NOTES IN THE NEWS
notes in the news Science, Unlimited A year and a half ago, the Editor of The- Progressive, in commenting on the extraordinary Soviet absorption in science and technology, reported from Moscow...
...It is admittedly a danger we cannot long tolerate to be strategically inferior, militarily weaker than the Russians...
...Our own satellite program has been rocking along on a three-year budget of $198,000,000 but a quarter of a billion dollars, the motor car publicists tell us proudly, went into the research behind the creation of the new Edsel...
...As part of its study the ADA released a graph showing an eleven-year trend of each party on liberal issues, dating from the first session of the 80th Congress to the session just concluded...
...Liberal quotient is a measure of the liberalism of a member of Congress determined by the proportion of his votes in harmony with liberal policies as determined by ADA...
...Twelve roll calls were chosen by ADA for study in the Senate, including legislation on civil rights, foreign policy, public power, and public housing...
...firmed by the record...
...What a bitter irony that the Columbuses of outer space today are not "free men," as we so proudly call ourselves, but minions of the Communist system...
...notes in the news Science, Unlimited A year and a half ago, the Editor of The- Progressive, in commenting on the extraordinary Soviet absorption in science and technology, reported from Moscow that a single agency, the Institute of Scientific Information of the U.S.S.R...
...The Russians have hoisted two chunks of metal into outer space, but that good old reliable American scientific know-how has come up with a filter that gives you the perfect smoke...
...Academy of Sciences, maintained a staff of 1,500 language specialists who do nothing but read, translate, condense, and distribute throughout the Soviet Union the best published materials available in every branch of science from every country on earth...
...T IKE MANY other Americans, I learned about the existence of Russia's second earth satellite while eating my Sunday breakfast...
...The graph shows the Democratic vote in Congress becoming increasingly more conservative and the Republican vote becoming slightly more liberal as it moves toward the Democratic low of the past session...
...Negroes at the Polls The Negro vote is becoming an ever more decisive factor in American politics, especially in such pivotal states as New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and California...
...Well, there you have it...
...If the present trend continues, the lines "would intersect in a few years and both political parties would be firmly anchored at dead center...
...These 12 major abstract publications place at every Russian's fingertips the entire current work of the world—in his own language...
...Republicans, convinced that the tide of Negro votes was running their way because of the bitter resistance to civil rights by Southern Democrats, were dealt a crushing disappointment in the New York and New Jersey elections last month...
...triumphs that I have recently noted...
...A member of the U.S...
...In 1956 the Eisenhower-Nixon tick--et siphoned off more than 35 per cent of the total Negro vote in New York City—a spectacular gain over the past —but Mayor Robert Wagner seems to have captured more than 75 per cent of the Negro vote in his landslide reelection...
...In the field of geography, for example, 40,000 abstracts are made a year, which come from all of the 600-odd journals in the field published in the world, plus items of relevance in this field from some 12,000 other periodicals scanned by the abstractors of this particular service...
...But we can redress this balance quickly with the proper use of all the human and material resources at our command—though it won't be cheap, and what we'll have then if we attack this rivalry only from the military side is merely a re-establishment of the uneasy stalemate in weapons of total destruction...
...Republican Senators Case of New Jersey and Javits of New York polled 83 per cent...
...Army's rocket research team, Heinz Koelle, predicted flatly that "in four or five years, Russia will be able to launch a one-ton satellite carrying enough reconnaissance equipment to spy on America...
...Under those chromium-plated circumstances, I ask you, what in the world have we got to worry about...
...A3>Filters and Sputniks by EDWARD P. MORGAN This article is adapted from one of Mr...
...The newscast I was tuned to led off with the story, gave a few recorded beeps of the satellite's strange staccato voice, and added that a live dog was aboard...
...Nine Democratic Senators received a "liberal quotient" of 100 per cent...
...They are Senators Carroll of Colorado, Clark of Pennsylvania, Douglas of Illinois, Hennings of Missouri, Humphrey of Minnesota, Jackson of Washington, McNamara of Michigan, Neely of West Virginia, Neuberger of Oregon, and Symington of Missouri...
...Since life began man has been reaching toward the stars...
...The greatest challenge in cigarette history," cried an excited voice which went on breathlessly to inform me that the challenge had been bravely met with the development of a perfect filter...
...Whereupon there was an arresting fanfare of trumpets and drums and I had the dizzy feeling that somehow the upcoming commercial was going to answer Moscow with the revelation that we were about to start paying passenger flights to the moon...
...We'll have more details about Sputnik II," the broadcaster said, "right after this special announcement...
...Now, in the wake of Sputnik, the American press has broken out in a rash of stories on this "new" agency, but the reports fall far short of showing the extent to which the ordinary working scientist in the Soviet Union has access to far better information services through his government than does the best equipped scientist in the United States relying largely on privately published reports...
...Perhaps we'd better put that sobering fact in a perfect filter cigarette and smoke it...
...It would seem to this humble layman a mistake to turn our scientific competition with the Russians into a kind of interplanetary track meet, concentrating only on matching them missile for missile, satellite for satellite...
...Morgan's nightly commentaries on the news sponsored by the AFL-CIO—in our judgment one of the most distinguished programs of news analysis on any network.—The Editors...
...I managed to ration my jubilation among other made-in-the-U.S.A...
...There is an urgent question of military capacity involved...
...The Russians have suggested that American and Soviet publications reciprocate by putting Russian and English indices to their scientific and other publications, but American officialdom takes a dim view of reciprocity even though we might have much to gain from such an arrangement...
...Among the nine roll calls selected for analysis in the House were those on civil rights, domestic economy, foreign policy, and school construction...
...Actually there is no service to American scientists comparable to the massive doses of data available to Russian researchers at a nominal fee...
...The information from every land in the world is put out by the Soviets in fat reference journals, which are abstracting services...
...We may not have a Sputnik girdling the globe yet, but the 1958 Ford has just traveled around it in the most grueling road test ever given any new car, according to the double-page ads...
...The first Sputnik took the outer air just as rocket experts from all over the world were gathering for a conference in Barcelona...
...Nothing comparable is available in the United States, but it is possible for us to buy the Russian service and have it translated into English—if the FBI didn't crack down, that is...
...A leading British scientist hails Russia's successful satellites as "the greatest human discovery of our age...
...Governor Robert B. Meyner—a substantial gain over the colored vote for the Stevenson-Kefauver ticket last year...
...A3> ADA's conclusion that the session was characterized by a "marked failure al leadership" and that on all fronts e&j cept civil rights Congress "acted ir»5 responsibly," is emphatically con...
...We are, I think, off balance in a larger way...
...Twenty-two Republicans and ten Democrats opposed the liberal position on all major issues...
...No Republican Senator voted the liberal position more than 83 per cent of the time...
...What no graph or roll-call survey can show, of course, is the disturbing extent to which even the 100 per cent Democrats in Congress fail to introduce and fight for long overdue legislation in foreign and domestic affairs...
...The Trend in Congress Americans for Democratic Action, the national organization which comes closest to being an indigenously American left-of-center pressure and educational force on the political front, recently released its survey of the voting records of members of the 85th Congress during its first session...
...Much the same holds true in the fields of astronomy, biology, electronics, mathematics, mechanics, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, geology, machine-building, and metallurgy...
...In New Jersey, where the Republican candidate, Malcom S. Forbes, urged Negroes to support him as a vote of confidence in the Eisenhower Administration's civil rights record, more than two-thirds of the Negro voters cast their ballots for the victorious Democratic candidate...
...The original papers from which the abstracts are made are available in photostat form to anyone wishing them...
...In the House of Representatives, 36 Democrats showed a liberal quotient of 100 per cent, but no Republican reached that exalted height...
...Local issues and personalities doubtless played their part in the Negro vote, but clearly the fact that Democratic Governor Faubus used troops to prevent Negro children from attending Little Rock's Central High School while Republican President Eisenhower used troops to enforce their admission has not brought the Republican Party the political dividends it expected...
...The answer, of course, is plenty...
...Some of them are monthly, some twice monthly, and they run from 250 to 800 pages...
Vol. 21 • December 1957 • No. 12
