-Caveat Lector-
SkeptiNews 990605b - - - - - - - - - - - All The News That's Fit To Question
: Passages starting with ':' are editorial comments to provoke discussion.
: Nothing contained herein is ever endorsed for truth, accuracy or meaning.
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# PINNING DOWN ACUPUNCTURE. Acupuncture gets a boost in its struggle to
be recognized as a legitimate medical treatment for disease. A new report
shows the treatment clearly has positive effects. Leeches are good too.
http://www.wired.com/news/news/email/tip/technology/story/20020.html
# BODY PIERCING RISKIER FOR HEART PATIENTS. People with congenital heart
disease are at greater risk of developing potentially deadly infections
when they have body parts pierced, including their ears, nose, navel,
lips: http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/heart/9906/03/health.piercing.reut/
: Should heart patients have acupuncture? Do you want acupunctural body
piercings? Should they be electrified? Does acupuncture harm your implants?
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# GERMANY ENDORSES STRONG CRYPTO. The German government encourages companies
and citizens to use and develop strong data scrambling technologies to help
shield the nation from prying eyes and ears. How much privacy is enough?
http://www.wired.com/news/news/email/tip/politics/story/20023.html
# CALIF. GOVERNOR ORDERS AGENCY NOT TO SELL CONFIDENTIAL WAGE INFORMATION.
Gov. Gray Davis prohibits selling confidential personal income data on Cali-
fornians to private firms, saying the state "has a responsibility to protect
the privacy" of its citizens. A little known state law allows private firms
to purchase salary information maintained on about 14 million residents.
http://cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/06/05/calif.income.privacy/
: What secrets should/can/will you keep? Do you own your information? How
can you protect your privacy from governments, aliens, corporations, me?
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# Ancient City found on Mars! This Mars Global Surveyor image from orbit 35,
image 6, lower part, contains possible evidence of the remains of the ruins
of an ancient city in the North Hebes Chasma area of Mars. Twelve anomalies
are annotated in this image. Additional anomalies will be identified over
the next few days. http://www.anomalous-images.com/mgs/newcity.html
: What's your favorite Martian city? Does the subway run on time? Are the
muggers bad? Is the city abandoned? Did "suburban flight" go interplanetary?
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@ SPACE WARP. I show how a minor modification of the Alcubierre geometry can
dramatically improve the total energy requirements for a "warp bubble" that
can be used to transport macroscopic objects. A spacetime is presented for
which the total negative mass needed is only in the order of grams, accompa-
nied by a negligible amount of positive energy. This constitutes a reduction
of the absolute value of the energy by 65 orders of magnitude. The new geom-
etry satisfies the quantum inequality concerning WEC violations and exhibits
the same advantages as the original Alcubierre spacetime. Prepare to transit
the wormhole: http://xxx.uni-augsburg.de/abs/gr-qc/9905084
: Have you designed/built/tested a spacewarp drive lately? Share it with us?
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WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 4 Jun 99 Washington, DC
1. MIR: BAGGED AFTER BRIT BILLIONAIRE BUNGLES BAILOUT. In a last desperate
bid to save wobbly Mir, Russia agreed to let Peter Llewellyn play cosmonaut
if he'd pay for training and dig up investors willing to pony-up $100M for
first crack at all the research results, like... well that's the problem.
Industry likes to be paid to build space stations, but who would invest in
one? Mir will be abandoned because no one could think of anything useful to
do with it and it's being replaced by a bigger and more expensive version.
2. ISS: AT LEAST IT WAS QUIETER ON MIR. The International Space Station hit
a milestone: its first repair mission, not entirely successful. Astronauts
did fix the broken radio and replace the flawed battery packs, but they had
to wear ear plugs while they worked because of a noisy fan... a fan that
must run 24 hours a day. They tried wrapping the fan in foam, and thought
maybe it was a bit better. But even at the slightly reduced level, the ISS
crew will be required to wear ear plugs. Or play Jewell on the boombox.
3. HYPERDRIVE: "STAR WARS PROPULSION DRIVE SOARS TOWARD REALITY." A May 18
NASA blurb from Marshall SFC says "hyperdrive" in Star Wars gets its punch
from fusion, so NASA's busy developing fusion propulsion at MSFC. "Achieving
the level of technology portrayed in Star Wars is quite a challenge," says
an MSFC official, who said it would also require "overcoming the physical
limitations of space itself in order to travel faster than the speed of
light." As soon as they take care of the fan they'll get right on it.
4. SHIFTING PARADIGMS: SOCIETY FOR SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION MEETS. Yes folks,
it's going on right now in Albuquerque, with talks on Newton vs Einstein
(Newton wins), alien abductions, evidence of a human consciousness field in
World Cup soccer and, of course, cold fusion. A major theme of the meeting
is "the Suppression of New Science." So far, the best quote came after an
invited talk attacking Darwinism. Asked what the benefits to society would
be if "intelligent design" won acceptance, the speaker solemnly explained
that, "We could avoid wasting time looking for natural explanations where
none exist." It's that kind of meeting. Woo woo.
5. COX REPORT: ONE MORE PLOT TWIST. In addition to the reasons listed in WN
(WN 27 May 99), Randy Herber at Fermilab points to another reason why China
would let the CIA know they had our secrets: the data was real - they knew
it, we knew it - but China wanted the US to plug holes in security before
others got the same info. Now that everyone is on record, expressing shock &
outrage, the discussion should return to the hard reality - you can't keep
secrets forever so we better focus on nonproliferation and get on with CTBT.
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SkeptiLinks:
@ Millennium Prophecy stuff - All faiths welcome!
http://roadrunner.cybersurfers.net/~least/
# Call me Ishmael, dammit! New research shows we can internalize fiction.
http://www.salon.com/health/log/1999/06/04/memory
@ More moral/ethical qualms about cloning, reproductive technology, etc:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/Bioethics/bioethics.html?
@ Join the PUFORI seti@home team: http://www.pufori.org/seti/team.htm
or http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_970.html
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"Astride the rhythmically pulsating flanks of her galloping mount, Lady Ash-
croft plunged into the dark, moistly warm forest, breathlessly bolted past
the ancient plundered fortress once torn asunder by Saxon stones, came upon
the jagged cliffs that pierced the brooding skies, where far below the surg-
ing waves relentlessly assaulted the mist-shrouded cove, and there she grav-
ely pondered why Lord Ashcroft was always thinking about sex." Craig Nagoshi
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