AfFordability

One of the best reasons to belong to Sigma Xi is the subscription to American Scientist that comes with membership. One of the best reasons to read American Scientist is Henry Petroski's regular column on engineering. (Petroski is one of the reasons I became interested in the history of technology; his The Evolution of Useful Things is packed with unexpected information.)

Petroski's latest column is devoted to the development of the Interstate Highway System. Many people are familiar with Eisenhower's big push for the system, so as to expedite the movement of the military coast to coast. But (says Petroski) the first proposal in that direction was made by Carl Fisher (offhandedly identified as the "builder of a motor speedway on the outskirts of Indianapolis") in 1913, who suggested a "coast-to-coast rock highway" to run from Times Square to Golden Gate Park. Then comes the following interesting passage:

Fisher proposed that the rock highway be funded by "automobile barons" like Henry Ford, but Ford opposed the idea, arguing that if private industry began to pay for good roads the government would never be expected to do so.

I believe the phrase is "moral hazard"...

The Modern Mainstream

I'm not sure what prompted me to compile this list. I was thinking about modern mainstream literature, and  the extent to which I'm qualified to judge the "greatness" of works that I've read. My thought was that I'm really not particularly qualified, because I haven't read all that much of it. The ordinologist in me struck, and I decided to compile a list of modern mainstream novels that I've read. The restrictions were as follows. First, I'm restricting to novels, just for convenience. With a few exceptions, I excluded genre novels - science fiction, fantasy, Western, mystery, espionage, romance, and historical fiction. I used 1900 as a convenient cutoff date, and, for certainty's sake, stuck to books that I actually have. This last knocks out only a handful of books that I read, but did not like sufficiently to buy.

Anyway, for anyone who's interested, here's the full list.
( The Modern Mainstream )

Hmmm. That's more than I'd thought, but it's still not a lot, and quite a few major authors are missing altogether.