Friday, 9 April 1999 Washington, DC
1. MISSILE DEFENSE: SEA-BASED SYSTEM MISSES BUDGET TARGET.
The
Navy announced that its program to develop a theater ballistic
missile defense by arming its Aegis cruisers with high-altitude
interceptor missiles will cost much more than expected. Senator
Jon Kyle (R-AZ) has been urging that the Navy program be expanded
to defend the United States
(WN 8 Jan 99),
and the conservative
Heritage Foundation issued a report last month claiming that such
a system would be cheaper and faster than ground-based defenses.
Their real target, however, may be the despised Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, which bans deployment of mobile missile defenses.
2. SPY HYSTERIA: DID CHINA GET UPDATED NEUTRON BOMB SECRETS?
Using what was said to be stolen US secrets, China built and
tested a neutron bomb in the 1980s it failed. The New York
Times reported yesterday on the front page that one of our spies
says they came back in 1995 and got more information. There is
no hint that the leak, if there was a leak, resulted in a bomb.
Meanwhile, secure computers at weapons labs are in a stand-down,
and there are threats of a moratorium on foreign exchanges. The
Cox report has still not been made public
(WN 2 Apr 99),
so there
is no way to know how much substance there is to these stories,
but they are not helpful. People seem to have the impression that
you can come away from a lab tour with "the secret" to the bomb.
3. APPLIED PHYSICS: HAGELIN OFFERS TO END VIOLENCE IN KOSOVO.
At
a Washington press conference this morning, string theorist and
Natural Law Party presidential candidate John Hagelin proposed a
more effective air campaign: an elite corps of 7,000 trained
Yogic flyers. The trained meditators, he explained, would spread
tranquility with a quantum-mechanical consciousness field. It's
been proven, he said, citing the 1993 Demonstration to Reduce
Violence in Washington,DC. WN covered that demonstration
(WN 23 Jul 93).
The murder rate in the capital soared to an all-time
high during the 8-week project, but Hagelin later explained it
would have been 18% higher if the meditators hadn't been there
meditating
(WN 7 Oct 94).
NATO must guarantee the security of the
flyers presumably by force. He was perplexed that Madeleine
Albright had rejected the plan. The press conference ended with
12 trained yogic flyers bouncing around on mattresses. It was
clear to me his plan would work. Serbian troops viewing 7,000
bouncing yogic flyers would be rendered helpless by laughter.
4. PIGASUS AWARD II: FOR SUPPORTING THE MOST USELESS STUDY.
This
year, the James Randi Educational Foundation awarded the category
II award to Joe Firmage, who gave up a $2.1B computer business to
to spread "The Truth." Which, according to Joe, is that humans
aren't smart enough to have invented the computer chip. It was
reverse engineered from stuff found in one of those crashed UFOs.
The government is hiding the truth to preserve our self esteem.
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