Word: takings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...manned Mars landing when we have problems getting from Boston to New York City." Says Physicist Ralph Lapp: "Given a choice between $500 million for basic research and the same amount to bring back a second bagful of rocks from the moon, only a lunatic scientist would take more than a microsecond of decision time...
...operations." Wernher Von Braun, the father of the German V-2 and a pioneer in the U.S. space effort, is blunter. "The space program is the first time we could keep the cutting edge of science and technology sharp without having a major war," he declares. "Goddammit, does it take another war to get technology up to a higher plateau...
...Russians have recently emerged from a sealed chamber with self-contained life-support systems, after a year-the duration of a manned voyage to Mars. Moreover, NASA officials claim that Soviet scientists may soon unveil a rocket big enough to fly directly from earth to the moon, land and take off again. Such brute-force spacemanship might convince the U.S. that, as Von Braun maintains, "Russia still wants to beat us in space." If that happens, the money spigot would probably open wide again, and a new race would begin...
...conference's host and organizer was Malaysia's Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. A British-educated, golf-playing Moslem, Rahman is convinced that the predominantly Islamic nations of Africa and Asia must take a fresh look at "illogical beliefs" that interfere with their economic and social progress. Like many sophisticated urban followers of Mohammed, he is appalled, for example, by the almost total ignorance of contemporary business and financial practices on the part of rural Moslems. Often picking up their misconceptions from local ulamas, or wise men, these villagers, among other things, refuse to buy life insurance...
Nowadays, that will is not always easy to determine. What attitude, for example, should Islam take toward organ transplants? Although tradition forbids the desecration of the Moslem dead, the Kuala Lumpur conference decided that, since Islamic law also holds that life must be preserved if at all possible, human transplants are a legitimate life-saving tool. The meeting dealt similarly with a rather improbable dilemma involving dietary law. Lost in the desert and near starvation, a devout Moslem is suddenly confronted by two bits of unexpected sustenance: a stray piece of pork and some nonforbidden food in the hands...