GOOD AND FAIR READING

A. Nero, "Earth, air, radon and home," Phys. Today, Apr. 89.

CANDU (the reliable, re-fueled while running, Canadian heavy-water reactor), Ascent, Summer 1989, also other good arti-cles, $4 (AECL, 344 Slater St., Ottawa, Ont., Canada K1A OS4).

Science of 6/1/89 is a special issue on genetic engineering.

Since then, the cystic fibrosis gene has been found (Science 9/1/89). It will, however, prosper undisturbed as long as suits are filed by Jeremy Rifkin, who has now also authored a tome on the green-house and entropy, two subjects of which he knows less than Tawana Brawley knows about plasma physics. But it is media sup-port, not the product, that sells.

Pesticides and Food Safety and Cancer Clusters by the Am. C. on Sci. & Health ($3 each from ACSH, 1995 Broadway, 16^th fl., New York, NY 10023, tel. 212-362-7044) are a bit frothy and not up to ACSH's usual standard. The first is nowhere near as good as their Sept. 1988 report Pesticides: harmful or helpful?; and the oc-currence of cancer clusters by no more then natural probabilities could have been presented numerically, graphically and far more convincingly. Let me again praise their top-notch reports Does na-ture know best? (1987) and Biotechnology: an introduction (1988).

"Get ready for power brownouts," Fortune, 6/5/89. (They weren't kidding. In spite of a mild summer, the East had plenty of alerts and narrow misses; the New England and Southern Pools both broke their previous demand records, reports USCEA Info, 1776 I St. N.W., Wash., DC 20006.)

"Another PBS atrocity," AIM Report. Aug-B 1989, (1275 K St. NW/#1150, Wash., DC 20005) on the airing of the anti-nuclear documendacity Dark Circle. Meanwhile, National Public Radio, like PBS paid for by your taxes and lavish big-business donations ("please kick us harder!"), has been including "news" on the ter-rible threat by Galileo's nuclear electricity source almost daily.

The Scientific Amer. Sept. issue has not its usual one article, but all of it, politicized and palmed off as scientific. Called "Managing the planet earth," it is speculative, anti-industrial sham-environmentalism on all the dire threats we face, green-house, ozone debacle, and the rest. The energy article has a prime sample of the inherent-safety red herring discussed in the editorial.

Australian AtE subscriber R.J. Long has authored an eminently readable 32p. booklet Greenhouse Hokum. A $7 (drawn on Austr. bank) or $6 cash, from Dominion Data, GPO Box 1467, Brisbane, Qld., Australia 4001. An excellent antidote to the Scien-tific American's lamentations.

C.E. Finn "The Campus: an island of repression" Commen-tary, Sept. 1989. (Stop giving to the college of your choice!)

"The moral & military aspects of trade with the USSR," Konzak Rep., Aug. 1989 (Box 18272, Denver, CO 80218).

J.J. Drummey, "Sister Cities in captive nations," New

American, 7/31/89 (Box 8040, Appleton, WI 54913). Fact-filled survey of this scandalous mockery of human rights by "liberal" US city councils.