Editor's Notes

– BUSY EDITORS. The editors of REASON continue their hectic pace of speaking and writing. Messrs. Klausner, Machan, and Poole attended the biennial general meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in September (see p. 58), where they met with advocates of liberty from around the world.

Senior editor Tibor Machan had just returned from Austria, where he presented a paper at the Fifth Wittgenstein Symposium. His Op-Ed page article on the Polovchak case (the boy who refused to return with his parents to the USSR) appeared in the New York Times on August 28 and received notice as far away as Paris (where Le Figaro quoted from it on September 9). Machan has been tapped as editor of a book called The Libertarian Reader, a collection due out in 1981 from Rowman & Littlefield. And he has had papers accepted recently by two philosophical journals, American Philosophical Quarterly (on natural rights) and Theory and Decision (on rational choice and public affairs). And his piece on the police power will appear in the December issue of The Freeman.

Editor-in-chief Poole, meanwhile, has written two analyses of rent control for the Santa Barbara-based Community Research Council. He has also recently completed a study of federal urban and regional development programs as part of a Heritage Foundation study to develop an alternative federal budget. On October 14, he appeared in Louisville, Kentucky, to address the Governor's Conference on Local Government on the topic of privatization of public services. He is also contributing to a monograph on that topic, as applied to energy boom towns, for the Center for Political Economy and Natural Resources at Montana State University.

– ARTICLE IMPACT. As a result of the government investigation confirming REASON's charges of misuse of federal funds by the United Farmworkers Union (see Editor's Notes, Oct.), REASON author Patty Newman appeared for a second time on Chicago radio station WIND's Clark Weber program, this time on September 10. Newman spent 45 minutes reviewing the story and answering questions from listeners.

Another REASON article is going overseas, reprinted by the US government's International Communication Agency. It is Lawrence Chickering's "The Two Faces of Capitalism," published in our September issue. ICA monitors REASON on a regular basis and periodically requests permission to reprint articles for its overseas information program, in both English and other languages.

– TMI UPDATE. A news release on our article on the human factors problems that led to the Three Mile Island accident ("Who Caused Three Mile Island?" Aug.) was picked up and distributed around the country by Zodiac News Service. In addition, an article confirming many of author Adam Reed's charges appeared in a recent issue of Control Engineering.

– CORRECTION. An error crept into the sidebar on building codes in our October issue (p. 22). In the list of codes, only three were listed, with the third mistakenly credited to the International Conference of Building Officials. In fact, the Southern Standard Building Code is produced by the Southern Building Code Congress, and the ICBO authors the fourth code, the Uniform Building Code. We regret the error.

– PROPERTY EXPLORATIONS. Why are there no property rights in such things as seabed minerals, radio and TV frequencies, underground bodies of water, and the like? How should such rights be defined? And what would be the benefits of doing so? The Reason Foundation is hosting a Liberty Fund colloquium November 20-22 to explore such questions. Scholars from across the country will gather in Santa Barbara for three days of exploratory discussions. Watch this column for further details.

– DISSIDENT VOICES. An important new publication has crossed our desks. Called Freedom Appeals, it consists largely of translations of the writings of dissidents in repressive countries, both Communist and non-Communist. Issue No. 3 includes a letter of endorsement from Soviet dissident Alexander Ginsberg. The magazine is published monthly by Freedom House, the widely respected organization that publishes an annual index of the extent of freedom in countries around the world. Subscriptions are $15 for individuals, $20 for institutions (Freedom House, 20 W. 40th St., New York, NY 10018).