Friday, 18 February 2000
1. NMD: OUR EUROPEAN ALLIES OPPOSE NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE.
If
President Clinton decides to deploy, change must be negotiated in
the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The Russians refuse to
consider modifications. They believe a limited defense against
North Korea would escalate into a defense against China. Many
NMD proponents would like that. China, in turn, might counter
NMD by building more missiles. Does this sound familiar?
Europeans point out that a full-blown US defense would violate
the NATO principle of equal protection.
2. PATENT NONSENSE: INFINITE ENERGY MEETS INFINITE BANDWIDTH.
On
Tuesday, BlackLight Power was awarded a patent for a chemical
means of shrinking hydrogen atoms into "a state below the ground
state." The, uh, inventor, Randall Mills, calls his teeny little
hydrogen atoms "hydrinos"
(WN 22 Jan 99).
Mills describes them
as, "the most important discovery of all time...up there with
fire." The second most important discovery, I suppose, would be
to find the hydrino line in the spectrum. In November, a patent
was awarded to Media Fusion for Advanced Sub-Carrier Modulation,
a method of transmitting data over ordinary power lines with a 10
GHz bandwidth. The claim is that magnetic fields surrounding the
conductor can act as a waveguide. In a classic understatement,
the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has issued a warning
to members that Media Fusion's claims "lack scientific merit."
3. SCIENCE AND RELIGION: AAAS COUNCIL TO DISCUSS "THE DIALOGUE."
The AAAS Dialogue on Science and Religion started in 1995 with
$1.5M from the Templeton Foundation, a private foundation devoted
to the views of its founder
(WN 16 Apr 99).
In the opinion of
the officers of the Section on Physics, the Dialogue has been
distinctly at odds with the AAAS mission to advance science. At
the insistence of the Section, the program will be discussed by
the AAAS Council at its meeting on Sunday at 9:45am.
4. COPYCATS: TEXAS A&M RESEARCHERS FORM PET-CLONING COMPANY.
It
began when the anonymous owner of an aging border collie named
Missy gave A&M $2.3M to clone her. A&M hasn't come up with Missy
II yet, but why turn away hoards of other deep-pocket owners
wanting pets copied? So the A&M researchers have formed (groan)
Genetic Savings and Clone. Since pets are often considered to be
members of the family, it seems like a modest step to include the
other members. WN sought out physicist Richard Seed for comment.
He made headlines two years ago by proposing to clone humans
(WN 9 Jan 98).
Dogs, he explained, are hard to clone, for reasons we
can't go into in a family newsletter. But humans, he predicted,
will be cloned "sooner than anyone thinks." This brings up an
urgent question: who should be cloned first? The choice of the
WN staff is Leonardo DeCaprio, on the grounds that it would not
involve a sentient being. We welcome suggestions from readers.
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