Editor's Page
"True Tales - JFK's Lost Suitcase"
It
was 1960 – a half-century ago for those who can count. I worked
as an American Airlines ticket and ramp agent at New York's LaGuardia
Airport. It was a time of DC 3s and 6s, Convairs and later the
Lockheed Electra turboprops - which began to fall out of the sky at
around that time because of torque pressure on the wings. We
did everything. Nowadays you buy your ticket on the internet or from
a travel agent. Then you were more likely to have bought it from us
at the airport. That means that we didn't only give you a boarding
pass and sling your bag onto a belt, but we also issued your ticket
by hand, which made us tariff experts as well. And fares were
complicated those days – there were “open jaw”
constructions, which meant that you could travel from A to B but
return from C to A (the open jaw being from B to C) and still get the
round-trip discount, by calculating one-half the round trip fares A-B
and C-A. There were also “triangular” fares – A to
B to C to A, for example: New York-Paris-Buenos Aires-New York.... Read more
Fiction
"The Black Widow of Córdoba" by Frank Thomas Smith
Andrew
Johnson is tired, surely, but not tired enough to ignore the young
mini-skirted beauty seated at the table near the window who had
glanced his way twice in the past few minutes. Andrew is waiting for
a bus at the terminal in Córdoba, Argentina, after having
flown in starting from Minneapolis to Miami, where he connected with
another flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil, then another to Córdoba.
The
terminal café looks like its counterpart in any South American
provincial city: plastic tables and chairs, smoke-filled, unhurried
middle-aged waiters in once white jackets and coffee stained black
ties. Tired faces grimace as they sip muddy cafecitos
or relax over cheap red wine. What makes this one distinctly
Argentinian is the photograph of Evita Perón on the mirror
that hangs behind the bar...Read more
"Axolotl" (Español) por Julio Cortázar
Hubo un tiempo en
que yo pensaba mucho en los axolotl. Iba a verlos al acuario del
Jardín des Plantes y me quedaba horas mirándolos,
observando su inmovilidad, sus oscuros movimientos. Ahora soy un
axolotl.... Leer más
"Axolotl" (English) by Julio Cortázar
There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to
see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint
movements. Now I am an axolotl...Read more
"To Whom Can I speak Today?" by Iftekhar Sayeed
 NGO Directors |
"Who
is it?
I could see nothing through the peephole. The banging on the door
increased, and in the darkness sounded portentous. There had been a
power failure. I heard feet taking the steps two at a time.
"Sir,
it’s me, Jamaluddin!”
After the overthrow of the General, I decided to take a flat in a secure
building, with guards, and an intercom. The power failure had
rendered the last useless tonight – as on many previous nights.
I recognised Jamaluddin’s voice, though, and slipped back the bolt...Read more
"Primum Non Nocere" by Michael Ingles
A
hippopotamus can weigh up to 10,000 pounds, and is swift enough to
outrun a man. The fastest man in the world is Usain Bolt, of Jamaica.
Hippopotami are not native to the islands of the Caribbean.
Given
this information; you might surmise that Usain Bolt need not worry
about being overtaken by a hippopotamus running amok on his home
island/nation of Jamaica, in the Caribbean. Given particular facts;
it’s only reasonable to reach certain assumptions.
There is order in civilized society...Read more.
Current Events
"Prisoners of War - Bob Woodward and All the President's Men (2010 Edition)" by Andrew C. Bacevich
Once
a serious journalist, the Washington
Post’s Bob
Woodward now makes a very fine living as chief gossip-monger of the
governing class. Early on in his career, along with Carl
Bernstein, his partner at the time, Woodward confronted power.
Today, by relentlessly exalting Washington trivia, he flatters
power. His reporting does not inform. It titillates. A
new Woodward book, Obama’s
Wars,
is a guaranteed blockbuster. It’s out this week, already
causing a stir, and guaranteed to be forgotten the week after
dropping off the bestseller lists...
Read more
Science
"The Giraffe's Short Neck" by Craig Holdrege
...The idea that the giraffe got its long neck due to food shortages in the lower reaches of trees seems almost self-evident. The giraffe is taller than all other mammals, can feed where no others can, and therefore has a distinct advantage. It seems compelling to say that the long neck and legs developed in relation to this advantage. Why else would the giraffe be so tall? You find this view presented in children's books, in web descriptions of the giraffe, and in textbooks.
But just because this explanation is widespread does not mean it is true. In fact, this "self-evident" explanation retains its ability to convince only as long as we do not get too involved in the actual biological and ecological details. Various scientists have noticed that this elegant picture of giraffe evolution dissolves under closer scrutiny. Here are a few examples of my and their objections...Read more
"The Universe as Hologram" by Michael Talbot
At the
University of Paris a research team led by physicist
Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most
important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on
the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading
scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name,
though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of
science. Aspect and his team discovered that
under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are
able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the
distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or
10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know
what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates
Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than
the speed of light...Read more
Features
"Stan the Man in New York" by Tom Mellett
My Polo Grounds memories
center around Stan the Man Musial. I saw him in only two games but
watched him hit four home runs! First, though, I need to backtrack a
bit for that first game because that took place in Yankee Stadium on
my 12th birthday in 1960 when my father took me to the 2nd 1960
All-Star Game where the NL beat the AL 6-0 on 4 home runs by Eddie
Matthews, Willie Mays, Stan Musial and Ken Boyer...Read more
"No me arrepitino de tener 16 hijos" por Mariela Martínez
Nada fue fácil para Lilian Haidé González,
de 40 años. Desde su muy humilde condición económica,
cuenta cómo hace para mantener a sus 16 hijos. Un día
antes del Día de la Madre, se parece a aquellas progenitoras
inmigrantes que tenían familias numerosas para darle brazos a
un país despoblado. Durante
21 años, estar embarazada fue el estado más habitual
para Lilian. Es que su hijo mayor tiene 21 años y la más
chica sólo dos....
Leer más
"I Don't Regret Having 16 Children" by Mariela Martínez
Nothing has been easy for Lilian
Haidé González. She tells hows she manages to support her 16 children
with very humble economic means. This day before Mothers' Day she
reminds us of those original immigrant
mothers who gave birth to large families to people an underpopulated
country. For
21 years, being pregnant has been Lilian's normal state; her eldest son is 31 and the
youngest daughter is two...
Read more
Anthroposophy
"The Spiritual Matrix - An Anthroposophical Reading" or: "This Essay is the Red Pill" by Seth Miller
This
essay explores the Matrix trilogy of movies from the perspective of
spiritual science. Close attention is paid to the actual events in
the "text" of the movies, with an eye towards illuminating
features concerning the major characters and plot elements in a
coherent, symbolic, and mythological perspective. In particular the
movies are shown to be uniquely understandable from the perspective
of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical insights concerning human
evolution...
Read more
"The History and Actuality of Imperialism" by Rudolf Steiner
Today's
lecture will be episodic, a kind of interspersion into our
considerations, because I would like our English friends, who will
soon be going home, to be able to take as much as possible with them.
Therefore I will structure this lecture in a way to be as effective
as possible. Today I would like, at first historically, not so much
referring to the present – that can be done tomorrow perhaps –
I would like to say something about imperialism, historically, but in
a spiritual-scientific sense.... Read more
Karmic Relations, Volume 1, Lecture 6 by Rudolf Steiner
Continuing
our studies of karma, it is necessary for us to perceive first
how karma enters into humanity's development. We must perceive
how destiny, interwoven as it is with free deeds, is really
shaped and molded as the physical reflection of the spiritual
world...Read more
Book Reviews
"Ravelstein"by Saul Bellow
I don't think that "Ravelstein" is really about Ravelstein – whoever he's supposed to be in real life, some say Alan Bloom, but this doesn't interest me much. The real antagonist of "Ravelstein" is Chick, Ravelstein's reluctant biographer. And Chick can't be anyone but Bellow himself, or who Bellow would like to think he is or would like us to think he is, for the disguise is transparent. Chick is old, a well-known writer of fiction, recently survived a serious illness by the skin of his teeth, married to a much younger woman, and Ravelstein's best friend, perhaps his only friend, Jewish. And his writing style is suspiciously identical to Bellow's. Sound familiar? Read more
"The Trojan Spy" by Gaither Stewart
There
is no line that separates good and evil, no threshold over which one
steps. Rather a long tunnel connects the two, a tunnel that moves
from the brightly-lit chamber of the good towards the black abyss of
the evil, a tunnel in which shadows deepen as we move closer to the
abyss. We all spend time in these shadows, but most of us are
equipped with a moral gyroscope that is constantly pulling us back
towards the light. For some the pull is not strong enough and they
plunge into the darkness of madness, criminality. Or they become
CEOs... Read more
Letters to the Editor
I like the new format of SCR and I enjoyed your bit about natural selection.
There are several problems with the monkey theorem. If you’ve ever tried to state “the law of averages” you’ll know that it’s just a vague idea that “things even out in the end.” We have to deal with the laws of probability, which can be stated precisely and easily misapplied. It doesn’t matter how many monkeys and typewriters there are and it doesn’t matter if they die or wear out as long as they’re replaced by new ones. The mathematical absurdity of the thing can be shown quite easily. If the typewriter has 30 characters and instead of typing Hamlet we randomly type a phrase of 100 characters, the number of possible phrases is 30100...
Read more
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reads: La Cruz del Sur.
Frank Thomas Smith, Editor
JoAnn Schwarz, Associate Editor
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