THE DOLLAR COST AND BRAIN DAMAGE

But the cost in dollars is brutal, too. Below is a chart of the cost of nuclear plants as it has sky-rocketed as a function of the operating date since the late 1960s. The figure is taken from Prof. Bernard L.

Cohen's outstanding chapter "Nuclear Power Economics and Prospects" in a forthcoming book Energy in a Free Market Environment to be published later this year under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation.

When it is remembered that these are the plants built by the same people from the same companies, the point surely needs no further belaboring, and we turn to another aspect of this episode, namely that the two scholars from Rhode Island write: "How can nuclear power's technological and economic failure be explained? Prematurity is the answer."

As we compare this compound piffle with the chart, we suspect that these two lumina of economics do not know whether to read a time axis from left to right or right to left.

That remark is less facetious than you might think. American universities still host some of the country's most brilliant minds; but they are gradually being swamped, especially in the liberal arts, by greedy, dull-witted types whose only ability is that of securing government grants so they can hire a graduate student to show them which button to press on a computer. They lack the brains for true scholarship, but not the instinct what to parrot so as to gain access to the highest goal in the halls of higher learning: the lavish funds extracted from the taxpayers.

Stop giving to the college of your choice.