S16 

reason than ordinarily gambling does, however, because it is 
more in earnest. . 

1t has been said that the physicist has just as closed a 
mind agout cause as the Christian has about god. The physicist 
assumes through thick and thin that everything happens according 
to causal laws. He presupposes cause, just as the Christian 
presupposes God. 

But the physicist does not assume that there is a reign 
of law; he hopes that there is. He looks for laws; but, whenever 
a possible law occurs to him, he conscientiously tries to dis-
prove it by all reasonable tests. He asserts at any time only 
such laws as seem at thgt time to have passed all reasonable 
tests, and he remains always prepared to hear of new evidence 
throwing doubts on those laws. This is far from the Christian 
attitude about god. The Christian does not merely hope that 
there is a god ~nd maintain only such gods as the best tests 
have shown to be more probable than improbable. 

(Thanks to Elmer Thiessen for submitting this example.) 

~7. 

Nancy Reagan: \Vhich hiS-
tory books has she been 
readilXli 

Reli!rion and Dolitics 
DetroIt Free Press, Mly 22, 1980 
I AM CONCERNED about the religion. My history books tell me 

comments-of Mrs. Reagan and Rev. our Founding Fathers and the first 
Falwell at the Christian rally in seven preSidents. of the United 
Indiana, concerning Christian can'- States were Deists '- which is defi-
lIidates for public office. njt~ly not,Christian. 
, This is a l:OUntry built pn the '. The Rev. Falwell says this,coun-
conCept of separation of church and 'try is not Jewish and not Moslem -
State. If a person chooses to join a but only Christian~ Obviously, it 
religion thit does not advocate lib- falls into place that if the United 
eral causes, then it Is that indiyid- States government overturns the 
ual's private preference. The indi-' 1963 Supreme Court ruling of 
vidual's freedom to pUQue certain forced Bible reading and prayer in 
ideas Is respected. So it does not public schools, that only Christian 
seem right for a religious group to prayers will be.allowed. It also fol-
dictat~ its preference to the country' lows that if we are a Christian· 
that has allowed religions the free- nation and nothing but. then I wO.n-
dom to flourish and develop. der what we should do with ¢e 

The Intermingling of church and Jews, Moslems, non-Christians and. 
state Is a scary concept. The Spanish atheists? 
Inquisition is one example of this There was once a man who had 
sort of Idea. the "final 'solution" to this "prob-
! JANE NUGENTlem." While Nancy Reagan and her 

Warren husband. candidate for president of 

NANCt REAGAN says our 
country Is S. Christian countr.y, 
founded on Cllristiali principles. 

I wonder what history books she 
,has been reading. My history books 
ten me that the ~nited States is a 
"Ountry tor all.religions - and no 

this great natidn. dangerously dis-
tort history, and while our FQUnd-
ing Fathers are twirling in their 
graves hi sadness a'nd sJtock, we 
better take a lesson fr)m history -
or else we are C;0omf'd to repeat it. 

, BARBARA SCHWARTZ 
'Oak Park 

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• 'h __________ . ________ ~ _________ ~ ____ ~ ______________ ~ ________ ~ __________ .~ ______ _ 
DETROIT FREE PRESS/THURSDAY. JUNE 12. 1960 15A 

Why such terror over nuclear reactors? 
Physicist Edward Teller is senior 

research fellow at the Hoover Institu-
tion. Stanford University, and aformer 
member oftheAtomic Energy Commis-
.~ion Advisory Committee on Nuclear 
Safeguards. He is also author of "Ener-
gy from Heaven and Earth." 

By EDWARD TELLER 
IN ORDER to ask If nuclear energy Is 

worth the risk, one must necessarily 
ignore the risks that are involved in oil 
dependence on the Middle East (includ-
Ing war), and the risks associated with 
coal, natural gas and hydroelectric pow-
er usage. One must also ignore the safety 
records of the various power-generating 
industrl('s, and one must focus on radi-
ation as a terrifying new threat to the 
well-being of the human race. 

Bumper stickers proclaiming "Ban 
Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Reac-
tors" are Indicative of the underlying 
association of nuclear energy and de-
struction. 

This is probably related to the flf$t 
introduction that people had to nuclear 
energy. However, radiation has been 
pr(,lIent since the beginning of the unl-
\prsf'. When mankind lived In caves, 
who!:e walls as a rule release radioactiv-
Ity, the average exposure to radiation' 
was probably greater by a considerable 
factor. 

THE WELL-PUBLICIZED Three 
Mile Island accident released about 70 
mlllirems of radiation to the Immediate· 
environment. This waS the most severe 
accident that has ever occurred In the 
history of 200 electricity-generating re-
actors, operating on the average for 10 
years each In the free world. 

The Increase of radiation that a resl';. 
dent In the area near TMI received was 
about equal to the Increase that would 
have occurred If he or she had left 
'Harrisburg and moved to a mountain 
area near Denver and lived there a little 
less than one year. 

The horrors of war, of bombing a 
civilian population with a mysterious 
unknown weapon, of which Hiroshima 
and Nagasaki remind us, are wrongly 
related to the compa~atlvely small ef-
fects of radiation. Three-fourths of the 
people wlthlR 3.1 miles of the bOmb 
Impact point survived. Many of them 
received doses between 100,000 and 
200,000 mrems of radiation, and some 
may even have received more. After 30 
years of study of some 80,(100 survivors, 
there Is no evidence of Increase In genet-
Ic birth defects among the children, 
grandchildren and, in a few cases, great-
grandchildren of the survivors. 

There is an observed increase In only 
one kind of cancer, leukemia. A total of 
126 people of the 80,000 In the study 
have been so afflicted. This total in-
cludes 66 cases who would have been 
expected to contract the disease even 
without radiation effects. Clearly, even 
tllese massive radiation doses did not set 
off a cancer epidemic. 

THE REAL killers In Hiroshima were 
blast, heat and fire - not radiation. The 
only real danger connected with reac-
tors Is radiation. The fear connected 
with radiation may very well have more 
profound health effects on people than 
radiation Itself. Many people are fright-
ened away from needed diagnostic X-
'rays or radiation used In therapy, though 
the radiation treatment Is often more 
promising than surgery. 

Three Mile Island: Workers wear protective radiation suits 

There Is a possibility bul'not a prob- panel had been easier to read, we would 
ability that one single person, yeats never have heard of Tbree Mile Island. A 
from now, might develop cancer as a major lesson has been learned at the cost 
result of the TMI accident. Unlike other of dollars, not at the cost of lives. 
forms of energy-generation, nuclear en-
ergy was not developed until safeguards 
for human life had beep provided. In this 
we succeeded. 

However, we did not succeed In es-
tablishing a system that cannot go 
wrong and damage equipment. To re-
pair the damage to the TMI reactor will 
cost a minimum of $400 million. The cost 
of having to buy oil-generated electric-
Ity is much greater. 

THE ACCIDENT could. easily have 
been prevented - if the Nuclear Regula-
tory Commission (NRC) had circulated 
an earlier report of a similar malfunction 
(which produced no real damage~ as 
was their responsibility. If the operators 
had not Interfered but had called for help 
from engineers; if, Indeed, the operators 
had had better training, if the control 

Let us train operat9~ better and pay 
them as well as we pay airline pilots. Let 
us have In the NRC safety experts, not 
polltlcal appointees. (The same five peo-
ple who ran the commisslorl at the time 
of the accident are stili in office.) 

Let us Install computers, not to run 
the reactor but to stand ready to give 
advice based on rapid calculations in 
case of any Irregularity. Then reactors 
will be even safer than they are now. 

Two questions remain: Will we be-
come Informed about the reality of t~e 
energy-related risks that confront us 
individually and as a nation? Will we 
make our decisions in time to avoi41 the 
real energy-related catastrophes -
war, national economic privation, uni· 
maglnable starvation in the Third World 
- that now loom as probabilities? 

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S18 

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II 

G ENETI CS : Maybe Dr. Shockley 
needs a lesson on biology and people 

YOU .HA VE. to give William Shockley 
credit for something, atJd it might as well be 
for his willingness to expose his real views. 
He has made no secret of his belief in the 
gt'netic inferiority·of blacks, and he has not 
tried to hide his. involvement in a sperm 
bank scheme that sounds like II sCript from 
the old "Star Trek" series. 

Dr. Shockley was co-winner of the 1956 
Nobel Pri~e for inventing the transistor, but 
the qualities that make someone a very good 
electrical engineer do not necessarily trans-
fer to other fields. If they did, the 70-year-
old physicist would never have donated his 
sperm to a.califomia outfit that is trying to 
concoct ~ recipe for brilllance. 

The brainchild of ~lifomia optometrist 
o Robert K. Graham, t'he sperm bank has 
CO preserved sperm from five Nobel Prize win-
~ ners, to be given to women with very high 

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IQs. Says Graham: "My slogan is, the more 
intelligent you are, the more children you 
should have." When questioned . about all 
this by the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Shockley, 
the only identified sperm donor, said, "I'm 
thoroughly in sympathy with this sort of 
approach." 

But while Dr. Shockley may deserve 
some dubious credit for sticking his neck 
out, that is about all he merits. For one thing, 
he's involved himself in a scheme of doubt-
ful scientifit value. Genetics is so far from 
a~ exact science that no one knows just 
exactly what combination of genes is likely 
to produce l genius - or, for that matter,. a 
dullard. 

Many scientists believe environment and 
nutrition may be as important as genes in the 
development of intelligence. And, since 
genes are randomly selected in the sperm 
and egg, the child may not get all the "right" 
ones, and'no child, certainly, will be a carbon 
copy of his parents. As far as we have been 
able to determine, Dr. Shockley's parents 
didn't win any Nobel prizes. 

Dr. Shockley: Sticking his neck out 

But scientific implausibility is not the 
only reason to spurn the sperm bank. The 
idea of impregnating very bright young 
married women with the s.perm bf excep-
tiOQal men to create super-babies is the sort 
of notion' that might have animated a 
Nietszche or a Hitler. 

There is. something fundamentally 
wrong about a theory that defines the "best" 
people only in terms of IQ. For one thing, no 
one.rea)ly knows how to measure intelli-
gence. And, if we did, we might discover 
that the ability' to juggle numbers and con-
cepts is neither the only nor, in some cases, 
the most desirable kind of mental sharpness. 

The survival of the race in the years 
ahead probably will depend more on the-
abillty to get along with others than on high 
Intelligence, whatever that is. It might make 
more sense to impregnate women with 
sperm from gregarious fellows or men born 
under the sign of Aquarius. 



30. 

The letter reprinted below in the left column was written in 
response to an earlier letter in which the writer had referred 
to the Vietnam War as a "fiasco" and complained that being 
drafted would interrupt his college education. 'llhe letter 
reprinted below in the rieht column represents a different 
point of view about the draft. 'l'he ec1i torial in the bottom 
right corner deals with the causes of inflation. Thanks 
to Sam Fohr, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, for 
sending along these examples. 

Other Voices 
This newspaper welc(Jme~leUeN to the edltnr. All letten 

must b .. signed with th~ .:orrect full name and address 01 
the writer :and should ~ brief and to th~ point. p~lerablJ' 
not more than UO 10 JOO·wnrd~. II the ",r!ler Wlshe5 to lIa\'1! 
his or her name wtthheld lrom pnnt. thIS can. be specrlled 
aCter the Sillnature. . . 

l'io vituperative or actionable material ~ay Ile pnnte<!: 
The column Is designed tor· dISCUSSion 0' ISSUes and ma;; 
not be used as a forum lor h~lou5 comments. 

Dear sir: 
In regards 'to thdetter- to the editor from 

"Timmy" who saeCl~ to be shaking in his 
boots at the thought of the draft: 

Let me ask you a couple of questions. First, 
do you think your college education is more 
important than 50 Americ.tDs held as 
hostages for 90 days i:l Iran.? 

Is your time and effort ~itt+.Dg in college 
more important than defending the USA? 

Was it a fiasco? A fiasco is a clash, a flask. 
a bottle or a failure. Which one did you mean 
by fiasco? . . 

Are you really worried about the amount of 
money and taxes it would cost or are you us-
ing that as a crutch? . . .. 

I'm going to tell you something ~y son, 
Joe, said to me when he (luckily) came back 
to us from that "fiasco." _ 

"Mom, would you rather have us over 
there, or them over here?" . . I 

Think aboutthat! .' . '.. ··1 
My father was a vet. I had three brothers in I 

World War II. My younge~t brother was kill-
ed there in Sicily. 

My husband also was in World War II. Our I 
two sons were in the "fiasco." . . I 

We are. very happy they both made it home. I 
Joe was wounded twice over there. 
. I'm very proud to be an American and that 
my entire family did their share in our tie of 
need. 

Don't think for one minute (while you 
gather your books to go to your next class) 
that it is easy on a mother or' father, because 
it was hell. . 

As for the draft, they should have never 
stopped it. If you don't want to serve your 
country, you have that right to leave. 

Is the draft.really necessary. Your damned; 
right it is! ! 

tJl I Irate mother, 
7 f1- ~4J__ I 

3/· 
Dearsi!:': 

As a mother of nine children I would like to 
speak out on the draft everyone is talking 
about. 

I am one that is very much against it. I lost 
a husband in Korea and if they draft from age 
18 to 26 I stand to lose four sons· and one 
daughter. 

As a mother in poor health I don't think I 
could take that. 

Why can't Carter leave well enough alone 
and try and find some of our boys still miss-
ing or being held some place. 

9/1"/'D Mrs.L.T. 

Sl~ 



S20 

33. 

• 

Hairy subject 
Men with beards could make 
good study for psychologists 

By HILDA FASTMAN 
Sunday Paper County Editor 

Remember when old men had beard.i 
and their sons and grandsons were 
clean shaven? Well, now it seems the 
reverse is true. 

Why so many men are hiding their 
faces behind hairy shrubbery is one for 
psychologists to ponder. 

Can it be because some men feel 
women are a threat to their 
:nasculinity? What better way to 
project a macho image than do 
SflfteLhinl a woman can't do-grcw a 
m&istache or a fi111 beard. 

Also contributing to the hair-raising 
craze could be the cold weather. There 
isn't a need to buy a ski mask when you 
can grow your own. 

Vanity often leads men to forsake the 
clean-cut look. A Van Dyke or goatee 
can hide a weak chin or cover up a 
comple .. don pocked by acne. Unat-
tractive upper lips are easily 
camoullaged with a healthy growth of 
hair. 

The hairy look came in with the 
flower children and the drug cultiSts in 
the 1960s. They defied the establish-
ment by letting their hair grow 
shoulder·length and cultivated straggly 
beards and droopy mustaches. Some 
young men who joined the establish-
ment retain their hippie mentality as 
evidenced by their scuzzy faces. There 
are few protest demonstrations where 
the majority of the men are clean 
shaven. 

Have you noticed how stout and 

Hilda 
at 
Large 

rotund men cultivate beards? Could it 
be tho~ think it detracts from their big 
beer barrel bellies? There are few tall, 
lanky fellows wBlking around with 
excess growth on their faces. 

It may be splitting hairs but most of 
the bad guys in history and fiction had 
beards or mustaches. Among these 
were Brutus, Bluebeard, Blackbeard, 
Hitler and Stalin. Today the heavies are 
Fidel Castro and Ayatollah Ruhollah 
Khomeini. 

Defenders of the hairy look in-
veriably bring up bearded Santa Claus 
and Abe Lincoln to show there are some 
good guys who rejected the razor. But 
they are a minority. Such bearded 
presidents as Rutherford Hayes and 
James Garfield never held a candle in 
history to clean-shaven George 
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, An-
drew Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt 
and Harry Truman. 

Nobody seems to know when man 
first started shaving but it is recorded 
that ancient Egyptians shaved for 
religious reasons. Greeks wore beards 
of all sizes and Romans let their beards 
grow in time of mourning. 

Alexander the Great made his 

soldiers keep clean-shaven so the 
enemy couldn't grab them by their 
beards 2nd shishkebab them with a 
sword. 

God is always pictured with a beard 
as are Christ and Mohammed. "By thy 
beard" and "by the beard of the 
prophets" are well known oaths of 
truth. 

You must admire the determination 
of the bearded ones who must cope with 
many obstacles because of the hair on 
their chinny chin chins. It is amazing 
how they can eat spaghetti without 
trapping the slippery pasta in their 
beards or havmg me hain; l:oated with 
meat sauce. 

Eating a dripping ice cream cone can 
be dangerous. Women who say they like 
men who have beards must be 
masochists. It is bad enough to endure 
whisker bum (rom smooching with a 
clean-shaven fellow. Kissing a bearded 
man leaves a girl with a mouthful of 
wiry whiskers. 

From a safety point of view, beards 
can be dangerous. If the man with a (ull 
beard smokes. he risks setting his hairy 
growth on fire. Working around 
machinery can be hazardous. 

At last the clean·shaven look is 
resurging on the fashion scene. Burt 
Reynolds cut oll his mustache and 
every man who keeps up with the latest 
fashion trends are (ollowing suit. 

Perhaps psychologists could tell us 
that men who hide behind beards are 
insecure, obstinate chauvinists. They 
may think they look macho but they 
really look like the Devil who is 
depicted with a spade beard. 

This column appeared in The Sunday Newspa¥er (Ohio) in January 
1980~ ~han~s to Nelson POre, Cleveland S ate University for ' 
subm1tt1ng 1t. ' 



so the 
bv their 
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must be 
to endure 
19 with a 
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look is 
ene. Burt 
ache and 
I the latest 
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lid tell us 
I<!ards are 
ists. They 
I but they 
1 who is 

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r 

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~The Hradtord (t'a.l tra, trtday, lJecemDt:r 14, IY,Y 

Comment & opinion 
For us or against us 

SECRETARY OF STATE Cyrus Vance 
has laid it on the line for our so-called 
friends and allies in the free world: if 
you're not for us, you're against us. 

This applies. particularly to the 
Japanese, whose current wave of prosperi-
ty, unparalleled in any Asian country, Is 
due to American benevolence 'and to 
American proteCtion. 

The Japanese seem to forget who won 
World War II, and what kind ~ vengeance 
we might well have extracted from the 
island empire. 

Instead, we put the Japanese in a a sort 
of protective wrapper under cover of 
which they have bullt a mighty industrial· 
organization to rival our own - indeed, 
Japanese-made goods are the most serious 
rivals that American manufacturers have. 

Moreover, Japan has a tiny military 
budget. The responsibility for protecting 
Japan - by treaty - rests with the United 
States; so, the rain may fall upon the 
American umbrella but will not wet the 
Japanese. 

We also' encouraged and assisted 
Japanese manufacture and the rebuilding 
Qf Japanese industry ait~r World War II, 
so that it is equal to any European nation. 

To be sure, Japan must Import all its 
crude oU. It has no domestic source. But 
we do not see why the Japanese should be 
~eady to take up the slack in Iranian sales 
when we have banned the importation of 
Iranian oil in this country. 

There are other sources. The Japanese 
are acting, in our opinion, like greedy 
children, fighting over scraps dropped by 
t;heir elders from the picnIc basket. 

If we have any ally in this world, that aI-
ry should be Japan, for Japan exists today 

because of American mercy and a wlll-
ingness to let bygones be bygones, ignor- I 
Ing the rape, torture and murder inflicted 
on American soldiers and civilians during , 
World War II. ; 

One wonders how survivors of the Ba-
taan Death March must feel toward the 
Japanese at this. juncture. Many of them 
are bitter already at the gentle way we 
treated the Japanese. Precious few of that 
nation's wartime leaders paid the price for 
their atrocities. By comparison, Ger-
many's wartime leaders suffered far more 
than did the Japanese, and Germany's 
people, through Allied bombing and oc-
cupation, paid a much higher price per 
capita. ' 

We do not expect slavish bowing to our 
every whim by the Japanese or any other, 
friend or ally, but we do not expect them to 
stab us in the back when our attention, is 
fixed elsewhere. It smacks too much of a 
Pearl Harbor mentality which is supposed 
to have been relegated to the back closet of 
history. 

The Japanese are a very industrious and 
clever people who have gone far beyond 
the mere copiers of other peoples' 
technology which they were a generation 
ago. But until the Japanese swing into line 
behind us in this grave crisis, it behooves 
us, we feel, to see that Japan understands 
the situation in the kind of economic terms 
that it best comprehends. 

Those who are not for us in this struggle I 
are against us. 

And those who follow their own dictates 
should consider how far out on a limb the 
U.S. might go in their behalf should some 
similar affliction fall.upon them in the, 

. future. 

Thanks to Sam Fohr, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, for 
sendin~ us this example. 

c 
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