this question: If soar. The number of Americans under 65 the cost of health care can be controlled without any medical insurance at all stands through centralized purchasing of a stand- at 37 million. The two problems, notes the ard product, why not lower the costs of Brookings Institution's Henry J. Aaron in other necessities, such as food and housing, the Brookings Review (Summer 1991), are in the same way?" Canada's system is not related, and any effort to solve just one is without problems:...
their se- niors that while they will encounter 'plenty of bumps on the road," as a black general put it, they must surmount them, for the benefit of those who follow.
"Media Goes Wilding in Palm Beach" Katha Pollitt, in TheNaming the Victim Nation (June 24, 1991), 72 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10011.
After Senator Edward M. Kennedy's nephew, William Kennedy Smith, was ac- cused of raping a Palm Beach woman last March, the news media's longstanding practice of preserving t...
a gang of youths in 1989.
Gartner and others argued that naming rape victims will help to eventually re-move the social stigma against rape vic- tims. The contention, Pollitt observes, rests on a dubious assumption. "Why would society blame rape victims less if it knew who they were?" The issue of nam- ing the victim, she says, cannot be di- vorced from blaming the victim.
The news media's coverage of the Palm Beach case, Pollitt says, underlines the fact that rape is treated differently...
Bernard Knox, in Humanities (July-Aug. 1991), National Endowment for the Hu- Of Sophistry inanities, 1100 Pennsylvania Ave. N.w., Washington, D.C.
20506.
Plato (427-347 B.c.) gave the Sophists a bad name, and it has persisted to this day. The denigration was quite undeserved, ob- serves Knox, a classics professor emeritus at Yale University. In fact, he says, the Sophists, who taught rhetoric in Athens during the fifth century B.c., were "the first professors of the humanities," and...
Timothy Goodman, in The American Enterprise (July-Aug. 1991), American Enterprise Protestant Ethic Inst., 1 150 17th st. N.w., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Protestant evangelicalism has made great inroads in traditionally Catholic Latin America. Evangelicals-most of them Pentecostals, who practice faith healing and speaking in tongues-have grown from 15 million in 1960 to over 40 million. More than half of them live in Brazil, mak- ing up nearly one-fifth of its 150 million people. Sociologist Peter...
Timothy Goodman, in The American Enterprise (July-Aug. 1991), American Enterprise Protestant Ethic Inst., 1 150 17th st. N.w., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Protestant evangelicalism has made great inroads in traditionally Catholic Latin America. Evangelicals-most of them Pentecostals, who practice faith healing and speaking in tongues-have grown from 15 million in 1960 to over 40 million. More than half of them live in Brazil, mak- ing up nearly one-fifth of its 150 million people. Sociologist Peter...
the fact that scien- tists in conversation are crisp and clear about their work. The same scientists, writing in a journal, produce a nightmare of incorn- prehensibility. Various explanations have been proposed, but I think the real problem may be structural: Scientific writing now de- mands a passive, abstract literary form.
In conversation, the scientist provides in-
' formation in the way we ordinarily expect to receive it: as a narrative. "We had an unan- swered question in our 'field....
Herb Brody, in Technology Review (July 1991), Building W59, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.
It was the bright world of tomorrow. Solar
u
cells and nuclear fusion were to provide pollution-free electricity, automobiles were to run on batteries. factories were to rely extensively on robots, and videotex terminals were to be important fixtures in American homes. But the technological fu-ture envisioned just a few years ago has failed to arrive, notes Brody, a senior edi- tor of Technology Review. I...
Herb Brody, in Technology Review (July 1991), Building W59, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.
It was the bright world of tomorrow. Solar
u
cells and nuclear fusion were to provide pollution-free electricity, automobiles were to run on batteries. factories were to rely extensively on robots, and videotex terminals were to be important fixtures in American homes. But the technological fu-ture envisioned just a few years ago has failed to arrive, notes Brody, a senior edi- tor of Technology Review. I...
1966, the total had reached 778, and now it stands at 2,000. This vast increase in quantity, Stephan maintains, has resulted in a discernible decrease in quality.
"The average quality of people going into science in the '70s and early '80s," Stephan claims, "was not as high as in the '50s and '60s in terms of motivation, abil- ity, and interest in science." In the 1970s, according to studies Stephan and Sharon G. Levin of the University of Mis- souri, recent Ph.D.'s in particle...