This month's issue mentions two famous biologists, Konrad Lorenz and J.B.S. Haldane. Here we would like to recall a third internationally renowned biologist, Lancelot Hogben, who was elected to the (British) Royal Society in 1936 at the then stunning age of "only" 41.
Were it not for Hogben, you might not be reading this newsletter; for this writer was first attracted to science and mathematics as a teenager by his book Mathematics for the Million. It was published in 1937 and translated into most European languages other than German: it was verboten in Nazi Germany, for it contained little remarks like "If you remember that the theory [of spherical trigonometry] was worked out by the colored conquerors of Spain when the people of Britain and Germany were barbarians, living in mud huts, ruled by ignorant priests and robber barons, it will clear your mind of the sort of cant chanted by ... the pundits of German national socialism."
The company that published Hogben's book was W.W. Norton & Co. of New York, and in 1937 it took some social courage to stand up to barbarism.
In 1981 it still takes some courage, but W.W. Norton & Co. has not only lost it, it has joined the barbarians. To its list of antinuclear books it is about to add The nuclear witnesses by some woman who has interviewed the same old tired names
¾the three ex-GE salesmen, Gofman, and the others who make a living by smearing nuclear power, down to the inevitable Khelen Keldikott; needless to say, strict censorship is imposed on the reports of the National Academy of Sciences, the A.M.A., and the testimony of the overwhelming majority of radiologists and health physicists.Had the predecessors of the present crew at W.W. Norton been as fashionable in 1937, they would have published books on the superiority of the Aryan race and on the Fuhrer's quest for lasting peace.
Nor is Norton & Co the only slave to fashion. A few months ago, McGraw-Hill ("Serving the Need for Knowledge") published Secret Fallout by Ernest Sternglass. Alice Stewart, Arthur Tamplin and other antinukes have recoiled from this charlatan, and not even John Gofman, testifying under oath, could bring himself to endorse his concoctions. But at McGraw-Hill ("Serving the Need for Knowledge") they stomached them in serving the need for improved cash flow.
In bookstores, pro-nuclear books are virtually unobtainable, though they are often well-stocked with antinuclear propaganda. This is so with the ACE-paperback edition of The Health Hazards, of NOT Going Nuclear,(*) and word has reached us from Australia that John Grover's Struggle for Power [AtE Jan 81] ran into an organized campaign to make it an "unbook"
¾the antinuclear media decided not to dispute, attack, or even smear it, but just never to mention it. Only recently have attempts been made in the South Australian Assembly [state legislature] to purge it from school libraries. In the US, you can buy do-it-yourself guides on theft, arson, bomb making and terrorism, not to mention books explaining that what's really wrong with you is insufficient practice of homosexual incest; but books on a more benign energy source? That's where good taste draws the line.Sour grapes? People wouldn't buy it anyway? Then what happened to Overload or The Spike? Both were on the national best-seller list for months. Try and find it at an airport bookstand among the other best-sellers of long ago. Overloads Spike? Well, they don't usually order that kind of book. It would offend the more refined people.
The ones who want the broadest possible interpretation of the First Amendment.
* The editor (James Baen) who initiated its publication is no longer with ACE, which has apparently ceased to promote it. Original edition available for $5.95 from Golem Press, Box 1342, Boulder, CO 80306.
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Vol. 9, No. 2
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 9, No. 2 Date: November 23, 2004 12:45 PM Title: Slaves to Fashion
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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