■ snafu ’75: “San Francisco, July 19 (AP)—A man who stored a sample of his semen at a sperm bank and then had a vasectomy has filed a $5-millon lawsuit against the bank for accidentally destroying the semen.” Bank officials blame “an apparent equipment failure.” Where’s the FDIC when you really need it?
■ Aviation Week & Space Technology, the authoritative spokesman for the aerospace community, summed up its estimate of the Apollo-Soyuz mission: “The progress of space technology always has been inextricably linked with terrestrial politics, but the Apollo-Soyuz mission carried the heaviest dose of superficial international politics ever into orbit and an application should be submitted to the Fédération Aeronautique Internationale for a world record in this category. As evidence of the validity of the U.S.-USSR policy of detente, it ranked slightly above the Paris Treaty with North Vietnam and the SALT arms agreements, both negotiated by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, but not much. . . . Any steps toward genuine scientific cooperation were inexplicably vetoed by the Soviets, reducing the orbital joint scientific program to a token exercise that will be more celebrated in speeches than in laboratories. . . . There are no indications that the excellent cooperation and camaraderie of the Soviet cosmonauts and U.S. astronauts in space will change any of the barbed interface between an open and closed society on Earth. We do not think there is much hope for the world from the cooperation and contributions it may expect from the Soviet scientific community operating within the rigid political control and security paranoia of the Soviet system. The Soviet system stands firmly opposed to the type of free scientific exchange that is the soul of genuine science. Soviet scientists expressed interest in a number of excellent Apollo-Soyuz joint experiments but were vetoed by political authorities. . . . The decision to fly Apollo-Soyuz . . . was as foolish and feckless as those other facets of the Nixon-Kissinger detente—the SALT talks, the trade deals, and that great treaty that brought peace to Vietnam.”
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