Magazines: Turning Back the Clock

The clock face was intended to scare the world. Its hands, spanning the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, were originally set at an ominous eight minutes before midnight. After the Russians exploded their first H-bomb, Bulletin time read two minutes before the hour of doom. Today the clock is still on Bulletin's cover, but it has shrunk to an inconspicuous size, and registers a relatively unfrightening 11:48. The minutes that, in the editors' view the world has gained, measure a strange triumph for the magazine. Now that there is...