Science & the Future
Sir:
Thanks to TIME, Nov. 18, for its article on Edward Teller, and for showing the world that we do have men endowed with scientific talents who have a genuine interest in our country and its future.
MARIE DELISLE
Cohoes, N.Y.
Sir:
So you combed your wide land for a real scientist, and all you could find was a ruddy Hungarian.
BASIL STUART
Vancouver, B.C.
Sir:
A source of special thrill to me was TIME'S account of Dr. Teller's denunciation of the inadequacy of our present educational system, especially the high schools, and the letters to the editor protesting against the crazy trends in present U.S. car design.
P. L. BARGELLINI
Media, Pa.
Sir:
Why should our college students want to become intellectuals? It only requires a B.A., M.A. and a Ph.D. For a two-bit extension course and a cheap guitar, they could become famous.
WILLIAM H. MAYFIELD
Springfield, Mo.
Sir:
A good research professor in Russia can earn around $36,000 a year, with a number of interesting fringe benefits such as chauffeured limousines, free hospitalization and summer villas. Their income tax is low, too. Furthermore, scientists are more or less the pinup boys of the Soviet Union. Is it any wonder that a Russian high school boy, unlike our own kids, thinks science is a likely profession?
JANE S. WILSON
Ithaca, N.Y.
Sir:
The men in your "bright spectrum" are bright, and some scientists are making from 10,000 to 20,000 bucks a year, but that is because of the vast army of small, dark, unknown plodders in U.S. science (like myself) whose salary plus commissions, etc. runs between $5,000 and $10,000 a year (mine: $6,000), and plenty of them get less than that.
STEPHEN TABER III
Baton Rouge
Sir:
You report a lady "fashion arbiter" earns an estimated $40,000 a year. America must decide. Will it be fashion or fission?
S. S. BLOCK
Gainesville, Fla.
Sir:
I was fascinated with your Nov. 25 color pictures of the horrible monstrosities we have created to defend ourselves from destruction and to destroy other people who likewise are preparing similar machines to defend themselves from destruction by us. In the frenzied direction we are now headed, to avoid sudden destruction we seem to be preparing to perish slowly, like Laika, in a bigger and better metallic cage.
WATSON CLAY
Frankfort, Ky.
Sir:
Even supposing the U.S. material and scientific attainments are less than those of Soviet Russia, which I doubt, the ends to which those attainments are directed and the ethical values which undergird the scientific accomplishments of the U.S. place those achievements on an entirely different plane from those of the U.S.S.R."
JOHN Withall
Karachi, Pakistan
The Girard Case
Sir:
America has need of friends abroad, but the brutal shooting of a poverty-stricken, scrap-picking Japanese woman by Private William Girard has made enemies instead. Insult has been added to injury now that Girard has become the recipient of that modern legal farce, the suspended sentence. Girard not only has got away with murder, but he has cost Uncle Sam precious good will.
CHARLES L. PIZZANO