CC: Okay. It's some more like human interest stuff rather than pure news. One thing the - in the Liberty Bowl football game Georgia Tech beat Iowa State. Well, I guess it's not quite over yet - this is a fourth quarter score, Georgia Teeh 31, Iowa State 24. And, there is a story about the Moonship that's streaking smoothly homeward. There's nothing in it that you don't know about, though, except maybe one little part of the article describing a quote from William E. Fastie of Johns Hopkins University, member of the Orbital Science Team3 who said that a rather startling discovery is the Moon is simply not degassing. It has nothing left in terms of any- thing that you think - that can create an atmos- phere. Much to his surprise, even the amount of hydrogen, an element that should have been the most abundant outgassing candidate, turned out to be about i percent of its predicted value. He speculated that the absenco f a planetary magnetic field on the Moon works to the purge surface of any atmospheric accumulation. The atoms of gases that have vented to the surface, he theorized, pick up an electrical charge then - and are then swept away by the solar wind, which is a stream of electrified atoms pushing far out into the solar system of the Sun. Former President Truman is stabilized is the word they are using now. His heart condition is unchanged. His kidneys are failing him, and he's termed to be still in a very serious condition but resting comfortably. A declining birth rate and a desire for fewer children in the years ahead have caused the census bureau to reduce sharply its estimates of future popula- tion growth in the United States. By the year 2000, for example, the estimate is now 20 million fewer people than had been forecast on the basis of previous statistics. Reduction could have major implications for American society in many areas. And it reflects changes in birth and child planning, which now suggest that the U.S. may eventually reach zero population growth. The last one is pretty interesting, and more so if you can see the picture that goes with the story, about James L. G. Fitzpatrick who for 40 years has been interested in copying natural flight. And he has now designed a batlike flying machine that may be ready for a test run next summer. Fitzpatrick said that the first - that first, every small part of the ungainly structure must be tested carefully. Otherwise you end up either in a disaster or a grave, and we try to avoid that sort of thing. After three decades of trying, Fitzpatrick, who's 66, believes his latest device comes closest to the real thing, although it still needs a small motor to flap the wings. Asked whether his device, as yet unnamed, works on the flight principle of a bird, he said, "I don't know anyone who knows what principle a bird works on, but I guess this is more like a bat of a pterodactyl." Fitzpatrick's ornithopter or flapping wing airplane is equipped with cockpit controls that include a throttle that regulates the 1-horsepower engine and up-and-down flight. Other equipment includes rudder pedals to regulate a power steering system, a parking brake, a pseudopaddagieum, I don't know what that one - that word is, it's a new one on me, to trans- fer power from the engine to the wings, and a two-way radio. It has a maximum 40-foot wingspan and weighs 320 pounds. It is 6 feet long and it looks like a cage of scaffolding covered in parts by canvas. He said he's far enough along on build- ing his device that he will be able to test the way the wings move in the Staten Island Community College gym by the first of the year. However, there will be no free flying. The gymnasium test will involve tying weights to the wing tips and flapping the wings. He said that his bird is rather slow in maturing; and it's been a long gestation period which involved 9000 hours of experimentation, $40,000 in his money, and the dissection of 300 birds of various species. "I've been interested in flight since 1930," he said. "Basically, I was curious as to why various things flew, and I've been painfully finding out ever since." And he winds up with a real quote here. He said, "Never has so much been done with so little success." That's the news. No, wait - wait a minute. One final closing story. In Atlanta, Georgia, a 5-year-old boy crawled up on Santa's lap in a department store and asked him what Santa would need if he had two boots and one sock. Dick Wright, a Georgia State University graduate student in the off season, said he thought quickly and replied, "Another sock," and the child punched him in the stomach.