There is a growing consensus among climatologists and other researchers that both the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion are not simply alarmist fantasies.
I'm writing a book which is a memoir- insofar as a memoir is any account, usu- ally in the first person, of incidents that happened a while ago.
It isn't an autobiography, and it isn't "memoirs." I wouldn't dream of writing my memoirs; I'm only 40 years old. Or my autobiography; any chronology of my days would make very dull reading-I've spent about 30 years behind either a book or a desk. The book that I'm writ- ing is an account of a childhood in Pitts- burgh, Pennsylvania, where...
a su- pernova exploding in outer space.
Recently, physicist Luis Alvarez and his son Walter, a geologist, have found evidence that the planet was struck a huge asteroid at about the time of the dinosaurs' extinction. If so, it may have thrown up a massive cloud of dust, shrouding the Earth against sunlight and leading to a catastrophic cooling. On the other hand, the Earth may have warmed-or it may have gone dark, or it may have temporarily lost part of its protective ozone layer. The Alvarezes...
LECTIONS
Saving America's
Symphonies
In his recent book, High Brow/Low Brow, historian Lawrence Levine notes that "in the 19th century, especially in the first half, Americans, in addition to whatever specific cultures they were part of, shared a public culture less hierarchically organized, less fragmented than their descen- dants were to experience a century later." Performances that were once accessible to broad popular audiences-whether the tragedies of Shake-speare or the symphonies o...
To the traditional Anglo-American male imagination in the late-19th cen- tury, it was taken for granted that one's attitude toward one's mother should be conspicuously chivalric, if not reverential. It was axiomatic not only that Mother Knows Best, but-more startling-that A Boy's Best Friend Is His Mother.
Wherever you went, Mother was likely to go too, safeguarding your chastity, making sure you were protected from the evils of drink and tobacco and low friendships. And from Mother's omnipresence...
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Delegates to the 1900 G.O.P. National Convention met in Philadelphia to renominate President William McKinley. But who would replace Vice President Garret A. Hobart, who had died in office? When Theodore Roosevelt got the nod, Ohio's Mark Hanna said to McKinley: "Your duty to the country is to live for four years."
NEW YEAR'S 1988
48
The presidential primary election season is about to begin. Nearly every Tuesday night during the coming months, TV anchormen will gravely report...
Ceaser and Neil Spitzer
Last September 17, several thousand American politicians and for- eign dignitaries elbowed into Independence Square in Philadelphia to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. Addressing the crowd, President Reagan called the constitutional system "the great safeguard of our liberty," and praised the document which "has endured, through times perilous as well as prosperous. .. ."
The celebration no doubt would have p...
IMARY GAME
When Senator Gary Hart (D.-Colo.) bested former vice president Walter Mondale in the New Hampshire Democratic primary almost four years ago, his upset victory dazzled some press and television commen- tators. Declared CBS News correspondent Bob Simon: "Now there are two front-runners."
But the election disturbed many pundits and Democratic politicians; it seemed to demonstrate just how volatile the process of choosing presi- dential nominees had become. Echoing other complaints,...
1984, Schram, a Washington Post reporter, decided to cover the election campaign watching news reports and the candidates' ads on TV. Among other things, Schram con- cluded that the local television news was more influential than the national net- work programs in presidential primary campaigns.
During the weeks prior to the crucial New Hampshire primary, some 432,000 adults living in the Boston TV market (which encompasses southern New Hampshire) watched one of the local hour-long news shows;...