Friday, 18 July 97 Washington, DC
1. PERPETUUM MOBILE: FREE ENERGY COMPETITION IS HEATING UP.
On Saturday I went to Hackensack, NJ for the "historic first public
showing of a perpetual motion machine." The 5-hour show included an
internal combustion engine that runs on water, a radioactive waste
neutralizer, electrical energy from neutrino flux and much, much more.
You thought maybe a perpetual motion machine would be historic
enough? The centerpiece was the "Fisher engine," which runs off
ambient heat. It was historic all right; it was nothing but the
"zeromotor" which was "invented" by John Gamgee in 1880. It didn't
work then either, but at least it was original. What ever happened
to the clever hoaxes of the past? Must we content ourselves with
sloppy remakes? It appears that the standards, even of flim flam,
have eroded. Personally, I blame television.
2. OFFICE OF ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE: SCIENTISTS LAUNCH AN ATTACK.
APS President D. Allan Bromley joined leading biologists last week
in calling for elimination of the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine.
In a letter to John Porter (R-IL), HHS Appropriations Subcommittee
chair, Bromley charged that the OAM has promoted practices "which
clearly violate basic laws of physics and more nearly resemble
witchcraft than medicine." The Subcommittee decided to cut the OAM
budget to $7.5M, from its current $12.5M, in keeping with the
President's request. That sets up a fight with the Senate, where
the OAM originated in 1992 as an earmark.
3. OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT: THE CORPSE JUST TWITCHED.
When Congress terminated funding for OTA in 1995
(WN 28 Jul 95), legislative
authority for the "in-house brain trust" was left on the books.
Last night, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee in
the Senate accepted an amendment that would use that authority to
pry the coffin open a crack. Introduced by Jeff Bingaman (D-NM),
the amendment calls for a $500K pilot program of studies requested
by committees and Members. The studies would be contracted out to
not-for-profit organizations. Bingaman suggests you think of it as
a "virtual OTA."
4. THE BUDGET: SENATE APPROPRIATORS TAKE THEIR TURN AT NSF.
As expected, Senate appropriators were less generous than their House
counterparts -- they had a smaller allocation to work with
(WN 27 Jun 97). Still, it upped the
agency's total take by 3.3% and boosted research and equipment
3.9%. That's slightly more than the White House requested.
For DOE, Senate appropriators added just 2.9% to Basic Energy
Sciences, but with last year's earmarks removed, the net is a
hair over 7%. Ummm, where do you suppose that number came from
(WN 16 May 97)? The Senate said
yes to support for the LHC, but no to advanced funding of capital
construction projects. Consequently, the high-energy and nuclear
physics lines remained flat. But fusion, under assault the last two
years, was rewarded with a 3.3% in return for restructuring.
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