Space Shuttle M. Mitchell Waldrop, in Science (Oct. 28, 1983), 1515 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Skeptics Washington, D.C. 20005.
After 13 missions, U.S. space shuttle launches still capture the public imagination sufficiently to merit live network TV coverage. But not everybody is cheering.
To scientists, reports Waldrop, a Science correspondent, the shuttle represents unmet expectations. During the early 1970s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) promised scientists that there...
the early 1990s.
Bom-Again "Are New Diseases Really New?" Ed-
win D. Kilbourne, in Natural History Diseases (Dec. 1983), Membership Services, P.O.
Box 6000, Des Moines, Iowa 50340.
The world's last remaining pockets of smallpox had hardly been wiped out when a series of baffling new illnesses-Legionnaires' disease, toxic shock syndrome, and, most recently, AIDS (acquired immune defi- ciency syndrome)-seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
Most of these afflictions are actually old...
IODICALS
RESOURCES & ENVIRONMENT
"The Case for Ocean Waste Disposal" by
Where Will All William Lahey and Michael Connor, in Technology ~eview(Aug.-Sept. 1983),
The Garbage Go? Room 10-140, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.
New York's Love Canal, Missouri's Times Beach, and other toxic waste dumpsites gone bad are making the oceans look better than they did 10 years ago as places to dispose of industrial by-products, municipal sew- age sludge, ind p...
the year 2000.
Wholesale clearance of tropical forests began when European plant- ers began colonizing Latin America in the 17th century, writes Jackson, a freelance journalist. Sugar and rubber plantations still cover vast ex- panses of land once occupied rainforest. Today, "shifting cultiva- tors," small-scale forest farmers numbering 150 million worldwide, are responsible for half of new losses as they slash plots out of the forest, then move on when the thin soil wears out.
Logging...
the year 2000.
Wholesale clearance of tropical forests began when European plant- ers began colonizing Latin America in the 17th century, writes Jackson, a freelance journalist. Sugar and rubber plantations still cover vast ex- panses of land once occupied rainforest. Today, "shifting cultiva- tors," small-scale forest farmers numbering 150 million worldwide, are responsible for half of new losses as they slash plots out of the forest, then move on when the thin soil wears out.
Logging...
the
U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service have ap- preciated 22-fold, and are now worth some $500 billion.
Clawson notes that the 200-year history of federal land use policy has been one of constant change. Until the early 19th century, the focus was on acquisition. A period of disposal through homesteading (which con- tinued until 1934), sales, and land grants for colleges and railroads fol- lowed. Beginning with the creation of the first National Forests (then called "forest...
what we would today call the "preppie class." Cheever views his subjects with sympathy but detachment, engendered his per- sonal demons-a stormy marriage, alcoholism, and, later in life, grow- ing homosexual proclivities.
With the exception of his first two (and best) novels, The Wapshot Chronicle (1957) and The Wapshot Scandal (1964), Cheever's books were attempts to exorcize those troubles and find redemption, argues Gus- sow. Both Bullet Park (1 969) and Falconer (1977) worked poorly...
such authors as James rep- resented an escape from the "frantic acquisitiveness" that dominated American life. Characters were catapulted into wealth and high sta- tus, as Zanger points out, in a way that carefully avoided "any realis- tic examination of the practical and moral problems attached to the accumulation of money."
Ultimately, says Zanger, an aristocracy of inherited wealth contra- dicts the American ideal of the self-made man. Yet as long as fame and fortune appear...
John McPhee, in The Swiss Army The New Yorkey (Oct. 31 and Nov. 7,1983),
25 West 43rd St.,New York, N.Y. 10036.
For nearly 500 years, Switzerland has stayed out of Europe's wars relying on what the Swiss call the "Porcupine Principle." The formula is simple, reports McPhee, a New Yorker writer: The tiny nation bristles with arms and its people stand ready to fight.
Topography-the Jura mountains and the Alps-makes Switzerland
The Wilson QuarterlyISpring 1984
39
PERIODICALS
OTHER N...
their de- signers, ready to self-destruct on command. Mountains are honey- combed with airplane hangars, tunnels full of food and munitions, and command posts. Shelters against nuclear attack are everywhere; one alpine highway tunnel is fitted with five-foot-thick concrete doors at either end, making it "the biggest bomb shelter in the world."
Almost all able-bodied Swiss men are drafted into the Army (it has only some 30,000 professional soldiers) for 30 years of part-time ser- vice....