Control Today (Nov. 1990), 11 Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C.
Last January President George Bush de-
clared that as long as the United States de-
pends on nuclear weapons, it "must be
free to conduct nuclear tests." The Penta-
gon claims that continued testing is
needed to ensure that the more than
20,000 nuclear warheads in the U.S. arse-
nal will work if they are ever needed.
Mark, former head of the Theoretical Divi-
sion of Los Alamos National Laboratory
(1947-73), finds...
~r-win M. Stelzer, in Commentary (July 1990), 165 E. 56th St., New York. N.Y. 10022.
For Irwin Stelzer, a Fellow at the Ameri- can Enterprise Institute, Japan's high wall of protectionism poses a special problem. As a strong believer in free trade, he should oppose retaliatory U.S. trade barri- ers. After all, he argues, "if the Japanese choose to rely on high-cost homemade products rather than on more efficient American-made alternatives, why should we retaliate denying ourselves their w...
Andrei Shleifer and Rob- ert W. Vishny, in Science (Aug. 17, 1990), 1333 H St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.
The words "hostile takeover" evoke im- ages of ruthless billionaires tearing apart helpless companies and firing workers for sport. 1989, 143 huge corporations that belonged to the mighty Fortune 500 of 1980 had been swallowed up by other
companies. All told, $1.3
trillion in corporate assets
changed hands during the
1980s. What should have
been done to stop the take-...
"Whatever Happened to New Math?" Jeffrey W. Miller, in American Heritage (Dec. 1990), 60 5th Ave., New York, N.Y.
In the mid-1950s a radical new way of teaching math to America's reluctant stu- dents was born, and was soon hailed as the greatest advance since Pythagoras's the- ory. A little more than three decades later, however, the term "new math" is virtually a profanity.
New math was born after World War I1 as a modest attempt to improve math edu- cation. Math classes...
the mid-1970s, new math was dead.
If the space race hadn't pushed new math along so quickly, Miller writes, it might have been a success. Instead, "its most lasting impact might be that of a cau- tionary tale." Today's curriculum reform- ers, he concludes, would do well to work "from the teachers up, not from the uni- versities down."
"The Economics of Legalizing Drugs" Richard J. Dennis, in
Drug Bust The Atlantic (Nov. 1990), 745 Boylston St., Boston, Mass. 021...
Randall K. Hornelessness Filer, in NY (Autumn 1990), 42 E. 71 St.,New York, N.Y. 10021.
To many New Yorkers, daily encounters ways, roaming Central Park, or panhan- with homeless people sleeping in door- dling suggest a problem of crisis propor-
WQ WINTER 1991
120
PERIODICALS
tions. And it is, says Filer, an economist at residents in New York-one third the rate Hunter College, but not of the kind or for of 20 other large American cities. Curi- the reasons most people think. ously, though, New...
25 percent and the supply of cheap apart- ments was as great as in other cities, yet the number of homeless families rose steadily. New York families are more vul- nerable. Filer concedes. But while there are 30 to 50 percent more poor, female- headed families in New York than in other large cities, the city's family homeless rate is 250 percent higher.
Filer suggests a third, perverse possibil- ity: New York's generous homeless and housing policies encourage families to be- come homeless.
Since...
the same company. In- side the magazine were full-page ads for two Guerlain products. The woman on the cover, it turned out, was Guerlain's public relations director.
Food and cosmetic companies regularly advertise in magazines such as People and the New Yorker without demanding reci- pes or beauty columns, Steinem
en, [ellectsthosechanges
Today's Ms covers the mild as il attwlsadds. So where does the habit of men In all its diversity,wthout l~m~tat~ons
controlling the content of wom- From politics,...
a lack of non-crime-related news reporting on blacks. "Reports invariably will give mi- nority legislators ample coverage when the subject is a so-called minority issue," notes one black state legislator, "but when minority legislators become involved in the mainstream of economic, political, government, and social matters," they are "either ignored or very lightly reported."
The small number of black reporters is one reason for the media's poor coverage of blacks,...
the messiness of life," and Quine sought to construct a fluid philoso- phy of belief, Wittgenstein said that each person's truth is revealed in the way he perceives his life's experiences. Ultimately, the philosopher cannot hope to discern universal truths.
Not all Anglo-American philosophy of the past half century has been concerned with language, Ross continues. In his ele- gant Theory of Justice (1971), Harvard phi- losopher John Rawls set out explicitly to construct a set of "just...