Thomas Eisner,
Nature's
in Issues in Science and Technology (Winter 1989-90), 2101 Medicine Chest Constitution Ave. N.w., Washington, D.C. 20418.
Even optimists now concede that plant and animal extinctions are going to occur at an alarming pace well into the next cen- tury. "We have yet to comprehend what it is we lose when species disappear," warns Eisner, a Cornell biologist. In the area of medicinal chemistry alone, he says, the implications are staggering.
Overall, nearly one...
association." The critic Svetlana Alpers has argued that 17th-century Dutch artists used "proto-photographic" techniques; Heinrich Schwarz and Aaron Scharf have argued that the camera has "influenced the visual imagination of painters since the phy's flattening of space and its ability to capture ephemeral movements, for exam- ple, are said to have had a profound im- pact on the impressionists. Finally, photog- raphers overcame the handicap of the "infinite reproducibility"...
Samuel Beckett, were private and had no literary value. But Joycean scholars, Fromm notes, "maintained that any and all mate- rial about great writers like Joyce and Beckett belonged to the world, not the family." In fact, she recalls indignantly, when Stephen Joyce said that Beckett had told him to destroy the letters, Beckett's biographer Deirdre Bair "flatly insisted that Beckett had not meant what he said."
"If the sanctity of private life and the in- dividual is rejected...
Colin Legum, in The Washington Quarterly (Winter 1990), 1800 K St. N.w.. Washington, D.C. 20006,
Africa is on the verge of its second libera- tion. Three decades after they threw off the shackles of European rule, predicts Legum, a veteran journalist, many African countries are about to overthrow their "unpopular, unsuccessful, and undemo- cratic" postcolonial governments.
After achieving independence during the 1950s and '60s, most African countries adopted European-style parliamentary s...
Rensselaer W. Lee, in Society (Jan.-Feb.
Cocaine Politics
1990), Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, N.J.
Less than a year after the government of Colombia began its crackdown on the
"
country's cocaine traffickers, many Co- lombians are growing weary of the turmoil and bloodshed. According to a public- opinion survey conducted last fall, citizens favor a negotiated settlement with the country's cocaine mafia a two-to-one margin.
what may sound incredible to Ameri- cans is al...
Pablo Escobar, for ex- ample, claims that the "nation's face has been disfigured the imperialist boot of the [extradition] treaty." Such views have broad appeal in Colombia.
What Colombia and other Latin nations need most to combat the cocaine mafia is not weapons or helicopters and not stepped up extraditions, Lee concludes, but stronger and more effective courts, po- lice, and other civilian institutions.
'Underclass" by Charles Murray, in The Sunday Times Maga- zine (Nov. 26,...
Masao Miyoshi, in Raritan (Fall 1989), Rutgers University, 165 College Ave., New Brunswick,
N.J. 08903.
The written word is not faring well in Ja- als begin congratulating themselves, pan. But the problem is not that the mass Miyoshi cautions that they too have suc- of Japanese are badly schooled or illiter- cumbed to a form of "conversationalism": ate, writes Miyoshi, a professor of litera- the endless chatter of meetings, confer- ture at the University of California, San ences, and...
Joseph W. Alsop with Adam Platt, in The New York Review of Books (Nov. 9, 1989), 250 W. 57th St., New York, N.Y. 10107.
For 300 years, this country was ruled, if not always governed, a small White An- glo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) elite. George Bush notwithstanding, the WASPs as a group have not enjoyed an organized po- litical victory since the upright ladies of Mrs. Charles H. Sabin's Woman's Organi- zation for National Prohibition Reform helped put martinis back on the nation's tables in 1933.
Alsop, a...
Patrick Anderson, in Regardie's (Nov. 1989), 1010 Wisconsin Ave. N.W., Ste. 600, Washington,
Points of Bite D.C. 20007.
Patrick Anderson says he must have been "temporarily insane" when he first agreed to write a speech for a politician. He wrote it in the spring of 1976 for Jimmy Carter, then a candidate for the Democratic presi- dential nomination. Carter introduced this new "Kennedyesque" marvel woodenly informing an audience, "Now I'm going to read a statement my s...
Di-nah Wisenberg of the States News Service, in Common Cause Magazine (Sept.-Oct. 1989).
In the heat of [the 19881 presidential cam-paign, George Bush attacked Michael Duka- kis for espousing liberal policies "born in Harvard Yard's boutique." And he boasted to a Houston audience last June, "when I wanted to learn the ways of the world, I didn't go to the Kennedy School [at Harvard]. I came to Texas."
One year later, President Bush's Harvard- bashing days seem to be behind...