onnajiVOL. 5 NO. 11 AUGUST 1983 EDITOR & DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE PRESIDENT: KATHY KEETON EXECUTIVE EDITOR: DICK TERESI GRAPHICS DIRECTOR: FRANK DEVINO ART DIRECTOR: ELIZABETH WOODSON

CONTENTS PAGE

GENIUS SPERM BANK First Word Afton Blake 6

OMNIBUS Contributors 10

COMMUNICATIONS Correspondence 14 FORUM Dialogue 16 EARTH Environment Ben Barber 18

LIFE- Biomedicine Thomas A. Bass 20 SPACE Comment Richard C. Hoagland 24 SUPERIORITY OF THE Mind Carol Johmann 26 FEMALE BRAIN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Computers Michael Edelhart 26 FILM The Arts Brian McKernan 32 CONTINUUM Data Bank 35 ANIMAL FEMINISM Article 44 X-RAY HOLOGRAMS Ariicle Richard Wolkomir 50 WIRED Fiction David Bischoff 56 ROGER SPERRY Interview Yvonne Bask in 68 UNEASY PASSIONS Pictorial Goltiried Helnwein 76 SAPIENS RISING: Article Pamela Weintraub 86 MAN— 1,000.000 A.D. ANTIMATTER UFOs, etc. 91 EXPLORATIONS Travel Delia Willis 108 CREDITS 110

BREAKTHROUGHS Technology Michael Edelhart 122

TENSILE TENTS Phenomena Anthony Wolff 124

THE MARS-ROCK Stars Charles Koltz 126 MYSTERY SOLVED

GAMES Diversions Scot Morris 128 DENSA: MENSA FOR Last Word Nigel f looks 130 THE DUMB

French- bom Michel Tcherevkolf presents a visual interpretation of the ideational process. His striking, surreal images bear his distinctive signature, and his inimitable use of special :! A '! one effects has made him one of -: : ' New York's foremost advertising .-:-. I ':las5Boiiagirpaitt-a1 photographers. 4 OMNI .

o longer doe

»f a single-par WORDFIRST By Afton BlaRe

Qlhe first few sperm banks assured me only that I could choose the father's:race and religion. Timerse one comple My quest then led me to the "Nobel sperm bank" in California^

e \obei

:ed. as 6,Tdence;J by

accomplishing tl MRBUORS DQJirUIBU!

The giant atom smashers known report on the world's most powerful X ray. tropics alreaoy es:ab'ished, these as synchrotrons have long Today the phrase split brain is almost strange-looking creatures could be the enabled physicists to scrutinize a cliche. But two decades ago, when result. Researchers think the driving quarks, bosons, and other subatomic neuroscienlist Roger Sperry tested and force behind this change is the process oddities. Now, a spinoff of this technology confirmed his theory that each hemisphere of neoteny—the genetic mechanism promises to become one of the hottest of the brain has "a mind of its own," by which juvenile traits are retained into new scientific tools for probing everything such a notion was considered heretical. adulthood. A million years from now, from proteins in cell membranes to the In recognition of his pioneering investiga- these theorists add, our "childlike" chemistry of the earth's molten core. The tion into the dual nature of human descendants may have 200-year life idea is to harness the powerful X rays consciousness, Sperry shared the 1981 spans and brains twice the size of our generated by particles as they rush Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology. An .own. 'A few scientists." reports Omni around the circular synchrotron. This vast extremely reclusive man. Sperry has editor and writer Pamela Weintraub.. "say energy, once considered pure waste, is shied away from speaking to general we might eventually alter the genes being tapped for all sorts of experiments audiences in the past. "He doesn't do of neoteny through recombinant-DNA that were once impossible. For example, interviews;" his secretary of 25 years told technology, forging the future race one scientist used the bursts of X rays as Omni writer Yvonne Baskin when she ourselves." Her article, "Evolution's Child," a superhigh-speed strobe. In 100 contacted his office in May 1982. To the starts on page 86. billionths of a second he was able to surprise of both parties, however, the Our fiction offering is a story by record the effects of a laser etching a request was granted. Explains Baskin, David Bischoff. a talented young writer crystal. According to Omni contributor "Omni's inquiry came at the right time. whose novels include Nightworid (Del Richard Wolkomir, who traveled to Cornell Sperry had just completed a book, Science Rey) and Seik.ie (Macmillsn). Don't miss University to see this synchrotron radia- and Moral Priority, and was keen to "Wired" (page 56), a futuristic tale of a tion in action, the X rays coming oft spread the word about what he considers rock-and-roll musician who experiments the atom smasher were impressive. "I the most far-reaching implications of his with a technology that enables him to saw an X-ray beam burn a hole straight research: a revised view of the mind reach his audience in a way that only through a thick slab of lead," he recalls. At and a proposal for a new world ethic that he had ever dreamed possible. the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron he believes offers the best hope of "I was in Thailand," says freelance

Source (CHESS), Wolkomir inspected the keeping man off the endangered species writer Ben Barber, "and I saw a lead "telephone booths," where biochem- list." This month's Interview (see page mechanized beast, dubbed the Iron

' ists, metallurgists, and other scientists 68)- is the culmination of an exchange of Buffalo, whose feet allowed it to navigate expose materials to the sizzling radiation phone calls, letters, and a series of .through rice paddies." It is one of the and study the results. "The lab has all meetings that spanned almost a year. many inventions of Prince Mom Teparit, sorts of safeguards to protect personnel Most of us relegate the image of large- cousin and agricultural expert to the king from accidental exposure to those brained, slit-mouthed men and women of Thailand. On page 18 Barber, who beams, but it's still a spooky feeling to the pages of science fiction. But a has traveled extensively in the Third World, down in that underground installation," growing number o! scientists say that if reports on the green revolution that is Wolkomir says. Turn to page 50 for his humans keep evolving according to sweeping Asia. DO [wi|a'JH»J I . BOBGUCeiONE. HTER

OMNI PUBLICATIONS IN TEA NATIONAL LTD THE CORPORATION CDruinnuruicMTorus

Robolic Scare enlightenment, he could have walked

I was glancing at magazines at a up the street from Roger's Pool Hall newsstand the other day when the cover to Restaurant on the Corner and discussed of the April 1983 issue [The Robot: A nuclear disarmament or the meaning of Special Edition] stopped me. I immediately life over herb tea and honey. recognized the classical allusion. Robert Bolls

As I continued to stare, a sense of Oxford, MS

uncertainty gripped me; it grew into confusion and then anger. Why such a As a graduate student at the largest negative response to a painting depicting campus of the University of Minnesota,

creation? As much as I appreciated I've seen a representative sample of

the style, the content worried me. What is coeds. And I have yet to see anyone here Omni trying to tell me? Technology is who looks like one of those "attractive superior to man? Metal men are divine, young women with go to hell T-shirts and and human ones are mere clay? What is spray-on jeans" that William K. Stuckey creating whom? Is this the next wave? says exist in "incredible numbers" at

This arrangement of machine giving life the University of Arkansas. I wonder if to man was not out of necessity but by these students really exist in Fayetteville,

design, and this beholder found nothing or if they exist only in Stuckey's mind. beautiful in the suggestion that robots Jennifer Raich

are better than she. In fact, it scared me. Minneapolis. MN Karen Alison Ann Arbor, Ml Thank you, thank you for your article "Ozark Mountain High."

Scoring Puzzlers I laughed, then cried, then achea to be Hey! Wow! Get outta here! Boy, did you in Fayetteville again. The city was once push my buttons with the statement a well-kept secret, but the 'est of the made in the April 1983 Games column world is slipping in (but not out). about the scoring for the "head- In all the world, and I've seen a good

scratchers." I am a highly intelligent, deal of it, there is no place as stimulating ADVERTISING analytical, intuitive, verbal counselor type as Pig Sooey U. and Fayetteville but stupid with games, math, and mind Beth Bierwirth puzzlers. Probably an early childhood Rosewell, NM

trauma, but I wanted to rip up your Games pages with my teeth and stomp on them. Cloning Musicians Polly Carter The special April 1983 robotics issue

Santa Rosa Beach, FL really dazzled my diodes, i am especially — : excited abo_: 're e e:ez r.'es a la

Cheers for Fayetteville Disney/Westworid. If robot actors could be

I would like to express my pleasure with programmed with artificial intelligence, the article "Ozark Mountain High" [May we'd have perfect androids among us.

1983]. I feel that William K. Stuckey wrote (I can't wait to marry one!) a fair and informative expose on the Incidentally, robots have already invaded University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. the music industry. I refer to Kraftwerk, Recently the University of Arkansas was the German techno-rock group. The vilified by some self-proclaimed expert band consists of four humans, a portable college reviewers who labeled the school studio/computer-synthesizer console,

an intellectual desert. It should be clear and four robot clones, one for each from Stuckey's article that this defamation member of the group. Together, all of is far from true. Kraftwerk's components constitute the My only objection is that Stuckey failed perfect man-machine union. to discuss the social environment of Melanie Mayfieid Fayetteville. If he were truly seeking Eureka, CA DO —

D1ALOOUE FDRurm

In which the readers, editors, and combinant-DNA costs. His $50 million government sales of surplus equipment. correspondents discuss theories and figure for setting up and running a DNA An operational centrifuge was sold at speculation arising out of Omni. Readers weapons lab is profoundly misleading. surplus for $17.95. Other lab hardware, are encouraged to debate views and Since even some people at the heart of some of it usable in a recombinant-DNA pose questions to Omni, the scientific this work tend to accepl such out- project, can be obtained at equally community, the science-fiction and rageously inflated figures, I think it is time ridiculous prices. establishment. The opinions published to challenge them. Where criminal activity is concerned, are not necessarily those of the editors. Most people who make these inflated one would have to be living in isolation not

estimates ignore four extremely important to know that consignment thievery is Frank Herbert on DNA Terrorism facts about this avenue of biotechnical available in every major city in the United You will understand immediately. I am development. Not considered are States, Western Europe, and the Orient. sure, why Douglas Starr's piece "DNA ingenuity, surplus sales, thievery, and the The rule of thumb for the cost of large [Continuum, Wars" November 1982] intent of the lab. items stolen to order in the United States caught my attention. I covered the same As examples of ingenuity, a quite is approximately 10 percent of the market ground researching my novel The White serviceable centrifuge can be constructed value. This can vary depending on Plague, part of which you published out of tire-balancing equipment; tem- particular problems of breaching plant in [July Omni and August 1982]. As you perature-controlled cabinets can be security, but there is competition where a

this, it read should become clear why improvised from household refrigerators; desired piece of equipment is available

I wrote this letter only after considerable a kitchen pressure cooker will do nicely in different cities. soul-searching. To publish or not to as an autoclave; a sonic device for This means that you can acquire an publish—that is the question. The dangers cleaning dentures, available at many electron microscope for about 517,000 are obvious, but I am convinced that a drugstores, can be reworked to substitute no questions asked. And depending broad base of public awareness for much more costly equipment. on the refinements you specify, the poses fewer dangers. Furthermore, some of the necessary equipment for digital subtrac'dn What especially interested me in Starr's enzymes can be produced by simple radiography and computer-linked. X-ray article was his unquestioning acceptance means (one is derived from beans). crystallography can be installed for of the popular mythology about re- Consider what happens in U.S. about the same amount.

Now we come to what I believe is the most alarming aspect of these cost

estimates— intent, f* your intent Is only to create somelhing dirty ana dangerous, lab costs plummet Take few personal precautions, ignore dangers to the innocent population, and the low cost of a. lab is shocking. Fifty thousand dollars would be generous. Scattershot techniques can be used wflh minimal equipment. This approach could be called

"mix 'em and see what survives." It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which a madman broadcasts the products of his lab without regard for consequences. With a malevolent choice of the subject disease (anthrax, for example), the result would be widespread disaster. Clearly, this is an insane approach, but did we really need the Tylenol iragedy to make us aware that we share our world with nuts? High estimates of the costs for this madness are based on the assumption that your lab has a particular scientific goal that can be defined Lei us say you

ON PAGE T07 THE ROYAL RAINMAKER

By Ben Barber

Thailand's Royal Rainmaker crash- the help of paddle wheels. And the blue Slowly but surely animals were replaced landed near the town of Surat tubes of the Teparit Pump bring irrigation to by tractors, irrigation pipes were laid, Thani a few years back, and a land beset by drought. Manufactured bugs were banished with pesticides, and Communist guerrillas swarmed out of the across Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, crops were made hearty thanks to jungle shouting, "It's a government Laos, and Cambodia, his inventions chemical fertilizer. By the time the prince plane! Let's burn It!" have helped double and triple crop yield, reached college, American farming had But the sixty-two-year-old pilot, Prince providing food for the malnourished become a science; he spent his under- Mom Teparit, held them off. "Don't you and easing the drudgery of farm work. graduate career mastering everything from dare touch this plane," said. he "It's It all began in 1914, Teparit explains, agricultural engineering to the subtleties a rainmaker. Eat these apples, then help when he was born to diplomat parents at of soil chemistry. In 1940, with a bache- me get my machine in the air." The the Thai embassy in Berlin. The mother lor's degree from the University of jungle fighters, stunned by the sheer of the Thai king saw baby Teparit and Maryland, he vowed to bring the agricul- confidence and of energy Mom Teparit, pronounced: "Everyone in the family is a tural revolution back home. pitched in to fix the single-engine craft. diplomat. Let this baby study agriculture Teparit returned to a post at Thailand's Prince Mom Rachawong Debriddhi so he can help the common people," Ministry of Agriculture, in Bangkok, and Devakul (Teparit is his widely used The royal mandate became reality. set about estimating the task before nickname] is a living legend in Thailand. Teparit attended prep school in New him. Wandering through thatched-hut Adviser to his cousin, King Bhumibol Hampshire, and he spent summers on a villages and green, quilt-patterned fields, Adulyadej, and a driving force behind farm, where he "watched as International he could see that little had changed Southeast Asia's agricultural revolution, Harvester tractors replaced big, white over the decades. Teparit has spawned thousands of inven- horses." Captivated by the mechanical Overburdened Thai farmers first planted tions and developed a method for plows, he even tried to drive one himself. grains of rice in small, dry plots, waiting making rain. Driving across the flat rice smashing it through the wall of a barn. a month for Ihem to grow into half-foot- bowl of Thailand, one can see his handi- Since his parents were convinced that a high seedlings. Once the seedlings were work everywhere: Farmers walk behind Western education was best, Teparit ready, farmers used plodding water Teparit's Iron Buffalo tractor, which is spent the next decade observing the buffalo to plow nearby fields that were propelled through thick paddy mud with revolution sweeping American farms. filled with water and surrounded by earthen dikes. Then they transplanted seedlings from the dry field to the wet one, waiting 12 weeks for the crop to mature.

When it was time for harvesting, they made holes in the dikes, letting the water flow out and reaping the crop. Finally they repaired the holes and prayed for rain: Without more rain to rewater the paddies, no rice would grow. This back-breaking process. Teparit knew, was centuries old—and years out of date. The leisurely water buffalo, for instance, were beautiful, but painfully inefficient. Transplanting rice from dry to wet fields ate up thousands of man- hours of labor. And waiting for rain before each new crop meant one planting a year instead of two or three. Calling upon his American know-how, Teparit realized that "the first step had to be the introduction of tractors to pull plows and reapers through water-logged fields." Since American tractors, with their big rubber wheels, couldn't possibly stay afloat, he racked his brains for an The Iron Buffalo: The tractor Invented by Teparit has revolution culture in Thailand. alternative. Then he realized the answer 18 OMNI COiSTNUEOONPAGEIII £NETIC COOKBOOK

By Thomas A. ;

Imagine a telephone directory listing information on genetic sequences. developed techniques for large-scale every life form. Then think ot dialing a He became a genetic librarian as much DNA sequencing and cloning. As scientists number 130,000 digits long. (This by accident as by design. Trained as a rushed to decode genomes from 50 to might connect you to a herpes virus.) Or particle physicist, Goad for some time had 100,000 bases in length, it became obvious picture a cookbook with only four ingredi- been interested in studying radiation that the flood of information would swamp ents. Out of such limited fixings, you and its effects on genetic mutation. them all unless someone volunteered too could cook up such unsavory dishes Radiation studies have historically provided to compile and manage it. as cauliflower mosaic virus or mouse the link between Los Alamos, home of Los Alamos had by then assembled mitochondria, if you follow directions 1 ,000 the atomic bomb, and basic research in the country's preeminent team of theoret- steps at a time. biology, although the mandate of the ical biologists. They also possessed This telephone directory, or cookbook, laboratory has expanded in recent years the one essential tool for research in to life is now being compiled at the Los to include the study of all carcinogens, molecular biology: high-speed computers. Alamos National Laboratory, in New from auto exhaust to oil shale. "To make sense of all this information Mexico, which recently won a government "I don't think there is any doubt that pouring in," recalls Goad, "it became clear contract to open a computerized data our genetic library will help us to under- that we would have to make good and bank listing all the genetic sequences that stand what makes something a carcino- effective use of computers." So in 1979 he have already been decoded. Begun gen," says Goad. "That's where you have borrowed some Los Alamos computer officially in the fall of 1982, the Genetic .to look to see what's really going on." time and declared himself open for

Sequence Data Bank, or GenBank, as it is As he and other scientists at Los Alamos business as a genetic data bank. called, already includes over a million were getting interested in molecular Found in one of the newer Quonset of the nucleic-acid bases that constitute biology, the revolutionary advances of huts outside the security fence at Los all or part of the genetic makeup, or genetic engineering were just being Alamos, GenBank itself is no more genomes, of 175 biological species. developed. James Watson and Francis impressive at first sight than a handful of GenBank will add another million bases Crick unraveled the double helix 30 video terminals. Its screens are covered this year as the rate of decoding genetic years ago. but it was not until 1977 that with spidery strings of As, C's. G's, messages continues to increase more Frederick Sanger, at Cambridge, and and Ts— short for adenine, cytosine, than exponentially. Walter Gilbert, at Harvard, independently guanine, and thymine, the nucleic-acid "Right now we're just scrambling to get building blocks of genes. This four-letter all the data," says Walter Goad, the Los genetic alphabet spells out the vast array Alamos scientist who directs GenBank. of proteins that make up living organisms.

"It wouldn't surprise me if we sequenced Sequence these nucleic acids one way twenty million bases in the genetic code and— presto! — up pops the formula for a by the end of our five-year contract." turnip-yellow mosaic virus. Reshuffle

The list of technical advances expected them in a different pattern and you could to come out of genetic sequencing is end up with the recipe for herpes virus. mind boggling: vaccines developed from Only the excruciating accuracy of cloned viruses; special screening tests a computer can keep genetic "mistakes" capable of measuring people's suscepti- like the latter from happening. Com- bility to disease; microbes endowed puters are also required to annotate DNA with the ability to churn out petroleum sequences; that is, to read in these long products in the laboratory; edible plants strings of letters the specific "start" designed to manufacture theirown fertil- and "stop" signals of the code that regulate izers; perhaps even ultrafast organic genetic expression. computers capable of building still larger "It gets even more complex when you protein machines, try to understand evolutionary change

Goad is a handsome man in his fifties at a molecular level," says Goad. How, for who shapes molecules in the air when example, does one make sense of the he talks. His ruddy cheeks and a enormous biological differences between thatch of white hair make him look like man and chimpanzee when it is now Lome Greene unhorsed. "This is an known that we have 99 percent of our exciting place to be," he says, now that genes in common? he and a dozen staff members find Goad's experimental data bank quickly

'.-'; .-.-::,; themselves compiling all the world's known Gcac. one: gsnz^c: ,'s s; GsrS-aW became the central clearinghouse for 20 OMNI CONTINUED ON FAGE 114 M6WAKK BREAKTHROUGHS By Michael Edelhart

All was that it did." sandwich of stainless-steel it worked. we knew ^^Washington. D.C., engineer and through a "It's an inspiration," says Harvey Palmer, M^^^a Phoenix mechanic have screens. The curved plate speeds up the chemical-engineering professor and that it hits the screens with a proved that even in the Age of mixture so # \ University of enormous force. The arrangement of holes distillation expert at the Corporate Paients, there's still room for screens breaks even the heaviest Rochester. "Two individuals with a solid the independent inventor working out in the All research money at GM into an invisible mist. The mix that guess. the of a garage and driven by dreams. Now drop just can't buy that." results is almost totally uniform and and Ford their idea for a simple device that raises incredible feature of perfectly blended. Perhaps the most a car's gas mileage while cutting pollution that it is expected to cost heart of the valve is the screen the valve is appears ready to leave the garage and The $100 to install. sandwich. Other valves with screens have car manufacturers less than make its debut in American cars. In seeing the potential for a failed, but this one succeeds because Chrysler, widespread use it could slash by almost sandwich creates a vibration pattern low-cost antipollution device to replace 50 percent the amount of oil imported the catalytic converters, has that pulverizes drops. Webster and expensive into the United States. could begin using discovered their breakthrough in licensed the valve and After dozens of false starts, engineer . Heise it in cars by the middle of the decade. Webster and mechanic Richard 1977 entirely by accident. Their 39 Sherwood follow, create a single-screen filter Other American carmakers may Heise created a valve thatsits beneath attempts to one day while with government prod ding. an auto carburetor and. according to had all flopped. Then stainless-steel screens a Congressional Research Service report, washing off their NEW PRODUCTS with a hose in Heise's garage, they does all of the following: cuts fuel screens next to In the evolution of portable audio consumption by 20 percent, increases happened to hold two Mister Disc (known as the other. To their astonishment the water equipment, the engine tor.que by 13 to 40 percent, cuts each the Sound Burger, in Japan) fails somewhere carbon monoxide emissions by almost spray vanished. It emerged from Walkman and a minimalist in a mist so fine, it was between a 50 percent and hydrocarbon emissions by second screen this effect record player. It's a clamplike device 11 23 percent, and drops required invisible. Two years of testing up to wide, and about in the prototype valve. inches long, 4 inches octane ratings by 10 to 15 points. resulted record sits on a tiny built the prototype." Webster 3 inches high. The Octane is a measure of a fuel's ability "When we platter built into the lower arm recalls, "we didn't even understand why spinning to resist engine knock; higher-octane fuel of the clamp. The battery-powered unit requires additives and more crude oil comes with its own pair of high-fidelity per gallon than lower-octane fuel, The stereo headphones, or it can be plugged octane reduction of the Webster-Heise into a standard speaker system. A valve would translate into a 600,000-barrel- carrying case is supplied, but the Mister per-day oil savings if it were applied to Disc is hardly a stand-in for miniature every American car; the valve's gas- cassette players: The system plays only mileage improvement could save an when placed on a stable surface. additional 1.3 million barrels per day. The ($170, from Audio-Technica U.S., Inc., savings would add up to almost half 1221 Commerce Drive, Stow, OH 44224.) the 4.2 million barrels of imported oil this country consumes daily. A new, electric-powered massage Webster and Heise achieved these table provides a Shiatsu back rub. The results by solving one of automotive Acu-Massage table has eight rollers that design's oldest problems: how to fully act like fingers to massage the muscles in and evenly vaporize gasoline. Carburetors the back of the body from "head to mix air and gas to form a vapor that heels." The rollers are adjusted to expand feeds the pistons. Inconsistencies In the and contract to match the width of each density and chemical composition of vertebra, providing a gentle, wavelike gasoline create heavy drops that the motion that penetrates and relaxes taut carburetor can't break up. These drops muscles. Originally designed by the burn poorly, leaving deposits that cause France Bed Company, of Tokyo, several engine knock, increase wear on years ago, the Acu-Massage table has just components, and lower efficiency. become available to Westerners. ($1 ,800, The Webster-Heise valve sucks the from H.W.E. Inc., 1638 North La Brea gas-air mix from the carburetor, bounces Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90028. )DO it Hc-'ss :a:d /a:'.'? Ga:egc it off a concave shield, and squeezes 122 OMNI THE ELCHICHON INCIDEN"

By Richard C. Hoagland

Several months before ihe intended questions. Such volcanic clouds have Service had issued warnings about the liftoff of the fourth flight of the been suspected of causing major changes cloud to users of its satellite infrared

shuttle Columbia, a Mexican in the earth's climate. Some scientists data? No. "I guess I don't know the details. volcano blew its top, spewing millions of have blamed them even for the ice ages. to be honest," Smith said. tons of dust and gaseous material into Whether or not their research could Smith said the Air Force was primarily a globe-circling cloud. The eruption was settle such issues, the scientists were a interested in the region above 100 the first of a series of incidents revealing good source of data about El Chichon. kilometers, not in the lower layers occupied uneasiness in the relationship between the But both scientists told me that no one by the volcanic cloud. This seemed to military and civilian components of from the Department of Defense had contradict Aviation Week and its sources America's space program. been in touch with them about the potential that there was high interest in "Soviet

The instruments aboard Columbia effects of the cloud on Cirris. In fact, air-breathing threats." And it appeared during the fourth flight, STS-4, were code- the scientists said they weren't even aware unlikely that our Air Force wouldn't be named Cirris (for Cyrogenic Infrared of Cirris or its impending flight. keenly curious about infrared patterns in Radiance Instrumentation). Contrary to For its part, the Air Force appeared to atmospheric layers where Soviet cruise

most media reports, the purpose and be as much in the dark aboul El Chichon missiles might someday fly.

technology of Cirris had been made public as NASA was about Cirris. Donald Smith, In any case, it was obvious from these almost a full year before Columbia's program manager for Cirris at the Air conversations that there had been no "military" flight in July 1982. They were Force Geophysical Laboratory, near direct contact between the Air Force described in public testimony before Boston, confirmed that he had made no planners running the Cirris program and congressional committees by an assistant contact with NASA Ames about the the NASA scientists who could have secretary of the Air Force, Robert potential impact of the eruption on his provided timely data on the potential Hermann. Details from those hearings mission. Smith said he hadn't known impact of El Chichon upon the Cirris flight. appeared, among other places, in of the volcano until well after the Cirris More surprising, there was apparently Aviation Week and Space Technology- flight, when he "noticed the spectacular no systematic liaison between Air Force According to reports at the time, Cirris sunsets produced by the debris and NASA scientists involved in basic was an earthward-looking supercooled suspended in the upper atmosphere." research. Again and again Smith empha- infrared telescope. Part of its mission Was he aware that the National Weather sized that Cirris was a research program, involved gazing high above the earth in designed to gather basic data search of new data on the so-called on a region of the atmosphere where we mesosphere (the region of space above "basically don't have any data at all." the earth's horizon where Russian ballistic Smith was apparently unaware of a NASA missiles would have to fly). Another part Solar Mesosphere Explorer satellite, of the mission consisted of peering which has been monitoring this region, down into the lower atmosphere, gathering and which has been NASAs prime source information on the region where "air- of data on the El Chichon debris.

breathing" cruise-type missiles fly. All of this is slightly academic (at least, But while these plans were nearing until the next flight of Cirris on completion, ihe Mexican volcano called the shuttle), because the Air Force device El Chichon was filling this lower region with failed in orbit. The cover protecting the an impenetrable cloud, roiling up nearly Cirris optics in the payload bay of Columbia 20 miles into the stratosphere, snaking all would not open on command.

the way around the earth, blanketing But even if Cirris had worked and had Ihe infrared region. penetrated the cloud, some large The cloud — the most unusual of its questions would have loomed over STS-4 kind in 70 years— raised the clear possi- and the entire space program. How bility that Cirris would be unable to carry much vital scientific data are we losing out all of its mission. because Air Force satellites aren't plugged NASA was well aware of the cloud. in io any NASA systems? And how much Agency scientists James Pollack and Brian military information is being compromised Toon, of the Ames Research Center, because of lack of NASA input were responsible for tracking it, and they from its satellites in areas where the Air had begun to collect information that Force Geophysical Laboratory insists might help to answer some persistent Globe-circling cloud liveaient? there are no data?DO 2A OMNI —

SEX AND THE BRAIN ruiiruD By Carol Johmann

I ^^ hen she was a Ph.D. student theory often cited by some researchers misguided use of research. Bigots have

I at Columbia University, lo explain why men tend to outperform long manipulated I. Q. -test results and w wv physical anthropologist women in such visual-spatial disciplines comparative studies of brain size to Christine de Lacoste-Utamsing was as geometry or engineering. support their views. What De Lacoste dissecting human brains as part of her "Studying areas of the brain is very and others are trying to do is to put the research. In the course ot her work her exciting," says De Lacoste. now at the new brain discoveries into the proper attention was drawn to a flat bundle of University of Texas's Health Science perspeci ve oetcre sorre:h ng similar nerve fibers, called the corpus callosum, Center, "but [my findings] can be twisted happens with those findings, that connects the right and left in a very sexist way. All I've shown is Since the early Seventies there has hemispheres of the brain. After examining that there is a difference in the number of been an increasing body of evidence that specimens from nine men and five connections between hemispheres." the brains of males and females differ. women, she noticed an odd thing: On "What gets me is the leap some people Studies of rat brains, tor example, average, the corpus callosum was larger make," adds City University of New York disclosed structural brain differences and more bulbous in women's brains psychologist Florence Denmark, who has between the sexes in the hypothalamus than in men's. Intrigued by this, she has been following this research. "They the section of the brain that regulates since gone on to study more specimens, assume that brain differences between sex drive, body temperature, and blood including the brains of both adults and the sexes always indicate differences pressure—and in the cerebral cortex, the fetuses. Her data have led her to one in intelligence and ability. And somehow control center for thinking, the senses, conclusion: The brains of men and women men always come out on top." and movement. De Lacoste's research are physically different. Such concern is hardly unwarranted. showed that there were sex-related De Lacoste is still fascinated by her The notion that "biology is destiny" has differences in the human brain as well. work and loves to talk about it, but she is been used repeatedly over the years to Brain researchers now assume that a concerned that people might jump to support a variety of racist, sexist, and larger corpus collosum means there the wrong conclusions. She worries that other prejudicial attitudes. In his book The is more communication between the right her discovery might be used to support a Mismeasure of Man, Harvard paleontolo- and left halves of the brain. This assump- controversial hypothesis that women's gist Stephen Jay Gould points out tion and data from De Lacoste's research brains are less specialized than men's, a how vulnerable a topic the brain is for are significant when we realize how divided the brain is in its abilities, especially when we consider how that split may differ between the sexes.

The human brain is split in two ways, First, each hemisphere controls the movement of, and receives sensory input from, the opposite side of the body. Second, each half is specialized, or later- alized, as scientists like to say. The left brain handles information in an analytical,

sequential manner. It is concerned with

problem solving, and it excels in language

skills, We use it to understand spoken instructions, for example. By contrast, the right brain appears to process informa-

tion holistically; that is, more intuitively

and perceptively. This is the brain half used to recognize visual patterns and three-dimensional objects. (See the interview with Roger Sperry, page 68.) By connecting the two halves and letting them act as a whole, the corpus collosum keeps us from feeling like some kind of two-headed, or at least two-

minded, beast. So if the female's larger corpus collosum alows for more of this

CONri'JiJLDON PAGE 113 MONSTER MACHINES ARTIFOML

By Michael Edelhart

long does it How lake to count all information more than 100 times faster national effort to beat America to the the atoms in the universe? than typical large computers. Since next generation of supercomputers. Fujitsu For a human the lask is the being, early Sixties, when Cray and colleagues has already announced its intention to impossible. A home computer might be developed the Model 6600, the world's manufacture a computer six to eight able to manage the effort, given a few first supercomputer, he has dominated the times more powerful than the Cray-1. And millennia. A powerful IBM mainframe could field in a way few individuals can. He a U.S. government panel headed by spend few it. a years at But Seymour founded both the leading supercomputer Dr. Peter Lax, of New York University, Cray's computer can provide the total builder in the world —Cray Research, determined that "under current conditions during a coffee break. Inc.— and its principal competitor, Control there is little likelihood that the United In fact, Cray's $8 million computer, the Data Corporation. While computer States will lead in the development and Cray-1, found the largest known prime developers in California's Silicon Valley, application of this new generation of number in just 20 minutes. The 13,395- Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Stanford, machines." This has made the government digit-long integer is larger than the number California, have become household so nervous that it has established three of atoms in the universe. names, Cray has quietly gone about the different study groups to examine the is Now Cray about to introduce a business of creating number crunchers in problem simultaneously. machine that will make everyone else's his small Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, The thought of losing the supercomputer computers look like children counting on laboratory. In a computer world where lead scares the government, the world's stubby fingers. The new $12.6 million everything becomes outmoded instantly. biggest buyer of supercomputers, because Cray X-MP, this fall, will due be two to five Cray's computer has been the world's of the many vital and special jobs super- times as fast as the Cray-1. And within fastest for seven years, the company computers can do. They help the Pentagon two years we can expect yet another claims. Since it was released in 1976, play war games (WOPFi, the villain of monster machine, the Cray-2, which will nothing on earth has caught up with the this summer's film WarGames, is a rogue blast through more than half a billion Cray-1 for certain applications. supercomputer). They create elaborate calculations per second. But that long dominance at the top of mathematical models of atomic phenom- Cray, fifty-four, designs and builds the computer heap is now being ena, formulate and test airplane compo- supercomputers, machines that process challenged. Japan has announced a nents through a lifetime of wear in mere minutes, and follow the courses of thousands of celestial bodies through millions of years across the universe, The mighty processors play a crucial role in industry, too. Many companies lease time on supercomputers to solve problems their own machines simply can't handle. Scientific Software, for example, a petroleum consulting firm, buys help from a Cray-1 to simulate the pressure and volume inside petroleum reservoirs when fluids are injected into them (to break loose more oil from under- ground chambers). The simulation requires the computer to solve a series of differential equations that describe 10,000 three-dimensional coordinates, each representing a specific point in the

subterranean oil field. This is 50 percent more coordinates than any fesser computer can handle, allowing the company to report more accurately on larger oil fields. Even moviemakers are turning to supercomputers. This year Digital Productions, a Hollywood special-effects

CONTINUED ON PAGE Tia —

FILM THE ART5 By Brian McKernan

Ultimately, computers can be a movie literally starts on a matchbook cover. opens Superman III with a collection of destructive force that prevents The opening shot is of Richard Pryor sight gags of extraordinary urban calami- people from relating to one a guy out of work who picks up a match- ties. "The style with Lester is not just to another. Computers are misused in book that reads: earn big money, be a spoof any values or anything, but to Superman III by certain bad elements computer programmer. Whereas the other show absurdities in the world," Reeve

who are trying to take over the world. They Superman films started big (outer space, explains. "I had a discussion with him are abetted by Richard Pryor's character, other planets) and worked down, about the way computers round off

who eventually realizes that a high-tech Superman III starts small and develops decimals on paychecks to the nearest scheme he's been ied into is evil. Whether into an epic-size movie." number. There's a great many fractions of to stay with it or not is the moral choice But is there an antilechnological bias cents that get stored away someplace, he has to make." present in the film? "There certainly and the man who could tap into that Christopher Reeve, famous for his is from Richard Lester's point of view. would have a windfall." Lester liked

portrayal of the latest incarnation of what One of the premises of this movie is that Reeve's idea and used it for Richard has been called the mosl widely known as we move into the future and toward Pryor's character, computer hacker tigure in American fiction, is discussing high tech we must try not to move away extraordinaire Gus Gorman. Gorman's his third and, he says, final appearance from people. That's Lester's bias and silicon larceny causes him to be black- as the caped extraterrestrial. The film, my bias, and it definitely works into the mailed into assisting his employer, indus- directed by Superman II veteran Richard story. Getting a machine to do all our trialist Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn), Lester, also features comedy superstar work for us isn't necessarily a good idea." who plots to control the world's oil supply. Richard Pryor, who adds plenty of Lester, an American who achieved As for Clark (Superman) Kent, he's away laughs to this fantasy of human greed success in England directing the zany on assignment for the Daily Planet. and artificial intelligence. 1964 Beatles classic A Hard Day's Night. "Clark goes back to Smallville for his "The film takes place in 1983, with and who has imbued all of his films high-school reunion, and he makes a contemporary people who have the larger- (including Help!, A Funny Thing new friend," Reeve reveals. "He meets a than-life hero, Superman, in their midst. Happened on the Way to the Forum. girl he knew as a kid, named Lana Lang

It is really a comic book, and within that we The Three Musketeers, and The Four [Annette OToole], She's divorced, has a play it straight," Reeve explains. "The Musketeers) wilh his own brand of humor, nine-year-old son, and is trying to make a living. Clark and Lana renew their friendship. She likes him. and there's a kind of attraction there, but they're just friends, really. Remember, at the end of

Superman II, he causes Lois Lane to forget that they had a relationship. That was the end of romance for Superman.

Lois was his one true love, it didn't work out, and there won't be another. The idea of hopping from bedroom to bedroom

in contemporary fashion I think would be wrong for Superman. 'Also, you'll see a far more normal Clark

i Kent. If you remember in the first movie, when he was growing up, he was an average farm kid with no behavioral problems. He didn't stutter and push his glasses around; that was all a disguise he invented for living in the city. When he goes back to Kansas you see him drop

all that and ask himself, Why do I do all this shtick? Clark helps Lana without putting any pressure on. When men and women aren't trying to impress each other, there's a good chance that

Superman's troubles begin whi. i Richard Pryor slips something very close can develop."

32 OMNI CONTIN'JtDON PAGE 115 —

CDnjnfuuunn

R. D. LAING'S NEW HO/

™\ few years ago a troubled young Londoner moved to key, comes and goes as he pleases, remains alone, or keeps - a new house. In the process of his search, he also whatever company appeals to him. found a new, more humane brand of psychother- When confused people in the throes of psychotic breakdown door, residents therapist team apy and a second chance at life. show up at the house and a up Before arriving at his new home, the twenty-three-year-old to give around-the-clock care. But the on-call psychiatrist, who only sparingly in the res- had been hopelessly psychotic. In and out of mental hospitals does not live in the house, intercedes for years, he had suffered close to 100 convulsing electroshock idents' day-to-day lives. And although the association does not treatments at the hands of well-meaning psychiatrists. But these discourage prescription drugs, adds Laing, patients are free to brutal sessions did no good. live without them, formerly Phil- In the new residence, he and other psychotic patients lived According to psychologist David Goldblatt, a freely, without psychiatric supervision. He chose to spend most adelphia Association house therapist, patients who live through their of his time alone in bed, absorbed in what he described as psychosis without the dulling impact of drugs may lose "deep thinking." Though he received no treatment of any kind, symptoms in just a couple of weeks. Residents weaned off con- he emerged from this insular world after two years to reestablish ventional treatments do sometimes freak out. "People hit me," contact with reality. reports Goldblatt. "I've been bitten, and one guy came at me This sort of success comes as no surprise to charismatic with a kitchen knife." Nonetheless, of more than 600 people who Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, who founded the residence have stayed at the houses, few reportedly ever see a psychia- leave the program. and its umbrella organization, the Philadelphia Association, in trist or go to a mental hospital once they 1965 (Philadelphia, Laing explains, is the Greek word for Laing has recently resigned from the Philadelphia Associa- "brotherly love.") Laing, author of Knots and The Politics of Ex- tion's governing board with hopes of setting up a training center, learn run perience, is best known for popularizing the view of psychosis perhaps in Switzerland, where psychotherapists will to as a sane response to an insane world. Some 20 years ago he households like those in London, If those plans come to fruition, illustrated that theory with a simple analogy: Imagine a single the center might also offer classes in the martial arts so that bird that veers from its flock in midflight. The flock, Laing said, students could defend themselves against violent patients. might be heading toward disaster while the one would land Despite the opposition of traditional psychiatry, therapeutic safely on the ground. households are beginning to spread in the United States. Gold- Like the solo bird that seems to be out of formation, holds blatt is cofounder of Burch House, a retreat in New Hampshire's Laing. the twenty-three-year-old's psychotic interlude was ac- White Mountains, where therapists and those suffering mental tually a journey toward salvation. Moreover, his journey could crises share a 19-room home. "For the most part," Goldblatt Staff never have ended if it were interrupted by electroshock therapy says, "people structure their time here themselves." and and drugs that halt emotional growth. clients do minor repair work on the house, cook and shop, care To speed the journey, each of the association's four houses for a vegetable garden, and split wood to heat the house in the with forms a "therapeutic community, " a place where eight to twelve winter. Drugs are generally shunned, but formal counseling mentally disturbed people "cultivate the art of living together." a therapist is encouraged. Each association resident helps with cooking, cleaning, and More than 40 clients have passed through Surch House, many shopping: all the routines of daily life. Some people practice with a long history of stays in mental hospitals; 60 percent have yoga or meditation; others spend time on music and art; and successfully returned to society. The bottom line, Goldblatt be- still others, like the young man, do nothing at all. Such important lieves, could be a revolution in psychotherapy. In the presence decisionsas admitting a resident, or occasionally expelling one, of caring and supportive people, he says, the insane often "find are voted on democratically. Everyone has his own room and their own way through the healing process." ERIC MISHARA "

coruTiruuurui

BOVINE IMMORTALITY been working toward this over the next few months moment for almost two half a dozen other heroin At age 14 Sabine the cow years. "The question we had users, all between the ages had enjoyed a dis- asked ourselves," explains of twenty and thirty, ap- tinguished breeding company research consult- peared with the same tragic history. Though she herself ant Jonathan Van Blerkom, symptoms. Many were was not a prize animal, "was, Can we take these bedridden and unable to nearly every one of her eggs during the maturation speak; all had bought calves had grown up to be- period, freeze them without "synthetic heroin" that police come an outstanding bull killing them, then thaw them traced to one illicit lab. or heifer. And her embryos out and have them resume The drug samples re- consistently fetched as maturation? We were finally vealed a compound so much as $10,000 apiece on able to accomplish this." obscure that its chemical the booming embryo- What has yet to be ac- "fingerprint" was unlisted. transfer market. But her last complished is successful But, fortunately, Langston pregnancy proved to be fertilization of the thawed stumbled on a 1976 medical her undoing. There were eggs. Attempts have thus far journal that described a difficulties at birth, and failed, Van Blerkom sus- similar case; a young grad- three days later, at 4 a.m., pects, either because uate student who had Sabine died. researchers have put too contracted "Parkinson's But her owners, Genetic many sperm cells in the disease" from homemade Engineering, Inc., of Den- fertilization dish or because heroin and later committed ver, acted quickly. In an they have put them in an suicide. The autopsy re- emergency operation, they inappropriate solution. vealed a chemical called removed the dead cow's Van Blerkom is confident, BAD TRIP 1-methyl-4-phenyi-1,2,5- ovaries and extracted however. "It's very possi- tetrahydropyridine, or MPTP.

80 unfertilized eggs. The ble," he adds, "that we'll It began when a forty- The culprit in the San smaller eggs were immedi- eventually be able to do the two-year-old man showed Jose cases turned out to be ately frozen in liquid nitro- same thing for a dying up at the Santa Clara Valley the same chemical, the gen, The larger ones were woman that we did Medical Center, in San result of an underground allowed to mature in a for Sabine."— Bill Lawren Jose, California, with some chemist's blunder. Trying to special culture, then joined baffling symptoms: a mask- make synthetic heroin in their younger cousins in "Better a diamond with a like expression, drooling, the form of a chemical the deep-freeze. flaw than a pebble without. rigid posture, and a shuffling called MPPP(1-methyl-4- Genetic Engineering had —Chinese proverb gait— all classic signs of phenyl-4-propionoxy- Parkinson's disease. But piperidine), he had un- Parkinson's disease is an leashed the toxic by-product affliction of old age, rarely MPTP instead. MPTP ap- seen in people under sixty. parently kills nerve cells in Unable to speak, the man the nigrostriatal pathway, scrawled a haunting mes- the part of the brain affected sage on a notepad, what's by Parkinson's disease, HAPPENING? NOTHING WORKS. triggering a permanent par-

It took astute guesses kinsonian condition. by Stanford University neu- "Ironically," notes Langs- rologist J. William Langston ton, "we've never had an and other medical sleuths animal model of Parkinson's to find the answer. The before. Now we may have "Parkinson" patient, they one." By using MPTP to learned, was an addict who induce the disease in rats,

had become ill after inject- researchers can try out new ing what he supposed drugs or even find a cure. was synthetic heroin. Then, — Judith Hooper — —

formed in space before PREHISTORIC down several of the teeth they evolved down here on iMEN found by Martin and dug up Earth. I new ones on his own. His Scientists don't literally Henri conclusion: Martin may "see" chemicals in space, of Martin was scouring the ' have been conservative. course; instead, they detect prehistoric sites of southern Men were controlling horses a chemical's presence France in 1911 when he at least 12,000 years ago, using a radio telescope—by found several pairs of worn- Bahn says, and possibly its characteristic electro- out horse teeth. The teeth, were doing so as long as magnetic wavelength, which were estimated at 100,000 years ago. or signature. 30,000 years old, showed Bahn suspects that the When Mollis first no- signs of crib biting —the animals were corralled, ticed sodium hydroxide in habit of biting a railing, rope, ridden, and kept for meat. the vicinity of Sagittarius, or even nearby rock. "Considering what the he and Rhodes worked An obvious sign of bore- American Indians were around the clock observing dom, crib biting is exhibited doing with horses after the constellation through only by captive animals, they'd been exposed to the Tucson Observatory's 11- never by those in the wild. them for only a couple meter telescope on Kitt Martin naturally concluded of hundred years," he says,

Peak. The finding? The that humans had domesti- "I think It highly likely that "soap" seemed to be ema- cated horses lens of thou- among a people who had nating from clouds sands of years ago, contra- lived in close proximity surrounding the center of dicting the long-standing to horses for thousands of the Milky Way. theory lhat control of animals years, someone is going SPACE to SOAP "We now know," he says, hadn't begun until 6000 have the idea that you can "that molecules evolve in B.C. Martin promptly pub- do more than chuck a spear Radio astronomers scruti- space. Simple species lished his evidence but was at them."—Timothy Perrin nizing the cosmos can on Earth tend to evolve into ignored. find the most mundane of more complex species. Martin's explosive theory "The observer, when he things—sodium hydroxide, What we don't know at this had been buried for 70 seems to himself to be ob- for instance, a chief ingredi- point is how tar this evolu- years when archaeologist serving a stone, is really, ent of earthly household tion is carried in space." Paul Bahn, a research fellow if physics is to be believed, soap. The chemical's ap- —-Rick Boling at the University of London, observing the effects of pearance in the constellation came across the paper, the stone upon himself." Sagittarius, however, has "An expert is a man who Intrigued, Bahn soon tracked —Bertrand Russell some far-from-mundane doesn't know all the implications. but is sure that if ht This is the first time a enough money, he compound containing the find them." simple element sodium, —Rex a mineral essential to life, has been spotted in space. "I recently learned some- And Its discovery—by thing quite interesting about astrophysicist Jan M. Mollis, video games. Many young of NASAs Goddard Space people have developed Flight Center, in Greenbelt, incredible hand, eye, and Maryland, and Paul J. brain coordination in playing Rhodes, chief telescope these games. The Air Force operator at the National believes these kids will Radio Astronomy Observa- be outstanding pilots. tory, in Tucson, Arizona Homework, sports, and bolsters the theory that life's friends still come first." Cave paintings at Lascaux: For prehistoric humans, t building blocks were —President Ronald Reagan not merely objets a'ari; they were also domesticated animals. "

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vibrio bacteria "biolumines- sorbed gene, it renders I by a

cent" by moonlight, and it j that gene inactive. Thus, endows the gut microorga- whenever a luciferase gene nisms with the same gift. absorbed a transposon, The Agouron researchers, the bacterium ceased to according to chief biologist glow. Michael Silverman, hope By pinpointing transpo- to use their technique sons in nonglowing bacteria, to isolate the genetic mate- the researchers were able rial that makes vibrio sticky. to locate the luciferase

Vibrio, Silverman explains, gene. From there it was is a common marine bacteria relatively easy to transfer the that adheres to ship hulls, gene from vibrio to E. coli.

Using photomicrography, scientists have watched the bombardier forming a slime that attracts Moreover, the same tech- beetle (shown above at left) carrying out high-tech warfare. barnacles and other messy nique can be used to locate

marine life forms. If re- and transfer many other BOMBARDIER BUG to splatter approaching searchers could understand genes, including those for predators. To compensate, the genetics of bacterial stickiness. For years entomologists they've developed curving, stickiness, they might be Bioluminescence itself, have pointed to the bom- rimlike projections — or able to interfere with it. Silverman adds, is a biolog- bardier beetle as an insect flanges —aligned with the But the stickiness factor ical riddle. "A cell expends that used rocket technology glands. Using photomicrog- involves probably dozens of a lot of energy glowing long before man discovered raphy. Eisner and Aneshan- genes. So the genetic in the dark, but we don't it. The minute bombardier sley have seen the bugs engineers decided to test know what value this has for launches scorching blasts of employing the Coanda their tools on the simpler bacteria. Bacteria don't benzaquinone, a toxic effect to thrust their toxins problem of bioluminescence. glow in the dark when spray, tram its hindquarter forward. First they had to find the they're alone, only when glands into the face of "The flanges serve as gene that instructed the lots of them get together." its archenemy, the ant. it launching guides for the bacteria to make luciferase, — Paul Raeburn does this by releasing spray," Eisner says. "The jet To do that, they mixed the hydrogen peroxide and hy- of fluid is bent into its tra- bacteria with transposons, "I am unique. Never again droquinine from one cham- jectory." The upshot: The ant snippets of DNA that act will this aggregate ol atoms ber into another, triggering gets sprayed in the face. like circuit breakers; when- stand on Earth, an explosive chemical —Susan S. Lang ever a transposon is ab- —Max Stirmer reaction. Now biologist Thomas GENES THAT GLOW Eisner and engineer David Aneshansley, both of Cor- Genetic engineers have nell University, say bom- manufactured another bardier beetles, of the first— intestinal bacteria that i subfamily Paussinae, glow in the dark. make ; use of yet another sophisti- 1 At the Agouron Institute, cated physical principle: I in La Jolla, California,

the Coanda effect, best I common E. colt bacteria

illustrated by liquids that ! from the human gut are dribble down the curved I emitting an eerie blue-green surface of a container glow. Its source: a foreign | instead of flowing out gene clipped from a simple j smoothly. sea creature called Vibrio i

Paussinae beetles, the i harveyi and spliced into researchers explain, have E. coli DNA. The cloned

gland openings at the ; gene codes for luciferase, the rear and can't twist around I enzyme that makes 38 OMNI MELTING HARDENED particles collect in the ARTERIES plaque-damaged areas, which are more permeable

Atherosclerosis is. the than normal blood-vessel scourge of the elderly: As walls. Then the patient the years pass, fat often is placed inside a large builds up within artery walls, induction coil and subjected restricting the coronary to a high-frequency vessels and blood supply to alternating electromagnetic the heart. The condition, field. The field interacts commonly called hardening with the particles, generating of the arteries, is irreversi- heat; the heat melts the ble. And its deadly effect is fat, leaving normal tissue ameliorated only by bypass unscathed. The contents of your id are supposed to be confidential, but surgery, with all the risks Gordon has thus far used most therapists have no qualms about using collection agencies and bills. his new technique only on

If a Chicago physician's rabbits and rats, and it THERAPY AND now with the Veterans experimental technique may take several more years BILL COLLECTORS Administration Hospital in pans out, however, future of testing before it's avail- Palo Alto, California, shows patients may be able to able to humans. But some of Robert Jones has been that when it comes time regain their health without his colleagues are already down on his luck— divorced, to collect bills, most psy- going under the knife. forecasting a new era of troubled, and unemployed. chologists have no qualms Developed by heart surgeon heart-disease treatment, and Now in the process of about reporting a patient Robert Gordon, of the Gordon is cautiously opti- getting back on his feet, to a collection agency. University of Illinois Medical mistic. "It's possible," he Jones applies for a sensitive Of the 148 psychologists in Center, the new method notes, "that we'll even be - job with a government private practice who re- uses electromagnetism to able to prevent hardening of agency. But a routine check sponded to Faustman's "melt" the fatty deposits, or the arteries by melting of his credit history shows questionnaire, 60.8 percent plaques, away. newly forming lesions." that a psychotherapist once reported that they had To melt the fat, Gordon —David Dreier turned Jones'sunpaid bill used collection agencies. first injects a solution of over to a collection agency. Of those, fewer than half had such tiny magnetic particles Alerted to the fact that informed their patients of as iron hydroxide into the Jones was once in therapy, the possibility beforehand. patient's bloodstref his prospective employer Many psychologists argue rejects him as "unstable." that they are simply provid-

While fictional, this sce- ing a service, and if the nario is the plausible out- client does not pay for the come of an ethical —and le- service, the psychologist has gal—issue that affects the same right as any other both psychotherapists and professional to use legal their patients, According means to collect. But Faust-

to guidelines set down man feels differently. "If by the American Psycho- you buy into the APA's ethical logical Association (APA), guidelines," he says, "then information gathered by giving information to a bill- a psychologist working with collection agency or a a patient is considered lawyer constitutes release strictly confidential and without the patient's cannot be turned over to a consent."— Bill Lawren third party without the patient's consent. "A pig bought on credit is

Clogged coronary artery: Now the only remedy is a heart-bypass But a study by psycholo- forever grunting." operation, but a new technigue "melts" plaques nonsurgical^. gist William Faustman, —Spanish proverb "

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ten-month-old babies who the name of Black Man's been bitten by a snake. were entertained by video- Head, or Cabeza de Negro," And Nakanishi suggests that tapes of an actress laugh- explains Koji Nakanishi, of rubbing against the plant ing and crying. Unlike the Columbia University, "and might reward some animals emotionally responsive the woman who supplied the with immunity to snakebite.

left brain, the right frontal extract would not tell us But even without the plant,

and parietal lobes showed which one it came from." humans may benefit from no EEG changes. After Nakanishi's group the antidote's powers. Since Brain asymmetry, David- isolated and described scientists can synthesize son asserts, may begin the structure of the antidote the valuable compound, they at birih. He also speculates molecule, other scientists may soon start manufactur-

that the left hemisphere tested it on mice and dogs ing batches in the lab. may specialize in positive, that had been given two — Dava Sobel or "approach," behaviors; to three times the lethal dose the right, in negative, or of venom from a snake "Usually when people are avoidance, reactions. Al- known as fer-de-lance sad, they don't do anything. ready scrutinizing newborns (Bothrops atrox). They found They just cry over their for asymmetrical brain ac- that the antidote success- condition. But when they

tivity, "the psychologist hopes fully restored heartbeat, get angry, they bring about ASYMMETRICAL to move on to babies of blood pressure, and respi- a change. I BABIES psychiatric patients to see ration to normal within —Malcolm X | whether the offspring have approximately two hours. j RADIOACTIVE GEMS As scalp electrodes their parents' brain pat- I What's more, Nakanishi antidote recorded her brain waves, terns. — Madeleine Lebwohl ! believes that the a ten-month-old baby may be effective against Wholesale jewelers in Los squealed with delight at the "The way to happiness venom from many other Angeles recently bought a videotaped hamming of a does not include murdering snake species as well. collection of Brazilian gems. grown-up actress. your friends, your family, Legend has it that certain But when the stones were " The part of the baby's or yourself being murdered. animals seek out Black tested with a Geiger counter, brain that got a kick out of —L Ron Hubbard Man's Head after they have they turned out to be "hot." the actress's antics was the left frontal lobe— the "Midnight shakes the mem- same area that would regis- ory as a madman shakes ter such stimulation in an a dead geranium." adult brain. The electroen- —T. S. Eliot cephalograph (EEG) read- ings, says Richard Davidson, BLACK MAN'S HEAD a neuropsychologist at the State University of New York A mysterious Amazon at Purchase, are the first tree with the colloquial evidence that the brain's name of Black Man's Head hemispheres may already be appears to contain a snake- specialized in infancy. This venom antidote so potent

contradicts old notions it can bring animals back that only as the brain ma- virtually from the dead. tures do its two halves start Chemists in the United processing emotions States and Japan have syn- selectively. thesized the plant's active Davidson and co-worker ingredient, but they don't Natban Fox, of the Univer- know the identity of the sity of Maryland, College natural source. Park, moniSored the frontal 'At least a dozen South and parietal lobes of 24 American plants share AC OMNI — "

The jewels, in (act, were gems 24 hours a day for a dangerously radioactive year, he warns, you'd be and this was the third such exposed to radiation levels shipment in several years. approaching the legal The pain suffered by

How did it happen? limit for nuclear-industry terminal cancer patients is

"These stones were placed workers. And it might be a often too excruciating to in a nuclear reactor," sug- lot worse. "These stones alleviate with drugs, hypno- gests George Rossman. a could be worn as a necklace sis, or other techniques. California Institute of Tech- over the thyroid or lungs," Now physicians at Hout nology mineralogist. It was a he observes, "It is certainly ton's M. D. Anderson Hosi case of gem tampering: imprudent to expose inter- tal and Tumor Institute with a scary twist. nal organs to this level have come up with a solii Low-level radiation in the of penetrating radiation." tion: injecting an opiate earth's crust enhances The Brazilian government directly into the brain, when the color of precious stones (a major gem exporter to pain originates. over vast geologic time the United States) has been First, reports Dr. C. St rat- periods', Rossman explains. notified that some of its ton Hill, director of Ander- Once amputees wore peg legs; Impatient with nature's stones are "hot," reports a son's pain clinic, a neuro- gel muscles will be softer. sluggish course, some mer- Nuclear Regulatory Com- surgeon drills a hole in chants resort to coloring mission official in Washing- the patient's skull above the cells is their ability to con- gems with benign gamma ton, D.C. And many gem forehead, creating a reser- tract rapidly when excited by rays, widely used to sterilize merchants now use Geiger voir for the pain medication, a chemical messenger, medical instruments and counters to inspect their Once a day the medication then to resume their former to package food. But this wares.— Eric Mishara is placed directly into the shape. When subjected time, Rossman speculates, area, which may be covered to a low-voltage electrical someone in Brazil irradiated "Nature composes some of by a flap of skin. The pa- field, a gel does the same topaz and the gem spodu- her loveliest poems for tient then wears a wig. thing. Since gels can be mene with neutrons from the the microscope and the Hill says that since the molded into any shape. core of a nuclear reactor. telescope. technique requires lower Tanaka explains, artificial If you wore one of the —Theodore Roszak doses of morphine, patients limbs can be made of suffer few side effects and bundles of tiny gel cylinders

may even remain active that resemble muscle fi- up to the time of death. So bers. The gel "fibers" could

far, it has been successfully be encased in a skinlike used on ten adults and membrane and attached to one child, —Joan Goffman steel or plastic bones. Future amputees might MAN-MADE MUSCLES wear tiny microcomputer devices to send electrical Although they're more signals to their sculpted sophisticated than Captain limbs, Tanaka adds. By reg- Ahab's peg leg. today's ulating the volume changes

artificial limbs still lag behind of each gel cylinder individ- the real thing. But a sophis- ually, such computers ticated prosthesis may soon could orchestrate complex arrive. The secret, says movements. physicist Toyiochi Tanaka, The result, Tanaka con- of the Massachusetts Insti- cludes, would be an almost tute of Technology, is a lifelike limb. —Leah Wallach bionic jelly that expands and contracts much as human "Some men go through a The Geiger counter has been the jeweler's best mend e muscles do. forest and see no firewood." unsavory gem traders began dallying with nuclear reach The hallmark of muscle —English proverb conjTiruuurui

HISS BUNDLE malfunctions, hearl disease may follow, but it's impossi- Stargazing doesn't ordi- ble to examine the electri- narily save lives, but celestial cally noisy fibers with a rhythms recently set an conventional electrocardi- Israeli astronomer to thinking ogram. By "absorbing" about the human heart. the body's noise, however, The fruit of his meditation is the computerized version a down-to-earth medical was able to detect erratically invention. functioning hiss bundles, Tel Aviv University profes- According to the sor Dror Sadeh had been researchers, the new cardiac using a computerized detector may be used to detector to differentiate measure other body func- between the regular but tions as well. They are weak signals of pulsars and currently testing its effec- Ihe background noise of tiveness in monitoring the universe. He was sifting breathing and blood pres- through the pulsar signals sure.^Paul Raeburn

one day when it occurred to him that an analogous tool 'Trie present time has one might pick up faint heart advantage over every other. ." signals normally drowned It is our own Pygmy chimps: Our closest animal relatives are tour leel tatl, out by the body's electrical —Charles Colton swing from frees, and indulge in elaborate courtship rituals. noise. He took his idea to Dr. HUMANOID CHIMPS no ordinary chimp. He tures, Sussman reports. Schlomo Laniado, director belonged to a new species; They engage in much ho- of cardiology at nearby Back in the early Thirties the pygmy chimpanzee, mosexual dallying, and Ichilov Hospital. Laniado an exceptionally clever which Harvard zoologist the females are sexually heeded Sadeh's suggestion. and sociable pinl-size Harold J. Coolidge was to receplive throughout the Before long he found thai chimpanzee called Prince identify a few years later. menstrual cycle. They are a computer, working in Chim inspired a book by And today the small pri- omnivorous and highly tandem with an electrocar- the eminent Yale zoologist mate— four feet tall like a intelligent. diogram, could record Robert M. Yerkes. Its title, regular chimp but slighter in Researchers estimate the activity of the hiss bun- presciently enough, build—has become an that our common ancestor,

dle, a column of muscle was Almost Human. anthropological curio; It may which lived about 4 million fibers running through the What Yerkes didn't realize be humankind's closest or 5 million years ago, might heart. When the hiss bundle was that Prince Chim was living relative. have looked like a small "Studying pygmy chimps chimp. And they point to in the wild will help unravel similarities between the what human ancestors were pygmy chimp and "Lucy." like," says Randall Suss- the famous 3.6-miltion-year- man, a primatologist from old hominid fossil said to the State University of be our true ancestor. New York at Stony Brook. "The pygmy chimp is not Sussman began doing man's ancestor," Sussman just that two years ago in cautions, "but it's the closest Zaire's Lamako Forest, living representative." What makes pygmy —Tom Kovach chimps so humanoid? Well, unlike other African apes, "imagination is more impor- Beyond echocardiography A computerized technique that locates they mate front to front, with tant than knowledge." pulsars can also be used lo detect the heart's fainter signals. elaborate courtship ges- — Albert Einstein 12 OMNI .

EgtisHTCSOf

ANIMAL FEMINISM

ly because they "-- kills, sug-

%f

of studies from the ai iorists shows that biology no longer predestines a natural order of male supremacy—at

enough ies of fish, birds, jn spotted hyena society, indicate that females __, j so impr ~'"i, or at least share domi-

! frequently Rights Amendm

l the hyei

' ' ' a tew exceptions, mala dominance was the like a male fantasy gone haywire. "Elephant shrews have favorite resting rule in the animal kingdom. It's not hard to Females arrive early in the mating sea- places," explains Koontz. "I've seen males see how this view arose. The first animal son to slake out their territories. When the sitting in these, and a female will come along societies that behaviorists studied were males appear, the females fight over them and ram her head into him. She pushes those of .such domestic creatures as the viciously, sometimes inflicting crippling him out and then spreads out there her- chicken; few males reign more supreme wounds on one another. While all this fight- self." Although elephant shrew females than a rooster in the barnyard. In the wild ing is going on, the males busy themselves would hardly win a congeniality contest, the first primate subjects were baboons and building nests. As soon as a female sand- they seldom fight with their mates, a trait rhesus monkeys. They were chosen partly piper has finished mating with one male, of most monogamous animals. Among po- like because they were easy to observe. As it she begins looking around for another. If a lygamous animals the hyena, females happens, males are dominant in both spe- prospect should hop into sight, she will then are much feistier toward the males cies, according to Linda Fedigan, anthro- take off with him, leaving mate number one Ounce for ounce, one of the most ag- pologist at the University of Alberta and to mind the eggs. gressive temales in the animal world is the author of Primate Paradigms. Other pri- Oring has seen a female mate with up tiny Southern flying squirrel. (Females weigh mates that had different life-styles were to four partners, laying a clutch of eggs for only about three ounces; males tip the largely unstudied by researchers in the early each. After all these matings the female scales at even less.) In her observations of years of behavioral research. blithely ignores her mates and her numer- this nocturnal creature, biologist Jacquelyn When scientists began to study animals ous offspring unless the weather is unusu- Willis, of Upsala College, has seen incidents

in the wild, they expected to find male ally bad, in which case she will lend her of female dominance as sinking as the fe- dominance; not surprisingly, they did. "Their feathers to warming the nests. male hyena's at feeding time. At one feeding prejudices were feeding their observa- The sandpiper's practice of taking mul- station she set up, Willis recalls, "a male would tions," says Harvard University anthropol- tiple husbands does not exist among start feeding, then a female would come ogist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, whose book The mammals, because mammalian mothers along and pounce on him. And he'd run away Woman That Never Evolved explores the supply their young with one thing the fa- squeaking." After just one such encounter, variety of primate life-styles. the male squirrel, like the male hyena, would Before long the idea that primates, and hang back respectfully wa-rin.g until the fe-

ultimately all creatures, lived in male-dom- male had first eaten her fill. inated societies was firm y nxed in the minds The greatest incidence of female domi- of most scientists and in the texts they wrote. nance or codominance is found among the a female There were of course exceptions. Rap- £When primates, our closest mammalian rela- tors — hawks, owls, and other birds of clown fish dies, it may be tives. One of the first observations of a pri- mate society in which females are domi- prey—had long been known to have dom- replaced by inant females. But scientists tended to view, nant was made by Allison B. Jolly, of these species as oddballs. a male, but only after the Rockefeller University. During the early Then in the early Sixties came an explo- male gains Sixties she studied ring-tailed lemurs on sion of discoveries, as a new generation the island of Madagascar, off the coast of weight literally of scientists, many of them women, stud- more and Africa. Jolly found that these monkeys live ied a wider variety of animals over long changes its in separate all-male and all-female bands, of time. These researchers found each having its own hierarchy. Although periods sex, becoming a female^ that among some animals, female domi- females and males are about the same size, nance is the rule, not the exception. In fish whenever the two sexes come In contact societies, for example, females tend to the females invariably rule.

dominate in any encounter, mostly be- Jolly reported seeing females bounce up cause of their greater size and weight. The to a dominant male and snatch a tamarind classic example is the clown fish, a col- thers cannot: milk. Nursing ties these pod from him, cuffing his ear in the proc- orful species found off the coast of Japan. mothers more closely to their offspring. As ess. On any number of occasions, slaps Clown fish travel in groups comprised a result, the world ot mammals is primarily from females were the males' lot; the males entirely of males, with the exception of a a polygamous one in which males take never hit back. rule single female, which reigns over them. It is several mates. Still, there are some mo- Female dominance seems to be the

the female, not the males, that stakes out nogamous mammal species, and it is within among all lemurs that have been studied. a territory attractive to the opposite sex, this monogamous minority that we find Most, like the ring-tailed variety, live in po- an area dotted with sea anemones. When dominant females. lygamous groups, but there is at least one a female dies, a male may rise to power An expert on monogamous animals, Dev- monogamous lemur, the indri. among which and step into the former leader's role, but ra Kleiman, ot the National Zoo, in Wash- the temale is also dominant. Anthropolo-

only after he gains weight and literally ington, D.C., says that among most of these gist J. I. Pollack, of London's University changes sex, becoming a temale. mated pairs, females are either in charge College, watched these tailless, black-and- "The most dominant male in the group or codominant, sharing the power with white primates for over a year and discov- turns temale," reports ethologist Jeffrey males. A colleague of Kleiman's at the zoo, ered that indri females make their status Baylis, of the University of Wisconsin. "In Fred W. Koontz, has been studying a unique very clear by occupying the top parts of these fish, dominance and being female monogamous mammal, the elephant shrew. trees, where most of the food is. The males mean the same thing." A long-nosed, long-legged little beast that occupy the barren lower branches. As with The same was found to be true for an- hails from Africa, the elephant shrew looks the hyenas, only when a female moves on other animal species, the spotted sand- something like a gerbil standing on stilts. does a male dare to climb up and take piper. Not only are female sandpipers about Unlike most monogamous animals, which some food for himself. 20 percent larger than the males, but they're are paragons of togetherness, elephant By contrast, most other monogamous polyandrous (having several husbands) as ' shrews ignore each other except for the primates divide the power between the well, according to Lewis W.Oring, of the Uni- brief period of estrus, when the female is males and females in an arrangement of

versity of North Dakota. For more than a de- in her fertile period. If they encounter each codominance. Patricia Wright, a primatol- cade Oring'has made annual treks to study other at any other time, the female chases ogist with the City University of New York, these birds at their mating grounds on a the male away. And on the few occasions was able to observe two such species, the

small island in a Minnesota lake. The picture when the two interact there's really not much titi and night monkeys, in Peru's Manu Na- he paints of their sex life looks something doubt about who's boss. tional Park. According to Wright the life- 45 OMNI y

practicing the ver- Jolly's discovery of female dominance styles of both types are very similar. "The per are merely female among the lemur societies of Madagascar, adult male and female never squabble," sion of sexual selection. ex- where they have been isolated from out- she says. "They share everything. The male Ul,timately, dominance can best be conditions. side influences for hundreds of millions of carries the young about eighty percent of plained by environmental The strategies and years, has raised another question. Since the time-. The female has the infant only environment shapes mating lemurs are among the most primitive of pri- when she's actually nursing." other behavior. Female sandpipers, for ex- the ability to mates, their social structure lends some Males are still dominant among most ample, may have developed to the theory that female domi- group-living primates. Even there, how- lay multiple clutches of eggs as a way of credence nance may have been the original condi- ever, females have developed a powerful combating egg loss to predaiors. For the tion of primates. If that is true, why are fe- weapon; the female coalition. Like their hu- good of the species, Oring argues, it is dominant or codominant in some man counterparts, they've learned the better for the female spotted sandpiper to males rather than species of animals and subordinate among strength of numbers. "If one of their infants confine herself to laying eggs others? Or, as Hrdy asks, why haven't more screams, female vervet monkeys will mob caring for her young, because the males evolved dominance? the nearest male," says Linda Fedigan, can do the latter as well as she can. females it is probably a matter of the en- who has made long-term observalions of Like the sandpiper, the hyenas that Til- Again, of their be- vironmental conditions. Hrdy notes, tor ex- the animals both in captivity and in the wild. son studies have had much environmen- ample, that whereas most male langur apes "So the males tend to stay away from the havior shaped in response to among collect females in harems, a few Old World infants. The female coalition is a good way tal influences. Female dominance is response to monkeys have become monogamous "re- to counteract males who are larger and hyenas, Tilson suggests, a cently" (within the past few thousand years). can intimidate females individually." the species' need to survive. Hyenas de- kill Those monogamous species (nouveaux These kinds of discoveries raise broader pend on animals they or carcasses they monogames. she calls them] may have questions about the evolution of animal and, find for their food. Competition for the been affected by the intense pressure of indirectly, human society. The fundamen- available food can be fierce, and hyena if their mother human hunters. It was just too dangerous tal question is, Why did female dominance pups might not survive share of each kill. to live or travel in large groups. And among evolve in its various forms? couldn't assure them a monogamous species, in which there's less One insight may be gained by observ- And among titi and night monkeys the pressure among males to do battle, both ing animals' mating strategies. According high degree of male interest in the young, ultimately the sexes are a pretty even match in overall to the theory of sexual selection spelled as Wright stresses, is to male's There is one notable exception to this out by Charles Darwin over a century ago, advantage. Most of the time, the females size. generalization: Homo sapiens. males grow larger and more dominant so are either pregnant or lactating—two very Given this kind of evolutionary past, what that they can battle other males effectively costly activities in terms of energy ex- kind of destiny does our biology offer? No for females and/or territory with which to pended, By caring tor the young, the male one dares to make a prediction, but as Hrdy woo females. These macho iraits theoret- does his part to improve his offspring's that notes, "There's no evidence in the primate ically make the males more appealing to chance of survival. Thus he ensures posterity. to justify the old sexual stereotype females. Animals like the spotted sandpi- his own genes will be carried into record about passive females." Indeed, according to John Money, pro- fessor of medical psychology at Johns Hopkins University School ot Medicine, both male and female patterns are coded into the brain of every animal from its earliest 'SY-PRoDUMSPfSfK/De') stages, and either pattern may emerge in WlM>ES»f)Gi.ftSW a species as a whole or in certain individ- Of CHEMICAL!. uals. "Nature has this way of laying every- thing down," Money says. "Both male and ?«ESEf?VEp SEES female schemata are in the brain." Money stresses that among Homo sap- iens; dominance is not an exclusively male

trait, nor does it manifest itself in only one way. "Females are far more ferocious than males in protecting their infants, and males are often more ferocious in defending their

territory," he says. 'And when it comes to fighting over a mate, there's no difference. Murders over jealousy are just as common among women as among men." Simply being male is no guarantee of

being dominant, argues Money. It is easy enough to find instances where the sup- posed male-dominance trait "goes ka-

plooey," as' he puts it. "Some males just

don't get it," he continues. How many of them are there? No one knows. "Nobody's ever done a head count or a serious study of henpecked husbands."

So if our evolutionary female ancestors were dominant in primitive society, it is plausible that our human female descen- dants could govern society. The potential apparently exists. As Hrdy notes, "The evolution of dominant females doesn'f defy gravity or any natural law."DQ -Ea*

From a maelstrom of electrons and positrons Is "sssssssssssssr- bom the * #> ULTIMATE XRAY BY RICHARD WOLKOMIR

•Suspended in the • » air, a human heart hangs beating. It is u translucent, a laser-generated phan- tasm, The surgeons walking slowly around it can ponder every detail. When they come to operate on the heart they are watching, they will know precisely where to place their instruments. Years will pass before such a scene is a reality, But work on real-time 3-D holograms of living bodies has already begun in an underground synchrotron, or atom smasher, at Cornell University.

It is just one among hundreds of uses to which scientists are putting a new research tool. With it they can study anything from individual atoms trading electrons with their neighbors to Earth's white-hot core to the dance of proteins

!••• S «*

A technician mans the massive control panel of Cornell's synchrotron facility (right}. The •I'. control room's spectrum analyzer (above) shows when the X-ray beam is perlectly tuned. H#

PHOTOGRAPHS BY • DAN McCOY — UHtSS KAMA NUN BADGES

^Physicists, geologists, in the membrane of an individual cell. As Boris Batterman, who looks like a peppy the negatively charged electrons whizzing

one physicist puts it, "This is one of Humphrey and heads biochemists, the Bogart the Cornell counterclockwise around the ring, the hottest things going on in science today." High-Energy Synchrotron Source. Known positively charged positrons, clockwise, crystallographers, and This new tool is the same one that a den- by its acronym, CHESS, this facility puts Built into the synchrotron ring are radio- scientists tist uses to check your teeth: X rays. A den- those atomic scraps to good use, frequency (RF) cavities that create waves tist's X-ray machine radiates in all direc- In operation only since 1981, Batter- of electromagnetic energy. When the from scores of other tions at a fraction of a watt; X rays come man's facility is one of just a handful of speeding particles hit these waves, the persuasions off the synchrotron with an intensity that is synchrotron sources in the world, and of electrons and positrons receive a forward hundreds of thousands of times stronger. that select group its X rays are the most kick, much as a surfer shoots forward as propose experiments to a These rays are not diffuse. They are con- powerful, lis atom-smashing process be- his board rides a breaker. In a split second CHESS panell centrated in a flat beam no wider than an gins with a cannonlike linear accelerator the particles accelerate to as much as 8 inch-and-a-half-wide leather belt, The that generates electrons and positrons and billion electron volts. Electromagnets then

beams are so potent they have set fire to then sprays them into the synchrotron it- shunt them through a connecting tube into film and other materials. self, a tube running through a circular tun- the laboratory's third main part, the Cor- Until recently the high-energy physicists nel measuring a half-mile around. The par- nell Electron Storage Ring, or CESR (pro- who use synchrotrons to study quarks and ticles enter the synchrotron at an energy nounced Caesar). CESR is a tube that cir- other subatomic fauna dismissed this ra- level of 150 million electron volts. cles the tunnel next to the synchrotron tube. diation as so much waste to be discarded Electromagnets wrapped around the . CHESS director Boris Batterman and his lead like table scraps. No more. "This installa- synchrotron tube steer the particles in a telephone booths above,.1 Sosciai radiation- tion is an example of old-fashioned Yankee circular path, The particles travel in tight sensitive badges. Gosimc'.crs {above left), are thrift applied to science," says physicist bunches the diameter of a sewing needle required gear at the facility's X-ray ports (left). 53 Here, in a high vacuum, the electrons could poke your index finger through. "The "It's like a railroad train speeding around and positrons coast in opposite directions beam that did this came out of the syn- a circular track at night— its headlight is

for several hours, colliding and recolliding chrotron; you can imagine what it would the X-ray beam," says physicist Bilder-

for the benefit of the physicists in ihe con- do if your dentist used it to check your teeth back. "Whenever it passes one of our beam

trol room upstairs. Like racing cars skid- for cavities," says Bilderback. lines, it shines its headlight in. We make ding as they round turns, the particles ra- 'An accelerator like this is one of the most use of the light." diate energy as they circle CESR. To keep complicated instruments man has cre- Unlike a headlight beam, however, this

their particles up to speed, physicists must ated. It's amazing that it breaks down as light is lethal. That makes CHESS touchy

constantly replace this lost synchrotron ra- infrequently as it does," Bilderback com- to operate. Researchers must wear dosim- diation with kicks from the RF cavities. They ments later as he and a visitor take a rare eters, radiation-sensitive badges, which do not like the resulting electric bills. stroll through the accelerator tunnel. CHESS staff members constantly double- Until 1981 the radiation simply went into The intense radiation usually makes the check to guard against accidental radia- the metal walls of the storage ring, gen- regions off limits to humans, but the beam tion exposure. They set up their experi- erating heat that in turn required an elab- is turned off now while technicians fix a ments in heavily shielded cabinets, lead

orate water-cooling system to dissipate it. vacuum leak in one of the RF cavities. With telephone booths situated along the beam Then Batterman and his team, backed by the beam down, Bilderback and his visitor pipes. To get into their booths, the scien- funds from the National Science Founda- wander through the tunnel containing CESR tists must remove a special key from a cen-

. tion, attached the CHESS facility to the and the synchrotron. tral control panel. Several layers of such synchrotron tunnel and began to tap at least Every inch of the two tubes is encrusted precautions make accidents caused by a portion of this energy for research. with vacuum pumps, cables, water pipes, absentmindedness impossible. "My own The facility is buried in a corner of the electromagnets, and RF cavities. All of these laboratory on the other side of the campus Cornell campus devoted to athletics, in a must work perfectly, or the whizzing par- is more dangerous than CHESS," explains blind brick stub of a building across from ticle bunches inside will weaken or wob- Batterman. "My car is more dangerous." the tennis bubble. A discreet sign tucked ble. When that happens, the facility must Physicists, geologists, biochemists,

away in an alcove says wilson synchro- shutdown while technicians enter it to hunt crystallographers, and scientists from tron laboratory. No sign says CHESS. for the problem, sometimes patrolling the scores of other persuasions propose ex-

Wilson Laboratory's top floor, the fifth, is tunnel on bicycles. periments to a panel of experts who allot also at the street level. All other floors are To create CHESS, engineers have cut the CHESS time slots. Uses for the sizzling underground. The entrance to the building open CESR and attached straight pipes at X rays are limited only by the imaginations is an elevator with nowhere to go but down. a tangent to the curving ring. X rays travel of Ihe researchers who use them. CHESS is in the basement, next to the syn- in straight lines; so every time a particle Because they can do work that can be chrotron tunnel. "Look at this," says Don bunch comes whipping around the ring at done nowhere else on Earth but at a syn- Bilderback, a staff physicist at CHESS. He nearly the speed of light, streaming radia- chrotron source like CHESS, scientists from holds up a strip of lead an eighth of an inch tion, a portion of its X-ray photons shoot across the country will wait months for a thick. Burned in its center is a hole you down the pipe and into the CHESS facility. crack at using the facility. And when their slot in the schedule finally opens up, they'll work day and night on their experiments. They take catnaps on the couch in the tiny lounge or rest cuddled against the syn- chrotron's lead shielding. The "sleeping-

bag syndrome," researchers call it. A favorite technique among ihe scien- tists is EXAFS, which is an acronym for Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure. Despite the mind-twisting name, this tech- nique "is exciting because it's so simple. The X-ray specimen could be just a dot," according to Batterman. When an X ray hits an atom, he explains,

it usually knocks out electrons. Each elec- tron adheres to the atom with an energy

that depends on its distance from the nu- cleus and on the other atoms nearby. By adjusting the X ray's beam strength, sci-

entists can tune it for a particular atom they wish to study. An EXAFS experimenter

would mount his sample in front of the St- ray beam port, tune the beam to the atom

in question, and position an electron counter behind the sample. By studying how the sample absorbs energy from the X ray, the researcher can determine the distance between the sample's atoms, as well as identify the types of atoms surrounding the one that interests him. "In other words, you can see the environment of a particular type of atom," says Batterman. Joe Wong, a General Electric physical chemist, uses EXAFS techniques at CHESS "Here's'a feature you're really going to like. It's a full-service multiband to take a close look at coal, with the ulti- receiver with digital optional alarm." readout and snooze mate goal of developing clean, high-effi-

ciency techniques for processing it. "This CONTINUED ON PAGE 96 mm

mm mmmmmmm VMM

FICTION

Kid the Flash is one of the great rock and roilers of his time. WIREDBut success is killing him BY DAVID BISCHOFF PAINTING BY MICHEL HENRICOT " " "

The Kid's in his dressing room, spitting up He smiles and lays his head back. tachers who had zoned out on their wires. sparks. Spudzel stalks the room, popping I take off. The druggers clapped and wanted more; pills as il they were M&M's. 'Jesus'" I don't want to see the knives go into him. so Zonk did an old Ultravox tune, "I Want He slams his hand into the vidphone to Be a Machine." again. "Where's the tuckin' doctor? The He wasn't Kid the Flash when I first saw The band sort of limped away back- show's only an hour away!" him perform. . stage. I asked the bartender if he could Blood drips onto my hand. The Kid rolls Just the lead singer in a penny-ante syn- arrange a quick meeting for me with Zonk's away from the trash can. His shiny blouse, tha-shock group still using outdated com- lead singer. mottled by the vomit stain, catches light, synths and Jap guitars. Young, all of them, Before my beer was a quarter gone, Tom flashes it back in my face. doing a Monday night in a buzzclub-off of Ellerway was beside me, trying to be cool street in D.C., full of A smoke wisp curls'into my eyes. I can M pubescent power but sucking down a double whiskey smell the wrongness. and not a whole lot else. I was curious. I'd damned fast.

. "Can it, asshole," he mutters. He tosses known his mother . . real well. I'd heard "You remember Ultravox, huh?"

those famous frizzled locks, all tangled in he had a group. I was pretty burned out, His smile twitched. "I inherited a nice teen dreams. "I'll be okay." what with thirty years of laying my fingers vinyl collection from the Sixties, Seventies, "Like hell!" The afterimages of those on lead guitars with almost as many groups. and Eighties." 7 " sparks from the Kid's implants are like black I was with the Dying Ones then, which about "Got some of my stuff

it. holes in my vision. I put a pillow under his says The masks of surgery keep your "I think so." head, wipe sweat from his forehead. "What face and body young these days but don't I chuckled. "I sure hope you don't have did she do to you?" do shit for your soul. Fifty years old. Lots the clinkers." He coughs. Gears mesh. Crank of flesh. of experience. No money. And to think that 'A few. How 'bout 'Boogie, Sugar Baby,'

"Vampire Fire." He sneers. The Kid hates I had originally learned classical guitar. with the Viber Hots." that song. His fans love it. His pulse is still I sat with just a Heineken for company I dropped my cigarette in my —beer and strong and steady. while the band chugged and jerked. Same glared at him. "But I wasn't even "Christ, Ellerway." "Calvin Hodges, guitars." He got a smug "Yeah, well, this chick, she sucks elec- smile on his face. tricity. God, what a day! Need a new power "Not many people knew I was Calvin

pack, I think." Hodges."

I shake my head. "You didn't do this when "You can disco all you want, but if you're Qt's the Kid Simone was around, Ellerway." a rocker, ft shows."

"Fuck her." He clamps his mouth shut, they really want to see. Well, I ordered another round. We shot the punk hard. musical shit. I only want

I look up at the rumpled Spudzel. "How Then, in the midst of a sentence, he come you didn't at least have a medmech the money. Hell, anybody can backed off with an odd look in his eyes.

' around? I know they're expensive, but shit, understand that. "Crap. What am I talking to Jim Capp about Flash is the show." music for? You know it all. You've been Power? Popularity? Half "Don't you challenge my judgment! Ever! around forever and you're surviving."

That's not part of the deal here. I'm doing the world would I shook my head. "I can't change. Ell- my job. I can't help it if the Kid goes out erway. I'll just keep playing. Always one kill to be where I am now3 — and humps some AC/DC before the big- more set gest concert of his career." He tensed. "How'd you like our set?" "You're just a cheap bastard! Serve you "Your band is okay." right if we gotta cancel." I could see him cringe; so I stuck the

"Cancel!" Spud's face turns bright red. rest in real quick. "But I think you're pretty

"You ain't gonna cancel. I got all my money old rock-and-synth card deck reshuffled. decent."

wrapped up in this gig." But Ellerway . . . Ellerway had something, He bit his lip a moment. "Yeah?"

Spud doesn't, and we knowit, but he oh, yes he did, and I sat there listening and I patted him on the shoulder. "Yes. in- likes his drama, and we let him keep it. watching him and didn't touch my beer, deed. Look, let's you and I get a doggie

"Ellerway will, be all right," I say. "Probably which was damned strange for a man who bag of this poison and head over to the

just shorted oul the voice augmenter. The takes an anlialchy shot every week. Sheraton. I got some crystals I want you to medmech will have a spare. We can do the Cocaine-scrawny, he had just a thatch hear. We can talk." show, but Ellerway might need a long rest of hair, bjond and scruffy. He was seven- He smiled. Then suddenly his pale-green afterward. Right. Ellerway?" I punch his teen years old. Tattered jeans and a faded eyes got stony, and he said,— "Hey, wait a shoulder lightly. corduroy jacket with patches hung loosely minute. You don't wanna

"Yeah, Capp. How about a drink?" around his bare skin and prominent ribs. I chuckled and knocked oft the rest of

He tries to get up, but I keep him down. A red silk scarf was tied around his neck, my whiskey. "Hell no, Ellerway. I'm into "You'll get ail you need soon as we get you and the cord of an ancient Vocoder mike sheep now, haven't you heard? Bring some fixed up." wound round his right arm like an ema- of your band if you want."

The medmech storms in, and a regular ciated snake. He frowned, embarrassed, but I grinned doctor rushes in behind him, wheeling a His music was in his eyes. His enunci- at him, and it was okay. whole lab's worth of equipment: flashing' ation was precise. His words snuck around needles, long spirals of plastic tubing, and the songs and took chunks out of them, I checked my equipment a couple of packets of plasma alongside gleaming spitting them back into the outwash. He times that day, but I check it again. They racks of metallic odds and ends. used the Vocoder wonderfully. A flick of his have an opaque light curtain around the And wires. fingers to a key and his voice seemed to stage so that the crowd can't see me and

There's a moment of fleshly fear in Ell- sprout metallic wings. I can't see them.

erway's eyes. There were brief moments of perfect I hear them, though. I hear the gurgles

"Look. You'll be fine," I whisper. "Pretty metal-flesh mesh, powerand blood and the slurps and the crackles of elec-

soon we do what you want. That's what sneaking through the songs. He had no tricity as the wires are plugged in. I hear we're after." stage presence, but he had the raw stuff. the screams and the calls, the ocean of

He looks up at me and says, "Hell, 1 want The set ended. The bouncers wheeled jabbering voices. the women and the booze and the drugs." out the basket cases and booted the at- It's the year 1996, but it ain't the Lord's 58 OMNI "

no more. I've lusted after ihis all my life. years, but he's still got the habit. occupied with themselves to notice I'm Top crystal on the charts. The most pop- ."Always a delay," I say, striding away. outside peering in, amused at their stupid ular concert draw in the world. Playing the "They'll wait. They always do." outfits and behavior. biggest arena, here in Kansas City, He with puppy-dogs my tracks. "Jesus, I'm Then I get unamused fast. the world plugged in and knowing who I so worried I think my heart's going to fall There's this woman, well-dressed, dain- am. Jim Capp tearing their heads apart out, Jim." He licks Maalox off his lips. "You tily holding a glass of champagne and with his — slinging ax. don't know chatting brightly with a man in dark glasses.

Except it's the Kid they really want to I look away "He'll be okay." Spud elbows his way out, carrying a bot- - see. Well, right now I only want the money. "Just as long as he stands up and sings tle of Chivas Regal with him. Hell, anybody can understand that, right? a little. I already some got incredible pow- "Here you go, Jim. Sure wish I could have Power? Popularity? Ego trips? Sure. Half der going through this hall. Those kids are some of that." the kill world would to I think is be where am now gonna a burp and a fart Johann I point past him. "What the hell is that Yeah. Sebastian Bach." bitch doing here?"

. So I check my Gibson again, just to be "I need a drink." "Who?" sure. Neurosis. I won't let the roadies touch "There's plenty in the reception room." "Hardesty." My finger shakes. "Did you it. Nobody touches it but me. My souped- 'And get stuck answering the critics? 'Oh, invite her back here?" "1 up Stradivarius. I strap it on, open some Mr. did wait Capp. Why you so long,' " I . . — uhm— Capp . she's an important " electricity, and hammer out a power chord. mimic a typical question. 'Is Tom Eller- person." It rings and echoes through the audito- way the Lennon to your McCartney, Jim?' "She's the devil's asshole is what she is, rium, like the hammer of Thor. Blow it, Spud." Spud. I want no involvement with her." The crowd is suddenly still and quiet. "Hey, that's part of what you pay me for: "She owns half the industry. C'mon, be '' I let the resonance swirl, knowing the public relations. They're the people who a realist, Capp." sound man has damped me down. Cheers. talk to the fans." "You go and tell her to get the fuck out

I look up. All the technicians and roadies "And crap like that mouth review of 'Love ot here or I will. I've dealt with her before. are staring at me. I grin back and take out and Horror' last week in the Stone. white I'm still A taking four showers a day. I don't a cigarette. bread sandwich with a smear of caviar.' want to see her at the show." Spudzel Then comes toward me. "What Spud, I don't want to go in there and face "Yeah. Sure, Jim." the hell do you think you're doing?" the truth. So why don't you just go in there, I nod and turn down the hallway.

I blow some smoke in his face. 'Just sneak me out a bottle, I'll and go and put Above me buzzes power. I can almost teasing them." on my stuff." smell the lightning inside the kids. "Look. We might have to delay. And you're He shrugs wearily, working them up? We won't get out of here I wait outside the wall-to-wall couch while In my Vermont cabin. alive." He uncaps a bottle of Maalox and Spud hops over to the table stocked with, In winter. takes a sip. Spudzel hasn't had an ulcer in food drink. Folks and in there seem too I sat with Ellerway.

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Outside was snow. Inside was a wood been the main change in the last hundred and innocent in the flicker of the firelight.

I went and got a blanket for him and then fire, a bottle ol brandy. Albioni's "Adagio in and, fifty years? Technology. The sounds city. watched him sleep for a while, listening to G Minor" in the crystal deck, along with of the You see what I'm trying to say?" Handel and Vivaldi: a collection of ba- "I think so." the music of his breathing. roque. "Now, all this is damned imperfect. But

if In the beginning there is darkness. Staff paper lay all around us, with splotchy what would happen somebody could truly communicate the music in his head? The And darkness te upon the face ot the notes and G clefs and other stuff I hadn't auditorium, silence. used in years. emotions, the thought structures of being. and Flash looks the dark The last chords of the Adagio whispered The attachers are close, but it's too much And Kid the upon silence finds it away like your mother's last breath. like direct electrical stimulus. There's got and the and a bummer. After a long moment, Ellerway said, to be pain and ecstasy and grief and love And Kid the Flash says from the rafters the wires and the "Capp, I've been thinking." and anger. It's all there in rock, Capp. We and walls and through don't have the right instruments." air, "Let there be rock!" He liked it here in my piece ot the past, just there rock. my nest of comfort. Quite a change from "Suggestions?" And behold, is Lightning zigzags down to the stage, ex- his city life. "I think so. We've taken the raw human

it, tlashpots around Benny. Drum- A deep silence slid between us. Out- voice, amplified it, phased and Velvee- ploding flail. of train, of sex. flutter side, the wind and the snow embraced the taed it. But all trom outside. What if we sticks Chug beat Push of foot and cabin with sighs and creaks. The fire burned started from the inside? Electrochemical ot hummingbird wing. the notes bright and fierce with a gust of air squeez- music. Almost direct mind-to-mind contact nudge oi switch, and bass thrum ing through the flue. because of analogous processes." and pound the bottom of "Vampire Fire." "Tell me, Kid." "So what would this be? Sort of directly A spotlight hits me. flow I catch the line a and "What is music?" connecting yourself to the instruments?" bass on down string. power "Bread and butter. All that noise bought "Yes. Surgically. They've already been lick a long slide up my E The

hungrily at the end. I let it eat me this piece of quiet." using it here and there. Implants. Some chord waits "Why has rock survived?" up the crowd's ears as it booms and zooms about like a jet. I shrugged.

The Kid shook his head blearily and said I riff out the opening theme on chords, then in the repeater, which replays the softly, "I think the reason you play rock, cut

I a Frippish Capp, is because it's ringing through you power chords while squeeze / catch the bass just like blood." 4 screamer lead line.

" 1976." I strut a bit, the dance of the lover. My 'I Got the Music in Me.' Kiki Dee, line on a down flow and lick guitar waves out a spectrum of light after- Glibly.. a long slide He got up. "I'm going to bed." images, sparkler dazzles, and variegated

I from to side, "Hey, sorry to offend, Tom." „ up my E string. The power coruscations as move side in exact manner He wobbled. "We stumble around with waits hungrily at stroking the strings the synthesizer all kinds of wires coming out of us, and that will cut in the computer's the end. I let it eat up the where do we stick them? Up our asses." resonances. Layers of guitar unfold like crowd's ears audio flowers. suddenly growing in the He started radiating intensity. "Brain, I have a garden and zoom about like a jet:9 Capp. Nervous system. Pulse. Beat. air, sprouting from the dirt and fundament

Rhythm. Frequency. Zeitgeist." of Benny's rhythm section. I grin and stick "Zeitgeist?" up my green thumb at the crowd, then slash 'Uung. Spirit of the times. Collective un- through the foliage with an erratic, exquis- conscious, like that." itely timed scythe.

"Oh. Yeah." Japanese groups are experimenting with I nod to Benny. "Okay. Each one of us is a complicated it. It's going to spread. Question is, Does Benny has the muscles of a drummer really they're doing?" and shows them bare chested. Male dom- bastard. I mean, just when I decide I need anybody know what to take a piss, an electrochemical storm is "Are you crazy? No matter how much I ination made flesh and drums.

I switch on the fret of the Gibson, going on all through me. Chemicals from love my guitar, I still gotta put it down pull a glands, Irom vitamins, from all that junk that sometimes." disconnecting the false back, a painted we stick In our faces. It's all going on inside He shook his head adamantly "You can't cardboard model of the instrument. It sep- us all the' time. put down the music. It's part of you. This arates in smoke and thunder. the And the brain: a labyrinth of hallways. way, it just comes out better." I make an elaborate show of placing stage, upright And what's echoing down those hallways? I thought about the music Ellerway and thin pseudoguitar center on I'd supports. Electricity and chemical reactions, all I were making with Benny, the drummer pulsing to their particular beats. Inside we're brought in,-, and how this was maybe my Spears of lasers shoot out and twirl all rhythm and melody and dissonance and last chance to hit the bell and win the teddy through multicolored smoke. to the guitar. harmony and adagio and allegro. And our bear. I thought about the years of desper- Holo lines begin shimmer hearts and souls are rapping out the back- ation and irustration, the busted marriage Slowly it grows into human form, rock-and- beat, and we dance our lives toward death. and scarred friendships, the groveling and roll mutation, light radiating as if from some Madonna child. Each of us is music." the pride. I thought about the snickers be- Renaissance and

I in the air, taste the 'And some ot us can let it out?" hind my back. can feel the buzz attachers cut in the "Sure! But it's more than that. We're lonely "Okay, Ellerway. I got a guy who I think electricity as the on SOBs, Capp, and when music comes in- is going to be Kid the Flash's manager. He first verse: side us from others that somehow aligns can hook us up to the right people. We'll "In your furnace eyes I see the lust." with or changes or adds to our own music, think about it." Just a voice, cresting the wave of sound

amidst the roar. I use I like solitary surfer it's . . . it's like knowing that somebody is sat and thought some more for several a out there. You'rfi'not alone!" sips of brandy, and I added, "But there are the break to slide my compu-picker, 'And rock?" things Kid the Flash is going —to have to do, slip it on my right hand. I tap out the pro- "It adds the ingredients of electricity, Ellerway. Compromises. You gram code. power. Just like In our heads. We're all af- ,l looked down at him. "Staccato coals and synchromesfi fected by what goes on around us. What's He was curled up on the rug, face blank tongues 60 OMNI "

absorb Probe on molten wings, from Phoenix dust slowly building a choir of voices that crest dation upon which to build. Totally the then take them elsewhere. Through stainless-steel mouths to fleshy up majestically. I embrace the sound with audience, lungs." a few sustained whines wrested from my We play well. timing is clean perfect. Benny Deep, tortured, echoing breath. guitar. The crowd roars. Our and surprises. "Vampire Fire!" Ellerway bows his head with dramatic throws in a few

I from time to time. All sharp, With a deaiening explosion, the holo- sadness, and I slam a few Townshend do an improv all very professional. graphs cut in, engulfing Kid "the Flash in chords of defiance. Something, though, is wrong with Eller- illuminating fire. The song is finished. begins to lack the fingers fly over Ellerway looks up. He walks slo.wly over way. His performance I cut the picker and my emotional impact we'd begun with. The the frets to match the machine-gun notes. to me as the applause swells. He leans

doesn't seem to care. 1 do. I tiny, fresh audience The Kid is resplendent in his robes. He toward me to speak. can see

I Ellerway. looks good. stitches in his neck that have been care- I play like a demon. turn to while he sings. It makes He drops to his knees before the squirm- fully covered by makeup. Two drops of He stares at me ing audience, his voice winding in their blood well up on the sleek line of his throat. me feel creepy.

off. I slam and I pick and I bang. Just rote heads. We flow through "Vampire Fire" like I take my scarf and dab them stuff. Note for note equivalent to the snazz- a race car. He shakes back his hair. He stares at the The medmech has done a fast job on audience and waves. "Tonight's the night. rock we'd been putting on the crystals. break loose what Ell- him. New voice-augmenter circuit. New You think you can follow me?" I'm waiting to on power pack. Ellerway has a hard time get- "What are you talking about?" erway said was going to be his crest to-

I even goad htm with a searing run ting through airport metal detectors. He had He shrugs. His eyes have a faraway, night. that drowns him out before the mixmen can to work out a lot at tirst to realign his fleshly haunted look. musculature to compensate for his added "1 don't know anymore." pare it down. forming above Stalely, we bump out the last of "Twenty- weight. But he'd done it, and everything The opening rainbows are

lights dim. I put he'd ever said about electrochemical or- us for "Cry Like the Sky." Ellerway strides first-Century Shuffle." The from the begin- ganic music was true. His songs pierce slowly into a spotlight. He stands there, very my hand up to stop Benny of the next tune. "Hard as Rock." and heal, light up the insidesof your head thin and small against the monstrous ge- ning beats five-minute guitar solo when they're truly his and not glossed up. stalt beast of the crowd, the noise, the My baby. It's got a The records are just an echo. Live concert electricity, the power. I don't want to ruin.

In the darkness, I tug Ellerway behind is Kid the Flash's forte. Tom Ellerway, Kid the Flash, opens his leaks from their Ellerway stutters out the final words a shirt, parts the synthetic tlesh trom his ribs. the wall of amps. Pale light cappella; He plays the keyboard that's been sur- guts; spilling onto us like the luminescence "For when you draw out my love's breath gically embedded there, above his heart. of deep-sea creatures.

Leaning near Ellerway, I shout above the You suck not on life, but death. We play. of applause. Vampire fire, you consume yourself." The first part of the show has been pro- sound "Hey, Where's that charge you were The computers click in on the last word, grammed with familiar material. A foun- man!

talking about? I thought this was supposed to be your night."

. . it's "it'll be there, man. When . when ready." His eyes are corpselike, his face

chalky. I pull my hand away from his shoul-

der, which is sopping wet. Sweat? My fingers come away into the ghostly light greasy with blood and oil.

again. I "Jesus!" I look into his eyes knew

what they'd done. I storm back onto the stage, grab the mike, and say, "We're going to take fifteen, troops. Technical problem." floor. I slam the microphone to the The boom crashes through the auditorium like a big, fat period to my sentence. Benny is caught with drumsticks high in

the air, feet ready on the pedals of the downbeat machine.

'I grab Ellerway by the arm and lead him down the stage steps. Spud is waiting for us at the bottom. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Capp?" "That's the end of the concert, pal. You get Ellerway to a hospital and get him fixed up right. Then we'll talk about getting him back on stage." Ellerway sags against me in a drugged

glaze. "I can do it, Capp. 1 can do it, damn

it. And I will!" He looks at me. His eyes kind of flash for an instant, then go cold inside. there . "Listen to the Kid. Now you get back and do your job."

"I told you, you fucker." I grab him and

pull his ear real close to my mouth. I begin "He's unsurpassed in lampblack and yellow oxide but a to shout. "He's going to a hospital. Make bit out of his depth in red ocher. the arrangement and the apologies to all concerned. I'm not going to have him drop " "

I think will interest you." "Sky Suite 4, Watching the show," group that She smiles. "I think it needs more zip in tions. He is truly dedicated his art. I dead up there. I don't know why I ever let Capp, to have the capacity to play an entire orchestra of if back?" lighting. you'll him do those operations. Shit!" "You get the kid fixed up best you can. "And we do go the Now, it follow my direc- warned him. however, and will warn you instruments while doing his own conduct- mostly She shrugs Spudzel is as white as a dead worm in No drugs this time. I'll be back." "You'll be just mine," tions, Capp, we can have a real dazzler." that this is a very new technique. There ing. Tricks, Mr. Capp. In fact, I'm not sure

smiles. "So you see, either way. I really "You're a real sweetheart." I toward the exit. and difficulties. There is . may be that this a rain puddle. "You . . you can't cancel. stomp may be subse- system capable of the high-flown There's no provision in the contract." don't care. "I'm not as bad as you think, Capp." quent surgical realignments and biomech ideals thai Tom seems to have for his mu- give bruiser "You want us to go out there and a "No," I say, "you're probably worse." adjustments from "What? There's gotta be. The Kid is sick!" A curly-haired shows me some time to lime. As the state sic. I am merely, a biolechnical surgeon." Ellerway Spudzel is looking away, shivering. teeth in a snarl and moves me inside. lousy performance -maybe have of the art improves, no doubt we will re- "He intends to be the best rocker ever,

little room, with its above fall flat on his face." I sat in the doctor's office, the "Spud. What's going on here?" I let go The window on my can place system. Above all, regular doctor. Something wrong with that?"

dramatic. But I don't think of Ellerway and get a good grip on our and facing the seething crowd, is done up "That would be paging through old copies of Reader's Di- checkups will be necessary. Arid a quali- "Does he? Well, he will certainly be

it will is calm and cold, ra- manager. "What have you done. Spud?" elaborately with velvet curtains, plush fur- happen." She gest, waiting for Ellerway's preliminary fied biomech maintenance doctor or intern something to see and hear with all the diating confidence with every bit oi floss before He won't look at me. niture, and a smooth rug. A shiny silver tea exam the infitting could begin. will certainly have to be in attendance embeddings we're talking about. But will high-backed, that coats her blond stack of hair. Her heart Dr. It all comes to me. service sits by the side of a Rashone came out, his smock clean whenever Tom chooses to use the instru- the audience truly be able to appreciate all crystal. leather swivel chair. is all vinyl: her soul, Of course and white, wafting with him the alcohol ments, it in the studio or concert." I punch Spud hard in the face. padded be at a what he's doing? Or will he merely be a He goes down blubbering and bleed- "Hello, Capp." she has other interests these days. Finan- smells of surgery that gave my spine the "Delicate stuff, huh?" squawking freak to them, a pleasure ma- on cial ventures that far dwarf music, But mu- creepy-crawlies. ing, but still conscious. "So, Hardesty. You've got your hands "The instruments? No. I think that for all chine? The key word there, Mr. Capp, is after all." sic is where she got her start, and it's where His delivery well his health. Ellerway "I ought to kick your balls into your throat. me was as pressed as the Tom is quite a bit more machine. I would not wish Tom, or any- — dallies delighting in owning us She is still beautiful. Her beauty knocks she most, cuffs of his no-stat trousers riding fashion- delicate, actually." Frankly, if you fuckin' body, that. he were my son. I

bit of the hate from me. "No! so much all. She and I had our brushes in the old ably above giossboots. "You're Mr. his reaction "I ... I had to, Capp," he moans. "You a Capp?" "What was to that?" would not allow it. This is why I ask for pa- days. The first had been in a hotel room were in such a goddamned hurry. She was you, Capp, as your group." "You're Rashone, right?" I took his cold "He seems quite confident ot his ability rental permission."

after gig. I didn't remember, but she re- the only game going that could do what "All the way from groupie to group god- a hand and pumped it. I gave him my Cali- to hold the mechanisms and adapt to them. "What was Tom's reaction?" minded me of it later, when she was on top. fornia it. eh?" smile. relaxed. very I you wanted done. I swear Jesus, leave dess, We He sat down. He's eager to try them out. Rather like was getting antsy. We were building it I good, me alone." "The amenities are not necessary. trust "You don't want to be too do "Usually, with Mr. Ellerway's age, it's a kid with a bunch of new toys." He our whole act, our whole publicity push, not style." kill "That's not the whole you will soon be returning to the stage, with you? That's your necessary to get parental approval for this scratched at his straight, sharp nose around I want to him. and this operation. cram in few "Pardon?" it, to you, Mr. Ellerway. We've had to a kind of thing," he said. sighed. "Frankly, I story, is man? What happened though. Mr Capp. ad- The doctor smiled gently. "He told me I videos the satellite network and they're "That's why you sicced that little AC/DC "Then Tom's okay? He can with vised him against all Spud? What the hell's happened to you in on go ahead of this." was an old goon. I should stick the advice

I were I sighing. 'And you these years?" going to run out in—" she examined a ring on Tom." say. bet the implants?" "You what? up my ass and the electronic stuff inside — with his girl leaving, He looks at me. All his hardness is back watch "twelve minutes." even behind the scene "He's healthy. His system will allow the "In our preliminary talk last week, Tom him. He'd lake care of the rest." of this own?" How'd you manage that. Cynthia?" antirejection treatment. know, I'm played in his eyes, "Same thing as happened to "How much do you As you some tapes for me of what he's been I nodded. "Sounds like Ellerway." her cool if "All." "You're paranoid. Capp." But the only mechosurgeon presently qualified you, chum. And I tell you. you and the composing. I'm impressed." "So I thought that you might like to per-

exterior cracked, and I know I'm right. Kid don't get back on the stage quick, she's 'And if we don't go back?" has for this sort of extensive electronic en- "Do you think he won't be able to do his suade him not to. He speaks highly ot you." of Kid the "It's not enough to play with bucks, is it, going to have your butt 'or breakfast.'' "That, Capp. will be the end hancement." best with his new—uhm—apparatus? "Me? Hey, it's not for me to try and run dear heart? You've got to have souls to Suddenly there is defiance in the little man. Flash as an independent entity. You will be "You're the only one who will do it for a "It will neither harm nor increase his ac- his life."

'all which would quite please bounce about as well. So tell me, are you potential rock star, you I Capp, mean." I'm sorry that had hit him. mine, tual musical abilities. It will merely increase "Ah. I see." "Where is she?" ma, IVe a few ideas of my own about the enjoying the show?" "I am intrigued by Tom's desires and no- his range. It's like giving a gifted violin player

DISCOVER A DIFFERENT WORLD... AROUND EVERT BE

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AMERICA BORDERS ON THE MAGNIFICENT \

March to a different drummer in old Montreal. That afternoon see the miracle of autumn in the r Laurentian Mountains, For a warm autumn welcome, come on up. The bold debunker whose split- brain research galvanized neurophysiology now plans to topple the last great pillar of conventional science irUTERV/IEUU

Science was wrong Its interpretations of man and the bunker. As one former colleague notes, Sperry is "constitutionally world were demeaning and dehumanizing," declares able to be interested only in critical issues." pioneering brain researcher Roger Sperry. 'All physical Even as a graduate student at Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio, reality, including the human psyche, was reduced to quantum Sperry challenged his dislinguished mentor Paul Weiss, who pro- mechanics. The richness, color, and beauty were all lost in math- pounded the view that neural connections were determined by ematical concepts." At sixty-nine, the man who shared the 1981 experience rather than genetic mechanisms. To test his theory, Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology tor his famous split-brain the young scientist designed an intriguing experiment that in- studies has turned his to attention battling the materialist legacy volved rotating the eyes of a salamander by 180 degrees. If Weiss's of twentieth-century science. This latest assault on orthodoxy theory that "function precedes form" were correct, the salaman- comes as no surprise, because Sperry, though shy and reserved der would eventually adjust to seeing the world upside down and by nature, has never been afraid to challenge accepted doctrine. alter its behavior accordingly. But the poor salamander never In his 40-year quest to understand the nature of human con- learned to compensate for its distorted vision. Even after hundreds sciousness, -he has overturned more than one cherished belief. of training trials, it continued to dart in the opposite direction of Bearded, bullet with eyes capped by gracefully arched brows, any lure placed in its tank. Moreover, when Sperry severed the Sperry may have been destined to play the part of scientific de- nerve pathways to the eye, the tangled fibers somehow sorted PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER SPRINGMANN .

themselves out, only to reestablish the same ever, altered the picture drastically. For ex- distinction has entered the mainstream of "upside-down" connections as before. ample, a split-brain individual might cate- public knowledge. In his Nobel lecture, he Neural networks, Sperry concluded, or- gorically deny the existence of an object noted that split-brain studies have led to a ganize themselves independently of the placed out of view in his left hand (sensory better appreciation of nonverbal forms of function they ultimately come to perform. information is transmitted from the left hand intelligence and increased understanding

Even today, his landmark study is touted to the right half of the brain), But if that of "the inherent individuality in the struc- by those who believe that basic behavioral same subject is given a nonverbal mode ture of human intellect." He also feels his patterns of humans and other organisms of identifying the object, such as feeling research has helped to underscore the are heavily influenced by genetic factors. with his left hand for its match in a collec- need for educational tests and policies "to The way that growing nerve libers are tion of items, he will invariably make the selectively identify, accommodate, and guided to predetermined connections correct choice despite frequent protesta- serve the differentially specialized forms preoccupied Sperry for the next decade, tions that he is merely guessing. of individual intellectual potentials." eventually leading him to postulate that Clearly the right brain was neither dumb Still he can't help being amused by the brain cells use "a kind of probing chemi- nor devoid of consciousness, as early au- cult following that the theory attracted in Seventies, especially philoso- cal-touch system." His theory—that the thorities had insisted. It just lacked the the among nervous system arranges itself according words to inform investigators of its hidden phers, psychologists, and pedagogues, to a chemical code roughly analogous to talents. As Sperry disciple Michael Gaz- Sperry realizes that it's easy to become the color code that governs the wiring of zaniga recalls, "No one was prepared for intoxicated by the implications of the bi- mind. treated the subject with circuits in a telephone receiver—is now the riveting experience of observing a split- cameral He considered a keystone of developmental brain patient generating integrated activi- characteristic dry wit when he accepted neurobiology. But in the intellectual climate ties with the mute right hemisphere that the the 1979 Ralph Gerard Prize of the Society of the early Forties, Sperry's concept of a language-dominant left hemisphere was for Neuroscience: "The great pleasure ancf "hard-wired" brain met strong resistance. unable to describe or comprehend." feeling in my right brain is more than my One major opponent of this viewpoint was Interestingly, the left hemisphere often left brain can find the words to tell you." the eminent neurophysiologist Karl Lash- The achievements of Sperry's left brain ley, whom Sperry worked under at the earned him numerous other awards and Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology, then honors before the Nobel Prize, including located in Florida. Lashley's arguments the 1979 Albert Lasker Award, the highest against the specificity of nerve connec- distinction in American medicine. But as a tions stemmed in pari from reports about QAs evolution sculptor and self-described dabbler in ar- a rare group of patients who had under- progresses, combining the tistic pursuits, including folk dancing, ce- gone radical brain surgery to stop intract- ramics, and figure drawing, he hasn't ne- atomic building able epilepsy. These people were oper- glected development of his right brain, ated on to sever the corpus callosum, the blocks into ever-newer, more either. As a child growing up in rural Con- main nerve cable that connects the cere- complex compounds, necticut, he also acquired a passion for bral hemispheres, wildlife that has persisted to this day. Out- "At that time the corpus callosum was an new properties emerge. In the door activities—camping, fishing, fossil hunting now dominate what leisure time enigma," recalls Sperry. "You could cut it brain, too, you — completely hundred million nerve fi- he can find in his busy schedule. —two hierarchies^ have these nested intensely private man who prefers the bers—and it didn't seem to cause any An functional deficit that people noticed. This solace of nature to life in the limelight, Sperry fit in with a commonly held notion that the conveniently vanished from sight at the time brain is characterized by wholesale plas- of the Nobel announcement. While his ticity and comes out functioning fine no Pasadena office struggled to handle the matter how you cut or scramble its nerves." proved all too willing to comment on mat- deluge of calls and telegrams that poured all A decade of animal studies soon dis- ters it knew nothing about. During one rou- in from well-wishers over the world, he pelled many false ideas about the corpus tine test of a female patient's ability to make and his wife snorkeled along the beaches callosum, including Lashley's assertion that visual discriminations, Sperry replaced a of Baja California, returning only after the subsided. it was little more than a mechanical prop slide of a household object with one show- hoopla had to stop the hemispheres from sagging. ing a nude woman. Using a special ap- When not retreating to the wilderness,

Once this connection was broken, it was paratus, called a tachistoscope, he was Sperry spends most of his quiet moments of his as if two minds resided in the one brain. able to project the picture only to her right exploring the broader ramifications Each half of the cerebrum was capable of hemisphere. The arresting stimulus trig- revised view of consciousness, applying learning, remembering, and feeling gered a sudden change of expression, and his knowledge of individual awareness to thoughts completely unknown to the other. her face reddened as she laughed ner- global phenomena. He is, in effect, super- To Sperry, the conclusion was inescap- vously. "What's so funny?" Sperry asked. imposing the bicameral mind on the col- able: The neural isthmus must be vital for Forced to rationalize an embarrassed re- lective consciousness of society, attempt- an integrated sense of awareness. sponse to something it had not seen, her ing to reconcile two schools of thought: the

Still greater revelations followed. In 1953 left hemisphere replied, "I don't know . . reductionist view of the scientific materi- Sperry was appointed Hixon Professor of nothing ... oh, that funny machine!" alist, who adopts the left brain's strategy Psychobiology, at the California institute of From this experiment and hundreds more of chopping up reality into fragments; and

Technology, a post he has held for the last like it, Sperry and his colleagues gained the humanistic view of the philosopher, who 30 years. Shortly thereafter he launched a powerful insights into the dual nature of favors the right brain's holistic perspective, series of now-classic studies of split-brain human consciousness. Today it is widely which incorporates emotions, ethics, and individuals— patients whose corpora cal- recognized that the left hemisphere is pri- other complex values. losa had been severed surgically. At first marily verbal, logical, and sequential. The Just as the left hemisphere was once the test results appeared to support the right side is. viewed as more intuitive and thought to dominate human conscious- popular contention that the right hemi- emotional, specializing in visual-spatial ness, Sperry feels that its cultural coun- sphere was "mentally retarded" in com-* problem solving and other situations in terpart— reductionism— has been given too parison to the left hemisphere, which had which a single impression or mental image much weight in society. Still the zealous long been recognized as the seat of lin- is worth a thousand words. debunker of his youth, he is quietly chip- guistic abilities. Careful examination, how- Fof the most part, Sperry is glad that this ping away at this last great pillar of modern 70 OMNI — '

science. And when it finally topples, he in- tends to lay the foundations for a much more integrated world view of science one that encompasses the concerns of the humanist and the reductionist under one intellectual umbrella. In his recently pub- lished book, Science and Moral Priority, Sperry explains how these revisions could Tl le Crown Jewel ofEngland qualify science lor a higher role in society as a partner with religion in the quest for an ultimate ethical and moral frame of ref- erence. Changes in our social priorities, he

believes, are a prime requisite for civili- zation's survival. Sperry talked about his views with sci- ence writer Yvonne Baskin in his office in Caltech's Norman Church Laboratory.

Omni: Aren't ethics and moral values pretty far afield for a brain scientist? Sperry: In some ways, but actually they're

a natural follow-up to something I came upon in the mid-Sixties— a modified con- cept of the mind-brain relation. It's com- mon practice in science to follow up on the most promising leads opened by any new discovery, and these human-value impli- cations seemed to be far and away the most important. Omni; Granted, human values are impor- tant, but don't they take you way outside the bounds of science? Sperry: Well, my scientific colleagues sometimes think lha! I've gone off the deep

end or something, but I don't look at it that

way. I view it more as a shift to a new sci- entific area that's now developing. You see, according lo our new views of conscious- ness, ethical and moral values become a very legitimate part of brain science. They're no longer conceived to be reducible to brain physiology. Instead, we now see that sub- jective values themselves exert powerful causal influence in brain function and be- havior. They're universal determinants In all human decision making, and. they're actually the most powerful causal control forces now shaping world events. No other causal system with which science now concerns itself—earthquakes, chemical reactions, magnetic fields, you name it— is of more critical importance in determin- ing our future. Omni: Your research defined with new clarity the different but complementary roles of the right and left sides of the brain. A lot of follow-up work remains to be done on the way the two hemispheres interact and how the dominance of the right or left hem- isphere of the brain in an individual cor- relates with sex, musical or mathematical ability, creativity, occupational prefer- ences, right- or left-handedness, and soon. Doesn't this work interest you anymore?

Sperry; Yes, of course, it's all interesting and important science. But you always have to ask, "What difference does it make?" Or

better, "What difference is it going to make ten years from now?" You look around at all the looming threats of global disaster fflBBffl and the declining quality of life, and won- der. "What difference will it make if we sue- world, farther neuroscience advanced, the more ceed in improving educational policies a liefs about the nature of man and the matter, ot sci- convincing their arguments seemed. It ap- little, or neurologic diagnoses, or our un- about the relation of mind to complete account of brain derstanding 01 right-left differences, or de- ence t'o values, about free will and moral peared that a function and, for that matter, all of nature tails of hemispheric interaction?" responsibility. Even beliefs about science material physi- Then, by contrast, think what even a very are changed, its scope and limitations, its could be given in purely terms without any need to re- slight shift of values would do in the deli- world view, concepts of causation, and the cochemical conscious, mental, or vital forces of cate balance of opposing positions in the relation of science to the humanities. fer to claimed it abso- abortion controversy, for example, or in Everything's transformed. We come out with any kind. Science had since con- various environmental matters, or other a whole new outlook, new beliefs abput all lutely no use for consciousness couldn't anything in the brain global issues. We're talking here about that we group together as reality. sciousness do There was no hundreds of thousands of lives, pro or con, Omni: Aren't people worried at the thought and didn't change anything.

it causal explanation. The about the kind of world we and our grand- of changing human values through sci- need for in a progress of brain science toward an ulti- children will live in — if they live at all—and ence and technology? description of be- the .kind of laws we're governed by. When Sperry: It's not a matter of altering values mate physicochemical leave less less for you see your science having direct and directly or experimentally. It's more a mat- havior seemed to and anything like human dignity, moral choice, compelling implications in these areas, it's ter of bringing scientific knowledge to bear and such things that hard to turn away and go back to more where values are already in conflict. We're meaning, purpose, in hand with values. That's laboratory experiments, especially when still in the early phase of this. It wasn't too go hand human

I meant when I said science was de- you see in this new path the one humane many years ago that values were generally what dehumanizing. means for getting us out of our current considered to be oft limits to science. meaning and to cause the shift global straits. Omni: Let's start at the beginning. What Omni: What happened of in psychology away from these estab- Omni: But doesn't science in its traditional was this change in the concepts con- lished behaviorist views? role provide hope for concrete technical sciousness and mind-brain relation that first the time right. Many solutions to many of today's problems? prompted you to endorse the merging of Sperry: In part, was Sperry: Technological answers by them- things came together that collectively out- the old arguments in favor of the selves, in the absence of population con- weighed Earlier views had been floating around trols, just put us deeper and deeper in a new. current revised con- self-feeding, vicious spiral of mounting that came close to the humanistic in population, pollution, energy and resource cepts: gestalt and views side phenomenology, demands, and so on. iSince each psychology, concepts of systems theory, tacit knowing, emerg- Omni: The best way to break this spiral is of the surgically divided brain ence, holism, and so on. The question is. to change man's sense of values —to evolve is able to all of this from a new global ethic or theology? What happened to change scattered philos- Sperry: That's the most humane way. A nu- sustain its own conscious the status of occasional ophy and minority science to its present clear holocaust, global famine, or some volitional system, status as the dominant doctrine? other worldwide catastrophe would do it, don't arises, I it largely a matter of dem- of course; so would just letting things con- the question Why think was onstrating a logical flaw in our seemingly tinue as they are. But the most painless we perceive visible airtight reasoning, finding a new, different and reasonable solution presently ourselves as two persons?^ of logic that fit more widely and combined is to change the kinds of values and beliefs earlier threads into a new formula for mind- we live and govern by. Others agree with brain interaction. Mostly, perhaps, it was this. Lester Brown, of the Worldwatch In- introduction of some new ideas about stitute, comes to the same conclusion in the applied to the chain of com- his latest book, Building a Sustainable So- causation brain When you talk ciety. The National Council of Churches science and ethical and social values? mand in dynamics. causes and causa! control, science sponsored a meeting three years ago at Sperry: It was the change involved in the about which representatives from different faiths so-called consciousness, or mentalist, invariably listens! was that the higher affirmed that what the world needs today revolution in psychology that took place The key realization in the levels in brain activity control the lower. The is a new religion, a new theology that will during the Seventies, a turnabout of mind and promote the values of conservation, re- treatment of consciousness. Behaviorist higher cerebral properties in command. They en- newable energy, and respect for the land. principles, which had dominated for over consciousness are Psychol- velop, carry, and overwhelm the physico- Think what would happen if the values half a century, were overturned. details. call the plays, ex- of conservation, population control, and so ogy suddenly began to treat subjective chemical They erting control over the march of on were to be lifted above the level of just events— mental images, inner thoughts, downward traffic. new model, wisdom and expediency to become mat- sensations, feelings, ideas., and so on— as nerve-impulse Our and mental ters of deep religious conviction. Imagine factors having,. a genuine causal role in brain mentalism, puts the mind contents of in- properties to work and gives them a rea- if people worldwide believed it to be im- function and behavior. The for having evolved in a . moral, even sacrilegious, to pollute, over- trospection, the whole world of inner ex- son for being and physical system. II also shows how it's populate, or in any other way degrade the perience, suddenly became accepted as out of mat- quality of the biosphere for future gener- elements that could influence physical and possible for mind fo be created ter in fetal growth. ations. This is where our changed views of chemical events in the brain, they were no mentalism? brain and consciousness seem to lead. longer treated as passive, noncausal as- Omni: How do you define Mentalism is contrasted in psy- Omni: But proposing new values is quite pects or even as nonexistent ones. Sperry: behaviorism materialism. different from just scientifically studying al- Omni: What you're saying is that neuro- chology to and It's a doctrine holding that mental events, ready existent values scientists previously found it difficult to see in the mind, Sperry: True, but the two are not separate. how the sequence of brain events could as consciously experienced behavior. The men- The increased understanding of the origins ever be influenced by anything other than determine and explain conceived in non- of our value systems enables us to choose strictly material, physical, and chemical tal qualities used to be now our moral positions more wisely. agents. Scientists believed that any step physical, supernatural terms, but we view them as the emergent properties of But this is only part of it. The main point in the process must have physical cause. is that our recently changed views in mind- Sperry: Exactly. That was the view ac- brain processes. emergent properties? brain science radically alter traditional be- cepted by psychologists as well, and the Omni: What are 72 OMNI Sperry: Emergent is the same as holistic, and response to, objects and other inputs conflict with the basic models. Science has the Greek word for "whole." The properties requires that emergent consciousness have had to renounce them— to deny their exis- of the whole are contrasted to those of its a causal impact on brain activity. The nor- tence or to say that they're beyond the do- parts; the concept encompasses the old mal bilateral consciousness can be viewed main of science. maxim that "the whole is greater than, and as a higher emergent entity that's more than For most of us, of course, all three are different from, the sum of the parts." As just the sum of its right and left awareness among the most important things in life. evolution progresses, combining the atomic and supersedes this as a directive force in When science proceeds to deny their im- building blocks into ever-newer and more our thoughts and actions. portance, even their existence, or to say complex compounds and then com- Omni: So the two hemispheres normally that they're beyond its domain, one has to pounding the compounds, new properties function together as an integrated whole, wonder about science. emerge at each step. So you start with the and the mind as a bilateral unit then arbi- Omni: Did science deny free will and call subatomic physical properties and work trates and integrates the activities within it just an illusion? upward through chemistry, biology, psy- each hemisphere, making decisions that Sperry: In principle, brain science always chology, sociology. In the brain, too, you are carried out as physical or chemical assumed it could show just what physical have these nested hierarchies from sub- events in either or both sides? and chemical events in the brain led you atomic levels upward, with emergent prop- Sperry: That's the idea, yes. Putting all this to make every single decision you made. erties at each level and conscious prop- together with some notions about emerg- Psychiatry and all the behavioral sciences all I our erties at the top. ence and causation, found I could see a are based on this principle, that be- Omni: How does your shift to this mentalist way around the old behaviorist logic and haviors, even the slightest mannerisms and view fit in with the split-brain studies? the mind-brain paradox, a way to finally nervous twitches, are caused, and if one into the past, into Sperry: It was a matter of explaining the affirm the causal usefulness of conscious- probes deeply enough effects of split-brain surgery on conscious ness without violating scientific principles. the subconscious, or into brain physiology, experience. We found that each discon- Omni: The mind-brain paradox? one can find the causes and thereby ex- nected hemisphere was capable of sus- Sperry: The puzzling contradiction tradi- plain and predict behavior. taining its own conscious awareness, each Omni: Do you think there is any real proof largely oblivious of experiences of the other. of this determinism? The separated hemispheres were able to Sperry: Proof seemed evident in experi- carry on independently at a fairly high level. ments with posthypnotic suggestion in They could even perform mutually contra- which a person would think he'd done Consciousness, dictory tasks at the same time, and each 6 something special of his own free will, but was able to exert its own volitional control free will, and values: three witnesses knew he or she had been in-

structed to do it under hypnosis and then and select its own differential preferences. long-standing For example, in a blindfold test for tac- told to forget having been hypnotized. tual sorting, both hands might search to- thorns in the hide of science. Omni: But you believe our actions can be considered free despite this kind of causal gether through a scrambled pile of differ- They are in direct ent-shaped beads. One hand would sort control. How can you say this? conflict models. out spheres into an upper tray and cylin- with the basic Sperry: We have to recognize different de- ders into a lower, while the other hand would Science has grees of freedom and also different types do just the reverse. In the process each and levels of causation, including higher had to deny their existence.^ hemisphere would consciously and vol- kinds of causal control involving mental and untarily make decisions opposite to those vital forces that materialist science has al- going on in the partner hemisphere. And ways rejected. Remember that the revised neither disconnected hemisphere would mind-brain model makes conscious men- seem to know what the other was doing. tal events causal. It follows that the causal The vocal left hemisphere could report that tionally posed by subjective versus objec- antecedents of any consciously willed act it had no clue about the experience in the tive views. On one hand, introspection gives are not just physiological but also mental. right hemisphere. Left and right domains the impression that consciousness is very It's no longer a matter of the laws govern- of conscious awareness and volition seem important in determining our thinking and ing nerve-impulse traffic or inexorable deal to be almost as separate as if they were in what we do. On the other hand, objective physicochemical mechanisms. We two different heads. science tells us that consciousness has instead with a sequence of conscious or Since each side of the surgically divided absolutely no role in controlling brain ac- subconscious processes that have their brain is able to sustain its own conscious tivity or human behavior. Each view seems own higher laws and dynamics. volitional system in this manner, the ques- strong in its own right and irreconcilable- The higher-order mental processes move tion arises, Why, in the normal state, don't with ihe other. their neuronal details in much the way a we perceive of ourselves as a pair of sep- Omni: What about free will, the idea that rolling wheel carries along its molecules, arate left and right persons instead of the we seem to have the power to do whatever or the way different program images on a single, apparently unified mind and self that we choose at any instant, regardless of any TV receiver determine the pattern of elec- we all feel we are? laws of brain function? tron flow on the screen. Only, unlike a TV, Omni: And the answer required a changed Sperry: This is opposed, of course, to the not only does the brain "receive" or "play," view of consciousness? old reductionist scientific view that we are but it generates, creating its own mental

Sperry: Not directly. I had earlier proposed causally controlled and have to do every- internal programs. that conscious meaning emerges be- thing exactly as we do it—that we could Omni: Are you reversing the usual scien- cause brain processes adjust to interact not have behaved other than we did at any tific interpretation, saying neural events with perceived objects rather than copy time, This was one of the so-called Big don't determine mental events? them. For example, when we look at a Three, another of the great unresolved par- Sperry: Not at all. It's always a reciprocal house, the brain doesn't so much copy the adoxes of science. relation, with mutual interaction. But be- house as it prepares for a functionally Omni: What are the Big Three? cause of the long history of reductionist adaptive resp'onse with respect to the. Sperry: Consciousness, free will, and val- bias in science, we need to actively em- house— the approach, location, form, ues: three long-standing thorns in'the hide phasize the kind of causal control exerted memories, associations, and soon... of science. Materialist science couldn't cope by the higher over the lower.

In wrestling with the split-brain problem, with any of them, even in principle. It's not Omni: So our actions are still caused and are in the I realized that this kind of interaction with, just that they're difficult. They're in direct directed, but the causes mental 74 OMNI —

form ot percepts, insighls, memories, ideas, Omni: You say these principles are gen- reasons, and logic? eral, that they extend beyond mind-brain Sperry: Yes, and also feelings, wants, questions and apply to all the sciences? needs, wishes, and values. We mustn't for- Sperry: Yes. For example, in biology I've get the right brain. Remember also that the illustrated this recently in reference to the mind can quickly scan not only the past old, discarded notion of vitalism, the idea but also the projected future conse- that life and living systems are character- quences of a choice. Its dynamics tran- ized by special vital forces over and above scend the time and space of brain physi- those of physics and chemistry. ology. When you put it all together on these When the early biologists started hunt- revised terms, we come out doing what we ing for these special living, or vital, prop- please, what we decide we want to do. And erties, they of course failed to find any- this resolves the paradox. thing. The longer, harder, and deeper they 5H Omni: But actions are still caused, not free? looked, the more convincing it appeared Sperry: They're free to an extent. We're no that there were no such things. So it was LEATHER concluded that all living things are longer subject to, or in the grip of, the laws nothing r of physics and chemistry, as inanimate ob- but physicochemical processes in differ- jects are. Nor do we have to obey the laws ent forms and degrees ot complexity. The HIPP of physiology, as do our autonomic and idea of vitalism had already become a reflex responses, our hormones, and our subject ol scorn and derision among nearly heartbeat. In general we are free of the all biologists by the Thirties and remains kind of mechanistic materialist forces with so to this day. which science used to saddle us. We are Omni: Would you revive vitalism? lifted above these into a higher realm with Sperry: In a modiiied form, yes, although a different kind of control — a control un- my colleagues shudder at this because of equaled in freedom anywhere else in the the mystic connotations of the word. A new known universe. If you think about it, you word would be belter, but in this case I'm wouldn't really want total freedom from all not sure that we should revise fhe lan- causation. It would be chaos. We all want guage just because a good word has mis- to retain some causal control of our own takenly been given bad associations. We over what we do. We just don't want other biologists had merely been searching in things to be controlling us. the wrong places. You don't look for vital Omni: I've seen occasional statements that forces among atoms and molecules. You equate your views with animism or dual-' look among living things— among cells and ism, Is this a misinterpretation? animals responding to one another, repro-

Sperry: Yes. I wholly reject anything su- ducing, breathing, eating, running, flying, pernatural, mystical, or occult in favor of swimming, building nests, and so on. the kind ot reality validated by science The special vital forces that distinguish with the proviso, of course, that the kind of living things from nonliving things are reality upheld by materialist science for emergent, holistic properties, not proper- more than a century has to be revised. ties of their physicochemical components. Mentalism is strictly a one-world, this-world Nor can they be fully explained in mech- answer. I don't see any way lor conscious- anistic terms. This doesn't mean they're in ness to emerge or be generated apart from any way supernatural or mystical. Those a functioning brain. Everything indicates "who conceived of vital forces in superna- that the human mind and consciousness tural terms were just as wrong as those are inseparable attributes of an evolving, who denied the existence of such forces. self-creating cerebral system. Inany living or nonliving thing, the spacing Some people have used the new men- and timing of the material elements ot which talist concepts to bolster mystical and su- it is composed make all the difference in pernatural beliefs, including those of para- determining what a thing is. psychology. Actually, under the new model, Omni: Can you give an illustration? mental telepathy, psychokinesis, precog- Sperry: As a very simple example, take a nition, and the other so-called psi phe- population of molecules, say copper. You nomena become even less likely than they canshape this into a sphere, a pyramid, a were before. long wire, a statue, whatever. All these very

Omni: In fhe past it has been a choice: the difterent things still reduce to the same materialist descriptions of natural science material elements, the same identical pop- on the one hand or various mystical or su- ulation of copper molecules. Science has pernatural schemes of religion and philos- specific laws for the molecules but no such ophy on the other. If the new stance in sci- laws for all the differential spacing and tim- ence rejects both these traditional choices, ing factors, the nonmaierial pattern or form where does it take us? factors that are crucial in determining what

Sperry: Well, it's just a different, middle-of- things are and what laws they obey. These the-road alternative, a changed scientific nonmaterial space-time components tend interpretation. Among other things, it in- to be thrown Out and lost in the reduction CELESTHON INTERNATIONAL cludes mental and vital forces that science process as science aims toward ever more P.O. Box 357S-0M. 2835 Columbia has traditionally renounced. Not only does elementary levels of explanation. Torrance, CA 90503 it include mind, the historic antithesis of Modern molecular biology is quite will- matter, but it also puts mind over matter in ing to accept the power of chemical or mo- the hierarchy of causal controls. It offers a lecular forces, but when the entities in different right-brain picture of reality. question are no longer molecules but liv- CCNTINUED0NPA3E9e UNEASY PASSIONS

PAINTINGS BY GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN

Master of the grotesque, this shock artist has convulsed European society with his portraits of emotional violence TEXT BY DOUGLAS STEIN

''*"' .... •/ believe in the individual, not in rules or theories, not in psychologists or scientists. People find freedom only within themselves^

Viennese painter Gottfried Helnwein practices the grotesque as an act of self- expression. In 1979 he painted a portrait of a dead child slumped over a plate of food. It was printed in a magazine accompanied by an open letter addressed to an eminent Viennese psychiatrist who, says Helnwein, "makes decisions about who is normal and who isn't." The psychiatrist was once an SS leader in of charge drug "experiments" at a children's camp in World War II, As a provocative test, Helnwein himself has walked the city streets with his head bandaged and table forks pulling his mouth into a hideous grimace. Recalling the "mistakes of the past," Helnwein disdains all "big group influences, whether political, artistic, or scientific," His work is a "cry for freedom: The individual must think and feel on his own." Nevertheless, Helnwein is fascinated by two extremes of social organization: the military and the circus. Whereas the mili- tary suppresses individual emotions, the circus affirms the passions and dis- ^People always laugh and smile. — prefer to cry. It Is not real joy, real love they would much TV Is the most artificial of~all$

torted beauty of "the strange and freaky. Choosing to be grotesque is an act of freedom," he maintains, citing Salvador Dali as a genius of the grotesque. Society licks the kneecaps of Dali. he observes, "rather than locking him away Dali's ability in a hospital, as they would most people." Helnwein, who admires to warp social rales, emphasizes that role playing "may be essential for sur- vival." Art and life are inseparable from theater, says this child of the vehemently antiestablishment street theater of the Sixties. Corralling his models from the streets, he distorts faces to conform to his inner visions. "1 make my models older or younger, more beautiful, more ugly." His portraits reveal characters convulsed by powerful feelings. The uneasy, spastic potency of their emotions leaves us unsure whether they are laughing or crying, in pain or ecstasy What- ever the interpretation, one cannot fail to notice that Helnwein delivers a pow- erful Heimlich maneuver to the solar plexus ot our times. DO " '

nance, no echoes; nothing. the grave for size. are here already, coming through The silence is deafening. It calches the Worms WIRED audience by surprise. The lights die to black your ears, your eyes." rises from the misty CONTINUED FROM PI except for those drumsticks, which glow. A large television set band. Holo- With slow implosion of sound from Ben- floor, holding a picture of the "Yeah, well, you know, I'm just a god- a of fog that machines, like a giant sucking in gravestones rise from the pond damned rock guitarist." ny's breath, the drumsticks begin to grow into bathes our feet. "Yes." He stood up. "Still, it will be nec- of spare gui- amorphous blobs with soft, red light glow- Then the Kid takes one my essary to obtain parental permission. I un- Slowly the shapes take form. tars in his hands. This isn't in the act. derstand he has a mother. His father he ing from within. the last chord, which warbles Jim I crash out doesn't know about." Kid the Flash. Capp. tooth communicator, with and slowly decays into silence. "You'll get I touch the "I know his mother," I said. Ellerway above the And then Ellerway cries, "Shit on this!" which I can speak to your permission, doctor." I stood to leave. began racket around us. with all the power of the scream that "You'll get your goddamned permission." "Ready, chum?" the song. He bashes my Stratocaster into the "I never the TV screen. With a smash of sparks, ' says, With a sigh, Above us, the steady drone: kids stamp- And he "God." sharded glass is sucked into the tube, then thought it would be like this." ing their feet, clapping their hands. holograph mimics falls out at his feet. Smoke gusts up. The I cut in my chords. My I'm sitting by Ellerway. "You up to it now?" set flail and real movements of my hand. power cables inside the huge He's all fixed up. He actually looks good, the holograph of Kid the Flash leans over snap with flashing intensity. Holding my ru- really Plasticene handsome, like the pic- The picks chord and a microphone. ined guitar in one hand, Ellerway cries. "But ture on the crystal cube. and up a alive!" sharp microphone. He jams it into his we're not dead! We're "Hurts a little." A subvocalized voice comes over to It emerges from his back. His "Yeah, well, we give them just another abdomen. To the rhythm of the music, a slow puls- me on my receiver, shaking my eardrums half an hour, okay? Keep it cool, don't bust weaves around the stage, through bone conduction. a gut. Simple stuff." ing dirge, he "It's now, Capp. It's got to be now." "We have to, don't we, Capp?" "What are you talking about?" let "Yes. It looks that way, Ellerway. But "Benny. Jim. We're doing 'Dreamflight' me tell you, we're getting a new manager next." after this." that ain't on I hear Benny say, "Hey, pal, Ellerway focuses on me in that funny new ^Ellerway looks up. the playlist." way of his, like he's trying to figure me out "I can feel them, just out of my reach. I or something. "Mom says hello to you." He walks slowly over to me want to touch them, not numb them. You "1 imagine she's watching, isn't she?" as the applause with me, Capp?" "She asked me to ask you if you'll maybe- could get in all kinds I see the tiny, "Fuck, Ellerway. We visit her again sometime." swells. can of trouble." "Sure, Why not? I'd like that, Ellerway. fresh stitches in staring at me, 1 see him across the stage, We'll go together," his neck. Two drops of blood hard and demanding. His expression is so He opens his mouth to say something,

intense, I have to turn away. pauses as though changing his. mind about well up on the darkness of the blank, I look up past what he is going to say then says, "Are you " the line of his throat^ wriggling on 7 blackened faces of the crowd still ready for whatever comes out. Capp' their wires. Past the light-canopied 3-D "What are you talking about? I told you, camera setups, up to the opaque bullet- you've got to take it easy tonight." proof glass panel of the sky suite. I think "This might be the last chance." of the power I've got now, the power and "For what? The world's at our feet. This

I of the money. shedding gobs of light blood all over the the adulation. think is just the beginning." there lide of the blood flows over And then I think, that bitch up has I'm sick inside. My anger at Spud, my stage. A great whirlpools into a dense had it all for years. What does she want fury and indignation at Hardesty are mak- the side of the stage, everything but ran- now? More. She wants all of me. She has ing me crazy. The worry for Ellerway nudges red mist, obscuring she's ever going light from within. a part now. But that's all it all into'a whirlpool of queasy anxiety. But dom holograph, continuing to get. And as long as I'm alive, she isn't get me. Ellerway's got to get I stand beside my I won't let her synthesizer play with going to touch Ellerway. up on the stage again. the dirge, letting the "It's show." Tom," I say. your it sounds like the song of some "Okay, He gets up, shrugging away my offer of it so that suite and give the I smile up at the sky help. "Okay. Let's go out and play." mammoth pipe organ. lady the bird. We trudge up the ramp, take our places, The mist gradually fades. old inside an elaborate Ellerway smiles at me wearily. "Impro- and begin to bash away into "Dance of the The real Kid stands vise around me. Right. And one and two Degenerates," our most upbeat number. coffin, hands folded ceremonially, eyes — and three lay percussion closed, in^uneral tux and tails from the Vic- I signal for Benny to on a He brings down his hand. I strike mine solo. Might as well save Ellerway, give him torian Age. hand reaches to the across the strings, trying to remember the a break for the next song, which was going His eyes open. His it two or three of the coffin, takes a wire, and plugs song. We've practiced maybe to be a little tougher. side paper. Nei- just under his ear. times; it was all scribbled on Coke. It nothing to settle it into the jack I drink a does

I hit iher Benny nor I can remember much, my stomach. The crowd's roar nearly drowns out the finger the chord again, then start phasing it with Benny builds up the volume and rhythm music. His arm slowly snakes out, a Stiff-legged, he the manual on the computer board. I've to an almost unbearable crescendo.. Time points at the audience. hall's acoustics down now, and I of next walks out, mouth open almost as wide as got the to move. I tap out the program the

can play with them. I sneak the sound number, "Protodeath," on the keyboard at Marley's, and screams an all-keys-played- white as frost, around, whooshing like a broken helicop- the base of my Gibson and get ready for on-the-organ yell. Holo-mist, ter about to chop off the crowd's heads. the climax,.. streams from his mouth. the song, his Ellerway signals Benny to come in; the Benny tosses drumsticks again, one to It continues as he sings his weak- drums begin to crank along recklessly, either side of the stage, understated delivery caused by another chord and chilling. restlessly. 1 slam out Then he hits the kill on the machines, ness making the song all the more we're trying on diddle with my memory of the basic mel- and the sounds instantly stop. No reso- "Protodeath, protodeath. 82 OMN! ody of "Dreamflight." With all the money riding on this gig, the director.and technicians aren't about io lurn off the power just because we change songs in the middle of a set. So they just put up a shifting webwork of spots and filters, no doubt computer-controlled to change with the shadings ot the music, and they let us be. Ellerway starts with the standard poly- phonic attack, a five-scaled choir of hundreds of voices branching out from his own, weaving delicately among them- selves their intricate network of rock fortis-

• simo and rock dissonance. The harmonic fabric vaults you into some ethereal emo- tional plane, while the cacophonic aspects make you realize that you are really dan- gling from the cliff over death's black™ Somehow Ellerway manages to recall the bass line of "Protodeath," builoing an en-

tirely new chorale above it. "The night dawns upon us all Chinchilla chill Sharp claws, sharp jaws Tearing at your heart. Dead fall," The fluid voices suddenly congeal into one voice. Ellerway's rock-bellow of rage, My guitar computer, geared to sense the change, switches timbre in midnote ot my

melody lacing, Automatically, it growls a

sympathetic chord, almost as if Ellerway

were controlling it.

The song is inside me and abruptly it becomes the focal point of my existence. 70 PROOF. IMPORTED Sv-A.vKi: Dl Just a point, mind you. Something small

. and concentrated: I could feel it feeding into me from the power of the guitar, from

the air which buzzed with it. God knows what is going through the actual wires to the listeners.

Ellerway sings. The stuff inside hirr the frequency modulators, the augment- ed, the microtransistors, the minicompu- ters, all flesh-enmeshed machinery—takes his wishes and makes them music. Perfect shimmering control. As my hands grab and flutter and dive- TV bomb the strings, pausing only occasion- I Now you can tune in the World from I home with your own Satellite TV Earth ally to fidget with the computer controls, I I Station System. suddenly realize what he is trying to do. Receive more than I 80 earth-bound channels of top I want to stop, to tackle him or some- . ' Movies, live sports, News, Adult thing, but it's too late. I'm into it. The music / has me by the short hairs. Ellerway's voice I Programming,Cable TV feeds / ' and more - all via Satellite is pulling my strings. /

I 24 hra/day. Installation ii I play like a demon. A demon caught in simple a shaft of light from heaven and reluctantly with our video- rising upinto the sky among the choraling 1 taped instructions or if . prefer - host, kicking and screeching and yowling you we can of- I ten arrange installation ail the while. for youl Prices for sys- And damned if I don't remember the terns begin at whole | a remark- song—just as we had practiced it. , able $2,295 and all I can feel Benny's thumping behind me ne with full 1 at a year blow my sweaty hair. I know he is. syn- parts & labor warranty. chronized with Ellerway as well, | NO GIMMICKS. Call or It flows out, beautiful and nasty and right. write for full information. Gut stuff, with all of Ellerway's feelings and I thoughts somehow mixed in for good I'can feel measure. Ellerway inside me. I recognize part of him from the two years 3320 SIRIUS ST. • LAS VEGAS, NV 89102 • (702) 362-9992 of our work together, but there is so mi more. My juices move with his. They dance. "

rage and frustration leak from my eyes. melody is formed. Slowly he synthesizes mixes my feelings with Eller- A The song looks at me with a penetrating stare the instruments for the song. The elec- He way's by some kind of special electric picks "Yeah, and I know too." He tronic background. The song is his as much that says, chemistry that I don't understand. on guitar and hands it to me. "Keep as anyone else's. up my guitar trills in sympathetic stridency My rockin', kiddo," Lords The song sings of bodies riddled with like the Hallelujahs and Praise the head. hanging crucified on the He walks away, shaking his the beats and music metal. Bodies rhythmically filling in voices of the crowd crying It cries I can hear the meeting. skeleton of a dead electronic culture. of a preacher's chant at a revival curtain, "Kid! Kid! and weeps and despairs. out from beyond the 'light "I'm like you, just like you," Ellerway sings. hear seats being Kid the Flash!" I can It hints of lost possibilities. Suddenly a whisper-choir rises all around, dis- ripped out, cups crashing, wires whipping. it comes, I hear the snap in various comple- When repeating the phrase robo-security pushing them back as spark jumps from a I hear molded to tinctly. A blue-white mentary musical permutations the light curtain. chest. Another arcs they try to leap through changes, his nuances of length of wiring in his Ellerway's subtle The robots click and hum with mechan- from his neck. Blood spills from his mouth. emotion. It's not just his performance up his chest. ical strain. plastic slapped Smoky flames lick up here, an act, a piece of my thirty- year-old, I take my Gibson, He falls. with paint and pretty costumes sitting Gib- the plug from his hundred-thousand-dollar, souped-up I dash to him. I yank amidst a castle of equipment. it into an amplifier. I smash neck. My guitar flops against my thigh. 1 son, and It's Ellerway, stripped of pretense, flow- off to smother the tear it off. I rip my shirt ing honestly, simultaneously showing his flesh. All that was two years ago. flames. I can smell charred own person and embodying a common million-and-a- . . . Now I've got my This was never supposed to happen. Too Now denominator of humanity. My guitar lines half-buck house in the canyon. I've got an- many safety precautions. Benny's drums fill in as best they can, and other house on the East Coast. I hung onto there too, all of a sudden, with drowned in the heat Benny's but they're essentially got money in the bank, towels. Steam rises up desperately. my cabin, too. I've Ellerway's song. wet and light of invested, money coming out of my The medmechs finally arrive. money He takes off his Victorian topcoat and ass. I've got a state-of-the-art recording his shirt, leaving his chest bare. He plays studio in the basement, stocked with any keyboard, flips this switch, on the chest musical instrument you'd care to name. that dial upon his arm. Sweat runs down I've got a Jacuzzi. I've got a sauna. I've the crevasses of his scars, mixing with the got a cook and a housekeeper. I even again. blood that's leaking ilhe holograph of picked up a contract Wife. The stainless steel, grotesquely protrud- Flash leans over Kid the Flash is no more, but the crystals from flesh like metal bone, shines in the Kid the ing keep selling. The concert where he did his under his arm- rainbow light. Wires snake picks up a in history. and trick is the most popular vid-disc pits, stitched through his abdomen like the chord and a microphone. And Ellerway is still around, despite plastic leeches. His hair hangs limp down rebuild rumors to the contrary. They had to back, where bolts glint. The real Kid his him, of course. They had to pry the twisted his He's still got the jack plugged into stands inside a coffin, mass of fused plastic and metal from him, getting weak. He slows neck, but I think he's graft back flesh and bits eyes closed, in treat the burns, bit, then spins around and signals Benny yet. a of organs. He can talk. He can't sing and me to stop. funeral tux and taiis3 They're working on that. We do. Hardesty got her pound of flesh. She's Slowly, breathing hard, he turns again happy. She even suggested that I form a points to the audience. and new band, which she would back. I told "Music, our senses' essence. I return her to shove the idea. I'm retired. Distillation of metal and will. from her unopened. moment they do, the jerks at any mail or messages Missionary moonshine. Almost the in a new band. Managed by the lighting switches finally get the smarts Benny's from our steaming still!'" the Come drink Spud. Owned body and soul by Hardesty. curtain. It shimmers on, bows his head. to drop the light He gestures wide, around once in a while. the vision of thousands of Ellerway comes A ghost shiver dances down my spine, cutting off little wary of me. 1 can't blame stunned faces. He's still a into my bowels. deep talk and play together. roadies run for a stretcher. him. We inside goes out to him. I The Something me mostly writes music now. He's work- still conscious. His eyes are He can sense that the audience is having the Ellerway is with a group of scientists studying the glassy. Faraway. ing I lookout same experience. My guitar stills. — he's even processes he introduced. I hear it. For moment, I felt quiet. "I ... 1 ... did a at that lake of faces. It is calm, out experimen- rest. You've thinking about bringing an Ellerway," I say. "Now of limbs. No flail of wires. "I know, No thrash looks a little differ- heavy damage." I'm numb in- tal album next year. He stare at Kid the Flash. done some They lot quieter. When conversation lead in my stomach. ent. He's a Ellerway opens his eyes wide, wider, side. The guilt sits like dried up and we're sitting on the patio, He turns to face me as a mechman spurts has seeing something beyond those faces. looks down glowing metal, the he gets this glassy stare as he touches them. He feels their song. some foam over the He valley. plastic. "Capp." into the misty The songs of their insides. The harmonics melted We never talk about Kid the Flash or that "Shut up, I said." of their souls. final concert. you, too. I know "Capp, I could touch all. I can see it in his He knows them about his mother, though it's okay." We never talk Capp. I know about you. And it inside me. now, expression. I can feel moving and her "What?" we both see her from time to time I turn to ice inside. Recognizing me, toward me her contempt _ His eyes close. coolness and Recognizing me and all that 1 am. nearest doc- seems to be fading. wrong?" I ask the He gasps. He tries to sing the song he "What's But I've promised myself. From that mo- tor. not—" feels, coming from all of us, telepathic "He's ment at the end of the concert, I've prom- thought-rock crashing in on him. Fifty "No. Not yet." to him. I that I would explain off. The burning smell is ised myself thousand mind-hands reach for the mike They cart him understand, but I follow. Benny don't know if he'll really wail their de- still in my nostrils, I start to he holds to scream their life, him. me. have to try to make spair and joy to others. stops will all come out and we'll you can do, Capp." One day it He sings one note. No word. Just song. "Nothing of really know each other. One day.OQ Another. "'Shit. I've got to do something." Tears It is piercingly beautiful. Another. 84 OMNI EVOLUTION'S CHILD

In a million years, the worlc will become the -dominion of a superrac

BY PAMELA WEINTRAUB PAINTING BY Dl MACCIO — —

driving force left the hands free stringent than ever. "The new The parched and crumbling desert lies an upright stance that in evolution," Boaz contends, "is the in- edge of a landmass once for toting objects. on the eastern Hunters recently scientists dismissed crease in the complexity of life. called North America. The earlier inhabit- Still, until neoteny would be a major and gatherers had to find food and shelter, ants, the researchers believe, were erect- the idea that be- and that was hard. But today the problems tall. Ex- force in future evolution. In fact, most walking creatures some six teet enormous centuries to come, any are multiplied. Everyone has amining the skull, they calculate that these lieved that in the would be insignif- options, and those who can't negotiate the ancient men had brains half the size of kind of human evolution researchers acknowledged diversity succumb"to breakdown, schizo- theirs, with twice the jaw, and 36 teeth to icant. Some suicide. It's obvious still refining the knee joint phrenia, depression, their own 28. This skull, the hefty explorers that nature was likely to repro- to disease; others that these people aren't as conclude with rapture, belonged to their or increasing resistance might duce. To avoid such calamitous outcomes, ancestor Homo sapiens, by now a admitted that genetic engineering puny of smarts future to eradicate can- we have to have a certain kind million years gone. one day allow man with increas- eyesight, and sharpen hear- the kind that may well come explorers in this scenario, with bald cer, improve The brains." most part, experts argued, ingly larger, more neotenic bulging heads and slitlike mouths, tit our ing. But for the Today the adult human head is one eighth twentieth-century notion of aliens from human evolution had ceased. A species, but Boaz believes they explained, evolves only when pres- the length of the body, space. But if some of today's anthropolo- to neoteny, a million years from by its environment. And that, thanks gists and paleontologists are correct, they sured to change fifth length now it will be as much as one the mankind's descendants a million as civilization eased the rigors of survival, "will be ratio pressure on the human ani- of the body—the same head-to-body years hence. They will live twice as long evolutionary as that of contemporary six-year-olds. The and their years of extra devel- mal had come to a halt. as we do, more or few years, however, re- human jaw, he adds, would have opment will provide them with a g reatly ex- In the past York University pa- less receded under the face "because with panded cortex and the intellect to match. searchers such as New have rebelled such a large head, something has to give." Their spectacular ascent will be achieved leontologist Noel Boaz and rugged, Boaz acknowledges that it would be diffi- through neoteny, the same process that against that point of view. Tall cult to move or support such a head but helped us evolve from the apes. explains that all we need do is develop Neoteny is the biological mechanism that muscles and ligaments around the neck. allows some species to retain infantile, or Since the brain consumes about 25 per- neonatal, traits throughout adult life. The cent of the body's metabolic energy, a larger force in idea that it might be a controlling mBoaz believes brain could require a larger body to pro- evolution was first suggested in the human well ac- vide it with food. That might be Twenties by Dutch anatomist Louis Bolk. that a million years from now, complished by increasing overall body Bolk observed that both adult humans and the human head height to perhaps seven feet. Some peo- baby apes have small jaws, relatively large one fifth ple, he adds, say bigger-headed babies brains—about one fiftieth the weight of the will be as much as would crush the mother's pelvis, but the body—and the ability to walk erect. Grown- the length answer to that would be premature birth. up apes, on the other hand, have large of the body—the same Presumably, neonatal medicine would jaws, relatively small brains— about one protect future babies born before term. hundredth the weight of the body—and a ratio as that Boaz's beliefs are speculation, based four-legged gait. Bolk theorized thai apes of six-year-olds today3 largely on fieldwork and discussions with and the ancestors of humans had origi- his students. But according to his col- nally developed in similar ways, but in the leagues, a considerable body of research course of evolution, the pace of human de- supports his ideas. velopment simply slowed. The result: Men Some of that research comes from Dale and women were perpetual neonates, never at the Canadian little Indiana Jones Russell, a paleontologist reaching the small-headed, four-legged looking more than a like Sciences, in Lost Ark, Boaz started National Museum of Natural "maturity" of apes. in Raiders of the for his model origins of man during his Ottawa. Russell is best known As far as Bolk was concerned, neoteny seeking the of the dinosauroid— a large-brained, hu- provided humankind with extraordi- Berkeley grad-school days in the early had evolved by in 1981 he manoid reptile that might have evolutionary strength. By endowing Seventies. In 1974 and again nary ex- of now if the dinosaurs had not become successive generations with the most explored the heart of Africa in search April 1982). light on man's be- tinct (see "Smart Dinosaurs," powerful juvenile feature— a brain that is bones that would shed his full-scale, four- This year he has left for Lake When Russell unveiled large in comparison to the body—the neo- ginnings. missing link— foot five-inch dinosauroid in 1981, it thrust teny mechanism had slowly turned our Amin, Zaire, to search for the man and the him into the international limelight. It also sedentary, apelike ancestor into the most the common ancestor to both he says, suggested an intriguing possibility; If the innovative, and successful crea- apes. His excursions into the past, mobile, increase that "people will con- size of the dinosaur's brain could ture on Earth. The large-brained juvenile, have convinced him they always have so drastically over time, wouldn't the same Bolk declared, had dominion over all. tinue to evolve just as species, including already in place. be possible for other Bolk's theory received widespread sup- according to trends years ago," Boaz explains, modern man? port during the Sixties and Seventies, when "Two million [brain] ca- Russell felt sure the answer was yes, and paleontologists began excavating bones "our ancestors had a cranial the idea by eight cubic centimeters; he set out to substantiate in the sweltering African plains where hu- pacity of hundred twelve studying the increase in biological com- manity evolved. Their discoveries showed a million years ago they were up to cubic centimeters; today, plexity over the millennia. Referring to the that with each step in human evolution, the hundred fifty that the size of an- fifteen hundred cubic centime- fossil record, he found latest species always had larger heads- perhaps imals and plants, the total number of spe- ters. If you extrapolate the line on a graph, making it, in effect, more "childlike"— than of brains had growing to about twenty- cies on Earth, and the size the species that came before. The cran- you'll see the brain centimeters a million increased through the course of evolution. ium, the researchers asserted, had started five hundred cubic There's no reason why that "Some dinosaurs had pretty big brains to expand millions of years ago, when our years from now. when mammalian brains were still small," apelike ancestors moved out onto the open line should taper off." belief Russell explains. "Yet when the dinosaurs savanna. Without the protection of trees, Boaz's prediction stems from his brain size didn't to prevailing opinion, envi- were eliminated,, average their survival depended on increasingly that, contrary become more go down. Instead, the mammals took over complex brains to design tools, as well as ronmental pressures have ea OMNI —

^Meier met Jesus Christ and shot an out-of-focus photo of the eye of God^

Rouged and radiant :u'es(saucerssuper- blue-eyed, voluptu- mposed on mead- ous, and blond, she ows) In some, and could leap out from string holding up the the pages of Vogue saucers in others She s as lorr id a num- Kal Korff. author of ber now as she was The Meier Incident. a century ago. Her Most infamous Hoax name is Semjase, in Ufology, says wit- and if you believe nesses have discov- Swiss farmer namt ered flying-saucer Eduard "Billy' models on Meier's er, she is a threi clothesline, as well hundred-year-ol as film negatives of emissary from the models lying half- Pleiades star cluster burned in Meier's Semjase and four garbage can, "The other Pleiadean cos- eye-of-God photo," monauts, says Meier adds Korff. "was have been visiting c ; early a blurred shot him In their flying o f the Ring Nebula saucers since 1975; in the constellation they've even taken Lyra. And theApollo- him for jaunts into the Soyuz photograph past and through the was obviously taken universe Semjase UFDUPDffTE directly off a televi- once introduced him sion screen; it didn't to Jesus Christ, who made Meier his fourteenth disciple even show the actual space capsules, rust simulations On another occasion, Meier shot an out-of-focus photo of that had been given to the networks by NASA." the eye of God. And in July of 1975, he snapped a close- None of this, however, has stopped people from be- up of the Apo//o and Soyuz capsules linking up in orbit lieving Meier. He's sold photos and articles throughout Meier has taken so many pictures, in fact, that a group Europe and the United States, and a full-blown cull has called Genesis III Productions, headed by retired U.S. Air formed around him. The believers, who call themselves Force Lieutenant Colonel Wendelle C. Stevens, has com- The Semjase Silver Star Center, live with Meier on a com- piled two books of them Most of the shots show saucers munal farm, providing him with funds and shelter. "When soaring above trees and meadows, with the Swiss hills I met him," says Stevens, "he and his family were living undulating in the distance. According to Stevens. Genesis on a dirt floor In a chicken coop, Now he has a nice apart-

III had the photos analyzed by NASA scientists, who could ment, a TV, and an IBM Selectric typewriter" find no traces whatsoever of a hoax: unfortunately. Ste- Some people hint that Meier has enjoyed other benefits, vens adds, "the researchers asked not to be identified." During those intergalactic voyages, they say, he and the UFO experts, however, claim the photos are bogus. Jim stunning Semjase became romantically involved "That's Lorenzen, of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organiza- ridiculous," scoffs Stevens. "Pleladeans really don't like tion, says he can prove the saucers in the photo are 18- humans; we carry too much lust and greed in our aura. inch models. Bill Spauldlng, of Ground Saucer Watch, Semjase told Meier that making love to him would be like analyzed the photos by computer, rinding double expo- rolling around with pigs," MARK TEICH —

Tne Nakela clan of New Guinea was performing a ritual mourning dance when the drummer made a mistake. Members of the troupe were so humiliated, they jumped off a high

sea cliff. Their bodies turned to rocks that can still be seen, and their souls became mermaids and mermen, ore/. is only a television station willing sixty thousand dollars for This ancient tale

if anthropologist to film the recovery, Daemion huge cages and cranes, myth But Roy Wagner, of the Univer- Last year newspapers smelled a hoax. Okay?" is correct, throughout Australia carried Although he'd never seen In Daemion's professional sity of Virginia, part of the haunting legend the story of one Noel the actual crash site, Dae- opinion, however, such actually be true. Wag- Martin, who claimed that a mion now left for the New claims prove that Martin has may ner claims that dozens flaming UFO had plunged South Wales bay In his begun to lose touch with in of New Guinea natives may into the bay near his New mobile home. After two days reality. "The water the bay the merpeople South Wales home some 25 of interviewing people is only twenty-five feet have seen creatures with human years before. The haunting cited in the initial witness deep," he explains. "If Martin probably heads and torsos, image refused to fade, list, he concluded wanted, he could legless lower trunks Martin told reporters; so at that "Martin had fabricated raise his 'bulge' with a ten- and terminating In fins. age thirty-two, he quit his almost everything," dollar inner tube. But I tell Wagner first heard of the steel-mill job to start UFO Martin's older sister, won't be the one to him. elderly Discovery '82, a company Margaret, for instance, said The guy's unemployed. ri in 1979, when an Guinea man mentioned dedicated to finding the that she recalled some What else can he do?" New the terror of a merperson sunken craft. strange lights but no crash. —Peter Rondinone cast upon a beach decades Martin's flamboyant quest And his younger sister, before. Intrigued, the an- quickly caught the eye of Helen, had no memory of "/ have a friend who told me computer thropologist went on to Jonathan Daemion, a self- the incident at all "My that the very best ever built mankind "interview everyone who professed "psychiatrist brother believes I was with system by Druids at claimed to have encounters of the supernatural," and him when he saw the was by the with the creature." One before long Daemion had crash," Helen recently told Stonehenge. Well, that's an But I liked man reported a teen-age written for information Omni "But I don't remem- old story. what that felt the Druids girl h caught In a net by a Martin responded with a list ber it. I was only five at the was he they just native fisherman A ten- of 300 bay-area witnesses, time. Anyway, I'm too busy didn't die out, year-old boy described a convincing Daemion that with my kids to be bothered went bankrupt trying to male and female finding the vessel could with this nonsense." debug the software" line of — ri swimming into a freshwater mean millions in movie, When contacted for James Finke stream by moonlight. And book, and toy contracts. comment, Martin himself others mentioned that fish- After speaking with Martin, insisted the UFO was real. "If you brainwash people ermen sometimes butcher Daemion accepted the "In fact," he said, "I just into forgetting that they're of other, ri. then sell the tasty flesh job of public-relations officer found it. It's an underwater part each you and on the open market. In the new company and bulge covered with sea- can manipulate them, Eyewitness descriptions happily set about raising weed and everything. So I'm that's how individualism fascism— divide and of ri vary considerably. S600,000 for the project. But not crazy. But my engineers leads to Wagner reports, though when Martin refused a tell me we can't raise it conquer!" most concur on the basic $100,000 donation from a until we raise five hundred —Dr. Slater OMNI "

shed pounds but pulled the bank heist, too. In June 1981, Ronald Sprmgstons attorney, Springston, thirty, walked W. B. Putman, argued that into a small bank near the rob-a-bank bit was his home in rural Wheeler, part of the hypnotists reg- Arkansas, drew a pistol, ular patter." Springston and politely instructed the couldn't get the hypnotic bank teller to pile money in a suggestion "out of his mind

blue nylon bag. Springston It kept building and build- drove off with the bank ing, and obsession became janitor's car and $8,000 In compulsion." Springston, stolen cash, Putman said, was also Arrested several days an epileptic, and that made later, he claimed that the him exceptionally suscepti- holdup pistol had been ble to hypnotic suggestion empty and that, incredible Despite the clever de-

as it sounds, hypnotic fense, jurors failed to reach weight-loss therapy admin- a verdict. Rather than face istered two weeks before a new trial, Springston the crime was responsible bargained for a lenient ser-

tor his conduct. It seems tence. serving four months Springston was 50 pounds and ten days as a model overweight and had tried prisoner at a federal correc- hypnotism to break his tional facility. He was re- [fie upper torso though highly improbable, eating habit, The hypnotist cently released. of the creature is human or that ft are a genetically put Springston under, Springston found prison humanlike, with long, dark defective, inbred group of then allegedly told him he conducive to dieting, and hair head and relatively light humans. Because of the had the self-confidence he notes, "I lost fifty-one skin. The females have anecdotal nature of the to diet, or even to rob a pounds while there Obvious mammalian breasts, evidence, though, it's really bank. Springston began to — Eric Misfiara and each sex has human- difficult to hazard a guess." like genltats on the front of Wagner himself concedes the lower torso. Fingernails that "from an anatomical are long and sharp, the and evolutionary perspec-

palms are ridged and cal- tive, the ri does pose prob- lused. and there Is some- lems. But," he insists, "the thing strange about the credibility of some of my mouth. They breathe air, informants can't be lightly they live off fish, and they dismissed." He and Arizona

aren't known to speak, cryptozaologist J. Richard When questioned about Greenwelt plan fo visit New the report, biologist Roy Guinea sometime soon in Mackal, of the University of search of "the creature Chicago, said, "A real unknown to science." mermaid—half-fish and half- — MarcelloTruzzi human— is genetically impossible. But the creatures "Wow / will believe that could be an unknown there are unicorns ..." sirenian, the group of mam- —William Shakespeare malian species that includes dugongs and "I am a brother to dragons." manatees. It's even possible, —Job "

knocked unconscious. Since most people have been attacked at nigh! He eats air, sleeps a few while using lanterns, some hours a week, and lifts Dr. Peter Barss had been the fish ten limes his weigh!. Who Is at the Milne Bay Hospital, doctors suspect in Guinea, leap for the light like moths, this wonder man? If you Papua. New believe a recent advertise- for |ust a week when some striking their victims acci- ment, he's Wiley Brooks, villagers found the body dentally. But Barss says this founder of the Breatharian of a dead fisherman, The explanation may be inade- Institute of America, based young doctor's autopsy quate: It does not, for instance, account for the in mellow Marin County. revealed a sharp piece of California. bone (the tip of a crude three-year-old girl who was 7 in paralyzed after an attack Brooks (at right), author knife, perhaps ) lodged of the book Breathe and the man's chest. A week in broad daylight The Live Forever, says he derives later villagers found another villagers, in fact, believe the begun a holy all hie nourishment from dead fisherman, and this fish have Tired of being air and cosmic rays. The time. Barss discovered the war. yanked breatharian philosophy, he culprit: a thin, silvery fish, from their homes, they've decided to even the score. adds. Is a throwback to alive and kicking deep ancient times, "when man inside the man's stomach. The locals, Barss reports, condensed air Into solid After several similar have even begun chanting and liquid nutrients." Ordi- incidents, Barss finally real- incantations, calling upon nary food deposits poison ized thai Ihe fishermen the magical "forces of righteousness" to them in the body, he explains, were being massacred by save briny and the result is death. fool-long predators called from Ihe thugs To spread the word, needlefish. The streamlined Barss, however, hopes Brooks currently gives one- seen leaving a food store fish leap from the water at the attacks don't get too claims, publicity That, he day seminars (cost: $100), with a bag full of groceries. great speed, Barss much literally fisher- says, might cause fishermen in which students are taught Brooks himself denies and stab the everywhere outman to make the transition from these accusations, claiming men with three-inch-long, to outgun the fish to the carnlvorisrii to vegetarian- Ihey were perpetrated by bony snouts. and ism, fruitarianism, liquidari- his jealous ex-girlfriend "Though most people point of extinction. "That is would be a shame," says anism, and finally, breathar- Since its alleged that none think the shark the most needlefish lanism. No restrooms are of the institute's disciples dangerous fish in the Barss. "because kills are still nice to provided for advanced have ever stopped eating, ocean," says Barss. "it very eat." sludents. Brooks notes, however, Brooks may be only about ten people a — Peter Rondinone worldwide The nee- since, "if nothing's going in, the only "true breatharian" year skeptic not mean nothing's coming out." in the world. dlefish, however, takes "The does but he Though Brooks admits to —Roberl Sheaf fer more than twenty lives a he who doubts, who investigates or occasionally imbibing , month." In one week, he researches, ss opposed to orange juice, he empha- "Gravity is a trick of the adds, four fishermen died of he who asserts and thinks sizes. "It's only to cleanse body devised to conceal stab wounds to the chest, or ' that he has found." the system of all the pollu- deficiencies of the mind stomach, three were blinded I ' —Miguel de Uhamuno tants one encounters when —La Rochefouci " vo were living near a city." Some of his former associates, however, claim that breath- ariamsm is a sham and that Brooks Is in facta secret "sugar addict and junk- food junkie." He has report- edly been caught eating a chicken pot pie and was 34 OMNI .

blue lifesaver so complex they remain poorly under- the screen, something" like a blurs, grows, then shrinks back stood, "They may be made up of several materializes, "What we're actually XRAY hundfed different ami.no acids," says Mof- to a blue lifesaver. seeing there is the loss of six molecules of fat, To study the atomic structure of these compounds, he must grow them as crys- water," says Caffrey, "This type of thing country has lots of coal, but coal contains been done before." tals, an extremely difficult task, Creating a has never lots of pollutants," he says. "These metal X-ray He punches buttons, and more diffrac- vanadium, which cor- crystal large enough for ordinary contaminants, like molecules appear the size of a period at the end tion patterns of organic rodes turbine blades, are so tiny that con- study, aboul They look like dancing wed- this sentence, can take months. CHESS's on the screen. ventional tools can't tell you how they're of solar eclipses, radioactive hula X rays are so potent, however, that Moffat ding rings, bound in. If we knew that, we could de- Saturn. scintillating crystals only one fifth the usual hoops, the planet The velop ways lo get rid of the contaminants." can use makes some things colors represent the intensities of the X rays Geologists are using the X rays to study size. "The synchrotron various parts of the sam- that difficult easy, and some things diffracted from conditions at the earth's core, where the were impossible possible," he says. ple. "You can work with images on the heat and pressure are tremendous. Sci- that were in ways— for instance, goal is to understand breathing computer many entists simulate core conditions by Moffat's using the X blowing them up to look at the details in a squeezing minerals mercilessly between at the molecular level. He is hemoglobin's molecular particular region," Caffrey says. With such two diamonds. CHESS's X rays show how rays to learn how he can even study a cell mem- oxygen. It is a lone iron techniques, the minerals' atoms stand up under this anatomy binds in brane creating pores through which hor- atom in the molecule that does the work. kind of punishment. move- from the National Insti- mones and other substances can Other researchers are using CHESS as Under a grant pulses, he can take snap- tutes of Health, Moffat also is studying a Using CHESS's a kind of strobe light. Because the circling growth hor- shots, watching the processes in action. shoot rays into the hormone similar lo human particle bunches X benefit treat dwarf- To simplify what he sees, for the booths only when they whip by the mone, This hormone is used to CHESS he has drawn a car- ism and may help heal burns and bone of nonbiochemists, window in the storage ring, the radiation toon of a cell membrane in which pealike arrives in pulses. That gives scientists a lipids form the inner and outer skins, with chance to film the jostling, shuffling, shov- protein molecules sitting like plump green and scrimmaging on the molecular ing, peanuts between the two layers. The pro- level. This is high-speed shooting beyond teins he draws are smiling. Upon the ad- a sports photographer's wildest dreams. imSynchrotron X dition of calcium, however, the lipids in the CHESS's X-ray bursts sizzle into the booths cell membrane flow together, making the every 2.5 microseconds, and each burst rays could be used to produce membrane stiffer. Frowning, proteins march lasts tor a mere 150 picoseconds, or 150 a three-dimensional away from the stiffened area in a huff. "The trillionths of a second. "You can use the view of the whole body. proteins don'Hike that; so they bunch to- beam to take snapshots that show how a gether in a separate part of the membrane, structure is behaving now, then a billionth Surgeons could acting as a pore," says Caffrey. of a second later," says Dennis Mills, one - examine a beating heart by Producing the X-ray diffraction pictures of the CHESS staff scientists. he works with might require 12 hours using Dennis Mills is only thirty— "Five years walking around a conventional X-ray source; with CHESS you one of the grand in this business makes its holographic imaged people it takes only seven minutes, 'And old men," he says— but he has already using conventional X rays are goggle-eyed used the CHESS strobe effect to raise a at the quality of this material," he says. rumpus in the semiconductor industry. Synchrotron radiation already is in- During manufacture, a silicon chip's skin creasing our understanding of atoms and can become smudged with ions. Manufac- it lives. That scarce, however, available molecules; eventually may save scrub the chips fractures. It is turers use powerful lasers to Brookhaven cadavers. "Genetic engineers are is the aim of Bill Thomlinson, a clean, but they have never been sure how only from National Laboratory physicist, and John Hui, it themselves." says Moffat. the process works. Does the laser melt the hot to make department of surgery at the State Studies of its molecular structure may of the crystal? Or does it move contaminants factories. So University of New York at Stony Brook. Once around by snipping the electron bonds eventually lead to hormone CHESS, a physicist working with Nobelist Brian Jo- holding the surface's atoms together? tiny are its crystals that, without Hui switched to surgery when his able to study it at all. sephson, "Guys would get up at conferences and he would not be Cornell laboratory, biochem- father died of a heart attack. He hopes to really argue about this," says Mills. 'The In another home reduce the danger of heart disease. raged." ist Martin Caffrey works with CHESS fight just noth- With his Dublin h fact, Thomlinson an'd Hui intend Using CHESS's pulsing X rays, he pho- movies of cell membranes. synchrotrons into huge shoulder-length hair, Caffrey ing less than turning tographed a laser's effects on a crystal at accent and patients. Pre- rock guitarist than a man X-ray machines for heart intervals of 100 billionths of a second. The looks more like a intense, they say, cell-to-cell trans- cisely because it is so photos showed that the surface had melted. fascinated by the minute radiation will be safer than actions thai collectively make us what we synchrotron "If you understand the mechanism, you can such questions current techniques for X-raying the heart. improve the process," he says. are. But he is absorbed in which neurotrans- Right now, heart X rays require massive But the experiment raised new ques- as. -the precise way in fluid, like iodine, to be travel our nerve cells to our doses of opaquing tions, revealing that the melted crystal mitters from play Chopin iniected directly into the coronary artery. thousands of times faster than muscle .cells, enabling us to grows back required be- spaghetti. Caffrey examines struc- Massive doses of fluid are "I don't think the story's or eat. anyone predicted. With- an electron micro- cause ordinary X rays are so weak. completely told," Mills concludes. tures too small for even X rays out the iodine, X rays would pass right are not synchrotron radia- scope by probing cells with CHESS's Physicists injections are studying the.resulting photographs for through the soft tissues. The tion's, only fans. As Mills puts it, "Biologists and that physicians patterns. so dangerous, however, are ecstatic over this thing." One enthusi- diffraction procedure only for pa- night Caffrey is in his Cornell recommend the is Keith 'Moffat, a Scottish biochemist Late one ast strong symptoms delicately fingering the joystick tients who already have based at Cornell. He uses CHESS to study laboratory, of the con- uses to study these of heart disease. Also, because big protein molecules, including hemoglo- of the computer he heart, ordinary positions a data-gener- stant beating motion of the bin and polypeptide hormones. They have patterns. As he blurred. of a nerve-cell membrane on X-ray pictures tend to be important roles in the body, but-they are ated image ge OMNI "We think we can get around all those problems with the synchrotron," says Thomllnson. Because synchrotron X rays are so powerful, they can be tuned down ' to just one narrow frequency range and ) INTERNATIONAL still retain plenty of power. Iodine, says Thomlinson, absorbs the rays at a partic- ular frequency. Thus, doctors can tune the X rays to iodine, and thai means much less is needed to produce high-quality heart X rays. In addition, synchrotron radiation can freeze the heart's beating motion and take blur-free pictures. Thomlinson and Hul hope to see entire ' synchrotron facilities dedicated to heart X rays. To such facilities would come people with no symptoms of heart disease but at high risk because of life-style, heredity, or medical history. Synchrotron X-ray centers

would make it possible to study whether precautions like low-cholesterol diet and regular exercise really can prevent heart disorders. "Right now there are no data whatsoever. Research could prove or dis- prove the benefits," says Thomlinson.

Another possibility, suggests Hui, is in vivo microscopy. "Now we take tissues out of the body io test them," he says. "But

what if we could do microscopic studies inside the living body?" He sees an even more futuristic use: X- ray holography. "We could use synchro- tron X rays to produce a three-dimensional view of the whole body." says Hui. Sur- geons could examine an image of the beating heart in real time, walking around

the organ to study it from all sides. Because of such possibilities, synchro-

tron radiafion is one of science's rising stars. Besides CHESS, the United States has fa- cilities at Stanford University, at the Uni- versity of Wisconsin, and at the new Na- tional Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory, on Long Island. The government is planning to build yet another synchrotron source at the Law- rence Berkeley Laboratory, in California, emphasizing the ultraviolet and soft (less intense) X-ray end of the electromagnetic spectrum. Though many scientists are grumbling that what the country really needs is another source at the high end of the energy spectrum, Thomlinson notes, "At least the Berkeley project shows that synchrotron radiation is here to stay."

If diversity is any measure of scientific merit, researchers will be signing up for X- ray ports for a long time. Consider a sam- pling of the experimental subjects inves- tigated at CHESS in recent months: alloy structures, how anticancer platinum drugs work, automobile-exhaust catalysts, ex- amination of DNA, prolein dynamics, study of laser annealing in doped silicon, struc- ture of spherical viruses, chemistry of coal liquefaction, radiation damage to living tis- sue, fhe structures of lipid membranes in cells, and ihe mechanism of vision.

"The excitement for me is that I can-see Chivas • • it's going to be a tremendous tool," says Ri'fial 12 V.'iir- OH «WI,l,y„l,. RlonJol Smrch Whisky -86 front'

Win,. , Boris Batterman. "This is the biggest *f 193? Genenil & Spirit* Co N.Y. damned X-ray tube you can havel"OQ —

Omni: Aren't you coming back to the initial professionally dedicated to cultivating these irUTER\yiEUU impressions a nonscientist would proba- higher perspectives. But don't think that a merger CONTINUED FROM PAGE 75 bly get under ordinary circumstances? Omni: you excessive restraints Sperry: Much of it had seemed a matter of with science places along religious doctrines? ing organisms, the reasoning suddenly common sense until science came on otherwise. since, Sperry: In the past, under the materialist undergoes a flip-flop. The whole reductive and began telling us Ever culture philosophy, perhaps it would have. Past ef- materialist philosophy of twentieth-century there's been a growing conflict of world between scientists and the forts have been one"sided, asking in effect science is based on this flip-flop error, a and view the hu- that religion mend its ways to conform with failure to adequately credit the nonmaterial rest of society, felt most keenly in those4 disci- the facts of science, but with no similar re- elements in reality. This is how science has manities and especially in with moral values. quest the other way around. On our pres- misled itself and our culture into the ex- plines most concerned ent terms, it becomes a compromise. Re- cessive emphasis on materialism. Perhaps what I'm saying here, in effect, is ligion gives up dependence on mystical Omni: But how would this concept ot mod- an admission: The humanities and com- the right track all along, concepts, whereas science gives up much ified vitalism alter scientific thinking? mon sense were on of its traditional materialist legacy. Sperry: Among other things, the theory and we in science were misled. Omni: If science is to be a greater force in holds that most of the atoms on our planet Omni: Looking back, yours is not the first religion, do you think a naturalistic and are primarily moved around not by alomic attempt at a value system based on sci- from higher mentalist view of man's creator would or subatomic laws and forces, as quantum ence. How does your proposal differ Karl or French biochemist leave us enough to believe in and revere? physics would have it, but by the laws and that of Marx Sperry: Yes, but this gets into matters that forces ot classical physics, biology, geol- Jacques Monod or others? like are best left to theology. That's why we need I misled ogy, meteorology, even sociology, polifics, Sperry: think they were most of were earlier. ac- a partnership. and Ihe like. For example, the molecules of the rest us They Omni: But would the scientific view leave of higher living things are moved around cepted science as if this meant embracing could really hope the par- the philosophy of materialism and the something that theology mostly by the living , vital powers of to live with? ticular species in which they're embed- terms. Sperry: I think so, on our present ded. They're tlown through the air, gal- Remember that along with the human fac- loped across the plains, swung through the tors, the scientific view includes the cosmic, jungle, and propelled through the water not the subatomic, and everything in be- by molecular forces or quantum mechan- QThe higher-order tween the entire evolving web of all cre- ics but by specific holistic, vital, and also — and the whole matrix of forces in- mental properties— aims, wants, needs mental processes move their ation volved. No one has yet described anything possessed by the organisms in question. details neuronal that even remotely compares in vastness, Once evolved, the higher laws and forces complexity, diversity, and awesome beauty. exert downward control over the lower. much the way different It's certainly something to revere! Omni: Do you see applications also in program images can even look at it the other way physical science? One . on a TV receiver determine around as an overall gain for religion- Sperry: Oh, yes, in the relation of quantum — just as when mankind gave up the belief mechanics to classical physics, for ex- the pattern of that the sun was driven across the sky each ample. When physicists found that classi- electron flow on the screen* day by Apollo in his chariot of fire. We now cal Newtonian laws no longer worked for the concepts that replaced that as elementary particles but that a new theory, think of an advance, not a loss. quantum mechanics, did, they abandoned Omni: But does visualizing God in this way support for the old Newtonian doctrines in leave anything to satisfy personal emo- favor of the new quantum theory. The new soci- tional needs like loneliness and despair, as theory was taken to be a better and more interpretations of human nature and faith in a personal deity does? accurate description of nature.. ety that this implies. Marxism upholds val- There's nothing ues and a world view that are radically op- Sperry: It would depend. As we see it now, this was a mistake. from wrong with personalizing a difficult con- There's just no way quantum mechanics posed to the ones that would emerge

if one realizes what he's doing and could replace classical mechanics for a system based on science as we now un- cept doesn't take it literally— especially in the things larger than molecules. Quantum derstand if, In Marxism, what counts in privacy of one's own belief, where it doesn't theory can't handle the pattern factors that shaping the world and human affairs are material others. the classical laws naturally incorporate. the actions man takes to fulfill his harm the key principle Omni: When you refer to a new world view Neither is wrong. We need both, but for needs. But this overlooks science, you include truths, such as in- different things. of downward causation. Under the meh- in sights about human values, that have been Omni: Popularized accounts of the new talist view, the higher idealistic properties contributed by the humanities. physics imply a less mechanistic and non- that have evolved in man and society can of Sperry: Strict separations don't hold any- materialist kind of reality, drawing similar- supersede "and control and take care of its more. I emphasize science because ities with Eastern religions.. Do you see these more primitive needs. rigorous standards for validation. Also sci- common features with mentalism? The espousal of science by the Marx- including ence, like revelation, takes us beyond the Sperry: Well, not really. In my thinking, it's ists, Monod, and many others, usually bounds of ordinary experience. Science not legitimate to extrapolate from the na- today's secular humanists, has institutional re- gives deeper insights into the nature and ture of subatomic events to the world at meant also the rejection of especially meaning of things. It helps clear the mys- large. The emergent entities at higher lev- ligion. This, I think, is a mistake, tery and show the way. It enables us to get els contain, envelop, and control the prop- with world conditions as they are. We need above a better and more intimate understanding erties and expression of the elementary to raise our sights to higher values pol- of the forces that made, move, and control particles. So the common world is betler those of self-interest, economic gain, the universe and created man. described in the framework of the old clas- itics, and daily needs for personal sub- Omni: Where do you stand then on claims sical Newtonian physics, plus biology, ge- sistence to higher, more iong-term, god- religion based on revelation? ology, and the other sciences. The woFld like priorities. This isn't something the of

naturally or easily. It helps Sperry: Revelations are fine. We use and is not all dancing energy or "charm" just human brain does in science. Whenever you because the ultimate building blocks seem to have the continual reminders, influence, welcome fhem institutions become intensely wrapped up in a prob- to be of this strange and elusive nature. and teaching of people and 96 OMNI topsoil if we could get all of our want to have to submit to Communist val- maining lem over a long time, it can become part working right. I'd much rather ues, or vice versa; the same applies to technology of you. It gets ingrained in the subcon- calculate what the ideal population would breakthroughs may Christians and Muslims, and so on. There scious so that sudden best, foreseeable fu- be to make the life experience the from somewhere else. seems little chance in the almosl seem to come overall. countries will agree most beautiful, and wondrous course, science throws away many of ture that all the different Of scientists turn their their beliefs to unite under the Omni: It seems many when they fail to hold up to give up these revelations philosophical prob- principles and values of any exist- attention to global and under experimental test. That's the crux: ethical imagine the possi- lems as they gel older. double-check against outside reality. ing ideology. One can the scientists age. they see that all countries might be Sperry: As most Anyone who has studied the brain— its bility, however, approaching, and they no longer willing, for purposes of international law, to the end inputs, outputs, the way it works, and so neutral have the patience to waste their time on inner workings compromise on a new, relatively on— doesn't trust these could truth and world view the kinds of things they thought they without some kind ot validation. The hu- ethic founded in the once do forever. You raise your perspec- man brain can easily go wrong by itself. of science. I think this is some- to and direct a tives with age. don't internal logical process- Omni: Is it wise to try plan You can let your scientists values? Values usually change un- thing to be ridiculed, as many ing run loose and arrive at all kinds of ra- shift in their younger years. of practical reality, when are inclined to do in tionalizations. That's the nature of the brain. der the pressure It's something to be fostered and valued- processing system, conditions reach what you've called the It has a built-in logical rather than put down. " put up reasons for this and that, "margins of intolerability." and it picks up people today you can go this way, letting Besides, it's the young logic is not always airtight. You Sperry: Well, but such are most con- conditions force the new values, but thinking young people, who can up with all kinds of wonderful world come these questions. They're the course takes effect, it'll be cerned about wishful-thinking conclusions, entirely novel by the time this affected and are afraid of basic resources per ones who are most up just of the brain's own too late. Availability concepts made going to down. The law of that in five or ten years we're all runnings. Science gets around this by de- capita is already going everywhere. be dead. When my generation was grow- the brain process check and diminishing returns is evident manding that concern. had a eliminated in alarming ing up, this wasn't a We with outside reality. That's Species are being double-check cities year. dignity and future, hope, and heroes. The great difference between science and other numbers every The the things and minority creatures around of the world were still great, and sources of belief. meaning of life for people weren't so expendable. an ethic us are almost gone already. The longer you Omni: Your book suggests that power to force a The human brain has tremendous might work for the United wait for deteriorating conditions based in science habituated. Un- worse the residual qual- to become adapted and Nations and world government. value change, the less you're old enough to have experi- of the difficulty in get- ity of our biosphere. Sperry: Yes. Much times, like to think enced the ambience of earlier you rather gofor ideals. I don't ting agreement for world government is that I'd don't have much basis for comparison, and cultures don't only about a sustainable society—how peoples of differing faiths and But in you don't sense what has happened. by the values of op- many masses the world could sustain want to be governed ought to fisheries, and re- these days any adult of any age posing ideologies. Capitalist countries don't terms of agribusiness, be concerned about global problems. It's just a matter of looking around. Omni: Does the rational, antimystical ap- proach you advocate leave any room in fan- one's life for realms of the irrational, for tasy or profound, transcendental myster- ies beyond the reach of science? don't Sperry: Oh, yes, definitely. I certainly think science covers everything, or has all the answers, or dogmatically proclaims a final, absolute, or infallible truth. The more we learn, the more new mysteries we un- cover. The argument says nothing against mysticism, fantasy, and the like in art or drama, for example, or in the private sphere or anywhere else where it doesn't influ- ence the laws we're governed by. This is where my concern lies: with those social values and beliefs that directly or indirectly get written into constitutions, manifestos, laws of the land—and perhaps future laws of the planet itself. We have to remember, too, that strict separations don't hold anymore, The views of science fuse with religion and are on a continuum with the humanities. The two- cultures conflict resolves, and the way is open for the three disciplines to work to- gether. Like everything else today, even the desirable irrationalities of life— the mysteries and the magic— need more ra- with every- ^^fc^ tional protection. It's just that for thing considered, it would seem safer

our children's children if we didn't continue the world's destiny on conflict- "S/x weeks at bartender's school at the club's expense, and he to gamble mystical answers anymore— or on out- still can'! make a decent martini!" ing moded materialist ideologies. OQ became Shaw, a cognitive psychologist, began ster. But to our surprise, the face It took a few minules studying the human face to learn what fea- increasingly primitive. were generating im- CHILD tures our eyes latch onto when we recog- for me to realize we PAGE 88 ancestors. Instead of mimick- CONTINUED FROM nize a friend. "To do that," Shaw relates, "I ages of our the crucial components ing aging, the program was now going back where the dinosaurs left off. Intelligence had to determine stages of meant learning just what through what seemed like the kept increasing at an ever-accelerating of the face. That it was portraying what it develops. I evolution. In essence, original actors, the dinosaurs, a face is and exactly how pace. The twenty- all the ele- might be called devolution. The were replaced by a second string of ac- thought the best way to study into an in- would be to watch faces generated year-old Homo sapiens turned tors, the mammals, who continued the old ments dividual resembling our ancestor Homo drama and haven't finished yet." on a computer screen." pro- erectus and then into a humanlike creature Whether you're talking about dinosaurs Shaw went on to create a computer face de- more primitive than that." mammals, Russell notes, a single bio- gram describing how the human or retrace evolu- birth to adulthood (about the The program's ability to logical species has never lasted more than velops from Proceeding on the theory tion, Shaw thought, was explained if one several million years. Yet, brain size has age of twenty). defined evolution as growth that occurs despite the replace- that growing facial bones were influenced increased steadily, be simu- the force of gravity, he found over eons. If devolution could ment of old species by the new. Humans primarily by reckoned, it with the face of a normal lated by excess maturity, he as we know them aren't likely to last any that if he started his special gravity might be possible to simulate future evo- longer than other species, he adds. "But baby, then applied always retraced lution by making the image increasingly from what we know about the evolution of model, the computer face immature. To that, he started with the impediments human development in a matter of sec- do complexity, I see no obvious sapiens infant the white-lined profile on his image of an ordinary Homo to humans' giving rise to another species, onds. As make it younger screen went from infancy to adolescence, and told the computer to one that is still more highly evolved. If hu- the forehead nar- and younger. He entered the appropriate mans follow the pattern seen in the evo- the cranium shrank, jaw expanded. The pro- equations, and to his amazement the in- lution of other organisms, that new species rowed, and the jaw re- out, described facial growth fant's forehead bulged and the could be a humanoid creature with a larger, gram, it turned' ceded until it was tucked behind the nose. more complex brain." better than any other. lypical extraterrestrial: lark, Shaw and co-work- "It resembled your The possible facial features of Russell's One day, on a Jim Todd, and big brain, big eyes, and all," he recalls. large-brained creature have recently been ers (including John Pittenger, face on the "The suggestion was that evolution might suggested by Robert Shaw, of the Univer- Leonard Mark) instructed the baby-faced adults." Shaw's work computer to keep developing beyond the create large-brained, sity of Connecticut at Storrs. Shaw went on of twenty, when human-bone growth In his next experiments, with computer graphics shows that if the age Says Shaw: "We to demonstrate just why these baby-faced human brain grows larger, the corre- usually comes to a halt. to evolve. First, Shaw telling the computer io push adults would be likely face will have the neotenic traits- thought that by sponding the the point of complete and his student, Thomas Alley, used round cheeks, small lips, receding jaw- bone growth beyond pictures of generate some kind of mon- computer program to create that were predicted by Boaz, maturity, we'd children with a wide range of head and face proportions. The result: Human sub- jects viewing the pictures reported a pro- tective response toward children with larger foreheads, rounder faces, and smaller aws_chi[dren who looked younger for their j age. Then Shaw's associate, Viki McCabe, who examined pictures from Ihe Los An- geles County sheriff's department, found fhat battered children were usually more adult looking than iheir well-protected sib- lings. The disturbing implication: Neo- tenic-looking children inspire more ten- derness and thus have an evolutionary

advantage, even today. If natural selection then is in fact a force to be reckoned with, neoteny's child will probably be the one most likely to survive.

Before the juvenile inherit the earth they'll need at least a million years to complete their evolutionary odyssey, unless scien- tists learn enough about the process to create the new species ahead of time. One man who can't see waiting tor evo- lution to unwind is anthropologist William Chmerny, of Idaho State University. Chmerny became fascinated by neoteny as a graduate student in anthropology, when he "had more trouble mastering Spanish than a mere child would have." Chmerny realized that children absorbed not just a second language, but even a third or a fourth with ease. It dawned on him that geniuses like Mozart and Einstein had produced their major work before fhe age of thirty, when the brain is still dev'el- —

arresting he'll recombinant-DNA technology to oping. What's more, he recalls, "I knew that those specific genes capable of use that produce those pro- children had six or seven times more dream development— the genes of neoteny—had find the genes sleep than adults, giving them extra hours changed, causing the adult Lucy and her teins. Since both bipedalism and intelli- for bi- gence seem to have emerged through to make sense of all the data they ab- kin to retain the juvenile capability neoteny, he adds, similar techniques may sorbed during the day." pedal walking. If that were the case, the Chmerny's observations convinced htm change from quadrupedal to bipedal help us find both sets of genes. accomplished with a "When we find those genes." he con- that if "he could render the brain perma- walking could be won't fiave to wait for neoteny nently "childlike"— creative, intuitive, and couple of hundred gene changes instead cludes, "we to increase the juvenile proteins. We'll alter rich in dreams— human intelligence would of a couple of million. ourselves through recombinant- know no bounds. After years of studying To pin down the point of change from the genes technology, letting sexual maturity evolution, he felt he might best achieve this four- to two-legged walking — the first ma- DNA completion but keeping part end by artificially accelerating neoteny. jor neoteny event in the evolution of man progress to cerebral cortex, Before he could attempt such a thing, Chmerny is now examining human and of the brain, especially the immature. Thus," he concludes, "we'll have though, he had to know a lot more about chimpanzee fetuses. Until about three how neoteny worked. months after conception, Chmerny ex- the best of both worlds: an adult body essentially adult brain His biggest clue to the mechanism came plains, both species seem to be develop- combined with an for that has retained the curiosity, creativity, in 1974, when California paleontologist ing the anatomical architecture bipedal

' Donald Johanson found the three- to four- walking. But sometime after the ihree-month and insight of the child." ethical prob- million-year-old skeleton of the protohu- mark the chimp fetus starts developing the Does Chmerny see any redesigning twentieth-century man Lucy. The amazing thing about Lucy anatomy for quadrupedal walking while the lems with "The principal was that she'd walked erect, evolving from human maintains its immature, bipedal form. humans? "Yes," he says. with what you're rede- her four-legged predecessors in less than These different developmental paths, danger has to do

I certainly wouldn't want a million years. A million years, Chmerny Chmerny believes, can be traced to the signing them for. or better political knew, was a blink of geologic time, nor- production of still-unidentified body pro- to make better soldiers

it expand human mally long enough for only about 250 genes teins. In both chimps and humans, his the- subjects. But we could for instead of limiting it, then the con- to mutate. Yet the essential changes in Lu- ory goes, the genes producing proteins potential genetically engineering humans is cy's brain, muscles, and bones should have the juvenile, or bipedal, anatomy turn on cept of support." required millions of genetic mutations, and and off at much the same pace. But in one I would located the thus many millions of years. chimps, the next set of genes— those pro- Though Chmerny still hasn't another ex- Chmerny faced a paradox, but his avid ducing proteins for the quadrupedal form genes that control neoteny, pert, gerontologist Richard Cutler, has an interesl in neoteny quickly presented a so- take over within about three months; in hu- where they are. Cutler was propelled lution. He knew, first of all, that the juvenile mans these genes are repressed. idea through his lifelong form of Lucy's four-legged ancestor had By studying development in the fetuses to the study of neoteny and expand human probably walked erect, just as baby apes of humans and chimps, Chmerny hopes to desire to understand in a religious home, do today. Suppose, he theorized, that only identify the various proteins involved. Then longevity. Brought up he was taught from birth that he'd be re-

warded with immortality if he were good. But once he started studying science and evolution, he began to suspect that no matter how good he was, death was some- thing he couldn't avoid. "The reality of a finite human life span," he says, "has been with me ever since. "After a while," he adds, "I realized that

I'd still be in school at the age of thirty, and scientific ca- that I wouldn't even begin my

reer until after I reached my biological and intellectual prime. I'd always been inter-

ested in space travel, but it seemed foolish to spend all that money getting to other

planets if we had a limited life span. I rea- soned that increasing life span was the first order of business. In the long term, sci- entific discovery would be far more ad-

vanced if scientists had just a five or ten percent increase in health and vigor." Determined to break the life-span bot- tleneck, Cutler began his graduate training at Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Up- ton, New York. Burying himself in books, he soon learned a simple rule of thumb: A

species' life span always increased as its brain size increased. Since the human brain had clearly gotten larger in the course of evolution, Cutler concluded, "it didn't seem likely that we'd come from long-lived ancestors like Methuselah. Human life span had not decreased through the millennia, but rather, must have increased at an ever- quickening pace." Because the increase in brain size and life span had been so rapid, Cutler, like die at perhaps two hundred- Chmerny, believed that no more than a mans with twelve primate species, he cal- sixty and Discussing his drawing from the din of couple of hundred genes were involved in culated that the enzymes had increased in whirring in the corner, neoteny and hominid evolution as a whole. direct proportion to advancing neoteny. The his lab, a centrifuge Cutler says he sees no specific physiolog- As generations passed, he theorized, these connection was so striking, in fact, that the of ical limit to the increase in neoteny. "We relatively few genes had begun to work antitoxin genes and the genes neoteny know," he explains, "to what ex- overtime, stretching out every stage of de- seemed to be in some way connected. don't yet might evolve before a biolog- velopment, from childhood to puberty to Cutler even thought they might literally be tent futurus restriction is reached. He might easily the years of decline. Because develop- strung together, forming one huge neo- ical surpass the two-hundred-year life span and ment slowed, brains had.more time to grow teny supergene coding for upright pos- twenty- eight- hundred -cubic -centimeter larger, and adults came to resemble the ture, longevity, and intelligence. or tripling life brain we're discussing today." children of their ancestors. To Cutler this Cutler's dream is doubling altering the genes of neoteny. The Our future as neonate, of course, is hardly made exquisite sense. It a large-brained span by in stone. Anthropologist C. Owen creature had a longer childhood, he'd have neoteny gene group, he feels, probably etched an- Lovejoy, of Kent State University, in Ohio, more prime years to explore and learn. With encompasses the DNA coding for the that although neoteny is one possible a longer period of adulthood, he'd have titoxin enzymes. Thus, if he can locate the says evolutionary path, he doesn't see mankind more time to refine and apply that knowl- antitoxin genes (possible through years of "Evolution occurs edge. Hence, neotenic individuals with work with recombinant-DNA technology) moving in that direction. only when those with a particular trait have larger brains and longer life spans would he feels he may find the neoteny genes offspring than those without it," have a better chance for survival; their coding for longevity and brain size as well. more contends. "I don't see people with progeny would always prevail. Altering those genes in a fertilized human Lovejoy greater intelligence having more children. Cutler began a serious quest for the egg, Cutler adds, would be tantamount to Where's the natural force leading to neoteny genes at Baltimore's Gerontology creating future man. So task greater intelligence? As for life span, most Research Center in 1976. There, with his Though Cutler concedes that such a people children before forty no mat- wife serving as lab technician, he devel- might take centuries, he's already sketched have ter how long they live. So unless we inter- oped his plan of attack a version of our human descendant, Homo we'll have no particular selection for Aging, he reasoned, was instigated by sapiens futurus, based on his work in the vene, longevity, either." advancing stages of physical develop- lab. When the crucial genes are altered, explains, futurus will be born after a Another critic, Jonas Salk (of polio-vac- ment, but it also took place day-to-day be- he head-to-body cine fame), believes that the urge to create cause of toxic particles released as the nine-month gestation, his our own is misguided, "I don't body metabolized food and oxygen. Doz- ratio somewhat greater than the infant's of futurus on really see the need for that kind of ad- ens of natural enzymes, Cutler knew, pro- today. He'll reach sexual maturity at twenty- vancement," says Salk, who's been study- tected the body against these poisonous eight and grow until age forty, when he'll ing human evolution since the late Sixties. particles, and humans, with their long life have a head twice the size of ours. He'll "Even if these genes could be altered and spans, had more of these enzymes than also have a taller frame to support his then transferred to a number of individuals, other mammals. In fact, by comparing hu- mammoth brain. He'll reach middle age at we would still haveto rely on the slow proc- ess of biological evolution to transform the species. For instance, here at the Salk In- stitute we created a giant mouse by giving now it genes for rat growth hormone. Right we're waiting to see whether this trait will carry over to succeeding generations. But

whether or not it does, I daresay there are mice in the world that will pay absolutely no attention to what goes on here. If we wish to contribute to human evolution, we

can do it far more efficiently by improving the state of the world." Cutler, however, disagrees. "Only a very stupid person would claim we were intel- ligent and long-lived enough," he says.

"People are always saying that if we lived //JlTr^ much longer, Social Security would be de- stroyed, or we'd have more divorces. They

think if you want to change our brains and

our life span you've got to be a bit screwy. But longevity and intelligence evolved nat- urally in humans; they are the traits that separate us from the animals. Increased

life span and intelligence are part of our

heritage, and to me it makes sense thai using technology to create more of the same would be even better." Cutler concludes his speech and rises, anticipating an afternoon in the lab. The discussion has made him flush, but the glow only highlights his thick white hair. He is forty-seven, and as a Homo sapiens, his

life is more than half complete. But if his ideas are correct, they might buy a bit more "For openers, I'm taking you of! Proust and Kafka." time for his descendants, Homo sapiens futurus, the new race of man. DO —

tain thereby to confine the most dangerous FDRURJ1 recombinant-DNA efforts to the military, to criminals (including terrorists), and to the insane. History reveals that these have not seek a disease to destroy your enemy and always been mutually exclusive labels. against which you can immunize your own Some controls may be indicated, but population; or on the other hand lei us say keep in mind thattheyguarant.ee nothing. you seek a proprietary life form that you Implementing controls of equipment and can patent (the U.S. Supreme Court says materials at the sources, the first thing many you can do this), and your desire is to em- people suggest, ignores the reality of our ploy this discovery for the production' of a immersion in a iechnological society where life-sustaining hormone. Labs to do such raw materials and knowledge are so widely things are costly, and most of the people available that virtually any necessary in them go about their work with a decent equipment can be duplicated in secret. And - regard for innocent bystanders. who is going to keep you from fermenting There is no doubt that such labs are ex- beans in your kitchen? tremely busy right now and scrambling for It might be wise to take a building-code talent. At the universities I investigated I approach to those labs known to be en- found that most of the knowledgeable pro- gaged in recombinant-DNA research. We fessors were on lucrative retainers paid by could draw up a code of precautionary corporations racing toward that DNA pot isolation for the known laboratories—neg- of gold. Their goals are extremely exciting: ative air pressure within the labs, clean locks a tomato plant whose roots will produce with sterilizing atmospheres, separation of their own nitrogen, miniature cattle with very clothing used within the labs and outside high milk production, regrowth ot ampu- them, isolated and sterilized waste dis- tated limbs, and so on. The bacterial pro- posal—things of this nature, Such precau- duction of insulin already has been solved tions, including oversight committees through recombinant DNA. The economic composed of scientific peers, make a cer- rewards are enormous, and the fees paid tain amount of sense, but they do not in- to the academics reflect this. sure against accidents and they certainly Those highretainers and the urgency of do nothing about those who choose for the competition are pari of the inflated cost whatever reason to ignore safe practices.

estimates, but it should be obvious that I- The safest place to conduct such work am speaking; about something quite dif- is, of course, off this planet— in space ferent. In the arena where I want to focus but that poses other problems and does your attention, high-cost assumptions are no! appear lo be immediately feasible.

dangerously delusionary. r And don't make Our disastrous experience l y;ng to keep the mistake of thinking that only a few high harmful habituating narcotics out of our priests of science can do these things. country should teach us we can promise It took me about a year and a half to no absolute control with any policing sys- become what one of my sources calls a tem. Police can be bought. Border guards competent amateur in recombinant DNA. can be bought. Envoys with their untouch- The information was available in medical able dispatch cases can be bought. Power libraries, at university bookstores, from the .and riches can penetrate our barriers and. publishers themselves, and from some of where narcotics are concerned, do so with the workers in the field. Admittedly, I did disgusting ease. Let me caution you here not begin from a position of total igno- that the power arid wealth avai'abie through rance, but it was clear to me that a rea- recombinant DNA make the illegal-drug sonably intelligent person could follow a trade look penny ante by comparison. similar trail without productive difficulty. There's no sense in decrying the fact

When it came time to consider acquisi- that Pandora's box is Open. It has been tion of the necessary equipment, I inves- open for a long time. We and our descen- tigated I the means have discussed above. dants, if we're lucky enough to have any,

First, though, I conducted an. experiment. must make our way in a universe where Taking a readily available source book on terrible threats and magnificent benefits scientific equipment, I telephoned sup- arise from the same knowledge. Some of pliers, identifying myself as "Dr. Herbert." us seek to- improve our survival abilities. In each instance, I asked what my "pur- Others are all loo eager !o spread poisons. chasing department" would have to do to A sane society would meet this problem acquire the needed item. The answer was on at least two fronts —expanding our ex- universal: "When your check has cleared, ploration into dangerous knowledge and, we will ship." at the same time, rethinking the ways so-

Lest you think I arguing am that "we ciety is organized. In this way, it can un- 1 should do something about all of this/ let derstand how such perilous conditions me caution you to think very carefully about could arise. Our bes! hope now is to mount the consequences. I find very little wrong an all-out effort to learn everything we can with an open market in such equipment about the DNA codes within all life forms. and supplies. What we need is not less With such knowledge, we stand some research but more, much more. Clamping chance of continuing our species, Without a lid on recombinant-DNA research, con- it, we could join the dinosaurs. trolling and limiting it, is an attractive but Frank Herbert illusory path to security. We would be cer- PortTownsend, WAOO —

RADLE OF MANKIND EXPLORATIONS By Delta Willis

paleoanthropology and inspired many Great Rift Valley is nothing if unearthed. Farther north along the rift, including leading phmatologists Thenot great— a huge ragged in Ethiopia, Lucy was discovered, students, Birute scar that carves through seven challenging our assumption that the Jane Goodalt, Dian Fossey. and wife, countries, the result of a nasty fight enlargement of the brain preceded the Galdikas. His seventy-year-old respected matriarch of Olduvai, among earth, wind, and fire. This 2,000- development ot a two-footed gait. Mary, the Tanzania, continues to make remarkable mile-long gorge stretches all the way Yet, even under the best conditions, son, Richard, not only from the southernmost tip ot Turkey to the chances of finding anything of signifi- discoveries. Their continues the legacy but enhances it, Mozambique, and on a clear day it is cance is small. Only bones that have all of Kenya's archaeological visible from the moon. been immediately buried by sediment, by overseeing flood, might research as director of the country's The rift began when the earth's crust accident, by and by chance pulled apart from east to west, creating fossilize. Most are scattered by national museums. plural, museums, is correct, for huge craters that filled with water. The predators, ravaged and beaten by wind The established a series lakes, and the profusion of greenery and time. So what we know of the story of Richard Leakey has of museums and protected on their shores, attracted our early human evolution is based on very little annex throughout the country. ancestors, the hominids. Aptly christened evidence, and never have so many said so excavation sites sites are reasonably accessible the "cradle of mankind," this special much about so little. The from Nairobi and invite the ultimate quest corner of the globe is a gold mine for Being a human and trying to compre- journey, and paleoanthropologists. Their treasure hunt hend the vagaries ot human evolution for roots. It is a little-known safaris, the animal under has been made easier by the earth's is analogous to attempting to understand unlike other continuing change, for the action of how the brain works using the instrument pursuit has long been extinct. of creature that shifting faults and eroding winds and at hand. We are biased observers, and the We seek evidence a shuffling apelike beginnings rains has exposed long-buried skeletons. evidence would defy Sherlock Holmes. evolved from highly complex, upright primate. The last ten years alone have witnessed But in Kenya there are footsteps to follow into a to understand the beginning a dramatic increase in discoveries. South and telling clues to ponder. The name We seek of human. of Lake Turkana in the Samburu Hills irrevocably linked to the search for human being start, one must imagine the near Baragoi, in Kenya, fossils thought to origins is the late Louis S. B. Leakey. A To unimaginable: the long, uneven calendar be 8 million years old have been legendary pioneer, he popularized of prehistory; an ancestor who is darker, shorter, cruder, but—just possibly not at a loss for words. Once we've got the time and characters, we must fathom the setting itself, the Great Rift Valley. Besides the moon, the window seat of a plane offers the most breathtaking view of the cradle of mankind. From the

air, the sunlight catches the curves of the Kenyan lakes Turkana, Baringo, Nakuru, and Naivasha. These bodies of water were once surrounded by true gardens of Eden at the dawn of man. Every feature in the landscape below—jagged escarpments, volcanic cones, craters- plays a role in dating the chapters of evolutionary history. Once in Nairobi the first stop should be the National Museums of Kenya, on Museum Hill Road. Exhibits include reproductions of exquisite cave drawings from Tanzania, which depict humans and animals nearly 35,000 years old,

There is also a life-size floor cast of the footprints that Mary Leakey discovered at

Laetoli, in Tanzania. These imprints, From a Kenyan roadside skirling the Great Rift Vaitey/i imitation to explore human origins. 108 OMNI ATTENTION... which look almost as Irosn as the day they milECTDH were made, indicate a commitment to bi- SMOKE AND pedalism at least 3 million years ago. Appropriately adjacent to the main mu- POLLEN SUFFERERS seum is the Louis Leakey Institute for Pre- history. Housing the museum's depart- AT LAST. . . EFFECTIVELY REMOVE IRRI- TATING SMOKE, POLLEN, AND DUST ments of paleontology and archaeology, institute is home to an impressive col- x 10" panel FROM YOUR HOME AND OFFICE AIR. the lection of ancestors, including Australo- THE ZESTRON "COLLECTOR" IS AMERICA'S NEWEST AND MOST POWERFUL "Nutcracker BIPOLAR IONIZING PRECIPITATOR, AND NOT A CHEAP, INEFFECTIVE, TOY pithecus boisei—dubbed the FILTER-FAN UNIT. Man" because of its huge teeth—and 1470, Leakey's Is your indoor air fresh, c- the museum code for Richard polluf high Homo habilis, or "Handy Man," which is buildings are stifled with Energy efficient, a- rtighl the oldest complete skull of early man. But stale, polluted air i real adventure is on the road, over the I'll fireplaces, riving systems. the fly or drive to var- and cooking appll The COLLECTOR Oj edge of the rift. You can 18. Most of these pollutants s-e ious dig sites, and nearby there are very 50 small (under ! .; :hey a reasonably priced cabins, or "bandas," for units. So ientifictes wthatth overnight stays.

For the intrepid. I recommend driving thoroughly Hills and thoroughnes south, around the famous Ngong down an escarpment that rivals the Grand IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE ANOTHER the highest Canyon in beauty and beats it, several times jr.:-.i Li|>ili-i:\] over, in size. You can study the faults, the craters, and the changes in the soil while

i= urban and G:'e.=.i.iy dcp r.'ted in our you reconstruct history. :i miss rig e ern.'iit s 'lagative ions. The road from Nairobi to Magadi finds Olorgesailie midway, a rugged, arid basin that, half a million years ago, was covered The COLLECTOR by a lake and surrounded by swamps and a grassy flood plain. The mind's eye re- sists such a notion, because the sun has

COLLECTOR, bv Zcstrcr. creates milieus of these burned all the color out. The landscape is as bleached as an overexposed picture. A bt'sr performance, value, and technology in air 236.000 tall, swaying dust devil, swirling its way 540.000 suggestion THE ZESTflON BREAKTHHOUGH! 350.000 across the basin, mocks any jdO/JUU of land. Yet proof Most ionizers clean your air bul leave an untidy of water in the history this deposit of ijoli.ilLinrson room and rur"iUiesi.racs'; lies beneath the glare of the earth, within COLlECTOH Zestron. near the ionizer The by the vast depression. At least two shades lighter than the surrounding soil, the evi- FREE ION DETECTOR dence is a dull white diatomite that crum- reveal silica shells of OLLECTOR to verify and compare bles in your hand to aquatic plants. In stark contrast to the white diatomite. red fault beds trace the collapse of the Great Rift Valley, whose western ridge can be seen 30 miles away. One day, long ago, at SATISFACTION GUARANTEED Olorgesailie, the earth pushed too far, and the southern edge of the basin fell, inviting office risk tree for 30 days If -or any reason you a re closest hominid ancestor, Homo no: sst'sf'ed. reiu-r Ihe i.ir.ii lor a iul; refunc includ- flood. Our yourself i-rc ing reiur-i postage. The COLLECTOR has afull one erectus, must have eaten and run, for he isesabove the ashtray year warranty on both parts and labor excluding left behind tools and an unfinished dinner. ,e COLLECTOR panel The sediments of the flood buried the scene DEALERSHIPS AVAILABLE for more than 100,000 years, until Louis and The COLLECTOR. by Zestr Mary Leakey, in the 1940s, began to ex- on the market that cleans the enjoying 120 to accomplish this test. Dr.J.B..M.C.-C CO\TIN'„tD ON PAGE

three ilior ioi" oonipanies. ar-d nave fo say I am ADJUSTABLE OUTPUT CA. hIv . extremely Impressed." T.N.— CREDITS people preter fewer ions at night. The ZESTRON, ihcleiiucr in ion technology, hascreated COLLECTOR only adjuslablo cipnl.v lonizci BlO.JO rCi::i;i a- in que DEALERSHIP PROGRAM. Call or *r te tor ' psge page 2 details on this RISK FREE OPPORTUNITY. M P !i-1i''L!U i-WSiS' : ..;•:.:-. [y \ !-; friend:- deserve e '.;:' '';' 't you, your family and order ! ionizers I '"' an . Jos'ic"' thy. clean, -rest, lha ::' .•-;- ';;;! Zestr n. .ric. iJept. 8, 1901 : ':-:'. B top ; .. on. a- pafl* , :.-. .. Spege page 39 page 40 top, E

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rainy season, increasing rainfall by 20 per- cent over 18 million acres of cropland. Other EARTH missions have included fighting a Bang- CONTI'VljED from W kok cholera epidemic by producing rainfall was right in front of him: If he could model to wash away infected feces, halting the tractor wheels so they'd provide flotation onslaught of Philippine typhoons by mak- like the broad, flai feet of the water buffalo, ing it rain before the clouds reached land, he'd be home free, filling reservoirs, and clearing the fog over Teparit soon found he could duplicate King Bhumibol's helicopter pad. the ability of the wafer buffalo with paddle Today, at sixty-nine, Teparit -says that Is There an Invisible wheels that resembled those of a Missis- success has not left him unscathed. Ad- sippi steamer. He hooked the wheels to an justing his hearing aid, he explains thai his Influence Upon Our Lives? eight-horsepower engine, creating a power left ear was punctured during a cloud- tiller that chugged through the mud. He seeding mission by a small sliver of dry worked on his design tor _ five years and in ice; his right ear was damaged when an Somewhere 1946 introduced the Iron Buffalo, a ma- unpressurized plane went out of control. chine that traversed the paddy seven times And, he adds from the swivel chair of his Out There faster than its animal counterpart. By 1950 air-conditioned office at the Ministry of Ag- news of the vehicle had spread throughout riculture, he was nearly killed fighting a Are the countryside, and Teparit spent the next plague of locusts in 1976. He had been decade establishing workshops so farm- tied to an observation platform at the open ers could adjust the paddle wheels to the rear end of a U.S. C123 transport plane, Other Minds soil of each particular region. he recalls, when a 1,000-gallon chemical By the early Sixties, Teparit explains, tank he exploded. The crew were afraid to Does man stand alone in the tideless was ready to embark upon the next stage come and untie Teparit; so they flew up- ocean of space? Is earth the only of his revolutionary plan: developing pumps ward to drain the toxic chemical out of the habitat that of intelligent beings? Cer- could empty and fill the rice paddies, plane— it simply poured over him on the tainly the eliminating the need to transplant seed- way out. By the time the plane landed and phenomenon of life is not a lings and permitting three or four crops a a doctor raced up to him, his blood pres- chance once. Somewhere in the season instead of one or two. In 1968. after sure was up to 220. That day his spleen countless shining orbs are minds . . he'd lost two fingers experimenting on the was removed, and two years later his gall how puny by comparison in mental design, he announced the completion of bladder had to be cut out. and psychic stature we may be! the Teparit Pump, a long, blue tube pow- The scars and dangers haven't slowed ered the Those strange, inexplicable feelings by motor of the Iron Buffalo itself. Teparit down, however, at least not yet, Just Satisfied with the decades of accom- last year, in fact, King Bhumibol asked the we have at times ... are they a tug- plishment, Teparit settled back to enjoy his rainmaker to negotiate with Communist in- ging from the recesses of space upon wife and five children. But King Bhumibol surgents who were shooting bulldozer our senses? Are they the effort insisted of there was still one problem left: crews digging a royal reservoir project. Cosmic beings to reach find The country's intractable drought, "They "The king told out—to me to limp a little when I a bond of make rain in America and Australia," Bhu- entered their camp," Teparit says, "but that communication with earth? mibol told his cousin. "I want you to learn wasn't necessary. I put leaflets in the towns This FREE BOOK to do it too." With those words, he gave saying I was coming and wanted to meet Teparit $85,000, two single-engine Cess- their leader. After Explains two months, I was con- nas, and the title of Royal Rainmaker. Then tacted and taken to a meeting place. They There are two ever exciting, un- he ordered him to work. had built a wooden platform in the jungle solved mysteries— the nature of self Excited by the challenge, Teparit began for me to sit on, and soldiers sat around researching and our Cosmic connections- Let the all past rainmaking efforts pointing their guns outside in case Ihe army worldwide. that Rosicrucians, He found most rainmaking was following. But it was a completely se- a centuries-old organi- had been done in colder climes, usually cret operation. We talked four or five times zation of learning (not a religion), by seeding clouds with the compound sil- for six or seven hours each time, and they send you a fascinating free book, the ver iodide. But when Teparit sprinkled sil- agreed to let the reservoir project go ver iodide MASTERY OF LIFE. It casts amazing particles on the sweltering clouds through. The Communist leader—one of light upon these over Thailand, it things. Find new didn't work. He and his the few who has' not surrendered in the team pleasure then began months of exhaustive recent government amnesty—said he built and achievement in this tests, spraying clouds with a range of me In a house the woods that I can come unique knowledge. Use the coupon chemicals, from ammonium nitrate and urea to anytime I want." for your free copy or write Scribe. to calcium chloride and sodium chloride. But Teparit has no intention of retiring to Producing .rain in The the tropics began to seem a secret jungle retreat. He's hard at work ROSICRUCIANS [AMORCj impossible, until Teparit got an idea: The on his next project: using electricity to ex- San Jose. California 95191, U.S.A. warm, humid rains of Thailand usually come tract hydrogen from seawater. The electric from the sea; ' Scribe DLT perhaps chemicals from the current splits the water into its component

Rosicrucian Qrde ; sea i (AMORC) would produce the tropical rain. Fol- parts—hydrogen and oxygen. Some of the Rosicrucian Park lowing his hunch, Teparit had soon ex- hydrogen is then burned to create J more San Jose. Califor ia95191, tracted mineral i U.SA salts from seawater and electricity, and the rest can be used to fuel [ Gentlemen: sprinkled them on the clouds in experi- factories, autos, and homes. i Kindly send me a free copy of the MAS- i mental patterns. Down came the rain. It's been a long time since Teparit Mom 1 { TERY OF LIFE. am sincerely interested in His tropical rainmaking J system has re- got up on a brand-new t the International Har- mysteries of self aid of the Cosmic, i cently spread throughout Malaysia, Indo- vester tractor that was so big he couldn't l Namp nesia, the and Philippines. With an annual reach the clutch. But as he boards his 36- budget of million $2 as well as a fleet'of foot-long hydrogen-powered boat to cruise hily balloons and twin-engine Cessnas, ! Tepar- the Gulf of Thailand in search of energy, it Stale 7i it's Thai team [ r now works mostly during the seems that little has changed. DO Th» hfa& © ARTCUMINGS

One. thing about Vou can Spend youc "fcims- an artist eouway you like and u " u

it still beats working 9to5

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berty before boys do, their brains may have ferences in sex hcrmones and reproduc- n/iiruD less time to lateralize. tive functions." More important, she adds, Brains as well as bodies are shaped by one shouldn't misconstrue what sex-linked CONTINUED FROM PAGE .26 sex hormones; so a difference in special- brain differences mean. In itself laterali- cross-communication, her brain may be ization should not be at all surprising. If a zation says nothing about an individual's more balanced than a man's. In short, male rat is castrated at birth, for example, innate intelligence and mental capability. women's brains may be less lateralized, or his hypothalamus will develop into one that "We're talking about differences in the specialized in what they can do. resembles a female's. If a female rat is given way men and women screen information," researchers Some even argue that this the male hormone testosterone at birth, her De Lacoste explains. "Women seem to have could help explain why boys do better in hypolhalamus will take on male character- a bias toward picking up information pre- spatial-reasoning math and tasks involved istics. Remove her ovaries, the source of sented in a verbal fashion; men, in a visual- in but geometry have more trouble learn- the female hormones estrogen and pro- spatial way. Once information is selected, ing how to read. With less communication gesterone, and the female's cerebral cor- thdugh, their brains function in the same going on between their hemispheres, men !ex will become malelike. way with the same potential." have the may edge on women when it As De Lacoste points out, when the hu- Neither approach is better than the other, comes to who uses the right side of the man brain was evolving, males and fe- says Denmark. "It's assumed that if males brain exclusively. more males occupied different ecological niches. have more lateralization, then it's the thing In fact, several observations other than Female hominids gathered food and nur- to have. But you can interpret it another De Lacoste's suggest that the sexes are tured babies; males hunted. These activi- way. Perhaps women have larger areas of

not it created equal when comes to later- ties, each requiring different skills, could the brain from which to draw skills." alization. After a stroke has damaged the have put different adaptive pressures on Ultimately, both interpretations are equally brain's speech center, a woman is more brain development. Females, for example, irrelevant, she concludes. Why? Because apt to recover the ability to speak than a may have needed a more integrated un- when It comes to human behavior and in- man. In is theory, this because the other derstanding of the world, while males might telligence, biology is not destiny. "Regard- side of her brain can take over more easily. have required more specialized skills like less of structural differences, the cultural Another piece of evidence comes from what the ability to hold three-dimensidnal im- factors are enormous," explains De La- we know of human development. The ages in their minds (perhaps for mapmak- coste. Research shows that our genes may process of becoming lateralized begins in ing). Pressures like these, De Lacoste determine which sex hormones course the fetus. At what point lateralization be- speculates, may have been the environ- through our bodies, and those hormones gins is not clear, although in her study of mental forces that shaped women's brains may help sculpt our brains. But as De La- fetal brains, De" Lacoste struc- has found so that they became less lateralized. coste points out, it is the constant interplay tural differences in fetuses as young as 26 "Bui don't misunderstand," she adds. between this genetic potential and our en- weeks. this And process isn't finished until "We don't have two brains evolving sepa- vironment that defines our talents and abil- the onset of puberty. Since girls reach pu- rately, just one brain that reflects the dif- ities, and determines what we learn. DO LIFE CON TIM U ED FROM PAGE 20

information from sequencing laboratories around the world. His effort was officially IT lastyear when Los Alamos IS late WHAT sanctioned "Caviar in, caviar !3'ftK$i! ^H^^H^flfe and a corporate partner, the Cambridge ,$£' ' gT out." When it comes |Ej BB^^T^C consulting firm of Bolt Beranek and SE 'K; H H ^^fc to computer garne million : Newman, Inc.. were awarded a $3 ;I£ % fc^-M.^, software, this LHI the National Institutes of Health. contract by B ^^B ^^W adage fits only The Europeans, in the meantime, had 'V\ one brand. Because Infocom prose .games r-ri initiate your imag- launched their own sequence library in i rhihtiestoa lnatiomnr It' i i n i i l Heidelberg, Germany, and the Japanese |ll degree nothing else in so.Il ware approaches, instead of putting had also struck out on their own. "But tunny little arcade creatures on your screen, we put you inside our eventually," predicts Goad, "there will be If stories. And v/e confront vou ivith start". ingiy realistic environ- puzzles the just one international database, and ii !|| ments, alive with situations, persona Jt-es. and lorrical "" We've found logically that all the regional of which voi i won't find elsoAviiere.'i'he secret"- follows

... the way to pluji' our prose right into your imag- branches will carry identical data." ination, and catapult vou into a whole new Genbank is open to anyone for a nominal dimension. fee. "We play a primary role in helping to Step up to Infocom. All words. No keep the information accurate," says Goad. reaches of your pictures. The secret "That's why in spirit we wanted it made mind are beckoning. The next dimen- maximally available, as cheaply as possi- sion is in there waiting for you. ble." At present, 25 percent of Genbank's 150 clients come from industry, and another inFocom four or five users sign up every week. "We need reliable sequencing for all the work we're doing, from interferon synthe- sis to protein engineering." says Robert Schwartz, manager of computer program- ming at Genex Corporation, in Rockville, Maryland. 'At last the government is chipping in to help us out in a way the Japanese have been doing for themselves for years. " He also notes that the rapid influx of sequences has in turn necessitated the development of higher-level computer programs to search for data correlations that will lead to new discoveries. To biotechnologists. this resource repre- FOR veritable encyclopedia of genetic sents a cuisine. From computer terminals in their offices and laboratories, they will be able FUTURE REFERENCE to gain instant access to genetic recipes for numerous body chemicals from inter- feron to insulin and growth hormone. Alter- Moving? We need 4-6 weeks natively, researchers may make tiny alter- onnrui existing genetic codes to create notice 'of a change of address. Fill ations in Box 5700, Bergenfield. N.J. 07621 RO. proteins even whole organisms— never in the attached form. — before found In nature. "In the future," says or Renewal? New Subscription Christian Burks, a colleague of Goad's, "you is $24 One year of Omni in the U:S. could go to your black box, punch in the $34 in Canada and overseas. proper sequences, and out would come a Please enclose a cheGk or money bug capable of breaking down dangerous C J faddflSss. my new order for the appropriate amount chemicals. You could drop the bug in New and allow 6-8 weeks for delivery Jersey to clean up the place." No more farfetched, according to the Listing/ Unlisting Service? Omni Nome experts, is the prospect of mapping the' mokes the names and addresses locations of all the genes on man's 46 of its subsa iocs available to other mm* chromosomes. "Within our lifetime," publications and Outside com- forecasts Genex's Schwartz, "the entire

panies. The publications and City State. Zip genetic code of a human being will be companies selected are carefully stored on-line in a room that's filled with screened for their acceptability spinning disk drives—and it won't be a very

1 ' big room, either and quality of their offers. If you Attach- mailing label Just how this information will be used is would like your name removed anybody's guess. But it is certain to alter from this-mailing list please check how we view ourselves and perhaps even on tile the appropriate box genetic librarian Goad HSCA3 who we are. As coupon points out, "Genetic sequences are in some ways the ultimate data. "DO "

watch, but you'd better be ready when he FIL/ hits. The danger is that you'll be off when UtlUXK TilC hejs on." Lester encouraged this spon- CONTINUED FROM rv taneity from his performers by shooting r Unfortunately tor Superman, what does certain scenes only once, using several nmu develop is a bizarre personality change, cameras to cover each angle. caused of by a dose Gus Gorman's home- The release of Superman III coincides made kryptonite. The man ot steel, trans- with the character's fiftieth birthday, or font /hip into formed a drunken hooligan, must come Superman having been created in to grips with himself and then battle a su- Depression-ridden Ohio by two- teen-age percomputer (programmed to defend it- science-fiction fans, Jerry Siegel and Joe self SCWL at all costs) in a climactic, effects-filled, Schuster. An escapist and optimistic re- living video game. sponse to an era of hardship and the fear "I think this is probably the most tech- of war, Superman caught on faster than a nologically accomplished of the three speeding bullet after his initial comic-book films," Superman Reeve declares. "I over- appearance in 1938 and soon spread to saw a great deal of how the flying was to syndicated newspaper strips and radio. /UbUrtfflAL in be done, whereas the first two tilms I Film was the inevitable next step, and in recnniQue/ went along for the ride. We have shots in 1941 pioneer animators Max and Dave Stop Unwanted Habits — Lose Weight Superman III where I actually fly over real Fleischer earned an Academy Award Enjoy Better Health city traffic, about four feet above the deck. nomination for the first in their series of 17 With SCWL Subliminal Techniques you can Long flying shots over wheat fields and real color Superman theatrical cartoons. Accomplish your most desired goals quickly outdoor stuff. It's more ambitious, and yet, Through the years, the character ap- and simply whan you learn the truly remark- nci of new Behaylo/al Science I feel able pn ale these that the flying has gotten to the poinf peared in two movie serials, a feature film, Techniques. SCWL has now become the where it's so good you don't even notice a TV series, and a Broadway musical. choice of Doctors, Professional Athletes and it, which men and women from ail walks of life. Why? is the ultimate compliment. Peo- As the current keeper of the cape in this ple will see the film and take it for granted: latest and most ambitious series of Super- 'Oh yeah, Superman flies, of course.' man movies, Reeve suggests why the Richard Pryor, not generally noted for any character's popularity is stronger than ever. aerial abilities, was also required to be air- "Because he's such an accurate psycho- borne, making for some scary momenfs for logical model. He combines basic fantasy the comedian. Reeve explains: "I re- with everyday reality, and it's an unbeat- hearsed with Richard in the studio for a able combination. What person who faces SCWL TECHNIQUES couple of "YOUR KEY TO PERFECT MEMORY" days, taking him off the floor the nine-to-five world that we all live in has This SCWL Technique alone could pre slowly, first three feet, then five, and then not'dreamed of flying, power, and free- ten, and explained to 'fly,' how dom?" "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman" "But then the crew got him on the set at .by the voice of England's working class, eight in the morning, put the harness on, the Kinks, Is one of several recent pop and suddenly he was dangling on wires songs inspired by this universally recog- from a crane outdoors. They whipped him nized icon. Cliches about X-ray vision and GAIN TOTAL CONTROL Relieve Stress - Overcome Norvousne up to sixty feet without any preparation. undressing in phone booths are familiar to Become Mora Self -Confident Those construction cranes look flimsy; they us all, as is the encapsulated S insignia, a

don't look It solid. was not a kind thing to motif seen frequently in the mass media. do to him. They should have eased him "Superman is a strong visual represen- Into it. But the scene called for him to be tation of a thought common to every citizen terrified. The unit knew that he was safe, of Western culture. Namely, How do I func- and they decided to capture that real fear. tion individual as an in a society where I Richard Lester is big on that. No one feel like was a mouse? USE THE MOST in danger at any time, but they could have "However, we mustn't pump this up into POWERFUL SOURCE been more courteous to Pryor." being pseudomythoiogy," Reeve cau-

; - : 0;-;; ; : ::: Tll-.'i liji i! ::: I ?: i" '. i l-iSriiOOiJi ' Although the v i combination ot Richards tions. "Superman should be left up on the ensures that there is plenty of comedy in screen or on the page. The questions that !. SCWL Techniques simply releas Superman III, the atmosphere on the set people have come up with about the sym- "not was a nonstop party," according to bolism of Superman are really quite fright- Reeve, "It was professional, it was eco- ening. Religious figures have called me up nomical, as opposed to what Richard Don- and asked if I'm aware of the responsibil- OUR BOOK IS FREE ner did on the first movie. Donner luxu- ities of being a contemporary Christ figure. riated, did a lot of scene painting (the Hey, I'm an actor from New Jersey; I can't Cheerios on the breakfast table, the unlim- be responsible for that." ited horizon of wheat fields), and then would Though proud of his work as Superman, gradually let thing each go and move on. the Princeton native feels it's time to move Lester is not that way. Superman III is closer on. "You can't get stuck on any one thing MIDWEST RESEARCH to the U second movie. We were moving so in life. They're planning Supergirl now, and fast that when a shot was over, everyone's we had long talks about how much money

mind was on the next thing. Pryor picked it would take me to do Superman IV, but I that up technique. He got to the point said, 'Don't bother' Money can't buy sat- quickly, and many things were the first take. isfaction, and I've got to do movies I'm Sometimes, though, he can be fishing for happy with. I don't want the Superman films two or three-takes and then suddenly get to become formulaic. Each of them stands it. He's like a flat stone skipping over water; its on own two teet. I hope Superman III the stone will bounce several times before makes it— It's two hours where you can it goes in. That skipping stone is fun to check your problems at the door. "DO s — ruEXT orinrui s msm ffi sonalmsmtragedies It —and to give a prize lo the v

Of all the people striking matches today, rv >ws more about flames than Norman CI 10 this fluid dynamicist from Pitts- , according lie-Mellon University, com'

y. Chigier penetrates the with everything in the high- high-speed photography,

J this great quest lor flame in September's Omni.

out of a dawn sky, SOVIET SHUTTLE? ng craft soared neraiuuiyiu, return from orbit with a $

( reentry and then — :ili glowing with the heat rf .' l..-.:V, j said it was splashed intc i the Indian Ocean. Somt version f the space a prototype i if the Russian o flight shuttle. But v;as it really? Careful anal ysis of

the Russians were actually testing, g, a veteran observer of the Soviet am, explores Ihe mystery in Omni.

may be beautiful, but bigger is better to those accustomed to thinking on a cosmic scale.

Europe io the United States, a new Great Lake custom-built to supply most of North America's water, a vehicle that carries ships over dry land from one body of water to another. This is the stuff of which engineer's dreams are made, and \s VI

ibes some of the colossal projt tcts that are litvithin our power. Also in this issue, you'll how advanced mind-training techniques are helping athletes reach their peak-performance ore consistently. And you will get a look at Herman Kahn, one of versial and radical thinkers of and head of the prestigious Hu tank, Kahn for the Nineties (CPU) to link a few large memory areas ing about a supercomputer irUTELLIEEfUCE with input and output devices. But com- that, he hopes, will handle one trillion op- puter gurus now recognize that future ma- erations per second. all the atoms will require a wholly new architec- How long will it take to count house, will get its own Cray computer to chines in the universe? With new supercomputers generate full-screen simulations. ture. The problem is that the supercomputer are get. It like those Cray and the Japanese Creating screen-wide computer graph- CPU has gotten as fast as it can now represents a bottleneck, a limit on how fast working on, a few seconds should do it. ics, believe it or not, takes as many as 5.76 handle information. billion calculations for each second of film. new computers can consensus among computer experts Digital Productions has a contract to pro- "The NEW WARES: HARD AND SOFT further gains to be obtained duce 30 to 40 minutes of simulations for is that, despite materials and As computer components keep gelting the upcoming film Starfighter. Without the through the use of new smaller, companies are mixing them to- Cray, the work would take years; with the smaller machine geometry, Von Neumann the limits of gether in ever more versatile combina- help of the computer, the special effects machines are approaching example, says a report in Science. tions. Novation's new Intone, for will be ready in a few months. performance," next su- merges several pieces of electronic gear Considering their power, today's super- The leading candidate for the with a modem, a device to connect your computers look remarkably simple. A typ- percomputer generation is a configuration parallel circuits." The computer to another or to a database. The ical Cray-1 is a circle of six-foot-high mem- called "massively also includes a telephone, a full key- processing units surrounded by a system links thousands of memory cells unit ory and 40- of small processing com- board, a hookup for pay phones, and a couchlike semicircle. It looks a bit like a with thousands could character display board— all in a 2.5-pound high-tech Stonehenge. The circular form is puters on a chip. Such a machine hardcover novel. handle thousands of operations at the same package smaller than a more than decorative. It ensures that no for untold billions per second, a Infone is a portable terminal designed wire in the Cray is longer than three feet. instant and can do use by business people on the road. It can The shorter the wires, the faster the com- step beyond what supercomputers are con- connect computer to computer or voice to puter can move electronic bits about. Buf now. This is where the Japanese voice through any telephone line, or store the Cray's denseness produces thou centrating their efforts. * Midwest, Cray information from a database. And it can sands of degrees of heat, enough to mell Meanwhile, back in the record voice and text on an optional tape an uncooled computer. That's where the Research appears unfazed by the pres- Ox- Japanese "got our attention," a cassette. ($945, from Novation, 18664 couch comes in: It hides powerful refrig- sure. The "Cray Re- nard Street, Tarzana, CA 91356.) erators that remove heat. Cray spokesman says airily, but Despite these futuristic trappings, the search is dedicated to one proposition: to most pow- Biomechanist Gideon Ariel, whose dig- architecture of the Cray—and of most ex- continue to provide the fastest, world," itized models of athletes in action were isting computers— is based on the ven- erful machines in the think- among the earliest fusions of computing erable ideas of John von Neumann, one of "I do tend to look forward in my sport, has created the first complete computerdom's founding fathers. Today's ing," says Seymour Cray, "and I don't like and computerized exercise system: the Ariel. computers use a central processing unit to rest on my laurels." He is currently mus- The system looks like a common Nautilus or Cybex multipurpose exercise unit, but a computer controls the weights' speed, force, direction, angle, and many other

variables. Digital control makes it possible to preprogram complicated patterns into the weights. The company reports that even the motions of great athletes can be digi- tized, then used as templates for someone working out on the Ariel. A monitor above the exerciser's head can display menus, performance charts, comparisons with other exercisers, or diagnostic reports on training effects. (Ariel Computerized Ex- ercisers, Inc., 22000 Plan Trabuco Road, Trabuco Canyon, Coto de Caza, CA 92678.)

The 21 -inch screen of a new arcade game displays scenes of Dirk the Daring, a val- iant knight who is subject to attack by a giant chicken foot, goblins, an acid crea- ture, slime, and geysers, among other nuisances. The scenes have the perspec- tive and color of an animated cartoon fea- ture. But for 50 cents, players change the course of the adventure, moving Dirk around with a joystick and making his sword slash with the push of a button. The secret of the high-quality artwork is a computer-con- trolled laser video-disc system that stores some 50,000 drawings by Don Bluth Ani- mation, which produced the movie The Se- cret of NIMH. The game, called Dragon's Lair, can last up to 20 minutes depending on how skilled players area! cheating death. (Don Bluth Animation, 12229 Ventura Bou- levard, Studio City, CA 91604.) DO hippopotamuses and crocodiles edge into National Museums of Kenya notes, "Fire whitecaps. EXPLORMTIOfUS does not appear to have been used for the annex museum ai Turkana is CONTINUED FROM P' domestic purposes." The small exceptional, with a life-size re-creation of explore, it is only natural to spec- cavate. Littered among the fossil remains As you had a hominid campsite, complete with model thousands of ulate on how you might have behaved of giant baboons, they found fossilized settings. residents. Nearby is a complete with chop- you lived in those times, in these tear-shaped hand axes, along of Leak- from the excava- elephant and the active dig sites scrapers, cleavers, and variations in Consider the evidence pers, "hominid gang," a fleel of fossil hunt- tions, read Richard Leakey's Origins and ey's all which are on view at Olor- between— of the National Museums of Ardrey's classic African Genesis, ers employed by gesailie today. These tools were probably Robert con- Kenya. Turkana is the home of 1470 (Handy vegetables, and and observe the people of Africa who used to dig tubers, pound don't feel are Man), and if you go there and ba- tinue to rely on their environment. They extract marrow, since the bones of the have come home, of plant and animal thaf somehow you too boons were found smashed. But of course attuned to the patterns you'll be the first.- life and the seasons of few and plenty. And is conjecture. that Africa, when modern times will seem they know how to balance them out, how After Richard Leakey, whose seven-part BBC might con- bird that a little—well—modern, you Of Mankind to recognize the call of a certain television series The Making past. You can instance. sider keeping abreast of the the United States, cautions. warns a predator is near, for will soon air in of the Foundation for Fire, which was become a member always be careful to indicate to Buoyed by Ouesr for "One must the Origin of Man (FROM). in the Great Rift Valley, Research into reader or your viewer the transition filmed on location your Interim Evidence newsletter offers think of the evolution of the wink. FROM's think. We're I like to from what you know to what you notices of opponent, even an an- updates on discoveries and behavior or language, be- In staring down an not sure about and the foundation's re- blink shows vulnerability. stateside lectures, fossilize. What is certain imal, the first to cause they don't search-sponsor membership lets you ear- form- Vulnerability equals trust, and today a wink is that there was social cooperation, for specific secret My hy- mark substantial donations bands, making tools. That this indicates a shared trust, a ing hunting and receive personal reports from pothesis may not be correct, but it's healthy projects I think, is required some form of language, also evolved, the participating scientists. FROM can quite probable that our to consider how things began and very likely. It is also lour of the typical of what this arrange for a behind-ihe-scenes immediate hominid ancestors had the sort and such conjecture is Institute for members who travel to journey inspires. Leakey life-style that we see in contemporary of For those who prefer still more The greatest leap of imagination occurs Kenya. hunter-gatherer societies." conjunction time, at guidance, British Airways, in there are other dig farther north and further back in North by northwest, tour operators souvenir of the with Abercrombie & Kent— Hyrax Hill near Lake Turkana, a diminishing sites: at Lake Turkana, at designed a "sa- of raw, wind- based in Chicago—has Kariendusi. At the lat- Nile surrounded by a land Lake Nakuru, and at features visits "jade fari into prehistory," which are from swept beauty. Known as the sea" ter, many of the hand axes made in- waters, the lake to important dig siies. The itinerary volcanic glass. Regard- because of its algae-rich obsidian, a black Leakey-led lour of the a group of stone-walled cludes a Richard the behavior of the people who lived at is overlooked by ing Nairobi National Museum, a visit to Olor- cliff, from which you can watch Kariendusi, a brochure prepared by the bandas on a gesailie, and an option to explore the home of 1470. at Koobi Fora. Game drives in Am- boseli and Masai Mara afford a chance to observe such creatures as the black rhi- noceros, virtually unchanged for millions of years. scientist with a valid If you are a qualified research proposal approved by the Ken- yan government, the Leakey Institute will allow you to study its fossil collection. And should you like a fiberglass reproduction of a fossil for an exhibit, a lecture, or simply of to keep you company, the department paleontology will provide a good facsimile (post- of, say, 1470, for approximately $100 age is not included). Africa, there are If you can't make it to many dig siies in fhe United States and Europe to visit. People are digging every- where—and rightly so. As Richard Leakey notes, "Our future lies in understanding what sort of animal we are. "DO

For more information, contact: Kenya National Museums P.O. Box 40658 Nairobi, Kenya

FROM 382 Springfield Avenue Summit, NJ 07901

Abercrombie & Kent/British Airways Safari Into- Prehistory 1000 Oak Brook Road Oak Brook, IL 60521 Phone: (BOO) 325-7308 PHEfUDnJlErUM

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By Charles Koltz

long theorized that a meteoroid could Scientific discovery so Often meteorites with comets and asteroids formation of smash into the surface of a planet with involves a marriage of hard work debris left over from the enough force to scatter pieces of the and coincidence. Such a the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. But EETA planet millions of miles off into space. The marriage was certainly at work in the radioactive dating showed that comparative adolescent at problem was, they had no evidence case of two meteorites collected from the 79001 was a rock appeared that any such thing had actually happened. frozen landscape of Antarctica. 1.3 billion years old. The formed in a And that is where specimen ALHA After long odysseys through space to be volcanic and to be atmosphere. These findings 81005 comes in. In January 1982 an from celestial bodies millions of miles place with an Antarctic expedition led by geologist it from a planet, apart, the two meteorites landed on Earth indicated had come William Cassidy, of the Universiiy of Pitts- a iew miles from each oiher. Now their not a comet or asteroid. Scientists felt chip off the burgh, found a piece of greenish-brown destinies have intertwined. The two objects that the exotic 'visitor was a Planet. "That rock just smells breccia (a lump of compacted and are the first meteorite samples that can Red University of scorched soil] weighing 31 grams. Its be positively linked to specific space like Mars" is the way distinctive color and appearance Minnesota physicist Robert Pepin put it. bodies. One meteorite, it seems, comes that supported that feeling. immediately suggested to the group from the moon, and the other is sus- -O'ther studies 180 million years they had bagged something special, pected to be a piece of Mars. They showed that some dislodged Intense scrutiny by 20 different research Both alien rocks were collected during .ago a violent shock EETA drove teams confirmed that suspicion. At meteorite hunt in Antarctica. 79001 from its parent body and an annual Center the surrounding atmosphere Washington University's McDonnell There, fallen meteorites lie on the ground gases from Louis, melt pockets of the rock. These for the Space Sciences, in St. a in clusters, churned to the surface by into tiny Pepin and test for 33 elements pinpointed ALHA action and preserved in near- gases, when examined by glacial moon. When he others, were strikingly similar to those in 81005's origin as the pristine condition. It was also in Antarctica combined his information with that of his that, four years ago, a scientific the Martian atmosphere. good reason for colleagues, recalled McDonnell Center expedition found what is officially But there was also Fellow Larry Haskin, there was one group designated EETA 79001, a peculiar 17.5- doubt. How could scientists explain the conclusion: "It's virtually unequivocal pound grayish-brown rock. appearance of a piece of Mars on the that this is a piece of lunar rock." Planetologists usually associate surface of the earth? Planetologists had The space rocks have already inspired some cosmic speculation. Laurence Nyquist, of NASAs Planetary and Earth Sciences Division, theorizes that a meteoroid slammed into Mars, simulta- neously knocking free chunks of the planet's surface and quickly melting the subsurface permafrost, generating a burst of steam. The combined force of the impact and the burst of steam, suggests Nyquist, could have been enough to propel material into space. Planetologists have also been specu- lating about where the moon rock ALHA 81005 could have come from. Larry Haskin, University of New Mexico geologist Richard Klaus, and others think the rock came from the far side of the moon. What these discoveries have given us is a new technique'for doing an Earth- based study of our planetary neighbors. They've also shown that the expeditions to Antarctica have been a bonus for the space program. As NASA astrogeol- ogist Bevan French observes, each find is worth "a free landing mission. "DO wofa meteorite: Finds iike this can few trips to space. The hollow Earth: a maddening theory that can't be disproved

By Scot Morris

quarters and, of course, brought no Miss Hedwig We are sorry to report that bouncing baby Koreshans into the fold. months ago. at age Michel died a tew But Teed was a very persuasive orator. For the last 12 years ot her lite, she ninety. When he died in 1908, his community member of one was the sole surviving had over 200 members, most of them bizarre religious cults of all of the most female. They were so devoted to him that over a century ago by a time, founded they kept the group alive through two never met. When I last talked to man she world wars and continued to. recruit new her in 197B, she was still a believer. members. Miss Michel joined when she for If there were a hall of fame native was about fifty, after fleeing her Cyrus Teed pseudoscientists, surely Germany during the Nazi terrors. At the would deserve a place of honor. It was members. By [i me jhere were about 30 Civil War that Teed had his shortly after the 1961 there were only four left, and they hollow sphere, vision: The earth is a turned over the 300-acre settlement of in inside it. Everything else and we live Gulf Coast land to the state of Florida to planets, the universe is in here with us— become Koreshan State Historic Park. everything. What's comets, stars— Miss Michel lived on the grounds and the sphere? Nothing. outside told visitors that she still believed. Missile cosmology had a particular Teed's flights and rockets to the moon hadn't religious fundamentalists. It appeal to changed her mind—all such events were earth important again, rather made the either hoaxes or had occurred inside than insignificant speck in the cosmos. an the shell. Until she died she remained a the difficult concepts And it eliminated staunch advocate of one of the most aimlessly scattered of infinite space and absurd the ories ever proposed. worlds. We're all right here together in TURNED OUTSIDE-IN this safe, spherical womb. THE WORLD changed his name to In 1870 Teed What's most infuriating is that a little Hebrew for Cyrus) and Koresh (ancient mathematical fiddling turns this crazy a cult. At its peak in the Nineties started theory into a proposition that is virtually (pronounced kor-ESH-an) the Koreshan impossible to refute. The trick is done movement had some 4,000 Unity by inversion, a purely geometric established a religious/ followers. Teed transformation that lets a mathematician scientific community a few miles south of turn shapes inside-out. When a sphere founded Fort Myers, Florida, and there is is inverted, every point outside mapped town of Estero. He was determined to the to a'corresponding point inside, and his theory scientifically prove vice versa. launched his own geodetic survey and The geometry is quite simple. If a in do just that. Using his 1897 to sphere's center is C and its radius is r, a set of double-T squares 'rectiiineator," then every outside point P maps to an of large logs, he projected a CP' &. made Top and bottom: C>t;js Teed's "iocte/s of the inside point P' such that CP x = horizontal line until his calculations inversion hollow Earth. Center: Geometric In the illustration we show how to that it would plunge into the heavenly bodies indicated brings the moon and all other project an outer moon (not to scale) to an Mexico, four miles from its starting womblike Earth. Gulf of safe/y inside the inner one. Consider A (for Neil Armstrong), proof that the point This was Teed's moon's surface that is The Nazis entertained many occult the point on the earth's surface is concave and that his closest to the earth, which is distance A the theories in their quest for world rectiiineator line had intersected center. The inner one of them. away from the earth's curve. domination, and Teed's was earth's upward located on the line such that At one point a Nazi expedition went to point A' is The scientists had gotten everything distances CA mission: to get secret the product of the two force, not the Isle of Man. Its backward: It js centrifugal equals the earth's radius of the United States by and CA' keeps our feet planted on . photographs gravity, that squared. Here's a good way to visualize aiming its powerful telescopes up. the ground. The sphere is about 25,000 (on the sun, it: any outside point P Koreshanity was a strictly celibate For around, just as the scientists say. miles Pluto, or Cygnus X, for example), draw through order Husbands and wives who joined or China is about 8,000 miles away, that has CP as its diameter. From group thenceforth lived in separate a circle the earth's center— straight up. the 12B OMNI one of the two points where this circle keeping his theory irrefutable. intersects the earth, draw line WHAT AM IBID? a The centrifugal-force idea is demon- perpendicular to CP The intersection strably false. If it were so, there would be Last month we explained the rules of point is the location of P'. two points on the earth's surface where Dollar Auction and asked you to imagine By far the largest celestial body in our the force disappeared— along the axis of how a typical game might go. Briefly: inverted is Earth the moon: a bit over spin. It is gravity of a peculiar kind You offer to sell a dollar to the highest half a mile in diameter and some 3,933 that pulls us all to the outside. Teed's bidder. Bids must be in increments of miles above our heads. The sun's sphere rectilineator experiment must have five cents, and a 30-second time limit is is only eight feet across. The stars are been in error. A line that appears horizontal placed on each bid. There is microscopic this spots clustered around the actually curves in the toward center provision: You will collect from (a) the center, which is. of course, infinity. and so gets farther and farther "above" highest bidder and (b) the second- Is there any way to prove that we aren'f the surface. highest bidder. inside a hollow Earth? We asked H.S.M. Teed would have embraced Einstein's Martin Shubik, the Yale economist Coxeter, who mathematics professor at the view of a finite, bounded universe in invented the game, tells us that "in a University of Toronto and an expert on which light travels in circles and eventually typical auction you can sell a dollar for inversion geometry. "I can't think of returns to its starting point. infinitely An three or four dollars —sometimes even five any," he said. "A rocket flight, an eclipse, powered telescope aimed straight up, dollars or more." The game works a Foucault best pendulum, a Coriolis effect- Einstein said, will eventually produce a in a party setting, with six or more any observation we can make on the view of the other side of the earth. That persons. Usually, several people bid at outside of the earth has an exact duplicate idea might seem paradoxical to most the start, then all but two drop out. Two version inside. There would be no way of us, but it would have been intuitively "aha!" experiences occur along the to tell which was the truth." obvious to Cyrus Teed. way. The first is at a bid of about 55 cents, Just as the geometry of space inverts, Finally, we like to think that Teed would when bidders realize that the auctioneer so do all the laws of physics. Toward have applauded the space program. is going to make more than his dollar. The the center of a hollow Earth, light slows We can imagine him driving the 175 miles second occurs close to the dollar mark, down and everything shrinks—atoms, across Florida, from Estero to Cape as players understand that they are astronauts, no spaceships, and measuring Kennedy, to watch the 1969 launch of longer trying to maximize wins but to rods. Light travels in circular paths, Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins and to the minimize losses. ("I just heard myself bid producing some weird (but lawful] optical moon. After all, this would be the farthest a dollar and five cents for a dollar!" said effects. Astronauts on the moon looked in toward Earth's center that anyone one startled player. "What am I doing?"} back on what they thought was a blue had ever gone. A truly historic event. After this point, the bidding usually sphere in the distance. Actually it was the As if to commemorate Hedwig Michel, slows down drastically— that inside is, each bid of the earth's shell, through sight the Australian journal Speculations in takes close to the 30-second time limit. lines that flared like the bell of a trumpet, Science and Technology has published Also at this point, bidders producing realize that the the illusion of a sphere. The an article by Mostafa A. Abdelkader, auctioneer is not only going to make optical distortion is something like the of Alexandria, Egypt, that considers in all twice his money but is going to make wide-angle view through a fisheye lens. seriousness the proposal that we really more than twice his money because As look both we to the sky and the horizons, are in a hollow Earth. Abdelkader says that bidders are in so deep they don't know our visual field is within a sphere some the only way to test the theory's validity how to get out. Psychiatrists have 4,000 miles in diameter. Celestial bodies is to drill a tunnel straight through the studied Dollar Auction as a model that of revolve around the earth's center earth Until such an experiment is such destructive behaviors as addiction appear to "rise" and "set" as they enter performed, he writes, "it . . seems . that and escalation. or leave that sphere. the odds are strongly in favor of [a hollow There are three strategies, Shubik Earth] THE THEORY UPDATED being our actual universe." says. Either collude with another player (for example, stop Cyrus Teed the bidding at 25 said that the moon is an A good introduction to inversion cents and split the proceeds); be the illusion, that gravity is really centrifugal geometry appears in Geomefry Revisited auctioneer; or stay out of the game force, and that a horizontal line on the by H.S.M. Coxeter and S. L. Greitzer altogether. Collusion works only if other earth's surface eventually intersects (Mathematical Association of America). bidders don't spoil it; auctioneering the earth's upward curvature. We like to Information about Teed and his cult may works only if collusion doesn't. II you want think that if he were alive today he would be obtained by sending a stamped, to conduct your own Dollar Auction, junk some of his earlier predictions to self-addressed envelope to The Koreshan we recommend that you do so at a party conform to inversive geometry, thereby Unity, Box 97, Estero, 33928. FL that is almost over anyway. DO r r-i- e who I englble for membership those 'Sman"-- Join V,ensa. ' 'he ad read. was even find sitting in a tepid bath and reading the do not join us., who do not tunny! Densa, alter ail. is not a partic- London. Times,, and -I hated-.the implication us idea even less so if you ; ularly clever that, because ! was smart, should join an organization ihal seemed to name have to pay to join. car pin Densa? There- is no test, . itself after the- Latin wore 'or table Mien Who 7 ,: of appli- an loea was born. "Stupid Join Densa, ! no elaborate examination an cant's intelligence -such as Mensa. requires. I spat and within minutes was planning . details of a new organization to combat A simple statement of Idiocy wi;; go. loimng intellectual- arrogance. Founded on- the Some, however find the Moors of simple belief that to be bright and to join' "more difficult than others. Witness the

Viensa is n-oi to oe wholly br-gh;. Densa ma; set out to provide the intellectually his name at the top o; his otter each disadvantaged with a platform from time. He realized his rnisiake only when nailona! which, to proclaim: our manifesto. he heard himself mentioned en indeed. As :.-. as'-difch eifori to secure peace radio. A welcome member oi mind for those who were iale' to become Not everyone has been accepted by

: - the relec'lon 'offes members. of Densa,,! telephoned the . . Densa. Some o breakfast; reading Mensa offices in- England. Explaining hdw probably make' nasty from rial a friend of mine was. by liie-r definition, for the aspiring idiot, rejected or one ciub he was sure he could join thick (he had, I toid them. an. i.Q. of 30

I. his returned check torn neatly info so) ! suggested thai pemaps he arc in c ever 1 a group ooufd add together two our intelligence ciuoher.ts and apply for dismissal to underscore the fact that price n some sort o' joint membership While the even the densest have the- and 'person at the 'other end of' the 'telephone will not be bought at.any.cosL went off to inquire whethe' they accepted, On the- whole,' Densa has succeeded has failed... To the. best entrants on ihe.se terms, I quietly where Mensa

.:':: ,.'. of our knowledge, no one in Mensa has WJDRD I .'mod has humble roots, an I.Q. of greater than 200, a figure By Nigel Hooks -.'."Although Dehs.a ! ' ' :- '.' i ;.; ,i. .. . . ! it has now matured. It.asserts that societies where the chte'ffin 'or achievement Quietly members of Densa QWno can join Densa? of 'people membership is a common attribute very revel in the attainment of a con-Lined There is no quickly become tokenis: pressure g-oups. I.Q. of several hundreds oi points. In the of member, "When we reach elaborate examination of for example; "Lefl-Handed Lesbians; words one Against the Bomb." Does one jo n such a a million., then we can start to think."

' an applicant's society because of one's oexteious. In the end, is there -any point to these " Reading through the intelligence tike Mensa's. A sexual, ci societies at all? criteria? British Mensa Newsletter, one finds it simple statement can satisfy only two of the throe There : s always somef.hng sinister difficult to get very excited by its contents of idiocy will suffice* about these groups because the qualifi- There are the usual pleas for money newsletter, cations for members are defined first one could find in any parish are filled and the aims thrust upon them only later. and the advertisement columns thai thirty might Yet, a lot of es. with suggestions "Male, This has been Dome cut by the large do well with female, twenty-one, similar rvurnoe;' of applications Densa receives interests," whatever they are, from people who' have been' rejected Mensa, nevertheless, remains an enigma by 'Mensa. While' they are usually gently to many people. Who'are these Mehsans.,-"

' accepted into our flock itiese iailees, and..' what do they do? Very few know, fear coming '.0 us on an emotlcr-ai rebound but hundreds seem to them, or see iron- Mensa, are riot really the stuff for them as pitiful souls to ridicule. Does-

whom Densa was originally intended Mensa. serve any purpose? Does Densa, . is But leaving aside this inquiry info the • in opposing it? The answer probably sort of people who start societies, what i But becoming, accomplishing sort of person applies-. to Densa? We-now a member of Densa and something ;s surely Better than becoming . have members on five continents, but

:; amerriber..of Mensa arid doing' nothing . being. an inte eo;ua io:Ke c" sorts 'albeit

' not-of aparte-HaMy hgh caliber) Densa at all: All that can be concluded is that

. I! 'seems to have little. appeal to the thick-- .

deal • even less than fviensa has tor the bright. .- select group.and, at $1-5, a good

Consequently one o ho more gh'hoa'te; cheaper to join-iOCI .

aspects of Densa is that it is fu-l of Nigel Hocks m rrre icuncsr g.-id guiding ik&i of :-..->;. Mm. (A society ''of the stupid f'uii oi inteiiiger people":' What sort of success is that?) Densa Is not universally loved. Some in jnpaiataPle, even obno>;- Perhaps those individuals most