Friday, December 15, 2006

1. NASA'S MOONDOGGLE: EXPOSING THE DARK SIDE OF WHAT'S NEW.

"Viewed from the point of history several decades out," Michael Griffin told the NY Times last week, "the retreat from the Moon to low Earth orbit will be seen to be a mistake." A year ago he told USA Today that the shuttle and the ISS were both mistakes (WN 30 Sep 05) . So what are we doing about it? At $2 billion a pop, we're launching the shuttles as often as we can to finish the ISS so we can drop it in the ocean, or foist it off on some fool. Then we can get on with making really dumb mistakes like a manned lunar base. For what? Using fragile humans in space is hopelessly old-fashioned. Alas, WN makes mistakes too. Last week we said "dark side" of the moon, when we meant "far side." We got a lot of mail. It was a goof, but we were talking about radio telescopes. In terms of anthropogenic radio waves, the far side is the dark side.

2. SUBPOENA: NEW TACTIC IN EFFORT TO STOP CLASSIFIED LEAKS.

Grand jury subpoenas are usually issued to gather evidence, but federal prosecutors want to use the subpoena to hide evidence. The subpoena calls on the ACLU to turn over all copies of a classified document leaked by an unnamed source. If successful it would be a new tool to squelch leaks. We need a few leaks. Conscientious government employees willing to risk their careers by leaking classified documents are the only check on government excesses carried out behind a screen of national security. The Pentagon Papers in 1971 and the Nuclear Posture Review in 2002 were both hidden from the public using the ruse of national- security (WN 15 Mar 02).

3. HUMAN EVOLUTION: GOD KNOWS THERE'S ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT.

Homo sapiens has been around for maybe 170,000 years. We live in a world that little resembles the Pleistocene wilderness in which our species first appeared. But must we make do with the same old genes? There seems to be hope. A team led by Sarah Tiskoff at the University of Maryland found four distinct mutations that confer adult lactose tolerance in different populations. These mutations appeared as recently as 3,000 years ago, and spread rapidly because of the reproductive advantage lactose tolerance confers. It seems to be just a matter of time before everyone in the world can tolerate lactose. Well, it's a start. The world is dangerously short of tolerance.

4. PROJECT BIOSHIELD: LET'S PRAY THERE ISN'T AN ANTHRAX ATTACK.

The response of the Bush Administration to 9/11 included Project BioShield at $5.6 billion. Nearly $1B went to VaxGen to produce 75 million doses of anthrax vaccine by 2006, even though VaxGen had just failed to produce an AIDS vaccine for which it got millions from NIH. VaxGen now says maybe 2009. On Monday, HHS decides whether to terminate VacGen or give them an infusion of cash. I would bet on the cash.

Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.