Bob Park: asleep at the switch?

It's about 2am on Saturday, March 25, in both New Jersey and Maryland, and Bob Park didn't make the weekly installment on What's New.

Perhaps he was tired from celebrating/memorializing the 17th anniversary of the announcement of cold fusion [Thursday, March 23, 2006]. From WN of March 17 (still up on his webpage):

BELOW THE GROUND STATE: BEFORE SPRING THERE IS MARCH MADNESS.

On March 23, 1989 in Salt Lake City, the University of Utah held a press conference to announce the discovery of cold fusion, but the story had already been leaked to the world's most influential financial dailies, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Both papers continued to print unfailingly optimistic reports for weeks. Among those lured into the swamp was Randell Mills, a 1986 graduate of Harvard Medical School. Two years later Mills held a press conference of his own to announce that it wasn't fusion. It was better! Hydrogen atoms can shrink into "hydrinos," releasing energy. With the 17th anniversary of cold fusion approaching, both papers are now running credulous stories about Mills and his company, BlackLight Power. BLP, which has never produced anything, is rumored to be preparing an IPO.