Mark Green, in The Nation (Sept. 15, 1984),P.O. Box 1953,Marion, Ohio 43305.
Since 1974, political action committees (PACs) funded business, labor, and single-interest groups have multiplied like rabbits. But after early public alarm over the prospect of such committees "buying" elec- tions, a pro-PAC backlash set in. PACs, it was said, are not really so bad. Green, president of the Democracy Project, a Washington advocacy group, contends that the critics were right.
PAC defenders point...

for a stronger Clean Air Act?"
As Representative Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) has observed, Green writes, "Politicians are the only people we allow to take thousands of dollars from perfect strangers and not expect it to influence their judg- ment." Rather than cling to such delusions, he argues, Americans should demand federal financing of election campaigns.
"The New Jurisprudence" Gary L. Mc-A New Legal Theory Dowell, in The Journal of Contemporary Studies (Summer 1984),...

the Warren Court's (1953-69) judicial activism. Notable advocates in- clude Harvard's Abram Chayes and Oxford's Ronald Dworkin. "The new constitutional theorizing is not aimed at the explication of the the- oretical foundations of the Constitution," writes McDowell, "it is typi- cally aimed at creating new theories of constitutionalism that are . . . superimposed on the Constitution."
Traditionally, American judges distinguished between social evils and constitutional violations....

environmentalists and Eastern and Mid- western industrialists and labor unions aggrieved over "disproportion- ate" subsidies to the West-angered Westerners by limiting grazing, logging, and mining on public lands and by restricting the availability of cheap water and electric power. Such restrictions threatened to snuff out a regional economic boom.
To many Westerners, Washington's subsidies seemed to bring more trouble than they were worth. In 1979, Nevada's state legislators kicked...

IODICALS

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
however, OMB officials have spent more and more time on Capitol Hill, trying to push the president's budget through Congress-and thus more timi in the news.
The change stems partly from Congress's overhaul of its own budget procedures. The Congressional Budget Impoundment and Control Act of 1974, for example, compelled the OMB to report to Congress frequently. It also created House and Senate budget com- mittees and a Congressional Budget Office, all of which n...

no means extreme Latin American standards, would shock most American conservatives."
For Washington policy-makers, the question is this: How can the Center-Left be put back together again? The Reagan administration's "scenario calls for some unwieldy pieces to fall neatly into place," ob- serves Falcoff. With the help of U.S. military and economic aid, Presi- dent Duarte must simultaneously tame the army, appease the 45 percent of the electorate that last May voted for Roberto DJAubuisson's...

his generals in July 1914 that no plans even existed for partial, defensive mobilization of the reserves to deter Austria-Hungary from making further threats against Serbia. Russia was forced to muster its forces against Germany as well. In Berlin, the offensive mentality reinforced fears that the Russian bear, if not struck first, would overwhelm Germany. As a result, Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, and general war soon broke out.
Van Evera believes that if Europe's leaders had understood...

Admiral Karl Donitz's U-boats in the North Atlantic, the results were dramatic. Because Allied merchant convoys were able to pinpoint and avoid the roving U-boat "wolf packs," ship losses dropped from 61 in June 1941 to 22 in July and stayed low.
Ultra's ultimate value to the Allies is difficult to assess, Gabriel argues. In fact, the clearest lesson emerges from the German side. Hit- ler's generals, aware that their moves were frequently anticipated, re- fused to believe that their codes...

Rudiger Dornbusch, in The World Economy (June
Debt Crisis 1984), Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd, 108 Cowley Rd., Oxford OX4 lJF, United Kingdom.
In August 1982, Mexico declared itself unable to pay its foreign debts, and in quick succession, Brazil and several other Third World countries followed suit. Wall Street and Washington were shaken; the over- extended international banking system would be acutely threatened if any single debtor nation actually defaulted.
As Dornbusch, an MIT economist,...

slashing government spending and im- ports, look good on paper but diminish long-term prospects for eco- nomic growth.
"Muddling through" will not suffice during the next phase of the debt crisis. Dornbusch warns. U.S. officials should 1) lower barriers to Latin imports; 2) get US. banks to write off some Latin debt in return for agreements South American leaders to devalue national currencies in order to promote exports. That would leave the Latin nations poorer "but with employment...

IODICALS

ECONOMICS, LABOR, & BUSINESS
plants in the United States, employing some 73,000 workers.
The company's recipe for the LaVergne plant is light on cheerleading and group calisthenics, heavy on the basics: "tighter quality standards, new equipment, and a stricter management approach." Bridgestone met union wage demands but also won concessions on work rules (e.g., top production jobs are now assigned on the basis of worker merit, not seniority). It has retrained American m...

IODICALS

ECONOMICS, LABOR, & BUSINESS
they must fight factory-by-factory for new members against sometimes fierce employer resistance. No such difficulties hamper European labor unions. custom (and often by governmental edict), labor unions en- joy industry-wide recognition. They negotiate not with individual com- panies but with national employer associations. "There are virtually no important industries on the continent to which union recognition does not extend," Kassalow reports.
The f...

Joshua Meyrowitz, in Daedalus
6~~i-k~ (Summer 1984), American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, P.O. Box 515, Canton,
Mass. 0202 1.
Until recently, middle-class American children and adults lived in two different worlds, each with its distinct sphere of knowledge, language, behavior, and dress. Through their control over playmates, books, and conversation, parents and schoolteachers shaped what youngsters knew about life's "nastier realities."
No longer. "Childhood as a protected...

Russell W. Rumberger, in

The Journal of Higher Education (July-
Go to College? Aug. 1984), Ohio State University Press, 1050 Carmack Rd., Columbus, Ohio 43210.
"It doesn't pay to go to college anymore" is a charge heard frequently since the late 1970s. Not true, writes Rumberger, a Stanford University researcher, although there are reasons to believe that a college degree earned today is not "worth" what it was 20 years ago.
In 1960, he notes, new graduates of four-year col...

Russell W. Rumberger, in

The Journal of Higher Education (July-
Go to College? Aug. 1984), Ohio State University Press, 1050 Carmack Rd., Columbus, Ohio 43210.
"It doesn't pay to go to college anymore" is a charge heard frequently since the late 1970s. Not true, writes Rumberger, a Stanford University researcher, although there are reasons to believe that a college degree earned today is not "worth" what it was 20 years ago.
In 1960, he notes, new graduates of four-year col...

acting as a buffer between them and readers. James Gannon of the Des Moines Register adds that only top editors have enough authority to keep newsmen on their toes.
Not all of today's ombudsmen write columns in their newspapers (eight work strictly behind the scenes), and, according to Tate, few of those who do write say very much that is important. Too often, she con- tends, columns explore such "cosmic" questions as the relative merits of "Peanuts" as opposed to "Li'l...

the same token, the "constant drumbeat of TV news" hampered Carter administration attempts to win the release of the American dip- lomats held hostage in Iran through "quiet diplomacy."
Two-thirds of all Americans report that TV news is their chief source of information, adds Cutler. That means that whatever is on the tube is also on the minds of White House policy-makers, distracting their attention from problems that are often more important. Cutler is not optimistic about...

Michael Philips, in Ethicshat Is (July 1984), University of Chicago Press, Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005, Chi-
Bribery? cago, 111.60637.
Suppose a policeman stops you for speeding, and you fold a $20 bill around your driver's license before handing it over. Also suppose he takes it and lets you drive off with only a warning. Is that bribery? The answer is not so obvious, according to Philips, of Portland State University.
The American public, easily angered malfeasance in government and business,...

Michael Philips, in Ethicshat Is (July 1984), University of Chicago Press, Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005, Chi-
Bribery? cago, 111.60637.
Suppose a policeman stops you for speeding, and you fold a $20 bill around your driver's license before handing it over. Also suppose he takes it and lets you drive off with only a warning. Is that bribery? The answer is not so obvious, according to Philips, of Portland State University.
The American public, easily angered malfeasance in government and business,...

his new image.
Thoreau's contemporaries surely would have been. They knew Tho- reau as a troubled, terminally dyspeptic soul, a lifelong bachelor and curmudgeon. Robert Louis Stevenson dismissed him as a near-hermit devoid of sympathy for others; James Russell Lowell wrote that he was selfish andconceited.
Thoreau's rehabilitation in America began with the publication in 1931 of Henry Seidel Canby's Classic Americans, which hailed the Wal- den recluse as "an individualist citizen of the universe."...

IODICALS

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
matical equations that produced orderly strings of numbers that gradu- ally gave way to disorderly ones. He noticed that certain patterns began to emerge in the breakdown. Describing them in mathematical terms consistently produced certain numbers-now known as "Feigenbaum numbers." The physicist even discovered a new universal constant (like pi): 4.669201609 . .. ,which expresses how rapidly all systems undergo something called "period doubling" o...

the technology and afraid of being left behind, Noble says, too many Americans fail to recognize a pernicious fad for what it is.
Futuristic 'High-Tech Ceramics" Howard J. San-
ders, Chemical and Engineering News Ceramics (July 9, 1984), American Chemical Soci-
ety, 1155 16th St. N.W., Washington, D.C.
20036.
Ceramics is a pleasant hobby, a nice way to make personalized gifts such as ashtrays, coffee cups, and vases. Ceramics is also a rapidly ex- panding $4-billion high-technology industry,...

Richard J. Wurt-man, in Technology Review (July 1984),
P.O. Box 978, Farmingdale, N.Y. 11737.
The human body's production of the chemical messengers that govern its internal affairs is largely unaffected what nutrients are avail- able. However, recent evidence suggests that some foods do trigger the release of such messages, according to Wurtman, a medical re-searcher at MIT.
Along with other researchers, he has conducted experiments with serotonin, a "neurotransmitter" that carries...

research doctors in humans. Sero-
tonin, Wurtman says, "provides the brain with telltale information on
the body's nutritional state. This information then helps the brain de-
cide what and when to eat next, and whether to be sleepy or responsive
to the environment."
About half of all obese people are "carbohydrate cravers," and Wurt-
man believes that most of them suffer from a short circuit somewhere
in their serotonin-producing systems. Indeed, the drug d-fenfluramine,
which...

ship captains and Peruvian fishermen for centuries, reports Glantz, a National Center for Atmospheric Re- search scientist.
After El Nifio recurred during 1972-73, scientists began putting to- gether a picture of its worldwide effects. Some were obvious. Global food production dropped in 1972 for the first time since the late 1940s. El Nifio's abnormally warm waters altered wind and barometric pres- sure patterns on a massive scale, producing droughts in Africa, Austra- lia, Central America, and...

Charlie "Bird" Parker in the 1940s gave way to the more digestible "cool" sound in the 1950s; John Coltrane's avant-garde saxophone work of the 1960s was followed popular jazz-rock fusion. If the cycle stays true to form, a new crea- tive outburst is now due.
Giddins sees "an astonishing array of talent" in jazz today. But, so far, no leader with the stature of an Armstrong or Coltrane has emerged to lead a breakthrough. Even so, many of today's jazzmen are virtuosos,...

IODICALS

ARTS & LETTERS
microcosms" of the United States, Levine says. The gentry occupied the boxes, in the "pit" were middle-class patrons, and the gallery was the preserve of the common people. Shakespeare's plays served as the centerpiece of programs that included minstrel shows, acro- bats, and other entertainments; and the shows traveled far and wide. Makeshift stages in Western outposts such as Red Dog, Rattle- snake, and Hangtown drew some of the best Shakespearean a...

Merry I. White, in The Public In-terest (Summer 1984), 20th & Northamp-
Public Schools ton Sts., Easton, Pa. 18042.
In education, as in business, Americans are studying the "Japanese edge." If there is a "secret" to Japan's educational success, writes White, a Harvard sociologist, it is that the Japanese believe even more than Americans do in the importance of schooling.
The Japanese spare no effort to achieve educational excellence. Their school year is 60 days longer...

Edward Democracy Schumacher, in Foreign Affairs (Summer 1984), P.O. Box 2615, Boulder, Colo.

In Argentina 8032 1.
In October 1983, Argentinians surprised themselves when they made mod- erate Raul Alfonsin their president. That historic election marked the end of a seven-year military dictatorship and, possibly, the long domination of Argentinian politics Juan Peron and his followers.
Can Argentina finally shed its 50-year-old reputation as "the bad boy of the Western Hemisphere"? ask...

Edward Democracy Schumacher, in Foreign Affairs (Summer 1984), P.O. Box 2615, Boulder, Colo.

In Argentina 8032 1.
In October 1983, Argentinians surprised themselves when they made mod- erate Raul Alfonsin their president. That historic election marked the end of a seven-year military dictatorship and, possibly, the long domination of Argentinian politics Juan Peron and his followers.
Can Argentina finally shed its 50-year-old reputation as "the bad boy of the Western Hemisphere"? ask...

Hans
Whither Sweden? L. Zetterbera. in Daedalus (Winter 19841.
American cade em^ of Artsand sciences;
P.O. Box 515, Canton, Mass. 02021.
For much of the 20th century, Sweden has served as the world's model of a welfare state. Now, however, it seems full of dire portents, writes Zetterberg, who heads the Swedish Institute of Opinion Research.
Sweden's welfare state is very much a reflection of the national char- acter, he says, a special brew of rationalism and humanitarianism. Ra- tionalism...

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