the 3.2-million-member U.S. Episcopal Church. But the new compilation of prayers and services waters down essential doctrine, according to Hughes, an Episcopal priest and theologian.
The seriousness of sin is diminished in the new Book, Hughes says, apparently in response to complaints that the old version (last revised in 1928) was too gloomy. For example, the Confession of Sin has been made optional in rites for Holy Eucharist and morning and evening prayer. Also optional is the reading of the...
Episcopalians.
Missing from the new edition is the phrase "the merits of His [Christ's] most precious death and passion," formerly in the post- communion prayer of thanksgiving. This on~ission, Hughes writes, im- plies that, contrary to apostolic teaching, worshipers may rely on merits other than Christ's to gain God's acceptance. He asks: "Is the stage being prepared for us to celebrate our own merits?"
Several references to the wrath of God have been expunged. Yet churchgoers...
in Natural History (Mar. 1979), P.O. Box 6000, Des Moines, Iowa 50340.
If civilized societies, populated creatures similar to humans, inhabit any of the 2.5 billion planets in the Milky Way now presumed capable of supporting life, it. is not likely that even one of them has achieved the level of technological expertise to broadcast word of its existence to Earth.
Wesson, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, speculates that any major civilizations on other planets...
would-be Caesars (Charleniagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Hitler) have failed. It is doubtful, he says, that these "very special circunistances" have been duplicated on many other planets.
Loch Ness "Atrnosphcric Refraction and Lake Mon-
sters," W. H. Lehn, in Science (July 13,
M01~ste1p.s 19791, An~erican Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science, 15 15 Massachu-
setts Ave. N.W., Washington D.C. 20005.
111 the fall of 1958, fisherman H. L. Cockrell spent several nights in...
visual distortions that occur fre- quently at lakes in cold temperate regions.
Temperature inversions-i.e., when a layer of warmer air hovers over colder air-are common at lakes, where the water is often several de- grees cooler than the air. In an inversion, Lehn says, horizontal light rays tend to refract downward as they strike cooler, denser air. Light rays reflected from a single point on an object may be bent in varying degrees as they pass through air of different temperatures. The viewer,...
all. As long as that issue remains, Crutchfield says, the United States should take care not to jeopardize trade relations with other nations in order to gain access to nodules whose exact value has yet to be determined.
Moreover, the United States should not move too fast to tap its offshore oil and gas reserves. Crutchfield asks: Why not leave such reserves intact until foreign oil becomes prohibitively expensive? Con- trary incentives, however, are built into the U.S. Interior Department's present...
a mixture of gravity, drift, and strong winds stirred up the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. The temperature in this gyre (which transports 10 million cubic meters of water per second) would rise only .3OF if the heated waste water from 1,000 power plants of 1,000 megawatts each were released into it.
Csanady concludes that the daily waste heat of one large power sta- tion (equal, he says, to the heat emptied into the ocean "during a sum- mer day by a medium-size lagoon"), pouring out...
Pat Fleishcr,
in An~iu~gazine(May-June 1979), 234
Connection Eglinton Ave. East, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada M4P 1K5.
The highly sophisticated Mayan civilization of southern Mexico flourished from about 1500B.C. to roughly A.D. 1200. Advanced in math- ematics and astronomy, the Mayas developed, among other things, an accurate calendar and an 850-character system of hieroglyphics. Then, for unknown reasons, its leaders and priests abandoned their temple cities and disappeared.
Today, farming...