Word: utopias
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This week scientists are involved in a new effort to find the answer to this question. Two weeks ago Viking 2 dropped silently out of space and bumped to a landing on Mars' Utopia Planitia (plains of Utopia), some 4,600 miles east-northeast and almost halfway around the planet from Viking 1 (see map). The landing gave scientists some anxious moments. Shortly after separation from its lander, the Viking 2 orbiter lost its "lock" on the star Vega and began to roll, breaking its contact with mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. But even...
Scientists lost no time in studying Viking 2's new surroundings. With signals that took 21 minutes to traverse the 228,670,000 miles from earth to Mars, they swiveled the lander's cameras around for a better look at the Utopia site and the planet's salmon-pink sky, triggered its seismometers so that it could listen for Marsquakes (similar devices on Viking 1 have failed to work) and switched on its weather station instruments...
...growing numbers are plagued by a persistent, gnawing question: Is their Utopia going sour? Despite Sweden's prosperity, a sharp increase in burglaries and robberies has produced a sudden sales boom in police locks and other antitheft devices. Police in a country that for years took pride in having no drug problem have recently uncovered several large caches of heroin. There are no signs, moreover, that Sweden has made any progress in dealing with its nagging alcoholism problem or its high suicide rate...
...scheduled for this September; by then, the socialists-as they have often done before-may come from behind, thanks to a powerful machine that gets out the votes. A close outcome, however, would be a hard-to-ignore signal of continuing discontent with the Social Democratic blueprint for a Utopia...
This is not a formula for Utopia, for in a democracy the ideal is never quite reachable; there is always more to be done. The difference between what is and what might be lies in the initiative of citizens who are willing to strive together to create something better...