Editor's Notes

– FOUNDATION NEWS. We are pleased to report that the Reason Foundation has now completed its organizing phase and is beginning full-scale operations. Our Educational Programs Director is Tibor R. Machan, on leave from his philosophy professorship at SUNY Fredonia. Under Machan's direction, the Foundation's first-year academic program will include two major conferences and the awarding of up to five research fellowships'"funds permitting. The Foundation is also launching a series of Reason Monographs and is taking over publication of Reason Papers, which is to be issued annually.

The Foundation has been set up as a membership organization; present REASON subscribers are automatically members. You will very shortly be receiving a letter describing our plans in some detail and soliciting your support. Donations to the Foundation are tax-deductible, and the deadline for making such contributions is December 31, for the 1978 tax year. If you would like to help in the very important work of strengthening the philosophical foundations of a free society, contributing to the Reason Foundation is one of the best ways of doing so.

– PUBLICITY. Yet another REASON article has been selected for wider distribution. James R. Dunn's "Back to the Land: Environmental Suicide" is being reprinted by the New England office of the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Mines. They plan to distribute it to college students and other groups where representatives of their office are invited to give talks. Teachers: if you would like to order copies of REASON in bulk for classroom use, we can make them available at cost. Please write for details.

– STAFF CHANGE. We bid farewell to Brickbats columnist Bill Birmingham, who has gone to work for Libertarian Review. Taking Bill's place, effective this month, is Thomas Winslow Hazlett. Tom is experienced as a publicist and radio commentator and is currently pursuing graduate studies in economics at UCLA.

– NOTICE. REASON has learned that the information comprising the article "Slashing Taxes Is Good for What Ails Us" by Christopher Weber, appearing in our November issue, was derived from Jude Wanniski's recent book The Way the World Works. Nowhere in the article does Weber mention Wanniski's book as the source of his material. We wish to take this opportunity to set the record straight and to offer our apologies to Mr. Wanniski. Moreover, we encourage all of you to go out and buy his book'"it's a very worthwhile and thought-provoking volume, as Alan Reynolds pointed out in his review last month.

– EDITORS' ACTIVITIES. REASON's editors continue their very busy schedule of writing and speaking. Robert Poole, Jr.'s article "How to Break Up OPEC: Myths and Realities of Natural Gas Pricing," coauthored with Carlos Henkel, appeared in the October issue of the Freeman. His "Hidden Perils in Government Support of Space Activities" was published in World Research INK's September issue. Earlier this year, that publication reprinted from REASON Poole's article on the Scottsdale, Arizona, private fire department. That led to a long telephone interview with Norm Gorin, a producer for CBS-TV's "60 Minutes." And that, in turn, led to a "60 Minutes" story on the innovative company, aired November 5, just before election day. And Poole's Trends column from REASON is now being reprinted in the Enterprise, a Salt Lake City business newspaper.

Senior Editor Tibor Machan has recently participated in the Liberty Fund's conference "Toward Liberty: A Reevaluation of the Philosophical Bases and Constitutional Design of the Free Society." The ten-day seminar was addressed, alternately, by Jonathan R.T. Hughes, Shirley Robin Letwin, William Niskanen, James Buchanan, and Gordon Tullock. Machan reviewed Robert Heilbroner's Beyond Boom and Crash for Barron's (October 2,1978). His "Some Normative Considerations of Deregulation" appears in the Fall 1978 issue of the Journal of Social and Political Studies. He wrote the introduction to LibertyClassics' new edition of Herbert Spencer's The Principles of Ethics. And he contributed the essay "Reason, Morality, and the Free Society" to Law and Liberty: Essays on F.A. Hayek, edited by Robert L. Cunningham and published (December) by Texas A&M University Press. In addition, Machan read a paper entitled "Naturalism, Values, and the Social Sciences" at the Third International Wittgenstein Symposium, held this summer at Kirchberg-am-Wechsel in Austria.