Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 10, 1993                   TAG: 9310150322
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: WILLIAM F. POWERS THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WEATHER, OR NOT - IT MATTERS IN POLITICS

The current issue of Virginia Climate Advisory, an impish but nonetheless serious scientific publication, reports that the average temperatures of cities, regions and countries often coincide with their political tendencies. The magazine picks this up from a study published by the British Royal Meterological Society in its journal Weather. To use the weather to

predict politics, the study says, you need only calculate the temperature difference (TD) between the coldest and hottest months of the year. Societies with low TDs, meaning a relatively unvarying climate, tend to be politically flexible and tolerant. High TDs show up in places where strict - and in some cases fascist and authoritarian - regimes have flourished.

Iceland and the Netherlands, which the study classifies as politically enlightened places, have TDs of less than 15 degrees Centigrade. Most parts of China have TDs of more than 20, as do ``many of the states of the USA which retain capital punishment.'' And ``San Francisco, with its remarkably low TD value of about 6 deg. C, is the home of America's radical fringe.''

The Advisory states that its purpose is to ``present information about our climate, its impact and related research findings,'' noting: ``We reserve the right to do this in a humorous fashion.'' There are lots of charts and numbers for true weather freaks, and good writing for everyone else. This issue also looks at whether the alleged ``storm of the century'' March 13 really deserves that title. To subscribe, write to the State Climatologist, Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va., 22903. \

One of the world's great insomnia cures is no more. Foreign Affairs magazine, home of countless turgid and forgotten essays on statecraft, has been made over. There is a newly designed cover, new layouts and typeface (actually a return to the Caslon typeface formerly used by the journal), new use of photos and drawings, and most important of all, a new effort to write engagingly.

Traditionalists should not be alarmed. Tina Brown is not behind this transformation (as far as we know), and there are no plans for a Roseanne Arnold essay on the Ukrainian situation. Many of the changes are subtle, but they add up to a magazine you want to pick up and handle, and maybe even stay awake for.

It's clear from the debut issue that Foreign Affairs is still the place to go to hear the grave voice of policy-elite centrism. The lead article is Samuel Huntington's argument that we have left the age in which nations are the main players in global conflicts. From here on out, international conflicts will tend to be between major civilizations, of which Huntington says there are seven or eight: Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African. People will increasingly ``differentiate themselves by civilization,'' Huntington writes, and the central world tension will be between ``the West and the Rest.'' This piece sticks to the intellectual ribs, particularly its explanation of why the line dividing Protestant and Catholic Europe from Orthodox Europe in the year 1500 is once again the key fault line of that continent.

\ And for today's trend ... the cover stories of the current issues of the New Republic and Discover magazines both urge us to break out of the confines of the third dimension.

TNR's essay on the subject is either a subtle sendup of Hillary Rodham Clinton's airy ``politics of meaning,'' or a lighthearted endorsement of same. It wants to be funny, but ends up only baffling.

The Discover variant, by K.C. Cole, is an earnest journey into the world of mathematicians who ``travel routinely not only to the fifth dimension but also to the seventh, the tenth, and the twenty-sixth.'' There are helpful photos and drawings of four-dimensional cubes and doughnuts, and some sense of the excitement of being a professional math genius.