Browse Topics

Truth Is Stranger . . .

About a week before the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident — strikingly similar to the incident portrayed in the new film, “The China Syndrome” — the following memo was issued by the Carolina Power and Light Company, in its newsletter “Info-Briefs.”

“Truth” Crisis, Not “Energy” Crisis

It was all blamed on the “Arab oil embargo” but who really believed that? There were the tankers, filled to the brim with oil, being kept waiting off-shore. The figures that would authenticate a “shortage” just didn’t add up. Arab oil is just a fraction of U.S. supply and is mainly controlled and pooled internationally by the U.S.-dominated world oil industry.

Selected Poems

Another Opinion

Like most spokesmen on both sides of the nuclear debate, George Wald takes the liberty of addressing only those segments of the issues that support his arguments. He employs the nuclear opponents’ tactic of couching ideas in emotional terms, as well as using the purely technical arguments preferred by the supporters of nuclear energy. Both sides are wrong in that they address themselves to the symptoms rather than the origins of the energy problem.

Sunbeams

What is meant by light? To gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Editor’s Note

Therefore Choose Life

George Wald Speaks Out On Nuclear Energy, The American Revolution, Survival

Some of you may remember what the 60s were like. You know, things were moving. The kids were making every mistake in the book, but they were learning. My generation wasn’t learning, it was past learning. But they were learning, and then they stopped. I think it was a major event in human history. And I’m old enough to be very impatient, for them to get to it again. That poor guy Phil Ochs, nice person, committed suicide, Phil Ochs had that song, I’m Not Marching Anymore. A mistake. You have to keep marching. Stop marching, it’s over. A revolution that stops is lost. That goes for the American Revolution.

March 1979

The Sun Also Changes

I’d always been interested in journalism, in writing and in self-expression. The magazine actually grew out of a conversation with Mike Mathers, who then ran the Community Bookstore. That’s when I was running the juice bar and I used to bring him juice drinks for lunch every day. Then one day we got to talking about how it would be nice if Chapel Hill had a newsletter or a magazine.

Six Stories

She got her dogs and some tough little kids after me, and I was forced back to the highway. I can’t prove this, but I felt there were rifles aimed right at me.

Decisive Moments In Medical History

The cartoon in this selection is available as a PDF only. Click here to download.