Editor's Note: Newscripts does not go back for a full 75 years. But it is one of the longest running editorial features in Chemical& Engineering News. It first appeared in its current form on the last editorial page of the July 10, 1943, issue. It has appeared there in every issue since, without fail.

Reese has written Newscripts for the past 30 years. He was C&EN managing editor from 1962 to 1967 and he is a former Navy flier, among other things. The following is his selection of the best of nearly 55 years of Newscripts.

Newscripts has been called many things, not all of them nice, during its long history. An earlier memoir outlined the column's history and principal architects (C&EN, July 12, 1993, page 30). Here we focus more on content, quoted directly with interpretive remarks.

The editorial policy of Newscripts, if any, has tended traditionally to favor the chemical over the nonchemical, the scientific over the nonscientific, the abnormal over the normal. Still, the column has evolved subtly over the years in response to social trends and irate readers. In aid of conveying a sense of this evolution, the selections quoted here appear chronologically by date of issue.

Poetry, written or plagiarized by readers, has long been a staple of Newscripts. A precursor column, Emanations, carried this verse about heavy water (D₂O) when it was still a novelty:

"Kind Sir, please tell me truly
Of this water that is newly
Will it lather?

"If I use pure Ivory soap
In this liquid isotope
Will it lather?

"Or should I prefer Lifebuoy
As in the ads they sometimes doey
Will it lather?" (Nov. 20, 1938)

The war years
World War II would erupt less than a year later, and the War Production Board of that period stirred endless comment by its often necessary but sometimes picayune intrusions into people's lives. The board once decreed "that belt loops may be placed on slacks, shorts, and ski pants (except for male children).

"After watching [a] three-year-old in these days of nonelastic elastic in underpants, we are convinced the system of 'a grab and a hitch' is as much a first law of nature as self preservation. He does it like a veteran. We face the edict of no belt loops for male children calmly and unafraid." (July 10, 1944)

Language lessons
Once upon a time, the requirements for a degree in chemistry included reasonable competence in a foreign language. A jocular essay in fractured German in those days could be counted on to convulse a chemical audience. Two such yarns that appeared during 1952 were" Der Franklin und sein Keit" (April 28) and "Der Volta und seine Peils" (June 2). Language skills were declining even then, however, and Newscripts noted only five years later that "To keep up with rapid advances in technology ... scientists have had to develop new terms-and also ways of translating these terms into foreign languages. An up-to-date English-German glossary ... includes:

• Guidance system: Das Schteerenwerke.
• "Preset guidance: Das senden offen mit ein pattenbacker und finger gekrossen Schteerenwerke.
• "Warhead: Das Laudenboomer.
• "Nuclear warhead: Das eargeschplitten Laudenboomer.
• "Project engineer: Das Schwettenoudter." (Sept. 9, 1957)

Field correspondence
In the European vein, the parade of operatives who have personned the ACS editorial post in London, established in 1950, have spent most of their time rushing around the British Isles and the Continent covering the chemical news. On occasion, however, they have found time to touch on the local color:

"They (motor scooters) aren't considered too undignified over here. ... Everybody in Paris rides one with a girl on the back. In London this week I saw a type with a bowler hat and striped pants riding by with his umbrella stuck under the seat crosswise. ... I haven't received anything from the U.S. for three weeks except a trick package of peanut brittle. It ejected three huge artificial snakes when I opened it." (July 7, 1958)

C&EN's field editors have by no means confined their abstruse commentary to foreign climes. The chap who once covered the 13 southeastern states (a.k.a. the Dixie Division) confided one day that he had called on chemical operations in five cities on successive days and had slept every night in the Robert E. Lee Hotel. He had noticed also "in The Charlotte Observer ... that Elgin National Watch had broken ground at Blaney, S.C., for a pilot plant.

"'What do you suppose they're going to make?' he asked himself. 'Little teeny watches?'" (Sept. 17, 1962)

Tobacco redux
The behavioral police have lately been emitting reams of virtuous remarks about cigarettes, but Newscripts has consistently been ahead of the curve on that topic. Long ago, the column reminded the tobacco industry that it "should be thankful that the anticigarette faction does not include James I of England, who was the leader of an antinicotine movement there in the 17th century. That monarch, who evidently learned invective from experts, once described smoking in his brusque but winning way as 'a custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmfull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.' " (July 8, 1963)

Horse medicine
Speaking of kings, their sport turned up in Newscripts on the occasion of the 94th Kentucky Derby. Dancer's Image, the winner, was disqualified when traces of the analgesic and anti-inflammatory drug Butazolidin (phenylbutazone) were found after the race in the urine of the big gray son of Native Dancer. The Kentucky State Racing Commission was holding secret hearings on the matter at press time, and Newscripts could learn little by telephone. Expert Ian Paton, however, "did opine that the basic question is 'What is the proper treatment for a racehorse?'

"Q. Could you enlarge on that comment about proper treatment?

"A. Well, for example, is immersion in ice water proper? Baseball pitchers do it all the time, as you know.

"Q. Would that be only the legs?

"A. In the case of horses, yes." (May 20, 1968)

Historical oddities
Because Newscripts' readers span more than one generation, the odd historical snapshot, whether chemical or not, seems appropriate and instructive. One such account began "deep in the interior of Mexico, where a couple from Texas found a little Indian boy alone and crying. They took him home and raised him as their son. The boy enlisted in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War ... and became a fearless fighter pilot. He originated a brilliant ... combat maneuver that became known as the Miracle Whip. On his first day of combat, using this tactic, [he] shot down five enemy planes, thus becoming the first Mayan ace." (Feb. 9, 1970)

Gender police
The gender wars have been afoot for some years now, in the chemical community and elsewhere, and Newscripts knows a good bandwagon when it sees one. A pertinent trendy item:

"Many readers will know by now that the Bureau of the Census has revised its Occupational Classification System to help eliminate the concept of 'men's jobs' and 'women's jobs.' Sample changes are as follows: Old New Salesmen Sales workers Office boys Office helpers Airline stewardesses Flight attendants Policemen Police

"Since the topic has come up, this department has long bridled at the custom of calling ships 'she' or 'her.' How much better it would be the other way around:

"I must down to the seas again,
to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship
and a star to steer him by."
(Feb. 4, 1974)

Pitfalls of progress
Science and technology are marvelous, but Newscripts has deduced over the years that new developments do not always merit the late Pollyanna's rosy outlook. Caution, or even cynicism, is the safer editorial stance. Such as:

"The American National Standards Institute has come out with two standards' to help make sure that automobile and truck mechanics ... acquire the necessary degree of competence.' This should be cheering news, but what it suggests, somehow, is that all the factory-trained mechanics will suddenly start making identical mistakes." (July 23, 1973)

Poetry at dusk
Chicago's Loco Chemical Co. and its chief executive officer, Sir J. Conrad Bleet, have turned up now and then in Newscripts on the strength of their cutting-edge thought and activities. On one notable occasion, Sir Conrad was "enshrined in a poem,' The Love Song of J. Conrad Bleet.' The work ... opens with the lines:

'Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out
around the sky

Like a Grignard etherized inside a
flask;

Let us go, through certain half-
deserted labs.'

"This impassioned plea, forged in the holocaust of a mighty love, drove a palpitating maid, one Lily Astolat, to pen a 'Response to the Love Song of J. Conrad Bleet':

'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright-
Take me to your lab tonight.
You have lit my bunsen burner
Made my day a bit more schöner.
Aliquot me-yea, distill me!
I'm your beaker! C'mon, fill me!
Wee sleekit, cowrin' tim'rous Beastie,
You've put a panic in my breastie!'"
(Feb. 28. 1977)

Baking tips
Pulling the plug on the sea of technological applesauce that inundates us nowadays is almost irresistible, although sometimes morally equivalent to shooting a sitting bird. Still, a local person, "who was reading a cookie package found that the ingredients included 'evaporated apples.' 'After they evaporate the apples,' she asks, 'how do they get them into the cookies?' Who knows? One is reminded of the late Fred Allen, who once wondered aloud on his radio show how the condensed milk industry got the cows to sit on those little cans." (May 8, 1978)

Animal welfare
Ever since being charged unexpectedly with being antibat, Newscripts has taken care to keep readers posted on events in animal welfare. They occur sometimes in odd circumstances: "A legislator in Connecticut has introduced a bill that would ban the throwing of instant rice at weddings, according to the National Wildlife Federation. [She] claims that the rice kills the birds that eat it by absorbing moisture, causing severe bloating. She wants well-wishers to throw birdseed instead." (Aug. 26, 1985)

Chlorine therapy
Another instructive historical snapshot surfaced during C&EN's first year, in the newsletter of the Compressed Gas Manufacturers Association. The American Chemical Society, the newsletter revealed, had announced (in 1923) "that 900 tests were recently made on 300 students and members of the faculty of the University of Arkansas, who for five minutes daily inhaled air containing a small quantity of chlorine. A decrease in influenza cases from 133 per thousand to 44 per thousand was the result. This confirms the results of other investigations made along the same lines, all of which prove that chlorine is a successful preventive of influenza." (Feb. 2, 1987)

Lawyer bashing
Modern social trends include, of course, lawyer bashing, and readers consistently have kept Newscripts au courant. One reader suggested "that lawyers should replace white mice in toxicology experiments. ... there are more lawyers than white mice and also this development would solve animal rights problems ... the main problem would probably [be] trying to extrapolate the results from lawyers to human beings." (March 23, 1987)

Doublespeak
Silly syntax is a fruitful target for editors unconcerned about the glass-house adage (that is, if you live in one, don't throw stones). In this arena, a handy source has been the Quarterly Review of Doublespeak. In one issue, QRD took a shot "at a noted university's course catalog, where it says that Nursing II 'focuses on the care of clients throughout the life cycle who have basic alternations in health status. Stresses a multidimensional approach and encompasses ... the amelioration of the health status of the client. The restoration of health a major focus.'" (Oct. 19, 1987)

Lottery fever
One advantage of longevity is getting to see everything more than once, not that it does much good. A notable example is state-sponsored gambling, which consumed some $40 billion in 37 states in this country in 1996. Newscripts characteristically was on top of the trend:

"Lotteries have spread rapidly during the past quarter-century, as you might expect of such a dandy way for governments to raise money without raising taxes. They boast a long tradition ...

"An authorized lottery was employed in the year 1612 to help finance the Virginia Company's settlement of Jamestown ...

"In 1832, the eight state lotteries in operation grossed more than $53 million, or 3% of the national income. ... Fraud and dishonesty began to take their toll, and by 1860 only Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky were operating lotteries. With the end of the Civil War the lottery rose again in the form of the Louisiana Lottery, which enjoyed a 25-year monopoly in this country. ... [It] evidently was as crooked as a dog's hind leg, however. Congress, bowing to the public outcry, banned interstate transportation of lottery tickets in 1890 and banned lotteries altogether in 1894.

"So matters rested until 1964 and the birth of the New Hampshire Sweepstakes. In between, people played bingo." (May 28, 1990)

Stress management
A take-the-fun-out-of-the-holidays movement has emerged in recent years, courtesy, apparently, of the community of shrinks. The putative problem appears to be stress. One would expect to find further data in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM IV, American Psychiatric Association, Washington, D.C., 1995). This manual, however, although a barrel of laughs, does not identify the holiday syndrome in terms comprehensible to the layperson. For this purpose, Newscripts resorted to a newsletter, Taking Care, which recommended avoiding "holiday health-sappers: not enough sleep, too much rich food, too much alcohol, and not enough exercise. Undoubtedly this plan has merit, but it sure doesn't leave much room for frivolity. ...

"From ... another antistress strategist comes the following tip: 'Any current problem will intensify under the stress of the holiday season. Problem solve now.'

"As the late Wolcott Gibbs once remarked in another context, 'Where it will all end, knows God!'" (Dec. 3, 1990)

And so it goes.