George A. Keyworth I1 and Bruce R. Abell, in Technology Review (Oct. 1990), Build-Shuttle ing W59, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.
The U.S. space shuttle was supposed to open the door to routine, affordable space flight. Needless to say, it hasn't. Keyworth and Abell, both researchers at the Hudson Institute, argue that it was "doomed from the start. The shuttle is too costly, too com- plex, and too inflexible to support today's space access needs." Scrap it, they urge, and instead pump...
the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which is wary of any program that threatens the shuttle's future. Partly because of such bu- reaucratic indifference, Congress cut the NASP's 1990 budget from $427 million to $254 million, pushing back the first sched- uled flight test from 1994 to 1997. Keyworth and Abell worry that the NASP will be killed. "Only when travel into orbit ceases to be a newsworthy event," they conclude, "can we claim to have truly en- tered...
Peter W. Huber, in Daeda-lus (Fall 1990), 136 Irving Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138.
Scientists have no patience for colleagues who cook numbers and gloss over errors. So it is ironic, says Huber, a Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, that half-baked scien- tific theories and unproven hypotheses have found a home in, of all places, the American courtroom. During the last dec- ade, he writes, "courts have become steadily more willing to decide factual is- sues that mainstream scientists still c...
Michael Fumento, in The Ameri- can Spectator (Nov. 1990), 2020 N. 14th St., Ste. 750, Arlington, Va. 22216-0549.
For years environmentalists have called for the development of cheap, clean alter- natives to gasoline. In November, they were rewarded when Congress passed its landmark Clean Air Act. It requires, among other things, that localities that fail to reach clean air targets 1992 begin mixing "clean" fuels with gasoline to lower nollution. But while the Clean Air Act might make...
Michael Fumento, in The Ameri- can Spectator (Nov. 1990), 2020 N. 14th St., Ste. 750, Arlington, Va. 22216-0549.
For years environmentalists have called for the development of cheap, clean alter- natives to gasoline. In November, they were rewarded when Congress passed its landmark Clean Air Act. It requires, among other things, that localities that fail to reach clean air targets 1992 begin mixing "clean" fuels with gasoline to lower nollution. But while the Clean Air Act might make...
PERIODICALS
can be perverse.
When trees are cut for timber, for in- stance, the profits from their sale are added to GNP. But nothing is subtracted from GNP for the loss of the forest. Econo- mists do, however, count money spent to combat environmental destruction and pollution. Thus, the $40 billion that Postel says Americans dole out to doctors each year to treat pollution-related ailments is, strangely enough, counted as wealth. De- spite its devastating effect on Alaska's wild- life, the 1...
speculators, "with ostensi- blv no attention to versonal taste and de- sire, thrown up to cover the most land and make the most money, using the materials and technology of the 1870s, [have been] considered superior bv manv of those liv- ing in them to the new flats designed the best planning authorities using good architects?" Because most people, espe- cially those raising families, share a "taste for the low-rise, the small-scale, the unit that gives some privacy, some control,...
Phillip Booth: "On the far side/of the storm/window." The break is used as a trick to interrupt the flow of the poem and call attention to the cleverness of its author.
Are there any antidotes to the workshop syndrome? Dooley knows that little can be done about the larger cultural trends and
u
smaller academic imperatives that foster mediocrity. But he does have a few hints for buddins McPoets. Avoid obvious cli-
"
ches, such as the "adjective noun of noun" formula....
Philip Norton, in West European Politics (July 1990), 11 Gainsborough Rd., London El 1 1%.
After seven centuries, the British Parlia- ment is experiencing, in typically subdued British fashion, a revolution in its ways. Over the last 20 years, says Norton, a po- litical scientist at the University of Hull, Parliament has become more aggressive and influential. For better or for worse, it has come in some ways to resemble the
U.S. Congress.
Britain's political tradition favors a strong executive, a...
Tom Bethell, in Reason (Oct. 1990),
Trouble On the Kibbutz
2716 Ocean Park Blvd., Ste. 1062, Santa Monica, Calif. 90405.
To Israelis, the kibbutz is as vital a national symbol as the family farm is to Americans. Like the American family farm, the kibbutz is an ideal that has been sustained a few; at no time has more than three per- cent of Israel's population lived on a kib- butz. Now, according to Bethell, a Reason contributing editor, kibbutzim share one other similarity with family farms...