the 1620s, the Montagnais at Tadoussac, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, "were using large quantities of clothing, hatchets, iron arrowheads, nee- dles, sword blades, ice picks, knives, kettles, and preserved foods that they purchased from In this engraving from Theodore de Bry's Historia Americae the French." similarly, the MO- sive Novi Orbis (1596).Indians vrevare to test the immortal- hawks, near what is now Albany.
ity of a .Spaniard holding him under water.
had no practical...
Steven L. Gortmaker,
For TV Charles A. Salter, Deborah K. Walker, and William H.Dietz, Jr., in Public Opinion Quarterly (Winter 1990), Inst. for Social Re- search, P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48016.
Many parents are sure that TV is rotting their children's minds. The average Ameri- can youngster spends more than 15 hours a week in front of the TV set, so that would mean a lot of wasted brainpower. Not to worry, say Gortmaker, acting chairman of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Harvard's S...
Steven L. Gortmaker,
For TV Charles A. Salter, Deborah K. Walker, and William H.Dietz, Jr., in Public Opinion Quarterly (Winter 1990), Inst. for Social Re- search, P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48016.
Many parents are sure that TV is rotting their children's minds. The average Ameri- can youngster spends more than 15 hours a week in front of the TV set, so that would mean a lot of wasted brainpower. Not to worry, say Gortmaker, acting chairman of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Harvard's...
Christopher Lasch, in New Oxford Review (Apr. 1991), 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, Calif. 94706.
The New Age movement "invites a mix- ture of ridicule and indignant alarm," Uni- versity of Rochester historian Christopher Lasch observes, but the discontents it ad- dresses are "supremely importantw-and hence deserve a better response than the New Age one.
The movement's central teaching is "that it doesn't matter what you believe as long as it works for you." Actress-author...
Archibald R. Lewis, in Speculum (Oct. 1990), Medieval Acad. of America, 1430 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, Mass. 02138.
When did today's split between the Islamic world and the West occur? During the
14th and 15th centuries, said the late Uni- versity of Massachusetts historian Lewis. The attitudes "that these two great world civilizations formed" then toward each other "still govern much of how they inter- act today." the mid-14th century, while Western Europe was falling on hard...
John S. Rigden and Sheila
Tobias, in The Sciences (Jan.-Feb. 1991), New York Academy of Sciences, 2 E.63rd St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
Every year nearly 500,000 students gradu- ate from high school and go on to college with the intention of majoring in science or engineering. But every year only 200,000 college students complete one of those majors. After taking introductory sci- ence courses, most of the students initially oriented toward science change their minds. Meanwhile, of the undergraduates w...
John S. Rigden and Sheila
Tobias, in The Sciences (Jan.-Feb. 1991), New York Academy of Sciences, 2 E.63rd St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
Every year nearly 500,000 students gradu- ate from high school and go on to college with the intention of majoring in science or engineering. But every year only 200,000 college students complete one of those majors. After taking introductory sci- ence courses, most of the students initially oriented toward science change their minds. Meanwhile, of the undergraduates...
pointing with his gloved hand.
Variations on virtual-reality technology already have been used to help physicians position beams of radiation for cancer therapy and to aid biochemists seeking to attach drugs to protein molecules. But vir- tual-reality researchers have more exalted goals in mind. One scientist told Wheeler that the technology's main aim should be to take people to "absolutely unreal" places. He envisions, for instance, people acting as variables in mathematical equa- tions...
railroad expansion and the development of portable, steam-powered grain thresh- ers. "The destruction of the native prairie grasses enabled the thistle to exploit an ecological niche," Young notes.
Farmers themselves also helped the wind witch to spread. They often unwit- tingly sowed Russian thistle seeds along with their crop seeds, and grain shipments railroad were contaminated. "In addi- tion," Young writes, "the same steam threshermen who so disliked the spiny weed...
Rick Henderson, in Reason (Apr. 1991), Reason Foundation, 2716 Ocean Park Blvd., Ste. 1062, Santa Monica, Calif. 90405.
When the Carter administration set out in 1977 to combat destruction of U.S. wet- lands, there was not much question about
' what lands were to be protected. Wetlands were areas so often flooded or saturated with ground water that they would nor- mally support "vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil condi- tions." Only "aquatic areasu-swamps, marshes,...