The Public Interest articles from January 1993

The Public Interest archives from January 1993

What infrastructure crisis?
January 1, 1993... JUST A FEW years ago, the term "infrastructure" held little meaning for most people. Today citizens and policymakers alike increasingly subscribe to the notion that we suffer from an "infrastructure crisis," marked by deteriorating highways,...

In praise of pork. (pork barrel spending)
January 1, 1993... IN A WHITE HOUSE address last March, President Bush challenged Congress to cut $5.7 billion of pork barrel projects to help reduce the deficit. Among the projects Bush proposed eliminating were such congressional favorites as funding for...

Shakespeare-"for all time"? (politicizing the teaching of Shakespeare's works)
January 1, 1993... THE CONTENT of the curriculum tends to be the focus of contemporary debates on the humanities in college education, as if our only concern should be exactly which books are being taught on our campuses. Many people, for example, are...

Social science and minority "set-asides."
January 1, 1993... FOR THE PAST half century, government agencies and the courts have relied on social scientists to define and measure discrimination. The most famous result was the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which cited the work of...

Genetic engineering: the making of monsters?
January 1, 1993... IN 1973 scientists integrated a number of esoteric techniques in microbial and molecular biology, making possible the directed molecular recombination of DNA. By this method, fragments of DNA from any source could be spliced in the test tube...

Nostalgia as family policy. (emotional and economic effects of divorce on children)
January 1, 1993... IN "For the Sake of the Children" [Summer 1992], Richard Gill criticizes a study several collaborators and I published on the effects of divorce on children.([dagger]) Gill first charges that our methodology and our interpretation are flawed,...

Family breakdown as family policy.
January 1, 1993... PROFESSOR CHERLIN'S critique can be summarized in three claims: 1) that my concerns about technical flaws in his Science article are "groundless"; 2) that my hypothesis that the increased availability and social acceptability of divorce may...

Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays.
January 1, 1993... AS THE TITLE suggests, many of the pieces in this collection are variations on the themes of Paglia's Sexual Personae. Paglia identifies the archetypal elements in pop culture, sees beauty in advertisements, and finds deep meaning in rock...

Home Fires.
January 1, 1993... THE AUTHOR of this book, Donald Katz, met one of its subjects, Ricky Gordon, while jogging. A friendship developed between them, in the course of which Gordon, a young composer, talked at length about his family. His father, Sam, had served in...

The Diversity of Life.
January 1, 1993... ON AUGUST 27, 1883, a volcanic explosion smashed the Indonesian island of Krakatau with the force of a 100-150 megaton fusion bomb. The sound from this blast, the largest in recorded history, could be heard 4600 kilometers away. The explosion...

Talking Heads: Political Talk Shows and Their Star Pundits.
January 1, 1993... NO DEVOTEE of the astrological sciences is more dependent on the rhythms of the cosmos than are today's political journalists, pollsters, analysts, and other members of our pundit class. These people are not paid to take the long view of...

Sound and Fury: The Washington Punditocracy and the Collapse of American Politics.
January 1, 1993... NO DEVOTEE of the astrological sciences is more dependent on the rhythms of the cosmos than are today's political journalists, pollsters, analysts, and other members of our pundit class. These people are not paid to take the long view of...

The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and the Development of the Inner City.
January 1, 1993... NEW YORKERS GREETED the end of the Second World War with two housing demands. The first was for more housing: The previous fourteen years had left a painful shortage, made more acute by the formation of new families by young people who had...

As Far as Republican Principles Will Admit.
January 1, 1993... WHEN MARTIN DIAMOND died prematurely of a sudden heart attack in 1977, he had chosen the title for, but had not otherwise begun to organize and edit, a collection of his previously published essays. William Schambra has now selected and...

Media Polls in American Politics.
January 1, 1993... DESPITE then-Governor Clinton's solid lead in the weeks leading up to the 1992 election, it seemed unwise to have too much confidence in the polls. There was the matter of H. Ross Perot's rising, falling, and again-rising fortunes: One never...

The Superpollsters: How they Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America.
January 1, 1993... DESPITE then-Governor Clinton's solid lead in the weeks leading up to the 1992 election, it seemed unwise to have too much confidence in the polls. There was the matter of H. Ross Perot's rising, falling, and again-rising fortunes: One never...

Death at the Parasite Cafe: Social Science (Fictions) and the Postmodern.
January 1, 1993... IT HAS BECOME the custom in recent years for books to carry a general subject designation on their back covers--presumably to help the retailer know where to shelve the work. Death at the Parasite Cafe is listed by its publisher as "Sociology/...