SPAN 2 The President and the Congress by Elizabeth Wehr
3
Protecting Homes From Earthquakes Krishan Gabrani Interviews G.c.
Mathur
5 Geniuses at Work by John Boslough
10 What Are the Dolphins Saying? by Michael Partit
15 The Power of Small Dams by Everly Driscoll
16 Small Dams in India by Dilip Salwi
18 Shiva: In and Out of Manifestation by Kapila VatsYllyan
26
The Department Store as Theater
28
True Tales of New York
32
The Engine of Growth by W. Arthur Lewis
36
New Technology Rolls the Presses by V.N. Chhabra
40 For Your Information-Videotext by Doug Hill
41
On the Lighter Side
42 "A Real Writer Hypnotizes You" Katha Pollitt Interviews Isaac Bashevis Singer
45 Top U.S. Economists Talk About ... . Foreign Trade and Aid by Myer Rashish
Domestic Plans and Policies by Murray Weidenbaum
Editor Managing Editor Assistant Managing Editor Editorial Staff
Art Director
Mal Oettinger Chidananda Das Gupta Krishan Gabrani Aruna Dasgupta Murari Saha Rocque Fernandes
Nand Katyal
Associate Art Director
Kanti Roy
Assistant Art Director
B. Roy Choudhury
Chief of Production
Awtar S. Marwaha
Photographs: Front cover-Kathryn Marshall, courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Anonymous gift. Inside front cover-John Zimmerman, Life magazine, Š 1980 Time Inc. I-R.N. Khanna. 3-courtesy National Buildings Organisation. 4-Avinash Pasricha. '6-John Peoples, Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University. 7-courtesy University of Missouri; Jerome McCavitt. 8- Kenneth Garrett. 9-John T. Bledsoc, U.S.N. & W.R.; Š 1980 John N.H. Simpson. 10-II-Matt Herron. l5-E.E. Hertzog, courtesy U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation. 17-courtesy Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. 23 right, 24- Will Brown. 26:27- David Attie. 32-35-Illustration by Paul Salmon. 36-Ken Heinan, courtesy The Star. 37-Robert Moeser. 38-39-Avinash Pasricha. 42-43-Michael Mella. Inside back cover and back cover-Joseph J. Lucas Jr.
Published by the International Communication Agency. American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001, on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Government. Printed by H.K. Mehta at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana. Use of SPAN articles in other publications is encouraged, except when copyrighted. For permission, write to the Editor. Price of magazine: one year's subscription (12 issues), 21 rupees; single copy, 2 rupees 75 paise. For change of address, send an old address from a recent SPAN envelope along with new address to Circulation Manager, SPAN Magazine, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001. See change of address form on page 48b.
Front cover: Shiva, King of Dancers (detail). Chola Dynasty, tenth century. Bronze, height 30". This image of Shiva as Nataraja portrays the Hindu concepts of the cycle of creation and destruction-symbolized by the drum and flame in Shiva's upper hands-and liberation from ignorance, which lies crushed under his foot. See also pages 18-25. Back cover: An ultralight plane soars at an experimental aircraft fly-in. See page 49.
This month SPANis proud to present some of the treasures from the exhibition "Manifestations of Shiva" that is currently arousing great interest and excitement in cities across the United States. In Philaqelphia, where the exhibition was inaugurated, it sparked a veritable festival of Indian dance, music and folklore. Many museums and concert halls participated; there was even a program at the city's zoo! After its Philadelphia triumph, the exhibition is traveling to Los Angeles, California; Fort Worth, Texas; and Seattle, Washington. And,as in Philadelphia, the enchanting exhibition is sure to arouse renewed fascination with the country that produced these works: India. As the ancient art in "Manifestations of Shiva" brings to thousands of Americans new perceptions of the Indian people and their culture, a newer art form--cinema--is presenting a vibrant picture of India today. Certainly no single film gives a clear picture of a society, but a broad collection of a nation's films, carefully selected for their artistic excellence, cannot fail to offer remarkable insights into the soul of a country. Film India, which is now on a year-long tour of the United States, is such a festival! featuring some 100 outstanding works. Film India is the creation of the Indo-U .S. Subcommission on Education and Culture, and is sponsored by New York s Asia Society and Museum of Modem Art and India s Directorate of Film Festivals and Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. This monumental exhibition, which opened with great fanfare in New York in June, consists of three parts: a complete retrospective of the films of Satyajit Ray; a historical selection of Indian films of the pa st half-century (including some by D. G. Phalke, India's first feature filmmaker); and a showcase of contemporary Indian cinema. Many of the films will be screened in nine other cities, among them Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles. Film India is distinguished by its variety: It includes documentaries and shorts in addition to feature films and highlights the talents of filmmakers and actors from many parts of the country. The work of Satyajit Ray has been highly t respected in the United States for years, of course, since the world premiere of Pather Panchali in New York in 1955 -- but never before have all 28 of his films been exhibited in a single retrospective, even in India. Participating in a symposium on Ray's films at the New York opening of the festival was Chidananda Das Gupta, managing editor of SPANand author of a study of the filmmaker's work. Two of Das Gupta's short films, Portrait of a City and Across the River, are being shown in the festival. What effect does he believe Film India will have in the United States? "The cinema will be, I think, the spearhead of changing the U . S. media s stereotyped perception of India. " Eric Bamouw, the eminent American media historian and coauthor of Indian Film who participated in selecting titles for the historical section of the festival, believes the time is particularly ripe for such a major festival of Indian movies. He expects that American filmgoers will appreciate now-unfamiliar directors who have followed in Ray's footsteps, establishing a kind of authenticity by "focusing on people in a particular social setting at a particular moment." He envisions the festival opening a wider market for Indian films within the United States. As with the Shiva exhibition, the Indian films are being received with great excitement and press comment -- during the first week of the Ray films there was a line of people waiting in the rain outside the Museum of Modem Art to buy tickets, long after the seats had been sold. --M •P. I
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Five days after his first inauguration, on March 9, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a major banking bill to the U.S. Congres$ and had it back at the White House for his signature by dinner time the same day. Though none could wish for the economic disasters that made the legislators grasp so eagerly at that measure, presidents since Roosevelt must have envied .the ease with which he moved bills through a. largely uncritical Congress in his first term. It isn't likely to be that easy for President Ronald Reagan. The Capitol houses the biggest potential obstacle between Reagan and his vision of a leaner, less ambitious federal government. Like any president, he must move difficult legislation through a difficult institution. But unlike his Democratic predecessor, Jimmy Carter, President Reagan has a second task: to establish a new majority coalition in Congress. He needs that coalition to pass his bills and to solidify the gains Republicans made in the 1980 elections. Although Reagan begins his term with the customary pledges of bipartisan cooperation, his task will not be easy. "When you're rearranging national priorities for the first time in 40 years, you've got problems," remarks Senator Paul Laxalt (Republican, Nevada), the President's close friend and his "eyes and ears" on Capitol Hill. But Reagan has clear advantages over his predecessor. His assets, evident well before the inauguration, include an active network of congressional contacts, a team of seasoned lobbyists led by veteran Max L. Friedersdorf, who was a congressional lobbyist for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and the easy "insider" style of the President and his top aides. Members of both Republican and Abridged with permission from the Congressional Quarterly. by Congressional Quarterly, Inc.
Š 1981
Democratic parties expressed delight with Reagan's festive dinners for Washington political and business leaders during the transition, his decision to retain Mike Mansfield, former Democratic Senate majority leader, as ambassador to Japan and his aides' early contacts with key members of Congress and their staffs. One of Reagan's biggest advantages is the sense of both parties in Congress that the nation's problems are now very serious indeed. And a key factor favoring hj~ success is his stress on economic, regulatory and military issues, which have the broadest political appeal. Most Republican goals in these areas are "not dramatically hostile to Democratic sympathies," according to Thomas S. Foley (Democrat, Washington), House majority whip. Many Democrats are aware that if they appear tooobstructionistic, the President and the Republicans can, in the 1982 congressional elections, accuse them of wrecking the nation's chances for economic recovery. "We don't want to look like spoilers, and we really don't want to be spoilers either," Foley stressed. To hope that the Republicans fail and the nation's economic situation worsens "is a crabbed and perverse sort of politics," he said. That sentiment was reinforced by House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. (Democrat, Massachusetts), who recently said that "America comes first; party comes second." . However, the Republicans face clear time constraints. Robert Dole, Chairman of Senate Finance Committee, and other prominent Republicans have advised the President that he must win Congress to his economic plans to cut taxes and spending within six to eight months or risk losing support on Capitol Hill and among the voters. Given the deliberate pace at which Congress usually works, there is not much time before the 1982
In his effort to woo the Congress, President Reagan often meets with congressional leaders. Here, he talks with Speaker of the House Thomas O'Neill outside his office. Between them are Senator Paul Laxalt and Vice President George Bush (background).
elections for the Republican Party to make good on its 1980 promises and solidify its election gains. Reagan began courting Congress extraordinarily early. In 1977, he organized a political action committee called Citizens for the Republic to finance Republican candidates for state and national offices. During the 1980campaign, Reagan backers in Congress created a network of congressional advisory committees to develop policy positions for him and to advise himonkey concerns of constituents. The courtship of Congress intensified during the transition, when the opinion of Dole and Senators John Tower of Texas, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and other Republicans heavily influenced Reagan's Cabinet choices. Republican members also were invited to' advise departmental transition teams. Reagan aides promised regular bipartisan leadership meetings with the President. Reagan himself "met with a number of senators ... Democrats and Republicans ... touching all the right keys," Dole said. . . The Reagan Administration does not plan to load up Congress with more legislation than it can digest. Laxalt said Reagan's legislative agenda is an economic package, to be followed by a military spending proposal and regulatory reform legislation. To reduce the congressional workload, the President has decided to reverse or stave off as many regulations as possible by administrative action. 0 About the Author: Elizabeth Wehr is a reporter of the Congressional Quarterly.
PROTECTING HOMES FROM
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Much of the world's population lives in earthen buildings. Made of sun-dried adobe-mud-bricks or earth and stones combined with other building materials, these houses provide nearly the ideal low-cost housing. However, they are vulnerable to the elements-strong winds, torrential rains, floods, typhoons and, worst of all, earthquakes which can destroy entire townships. Although it is technically possible to build mud houses that are earthquakeresistant, there are social and economic impediments that hamper the implementation of this technology on a large scale. To share this technology and to examine the impediments-and how they could be overcome-the University of New Mexico and Intertect, an American foundation that specializes in world disaster relief, recently organized an international workshop on earthen buildings in seismic areas in the Southwest U.S. city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Agency for International Development and Appropriate Technology International-another private American organization that brings specialists in different disciplines together to apply their expertise in solving humankind's common problems-the workshop was attended by more than 80 experts from some two dozen countries. Among the participants was G. C. Mathur, director of the Indian Ministry of Works and Housing's National Buildings Organisation (NBO). Soon after Mathur's return from the workshop Krishan Gabrani interviewed him. Mr. Mathur, how would you assess the success of the workshop? G.C. Mathur: Oh, it was of tremendous significance. For one thing, although there .have been a number of world conferences in the past on different aspects of earthquake engineering, this was the first time, I believe, that an international workshop focusing exclusively on earthen buildings has been organized. I have always maintained, for example
n•••.....,.. •.•
at the sixth World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in New Delhi in 1977, that mud buildings must be included in any research and action plan aimed. at mitigating the effects of earthquakes. After all, most of the world's population, especialiy in the developing countries, lives in adobe houses. In India, for instance, more than 70 percent of the total 94 million dwelling units in rural areas are made with mud as the principal building material. Taking an average of five-to-six persons per dwelling unit, the total population living in adobe houses in India is about 380 million. You can imagine the magnitude of the problem when you realize that two-thirds of the country lies in seismic zones of moderate to severe intensity. This is a colossal human problem, and the workshop rightly underscored the need for intensive research to develop appropriate technologies for making both existing and new mud houses not only resistant to seismic forces but also more livable. The other significance of the workshop was that it provided a unique opportunity to the participants to share problems, experience and expertise. This is important insofar as it eliminates the duplication of research effort and energy in solving the common problems of the
world. With so many differences between nations in social, economic and cultural lifestyles, it certainly pays to view the same problem from different perspectives. What you learn at these meetings helps you plan your strategies. For example, as a follow-up to the·' workshop, we have already drawn a number of plans for action within India. One of them is to produce a film showing how existing and new houses can be made earthquakeresistant. This film will be shown all over India, and we may even share it with other countries. Digressing a little, I may add here that I was completely nonplussed when I received the invitation for this meeting. For, I could not imagine the United States, a nation famous for its science and technology and sky-rise structures, holding a workshop on earthen buildings. At the conference, however, my American hosts told me that the southern states of the United States-New Mexico, Texas and others-have many houses of mud for a variety of reasons. One, because of their proximity to South America and its Spanish influence, which has filtered to these southern states. Spaniards were famous for building mud houses called adobe. Second, mud houses are being con-
structed as an energy-saving device. In the tropical climate of these states, mud houses perform admirably: Unlike the concrete and brick houses, earthen buildings don't warm up in summer and are not too cold in winter. Can you cite one or two specific instances where you think the participants were the richer in experience as a result of this workshop? Mathur: Oh, yes-I will give you an example. You see, there are sophisticated instruments that simulate the forces of earthquakes. These are used to test the effects of earthquakes on huge buildings, dams and other industrial structures. But the problem is that they are very costly and¡ need specialists to operate themwhich many developing nations cannot afford. Besides, you don't need these sophisticated instruments for testing the earthquake safety factor in mud and masonry structures. To solve this problem, the Department of Earthquake Engineering at Roorkee University in Uttar Pradesh has developed a cheap, ingenious facility. They have built a slope and overlaid it with discarded railway lines. What they do is roll a discarded railway wagon down the slop, arid it hits the platform on which rests. the model of a building to be tested for earthquake resistance. The impact creates a force akin to that of an earthquake. Now, this is cheap, simple to operate and yet very effective. When this technique was demonstrated through slides at the workshop by Dr. J. Krishna and Dr. A.S. Arya, a number of participants showed a keen interest in it. Dr. Krishna, whose work in earthquake engineering has won him international acclaim, is Professor Emeritus and Dr. Arya is a professor at Roorkee University. Has your organization, NBO, done any work in improving the design of mud houses? Mathur: Yes, we have. As you know, India still lives in villages, and the majority of people there are poor. One of the basic tasks before the National Buildings Organisation, therefore, is to design mud houses that are not only earthquakeresistant but are also inexpensive, durable and aesthetically pleasing. We have developed one such house which can be adapted for varying climatic conditions in different parts of the country. Built on a plinth area of 20 square
meters, the house costs only Rs. i,500 to Rs. 2,000, depending upon whether it has a thatch or tile roof. I may here tell you that NBO, which functions as a regional housing center for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, has also done pioneering work in masonry structures, which too were discussed at the workshop. Until about 10 years ago, many civil engineers and architects thought that no more than two or two-and-a-half stories could be built on single-brick-thick loadbearing walls. So, we at the NBO took up the challenge, 'and constructed fourstory, even five-story, buildings on single-
brick-thick walls. These buildings have been subjected to tests to determine their performance characteristics. As population increases and land becomes scarce, we will have to go verti-¡ cal-especially in the cities. But high-rise buildings are costly in that they use reinforced concrete, steel and other expensive building materials. Bricks are still the cheapest building material. A little while ago you said that the basic philosophy of NBO is to construct mud houses that are inexpensive and thus within the affordability limit of poor people. What, then, are the constraints that hamper the acceptance of these low-cost, improved mud houses by the villagers? Mathur: There are many. Just reaching the people is a stupendous problem. In India, for example, there are more than seven million villages scattered over the length and breadth of the country-and many of them in the remotest and most inaccessible areas. How do you reach them? Moreover, these people are mostly tradition-bound and poor. It is difficult to convince them; and even if you
do, they don't have money even for changes that we suggest in their existing houses. But is anything being done? Mathur: Yes, we are doing as much as we can. NBO, for example, has nine regional rural housing wings in different parts of the country whose task is to create awareness about improved building techniques and earthquake hazards. We have also put up clusters of 10 to 20 demonstration low-cost houses in 36 villages, with a view to motivating villagers. Besides, NBO has propagated the basic principles of design and construchouses tion of earthquake-resistant through two films, When the Earth Trembles and For You, a Cheap Home. One last question: Is there no way to predict earthquakes so that at least the damage to life and property could be minimized? Mathur: To my knowledge, there is no technology as yet to predict earthquakes, but important work is being done around the world's seismic areas to better understand the origins of earthquakes. One of these is the North-East India region, which lies in a seismic belt of severe intensity. In this connection, let me mention here that in December 1978, an Indo-U.S. Workshop on Natural Disaster (Earthquake and Wind) Mitigation was held in . New Delhi under the auspices of the Indian Department of Science and Technology and the U.S. National Science Foundation. Among the many plans of action decided upon at this workshop was the establishment of a strong-motion earthquake instrument array in the North-East India region. This Instrumentation Project, which has been assisted by the United States, is in fact a follow-up of another international earthquake engineering conference at Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1978. The Honolulu conference identified 28 regions all over the world for studying the geotectonic origins of earthquakes. Of these 28 sites, priority was given to six areas that were considered most vulnerable to seismic forces. And topping these six areas was the North-East India region. By establishing these strong-motion earthquake instrument arrays, scientists hope tounderstapd better the characteristics and forces of earthquakes, and eventually may succeed in developing technologies to predict them. 0
JemesL
A virtually unsu1];Sgeneration of scientists is proving that individual inventiveness is still¡¡alive in America. These innovators, are pouring out inventions and discoveries that range from a "thinking computer" to a controversial theory that behavior is dictated by genes. U.S. scientists are making it clear in a wide variety of endeavors that they have not lost their creative touch-or surrendered the quest for discovery to research by committee in corporate and government laboratories. This wealth of new ideas and discoveries already is affecting life in every corner of the globe, and will be even more recognizable by the end of the century. For instance, a cheap, highly effective contraceptive compound developed by a University of Missouri chemist is being considered for mass distribution in China. This article discusses the work of six top scientists whose efforts represent some of the most promising scientific research taking place in the United States.
Melvin Gottlieb "It's one thing to achieve the burn in a laboratory, and another to make fusion a commercial reality." Nuclear fusion is the power source of the sun. It makes the hydrogen bomb explode. For more than 25 years, scientists have been struggling to re-create its force in a controlled reaction that could provide unlimited energy for the future. Fusion still remains the most awesome technological feat ever undertaken by mankind-including placing a man on the moon. Yet Melvin Gottlieb, one of the top fusion scientists in the world, believes fusion's immense problems are no longer insurmountable.
"We were really groping until about 1969," be says. "Finally we're starting to see the light.". His fellow physicists say Gottlieb has played a major role in creating the cautious optimism now shared by fusion scientists. Gottlieb heads the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, which is among the most respected facilities in the United States or the Soviet Union trying to solve the immense technical problems of the most promising energy source yet conceived by mankind. "This is one area in which there is total cooperation between American and Soviet scientists," says Gottlieb. "Nothing here is classified." In fact, cooperation between the two countries is so great that a Russian scientist recently told Gottlieb, "The international language of physics is now broken English." So far, the Princeton operation has come closer than any of the others to reaching the almost mystical "breakeven" point. Breakeven comes when a fusion reactor generates as much energy as it takes in. Princeton scientists have come tantalizingly near, and Gottlieb thinks a $239 million reactor being built at a huge construction site near the Princeton lab will achieve the elusive goal about two years after it goes. into operation in 1982. Fusion demands extreme conditions never before encountered on earth, occurring only in plasma, a form of gas so hot that individual atoms are strippeo of their electrons. The gas is hydrogen that comes from the earth's most abundant substance-water. Fusion takes place when the nuclei of individual hydrogen atoms join, thus releasing an immense surge of energy. In nuclear fission, the type of reaction that takes place in today's atomic power plants, atoms are split apart instead of fused.
A tall, energetic man who likes to jump up from his desk to draw schematic diagrams for visitors on a nearby blackboard, Gottlieb, 64, firmly believes that the Princeton facility will be able to establish the scientific conditions for the "burn," as scientists call the fusion breakeven. But he cautions: "It's one thing to achieve the burn in a laboratory, and another to make fusion a commercial reality." As head of the Princeton project, Gottiieb works to organize the efforts of more than 150 scientists in the fusion projects. When theoretical breakthroughs come, Gottlieb must decide how they are to be applied. "It's an extremely tough position to be in," says one of Gottlieb's colleagues. "Trying to deal with dozens of irascible scientists is difficult at best. But Mel handles it better than anybody else I've seen." Gottlieb, who has been responsible for some important theoretical breakthroughs in plasma physics, became one of the United States' top fusion researchers by accident. He had just received his doctorate in cosmic-ray physics from the University of Chicago. The physicist recalls: "I was on my way to a fellowship abroad, and stepped in at Princeton in 1954 just to see what was going on with the plasma-physics project that was just beginning. It was so exciting that I never left."
Pierre Crabbe "Right now the world population is nearly 4.5 billion persons. That will duplicate to 9 billion in 35 years unless we do somethinf?" Pierre Crabbe, chairman of the University of Missouri chemistry department, recently made a breakthrough in the development of an economical birth-control compound that could be used to curb population growth in developing countries. The Belgian-born scientist, 52, has already made a global name for himself as a teacher, author and humanitarian. He holds doctorates in organic chemistry and physics, and has taught in Belgium, France and Mexico. His recent breakthrough came in the creation of a new manufacturing procedure for Dinordrin, a contraceptive compound that is expected to become the basis of a twice-a-month pill for women. The Chinese are so enthusiastic about its prospects that Crabbe was invited to their country to explain it further. "Right now the world population is nearly 4.5 billion persons," he says, explaining the need for an effective, easy-to-vse mass contraceptive. "That will duplicate to 9 billion in 35 years unless we do something." Crabbe has been working with the World Health Organization for more than five years to produce an effective birth-control method for developing countries. He first extracted the birth-control compound Dinor. drin from the roots of wild plants that grow in China, Central America and northern India. The compound proved effective, but it required an enormously expensive extraction process. So Crabbe set out to create Dinordrin synthetically in the laboratory. He provided the ideas, and graduate students performed the lab work. He said the work should have taken two years, but the team worked day and night
and succeeded in synthesizing Dinordrin in eight months. The Chinese, who have developed a similar birthcontrol medication of their own, may be the first to use Dinordrin, which is 10 times as biologically active as the expensive and scarce Chinese compound. "You get the same effect with one-tenth the dose," Crabbe explains. Crabbe's compound, the first kind that could be taken orally as infrequently as once every two weeks, could be introduced in China within two years, but will require more than 10 years to test and market in the United States because of government regulations. Speed is urgent, Crabbe says, noting: "Most of the population growth is concentrated in areas that can least afford it. You have to try to reduce this population growth now. You can't wait 10 years to do it." Scientific endeavors are the essence of Crabbe's life. "Research improves the creativity of the mind," he says. "If you are an artist, you paint, draw, write. That is your creative outlet. If you are a scientist, you use your creativity to benefit society, to investigate questions or phenomena for which the answers are not known." .
"Computer capabilities in both visual and auditory domains fall far short of human capabilities." The creation of machine intelligence that simulates the human mind is a goal that some computer experts have been working on for more than 25 years. In some cases today, their electronic brains come astonishingly close to that concept. Herbert Simon, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, believes that computers that "think," rather than merely compute, eventually could help solve some of mankind's most pressing problems, like the energy crisis.
A professor of psychology and computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Simon, 65, is credited by his fellow scientists with having a quick and inventive mind that continually seeks new challenges. He is a Nobel laureate. But the prestigious prize was awarded in 1978 for work he did in economics two decades ago, not for his remarkable work with computers today. Simon and his colleague, Allen Newell, a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon, have come as close as anyone to creating a true thinking computer. The two recently built a self-programing computer that, once given basic mathematical principles, can develop more sophisticated formulations. Simon, who earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at the University of Chicago, says that in developing these remarkable new machines, it is necessary to learn the mechanisms by which human minds acquire and develop information. "It then turns out that you can program computers to simulate these mechanisms and thereby create machine intelligence," he explains. Called BACON, after statesman and thinker Sir Francis Bacon, the program developed by Simon and a graduate student, Pat Langley, recently "discovered" on its own a law of planetary motion first conceived by the astronomer Johannes Kepler in the 17th century. Machines programed in work such as physics or cancer research eventually m'ight be able to arrive at answers not apparent to human minds. But Simon and other researchers don't believe that machine intelligence will ever duplicate or replace human thought. For one thing, computers can only touch on the fringes of human emotion, an essential part of human intelligence and curiosity. Simon points out that it is exceedingly difficult to simulate the organs-eyes and ears-that feed information to the human brain. "Computer capabilities
in both visual and auditory domains fall far short of human capabilities," he says. The most important question about the development of intelligent computers is what it does to the way man views himself, Simon says. Mankind's collective ego has been jarred in the past by scientific developments from Copernicus to Freud. Computerized intelligence could have an even more profound effect, some social scientists think. Yet, says Simon: "To believe that knowledge is to be preferred to ignorance is to believe that the human species is capable of progress."
Robert Trivers "There is no reason to take the evolution of human social behavior out of the genetic arena." Most biologists agree that physical traits, such as eye and hair color, height, baldness and hemophilia are passed on from generation to generation by genes. Now a new branch of science called sociobiology says that behavioral traits-the way people select a mate, for instance-also are dictated by genes, the material in individual human cells that, in turn, controls hereditary characteristics. Robert Trivers, 38, is one of the leading and most controversial theorists in sociobiology, a field that has yet to be fully accepted as a legitimate scientific discipline by many biologists. Yet Trivers and his fellow scientists in this new discipline maintain that the theories that are being supported by sociobiology eventually will come to be seen as developments just as important to biology as Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Strongly dedicated to the controversial new science,
Trivers believes that scholars eventually will be forced to accept the genetic component of human behavior. "Without this interpretation, cultural evolution just doesn't make sense," he says. Educated at Harvard, Trivers is a faculty member at the University of Califo,rnia at Santa Cruz and at the Smithsonian Institution. He spends much of his time with his wife's family in' Jamaica, which he considers an ideal laboratory for sociobiology. One of Trivers' most important contributions to the new field is a theory he developed that contends parents don't take care of their offspring for the altruistic reasons commonly set forth. Instead, Trivers' theory maintains that parents of any species, including man, care for their young because such' behavior increases the chances that the offspring will survive-and thus reproduce. The theory creates a genetic reason for the way people act beyond the reproduction of their offspring. Because Trivers' and other sociobiological theories suggest that such admired human traits as parental altruism, charity and friendship could be ultimately motivated by individual selfishness, sociobiology has created a storm of controversy-including a backlash in . the academic community. Richard Lewontin, professor of biology at Harvard, says there is no evidence that a "single human behavioral characteristic" is caused by genetic variation. Trivers and other evolutionary biologists maintain that sociobiology is the only comprehensive theory that explains the development of human social and cultural systems. Explains Trivers: "There is no reason to take the evolution of human social behavior out of the genetic arena." The scholar, who stu,died history and mathematics before taking up biology, hopes he will be' able to help "educate a generation" with the books and articles he writes on sociobiology. "I want to change the way people think about their everyday lives," says Trivers. "Life is intrinsically biological. It's absurd not to use our best biological concepts."
Rosalyn Yalow "Nuclear physics was where everything was happening in those days. It seemed as if every experiment won a Nobel Prize." Rosalyn Yalow is one of America's top physicists in nuclear medicine, a field that uses radioactive substances to test and diagnose human illnesses. Her colleagues at the Veterans Administration Hospital in New York's Bronx borough and elsewhere say the field would still be in a "rather primitive state" without her. Yalow and a coworker recently devised a test that revolutionized biological and medical research. The procedure already is helping to diagnose serious medical problems. The sensitive technique, which combines the use of radioactive isotopes with immunology, measures tiny particles of hormones and enzymes that exist in such low quantities in the human body that they defy conventional testing methods.
Robert Trivers
For creating the powerful new medical tool, Yalow, 60, was a corecipient of the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology in 1977. She is only the sixth woman to win the prize in science, and the second woman to win a Nobel for medicine. The Nobel committee likened the sensitivity of Yalow's test, called radioimmunoassay, to detecting the presence of half a cube of sugar in a 9,325-square-kilometer lake one-third meter deep. Trained as a physicist, Yalow received her doctorate at the University of Illinois. She was inspired early by the story of another famous scientist. "In 1938, Madame Curie, Eve Curie's book about her mother, came out. Every woman scientist read that book over and over again. We were all going to be like Madame Curie." At first she wanted to become a medical doctor, but said that attending medical school would have been too expensive. "Besides, nuclear physics was where everything was happening in those days," she says. "It seemed as if every experiment won a Nobel Prize." In a sense, World War II helped propel her into physics.
James L. Gould "An infant blind from birth will smile naturally, and doesn't have to see an adult smile in order to smile himself. "
After the military draft had begun, she was named to the faculty of engineering at the University of Illinois. The appointment came because, she says in her straightforward manner, "there were a limited number of men as good as I was." She says it is still hard for a woman to be a scientist, particularly in a high-technology area. "You're never one of the boys," she adds. What qualities does she believe are responsible for her success? "I've always been well organized," she explains. "I've always considered what I wanted. I've been prepared to work for it. And I've given much thought to the complications associated with the paths I had set myself upon." Contrary to the practice of most working scientists, Yalow actually has rejected government money for some of her projects. "Too much money is disruptive," she explains, adding that, if offered, she also would turn down a position at the nation's most prestigious university. "Frankly, I'm happy in my laboratory. The scale is just right."
In early 1980, a school bus carrying 40 people with black hoods over their heads crept along the back roads of rural New Jersey. The man in charge of the bus was Princeton University biologist James L. Gould, and his "captives" were student volunteers in a unique experiment. Gould, one of the United States' bright young behavioral biologists, was trying to find out whether humans have a natural sense of direction. "What we found was nothing," said Gould. "If humans have the ability to tell where they are, it's certainly not the case with Princeton students." Strictly speaking, Gould is an ethologist-a biologist who studies animal behavior, including that of humans. Like many behavioral scientists, Gould has spent a lot of time studying bees because their actions are so regular and so simple. Partly from his bee research, he has developed a new theory about learning and development in infants. The theory is likely to create a storm of controversy among behavioral scientists because it contradicts an established theory that children learn through the responses they receive from adults. Gould says the "simplest, most natural experiment" disproves the established theory. He explains: "An infant blind from birth 'will smile naturally, and doesn't have to see an adult smile in order to smile himself." Gould's theory is that all infants, both human and nonhuman, are born with a set of innate instructions that gives them a learning and development "program." An example Gould cites is that when something is placed in an infant's palm, the baby shuts its hand. Gould says this means the infant has learned to grasp, a permanent skill. Other childhood skills, including toilet training and learning to speak, may be acquired the same way, Gould maintains. The 36-year-old assistant professor established himself as a behaviorist to be reckoned with in 1974, when he used an experiment to show conclusively that bees use a symbolic dance to show their hive mates where to find food. Like many younger behavioral scientists, Gould uses. advanced technology to help him solve the riddles of animal behavior. In his laboratory in a converted barn in the hills outside Princeton, Gould has set up television cameras, recording systems and a computer-all to measure the movements of bees. He says his background as a physics student at California Institute of Technology has given him an advantage in the high technology field. Gould became interested in science at an early age when he began asking the simplest questions imaginable, such as: What makes the leaves fall? "In a sense," he says, "I'm still asking those same 0 questions today." About the Author: John Boslough is an associate editor of
News & World Report, specializing in science.
u.s.
What Are the
Dolphins Saying? Like the atmosphere of the whole debate over the intelligence of dolphins, the air at Flipper's Sea SChObl in Florida was filled with an enthusiastic and sometimes discordant clamor. Laughing gulls cried, peacocks screamed, loudspeakers informed small groups of tourists about the value of green turtle shells and the feel of dolphin skin, Napoleon the heron screeched at larcenous pelicans, and dolphins leaped and splashed to the constant sound of human cheers: "All right, Gipper!" "Beautiful, beautiful, Longnose!" "Atta girl, Rose!" The quietest thing going on was the research. Off to one side, from a plywood box in which a man crouched under a poncho behind one-way windows, came an occasional short, whistled tune. If I had not known what it was, I wouldn't have noticed it at all. But the odd noise was a message, a request made by a human being to a dolphin in a code that resembled language. Although I knew that what it was asking was simple-that the animal touch a ball with its fluke-I knew also that the procedure represented a complex probe into a frontier of knowledge. Here, as at a few other places in California, Florida and Hawaii, people are examining, through language, an idea that has been broadly popular for years: that dolphins and their cetacean cousins, whales, may be among the smartest creatures on earth, as intelligent as humans. I arrived at Flipper's Sea School near the end of a trip I made to try to find out just how smart dolphins are. By then I had learned that the argument over their intelligence is both intricate and fierce, and seems A dolphin takes II breather (left) between research sessions at Flipper's Sea School in Florida. Deep in conversation, at right, llre trainer Carol Smith and dolphin Longnose.
Reprinted
from the Smithsonian
magazine.
Copyright Š 1980 Michael Parfit. Reprinted by permission of The Sterling Lord Agency. Inc.
to involve its participants in an intellectual and emotional tangle of metaphysics, science, speculation and hope so intense it sometimes doesn't leave much room for the simple beauty of the animals themselves. I began, as anyone must, with the patriarch of what might be called the "smart dolphin movement," John Cunningham Lilly, M.D. "I invite you to entertain some new beliefs," Lilly wrote recently, "[that] these Cetacea with huge brains are more intelligent than any man or woman." In the 20 years that Lilly has espoused this view, based on his own research, many. people, inspired by what they have seen of these sleek animals'at sea, at the movies, on television or at oceanaria, and by Lilly's five books on the subject, have not just been entertained by this notion of surpassing intelligence, they've been captured by it. They've heard recordings of the sonorous tunes of the humpback whale, they've read of wild' dolphins playing with children, they've seen testimonials from men rescued from drowning by porpoises. Grieving at all the ways human beings have found to behave foully on this planet, they're ready to believe in the dolphin Lilly describes: an alternate sentient being-benign, philosophical, and gifted with the patience and wisdom of the sea. Stored in Lilly's house in the hills of Malibu, California, are tapes of the voices of several bottlenose dolphins he worked with in the 1960s. One afternoon I stood and listened to one with him in a room walled with brown shag. Lilly was lean and almost bony, his slimness accented by one of the one-piece jumpsuits that seem to make up his entire wardrobe. Red light from the ceiling edged his face. He turned on the stereo and the room filled with the slosh of water and with a collection of sounds that seemed at once to be made by a drum, a rooting boar, a mouse, a smoke alarm, a thumb rubbed on a clean plate, a bullfrog, a number on a push-button telephone, and the slow, theatrical opening of a castle door, all punctuated regularly by sudden, fierce breaths. Lilly's voice was dry. "He's trying to convince us of something," he said, "and we don't know what it is. With that kind of repertory we don't think they're simpleminded." But there is no peace between scientists. A few days later I negotiated the concrete
maze of the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego and met Forrest G. Wood, a Navy staff biologist who, back in the middle 1950s, first introduced Lilly to the voices of dolphins by playing him tapes. "I'm not sure whether if I hadn't played him the tapes the world would be a different place now,". Wood said with some regret. "Nobody other than Lilly, no scientist, I believe, has attempted to say how intelligent these animals are with respect t6 humans." He elaborated: "With all our ability to communicate and express insights, if we cannot come up with something to measure our own intelligence adequately, I can't see how we could do it with dolphins." Wood's sharp attack on Lilly's point of view and on his credibility as a man of science framed the argument. Most scientists I talked to agreed with Wood that intelligence, as a word and as a concept, becomes pretty fuzzy when applied to dolphins. That was why many scientists recoiled when I asked them to place the dolphin on an intelligence scale, between dogs and chimpanzees, say, or chimps and humans, although most of them simply replace the word with phrases that seem more specific: information storage capacity, plasticity, behavior potential, cognitive characteristics. These words and phrases allow them to move gingerly from a semantic debate into something more rewarding: the dolphin's brain.
C
etaceans in general have remarkably large brains. The sperm whale's is up to six times larger than the human brain, and the bottlenose dolphin, the most studied cetacean, has a brain about the same size as ours. Raw size alone is not as significant as other factors, but Dr. Harry Jerison, a neurobiologist at the University of California, has developed a measure of what he calls structural encephalization, comparing the volume of the brain to the surface area of the body. This indicates how much of the brain's processing capacity goes beyond .the amount needed to handle ordinary body functions. Jerison places whales and dolphins near the human section along the "structural encephalization scale." The anatomy of that mass of neurons is just as important as its size, however, and here again tangible specifics like volume give way to interpretation. In human beings that part of the brain known as the neocor-
tex-the more recent structure, in terms of evolution-is often described as the area whose dominance of our brain's surface results in the capacity to create, innovate, solve, choose, articulate and reason which we call intelligence. In the kangaroo, says a Russian scientist named I.N. Filimonov, the total cortical surface is 69 percent neocortex, in the macaque monkey it is 93 percent neocortex, and in the human it is 96 percent neocortex. In dolphins the neocortex covers as much as 98 percent of the surface. But even this statistical hierarchy does not clarify much: The dolphins' expanse of highly folded neocortex is considerably thinner than it is in humans, and it differs in many other ways. Discussing brain anatomy is almost as bad as arguing about the word intelligence. The further in you wade, the more mired you become in the fallacies of direct comparison. However, one broad conclusion reached by many of the people studying dolphins is appealing: Their large brain's high metabolism is a prodigious consumer of fuel, and it's unlikely that the cetaceans made it for 25 million years on merely a gas-guzzler mind. They're using all that power for something. Once you start rowing out from the swampy shore of brain size and structure you run into a sea of speculation. To Lilly, dolphins have used their brains to develop their own language, culture, oral history, philosophy and system of ethics-a concept that has led some believers to propose establishing diplomatic relations with the cetacean nation. Forrest Wood and many others figure that the animal's incredible talent for finding and examining objects with its sonar probably puts much of that brain to use. This position is supported by recent U.S. Navy studies of records of electrical activity from tbe brain that "are consistent with a large percentage of brain devoted to auditory analysis." Dr. Kenneth Norris, a noted biologist who calls himself a "porpoise watcher," and who exude's an air of pragmatism even while engaged in flights of fancy, said that there are some researchers who speculate that dolphins may use their sonar sounds to project images into other dolphins' brains; and that dolphin sonar-which apparently can penetrate various substances in perhaps the same way hospital sonic equipment can penetrate a mother's womb to draw an image of an unborn child-may give the
While some scientists say dolphins are "more intelligent than' any man or woman," others think dolphins, like talking apes, may simply prove "the skill of trainers rather than the special ability of the animals themselves." animals an in-depth understanding of each other that human society is denied. Norris doubts that it happens that way, but believes "some sort of sonic imaging is possible." Wrecked by all these marvelous guesses, by now I wanted'to encounter one of these creatures. But there was more to study. If you cannot learn the nature of the dolphin mind by looking at bits of its brain, and you aren't satisfied with speculation, you have to look at behavior. Observations of dolphin behavior have been gathered largely from lucky meetings in the wild or from captive dolphins. From this limited data most scientists have concluded that dolphins are highly social animals. Their relationships with one another seem intricate. Although there appear to be hierarchical arrangements within dolphin clusters, they may also have what one scientist calls an open society, in which members can move from group to group within a larger herd, like humans at a cocktail party. In captivity they have been trained to perform amazing and often absurd tricks, like towing a dog on a surfboard or shooting basketballs, tricks they apparently can remember for long periods of time. In a celebrated experiment dolphins were taught to present new behavior-leaps, spins, dives and splashes their trainer had not seen the animals perform, but tasks they apparently grasped with ease. Although this experiment is often cited as an example of dolphins being able to understand and use generalized rules, it does not prove that they are unusually clever; the researcher who performed the experiment says she has seen equally impressive creativity in pigeons. In the wild, dolphins have shown some ability to adapt to new situations. Kenneth Norris noticed off Hawaii that small dolphin schools learned to identify and avoid boats that were out to capture them. But with larger groups he has seen no evidence that the animals transmit such information. The recent decline in the number of deaths of dolphins trapped in tuna nets is generally credited to improved industry techniques, performance and gear rather than to any dolphin's having learned to facilitate his own release and informing his friends of his discovery. To do that, of course, they'd have to have something like language. And language is at the heart of this debate. As human beings
it's our specialty,' the peak of our mind's achievement. So, when we go looking for something smart, really smart, the first thing we assume it should do is talk. John Lilly postulates the existence of "delphinese," a dolphin "language" a bit like Norris' musings about image formation using sound, but with an intricacy that would allow it to carry historical and ethical information from generation to generation. Norris and many others challenge that assumption. "There isn't anything that even hints at language," Norris said, slightly irritated at the difference between what he clearly labeled as his own speculation and Lilly's assertions. "What I see instead is a great rat's nest of sound which nobody-
nobody-understands.
"
number of experiments have, however, been aimed at unraveling that tangle. In 1965, in an experiment now considered a classic, Dr. Jarvis Bastian, a University of California (Davis) psychologist, separated two dolphins visually but not acoustically, then trained them so that the first, a female, had to tell the second, a male, which of two paddles to push so both could be rewarded. During a series of tests the two whistled and buzzed back and forth, and the male pushed the correct paddle most of the time. But this didn't mean that the two shared some kind
A
of detailed code or language. Bastian said it was just as likely that the female was making conditioned noises that the male had learned to interpret to his advantage. Back in 1962, scientists watched five bottlenose dolphins apparently send out one of their group to examine an artificial barrier. The dolphin swam out to the barrier making sonar clicks and swam back to the group whistling, and shortly the entire group swam through the barrier together. But however common this kind of action may be for dolphins, that rare scientifically recorded observation of the animals scouting the terrain remains today a little patch of color in an obscure puzzle. Thousands of feet of recordings have been made of dolphin sounds. In 1961 a Lockheed researcher said the 12 most common whistles he recorded in a tank containing nine dolphins were used in about the same frequency and order as the 12 most common English words. A few years later David and Melba Caldwell first published
studies that clashed with both these data and Lilly's idea of "delphinese." At least 90 percent of the time, they said, each dolphin in a group is just whistling a single, stereotyped sound that may serve as a sort of name-a signature whistle-but is not at all like language. Now both Lilly and the Caldwells have been challenged by a young behavioral biologist, Dr. Sheri Gish, who today studies bird song at the' National Zoo in Washington, D.C. During the middle and late 1970s Gish taped dolphins making sounds at each other over. a two-way ,underwater apparatus similar to a telephone. She found that most sounds were not the whistle some investigators have reported, but were clicks. She did not hear anything that she would call language. "The exact information they're transmitting is unknown to me," she said. "But what they're doing is limited. It doesn't appear to have a syntax or any other attribute of language-assumptions made by some past researchers. "Dolphins are unique among mammals," she continued. "We shouldn't confuse their behavior with human behavior. That's the mythology, and it gets in the way of science." Oddly, Melba Caldwell used a similar word. When I asked her why people are so fascinated by Lilly's hypotheses, she said mildly, "I think mainly because we can't find out anything about dolphins, so there does remain a mystery. So then you can attach a myth to a mystery, But the thing is: Do you want answers to questions, or do you want to keep your myth?" , Today at least four separate groups of investigators in the United States, exploring terrain already found by ,ape-language researchers to be mined with controversy, are working to teach dolphins artificial languages. At Flipper's Sea School dolphins are learning a whistle code, Near Augustine, Florida, graduate student Bill Lambaur is teaching two dolphins to recognize and use sheet-metal symbols. And in Redwood City, California, John Lilly himself, who is still respected as a scientist by many of his peers in spite of the scorn others heap upon him, is planning to beep and whistle at dolphins with an elaborate computer arrangement, observed by a constant stream of journalists. But the most advanced and dramatic work is being done by Dr. Louis Herman, a comparative psychologist specializing in the behavior of dolphins and
Sr
"Dolphins are unique among mammals. We shouldn't confuse their behavior with human behavior. That's the' mythology, and it gets in the way of science." whales, at the University of Hawaii. In a typical test, Herman puts a ball, a Frisbee, a hoop, a piece of plastic pipe and a fountain of water in a pool, tells a dolphin in a computerized whistle code to push the ball to the pipe-and the animal does as asked. More important, when he then asks the dolphin to push the pipe to the ball, the animal again behaves correctly, showing a rudimentary understanding of the structural differences we call syntax. When Herman throws a ball in the pool, a dolphin whistles "ball" in the same language like code. Herman is a methodical man. "I'm thoroughly impatient with speculation and wildness and extrapolation," he said with a confident, apologetic smile. "In scientific life there's no substitute for hard work and patience." Over 10 years Herman has built a broad foundation of knowledge about dolphin mental capacity on which to base his language work. He has published studies demonstrating, among other things, that they can remember single sounds and series of sounds about as well as humans, that they can see clearly above water and underwater, that they can identify tiny changes in the pitch of sounds, and that they can learn a symbol. Now, although his current project has been going only a year and a half, one dolphin already understands a vocabulary of more than 25 nouns, verbs and adjectives in the computerized whistle code. The other animal has a similar vocabulary based on gestures of the trainer's arm and hand, and ¡it can also recognize an object and name it in whistle language. At least one researcher thinks that polyglot dolphins, like talking apes, may simply prove the skill of trainers rather than the special ability of the animals themselves; but Herman believes that something like language is taking shape.
'W
e have a whole philosophical issue centered around the uni-queness of human language," Herman said. "Is it in fact a unique specialization, or can we find at least an elementary language capability in some of the large-brained social mammals?" Listening to Herman, I thought: This world of dolphin research is clearly a frontier. After years of speculation and wonder made possible by some pioneering but perhaps too hopeful leaps of thinking, the real work has begun. And it's exciting. No matter what you expect to find, you become enthralled by the magnitude of
"Ever wonder whether it's worth learning to communicate with humans?" Drawing by Thomas Stratton; originally published in Science Digest, September 1980.
the unknown and by the promise of the new exploration. In the heat of the Florida Keys, Flipper's Sea School bustled with that excitement. It was alive with noise and laughter, like a mining camp that's heard rumors of ore. I watched Mandy Rodriguez, 31, director of training, whistle in code to a five-year-old dolphin named Natua who was born here. "If you had told me five years ago that I would be whistling a language to a dolphin named Natua, I would have said you were crazy," Rodriguez said. "But I think we're going to get a lot done in this language." I sat on a dock with Carol Smith, 24, a research trainer, while she talked happily in English and sign language to a dolphin nicknamed Longnose. "Their friendship goes so deep and true," she said. She waved her foot in the air. Longnose dived and leaped. "Beautiful, Longsnouts," Smith said. "You can't spend much time around these guys without falling in love with them; then you become an emotional tree hugger and suspect in some people's eyes. It's so hard to get it down on paper so it's not just a girl in a bathing suit saying, 'Oh, I know they're smart, I know they are.'" I watched videotapes in a white van with Ron Reisman, 26, director of research, a college graduate in classical Greek and philosophy who has also worked with apelanguage projects. Reisman has clamped a steel framework of scientific methodblinds, statistics, random tests-over Flipper's free-ranging approach. "The name of the game at this operation," he said, "is
quantification: to take the vast wealth of anecdote and speculation generated over the years and test these in a controlled situation and produce quantifiable results. Nice, hard data gets you somewhere." I asked him why he has turned down lucrative jobs to work here. "I'm a hopeless romantic," he said. And there were the dolphins. Flipper's has 14 bottlenose dolphins held in large natural pools blasted from coral rock. Everywhere I walked they seemed to follow, cruising along beside the docks, each listing to one side to show one eye and a smile, watching speculatively, like a crocodile. They were more alien in person than on paper; the caricatures we draw of them, large brains and all, always wear human expressions. They were big, like streamlined horses, quick as otters, as firm and squeaky as rubber dolls, flexible as snakes. All grace and no hands, they could not move without flowing, like their sea. On a warm afternoon I put on a mask and swam with them, at last. They passed before my face, slabs of shaded gray patterned with scars, letting me slide my hand their length. One man has compared the first touch of a dolphin's skin to the feel of the new wet bottom of your own child, but this was a firmer contact, less emotional on both sides. I rode through the water grasping the base of a dorsal fin; I was whacked about the lower legs by flukes and noses; I dived from the quicksilver sky into heaving water and watched the shapes whirl around me-jaws, teeth, eyes, scars and flukes, a dance of speed and power. I surfaced, breathed and ducked below again. A face met mine head on, a strange countenance: the long, blunt beak, the eyes almost invisible from the sides, a broad forehead, the body tapering away behind. The head bobbed and nodded slightly in a sonar scan, and I heard a faint b4ZZ as the animal examined my skull, my skin, perhaps even the shape of the air held in my lungs or the pace of my heart. I felt scrutinized and known. For a moment-my need to judge would return-intelligence seemed indeed an artificial structure, like the pyramid of species on whose summit we humans have placed ourselves. I rose to breathe. So did the dolphin. D About the Author: Michael Parjit is the author ,j Last Stand at Rosebud Creek: The Story of Eighteen People and a Power Plant.
THE
POWER OF SMALL DAMS Thousands of existing small dams around the world, U.S. civil engineers believe, could be converted into small hydroelectric power plants. "Power from small dam sites represents a significant untapped potential for additional electrical energy in the United States and throughout the world," Lt. General John W. Morris recently told an international water-power conference in Washington, D.C., that drew representatives from about 20 nations. General Morris is Chief of Engineers of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whose civilian function is to build dams, reservoirs, levees, harbors and waterways in the United States. In 1977, the Corps conducted a survey of the water-power potential of the United States. The results were impressive, says Morris. "We have developed about 50 percent of our total hydropower potential. Or, more optimistically, we can double our existing hydropower production." The current total maximum potential hydropower capacity at existing U.S.
dams, both developed and undeveloped, large and small, is 120 million kilowatts. Of this, 60 million kilowatts have been developed-energy equivalent to about 63,000 million liters of oil. Of the remaining undeveloped 60-million-kilowatt potential, half could be produced from existing small dams. These 30 million kilowatts would supply the electrical needs of 8.5 million people annually, replacing 140 million barrels of oil. With continued oil supplies uncertain, with constantly escalating oil prices, and with the realization that eventually all oil reserves will be depleted, alternative sources of power, such as water, have become increasingly attractive. A small dam in the United States ranges from 7.50 to 30.5 meters in height with a reservoir storage capacity of from 61,000 cubic meters to 12 million cubic meters, although even smaller dams might be economically developed in some regions. The small dam, as defined by the U.S. Department of Energy, produces up to 5,000 kilowatts. During the study, the U.S. Corps of
.Small dams have the,potential of becoming a significant sourCl
Engineers found that of the 60,000 small dams surveyed, 5,600 were either already generating power or had the potential to produce more, and another 2,600 dams could be converted into hydroelectric plants. The reasons for renewed interest in hydropower are costs and the environment. The capital costs of small dams are estimated to be equivalent to the cost per megawatt for new coal or nuclear power facilities-about one to one-and-a-half million dollars per installed megawatt. (The lower the dam head, the higher the costs. The larger dams, for example, cost from $500,000 to $800,000 per installed megawatt.) But while the initial capital investment for turbines and related equipment is high, the costs of operating and maintaining hydroelectric plants are quite low. Most importantly, once they are installed, hydroelectric plants are virtually unaffected by the inflating costs of coal, oil and gas. "Moreover," as David Lilienthal, former chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, said, "they can be built quickly, compared to the 10 or 12 years required nowadays to design, license and build a large coal-burning or nuclear plant. What inflation and interest charges add to costs over such long periods is something the consumer would rather be spared." There are also no technological barriers. Hydroelectric technology is wellestablished. Joint research by the Department of Energy and the private sector is, therefore, now aimed instead at commercialization and capital cost reduction: developing innovations to reduce the cost of the structure, reducing the cost of turbines through mass production, stano. dardization or simplification, and reducing costs through the development of automatic control systems. But what makes hydropower more attractive economically than coal or nuclear power are the lessened costs to the environment, says David Zellner, environmental planner and manager of the hydropower study at the Corps. "There are environmental trade-offs and compromises," says Zellner. "But there are comparatively few harmful environmental affects."
Small hydropower--plants are virtually nonpolluting. They use a renewable resource-water. And while the ecology of a stream might be changed from one form of life to another, it is not destroyed. It is often improved. However to safeguard the ecology, Zellner cautions, an existing reservoir must not be drained to modify the dam with turbines and related equipment. Engineers can build a temporary water barrier near the water intake, pump out the region where the turbine is to be installed, then remove the temporary barrier once the modification is completed. If a lake is to be tapped, engineers can drill a tunnel to the lake, blasting a hole in the end of the tunnel to channel
the water to the dam. Or water can be siphoned from one area to another with pipes. "There are a number of ways to modify the dam without draining a reservoir," explains one engineer. U.S. interest in converting small dams grew in the northeastern states of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and New York, where there are as many as 10,000 small dams. In 1977 during a survey of energy resources and needs, Fred Manasse and Lewis W. Klotz, both engineers at the University of New Hampshire, suggested to the U.S. Department of Energy that at least 300 of those dams could be converted easily to produce hydropower. Most of the dams, however, are owned
SMALL DAMS IN INDIA by DILIP SALwI
Spiraling oil prices and the fact that oil is a finite resource force India, like nations around the world, to seek and develop alternative sources of energy. One such source is the moving waters of rivers and streams-small dams are being built to generate electricity. Small dams fit admirably into India's energy scheme. Water is plentiful; unlike oil and coal, it renews itself; and, unlike the fossil fuels, its cost remains constant. It produces a form of energy that does not pollute the air. Most important for India, water is by and large available where it is needed the most-in the countryside. Although a number of Indian states are working on the electrification of villages, the effort has been handicapped by a paucity of funds. Bringing transmission lines from a main grid to sparsely populated villages scattered over large areas of land is a costly proposition. Dams, built in the countryside, will provide cheap hydropower to villages, giving a much needed fillip to India's agriculture, while promoting a number of rural industries. There will be other benefits. At presAbout the Author: Dilip Salwi is a New Delhi-based science writer.
ent, most villages meet their fuel requirements by felling trees. Because they provide power, small dams will help protect forests from being indiscriminately destroyed-at least to some extent. Although there are hundreds of small dams in the country, the unexplored potential of hydropower in India is tremendous. For instance, the microhydel potential of the hilly regions of the north and northeast alone is estimated at 50,000 million watts. To realize the promise of this substantial resource, the National Productivity Council at its 1979 meeting in New Delhi called for a national body to plan, coordinate and execute various smalldam schemes in the country. In 1979, Punjab became the first Indian state to create a concerted plan to build some 50 dams on its canal network in the rural areas. These will generate about 710 million watts of hydropower for the state's agriculture and industry. Under the Hill Area Development program, the Indian Planning Commission has also approved the installation of two small dams in the Chamoli district of Uttar Pradesh. A number of institutes throughout
of relatively inexpensive-and nonpolluting-electric power. ,
by farmers, small cities and other private interests without the money to develop the hydroelectric facility. "We realized the main hindrance to the development of renewable energy resources in New Hampshire, for example, was economic," says Manasse. "So, we¡ tried to persuade the New Hampshire Public Utility Commission that to attract capital for converting the dams into hydroelectric stations it must offer a_ higher rate per kilowatt hour of hydropower than it pays to other companies from whom it purchases electric power. But it won't budge. The commission said that it would pay the same as it paid to other public utilities-one cent per kilowatt hour. This was ridiculous. One cent
a kilowatt hour was just not enough money to provide the necessary capital for entrepreneurs to develop the dams into hydroelectric facilities." The refusal led to a grass-roots movement, spearheaded by Manasse and other concerned citizens and supported by senators and congressmen who believed it was in the state's interests to encourage development of renewable energy resources. After a year-long struggle, the state legislature passed a law which exempted from regulation as a public utility all power plants with 5,000 kilowatt installed capacity using renewable energy resources, like water and the sun. The law also made it mandatory for the local public utility to buy power from these
Water Resources Development Training Centre (WRDTe). Its cost estimated at Rs. 30,000, the prototype of the dam is undergoing trials in the Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh. For another major hybrid microhydel technology project at WRDTC, the U.S. Agency for International Development has given a grant of $40,000. The aim of the project is to integrate micro-hydel power projects with supporting units useful to rural areas, such as fertilizer production, and energy sources like solar power. Such a hybrid technology would further enhance the role of a small dam in the overall development of rural areas. Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited has also developed a "pipe turbine" (left), which can generate 224 watts of power for a water drop of five meters. For a country like India, says the engineer in charge of the Bhola Hydel Power Station in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, hydropower is a must. Besides being nonpolluting, it is far cheaper than the electricity produced by thermal power plants. While the cost of a unit of the country are aiding this dam- electricity produced at the 1929-vintage construction effort by developing and Bhola dam, one of the oldest in the testing the equipment required for small country, is 2.75 paise, it is about 13 dams. For instance, a small dam with a paise in the case of a thermal plant. And power generating capacity of four to five with new, improved turbines being kilowatts-enough to meet¡ the power built nationwide, he believes the cost needs of a small ."illage-has been ¡of hydropower in the nation will further come down. 0 designed at the University of Roorkee's
facilities. Later, the New Hampshire legislature added an amendment to the law stating that the owner of a small dam could sell power to any person and that the state power utility would have to provide the power grid. The citizen movement also campaigned to change the members of the Public Utility Commission. When the time for election to the commission came, the electorate voted in those members who shared the view that small hydroelectric dams should be encouraged. The new commission raised the rate from one cent to about five cents per kilowatt hour for the power from small dams. "Now everybody is developing dams. Private capital is readily available," says Manasse .. Interest in small dams is so widespread in the United States that Manasse and a few other American engineers have established the American Small Hydropower Association to disseminate and exchange information on hydropower technology, not only within the country but with other nations as well. The U.S. Department of Energy, which has prime responsibility for the small-dam projects in the United States, is also helping a number of countries with technical expertise in developing their hydropower potential. Several nations have sought technical assistance and grants for small dams through the U.S. Agency for International Development and other government-to-government agencies. What will these little projects mean? "Lighting for schools, streets, parks and other communal purposes, at prices lower than the norm," according to David Lilienthal. "They mean power at a price that will permit small industries to stay in business and keep on employ'ing people." In fact, he concluded, "They will mean something much more important than these advantages: While the courts and experts discuss environmental trade-offs, while economists pontificate, people, in their own communities, can do something to help themselves. Private citizens can show officialdom what conservation really means." 0 About the Author: Everly Driscoll is a SPAN
correspondent in Washington, D. C.
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in and outol ) C7I'1anifestation by KAPILA VATSYAYAN
Shiva in his many forms dazzles Americans in four cities and, perhaps, brings them closer to understanding the mystery of Indian art, culture and religion. You are woman; You are man. You are the youth and the maiden too. You, as an old man, falter along with a staff. ... You are the dark~blue bird, you are the green parrot with red eyes. You are (the cloud) with the lightning in its womb. You are the seasons and the seas. Having no beginning you are everywhere. (You) from whom all worlds are born. The Shvetashvetara Upanishad addresses the formless omnipresent and omniscient power with these words, bringing together into the Indian world view the vegetative, the animal, the human and the divine, the past, the present and the future as manifestations of the one who is beyond form. Shiva is one amongst the many expressions of this world view. The sacred and the profane, the sentient and the transcendental, the uncreate and the manifest, the male and the female, the beautiful and the ugly, the benevolent and the malevolent, the preserver and the destroyer-all are contained in the One. Stella Kramrisch, the scholar, teacher and writer who is curator of Indian art in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, conceived an exhibition which, through the Shiva theme, would communicate the world view distinctive to India. Through 200 carefully chosen examples of Indian paintings, stone sculptures and bronze images (collected from all over the world, including 22 from India) her concept reveals itself, and leaves an unforgettable impress on every viewer, regardless of the culture he brings to it. Besides Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Texas; Seattle, Washington; and Los Angeles, California, are the other three American cities in which the Shiva ~xhibition will be seen within the next 10 months (see SPAN July 1981). The structure of the exhibition is clearly conceived. The
painting and sculpture sections are divided into the subthemes revolving around (1) linga, the phallus, the erect pillar, (2) the faces of Shiva as the one-faced (ekamukhalinga), the four- and five-faced (chaturmukha, panchamukha) linga, (3) the androgynous form, the ardhanarishvara, (4) the yogi teacher, the supreme guru, (5) the bull Nandin, (6) the forms of Shiva as the supreme beggar (the Bhikshatana), the lord of terror (the Bhairava), the lord of dance (Nataraja), the destroyer of the demon (the Gajasurasamhara murti), (7) Shiva and Parvati and the family, (8) Shiva and the mothers (matrikas) and the goddess, and (9) Shiva the saint. Through these divisions, the story is narrated in many styles and schools of sculpture and painting encompassing nearly 2,000 years of Indian art, including some folk and tribal art. Surprisingly, but meaningfully enough, the paintings, the scrolls and the masks come first. They belong to the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries A.D. They are hung in a long corridor, grouped together in the subthemes outlined earlier. Schoolchildren, women, young and old, ask questions. Some are bewildered by the myths which the paintings portray, others are impressed by the stylistic variations and excellence of each school. The paura~ic myths speak through them, re-creating the story of Shiva manifesting within the linga of flames, worshiped by Brahma and Vishnu, or of Shiva as half man, half woman (ardhanarishvara) riding the composite Nandin, where the animal and the human shapes of the god combine. They speak of Harihara, the conjointed image of Vishnu and Shiva; of Shiva's dance in the Himalayas before Parvati and in the cremation ground before Kali, of Shiva's marriage with Parvati, when he presents himself as a handsome bridegroom, and of Shiva the yogi and the ascetic. The captions tell the myth and provide details of the artwork's school and provenance.
The audience is animated, discussions take place all around. Some initiates identify the sources and schools of various works and remember other examples of Mewari, Bundi, Kotah, Basholi, Kangra and Chamba paintings. The children are excited by the animals and the birds in the paintings, and everyone stands spellbound in the front of the huge wooden headmask from Kerala on which serpents coil and recoil in awesome dignity. Few visitors fail to pause before the Nepali scrolls with brilliant reds and crimsons. At the far end of the corridor is a seated image of Shiva in stone as yogi: His expression shows ironic tolerance of these spectators who watch and discuss his many manifestations. Kramrisch's design encourages the spectators to articulate their questions in the long corridor of the painting section, and thus prepares them to be silent as they enter the large darkened hall in which spotlights illuminate the monumental stone sculpture. Suddenly one enters, as it were, a dark cave; the journey through the images begins anew; voices are hushed, the animation has subsided. The visitors are confronted by a group of Lingas. Kramrisch has prepared visitors to overcome the shock of the unfamiliar and introduced them to the myths, the stories, the family of Shiva before asking them to respond to the aniconic and iconic. The Linga platform is dramatically arranged; it includes the magnificent one-faced Kushana-period Linga from the Philadelphia museum's own collection, and also the well-known ekamukhaLinga of the Gupta period from the Brundage collection, now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. These dominate the platform, but one is also attracted by a simplified version of the same theme from the collection of Dr. Samuel Eilenberg in New York, exhibited for the first time. It has a quiet restraint and dignity, and the face is imbued with compassion. Other Lingas, more ornate and stylized, reinforce the theme through variations. From the ekamukhaLinga, one's eye almost unconsciously moves to the panchamukha lingas. These communicate the transcendental and the'ontological aspects of Shiva. The spectator begins to see that the Linga without face and figure and the four-faced linga (with the fifth present only symbolically) are meant to convey the entire structure of the cosmos. He begins to realize that all this is not to be understood simply as figurative art; the piece of stone is a multiple symbol containing many meanings. To a group of Catholic nuns, the association of the Linga and the cross seems to come naturally; to others, the relationship of the formless, the one form and the multiple forms, unfolds gradually. The language of correspondence, the fundamental basis of Indian art, is introduced. The four faces are the directions of the compass; they are also different aspects of the same Shiva, gross and subtle, demonic .and benign. In her exhibition, Stella Kramrisch makes a profound statement through this juxtaposition of the Lingas together. Some scholars find it disconcerting because, in its natural context, the Linga is usually situated in the center, alone and austere. However, perhaps in no other way could the concept of multiplicity and unity, of abstract and concrete, be articulated more successfully than through this grouping of Lingas, which normally
would be seen one at a time in disparate situations. As soon as they have finished going round (circumambulating) the Linga platform, the spectators face examples where the Linga is seen as an object of worship, where Shiva is flanked by the other deities, Brahma and Vishnu. The first group of Lingas establish the totality of the concept of the exhibition; the second, the context of worship. Two exquisitely beautiful Chola sculptures of Shiva as ardhanarish vara (half man, half woman) face each other. The sculptures embody androgyny and "biunity," another fundamental of the Hindu world view. As ardhanarishvara, Shlva reveals himself through the symbol of sexual "biunity" as beyond the duality of Shiva and Shakti, for both are within him. This abstract concept is articulated through the pliant movement of the images which combine the sinuous grace of the female form with a broad-shouldered masculinity. The perfect naturalness of form achieved in these sculptures validates a unique idea. Kramrisch explains the Indian principle of conjointedness and of "biunity" or "triunity" further by grouping the ardhanarishvara and the Harihara images together. Shiva contains the female and male; as if that were not enough, Vishnu and Shiva combine together in the same form. The conjointed images soon give place to Shiva as the yogi, the supreme teacher. The exhibition never lets the spectator forget that Shiva has many forms, and is yet one. With convin~ing logic Kramrisch punctuates the multiple forms with others that assert the unitary nature of Shiva-one, and alone. In this section one sees several sculptures of the 10th century belonging to Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan that present the supreme teacher, seated or standing, teaching in silence the oneness of one's innermost self (atman) with the ultimate reality (brahman). Coming after the unfamiliar Lingas, the conjointed images, one experiences a sense of familiarity; the inward gaze of another teacher, the Buddha, is manifested to the spectator. Shiva sits as the teacher of yoga, music and knowledge. holds the axe and the deer'and has one hand raised in the gesture of teaching the chinmudra. The appearance of the iconographical symbols of hand gestures and implements introduces another important dimension of Indian art. As if to release the tension a spectator might feel after encountering the many forms and then the silent oneness, Kramrisch now confronts him with three Nandin bulls, each a charming piece of animal sculpture with a naturalistic buoyancy, delightful and impressive. Children tendto run around them, and elders look at them affectionately. The caption tells them that the animal is the vehicle of the god-but additionally in essence the god himself, who is not only the teacher, the yogi who sits against the wall and under the trees, but also the animal, the bull. The juxtaposition of the yogi and the bull is remarkable for the visual delight it gives and its deeper significance in the relationship of the animal, at once human and divine. Then comes a dramatic change. As one leaves the playful bull and the solemn teacher behind, here comes the figure of Bhairava, the god of terror. From the far end, the yogi looks upon these other aspects of himself, where he is the cursed beggar with the skull of Brahma
stuck to his palm, the emaciated Atiriktanga Bhairava with fierce countenance of snarling lips, bared teeth and fangs below a bristling moustache. The linga and the androgynous images have prepared the visitor to see the composure and the disturbance, the peace and the turmoil together. Immediately after the last glimpse of an emaciated horrific Bhairava come the many sculptures of Shiva as the lord of dancers. Shiva's dance is the dance of the cosmos, the rhythm of the movement of the sun and the moon, the earth and the wind: All these pulsate in his body as the microcosm, corresponding once again to the macrocosm. The famous Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, ninth-century Shiva (which had traveled abroad earlier) introduces the theme, and gradually other examples with a more dynamic movement are arranged in a sequence. Cumulatively, the single movements of the individual images begin to be orchestrated, until they reach the complex dynamics of Shiva dancing in the pristhasvastika (a back turn of the torso) and with the raised leg in the Gajasurasamhara murti (as the vanquisher of the elephant demon). Dance turns into destruction with astonishing ease in the monumental Chalukyan images of Shiva as the destroyer of the three cities of the demons. The sense of powerful movement reaches a climax. With a dancer's instinct Stella Kramrisch (who began her career as a dancer) understands the need for a pause after the burst of energy; this is responsible for the sequential syntax of the s~ulptures. Hence now comes the lila, the sport of the Lord as the householder, sometimes loving, sometimes sullen and sometimes appeasing Parvati, at play with her in a game of dice or discussing family problems. The spectator begins to recognize the utterly human and familiar aspects of the god. One young spectator spontaneously exclaims-"Oh how like mom and dad." What better indication of the success of the exhibition than to elicit such response? From the myste" rious otherworldliness of India's gods and goddesses, the
1. The Holy Family in a Cave (facing page) Mandi school, Western Punjab Hills' c. 1810 -20. Opaque watercolor on paper, 12lf8X 101/4" Victoria and Albert lv!useum, London While in some of his images Shiva is interpreted as a cosmic force, this painting shows him with his iamily in their home in a cave on Mount Kailas, the highest peak in the Himalayas; it also represents him as an ascetic, his beggar's pouch hanging from a branch overhead. His wife Parvati, dressed in garments appropriate to a 19th-century princess, holds on her lap Shiva's son, the eternal child Kumara (also called Karttikeya and Skanda). Behind Shiva is Parvati's elephantheaded son Ganesha. The gods' animal vehicles-the bull that Shiva rides upon, Parvati's tiger, Kumara's peacock, and Ganesha's ratcomplete the domestic setting. Below, crowned gods on the left and a group of holy men and devotees on the right pay homage to Shiva. 2. Nandin (overleaf) Hoysala Dynasty, Karnataka, 12th century
spectator has been led gently to a recognition of the familiar and the universal. Shiva is no longer a stranger. The different aspects of the god have now become the diverse moods and aspects of humanity and the world known to all, no longer exclusive to the distant mythology of Hindu gods. The message is brought home by the subtlety of Kramrisch's intellect-bred in two cultures and committed to a world view that transcends national barriers. By the time one ha.s journeyed from the dark wooded sections of the stone sculptures to the brightly lit, dramatically presented bronze sculptures of the third hall, one feels the theme of Shiva resonating; questions of background, history and iconography recede to the background. The power of the artistic execution and the sheer visual beauty of the pieces enchant the spectator. However, some may persist in seeking out Hellenistic influences, and others may be bewildered by Hindu iconometry, specially the busts and the hips. It is revealing that the responses in this section are invariably in terms of form rather than meaning. The fact that American teenagers as well as a scholar like Calambur Sivaramamurti are delighted with the exhibition speaks of the multiple levels at which it succeeds in communicating. Thematic exhibitions that transgress chronology and style are dangerous adventures, often heralded by Cassandra-like prophecies. Despite all the difficulties of presenting the subject to Western audiences, Kramrisch has succeeded in making an artistic statement greater than the sum of its parts. She was helped by many countries, governments, students and friends all over the world, but above all by the light of her own inner eye. 0 About the Author: Teacher, scholar, dancer, administrator, Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan was associated, with the mounting of the "Manifestations of Shiva" exhibition and participated in the Shiva symposium at Philadelphia. A senior official in the Ministry of Education, Dr. Vatsyayan is the,author of several books on Indian dance, literature and art.
Chloritic schist, length 31314" Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchase Joseph E. Temple Fund Shiva's animal is the bull Nandin. Shiva rides upon him, sits upon him, dances upon him, leans against him. Nandin-his name means "giving joy"-is the foremost of Shiva's devotees, and a recumbent image such as this young animal carved fully in the round has a special place in every temple of Shiva. He sits outside the sanctuary (sometimes in his own pavilion), facing the linga in adoration. Paradoxically, the bull is also thought to be an aspect of Shiva himself. This sensitively modeled animal is elaborately adorned with a garland of bells, necklaces, tassels, and a headdress. 3. Shiva Manifesting Within the Linga of Flames, Worshiped by Brahma and Vishnu (overleaf) Jodhpur school, RajastHan, c. 1850 Opr.ique waterco7or on paper, 171/2x153/8/1 Collection William Theo Brown and Paul Wonner, San Francisco
The three great gods of Hinduism are represented in this painting: four-headed Brahma on the left and Vishnu on the right, both bowing to Shiva, who sits cross-legged in a fiery pillar. The diminutive figure of the great goddess sits at the feet of her lord. Legend tells that Brahma and Vishnu came upon a flaming pillar at the beginning of creation. To investigate, Brahma in the form of a wild goose flew up in search of its top: Vishnu in his form as a boar dived down to seek its bottom, but they could find neither a beginning nor an end to the pillar of light. Then the pillar split open and Shiva revealed himself within, demonstrating, according to this le'gend, his supremacy over the other Hindu gods. In the broad and bold style of this painting, the linga of Shiva is interpreted as the pillar of fire. Its surface is covered with bands of flames, and the calm and serene five-headed Shiva sits in the center in the posture of a yogi. With their traditional gestures, his eight hands convey specific thoughts and meanings, including the granting of favors and giving of assurance. The lower
part of the painting represents the cosmic waters;-a white line separates it from the great dark night edged above by a frieze of precise cloud forms. 4. Manikkavachaka Tamil Nadu, 14th century. Bronze, height 3D" Lent anonymously Manikkavachaka, "one whose words are like rubies," was a Shiva devotee who had sung glorious hymns in praise of the god. The saint
is represented as a wandering beggar clad in a loincloth. His only ornaments are the sacred thread of initiation that lies across his chest and a bead rosary slipped over his right wrist. He is recognized by the palm-leaf mapuscript he carries in his left hand and the gesture of communication that his right hand shows. In the sculptural norm of the post-Chola period, the stylized hair is arranged with geometric neatness, and the lines of the brows and eyes have a linear emphasis.
5. One-Faced Linga (ekamukhalinga) on an Altar Under a Pipal Tree, With Two Ganas Kusana Dynasty. Mathura, Uttar Pradesh First-second century A.D. Mottled red sandstone, height TW', State Museum, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh The linga is a multifaceted, highly complex symbol: in the form of an erect phallus, it stands for creation as well as for sexual control; it is the pillar of the universe and a column of resplendent light. The simple post-
like shape is often augmented sculpturally and symbolically with one, four, or five heads. In this partly damaged relief, a tall ekamukhalinga rises on a platform under the branches of a pipal tree. To the left are two ganas, sprites of Shiva's retinue. 6. "Bhairava" (Dancer's Headpiece) Kerala. Late 16th-early 17th century Wood with traces of polychromy, height 41" Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Lenart In this wood carving, Shiva is shown as Bhairava. In a moment of angry dispute, Shiva had cut off one of the five heads of the god Brahma, his father. As punishm~nt, Brahma's skull stuck to Shiva's hand, and he was made to roam as an outcast in cremation grounds for 12 years. In this manifestation, Shiva has terrible round eyes and fangs; serpents wreath his body, a garland of skulls adorns him.
esha's head. As Paravati was inconsolable, Shiva asked his attendants to bring the head of the first living being they could find. Coming upon an elephant, they cut off its head and attached it to the child's body. Ganesha's presence is considered auspicious by his devotees: He removes obstacles and brings prosperity. Eva Ray is the assistant curator of the Indian art department, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
7. Ganesha Dancing Gurjara-Pratihara Dynasty, Madhya Pradesh Late 9th-early 10th century Sandstone, height 23" Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond This image of Ganesha is replete with symbolism: The elephant head evokes the spiritual world, and the human body, the physical world; the figure in its totality represents the indivisible universe. Ganesha is pot-bellied not just because he loves sweets, but also because he holds the universe within himself. Here, Ganesha dances; with his eight arms, he fills the entire space of the composition. The story of the unusual form of this popular god with an elephant's head and a child's body is related in ancient texts. One day, Parvati was preparing herself for her bath. After applying a paste of cream, flour, essences, and oils, she formed a child with the doughlike substance. She placed him at the entrance to her chambers and told him to deny access to all while she bathed. Soon Shiva appeared, and not knowing who he was, the¡ new guard stopped him. Angered, Shiva cut off Gan-
8. Shiva, the Supreme Guru, as Lord of Music (overleaO Chola Dynasty, Tamil Nadu. Last quarter 10th century. Bronze, height 24" Collection Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence R. Phillips, New York This figure conveys the essence of Shiva. His upper right arm holds a battle-ax, a reference to Shiva as the warrior and destroyer of demons. F{om his upper left hand springs an antelope, an animal closely associated with Shiva in a variety of myths and often taken as a symbol of all animals, because Shiva is also lord of animals. The two lower arms are held as if carrying a musical instrument, the Indian lute, which identifies this image as Shiva, teacher and lord of music. His matted hair i~decorated with a crown of leaves. A skull; signifying Shiva's aspect as Bhairava, adorns the headdress. On its left is the crescent moon, and to its right is a small figure representing the river Ganges, an allusion to the myth of Shiva breaking the impact of the sacred river as it fell from heaven to earth.
The Department- Store . AsTheater
Time was when the neighborhood store in American towns was simply a place to shop. Today's department store-especially in big cities like New York-is a virtual amusement park. Most stores invest heavily in dramatic, visually exciting, unabashedly seductive layouts, decor and displays. Scattered tastefully among the products are music, food, models (sometimes live), videogames. In this age of visual merchandising, buying and selling have become a part of show biz. You don't just show your product, you glamorize it, let it put on an act. And it isn't all fun and games. For, as the cash registers prove, the image does count. The phenomenon of the department store as theater-and shopping as entertainment-is said to be responsible for the biggest retailing boom in New York in recent years. The trend was started by Bloomingdale's in the 1970s. Marvin Traub, the store's chairman, put it in perspective when he said, "We are in competition not only with other stores, but with the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan [the famous art museums]."
While Bloomingdale's concentrated on getting a high-status image, Macy's repackaged its merchandise, taking the good old principle of selling by display, to its most stunning, imaginative conclusion. Chairman Ed Finkelstein realized that it was the most mundane gqods that needed glamorous showcases. So he created the Cellar, a houseware arcade, designed to look like a glittering European street lined with small shops. Every item is given dramatic display, sometimes by putting it in action-at the Gourmet Cookware shop a pasta-making machine turns out noodles (above, left). Fashions, of course, lend themselves most readily to the new retail techniques. Mannequins ar~ used imaginatively, spinning a lariat for high fashion clothes (facing page), looking suitably sporty for sportswear (top) and nonchalantly chic for teen attire (above). Three years ago Macy's women's fashion floor had 30 mannequins; today there are almost 150, such models of perfection that you want to take them-or failing that, their wares-home. As they say in theater, ~~~~a~. 0
TRUE TALES OF
Famed for its tall skyscrapers, headquarters of the United Nations, the largest city and the busiest port in the United States ... New York City often tends to dwarf the men and women who live there, people who represent almost every national and racial group in the world. New York magazine brought them and their private worlds upclose recently when it invited readers
The Day It Rained Money On the Saturday before Mother's Day, gift hunting along 57th Street, I spied a shop window that looked promising. Joining the customers layered two-deep at the counter, I made my selection: a gargantuan fortune cookie, inscribed "Mother" in blue icing. It was a choice, I thought, that struck a nice balance between sentimentality and fun. I looked up from the case to speak to the clerk only to find he
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to send in anecdotes about life in the city. "The most striking thing, " the magazine commented on the hundreds of vignettes it received, "was the huge number that were simply accounts of unexpected kindness performed by strangers. How rarely," the editors concluded, "is graciousness expected on our streets, how often it is found. " SPAN presents some winners. had vanished. So, in fact, had every other person in the shop-even the cashier. In the space of one minute, 15 people had simply disappeared. Stepping outside, I discovered the solution to the mystery. In varying postures of supplication to the sky were the staff, the customers, and a growing number of passersby. All wore astonished faces turned upward, their outstretched arms clutching at the air. For there, in the middle of Manhattan, money was streaming from the sky. Pristine 10s and 20s floated through the morning air, grasped at by frantic, eager hands. Sometimes a note, borne on a puff of wind, fluttered to the pavement, whereupon three or four people pounced upon it. This manna from heaven lasted only a few minutes, but hundreds of dollars cascaded down. Before it was over, I had snatched three 20s from the breeze. Were the bills real? They were. Had they been thrown from the window of some eccentric? No one knew. But it was a profitable morning in Manhattan, when some unseen benefactor let loose a rain of money. -EVELYN
WALD,
West Orange, New Jersey
An Unshaggy-Dog Story Our three-year-old son, Nicky, had the ideal pet for a city kid .. Snoopy was a sad-eyed basset hound who avoided all the problems of vets, shedding, and pooper-scoopers because he was made of wood. The clackety-clack Snoopy made when we walked scared the neighborhood pups, but to Nicky the dog was as real as the rest of the gang at the hydrant. One day, while walking across 57th Street and Sixth Avenue, Nicky started screaming frantically. As we reached the sidewalk, I noticed that the dog's long, red leash was dangling from his hand-empty. Ob.viously, Snoopy was still stranded in the middle of the congested intersection. "My doggy, my doggy!" Nicky howled, just as a bus rounded the corner. "My doggy's under the bus!" The driver's window was open, and he must have heard, for he slammed on his brakes and jumped out. "It's not my fault, sonny!" He turned for assurance to the crowd that was beginning to gather. "I never even saw the kid's dog!" The driver peered under the bus and tried to coax the puppy out. "I can see his shadow right near the rear wheel. I'll get my
flashlight." Everyorie began to give advice. "He's probably too terrified to move." ... "Or too hurt." ... "Maybe he's dead." Nicky bellowed even louder. Someone said he was calling an ambulance. By now traffic was stalled in three directions, and people began to drift out of stores to watch. "What kind of dog is it, lady?" someone asked. I pretended not to hear. 'Just then I caught sight of Marco, the neighborhood grocer's delivery guy. "That's Nicky's dog? The one he brings in the store that scares the cat?" "Yes!" I grabbed at him desperately; "We've got to do something. They all think it's real." Marco raced across the street and returned carrying the long pole used to swivel the store's canvas awning. He grabbed the driver's flashlight and got down on the ground beside the bus, shoving the pole ahead of him. "Stop him!" "He'll hurt the dog .... He'll kill him." The chorus was still in business. "I've got him!" cried Marco, triumphantly. There was a hush of expectation. Slowly Marco dragged the pole back. A faint clackety-clack could be heard. Then, hanging from its torn vinyl collar, emerged the saddest looking, chipped and dented basset hound that ever saw the top of a shop counter. "Snoopy!" shouted Nicky. "Clack," answered Snoopy. Taking advantage of the stunned silence around me, I turned to Marco. "Thank you," I said soberly, shaking his hand. "You are a true hero. To my boy ... and to me." Then dog, son, and I took off fast for home, just as the paramedic unit from St. Clare's Hospital rounded the corner. -BRENDA GUSTIN, Manhattan
Charity She walks her dog every morning and uses that time to finish her cup of coffee. One particularly bright morning she stood at the curb, dog on leash, coffee cup in hand, sunglasses in place. The picture of indolent chic. A gentleman in a three-piece suit walked by and dropped some coins in the cup. She stared after him in astonishment. Aftet a few steps he turned back to her and said calmly, "I couldn't resist it." He was half a block away before he started laughing. , .-GLORIA ROSENTHAL;Valley Stream, New York
Serves Six Last February, a friend of mine was walking home during a storm when he encountered a bearded man beside a stand bearing the sign 3 FOR lOt. Resting on the stand were a dozen snowballs. "Are you serious?" asked my friend. "You're selling those?" "You bet I am. They're the best in the city. Perfectly spherical and pure. Watch-they're going like hotcakes." A few moments later, a woman stopped and said, "I'll take three." She gave the vendor a dime, and he presented her purchase in a brown paper bag. "May I suggest a delicious recipe?" my friend said. "Mix the snowballs with a dozen sausages in a red-hot skillet. It's an old Finnish dish." The woman thanked him earnestly, tucked the package securely under her arm, and walked off. -GAVIN MURPHY, Manhattan
The Sound of Music Living at the Westover is an event in itself. Best known as the "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" building, it contains the most diverse assemblage of humanity of any building in New York. We have a slew of would-be actors, cranky old ladies, and a good many people who have never been sighted without their roller skates on. Even by New York standards, the Westover is extremely noisy. As inured as we all had become to the noises produced by the various lifestyles, the pianist who moved into the apartment below mine created a truly intolerable situation. She played loudly, constantly, and badly. The landlord informed us that there was little he could do, since she played only within the prescribed hours of 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. Since logic, pleading, and threats bounced off this woman, my neighbors and I met to , d'iscuss our alternatives. Suggestions ranged from a pie in the face (satisfying, but ineffective) to homicide. Finally a decision was made. We would all buy "YMCA," by the Village People. At the first strains of Stravinsky, we would immediately toss the record on our turntables and play it at maximum volume. After several weeks of this musical backlash, victory was ours. Happy Fingers moved out. My neighbors and I were gleefully congratulating one another in my apartment when our hard-won silence was broken by the piercing wail of a would-be Beverly Sills... from the apartment above. -LAURA SHANAHAN, Manhattan
Natural Immunity We readily accepted Milton's invitation to spend a hot Sunday in July on his cabin cruiser. At the New York Skyport Marina (23rd Street and the East River) we found our host¡ readying the vessel for departure. I decided to make my way along the eight-centimeter-wide ledge along the side of the boat, grasping ropes en route to the open deck aft. Suddenly I found myself immersed in the filth and slime of the East River. A wave of nausea swept over me at the thought of these polluted waters. When my head bobbed up out of the water, I saw my host and husband frantically scurrying about to find a ladder'to lower over the side of the boat. I started to swim toward a boat
Throughout ¡the years, my drawers would fill with new designs, colors, and sizes. By some mysterious process, a whole year of shirts and pants gradually disappeared, never to be seen again. This came to seem inevitable. It was 1979. Camp days were over. In fact, college was over. I had joined the ranks of New York commuters, traveling each morning on the local train. On one particular day, I stood bumping shoulders with the other passengers. I swayed back and forth to the beat of this hot August day when down by my waistline I noticed a little boy clutching at his mother's dress. Eyes shut, he was singing. Something about him was odd. Sure enough, I looked down and read the tag of a shirt worn, accidentally no doubt, inside out. There it was-my name. From the summer of 1965. I smiled widely. I knew then that old shirts don't disappear, they just move on. anchored about six meters away, with a rope dangling over its side. A marina employee walking on the dock saw me and shrieked, "Hey, lady, you can't swim there. That water's polluted!" "This isn't voluntary," I answered with all the dignity I could muster. "Ya mean ya fell in? Hey, Joe, come quick-a woman's in the water!" he yelled. Joe came running, and together they hoisted me up onto the dock. Another man rushed toward me with a four-ounce glass of scotch. ~ "Drink this fast. It'll kill anything you've:swallowed." Warm, undiluted scotch is not my favorite drink, but the possibility of falling victim to anything from hepatitis to bubonic plague decided me in favor of the drink. Milton then phoned New York Poison Control and was reflM'red to a doctor. "Doctor," he said, "a woman friend of mine just fell into the East River. What do you recommend?" "Fish her out," replied the doctor. "We've already done that. Shouldn't she get a shot of penicillin or something?" Milton asked. "If she's a resident of New York City, don't worry. We New Yorkers are exposed to every bacteria and virus there is. We've built resistance and tolerance for most diseases. Give her a bottle of citrate of magnesia." For three anxiety-ridden weeks I waited for symptoms that never developed. ~BEE
KALISH, North
Bay Village,
Florida
The Shirt off Her Back It was 1965-the only year that my age and my shirt size were a matching twelve. . It was also the first year that my mother sent me off to summer camp. The week before, she inserted little tags into my clothes, stitching around an italic printed label, so that each article was forever inscribed. She even tagged the face towels, which I don't remember ever using. Thus equipped, I was sure that anyone who ended up with my name attached to her ankles or neck was a thief. I returned home in September with one shirt, two pairs of socks, and three towels missing. "Not bad for a whole summer," my mother said.
Law and Order This happened on 49th Street and Broadway, where'my bus usually turns south and heads straight for the Port Authority. Not today. As the bus started to turn, it was blocked bya little car coming in from the left and stopping. All the car had to do was move a little backward or forward to get out of the way, but it wouldn't budge. Probably the driver was waiting for the bus to scratch his fender so he'd have a lawsuit. In any case, he wouldn't move. The bus blocked all traffic southbound on Broadway; the car blocked all westbound traffic on 49th Street. There was a blowing of horns like thunder. The man in the car finally got out, ready for a good verbal fight with the bus driver. He, however, slammed his window shut and refused to say a word. An impasse. The horns continued. There was, of course, no policeman in sight, and it looked as if we could go on like this forever. Suddenly, to everyone's relief, we heard a loud traffic whistle and an authoritative voice yelling, "Clear the way for the bus. Get the traffic moving." Whistle and voice were very effective. The man in the little car took off in a hurry, clearing our way. You can imagine our surprise when what we had assumed was a policeman turned out to be an elderly, well-dressed gentleman-the savior of the day. He wasn't a policeman at all. Just happened to have been there with his whistle. The crowd that had gathered applauded, the bus driver offered him a big, fat cigar, but the man just turned and walked down Broadway, quite unimpressed with what he had done, as if it were something he did every day. -REGINA
ClONE,
Weehawken,
New Jersey
My friend Dan was walking through Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, when a guy grabbed him from behind and ordered him to give up all his money. Dan swung around, and as they faced each other, their mouths dropped open and they gaped in mutual recognition. The would-be mugger was an old friend from high school, and he just stood there looking sheepish and embarrassed. Dan finally broke the silence: "Well, Eddie, long time no see. Whatcha been up to lately?" -SUSAN
HOFFER,
Queens
THE ENGINE OF
Examining the evolution of the existing international economic order, economist Sir W. Arthur Lewis rejects the thesis that colonialism and unfavorable terms of trade between raw material producers and industrial producers are responsible for the present wealth of the developed nations of the North and the poverty of the developing countries of the South. The real engine of economic growth, he argues, is technological change. owdid the world come to be divided into industrial countries and agricultural countries? Did this result from geographical resources, economic forces, military forces, some international conspiracy or what? In talking about industrialization, we are talking about very recent times. England has seen many industrial revolutions since the 13th century, but the one that changed the world began at the end of the 18th century. It crossed rapidly to North America and to Western Europe, but even as late as 1850 it had not matured all that much. In 1850 Britain was the only country in the world where the agricultural population had fallen below 50 percent of the labor force. Today some 30 Third World countries already have agricultural populations equal to less than 50 percent of the labor force17 in Latin America, 8 in Asia not including Japan, and 5 in Africa not counting South Africa. Thus, except for Great Britain, even the oldest of the industrial countries were in only the early stages of structural
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"The Division of the Worid" and "The Engine of Growth" in W. Arthur Lewis' The Evolution of the Inrernational EconomicO,de,. (CopyrightŠby Princeton University Press) pp. 4 through 13 (omission oflootnote on p. 5) and pp. 67.through 75. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
transformation in 1850. countries significantly into world tradeAt the end of the 18th century, trade really belongs only to the last quarter of the between what are now the industrial coun- 19th century. It is then that tropical trade tries and what is now the Third World was began to grow significantly-at about 4 based on geography rather than on struc- percent a year in volume. And it is then that ture; indeed India was the leading exporter . the international order that we know estabof fine cotton fabrics. The trade was also lished itself. trivially small in volume. It consisted of Now it is not obvious why the tropics sugar, a few spices, precious metals and reacted to the industrial revolution by beluxury goods. coming exporters of agricultural products. There are two reasons for this low vol-' ume of trade. One is that the leading the industrial revolution developed in the leading countries in the first half industrial countries-Britain, the United of the 19th century, it challenged the States, France and Germany-were, taken together, virtually self-sufficient. The raw rest of the world in two ways. One challenge materials of the industrial revolution were was to imitate it. The other challenge was to coal, iron ore, cotton and wool, and the trade. As we have just seen. the trade foodstuff was wheat. Between them, these opportunity was small and was delayed until late in the 19th century. But the challenge to core countries had all they needed except imitate and have one's own industrial revfor wool. Although many writers have stated that the industrial revolution de- olution was immediate. In North America and in Western Europe, a number of counpended on the raw materials of the Third World, this is quite untrue. Not until what is tries reacted immediately. Most countries, however, did not, even in Central Europe. sometimes called the second industrial This was the point at which the world began revolution, at the end of the 19th century, did a big demand for rubber,¡ copper, oil, to divide into industrial and nonindustrial bauxite and such materials occur. The Third countries. World's contribution to the industrial revWhy did it happen this way? The example of industrialization would have been easy to olution of the first half of the 19th century follow. The industrial revolution started was negligible. The second reason why trade was so small with the introduction of new technologies in is that the expansion of world trade, which making textiles, mining coal, smelting pig created the international economic order iron and using steam. The new ideas were that we are considering, is necessarily an ingenious but simple and easy to apply. The offshoot of the transport revolutions. In this capital requirement was remarkably small, except for the cost of building r<:lilways, case, the railway was the major element. Although the industrial countries were which could ce had on loan. There were no building railways from 1830 on, the railway great economies of scale, so the skills did not reach the Third World until the required for managing a factory or work1860s. The other revolution in transport was shop were well within the competence and the decline in ocean freights, which followed experience of what we now call the Third the substitution of iron for wooden hulls and World. The technology was available to any of steam for sails. Freights began to fall after country that wanted it, despite feeble Britthe middle of the century, but their spec- ish efforts to restrict the export of machintacular downturn came after 1870, when ery (which ceased after 1850), and Englishthey fell by two-thirds over 30 years. men and Frenchmen were willing to travel For all these reasons, the phenomenon we to the ends of the earth to set up and are exploring-the entry of the tropical operate the new mills.
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Example was reinforced by what we now call "backwash." A number of Third World countries were exporting manufactures in 1800, notably India. Cheap British exports of textiles and of iron destroyed such trade and provided these countries an incentive to adopt the new British techniques. India built its first modern textile mill in 1853, and by the end of the century was not only self-sufficient in the cheap cottons, but had also driven British yarn out of many Far Eastern markets. Why then did not the whole world immediately adopt the techniques of the industrial revolution? The favorite answer to this question is political, but it will not wash. It is true that imperial powers were hostile to industrialization in their colonies. The British tried to stop the cotton industry in India by taxing it. They failed because the Indian cotton industry had the protection of lower wages and of lower transportation costs. But they did succeed in holding off iron and steel production in India until as late as 1912. But the world was not all colonial in the middle of the 19th century. Brazil, Argentina and all the rest of Latin America were free to industrialize, but did not. India, Ceylon, Java and the Philippines were colonies, but in 1850 there were still no signs of industrialization in Thailand, Japan, China, Indochina or the rest of the Indonesian archipelago. We cannot escape the fact that Eastern and Southern Europe were just as backward in industrializing as South Asia or Latin America. Political independence alone is an insufficient basis for industrialization. We must therefore turn to economic explanations. The most important of these, and the most neglected, is the dependence of an industrial revolution on a prior or simultaneous agricultural revolution. The distinguishing feature of the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century is that it began in the country with the highest agricultural productivity-Great Britain-which therefore already had a
large industrial sector. The industrial revolution did not create an industrial sector where none had been before. It transformed an industrial sector that already existed by introducing new ways of making the same old things. The revolution spread rapidly in other countries that were also revolutionizing their agriculture, especially in Western Europe and North America. But countries of low agricultural productivity, such as Central and Southern Europe, Latin America or China, had rather small industrial sectors, and there it made rather slow progress. If the smallness of the market was one constraint on industrialization, because of low agricultural productivity, the absence of an investment climate was another. Western Europe had been creating a capitalist environment for at least a century; thus a whole new set of people, ideas and institutions was dtablished that did not exist in Asia or Africa, or even for the most part in Latin America, despite the closer cultural heritage. Power in these countries-as also in Central and Southern Europe-was still concentrated in the hands of landed classes, who benefited from cheap imports and saw no reason to support the emergence of a new industrial class. It was relatively easy for agricultural countries to respond to the other opportunity the industrial revolution now opened up, namely, to export agricultural products, especially as transport costs came down. d so the world divided: into countries that industrialized and exported manufactures, and into other countries that exported agricultural products. The speed of this adjustment, especially in the second half of the 19th century, created an illusion. It came to be an article of faith in Western Europe that the tropical countries had a comparative advantage in agriculture. In fact, as Indian textile production soon began to show, between the tropical and temperate countries the differences in food production per head were much great-
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er than in modern industrial production per head. Now we come to another problem. I stated earlier that the industrial revolution presented two alternative challenges-an opportunity to industrialize by example and an opportunity to trade. But an opportunity to trade is also an opportunity to industrialize. For trade increases the national income and therefore increases the domestic market for manufactures. Import substitution becomes possible, and industrialization can start off from there. This, for example, is what happened to Australia, whose development did not begin until the gold rush of the 1850s, and was then based on exporting primary products. Nevertheless, by 1913 the proportion of Australia's labor force in agriculture had fallen to 25 percent, and Australia was producing more manufactures per head than France or Germany. Why did this not happen to all the other agricultural countries? The absence of industrialization in these countries was not due to any failure of international trade to expand. The volume of trade of the tropical countries increased at a rate of about 4 percent per annum over the 30 years before World War I. So if trade was the engine of growth of the tropics, and industry the engine of growth of the industrial countries, we can say that the tropical engine was beating as fast as the industrial engine. The relative failure of India tends to overshadow developments elsewhere, but countries such as Ceylon, Thailanq, Burma, Brazil, Colombia, Ghana or Uganda were transformed during these 30 years before World War I. They built themselves roads, schools, water supplies and other essential infrastructure. But they did not become industrial nations. There are several reasons for this, of which the most important is their terms of trade. " The final element of the international economic order that I wish to consider is the dependence of the developing countries on imports into the developed countries for
their engine of growth. When the developed countries are expanding, as in the 30 years up to 1913, the developing countries move ahead; when the developed are depressed, as they were for the nearly three decades that included the two world wars, the developing are almost at a standstill. And when the developed revive and grow faster than ever, as between 1950 and 1973, the developing also grow faster than ever. This sort of dependence is inconsistent with one of the objectives of the developing countries, namely that their per capita incomes should grow faster than those of the developed-that the gap between standards of living be narrowed and ultimately eliminated. I think most people interested in international relations would welcome the narrowing of the gap, whether they are rich or poor. But let us consider the effects of the link. Theoretically, one of the simpler ways of narrowing the gap would be for the richer countries to grow less rapidly, as their environmentalists are urging them to do. But if the richer countries grow less rapidly, the poorer countries will grow less rapidly too and will indeed get the worst of the bargain, since the terms of the trade will move against them. Given the link, it is in the interest of the poor countries that the rich grow as fast as possible. tis indeed one of the complaints of the poor countries that the rich do not buy enough from them, that the rich countries protect their own competing, high-cost production, whether of sugar and fruit, or whether in the processing of raw materials, or in manufacturing. The elimination of these barriers to trade is one of the main demands in the charter for a new international economic order. Estimates of how much more the LDCs (less developed countries) could then export start at $10,000 million a year. A low value for the link between indus¡trial production and the demand for tropical products impedes the attainment of the growth targets that the United Nations has set for the developing world. The target for the 1970s was 6 percent per annum. It was thought that this would require imports to grow by 6 or 7 percent per annum, and that exports should also grow by 6 or 7 percent per annum, keeping constant the ratio of the gap between imports and exports. But if industrial production in the rich countries grows only at 5.4 percent per annum, as it did in the 1950s and 1960s, imports of primary products will grow only. at 4.7
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"The industrial revolution presented two alternative challenges-an opportunity to industrialize by example and an opportunity to trade." percent, and cannot sustain the 6 percent growth target for the developing countries. It is not surprising, therefore, that developing countries resent the dependence of their growth rate on what happens in developed countries and would like to be free. Absolute freedom is not possible. Any country that exports is to that extent dependent on world trade. The issue therefore turns, first, on whether the developing countries are too dependent on exports of primary products and, second, given some dependence on exports, whether they could not do better exporting more to each other and relatively less to the developed countries. The excessive dependence of the LDCs on exporting primary products was the easiest line to follow in the last quarter of the 19th century. However, it should have led, as in Australia or Canada, to the development of a domestic market that would serve as an additional engine of growth for industrial and agricultural production. It failed to do this adequately for a number of reasons. There was no revolution in domestic food production, so LDCs became imp'orters of food. Finance and trade in primary products were dominated by foreigners, who looked outward rather than inward. Those whose interests were bound up with growing and exporting agricultural products used thcir political power
against industrialization. The factoral terms of trade were unfavorable, so the domestic market for manufactures was in any case rather small. The picture has changed over the last 20 years. Political power, which was formerly used against industrialization, is now used in favor of industrialization. But the domestic market is still small. partly because the revolution in food production is only just beginning, and partly because the factoral terms of trade are still unfavorable. So industrialization has run through the domestic market rapidly, and its momentum has been saved only by the opening up of the rich countries to imports of manufactures from the poor. When the LDCs switch from exporting primary products to exporting manufactures to the rich countries, they exchange one dependence for another. The potential scope is much wider. There is a limit to the amount of tea or cocoa or coffee that the rich countries will buy, but with exports of manufactures from LDCs standing only at 8 percent of world trade in manufactures in 1975, potentially unlimited growth is available in this area to LDCs over the next decade or so. World trade in manufactures has been growing by 10 percent per annum, and so have exports of manufactures from LDCs. If this pace continued, LDCs would merely be holding a constant proportionate share of world trade, and this should not present either party with insuperable difficulties. It is, however, unlikely that world trade in manufactures will grow indefinitely at 10 percent per annum, when world production of manufactures grows only at 5 to 6 percent per annum. If the growth rate now falls, LDCs will need an increasing
share of world trade in manufactures, and, though this is not difficult for the next decade or so, it is bound to face increasing resistance. The fact is that the LDCs should not have to be producing primarily for developed country markets. In the firs.t place, they could trade more with each other, and be "less dependent on the developed countries for trade. The LDCs have within themselves all that is required for growth. They have surpluses of fuel and of the principal minerals. They have enough land to feed themselves if they cultivate it properly. They are capable of learning the skills of manufacturing and of saving the capital required for modernization. Their development does not in the long run depend on the existence of the developed countries. I make the point only to remind ourselves that the current relationships are not among the permanent¡ ordinances of nature; it is not intended as a recommendation. If there is goingto be an exception to this underlying independence, it will be in the area of food. As noted, the LDCs have enough land to feed themselves if they cultivate it properly, but their populations are growing rapidly. If population overtakes food supply in Asia, the Asians will look to the rest of the world for cheap food. If this is not forthcoming they will almost certainly look for land. Three centuries ago North and South America, Australia and Africa were more or less empty. The world's population was concentrated in Europe and Asia. The Europeans seized the two Americas and Australia and commenced a rapid peopling of these continents, to the exclusion of Asians. They also taught the Asians how to bring about a population explosion.
Now that the Asians have followed their example and doubled the rate of growth, they too need more space. This will not be a problem if the Asians quickly control their growth; or if agricultural technology improves even faster than we expect; or if Europe and the Americas can feed the Asians cheaply and take Asian manufactures in return. Otherwise, the prospect for world peace in the 21st century is not good. Even leaving aside the question of food, and leaving aside long-run considerations, there is a special sense in which some developing countries need current access to the markets for manufactures in the developed countries. We encourage the LDCs to form customs unions to enjoy the benefits of regional integration, especially in coordinating their industrial development. They have tried to do this and have produced series of integration treaties in Latin America, Central America, Andean America, West Africa, East Africa and Southeast Asia, all of which are in deep trouble. The two main reasons are well known. First, each country wishes to produce for itself the whole range of light manufactures, so it is really only a few large-scale heavy industries that are in practice eligible for integration, and over these there is much quarreling. Second, in every region some countries are more advanced than others and benefit more from integration, at the expense of the others. So the agreement is unstable.
a
tu all y , up-and-coming industrial ~ations do not depend on protection in the markets of impoverished neighbors. They go where the market is, namely, in the rich countries. Thus, when Germany erupted into world trade in manu-
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market into a set of regional enclaves has some merit if the developed countries close off their markets to the manufactures of developing countries. If they do not, the arrangement will not survive except where it is cemented by strong political considerations, as in Western Europe. In any case the individual LDC does not have to be so dependent on exports in its development strategy. It should look more to the home market. What limits industrial production for the home market is the small agricultural surplus of that 50 percent or more of the labor market that is engaged in growing food for home consumption. Transform this mass of low-level productivity, and the whole picture changes. The LDCs cease to have to import food and instead penetrate the rising world market for cereals, meat and feeding stuffs. The factoral terms of trade move dramatically in favor of the traditional tropical agriculture crops, and the home market for industrial products and high-level services becomes the engine of growth. To summarize, international trade became an engine of growth in the 19th century, but this is not its proper role. The engine of growth should be technological change, with international trade serving as lubricating oil and not as fuel. The gateway to technological change is through agricultural and industrial revolutions, which are mutually dependent. The most important item on the agenda of development is to transform the food sector, create agricultural surpluses to feed the urban population, and thereby create the domestic. basis for industry and modern services. If we can make this domestic change, we shall automatically have a new international economic order. 0 About the Author: Sir W. Arthur Lewis, projessor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University since 1963. was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in economics. He is the author of several books on economics including The Principles of Economic Planning, The Theory of Economic Growth, ana Some Aspects of Economic Development.
lew Technology Bolls the Presses
During a recent visit to the offices of The New York Times (NYT) I noticed the absence of something I had always considered indispensable for any office, and certainly for one that puts out thousands of words daily: a wastepaper basket. The missing basket is an important clue to the story of the revolution in communication technology. Journalists at NYT -and several other newspapers in the United States-no longer need wastepaper baskets because they have stopped using paper to file their stories. They do type them out-but on a video terminal which is as simple to operate as a typewriter. The computer's electronic keyboard, in fact, makes typing faster, easier and more error-proof. Instead of paper there's a display screen. Every correspondent's story, once fed into the terminal, is immediately transferred through electronic impulses to a central processing system capable of storing several million words. From there it can be recalled for editing, rewriting, making layouts .... And a visit to South India presents another facet of the communication revolution: the simultaneous printing of The Hindu from Madras, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Coimbatore and Madurai. Adopting a technology used by just a handful of newspapers in the United States and other developed countries, The Hindu transmits page facsimiles from its head office in Madras to these receiving centers through telephone cables. Within minutes, images of pag~s made at Madras are transferred to plates in these centers for immediate printing. Subscribers in
The operator hard at work (above) composing on his Linotype machine stories already typed out by correspondents is still an integral part of most newspaper offices all over; the wortd. But the young reporter at right, typing out his story on a video terminal in an Amencan magazine office, illustrates some changes that computer technology will ultimately effect. What he types can be set by electronic commands to a computer, thus he can serve as both writer and compositor.
these cities no longer have to contend with newspapers received late or early editions without late-breaking news. Writing, editing, making layouts, printing ... each step in the process of getting the printed word across has been caught in the upswing of the revolution that is ushering in the postindustrial society: an era of information and communication, the age of electronics. Man has always communicated, limited only by the technology available in his time. Gutenberg opened the era of print communication with the invention of printing from movable types cast in metal over 500 years ago. Since then, the news has spread with ever-increasing speed-through rotary presses, photoengraving, wire service, radio and television. And so, on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon, millions of people watched the moment as it happened-on their home TV screens. Barely 16 years earlier, when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had made history by climbing Mt. Everest, the world had to wait for days to see just a still photograph of the event. But as cameras zoomed and TV technology reached ever
Computers have entered the newsroom-and the printing presses. Today this means that the news gets to you faster. Tomorrow it may mean that you don't need newspapers.
higher peaks of achievement, printing seemed to have taken a back seat. Development was limited to machines that could print more pages faster or better. All the scoops' were in the newsroom, Until very recently, even The New York Times, one of the world's largest newspapers, was produced by traditional technology. Reporters typed their manuscripts which were transported manually or mechanically to the composing room, Stories were composed manually on hot metal line-casting machines at a maximum speed of half a dozen lines per minute. Thousands of metal slugs were then arranged, again manually, along with advertisements and illustration blocks to make up page after page. Corrections involved the tedious process of recasting a new slug to replace the erroneous line. Fitting the set type in the available space was always a major challenge, necessitating cuts. But for NYT, the irritants posed by the old printing technology have now been eliminated. From the reporter to the printer ... each person's job has been made easier and neater. The reporter comes back from his or her rounds and sits before a video terminal to type out the story, Tentative stabs at the ideal story can be erased by pressing a "delete" button, and the reporter again faces a blank screen. Altering the sequence of paragraphs, inserting or deleting a line somewhere, changing a word, correcting a spelling mistake ... each task is accomplished with the push of a button. Reporters and editors who still have not adjusted to the idea of no pens or paper can order the computer to produce an instant printout. Corrections made by
hand can then be transferred onto the computer. Every senior editorial staffer has a video terminal. An editor can call up, on the screen of a desk terminal any story done by a reporter or even a summary of all incoming stories. He can discuss an international development with the foreign editor or find out the progress of a story from the Washington correspondent-all through the video terminal on his desk. He can also get a printout of his "conversation" with the correspondent. More technical editing functions can be carried out on other video terminals. Suitable headings are incorporated, the position of various stories manipulated-all while viewing the image of the entire page on the screen. One major editing and layout headache is eased by the machine's ability to enlarge or reduce type size instead of cutting or adding editorial matter for adjustment within the space available. While electronic technology has greatly influenced the way newspapers are organized, edited and designed, perhaps the most radical transformation has been in their printing and distribution. Traditionally, a newspaper is printed at one center and distributed to surrounding regions. Consequently, some areas get their paper late in the day and others get early editions without late-breaking news. But electronic technology has now made it possible to transmit images of complete pages-made up of news, illustrations and advertisements-by landline, microwave or satellite from head offices to regional printing presses. Here the electronic images are "read off" the satellite-decoded-and converted into plates for printing. A newspaper can now be "assembled" at one place and printed almost simultaneously in different parts of the country-or the world. The International Herald Tribune is the first, and so far the only, international daily newspaper to make use of this technology. It is being published simultaneously from Paris-its headquarters-and Hong Kong. Last March Time became the world's first magazine to adopt the system for international transmission. The pages, in the form of electronic data, are first sent to San Francisco from Time offices in New York via a receiving satellite above the equator and retransmitted over the Pacific Ocean on an international satellite. After traveling 1.6 lakh kilometers, the information is automatically transferred to film and then to plates for printing in Hong Kong. Before this system became operational, Time's editorial copy took more than 18 hours to reach HOng Kong by airplane. Today Hong Kong receives pages at the rate of four per 40 minutes. Asian readers now get the magazine 24 hours earlier. In terms of sheer numbers of publications, India, with close to 1,000 dailies and 4,000 magazines, is second only to the United States. But technological progress has been slow and staggered. However, India's spectacular advances in space technology and her proven ability to launch satellites with her own rockets and electronic devices promise rich dividends for the Indian newspaper and printing industry. India launched an experimental communications satelliteAPPLE-this June, However, the country's first multipurpose domestic communications satellite will be operational in early 1982, and the second in 1983. Called the Indian National Satellite system (INSAT), the two satellites are being built by the Ford Aerospace & Communications Corporation under
Computerized typesetting and printing are already in operation in India. Spectacular advances in satellite technology promise rich dividends for the Indian printing industry. specifications of the Indian Department of Space. INS A T will have the capability to communicate with 28 earth stations planned all over the country. Once made available to the private sector, INSA T will enable several Indian newspapers to transmit distortion-free pages to remote centers for simultaneous printing. Other innovaIions in printing technology-like the use of micro-electronics-are already in operation in India. Several newspapers, notably The Hindu, and more recently The Indian Express in Bombay, have installed computerized phototypesetting systems. The range and number of modern machines on display at the first international exhibition of printing and allied machinery held 'in Madras earlier this year demonstrated, among other things, the capability with which the new print setting techniques have been adapted to several Indian languages. By the end of the year, more than 200 such machines are expected to be in operation in India. While most of these innovations have provided shortcuts in the printing process, the communications revolution is not limited to advances and improvements in printing technology alone. Other developments may have an impact on the newspaper business that may, in the final analysis, be more competitive than complementary. The result could beelectronic newspapers, which would supply a daily dose of news in ways that are, more convenient and by providing more news
.faster than even the most modern newspaper
ever could. The computer takeover may have already begun, albeit in a small way, in the form of the videotext (see page 40). Dr. Fredrick Williams, Dean, Annenberg School of Communications, University of Southern California, predicts that "in the next 20 years we may be 'reading' as much television as watching traditional TV shows." "Although newspaper owners loudly discount the possible competition of videotext services to the traditional printed newspaper," he continues, "the pound of newsprint which lands on our doorway every morning may be the communications dinosaur of the 21st century." Will the traditional newspaper survive the onslaught of the new electronic media of communications? Can we do. without them even if we get all the news-and more-from other sources? How will computers replace those small pleasuresthe smell of ink, the crackle of the turning pages, the crossword puzzle hours, that early morning companionship with the morning tea and newspaper. .. ? And finally, as one fellow p'ut it, "Who ever thought of swatting a fly with a TV set?" 0
About the Author: VN. Chhabra, manager, job and process department, The Statesman, is also editor of Printing Times, the journal of the All India Federation of Master Printers. has been invited to attend the World Print Conference in San Francisco in October 1981.
He
The Hindu in Madras is the first Indian newspaper to install the latest computer technology for printing and typesetting operations. In place of hot-metal composing, the typesetter works on one of the 24 video display units in an air-conditioned office (/). The typed text is stored in one of the two computers (2); on command, a Lasercomp phototypesetter produces bromides of the matter which are made into complete pages (3).
Each fully made-up page, consisting of text, pictures and advertisements, is then photographed by an automatic computerized camera to get a negative (4). The negative is printed by contact on to a thin polymer (plastic) plate under high-intensity lights (5). Withi'! minutes, after etching, the plate (6) is ready for printing the Madras edition. And it now takes only seven minutes to send each page by facsimile transmission (7) to Bangalore, Hyderabad, Coimbatore and Madurai for the simultaneous printing of The Hindu's regional editions.
For Your Information
'IDBOTBXT T
he electronic marvels of the 20th century, the television and the computer, may together usher in the information revolution-in the form of the videotext. Combining the function of every TV set and computer in the world, videotext is a storehouse of handy information-infinite information fed by any government, business or individual who has something to say and wants the world to know. Born in the United Kingdom and already in operation in the United States, France, Canada, Japan and at least half a dozen other countries, videotext is essentially a generic name for two systems. One, called teletext, puts data (words, numbers and simple illustrations) in an unused and unseen part of the normal TV broadcast signal. By punching a hand-held keypad attached to the set, viewers can retrieve the hidden information for display on the screen. The second method, called viewdata, uses either telephone wire or cable TV as the pipeline to the set, which also is controlled by a hand-held keypad. But whereas the available space on th,e broadcast signal limits the amount of teletext data that can be carried there, the wired route allows direct access, via the keypad, to any number of data banks hooked into the system. 'Simply stated, viewers query the computer, and the computer answers by printing the requested page on the home screen. It is this "interactive" cap<;lbilitythat qpens the way to potentially unlimited information, and also to electronic shopping, banking, mail and other services-in other words, to the wired society. The notion of electronic publishing is nothing new. Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was using radio signals to transmit a newspaper to 10 cities in an experiment in 1937 and was one of several American companies that later developed home facsimile systems, generating pages printed on paper by means of FM broadcast signals. The difference now is the same sophistication in microcircuitry that put the power of room-size computers into pocket-size calculators, while at the same time bringing the price of those calculators down from $900 to $9 or less. Broadcasters can equip themselves to transmit teletext for less than they pay for a color camera; sets could be built to receive it for an extra $35. America Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), which annually spends more than $40 million on directory distribution, has already experimented in Albany, New York, with the electronic delivery of telephone directory information, weather reports and sports results. It is planning to launch a similar program in Austin, Texas. In the United States, Micro TV Inc., a Philadelphia-based pay-TV company, began videotext broadcasting in 1975. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Kentucky have prepared a pilot test of a phone-based system to bring news of crops, weather and commodities markets to 200 Kentucky farmers. Most TV networks have also quietly begun looking into videotext. Probably the in~st ambitious videotext experiment in the United States was conducted last year by the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain. About 30 sets equipped for an interactive telephone-based system were rotated among 160 families in the Miami area. They had access-free during the test-to more than 10,000 pages of information provided by 22 large American companies, including Associated Press which offers
an abbreviated news wire formatted for video display to several operating cable systems. For commercial broadcasters, the problem videotext poses is a rather straightforward one of competing with their own commercials, assuming they would offer teletext as a free, advertiser-supported service. It gets more complicated with the interactive viewdata systems. Nobody really knows whether people-enough people-want more information, or what kind of information they want, or if and how much they'd be willing to pay for it. The most popular viewdata "pages" thus far have related in one way or another to entertainment-games, horoscopes, TV listings, sports results. Skeptics take that to mean that "television is for entertainment"; optimists argue it will take people time to get over the novelty of the system. Not least of the difficulties is designing what data processors call a "user friendly" sy~tem-one with which the desired information can be had with a minimum of time and trouble. Many believe that the best way to work the bugs out is simply to start getting those keypads in the hands of the public. "When you get 200 million customers at the end of the tunnel, you get an awful lot of technology drive," said an executive in the semiconductor industry. Manufacturers of TV sets and keyboards, in other words, want to be sure of a mass market before they start retooling their production lines. This is the famous chicken-and-egg .dilemma: videotext sets are not going to be cheap unless enough people are willing to buy them, and enough people won't be willing to buy them unless they're cheap. In quantities of hundreds of thousands or millions, manufacturers can add the necessary electronics for videotext to TV sets and make keypads for less than $50 each. Probably the U.S. Government will someday be required to define its role on the larger issues videotext will undoubtedly raise-those of access, privacy, and freedom of speech. The questions are innumerable: Who determines what information is allowed on videotext? Will the Communist PartY and the Ku Klux Klan have the same access as the Republicans and Democrats? How about pornographers? Cigarettes can be advertised in print but not on TV -so which is videotext? How are copyrights protected when information can be scattered around the world in seconds? Who makes sure the computer records of viewdata calls aren't sold to marketresearch firms, or to credit bureaus, or to government agencies, or to blackmailers? Will everyone be able to use videotext, or will it widen the gap between the "information rich" and "information poor"? In the face of so many unknowns, an understandable air of caution surrounds this most expensive of undertakings, 'building a new medium. What is certain is that we're heading for what academicians call the "postindustrial, information society." The Xerox Corporation has cited some pertinent figures: 72,000 million new pieces of information are created each year; 75 percent of all information in existence was created in the last 20 years; the amount of existing information is doubling each decade. "How," asks Xerox, "do we cope with it all?" The obvious answer is: with computerized information systems, the elements of which, like videotext, are already within reach. 0
ONTHE LIGHTER SIDE
"Exactly what does the 'Iate ' b'Ird get to eat?" by La Linken.
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"When I was his age,we d'd I n ' t h aye fire to stare at. We had to use our imaginations!"
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Did you always know that you wanted to be a writer? You might say so. My father was a writer, in a way. He was a rabbi, but he wrote religious books; and my older brother, I.J. Singer, began to write while I was still a child. So I decided I had to be a writer too. When I was a little boy in cheder [Hebrew school], I used to boast to my friends that I was going to write a book.
Yes, but luckily my brother had already begun writing, so all the quarrels and fights had been gone through already. By the time I started, the war was half over. Still, in our house, religion was the air we breathed, and my father did not think it an honor that his sons were to become secular writers. My parents considered it vulgar for us to write love stories, or any other sort of worldly stories.
How did you begin? When I was 12 or so, I wrote an imitation of one of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, which I read in Yiddish. But it wasn't until I was 19 or 20 that I really started, first in Hebrew and then in Yiddish. Hebrew wasn't a living language then, as it is today, so I decided to write in Yiddish, the language I spoke.
Many young writers today study creative writing in order to learn from older writers. Did you have a literary mentor? My brother, of course. But we certainly didn't take creative writing courses! What can a teacher tell you? I learned as writers have always learned: through observing life and reading. Of course, now that I am kind of a teacher myself, I see some good can come of it. But you have to have talent, you can't learn writing the way you can learn engineering.
Did your wish to become a writer create opposition in your family?
"I Real Writer Hvpnotizes You" Isaac Bashevis Singer, at 77, still exudes zest for creativity. His terse, passionate, sometimes mystical novels and short stories of life among Polish Jews in Europe and America won him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978. Here, he talks about his new novel in progress, and offers insights into a variety of literary topics.
Reprinted by permission from Sarurday Review. Copyright by Saturday Review. All rights reserved.
Š
1980
Did you learn much from the other Yiddish writers in Warsaw? We talked a great deal about literature, but it was mostly gossip: how this one was no writer, and that one was a dreadful writer. Whether this kind of talk has anything to do with learning is hard to say. I read a story about you and wonder if it's true. When you were a young man did you really withdraw your first book after it had been accepted for publication? It is absolutely true. When I was 26 or 27, I had a book of short stories accepted by a Yiddish publisher. It was set in type and the galleys were sent to me. I read them and I thought, this is not going to be my book-certainly not my first book. I told the publisher and there was a hue and cry, because in those days a Yiddish publisher was far from being a millionaire. To pacify him and to compensate him financially, I translated two . books by Knut Hamsun from German
and Polish into Yiddish. Then I decided to wait a few years before coming out with another book. Actually, I waited 28 years.
Was that first book really so terrible? I would say many worse books have been published and praised. But I didn't like it. I had the same literary taste then that I had 10 years later, and when something was boring I rejected it. I tell you, I waited 28 years to publish another book!
What were those years like? In the eyes of others, my decision to write in Yiddish was a great handicap for me. The number of potential readers was diminishing, and anyway Yiddish readers are not, as a rule, as cultured as readers in English or French or even in Hebrew. But I said to myself, this is my language, here I will fail or succeed, and so I kept on writing, with decision, not despair, no matter what happened.
You speak of being "unknown as only a Yiddish writer can be." Of course! People who don't know Yiddish don't know Yiddish writers, and they are a majority even among Jews. And among Yiddish readers, some of them can read a writer for years and still not know how to pronounce his name. I have friends among the Yiddishists who even today call me not Bashevis but Bashevitz or Bashevitch. But I had made my peace with it, I had decided these were my readers. Of course, I always hoped I would be translated, but I never made translation a condition of continuing.
Do you feel that there are nuances in your work which your English-language readers are missing? I have many translators,
and after they
have done an English approximation I go to work on it, in English, myself. This going over again and again helps me not to lose as much in translation as other writers do. If I didn't know English and couldn't take part in translating my work. I don't think I'd have many readers.
Didn't you once say that entertainment has become the dirtiest 13-letter word in the English language?
So you make major changes as a story is being translated?
And yet your stories do so much more than entertain. Sometimes I think you're teasing. I never said entertainment was the only
While I'm translating it, and after it's translated, and when I read it over and over- I am always changing it. And when I send it in for a collection I edit it again. There is a continuation of writing, translating, editing, criticizing. When someone tells me about a flaw, I listenmy translators are my most constructive critics.
Do you think of your English and Yiddish audiences differently? I don't think about an iludience at all, I think about a story. I am my own first reader, and pleasing me is a hard job. If a story doesn't satisfy me, I have a good friend under my desk: the wastepaper basket.
Does much of your work end up there? Plenty! But about audiences, I will tell you. I assume that my readers are as intelligent as I am and that they know as much about life as I do. I don't talk down to them, or feel I have to instruct them. Some writers are always afraid that their readers won't understand them, assuming that he is so high and they are so low. I never have this illusion for a moment.
You've said harsh things about Joyce, for instance. I will tell you. Just today, by accident, I opened a book by Henry Miller. I was astonished to see that he said more or less the same things about Joyce as I havethat he was a writer for professors. He wrote so that he would have to be explained all the time, in countles~ footnotes and scholarly papers. For me, good literature teaches you, but it also entertains you. YOl: don't have to sit there and sigh and groan and read against your own wish. A real writer hypnotizes you so that you want to read him, his work is like a food you want to keep eating. A really good writer doesn't need so much explanation. That's why there are so few Tolstoy scholars, Chekhov scholars, de Maupassant scholars. But the disciples of Joyce have the spirit of scholars, or would-be scholars, and this kind of writ-
Only among
the literati.
purpose of writing. It's just the first. The first thing that matters about a restaurant is that the food is good. After that you think about whether it's elegant, whether the waiters are polite, and other such things. Entertainment is a minimum and a must. The _message is not. Anna Karenina, for instance, has almost no message. You can't make a generalization that all women who have lovers commit suicide. But the story itself is so mighty it stands on its own. Only bad stories have to lean on the crutches of messages.
Yet Tolstoy himself came to believe that art had to have a message. In his old age he thought so, and he wrote many wonderful things even then-he couldn't help it. But the real Tolstoy is the earlier writer, not the one who wrote Resurrection. Besides, nobody took his version of Christianity seriously anyway, neither the Christians nor the atheists.
You are unusual as a serious writer in that your audience isn't only educated people. The man who runs the Laundromat I use, for instance, is a big fan of yours. The truth is, the man who runs the Laundromat knows as much about life as I do. He may not know Hebrew or Aramaic, but he's lived. A real writer can reach almost everyone with his words. Every Russian, if he could read at all, could read Anna Karenina and enjoy it and understand it. He didn't need guides and explanations. It was crystal clear. While Joyce used his gifts to become so obscure that readers would have to use 10 dictionaries instead of one.
Some people do enjoy Joyce, though. Almost every one of them has a Ph.D. or is working for one. They enjoy obscurity and riddles. It's their privilege.
It sounds like you have little sympathy for American writers today, who often feel that their books go out into a void.
If their books go into a void it is because they write for a void. If you write for people, you will reach them. Then does the distinction usually made between serious literature and popular " literature not exist for you? Yes, there is a difference. A popular writer knows how to tell a story, but he tells it in such a primitive way that to a good reader' it looks obvious and banal. Anna Karenina entertains, and so does a kitsch novel. The question is, what entertains whom? You seem to appeal to both audiences. My editor Abe Cohen once said, a pig will eat garbage, but he'll also eat a piece of cake if you give him one. There is something of a pig in all of us. You've said that a writer needs to have roots in order to produce good fiction. Yes. Real characters come from real people, and real people have roots. You can't write a novel about just A Human Being. You have to pick a specific man or woman, a person with an address. Real writers, therefore, stay in their own environment, in their own corner. Flaubert's Madame Bovary could only have taken place in one particular French provincial town, at one particular time. It couldn't have happened as Flaubert wrote it a hundred years before, 'or in Dublin. Yet the bulk of your writing was produced after you'd separated yourself from your roots in the ghetto. Oh, I didn't separate myself. First of all, I had my memories, and literature is always more or less about the past. Secondly, in the United States I lived among Yiddish-speaking people, I wrote for a Yiddish newspaper, my brother and my relatives were here. I didn't run away from my roots, I took them with me. You write so much about spiritualism, mysticism, demonsNot about spiritualism, but about psychic phenomena like clairvoyance, premonitions, telepathy. Yes. This is a subject which literature has neglected, but to me it is life. I've often wondered how much of this you literally believe, and how much you are using metaphorically, for your own artistic ends. Well, both. It's a literary metaphor, but at the same time I do believe in entities, creatures, souls, whatever you' want to call them, the existence of which
we don't have any scientific evidence for, but which we feel just the same-at least I do. You can't photograph them or bring them into a laboratory, but can you bring into a lab love, talent, the human spirit? Must a writer believe in demons to write a good novel? I never said that! A writer can be a materialist, an agnostic, and still write. There's no such thing as "must" for a writer. However, it is a fact that you find the element of God-searching in the works of all great writers. Great men ask the eternal questions. For them, this is a must. You seem to have an inexhaustible supply of characters. I have the impression that people are drawn to pour out their life stories to you. All the time! The moment I ask, out comes a story. Sometimes even before I ask. And if they ask me, I tell them mine. The passion of the writer exists in every-
"The passion of the writer exists in everyone of us~ We don't want our experience to be ours alone." one of us. We don't want our experience to be ours aione, we want others to know about it too, to share it. I listen to the story, I understand it as best I can, I store it up in my memory, and someday it comes back to me. You can erase a recording machine, but you cannot erase anything from the brain. Do you still learn from other writers? Most of what I learn now comes from life', not literature. The writers of this century, after all, are not the writers of the 19th century. We, don't have Tolstoys and Dostoyevskys and Flauberts. However, this century is not finished yet. Are there any new writers you admire? I'm glad there are old writers I admire! Am I wrong to sense that your more recent works show less sympathy with modern life, and more nostalgia for the past? I don't think that's true. I've always criticized both the religious life-in The Slave, for example-and modernity. I'm critical of the whole human race, and most of all of myself. You find a decent human being quite rarely. So I wouldn't
say I've become more pessimistic. I've always been so. In your statement "Why I Write for Children," you gave as one of your reasons the fact that children don't read to find their identity. This was more or less a joke. For years people have been saying writers write to find their identity, readers read to find their identity. It has become a cliche. No person should read me to find his identity. I want him to enjoy, and if he finds his identity in addition this is sheer profit. What are you working on now? My new novel is a kind of fantasy, set in the time when the Poles stopped being hunters and began to work the fields, some time before they accepted Christianity. It's called The King of the Fields. I call it a fantasy because there's very little historical information about this era, so I've had to use my imagination. But when I read it, I feel that in some way it has the element-or at least the smell-of reality. What do you think about the future of fiction? I will tell you. There is a future both for excellent writers and for very bad writers. There will always be an audience for good literature and for cheap literature. But the prospect for middlebrow or average fiction looks very dink, because its audience will get more and more of its entertainment from films and television and perhaps from media we don't know yet. So when a young writer sits down at his desk today, he should say, either I'm going to write for the best or the worst. He should never try to appeal to the reader who has little taste and big pretensions, because this reader is going to disappear, I wish. What kind of writing do you mean, exactly? I mean the books that appear, day in, day out, by writers who more or less know their trade but have no real talent. I'd prefer the most vulgar literature to this kind of mediocrity that you can pick up and put down. This sort of book is and it isn't, it has no address, no deep roots, it doesn't entertain and it doesn't really teach, and it is always the result of .a vogue. A good book, on the other hand, is unique. Talent never tries to imitate 0 other talent. It is itself. About the Author: Katha Pollitt is a poet and critic who lives in New York.
by MYER RASHISH
Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs
by MURRAY
WEIDENBAUM
Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers
Outlining the Reagan Administration's foreign aid policy, Under Secretary Rashish emphasizes the United States' resolve to continue to help developing nations in their development effort. "The globe has gotten too small," he concludes, "for any nation to be indifferent to the plight of other nations. "
In this article, chairman Weidenbaumdiscusses President Reagan's proposals for domestic economic recovery. He notes that the proposals will not only pull the United States out of its present economic "mess," but they will also have a healthy effect on international economic relations.
The Reagan Administration is still forming its policies toward developing countries, and they will not be set 'until the final months of the year. But ideas have been emerging in discussions among officials concerned with foreign assistance and economic policy, and it is possible to give an indication of the direction of their thinking. The Reagan Administration's policy toward developing countries is based on three very important perceptions: .â&#x20AC;˘ That U.S. relations with developing countries will emphasize mutuality of interests: economic, political and security; â&#x20AC;˘ That economic development over the long term must be based on the economic policies applied by the developing countries themselves. Official development assistance can only be a catalyst. The prospects for successful development will be enhanced by an open and growing world market, by high levels of economic activity in the industrialized world and by solution of the oil payments problems of the LDCs (less developed countries); â&#x20AC;˘ That the private sector must be encouraged to participate more fully in the development process-internationally, through trade, investment and capital flows, and internally in developing countries through appropriate policies. Development is, in the final analysis, a word that describes the evolution of economies and societies in all their dimensions. Much of the discussion of development over the past years has successively focused on individual aspects of the process: terms of trade, commodity prices and earnings, ODA (Official Development Assistance), trade preferences, recycling, debt relief, etc. These are only pieces of the whole, and one must look at the whole. There is no deus ex machina which will descend on the world stage to resolve the problems. In my view, there is no homogeneous "North" and equally no homogeneous "South," and defining (Continued)
The United States has embarked upon a major change in its approach to domestic economic policy, an approach which emphasizes the private sector of our economy. I would like to share with you some of the details and a few personal thoughts about President Reagan's program for economic recovery. While my remarks will, of course, be based on an American perspective, there are many elements in our approach which, I believe, know no national boundaries . Let us begin by looking at the basis of a free economy. It is a world where people sometimes win-and sometimes fail-in their economic pursuits. Given adherence to mutually accepted<rules, a free enterprise system teaches individuals how to avoid failure and pursue success by rewarding the latter and punishing the former. In a healthy marketoriented economy, individual entrepreneurs and companies that successfully meet consumer needs are profitable. Those that fail to meet needs, sustain losses. It thus is erroneous to refer to it as a "profit" system; rather it is truly a profit-and-Ioss system . Government institutions, on the other hand, generally are not subject to these tests. No federal government agency in the United States ever has been forced to declare bankruptcy. Rather, the typical response for a government entity overrunning its budget is merely to ask for an increase in its use of public resources. Thus government programs continue often beyond their original justification and develop a life of their own. Critics may comment about the shortcomings of the "invisible hand" in the market economy. But, as we in the United States have learned so painfully and often in recent years, the "fickle finger" of government so often generates far greater problems when it intervenes in econo- . mic decisionmaking. The United States is engaged in an unprecedented effort to shift the focus of decisionmaking away (Continued)
FOfelgn Aid
Domestic Plans
the relationship in North-South terms is just not useful. Developing countries, like industrial countries, are extremely heterogeneous. Although the Reagan Administration is still forming its views, its initial approach to developing countries will focus on four areas-a commitment to a healthier U.S" economy, help to the developing countries to help themselves, greater emphasis on the private sector, and support for the international institutions which are essential to the international economic system. The Administration's first priority is to obtain and sustain-through supply-side incentives plus fiscal and monetary restraint-higher rates of U.S. real growth, reduced rates of inflation, and open trade and capital markets. A strong U.S. economy, growing rapidly and open to imports and capital flows, is of crucial importance to the prospects of most developing countries. The phenomenal gains in growth experienced by many developing countries over the course of the last three decades have been in good measure a result of the sustained growth in the United States and other OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries and our determination to keep markets as open as possible. Conversely, the OECD growth slowdown of the last few years has directly hurt the prospects of the developing countries. The sooner the United States and other industrialized countries can achieve a path of higher growth and lower inflation-and this depends in considerable measure on the path of oil prices and supplies-the better the growth prospects of the developing countries. And the more vigilant and determined developed countries are in opposing protectionism and other forms of official national interference in world markets, the more developing countries-the middle tier and the more developed amongst them in particularwill be able to see positive results from export-oriented development strategies. Another emerging focus of the Reagan Administration is to re-emphasize that our assistance programs help developing countries to help themselves. We would hope in our bilateral aid to place more emphasis on programs and projects which encourage local initiatives, self-sustaining activities, a vigorous private sector and, where necessary, structural adjustment. We also hope that multilateral aid can be moved somewhat more in this direction. We also see security assistance as an important part of our program: It, like other types of foreign assistance, enhances domestic stability, releases domestic resources for economic development, improves the climate for private investment (domestic and foreign) and increases the availability of international financial resources. One reason that foreign assistance does not have the domestic constituency in the United States that one might wish arises because many view it as welfare-as important as
from the government and to the many diverse and smaller organizations and institutions that better serve the individual. Thus, it has never been a question for the Reagan Administration as to whether it is more desirable to cut tax rates or to reduce the growth of government spending or to curtail government credit programs or to provide relief from regulatory burdens. All of these are a part of a larger task: to reduce the power and obtrusiveness of the federal government in all of its many dimensions. It is not just a matter of arcane estimates of economic impacts, Rather, this approach represents a desire to enhance the economic position of individual citizens. Then they will be free to make more of the decisions as to how they want to use their income-how much to save, how much to spend, and what to spend it on. Generating more of the nation's investment fund in the form of saving by the household sector also will mean a freer and less concentrated industrial economy, one in which the ownership and control is more widespread. As a general proposition, the Reagan Administration strongly believes that private citizens do not need officials of government at any level to make their decisions for them and to direct their lives. Most individuals-laborers, managers, investors, buyers and sellers-know best what they want and how properly to attain it. Their collective actions, if'left undisturbed, generally result over time in the most appropriate distribution of economic resources. The best government economic policy, therefore, is the one that provides a stable environment in which private citizens can confidently plan and make their own decisions. Those who advocate departures from this approach bear the burden of proof that the resultant government intervention will do more good than harm. Advocates of intervention must show in any given situation that "market failure" is greater than the "government failure" inherent in the political and bureaucratic process. The limits of political decisionmaking are many. Consider the great variety of consumer desires. In a political setting it seems appropriate that the majority should decide. But, on reflection, following that approach universally can result in needless losses in economic welfare. Let me illustrate that point. According to American folklore, the original Henry Ford declared that automobile buyers could choose any color so long as it was black. Since Ford was only one participant in the marketplace for cars, prospective purchasers with different color preferences had recourse to the products of other companies. But if the same Henry Ford had been the head of a U~S. Department of Automotive Production, the desires of many individuals would have remained unfulfilled. In our daily lives, there is rarely need for unanimity of choice. Here is where the market system automatically meets individual needs far more effectively than the best intentioned political dedsionmaking. Turning to the exampte of the automobile, if 5 percent of the population desires a car painted blushing pink, the market can meet their demand-provided they are willing to pay the cost. There is.no need to impose a single dominant viewpoint on all automobile purchasers. The role of government in this context must be carefully defined. Let there be no misunderstanding of the true
Foreign Aid
Domestic Plans
that is in humanitarian terms-rather than as a catalyst for achieving self-sustaining growth. The United States sees foreign assistance as part of an expanding world economy and a defense against radical revolution and political insecurity. Therefore, we are committed to higher levels of development and security assistance to support our longrange security, political and economic interests-and to meet our past commitments to multilateral institutions. While much publicity was given to budget cuts from the original Carter request, the fact remains that the total Reagan budget request for foreign assistance is 18 percent more than last year's appropriations. It is obviously important that development assistance be used effectively. We wish to reaffirm U.S. bilateral assistance efforts to critical sectors of economic activity in which private capital is either unwilling or, in many cases, unable to contribute-health and population, nutrition, and rural development. We will place considerable emphasis on food production, population and energy. We will also provide balance of payments assistance when necessary to suppo,rt economies facing serious economic difficulties. A third area of focus for the Reagan Administration will be to explore ways to secure greater private sector involvement in developing countries. We would like to see the private sector more active and in a greater number of developing countries, providing capital and technological expertise to supplement domestic resources. Quite often the private sector can accomplish what the public sector cannot do as efficiently. The key to the private sector's resources and initiative is largely in the hands of the LDCs themselves. The fourth area of policy focus is the international economic institutions: World Bank, regional development banks, IMF (International Monetary Fund), GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and United Nations Development Program. Most of these institutions were created more than three decades ago, primarily to serve the mutual interests of the major industrialized countries. They have evolved over the years in keeping with the growing number and importance of developing countries-the World Bank, for example, was initially focused on reconstruction and is now exclusively a development institution. The United States continues to support these institutions. We intend to keep existing commitments to them, even while reviewing carefully what our stance should be toward future replenishments in a period of tight resources and needs. The multilateral development banks have been a major source of resources for poorer developing countries and a major intermediary for capital lending to the middle-income countries. I personally see a significant and innovative role for the banks in the 1980s, particularly in (Continued)
meaning of free enterprise. It does not mean being simplemindedly probusiness. The latter sees a partnership between government and business, subsidies for failing industries, government planning, ~nd other interventionist techniques, albeit frequently justified on an "exception" basis. In contrast, promoting the concept of free enterprise requires that no favored treatment be given to any specific interest group or industry. It means restraining any tendency to reallocate resources from those who are entitled to them by virtue of their own economic activity to those who receive them by political decision. Furthermore, America's concern for the principles of economic freedom cannot stop at the water's edge. Freer worldwide flows of trade and investment-a free enterprise system writ large-offers greater economic welfare to the peoples of the world. Special interests in the United States, for instance, would have us close the door to the accomplishments of Japanese management. But when all the benefits of a more open economy are added up, it becomes clear that losses for domestic producers do not and cannot cancel out the gains that consumers receive from imports. Free trade, of course, is preferably a two-way street. Thus, one role for governments is to encourage each other to provide more open markets for the products of the various economies of the world. Let me now turn to the Reagan Administration's economic program which is built upon this free enterprise philosophy. It is helpful to begin by placing our current economic situation in perspective. There can be no question, but that, viewed over the past two decades, the basic trends in the American economy have been highly unsatisfactory. They have led the country to what can be fairly described as a "mess." The average yearly rise in the U.S. consumer price index in the 1960s was 2.3 percent; in the 1970s it more than tripled to 7.1 percent. The average unemployment rate in the United States in the 1960s was 4.8 percent; in the 1970s it rose to 6.2 percent. Productivity in the American economy in the 1960s grew at an annual rate of 3.1 percent; in the 1970s it slowed to 1.5 percent. Real GNP (Gross National Product) per capita grew at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the 1960s compared to 2.3 percent in the 1970s. And, of course, the latter part of the 1970s-and the first year of the new decade-offered little hope of any turn around from these long-term trends. To be sure, within each decade there were cyclical upswings in output, employmeIit, and productivity growth, and occasional moderation in inflation and the unemployment rate. But these cyclical movements all took place against a background of continued deterioration in most of the key economic indicatorsofahealthy Drawing courtesy of the U.S. Trust Company. society. (Continued)
Porelgn Aid using their capital and development experience to mobilize private capital for productive investment. The International Monetary Fund has undergone adaptation in recent years to make it a more relevant and approachable institution for developing countries in significant financial difficulties. While the Fund will always be the lender of last resort, one can hope that countries with serious disequilibria will seek help earlier. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade has been the central institution in maintaining an open international trading system which is critical to the development of developing countries. We believe that tire nontariff codes and dispute settlement machinery perfected by the multilateral trade negotiations will further strengthen the GAIT, and that they demonstrate its ability to adapt to changes in the world trading environment. The fuller participation of developing countries in the rights and obligations of the GAIT will ensure that it continues to respond to the needs of all countries. Looking at multilateral contacts with developing countries themselves, we see a continuation of very useful discussions and negotiations in many specialized fora, but we have doubts about the utility of abstract debate in fora without competence on specific issues and about the utility of general meetings where blocks of countries square off in what is essentially a political debate rather than a search for solutions to the real economic problems which confront each country differently. On President Reagan's agenda is the Ottawa economic summit in July and after that participation in the meeting on cooperation and development in Mexico next October. He believes that the heads of state at both summits will benefit from each other's experience and perspectives and that they will be in a better postion to decide later about such issues as the global negotiations that have been proposed by developing countries. The principal ¥derlying factor informing the Reagan Administration's policy review is the substantial U.S. economic interdependence with major developing countries. We export more to developing countries than to Europe and Japan combined. LDCs provide us with a high share of critical raw materials and increasingly with economical imports of manufactures. Our financial interaction is especially extensive, both in terms of direct investment and portfolio investment. Moreover, the globe has gotten too small for any nation to be indifferent to the plight of other nations. Development is the only answer to malnutrition, high infant mortality, illiteracy, and disease. Both on humane grounds and in terms of our political interests we wish to see countries succeed in their efforts to eradicate these manifestations of poverty. At the same time we see an economically advancing Third World as a critical partner in trade and finance; as a cocustodian of the world's dwindling resource base; and as a source of new production of goods, services, and ideas. 0
Domestic Plans The program necessary to restore the American economy consists of four parts: (1) a substantial reduction in the growth of government expenditures; (2) a significant reduction in federal tax rates; (3) prudent relief from government regulatory burdens for business and other institutions; and (4) a policy of monetary restraint on the part of the independent central bank which is consistent with those policies. These four complementary policies form an integrated and comprehensive program. Clearly, the Reagan Administration's program has significant implications for international economic relations. We are making every effort to take that fact into account as we carry out our program. To begin with, we are sensitive to high-interest rates in the United States, and their implications for exchange rates. It should be clearly understood that the United States Government is consciously following a set of economic policies which will lead to lower interest rates. As the President has emphasized, lower interest rates will follow from lower inflation rates. The Reagan Administration's economic program is designed to avoid the errors of the past-misguided efforts to lower interest rates temporarily by pursuing an expansionary monetary policy which then only led to increased inflationary pressures and ultimately higher interest rates. Our policy, in contrast, is to encourage lower growth of the money supply in order to reduce inflationary pressures and expectations of future inflation, which are the basic factors that have caused high interest rates. Such a policy of monetary restraint is facilitated by reducing government spending, by broad-based tax rate reductions which will increase private savings, and by steps to lower the cost of government regulations. All of these actions are integral parts of the President's economic recovery program. As participants in financial markets come to appreciate this policy-and the Reagan Administration's determination to carry it out-there will be a substantial easing in inflationary expectations and a corresponding decline in interest rates. Here are a number of other implications for international economic relationships which follow from our program and its expected results: • Monetary and price stability in the United States will go a long way toward permanently restoring confidence in the dollar. Evidence to date suggests that the exchange markets do view our program favorably, even after allowance is made for interest-rate movements over the past several months; • Monetary and price stability will contribute to stability in international as well as U.S. financial markets; • A more stable domestic growth rate will reduce the volatility of U.S. imports and thus contribute to economic stability in other countries; • A more dynamic and innovative U.S. economy will provide growing markets for foreign producers. Stronger U.S. growth will mean more job opportunities, within the United States, particularly for those whose jobs are affected by foreign competition. . In short, a successful program implies that protectionist pressures will recede; U.S. consumers will continue to enjoy the benefits of a wide range of imports, and foreign producers will benefit as well. d
No longer 'dependent on bug-eyed monsters and other imaginative implausibilities, science fiction and sci-fi films are today a respectable literary genre. An accompanying piece answers a controversial question: How true to science is sciencefiction?
Let's Have a Meeting Are meetings a vital management tool? Opinions differ. While some executives cringe ~t the - -thought of yet another mee.ting, others consider them an essential part of the trend toward management by consensus-and not by command.
"All the King's Men" Novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren recalls the political milieu of Louisiana in the 1930s that inspired his All the King's Men ... and Nayantara Sahgal explores the literary themes of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
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Reinventing the Small Plane PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOSEPH J. LUCAS JR.
Left: The transparent skin of Lazair, a mosquito like airplane, reveals an aluminum skeleton. Below: Gliding silently, a pilot yanks the pullcord to restart his engine. Most ultralights can fold up to a con venient size and thus be easily transported.
The Styrofoam floats of this plane help make runways out of lakes and rivers.
A dozen improbable flying machines in various sizes and shapes being determinedly steered by their pilot-builders, some of whom have made a running skip, hop or jump into their planes: To curious onlookers it was an amusing, thrilling sight. But to the navigators and creators of these minimal aircraft, the American Experimental Aircraft Association's recent fly-in and convention at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was a matter of moment and achievement. In just four years of swift evolution, ultralights, as these home built aircraft are called, have made astonishing progress. A follow-up of the popular pastime of hang gliding (see SPAN, April 1979), these nimble, fluttery craft meld together such diverse components as st~inless steel aircraft cable, sailcloth, plastic hang glider fittings, pop rivets, bicycle wheels and lawn mower throttles. Most are powered by engines adapted from chain or snowmobiles. They cost saws, go-karts approximately $3,000-4,000 and take 20-500 hours to build from a kit with hand tools. Using
about four-and-a-half liters of gas or alcohol per hour, they take off and land at 25-40 kilometers and cruise at 50-70 kilometers per hour. But they are increasingly moving toward bigger engines, more weight, higher speeds, greater complexity-and higher prices. Their builders, say observers, seem to be reinventing the airplane. Steering by shifting weight is giving way to aerodynamic controls. Aerobatics-though illegal-are commonly attempted. The pilots, of course, have high hopes that their planes will "revolutionize the airplane industry," but at present they are just a fascinating, if complex and demanding, hobby to fly the hours away.