The Alliance for Progress, whatever it signifies for Latin America, has meant for American labor an alliance with government and big business. American labor has never minced words about the unions of the Soviet Union. “The so-called trade unions in the USSR,” the AFL-CIO Executive Council has proclaimed, “are nothing but agencies of the Communist dictatorship.” The implication, sharp and clear, has always been: Unions of America are anything but agencies of government and big business. That has been a pride of American labor, but the new alliance raises questions that may make that pride ring a bit hollow. British Guiana is a good place to begin. American Government, business and labor have never been happy with the leftist administration of Cheddi Jagan that took office after the August, 1961, elections in the British colony. American woes and worries have multiplied with the approach of independence. The AFL-CIO boasts of its part in helping the trade unions there battle the Jagan government. “In British Guiana,” said a recent union advertisement, ‘‘the AFL-CIO has rendered generous aid to the free trade unions resisting the attempt of the pro-Communist Jagan regime to destroy their independence.” On the surface, American labor has moved into British Guiana to help brother unions fight communism. But the situation in British Guiana is far more complicated than that, and its “generous aid” has involved the AFL-CIO in racial and political strife. In addition, not all the aid given by the AFL-CIO has come from the labor treasury...

A peculiar American disease has been isolated by medical scientists. The disease was first described in 1960 by Dr. J. V. Brown in the Western Journal of Surgery. An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association then drew wide medical attention to it. Commercial houses are now marketing products designed to cope with it. Statistics on incidence and morbidity are scanty, and the name of the disease is hazy. Some doctors call it “the fast draw syndrome”; others, “the Dodge City syndrome.” But whatever the name, it is with us. It is most prevalent, of course, among the numerous special gun clubs that have sprouted across the land in recent years. Members, taking a leaf out of days of yore and some scripts of today, draw guns from their holsters, quick as lightning, and fire away. Unlike their legendary heroes, they don’t shoot at one another but aim at balloons. Sometimes, though, they miss the balloon and hit themselves in the right foot...

This article focuses on the possibility that the assassination of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy might harm the U.S. Army's civilian marksmanship program due to public revulsion to the weapon which was used in the murder. The Army oversees civilian marksmanship through its National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice, which is headed by Colonel John K. Lee. The board sets up instruction programs, organizes the annual National Rifle and Pistol Matches, and markets used guns to the public. It does all this through the National Rifle Association (NRA). The Army sells rifles at cost to civilians only if they are members of the NRA, and it gives instruction to gun clubs only if they are affiliated with the NRA.

Lie Detectors - The Industry, the Technology and the Victims. The first lie detector, employed centuries ago, was a handful of rice dropped into the mouth of a suspect. If the rice stayed dry while he answered questions, he clearly was a liar — exposed under the questionable theory that a liar's salivary glands would dry up when gripped by fear. The lie detector used most commonly today is far more sophisticated. Developed by the psychologist and criminologist Leonard Keeler almost forty years ago, it comprises a pneumatic tube that fits across a subject's chest to measure breathing, an inflatable rubber cuff that wraps around the arm to measure blood pressure and a pair of electrodes that touch the fingers and, by the flow of current, measure the dampness of the palm. These instruments activate pens that draw wiggles and waves on a rolling sheet of paper — a process that gives the lie detector its modern name, polygraph, Greek for "many writings." In theory, an examiner can look at the chart, note any unusual wiggles and waves, and nab his man. This polygraph, obviously more complicated than a few grains of rice, is also touted as more accurate. In truth, it is not...

Old Ben Franklin, ambassador to France during the American revolution, peered out his window early one morning and took in the Paris sun light. "Why are we not taking advantage of all this daylight?" he is supposed to have said. The philosopher and scientist then picked up his quill pen and scratched out a study that showed the immense number of candles that Paris would save if it changed its clocks to gain extra daylight in the summer. With these scratches, Franklin reputedly first outlined the idea that led to the 20th-century daylight saving time system that brings confusion and controversy to America every year. Millions of Americans in 15 states switched from daylight time back to standard Saturday. To some, the time-switching means little, except the twice-annual struggle to remember to juggle their clocks. But others are hotly concerned over the time-switching, and are demanding an end to it. They do battle with the defenders of daylight saving time...