a sharp anti-Semitic bias. What the Revised Standard Bible renders as "we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe," for exam- ple, The Book gives as "We were slaves to Jewish laws and rituals." A more recent effort the National Council of Churches to remove "sexist" language from the Scriptures has produced its own share of problems. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son" thus becomes "For God so loved the world that God gave...
Harriet Ritvo, in BioScience (Nov. 1984), 1401 Wilson Blvd., Arling- ton, Va. 22209.
"The word vivisection has an old-fashioned ring, and antivivisectionist is even more suggestive of quixotic Victorian crusades," writes the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology's Ritvo. Yet, protests against the use of live animals in scientific research have been growing in recent years.
The origins of antivivisectionism actually predate the Victorian era. 1780, a number of Evangelical clergymen...
infecting healthy rabbits with the disease. Even though a rabies epidemic had taken 79 English lives in 1877, revulsion against Pas- teur's method sparked a public outcry against use of his vaccine. Within 20 years, however, the role of animal experimentation in the conquest of such deadly diseases as diphtheria deprived antivivisec- tionism of broad popular support.
Today's most vocal animal-rights protesters in Britain and the United States, like their Victorian predecessors, doubt the value...
natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test."
Many evolutionists admit that taxonomy has, in the past, been a bit slipshod; few make such sweeping statements as "mammals evolved from reptiles" anymore. (Cladists assert that reptiles, like invertebrates, refers to no real group of animals.) Still, evolutionists say, Darwin must be right: If one agrees that all organisms have parents and that there was once a time when...
Congress in 1980, the Synthetic Fuel Corporation subsidizes private companies producing synfuel (e.g., oil from shale and tar sands). Its annual budget: $8 billion. But despite the subsidies, today's temporary oil glut has rendered current synfuel technology uneconomi- cal. Many private companies have closed down their synfuel plants. What was needed all along, Landsberg argues, was federal financing for research-and-development efforts.
Washington has enjoyed a few successes. The Strategic Petroleum...
Donald Hall, in The American Scholar (Winter 1984-85). 181 1 Q St. N.W., washington, D.C. 20009:
When the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats toured the American college circuit during the 1930s, he did not read his verse aloud. In- stead, he delivered lectures on "Three Great Irishmen."
Poetry just was not commonly read aloud. Today, says Hall, himself a poet, things are different. The public reading "has become the chief form of publication for American poets. Annually, hundreds...
its full title,.Awangernent in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother.
"From Clapham to Bloomsbury : A Gene-A Dead End alogy of Morals" Gertrude Himmel-
farb, in Commentary (Feb. 1985), 165 East In Bloornsbury 56th St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
The Bloomsbury group is enshrined in the literary imagination as an early 20th-century coterie of brilliant and somewhat eccentric British artists, writers, and intellectuals. Himmelfarb, a historian at New York's City University, sees...
stealth."
Earlier "reform-mongers" include Japan's 19th-century Meiji Em- peror, Turkey's Kemal Ataturk, and France's Charles de Gaulle: Ac- cording to Stultz, such reformers "rig" the political process "in such a way that 'progressives' think they are choosing between the prof- fered reforms and the status quo, while 'conservatives' concurrently are persuaded to see the choice as between what is being suggested and revolution."
Is that what President P. W. Botha...
Leigh H.Divided Cyprus Bruce, in Foreign Policy (Spring 1985),
P.O. Box984, Farmingdale, N.Y. 11737.
Tiny Cyprus is one of the modern world's perennial trouble spots. Eleven years after Turkish troops invaded and carved out a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the situation is as volatile as ever, reports Bruce, a Christian Science Monitor correspondent.
Settled Greeks, the island was taken over by the Ottoman Empire in 1571 and passed into British hands in 1878. Under Ottoman rule, Turkish settlers arrived...
then, Makarios favored an indepen- dent Cyprus rather than union with Greece, and the newly installed military junta in Athens backed General Grivas's attempts to under- mine his old ally. In July 1974, pro-enosis, Greek-backed forces in Cy- prus toppled Makarios, sparking Turkey's military invasion.
Stalemate has prevailed ever since. Some 30,000 Turkish troops now occupy about a third of the island. Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denk- tash is busily engaged in establishing an independent state;...