Richard J. Seltzer, in Chemi-cal and Engineering News (Feb. 20, 1978), 1155 16th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
The abuse of science and scientists for political ends, and the backlash this has provoked, threaten to disrupt international scientific relations.
Among the most glaring issues are the denial of scientific freedom and human rights to scientists, especially in the Soviet Union and Argentina; the banning of Taiwanese, Israeli, and South African re- searchers from world scientific meetings;...
Charles F. Cooper, in
~oreignAffairs (~pr.1978), 428 E. Preston
St.,Baltimore, Md. 2 1202.
Carbon dioxide makes up only .03 of 1 percent of our global atmos- phere, but without this slight COz envelope to keep heat from being radiated out into space, the earth would be 10 degrees centigrade colder. This is known as the "greenhouse effect." As the burning of oil, gas, and coal increases the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the temperature of the earth may rise sufficiently...
Alvin M. Weinberg, in American Scientist (Mar.-Apr. 1978), 345 Whitney Ave., New Haven, Ct. 0651 1.
The great energy debate, like great religious conflicts of the past, stems from two differing conceptions of the future: "the solar utopia and the electrical, i.e., nuclear, utopia." Both utopias, says Weinberg, director of the Institute for Energy Analysis in Oak Ridge, Tenn., are conceiv- able, and the most prudent planning will aim at some combination of the two.
Radical, pro-solar...
increasing world demand for oil and driving up prices.
Skeptics abroad wonder if U.S. nonproliferation policy is not really designed to curb the global shift toward plutonium and the breeder reactor until U.S. technology has caught up with Western Europe's. Such doubts about the motives behind President Carter's maneuvers, and the fickle nature of the U.S. decision-making process, provide more incentive for the rest of the world. including the less develooed coun-
"
tries, to set up enrichment...
the "Iron Madonna," who "strangles in her fond embrace the American novelist" and destroys his chances for greatness.
Later critics, like H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis, turned on How- ells and labeled his new brand of social realism-evident in The Undis- covered Country (1879) and The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)-not only "commonplace" and "prudish" but inimical to literary esthetics. How- ells, in fact, did believe that wealthy Americans read little and...
Aubrey Beardsley.
cavalrymen were captured and sent to bolster Roman garrisons in northern Britain. (Archeological evidence points to a flourishing, close-knit Sarmatian community near the town of Ribchester.) Along with heavy armor, heraldic devices, and advanced cavalry techniques, these warlike Asians may also have transplanted the seeds of the Arthu- rian legends.
A last coincidence: The Roman commander of the Sarmatians in Britain was named Artorius.
"The Decline of Anglo-American Poetry"...
undergraduates (and some teachers) as our most impor- tant uoets.
Readers' desires for clarity and memorable language cannot be dis- missed as escapism or bad taste, Clausen concludes. On the contrary, this preference may simply indicate a desire for poetry that transcends the ills of modern life. Poetry must "reflect the complexity of [the poet's] thinking," as William Carlos Williams said late in his life, but it "should be brought into the world where we live and not be so recon-...
Surviving "A Millenium of Misery: The Demog-
raphy of the Icelanders" Richard F.
in Iceland Tomasson, in Population Studies (Nov.
1977), Population Investigation Commit-
tee, London School of Economics,
Houghton Street, Aldwych, London
WC2A 2AE.
The 11 centuries of Iceland's known history provide the most consist- ently bleak record of death and suffering a European nation has ever known. Thanks to the Icelanders' passion for genealogy and their early development of popular literacy...
Robert
E. Harkavy, in Orbis (Fall 1977), 3508 Market St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19104.
For various historical and ideological reasons, Israel, South Africa, Taiwan, and South Korea now share the peculiar attributes of "pariahtude" marked extreme diplomatic isolation and "wide- spread, obsessive, and unrelenting global opprobrium."
As "pariah states," all four nations are militarily exposed, lack legitimacy in the eyes of much of the Third World, have weak diplo- matic...