From the Top of the Empire State Building, High Above New York

Last June, when the Bureau for Radiation Control of the New York City Department of Health announced its intention to establish a standard for environmental exposure to radio frequency and microwave radiation, a collective shudder passed through the radio and television broadcast industry. As well it might. The Bureau's proposed standard called for a radiation power level of no more than 50 microwatts per square centimeter "in unregulated or uncontrolled areas available to men, women and children by virtue of residence, recreation, or general public access." Now, 50 microwatts is not only a power level 200 times less than the level presently considered safe by the federal government for workers and people in the general population, it is also a power level that can commonly be found in the vicinity of FM radio and TV transmitters from one end of the United States to the other. For example, in its ongoing survey of broadcast radiation levels in American cities, the federal Environmental Control Agency has measured 66 microwatts in the Sears Tower, in Chicago; 97 microwatts at 2 Biscayne Boulevard, in Miami; 100 microwatts in high rise buildings near the Sutro Tower broadcast complex, in San Francisco; and 150 microwatts at the base of a radio transmitter tower in Portland, Oregon.

The Mechanical Mule

I strapped my feet into the bicycle-like pedals and began pumping, turning a chain drive that slowly wound a thin steel cable onto a spool. About 50 feet down the field, a plowing attachment that was bolted to the end of the cable caught in the earth as the line tightened. Guided by another person, the plow inched toward me, wedging a neat furrow about half a foot deep into the sodded soil.

Femininity As Symptom

Is it possible that those personality traits and characteristics associated with "being feminine" are, in themselves, depressogenic? Isn't it true that the line between "neurotic" dependency and "normally higher" feminine dependency needs is a difficult one to draw? It may be that being "normal" and being "normally feminine" might not be quite the same thing. I want to talk now about the witty (if somewhat devastating in their implications) researches carried out by Inge and Donald Broverman and their colleagues. This work was reported upon in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in 1970.

In the autumn of 1921, George N. Peek and Hugh S. Johnson, executives with the Moline Plow Company, Moline, Ill., proposed a plan to aid the American farmer. The early 1920s were hard times for farmers. Many had prospered in the first two decades of the century, particularly the years before and during the war. But the end of the war had brought a reduction in markets, and farm prices dropped dramatically. Farmers who had gone into dept to purchase more land when prices were high were unable, with falling prices, to make their mortgage payments. Many farmers lost their farms.