Friday, September 28, 2007

1. SUBSIDIES: FARMERS GET FAT WHILE LIVESTOCK GO HUNGRY.

The price of corn is the highest in a decade. Ethanol plants are sprouting up in the corn fields. Land prices are turning farmers with 200 acres into millionaires. And yet, they still get direct government subsidy checks to "save the family farm." "We're harvesting the sun," one of the new breed of business-man farmers boasts to Dan Morgan in today's Wash Post. Maybe "harvesting moonshine" would be more accurate. There is no credible study showing that ethanol is saving one drop of oil.

2. EARMARKS: SENATOR VITTER (R-LA) BATTLES DARWINISM.

Poor Larry Craig (R-ID) fumbled. Busted for foot tapping in the men's room, he first pled guilty and then denied it. But when the phone number of "moral-values" Senator David Vitter showed up in the "client" book of a D.C Madam, he knew just what to do: he immediately repented. He understood, as Craig did not, that fundamentalist Christians love a sinner who repents; the more times they sin and repent the better. As a token of repentance, Vitter earmarked $100,000 of taxpayer's money for the Louisiana Family Forum "to develop a plan to promote science education." That's Family-Forum talk for "get Darwin out of the schools." Ironically, Darwin's theory explains why Vitter sinned.

3. LIES: EVOLUTIONISTS ARE VICTIMS OF A "BAIT AND SWITCH."

A story by Cornelia Dean in yesterday's NY Times described the production of a documentary titled "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." Leading Darwinists were interviewed, but they had been misled about the name and purpose of the film and they're pissed. The film, set to open in February, is described as "a startling revelation that freedom of thought and inquiry have been expelled" from public educational institutions. It cites the case of Guillermo Gonzalez, author of The Privileged Planet (WN 3 Jun 05) . The book is a daffy twist on the already daffy anthropic principle. To paraphrase: "If things were different than the way things are, things would not be the same." Gonzalez was denied tenure at Iowa State for the reason anyone is denied tenure: department members didn't want him as a colleague. They made a good decision.

4. BALANCE: CLIMATE FEEDBACK MAY NOT BE AS BAD AS THOUGHT.

One of the global warming nightmares is that thawing permafrost might release methane, a potent greenhouse gas. This positive feedback would accelerate warming. A group led by M. Turetsky of Michigan State found that new plant growth in thawing Canadian peat bogs more than offset the release of methane.

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.