鈥淥H GIVE me a home, where the buffalo roam鈥� is a line just about any American
can recite from heart. It鈥檚 sung over countless campfires as part of the
American ritual of coming of age. The line represents that yearning for the
wide-open spaces that make us different. Or so we think.
Sadly, there is almost no place for the buffalo to roam now. The Clinton
administration wants to create one, and who could argue with such a patriotic
goal? Well, some members of Congress could. The story goes like this: the
largest wild herd left is in the Yellowstone National Park. Some of these
buffalo do occasionally stray onto the private property that abuts the park,
since that property is more hospitable during hard winters. When they do, they
are shot. The problem is brucellosis, a disease that buffalo can carry. Cows do
very poorly when infected with it, and their meat is worthless, so ranchers
don鈥檛 like buffalo roaming nearby.
However, the owners of the private property鈥攁 fundamentalist group
known as the Church Universal Triumphant鈥攚ant to sell the land. The
Clinton administration has the money and wants to give those buffalo room to
roam again. But only Congress can release the cash and it won鈥檛, because
ranchers are worried about their cattle. But there鈥檚 never been a case of
brucellosis being transmitted from buffalo to cow on the property in question.
Friends of the buffalo also point out that there is no shortage of cows in the
US, while wild buffalo are rare. At last report, the church was taking bids from
other interested buyers while the Clinton administration jingled the money in
its pockets and waited.
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IT鈥橲 becoming an annual ritual. Every year, shortly before the ides of
October, press officers at hundreds of research institutions around the US set
their alarm clocks for the ungodly hour of 5 am. Once up, they turn on their
computers, start up their Web browsers, and wait for the magic moment when the
Nobel prize announcements appear on the Nobel Foundation鈥檚 website. If they鈥檙e
lucky and a winner comes from their institution or university, they can look
forward to a day of frantic calls鈥攆irst, theirs to track down the laureate
and get them ready for the onslaught, then the media鈥檚 in search of the latest
scientists to be canonised by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Winning a
Nobel prize may be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the winner, but it
can be worth even more to the host institution in terms of prestige. Press
officers want to make sure that the news is disseminated far and wide. And
Federal funding agencies are proud to proclaim that their foresight in funding
promising research gave a laureate the opportunity to pursue the prize-winning
research.
Now if it鈥檚 biomedical research in the US, it鈥檚 a fair bet that the National
Institutes of Health contributed some money to the work. So every year, the
office of the director of NIH sends a gentle reminder to its two dozen
institutes and their press officers to be sure to set their alarm clocks.
Stanford University, of course, has the Nobel drill down to a fine art. I can鈥檛
blame it: this is the fourth year in a row it鈥檚 had a winner. Well before
announcement day, it comes up with a list of PNLs鈥攑re-Nobel
laureates鈥攁nd makes sure the press office knows their whereabouts on the
Big Day. There鈥檚 confidence!
LITTLE did we imagine when they raced each other into space 40 years ago that
the Russian and American space programmes would be bailing out each other. But
recent events suggest the two are covering up each other鈥檚 mistakes.
The flow of charity from the US to Russia is well known. The latest of many
bale-outs is an agreement by NASA to buy four years of Russia鈥檚 research time
aboard the international space station. That鈥檚 $60 million that Russia
needs to continue building the station鈥檚 crew compartment, already way behind
schedule. Dan Goldin, NASA鈥檚 administrator, seems to have taken Russia鈥檚
financial plight to heart. When Congressional sceptics complained that it was
time to turn off the money tap for Russian engineers, he described their
criticism as 鈥渁 dagger in my heart鈥�.
What many of those critics apparently don鈥檛 know is that Russia may soon help
bail out the American commercial space business. The space shuttle, which as a
few foresighted individuals predicted 20 years ago, has turned out not to be an
affordable way to launch satellites into space. But the shuttle pretty much
punctured the rocket business in the US, and recent failures at the launch pad
have encouraged the trend for American satellite makers to use foreign launch
vehicles. Among the latest schemes is a joint venture in which Russian rockets
will carry American satellites into space. Perhaps the Russians will earn their
$60 million in more ways than one.