A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the antiscience tag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research.
The most thrilling explanation is, unfortunately, a little defective. Some economists argue that powerful structural changes in the world have upended the old economic models that were based upon the historical link between growth and inflation.
The Aswan Dam, for example, stopped the Nile flooding but deprived Egypt of the fertile silt that floods left-all in return for a giant reservoir of disease which is now so full of silt that it barely generates electricity.
New ways of organizing the workplace--all that re-engineering and downsizing--are only one contribution to the overall productivity of an economy, which is driven by many other factors such as joint investment in equipment and machinery, new technology, and investment in education and training,
"The test of any democratic society, he wrote in a Wall Street Journal column', "lies not in how well it can control expression but in whether it gives freedom of thought and expression the widest possible latitude, however disputable or irritating the results may sometimes be..."
During the discussion of rock singing verses at last month's stockholders' meeting, Levin asserted that "music is not the cause of society's ills" and even cited his son, a teacher in the Bronx, New York, who uses rap to communicate with students.
Much of the language used to describe monetary policy, such as "steering the economy to a soft landing" of "a touch on the brakes" , makes it sound like a precise science. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Economists have been particularly surprised by favorable inflation figures in Britain and the United States, since, conventional measures suggest that both economies, and especially America's, have little productive slack.
We live in a society in which the medicinal and social use of substances (drugs) is pervasive: an aspirin to quiet a headache, some wine to be sociable, coffee to get going in the morning, a cigarette for the nerves.
Dependence is marked first by an increased tolerance, with more and more of the substance required to produce the desired effect, and then by the appearance of unpleasant with drawal symptoms when the substance is discontinued.
"Is this what you intended to accomplish with your careers?" Senator Robert Dole asked Time Warner executives last week. "You have sold your souls, but must you corrupt our nation and threaten our children as well?"
Some have breathed sighs of relief, others, including churches, right-to-life groups and the Australian Medical Association, bitterly attacked the bill and the haste of its passage. But the tide is unlikely to turn back.
In Australia- where an aging population, life-extending technology and changing community attitudes have all played their part other states are going to consider making a similar law to deal with euthanasia.
There are, of course, exceptions. Small--minded officials, rude waiters, and ill mannered taxi drivers are hardly unknown in the US. Yet it is an observation made so frequently that it deserves comment.
Robert Fulton once wrote, "The mechanic should sit down among levers, screws, wedges, wheel, etc, like a poet among the letters of the alphabet, considering them as an exhibition of his thoughts, in which a new arrangement transmits a new idea".
