Dept. of things not likely to be mass produced. U. of C. biologist Michael Dickinson on the equipment he needs to study the physiology and aerodynamics of fly flight: “I can’t just call up Fisher Scientific and say ‘I would like to buy an automated flight simulator for tethered flies.’”
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“Here’s the real deal killer,” writes Ed Zotti, explaining why the city has trouble marketing its vacant land to businesses (Chicago Enterprise, November): “Potential liability for environmental cleanup. The so-called Superfund Act of 1980 makes current and past owners of contaminated sites responsible for the cost of cleanup, even if the owners didn’t create the contamination themselves. The only way to avoid liability is to prove that you made all appropriate inquiries before buying the property and genuinely believed it was untainted–and the burden of proof rests with you, not the government. A city study of the Lake Calumet area found only one large site without major environmental problems and almost any older site in the city poses some risk.”
Our forgetful social critics. Marilyn French, The War Against Women, page 169, paragraph 3: “The more popular a medium the more it is subject to censorship–television, film, and glossy magazines are most censored.” Page 169, paragraph 4: “Filmmakers and book publishers are freest from interference.”
