crime, a doubling of crime coverage made crime twice as likely to be ranked as a major issue. Similarly, while families with members out of work were extremely sensitive to increased coverage of unemployment rates, opinion in families un- touched the problems held fairly constant.
Media coverage may affect people's notions of "what is important," to some degree. But the public's perceptions are more than a simple reflection of the front page.
"All the News That's Fit to Compute"...
Elliot S. Schreiber and
Douglas A. Boyd, in Journal of Communi- the Elderly cation (Winter 1980), P.O. Box 13358, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101.
The elderly are not only a large (1 1 percent) and growing part of the
U.S. population-but they watch more television than any other age group, according to the Nielsen ratings. Schreiber and Boyd, com- munications specialists at the University of Delaware, Newark, report that income, education, and age are good predictors of senior citizens' TV viewing habits.
The...
Elliot S. Schreiber and
Douglas A. Boyd, in Journal of Communi- the Elderly cation (Winter 1980), P.O. Box 13358, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101.
The elderly are not only a large (1 1 percent) and growing part of the
U.S. population-but they watch more television than any other age group, according to the Nielsen ratings. Schreiber and Boyd, com- munications specialists at the University of Delaware, Newark, report that income, education, and age are good predictors of senior citizens' TV viewing habits.
The...
PERIODICALS
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
subjects had to perform to create a just society.] Yet most scholars are convinced that he thought of man as being naturally good. Their belief is based on the claims of Mencius, a 4th Century B.C. Chinese philoso- pher, and on debatable interpretations of Confucius's own ambiguous sayings, asserts Hwang, a professor of philosophy at Duksung Women's College in South Korea.
For thousands of years, Chinese philosophers took Mencius at his word when he procl...
encouraging abstention from sex. Priests would have to "practice what they preached." Siricius only decreed continence. But Callam contends that his ruling paved the way for the requirement of universal clerical celibacy in the 12th century.
Life or Death? "Brain Death and Personal Identity" Michael B. Green and Daniel Wikler, in Philosophy and Public Affairs (winter 1980), Princeton University Press, P.O. Box 231, Princeton, N.J. 08540.
When does a human being truly die? The...
an artificial aid which performed its function."
Most "moralist" philosophers who support a brain-death definition do so on a different basis. Human beings, they contend, distinguish the dead from the living not only analyzing vital signs but by reasses- sing their obligations toward them. Upper-brain "deathn-when a per- son "has no capacity for happiness, has no interestsw-justifies such a reassessment. The flaw in this argument, note Green and Wikler, is that it maintains...
the first photosynthesizers-the earliest ancestors of modern plants. For hundreds of millions of years these proto-plants released enough oxy- gen to transform Earth's atmosphere. Some bacteria "learned" how to both photosynthesize and respire.
But some microbes known as purple bacteria only developed re- spiratory systems. In a low-oxygen environment they might have died out. Atmospheric changes eventually made the dual system redundant. The respirers thrived and probably evolved into...
the likes of Kepler, Huygens, Wilkins, and, in the 18th century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant completed the intellectual revo- lution begun by Copernicus. These thinkers helped to free scientists of their preoccupation with the "closed world" of Earth and roused their curiosity about the larger universe.
"Ocean's Hot Springs Stir Scientific Ex- Natuye's ufldeysea citement" by Mitch Waldrop, in Chemical Laboratories and Engineering News (Mar. 10, 19801,
Membership and Subscription...
W. K.
Estes, in American Scientist (Jan.-Feb.
1980), 345 Whitney Ave., New Haven,
Conn. 0651 1.
Able to store millions of bits of data and retrieve them in microseconds, computers put human "short-term memoryw-which handles new in- formation and problem-solving-to shame. Technological advances are bound to make small computers as common as typewriters. Will hu- mans soon be able to leave all short-term memory tasks to electronics?
No, says Estes, a Harvard psychologist. Granted, short-term...
W. K.
Estes, in American Scientist (Jan.-Feb.
1980), 345 Whitney Ave., New Haven,
Conn. 0651 1.
Able to store millions of bits of data and retrieve them in microseconds, computers put human "short-term memoryw-which handles new in- formation and problem-solving-to shame. Technological advances are bound to make small computers as common as typewriters. Will hu- mans soon be able to leave all short-term memory tasks to electronics?
No, says Estes, a Harvard psychologist. Granted, short-term...