Contributing Editor, TCS
Ralph Kinney Bennett is a TCS Contributing Editor. An aging crank, he lives in Ligonier, Pa., and Delray Beach, Fla. He is an avid scholar of military history. He has a passion for automobiles, the Simpsons, English and American classic poetry and long bicycle rides. He is fascinated by technology, but particularly by what he calls "technology that counts - like the paper clip or a garage door opener." Mr. Bennett is retired from the Washington bureau of The Reader's Digest as an Assistant Managing Editor. For over 30 years he wrote on a wide variety of subjects for the magazine. Prior to joining the Digest, he was a writer for The National Observer, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The New Haven Register. He and his wife, Virginia, a retired CPA, have two children and five grandchildren.
Technology will always make it ever easier to live and die. And its "proper control" will continue to be the first refuge of those who find it difficult to believe, let alone deal with, the truth of an evil or demented mind, a dark heart, a hellishly bent soul and its capacity to surprise, horrify and confound us.
A new trend in autos shows how every once in a while, technology catches up with itself in an interesting way.
It was fifty years ago this month that the first eight-mile stretch of what would eventually be more than 42,000 miles of limited access highway lacing the states together was opened in Topeka, Kansas. Ralph Bennett on one of the most magnificent engineering feats of all time.
I was 29 years younger than the great economist. I played a lot of tennis then, and was in pretty good shape. Milton Friedman didn't look frail, but he didn't look particularly athletic either. I sized up his spindly legs, his glasses. Even in tennis whites he really looked the whole egghead thing. But I noticed that his racket looked ominously well used...
Cong. "Jack" Murtha is a sort of local legend here in Western Pennsylvania. But I have just one question.
