Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
............................................................................................................................................................................ CURRENT...
...We must develop together or we will perish together...
...Your dedication and professionalism has moved and impressed us for decades," he told NASA workers in his TV address to the nation...
...Kevin Byall [January 24, 1986] Ms...
...If this happens, girls, big and small, will be mouthing words to an almighty "He...
...28, we stop referring to space flights as "manned" or "unmanned...
...By degrees the blood slows, as it must...
...I was remembering snatches of it, "millions of hearts are lifted out of human race, space control in Houston, military command...
...Kevin Byall (possibly a philosophy major) dares to part company with his Reaganite generation: As I looked at the Jan...
...Still the lessons of this event go deeper if we have the courage to look...
...I am not particularly in favor of abortion, but when comparing the life of an endangered species to the life of the species endangering it, I found myself choosing the eagle...
...Our successes have been hailed as American accomplishments...
...It happened here in this country and I'm in this country...
...We have the wrong intentions...
...The tragic loss of seven of the best Americans who ever lived and the space shuttle should result in the end of the space program...
...Everything affects me as a writer...
...Quite frankly, I thought, God, Ann, here you are working and there's a tragedy in the world out there...
...The scab is tender at first, then hard, ridged a secret braille...
...Marines killed by Moslems but not Nicaraguan teachers killed by U.S: backed contras...
...1, 19861 Los Angeles Daily Journal Another advance in human justice vouchsafed by the illustrious California Supreme Court, this time on behalf of the modestly endowed homicidal maniac: The Cal...
...Yet the forces of the universe are benignly indifferent to our aims, and the laws of nature remain unmoved...
...Once from a Mr...
...Koss estimated that 16 group rapes had taken place on 33 campuses in the 12 months preceding the study, con-ducted between November 1984 and March 1985...
...We should spend no more money on "star wars...
...It's a lot harder now," says Bradlee, "there are so many of these asshole watchdogs now...
...To what purpose is this space program dedicated...
...The pain, though said to be centered in the brain, throbs and blossoms in the wound, imparts its radiance...
...Sixteen group rapes on thirty-three campuses in twelve months—or one-half group rape per institution of higher learning per year...
...It thickens, congeals...
...What next?: Although no comprehensive statistics have been collected, Mary P. Koss, a psychology professor at Kent State University who has studied rape among college students since 1976, has come up with an estimate...
...Miss Ellen Thompson, the Canadian Harvey Cox, gets off one last letter seconds before the thunderbolt strikes: The American Administration is currently trying to get prayer back into schools...
...February 16, 1986] San Francisco Chronicle And the creep speaks for Magda from Oakland: Editor—If the loss of the space shuttle Challenger spells doom for Reagan's Star Wars, the seven astronauts will not have died in vain...
...Yet in recent days that is the position he has assumed—in Iarge measure because of the actions of the United States...
...February 1986] New York Times After utilizing the most advanced statistical techniques known to manand woman-kind, Dr...
...Ellen Thompson Montreal, Quebec Canada [March 1986] Washington Journalism Review Disturbing evidence that the revolution is eating its children: [Ben] Bradlee still answers his own telephone the first hour of each day and says he replies to every letter he receives, but admits that keeping in touch with readers has become more difficult as the Post's national reputation has grown...
...Not just human life, but all life...
...Imagination pales in comparison with real stuff...
...21 [advertisement] comparing the life of an unborn eagle to an unborn child, I had to stop and think...
...It defies common sense...
...Magda K Jensen Oakland [February 5, 1986] New York Times Finally, asked to reflect on the ill-fated flight, the gifted novelist Ann Beattie puts first things first, to wit: herselfc'est tout: A friend said it best, in a phone call around noon...
...Joan G. Silberman Suffern, N.Y...
...January 20, 1986] Washington Post Once again the mind of Dr...
...February 7, 1986/ Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York) And the creep commandeers the tongue of an esteemed yoga instructor in greater Rochester: - When the space shuttle exploded in flight , we all felt immense human grief and realized the cost of the space program in economic and political terms...
...February 15, 1986] New Orleans Times-Picayune/ States-Item The creep steals across the correspondence page of a great New Orleans publication: It was too high a price to pay...
...Herbert Kohl: The death of Christa McAuliffe should be compared with that of junkies in New York and Detroit and with starving and tortured people throughout the world...
...We are just beginning to be aware of the unity of all life and the subtle connections between seemingly unrelated events...
...Supreme Court has overturned a death sentence, finding that the fact that a defendant stabbed his victim 48 times before killing him, indicated only that the victim was difficult to kill, not that the defendant intended to inflict extreme pain...
...February 18, 19861 Nation The demise of the space shuttle Challenger emboldened the little creep lurking in the dank of every ideologue's mind to step forth and to solemnize...
...I can't make a speech in public now without being confronted...
...The wound shrinks to its proper size...
...Let all my representatives and friends in government beware of further involvement with weapons in space, and, for that mat-ter, any weapons that could destroy many more persons in the same short time it took for the shuttle to explode...
...Indeed, perhaps we should all make a serious effort, in respect and recognition of half the human race, to substitute words like "staffed" and "humankind" for "manned" and "mankind...
...Further, the jury was erroneously instructed during the penalty phase that it should not be swayed by sympathy or compassion for the defendant...
...It shakes you back to reality...
...After the phone call, I just spent most of the day looking out the window and thinking...
...we seek to control and manipulate the frontiers of space for our own selfish ends, in competition with the Russians to dominate lest we be dominated...
...When you are a writer, in some ways, you space out when you're working...
...It's not something that happened to somebody else...
...I was sitting alone writing and it pulled the rug out from under me...
...He said, "Not again...
...They were the sort of words the president would never utter to welfare workers who brave inner-city slums or mine inspectors up to their knees in cold water...
...Christa McAuliffe died pointlessly in a $1.2 billion machine along with six other people...
...Richard Cohen goes haywire and suddenly an astronaut is a welfare worker is a mine inspector...
...Magazine Campus Project on Sexual Assault, Dr...
...January 15, 1986] New Yorker High grade flummeries from a dear old auntie: People can choose their own words to describe Qaddafi's mental state—President Reagan called him "flaky," and later denied that he considered Qaddafi mentally unbalanced—but most people would agree that Qaddafi is not a man on whom they would like the peace of the world to depend...
...I was thinking about "The Birds" [sic], that sang that song, "Lost away in space," when the three astronauts burned up years ago...
...No...
...I point this out to God every day and so far I haven't received any wrathful objections...
...Whoever created the world can't possibly be exclusively male...
...Any school child can elaborate the dangerous impact of technological "achievements" on the environment...
...February 21, 1986] THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1986 49...
...Your fingertips can't resist...
...Accept Russia's offer of peace and concentrate on domestic peace instead of outer space...
...Mary P. Koss hands down the depressing news...
...It calls attention to the fact that there's a great big other world out there...
...This life is not a contest to win at the expense of the losers...
...Iowa State Daily In the correspondence section of a great collegiate daily, Mr...
...In one issue of the Nation the creep emerged twice...
...CURRENT WISDOM...
...The taste is salty on the tongue...
...Life is precious...
...Jnuary 29, 1986] Partisan Review The poetic Joyce Carol Oates in one stupendous lilt masters a new approach to human understanding: SCAB At first you bleed freely, like another's tears...
...because Reagan likes both the goals and the style of the space program, because it excites his imagination, he anthropomorphized it and turned what is another government program into something out of the Oregon Trail—a heroic enterprise of pioneers...
...And, of course, from the suctorial Cockburn: This is a society that should mourn, to a point well past hysteria, Leon Klinghoffer but not Alex Odeh, Christa McAuliffe but not that true heroine Samantha Smith, U.S...
...Extrapolating from a study of rape she con-ducted for the Federally financed Ms...
...Perhaps the "primitive" cultures that were overrun in Western man's zeal to conquer have something to offer us today about living in harmony with nature...
...NASA should immediately be changed to an agency whose purpose is research and . development of housings, and job training for the poor and homeless in this country...
...Tony Criscuolo Director, Yoga Society of Rochester [February 16, 1986] New York Times In New York, too, the creep intones: The time has surely come when, out of respect for Judith A. Resnik and Christa McAuliffe, the two women who lost their lives on the Challenger space-shuttle flight on Jan...
Vol. 19 • April 1986 • No. 4
