcommittee, that rarest of fiscal conservatives who will block
>a dumb weapons program. A year ago it was a new pit facility
>that can make pits for a new nuclear bunker-buster. Brooks is
>now pushing for a warhead so reliable that it could be deployed
>without testing. This is the old Reliable Replacement Warhead
>plan proposed 30 years ago. It's hard to oppose reliability but
>the first atomic bomb used in anger was an untested design.
>
>2. MARS: SPIRIT AND OPPORTUNITY JUST KEEP GOING, AND GOING...
>NASA is pushing on with plans to stick the next president with a
>pointless trillion-dollar mission to put humans on Mars or be
>remembered for ending human space flight. Locked in space suits,
>astronauts would have only the sense of sight. Meanwhile
>operations of the twin rovers have been extended another 18
>months. They don't need air, water, or space suits. They live
>on sunlight, never rest, never complain, and have better eyes
>than humans. When they finally wear out, their switches will be
>turned off. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be remembered as the
>President who led America into an era of truly modern space
>exploration where no human can ever set foot.
>
>3. 2005 TROTTER PRIZE: AN AWARD FOR OVERLAPPING THE MAGISTERIA.
>In February http://www.aps.org/WN/WN05/wn022505.cfm, WN commented
>on a session at this year's AAAS meeting in Washington DC devoted
>to the proposition that science and religion are "non-overlapping
>magisteria." But at Texas A&M they see it a little differently:
>the Trotter Prize is awarded for "illuminating the connection
>between science and religion." How better to illustrate the
>overlap than to give the award this year to one of the nation's
>top pseudoscientists, Dr. William Demski, a senior fellow of the
>Discovery Institute, often regarded as the leading intelligent-
>design theorist. The Intelligent-Design movement seeks to
>portray intelligent-design as science. However, by resorting to
>a supernatural explanation it clearly belongs in some other
>magisteria.
>
>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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