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From: Sam Wormley on 8 May 2010 06:10

> WHAT�S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, May 7, 2010 Washington, DC
>
> 1. FIRST AMENDMENT: OBAMA APPEALS NATIONAL PRAYER DAY RULING.
> One week ago Pres. Barack Obama proclaimed May 6, 2010 to be a National Day
> of Prayer in accordance with his responsibilities under Public Law 82-324.
> I heard no pealing of church bells yesterday, nor were throngs of the
> faithful seen gathering to give thanks. The only indication that
> yesterday was National Prayer Day was a full-page ad in the New York Times
> announcing that Federal District Court Judge Barbara Crabb had ruled that
> the law is an unconstitutional call to religious action. However, Judge
> Crabb put enforcement of her ruling on hold pending appeal, allowing
> already scheduled prayer events to go on. The ad in the NYT, and perhaps
> in other newspapers as well, was placed by the Freedom From Religion
> Foundation, which initiated the court action by suing. It is no accident
> that the Bill of Rights begins with the establishment clause; many of the
> framers of the Constitution, having seen the pernicious effects of state
> religions in Europe, were determined to produce a religion-free document.
> They would have been shocked that the Rev. Billy Graham, a Southern Baptist
> evangelist from North Carolina, could show up at the United States Capitol
> 164 years later and instruct Congress to pass a law directing the President
> to urge citizens to pray; Congress dutifully obliged. Moreover, although
> the law was a clear violation of the establishment clause of the First
> Amendment, it was allowed to stand unchallenged for 58 years. It required
> the President of the United States to set aside a day each year as a
> National Day of Prayer and every President since has meekly complied; it
> would be political suicide to do otherwise. Likewise, the President can
> not publicly thank U.S. Federal District Court Judge Barbara Crabb for
> upholding the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I'm not the
> President, but What's New thanks her.
>
> 2. THE TRIP: JUST DO THE CALCULATION.
> A hundred years ago, more or less, I had a professor whose response to
> every question was: "Do the calculation." His point was that I knew more
> than I thought I did. Last week I did the calculation of the energy per
> gram to get something to the nearest star. Right there in front of the
> world, I knew less than I thought I knew. I still have trouble converting
> units. I got 317MJ/g. The correct answer, I think, is 317GJ/g.
>
> 3. RARE-EARTHS: THEY ARE NOT THAT RARE IN CHINA.
> The 15 metals in the lanthanide series of the periodic table (57-71)plus
> scandium(21) and yttrium(39) are hot. They play an important role in
> many high-tech applications ranging from hybrid automobiles to missile
> defense. An excellent article by David Kramer in the May issue of Physics
> Today focuses on the area of concern: they are fairly abundant in the
> Earth's crust, as long as the crust is called China. Before 1950 if you
> were interested in rare-earths you bought a bucket of them from China, all
> mixed together. But the Ames laboratory in Ames, Iowa became the world
> center of the chemistry and properties of the rare earth metals. There are
> plenty of rare-earths outside China and there is now motivation to find
> them.
>
> THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
> Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
> University of Maryland, but they should be.
> ---
> Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org
> What's New is moving to a different listserver and our
> subscription process has changed.

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