Show davest fossils intrigue bright v young scientist farmer one of 40 talented youth honored with tr trip p to washington many ponder careers As atomic res by analyst and commentator WV service 1616 1610 eye street N NW washington D C he knew what a sphygmomanometer was used tor for that a decigram gram e quals equals grains and that septicemia and anaphylaxis are different besides that he collects tos ills Us enough to fill the farm arm kitchen at his home near ellens burg wash why 18 year old jim gibson got a free trip to washington D C where he ate buffalo steak at the zoo drank tea at the white house gave congress a critical once over and listened to lise physics wizard talk on atomic energy jim Is one of 40 bright young high school I 1 seniors selected as finalists in the fifth annual science talent s search ear c h spon sponsored so red by science service of washington with scholarships offered by westinghouse electric company sixteen thousand minded boys and girls from every section of the country took competitive examinations on such things as sphygmomanometers and decigrams deci grams wrote essays on my scientific project were interviewed view c d by leading scientists three hundred of them won special recognition n were given honorable men mention tion and 40 finalists including 1 I james gibson jim gibson came to washington D C to attend the science talent institute I 1 met jim at the banquet which wound up the hectic weeke weekend fid of interviews and sightseeing tours and basked asked him how bow hed happened to start collecting fossils instead of stamps birds eggs or matchbox covers jim a ruddy rumpled pled serge suited farm boy scoffed at stamps as dull fossils arent one fossil years old why just this year he was nosing around some cliffs in his part of the state of washington and he came upon an interesting rock that Is it would look like a rock to you and me jim saw something embedded in it maybe a bone he and his fossil minded companion hacked backed out the rock and with considerable effort lugged it into their car it weighed pounds at home jim liberated what he had bad seen embedded in the rock A small piece of wood he took it to a scientific professor friend of his and learned beamed that what he had bad found was a year old fossil jim was as 25 excited as if somebody had presented him with a brand new 1048 1946 model automobile the serious brown eyed youngster tosses decades and centuries around with great ease over the mu mushroom ghroom soup he dug around in his crowded pockets and produced en an odd looking object see this lie he asked urn um I 1 said another piece of rock its a sharks tooth jim explained pla ined its eight million years old dr foshag of the smithson tin lan institution gave it to me 11 I 1 hurriedly rolled the conversational ball back to 1948 1046 what does your family think of your fossils tos sils 11 1 wanted to know well it turns turn out that jim and his father a dairy farmer famer batch it mr gibson has no objections to fossils under the bed so I 1 long ong a they dont interfere with jims cooking yes jim i does most ot of the cooking but hes deprecatory on this score s saying his culinary exploits depend largely on a con can opener likes collector of brains girls well to appeal to jim have to be as smart as lase the little gray haired feminine scientist whose research led directly to the development of the atomic bomb impressed him most of anything or anybody he saw in washington with the exception of 0 the cyclotron on at the bureau ot of standards however there wason was one girl he be met at the science talent institute who he admitted was interesting she collected brains he knows all about running a farm and he keeps bees as part of his bis 4 H club work but jim gibson keen about farming a as a living I 1 he prefers fossils and hes casting a speculative eye on the field of nuclear physics as are well over half of the s scientific tent lie minded youngsters who came to washington this year incidentally at the same banquet science service director watson davis mentioned a few firsts this fifth group of young scientists had chalked up they ate broiled buffalo steak without a qualm after viewing the live variety at the washington zoo they prepared a talk back report of their opinions on the atomic energy and kilgore bills to be submitted to congress congressional lon committees and among the group was one missourian said M mr r davis the first missourian he added who had ev ever er gone into the white house and had not come out with a federal appointment there is a strange paradox in congress and it may cost the democrats the pro tern tem presidency ot of the senate its the exact reverse of the unholy alliance of today the coalition between the southern democrats and the northern republicans b and this is the way some of the crystal gazers on capitol hill expound it there have been no real issues before thi the country over which the voters could tear their hearts asunder but there have been some bitter ones within congress and among the democrats in the senate especially which have caused incendiary intramural political friction senator mckellar democrat of tennessee has been in the eyes of some of his bis more progressive colleagues a brake on the wheels wheel of what they consider their progress senator mckellar has sturdily and steadily bucked administration legislation not merely the fair employment practices bill but other measures which the liberal liber er al element on both sides of the a isle aisle have supported nobody dent denies es that after the next election ahe the republicans public ans are going to get some of those 17 seats in northern and western constituencies away from their democratic Democrat id opponents they may get enough of them so the parties will be at least more evenly balanced even in the opinion of the more conservative prognosticators that is half of the proposition the other half Is the growing wrath of some odthe of the liberals on the democratic side who are very sore at mckellar for deserting the party line it Is not out of at the picture that enough of these liberals will be willing to kick over the traces and vote vot e for a republican president prote pro te tern or at least vote against mckellar and thus produce the strange but possible phenomenon of a representative ot of the minority party presiding over the senate this Is not a prediction but it Is the presentation of a paradoxical possibility granted the trend of the times becomes the course of to morrow the FCC must decide whether the new telephone recorder destroys des troya the telephones privacy it might keep people from wasting telephone time and think of all the things you say if you knew they were going to be ba anthe on the records fo for r one thing it might make people more sympathetic toward radio commentators |