WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 07 Jan 04 Washington, DC

1. MISSILE DEFENSE: SCALED BACK TO PAY FOR THE GROUND WAR IN IRAQ?
The FY06 budget plan leaked by the Pentagon trims $5B from missile
defense over six years as part of the president's pledge to cut
the $500B budget deficit in half. Meanwhile, the White House is
said to be preparing a $100B emergency spending bill to pay for
the war in Iraq. $5B won't make a dent in this deficit, so why
take it out of the president's vaunted missile defense? Maybe the
idea is to save it by eliminating testing. Tests are embarrassing
anyway http://www.aps.org/WN/WN04/wn121704.cfm . And who needs
them? The only hope of missile defense is to sow doubt in the mind
of a would-be attacker. Testing would remove the uncertainty.

2. MEDIUM DONE: IF ONLY THE HURRICANE HADN'T WASHED THE BODY AWAY.
At WN we're still trying to figure out why superstitious nonsense
persists in an age of science. Last night we sought clues in the
NBC prime-time program Medium, based on the exploits of "Research
Medium and Criminal Profiler" Allison Dubois. She solves murders
by chatting with dead victims. In this episode, she takes a Texas
Ranger to a spot in the middle of a field where a boy is buried.
Before they can get back with a search warrant to dig him up, a
hurricane hits Texas and he washed away. Sigh. Some silly
programs are fun; Spiderman's super powers come from being bitten
by a radioactive spider. But there's a huge difference -- Medium
takes itself seriously. There really is an Allison Dubois who
thinks she's a medium, and she's an NBC consultant; NBC should be
ashamed. The James Randi million-dollar prize for proof of the
supernatural was pointed out to Dubois. "He'll never give the
money to anyone," she sensed. Amazing! So we are offering the WN
Challenge. She sensed where the boy was buried; if she can sense
where his body floated to, she gets WN free for life, and beyond.

3. ADJUSTMENTS: FLORIDA STATE FACULTY OPPOSE CHIROPRACTIC SCHOOL.
There is a faculty revolt brewing at FSU. Both of FSU's two Nobel
laureates, Bob Schreiffer in physics and chemist Harold Kroto are
opposed, fearing the impact on FSU's academic reputation. A map
of the campus parodies the planned chiropractic school with a
Bigfoot Institute, Astrology School and Crop Circle simulation
Laboratory. The Legislature has appropriated $9M annually for the
school. Chiropractic was founded in Davenport, Iowa by Daniel
Palmer. It actually began as Palmer's School of Magnetic Cure,
but Palmer discovered, as Mesmer had discovered in Paris, that it
worked just as well if you left the magnets out, and the name was
changed to Palmer's School of Chiropractic.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.

WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 07 Jan 04 Washington, DC

1. MISSILE DEFENSE: SCALED BACK TO PAY FOR THE GROUND WAR IN IRAQ?
The FY06 budget plan leaked by the Pentagon trims $5B from missile
defense over six years as part of the president's pledge to cut
the $500B budget deficit in half. Meanwhile, the White House is
said to be preparing a $100B emergency spending bill to pay for
the war in Iraq. $5B won't make a dent in this deficit, so why
take it out of the president's vaunted missile defense? Maybe the
idea is to save it by eliminating testing. Tests are embarrassing
anyway http://www.aps.org/WN/WN04/wn121704.cfm . And who needs
them? The only hope of missile defense is to sow doubt in the mind
of a would-be attacker. Testing would remove the uncertainty.

2. MEDIUM DONE: IF ONLY THE HURRICANE HADN'T WASHED THE BODY AWAY.
At WN we're still trying to figure out why superstitious nonsense
persists in an age of science. Last night we sought clues in the
NBC prime-time program Medium, based on the exploits of "Research
Medium and Criminal Profiler" Allison Dubois. She solves murders
by chatting with dead victims. In this episode, she takes a Texas
Ranger to a spot in the middle of a field where a boy is buried.
Before they can get back with a search warrant to dig him up, a
hurricane hits Texas and he washed away. Sigh. Some silly
programs are fun; Spiderman's super powers come from being bitten
by a radioactive spider. But there's a huge difference -- Medium
takes itself seriously. There really is an Allison Dubois who
thinks she's a medium, and she's an NBC consultant; NBC should be
ashamed. The James Randi million-dollar prize for proof of the
supernatural was pointed out to Dubois. "He'll never give the
money to anyone," she sensed. Amazing! So we are offering the WN
Challenge. She sensed where the boy was buried; if she can sense
where his body floated to, she gets WN free for life, and beyond.

3. ADJUSTMENTS: FLORIDA STATE FACULTY OPPOSE CHIROPRACTIC SCHOOL.
There is a faculty revolt brewing at FSU. Both of FSU's two Nobel
laureates, Bob Schreiffer in physics and chemist Harold Kroto are
opposed, fearing the impact on FSU's academic reputation. A map
of the campus parodies the planned chiropractic school with a
Bigfoot Institute, Astrology School and Crop Circle simulation
Laboratory. The Legislature has appropriated $9M annually for the
school. Chiropractic was founded in Davenport, Iowa by Daniel
Palmer. It actually began as Palmer's School of Magnetic Cure,
but Palmer discovered, as Mesmer had discovered in Paris, that it
worked just as well if you left the magnets out, and the name was
changed to Palmer's School of Chiropractic.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.