Watching the World
Italy’s “First Secular Government”
◆ Italy’s new premier, Giovanni Spadolini, stated in a recent interview that his was the “first secular Government in the history of the republic,” and noted that it was “a historic event because it established for the first time the practice of rotation of the Prime Ministership between the secular and the Catholic forces in the country.” The New York Times explained that the Christian Democrats, who had ruled for 36 years, “often call themselves a ‘Catholic party”’ because their “leaders have entertained close personal and political links with the Roman Catholic Church.” The secular parties, including Spadolini’s Republican party, says the Times, “share a tradition of sometimes militant opposition to church influence in the country’s political affairs.”
This Is Peacetime?
◆ “It is widely believed that war is the exception and peace is the rule,” noted a summer issue of New Zealand Herald. “However, it is hard to avoid noticing that even in this relatively fortunate time, when the world seems to be mostly at peace, there are at least 23 wars going on.” The Herald added that “there are about a million soldiers and guerrillas in the world today who are engaged in active military operations on a more or less daily basis . . . Each day at least a hundred young men die in combat, and a similar number of civilians lose their lives as a direct result of military operations.”
Churches and Hitler: “Chilling”
◆ Scots theologian Peter Matheson of the University of Edinburgh recently published a book entitled “The Third Reich and the Christian Churches.” “Parts of it are chilling to anyone concerned about the capacity of an evil government to convince chauvinistic churchmen that God belongs to a given people,” says a book review in the Wisconsin State Journal. Among many revealing documents is one from Germany’s Catholic Students Union that “hails the National Socialist [Nazi] revolution as the great spiritual breakthrough of our time.” The document added: “It is the destiny and the will of the Catholic Students Union to embody and disseminate the idea of the Third Reich.” And when the Evangelical (Lutheran) Youth movement merged with the Hitler Youth, it declared in writing: “From now on, no one in this age group can be a member of the Evangelical Youth unless he is a member of the Hitler Youth.”
The Journal’s review concludes: “When the Christians opposed Hitler, they seemed to be much more interested in the possible loss of their privileges than in the systematic murders of Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses [who refused to be intimidated], the mentally ill and others. . . . Reading the book makes one wonder if it could all happen again.”
Elementary Economics
◆ Nations usually blame their growing economic problems on a variety of strictly monetary factors. But one of the most elementary causes is often overlooked or ignored. A recent study of major industrial nations entitled “World Military and Social Expenditures” revealed a fundamental cause for weak economies. During the past 20 years, the two countries in the study that spent the largest portion of their national wealth on military programs—the United States and Great Britain—also had the lowest national productivity growth. Was this just a statistical fluke? Well, the two nations that spent the smallest portion of their wealth on the military—Japan and Denmark—had the highest productivity growth.
First Solar Flight
◆ With its 2.7-horsepower electric motor softly buzzing, the sun-powered Solar Challenger lifted off near Paris and flew successfully across the English Channel. The 210-pound (95-kg) aircraft was powered only by 16,000 photovoltaic cells that converted the summer sun’s energy directly into electricity for the motor. The plane, designed by American Dr. Paul McCready, flew at 11,000 feet (3,350 m) for most of its 165-mile (266-km) trip, at an average speed of about 30 miles per hour (50 km/h).
Crash Corps
◆ “An incredible total of 537 U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft have been destroyed in accidents since 1976—enough planes to replace the entire British Royal Air Force,” reported the New York Post after an interview with a Navy spokesman. These figures for just the past five years apparently do not include Air Force or Army aircraft. Said the Post: “The most conservative estimate would put the cost to the American taxpayer at well over $2 billion.”
Seeing Is Fattening
◆ “If I even look at food, I get fat,” complain some weight-conscious people. Now there is evidence that they may be right. In a report describing recent research at Yale University, Science Digest states that “people who are sensitive to food ‘cues,’ such as the sight or sound of a steak sizzling in a pan, secrete higher levels of insulin when they encounter those signs. And if the food is a special favorite, they’ll secrete even more.” The researchers concluded that since the hormone insulin can accelerate conversion of sugar in the blood to fat, seeing, smelling or even hearing food cooking may have a fattening effect.
“Work-related” Adultery
◆ A Michigan man temporarily away from his family on assignment for his company in Birmingham, England, died of carbon-monoxide poisoning due to a faulty heater. The heater was in the apartment of a woman with whom the man had just committed adultery. A Michigan administrative law judge ruled that the death was work-related, so that his family could obtain $250,000 in workmen’s compensation benefits. How did the judge come to such a conclusion? “Man is by nature a social creature,” he argued. “It is not reasonable to expect that an employee who is on assignment to a distant land will simply stare at the walls of his hotel room after work.” However, the British government might take a dim view of the implication that “social” activity available to lonely male visitors in England is limited to adultery.
Divorce Peak
◆ In 1979, divorces reached a new peak of 1.18 million in the United States, compared to 1.13 million the previous year. This represents three times as many divorces as were obtained 20 years earlier. And the divorce rate, considering population growth, is two and a half times what it was 20 years ago. There was an average of one child involved in each of the breakups—1.18 million.
Salt and Blood Pressure
◆ The result of a recent study done in Liverpool, England, and reported in The Lancet, strongly suggests that blood pressure in humans is related to salt intake—more salt means higher blood pressure. Scientists have been aware of this for some time, but it has been difficult to establish anything definite. As it is now understood, this is because different persons respond to high salt intake in different ways and the response comes slowly.
The correlation is also supported by studies that compare cultures and societies that use little or no salt with those that use large amounts of salt in their diet. Such studies show that as little as 200 mg of sodium is needed a day, whereas in most Western countries the daily intake is about 10 grams. Though the U.S. National Research Council recently advised Americans to reduce their daily salt intake to around 3 grams, some authorities feel even that is too high.
An Ominous Element
◆ What is 486 million times more poisonous than arsenic and so lethal that just a thimbleful is enough to wipe out the entire human race? According to Parade magazine, it is plutonium, the radioactive element used in nuclear bombs and reactors. Plutonium occurs naturally only in trace amounts in uranium ores. But nuclear breeder reactors around the world are producing enormous quantities of it. A sobering thought is that at least 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg) of plutonium is either missing or unaccounted for at the present time.
TV Evangelism Declining
◆ “Though some television preachers are doing well, the overall appeal of telecast ministries appears to be in decline, according to a new book that uses the research methods of the social sciences to gain a clearer picture of a subject often marked by confusion and speculation,” reports the New York Times. The book shows that between 1970 and 1975, the combined U.S. audience of TV preachers rose from 10 million to about 21 million. In the past three years, however, the total has fallen to just below 20 million.
The “confusion and speculation” is well illustrated by the claims of evangelist Jerry Falwell, who estimates that he has an audience of 17 million to 25 million. Data from Arbitron, a television research organization, shows that Falwell’s program is seen by only 1.6 million people.
Inborn Kinship
◆ A Tokyo University research group has demonstrated, with the aid of computers, that “an infant can react to its mother’s calls immediately after its birth,” reports Japan’s Mainichi Daily News. Babies two to four days old were placed in incubators and were given opportunities to hear human voices, including their mother’s, and other sounds. Five of the 16 babies monitored reacted to human voices, but their reactions to their mother’s calls were much sharper. None of them responded to any of the mechanical sounds. In reporting the findings to the Japan Pediatric Society, the researchers noted that their study shows the significance of kinship and indicates that there is an “inborn” relationship between an infant and its mother.
Hope for Dyslexics?
◆ Dyslexia, a perplexing brain dysfunction that affects an otherwise normal person’s ability to read and write, may have a rather simple remedy. According to Swedish psychologist Paul Parlenvi, dyslexics seem to see printed matter in a reverse order, possibly because in most of them reading ability originates in the right half of the brain rather than the usual left. Dr. Parlenvi theorized that turning reading matter upside down to reverse the lettering order should help to solve the problem.
One Englishman who tried Parlenvi’s system after years of standard treatment in Britain declared: “It was miraculous. In three months I had learned more than in all the nine years I had attended special classes. I can now read virtually anything. You cannot imagine what it means to me.”
Space Is for Spying
◆ A new study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that “75 percent of all satellites orbited since the start of the Space Age have been for military purposes. . . . Since 1957, 1,801 military satellites have been launched.” And in 1980, “103 military satellites were launched—14 by the USA and 89 by the Soviet Union.”
Sound Out of the Ear
◆ The ears of some people can not only receive sound but also send it. By placing a microphone in the ear canal of 32 volunteers, a scientist at the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, Missouri, detected a high-pitched signal in at least one ear in half of his subjects. None of them, however, knew that their ears were giving off such signals. The sound from one young woman’s right ear was so loud, in fact, that it disturbed her sister when they played the piano together. Yet she was unaware of it herself. The sound seems to come from the cochlea in the inner ear where vibrations normally are converted into nerve impulses. Apparently the mechanism can also work in reverse, setting itself into vibration and thus emitting an acoustical signal.