In an episode of the 1950s TV show Superman, a school bus full of kids is threatened with disaster as it nearly topples over a cliff, when whoosh the Man of Steel flies in and pushes the bus to safety. That was the fantasy that Geoffrey Canada, the South Bronxbred boy who became a Harvard-trained education entrepreneur, hoped for as a child
Tag Archives: 1950s
Tree Believer: Terrence Malick’s Cinematic Vision
YOUTH: The Return of the Gang
Among the phenomena of the 1950s was the rise of the violent urban gangs with their freewheeling, sometimes lethal “rumbles” in protection of their “turf.” By the mid-'60s, gangs seemed to be on the wane, their vital energies either drawn into the protest movements of that era or sapped by the burgeoning drug culture.
Nuclear Batteries
Nuclear-powered cars! airplanes! Fridges and freezers! In the heady days of the early 1950s at the dawn of the civilian nuclear power age and President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program nuclear optimists imagined a world powered by tiny nuclear reactors. Today, in an era of climate change and energy insecurity, the nuclear industry is dusting off some of those old dreams.
Bedbug Outbreak: Grim Summit on How to Fight Infestation
D.C.’s Metro Rail Crash and America’s Aging Transit System
Investigators are still sorting through the wreckage of Monday’s crash of two Metro rail cars in Washington, D.C., the deadliest in the system’s 33-year history, which killed nine people and injured scores of others. Federal officials said on Tuesday that the train that rear-ended another was an older model that lacked equipment that might have helped avert the collision and, according to the Washington Post, had been overdue for needed brake work