Viewpoint Top of the New The Battalion Thursday Texas A&M University July 13, 1978 A birthday to remember Jerry was 17. He and a friend were on a camp ing vacation in the Arizona high desert. Poli ce said a drunk driver, barreling down the wrong side of the freeway, slammed head-on into Jerry’s car at 90 miles an hour. Jerry and his friend were not killed instantly. But at the funeral the coffins were closed. The morticians said it would be better that way. Clinton was also 17. He was bright and hand some, one of those people who had everything going for him. The drunk driver who smashed into Clinton didn t kill him. But Clinton’s damaged brain struggled for two years to relearn basic skills such as holding a spoon and speaking coherently. Four other high school friends were killed by a drunk driver on a canyon curve at night. Another friend’s new bride was disabled for a year by a drunk driver who ran a red light. Seven friends in all. Seven people who shared their dreams in intimate conversations over cups of coffee after late-night movies. Not casual ac quaintances, but seven friends, and all killed or injured by drunk drivers before the age of 21. That in itself is horrifying. But more horrifying are the statements by State Comptroller Bob Bullock, who was arrested Tuesday morning for driving while intoxicated. Bullock, who had been celebrating his 49th birthday Monday night, did not seem too con cerned about his arrest. Calling it the finest birthday he had ever had. Bullock said he was disappointed that not everyone had enjoyed it as much as he had. Released 30 minutes after he was booked on a $500 recognizance bond, Bullock added that he would go to trial if his attorney decides it’s worth the “time and effort.” Bullock’s insolent and ignorant attitude toward his DWI arrest, and the attitudes of others like him, killed and maimed those seven friends. Texans should not have to suffer such irrespon sibility in anyone, but least of all in a state official. Bob Bullock may have laughed off his arrest for drunken driving. Let’s hope he doesn’t laugh one of us into the grave. F. K. Carter’s ship sinking fast By DAVID S. BRODER WASHINGTON—President Carter is going to Europe this week under almost the worst circumstances imaginable. Not since Richard Nixon made his pre resignation visits to Moscow and the Mid dle East has an American chief executive conferred with his counterparts at a mo ment when there were more reasons for skepticism about his own capacity for leadership. The Soviet Union has dramatized its disdain for Carter’s vaunted “human rights” policy by staging showcase trials of two prominent dissidents and by tighten ing the screws on American corre spondents in Moscow. AT HOME, the sendoff to the economic summit was the concession by Carter’s own top economic advisers that inflation in this country will be worse and economic growth slower than they had expected. As if that were not enough, Carter must face his fellow heads of government with out the national energy plan that all of them regard as the single most important evidence that this nation has the will and the skill to address the fundamental prob lems facing the international economy. If there is a single silver lining to this dark cloud of doubt, it is that there appear to be few people inside the Carter admin istration who are kidding themselves about the seriousness of the situation. In the past week, one could hear grimly realisitc appraisals of the problems in U.S.-Soviet relations, in the economy and the energy picture’ from the men who ad vise the President in each of these areas. What is not clear, however, is whether these men—or the President they serve—understand the extent to which the present problems have been nurtured by Carter’s tendency to moralize rather than manage his way throught the morass of conflicting interests and powers in the world. TO UNDERSTAND WHAT is happen ing now, it is helpful to look back slightly more than a year to the time in 1977 when the characteristic approaches of the Carter 1 CM feel iTL GROINS up immu administration were being defined. What one sees time and again is the President confusing the expression of good intentions with the devising of a sensible strategy for achieving his goals. His naiv ete of concept was matched by the naivete of risk-measurement. Carter was as reluc tant to give weight to serious opposition as he was to hold his own idealism up to skeptical self-examination. At the press conference of March 24, 1977, for example, he discussed both U.S.-Soviet relations and inflation in terms that are almost ludicr6us when read in the light of subsequent events. On the eve of Secretary of State Vance’s first visit to Moscow, Carter said the agenda would include actual reductions in nuclear arms,mutual force reductions in the NATO area, and eliminations of all nu clear tests. “We are going to express our concern about the future of Africa and ask the Soviet Union to join with us in removing from that troubled continent outside inter ferences which might contribute to war fare in the countries involved,” the Presi dent said. "And we will start laying the groundwork for cooperation with the Soviet Union at the Geneva Conference which we hope will take place concerning the Middle East. “These matters are extremely complex, ” he conceded. "We don’t know whether or not we will be successful at all, but we go in good faith with high hopes. The Soviets have been very cooperative up to this point, and we are pleased with their at titude. There is not a hint in the press confer ence of any suspicion that the Soviets would, within a week, coldly reject Car ter’s agenda and send Vance home from Moscow empty-handed. Much less was Carter thinking that his grandiose plans for Africa, the Middle East and Europe might be exploded. YET THE WARNING SIGNS were there. At this same news conference, re porters noted that Leonid Brezhnev had reacted angrily to Carter’s heavily pub licized human rights campaign and had said that normal relations would be “un thinkable” if it continued. No problem, said the President. The Brezhnev speech, he said, was “very con structive," and if the Soviet president mis takenly thought the human rights cam paign was an “intrusion into the internal affairs of the Soviet Union,” he, Jimmy Carter, would be happy to assure him that “I don’t agree with his assessment. As if that settled everything. What about inflation?, another ques tioner asked, noting that even then, 15 months ago, the two basic price indexes were in the double-digit range. No problem, said the President. “I in tend to cut dow n the expenditure of gov ernment programs well enough to bring about a balanced budget by 1981. I am deeply committed to this goal. And I be lieve that we will have unveiled, for the nation to assess, a comprehensive package against inflation within the next two weeks.' THERE WAS, of course, no such pack age, and the goal of a balanced budget has now been officially postponed at least until 1982. A month after this press conference. Carter was back on the airwaves with an energy plan he proclaimed "the moral equivalent of w^r.” The failure of his government to gain congressional approval of that plan re sulted, like other failures, from both the substantive short-comings of Carter’s pro posals and his massive underestimation of the oppposition. Now the energy failure, along with inflation fears and the dete riorating international climate, spread gloom over his trip to Europe. One can only hope that the lesson has not been lost. (c) 1978, The Washington Post Com pany Wine-sipping success Calculating age By LeROY POPE UPI Business Writer NEW YORK — Sitting at home and tasting up to 20 wines a day is a nice way to earn a living, even for an MBA from Har vard. Harvard didn’t teach Bob Finigan any thing about wines. It just taught him how to turn his interest in wines into a paying business, one he likes a lot better than his last job as a financial consultant for the Penn Central Railroad in Philadelphia. Business He now runs a firm called Walnuts and Wine, Inc., near San Francisco, which puts out a news letter on how to buy and serve wines for which 10,000 subscribers pay him $24 a year each. It’s virtually a one-man shop. Finigan doesn t taste or recommend walnuts. The firm name was taken from a line in one of Tennyson’s poems he hap pened to like. Raised in Boston, Finigan set up the business near San Francisco because that’s the heart of the major American wine in dustry and he recommends good Ameri can wines along with the best the Old World can offer. Speaking of vintage wines, Finigan said he has no mystique or collectors syndrome about them. “Anyone who pays huge prices — sev eral hundred dollars a bottle — for very old wines from famous vineyards runs the risk of finding the bottle contains nothing but vinegar when he opens it. Of course, most people never do open such wines; they just keep them as status symbols.” Nevertheless, Finigan said he tasted a century-old Chateau Latour in London last year that was the finest red Bordeaux he ever had encountered. “I gladly would have paid up to $300 for a bottle of it to drink on some special occa sion,’’ he said. Finigan said the key to the success of his business was a decision to make integrity its cornerstone. “I decided early on that I couldn’t ac cept and pass on wines submitted free by the wineries,” he explained. “I made it an iron-clad rule that I must pick out and pay cash at the liquor store for every wine I tasted and recommended. This costs me over $15,000 a year before the business even begins to break even. I will continue this policy absolutely.” Bob Finigan’s interest in wine did begin at Harvard although not in the classroom. He met two Radcliffe girls there who were enthusiastic gourmet cooks. They asked him to find out about wines to go with their culinary triumphs. He expanded his knowledge of wine while he was working for Penn Central and he went to France in 1969, a year in which the wine crop was hailed as fabul ous. Finigan decided the 1969 French wines were not really remarkable and that made him think about becoming a wine consultant and publishing a wine newslet ter. He started by purchasing Jack Shelton’s restaurant guide to the San Francisco Bay area and then added the wine letter. It took six months to reach a break-even point of 2,000 subscribers. Finigan did not marry one of those Radcliffe girls. Early on he wrote a para graph in his wine letter recommending the wines of the Torres vineyard in Spain. He received a letter from Senorita Marimar Torres, thanking him on behalf of her father and inviting him to visit their vineyard. He did visit the vineyard in 1973 and brought Senorita Torres back to California as his bride. By ROLAND LINDSEY United Press International Like sex and automobiles, pocket cal culators are here to stay, but they can cause problems to people who start using them too young, the head of the mathe matics department at Texas A&M Univer sity says. Dr. George R. Blakley says grade school teachers must take precautions to assure students are learning to do basic math with pencil and paper rather than . elying on the electronic calculators to do homework. “For certain kids, calculators can be the best thing in the world because they use them to discover things and be stimu lated,” Blakley said. “But let’s face it, grammar school math is pretty dull and if you can avoid it by using a calculator you’re going to do it.” Blakley says the pocket calculators have not been easily available long enough for colleges to feel any impact, but he said, “Maybe by 1984 we’re going to have some calculator-induced trouble with math at the college level.” College level math instructors differ on whether students should be allowed to use the calculators, and some instructors at A&M have banned them from the class rooms, Blakley said. In the academic profession, the cal culators are fine, said Blakley, who had two calculators on his desk. But he said students should not be permitted to use the calculators before the junior year of high school. “I like the idea of exploiting them at the university level, but you have to control the rate at which young kids learn to use these new tools,” he said. “It’s like giving a kid a power saw too soon. A power saw is a great tool, but if you give it to him too soon you have to supervise very carefully. “Like sex and automobiles, they’re here to stay, but if you get involved with them too early you might get hurt. ” Blakley said grade school curricula must be adjusted to assure that students learn basic skills of doing math with pencil and paper, even if those drills often are dull. “I think if we don’t regulate their use they’re going to cause some harm in grammar school. We can’t use the present curriculum and get good results if a kid can do all his drill problems at home with a calculator,” Blakley said. “We can disagree and can test the ways of teaching with and without them, but sooner or later everyone is going to have one and their very bulk is going to force their way into the classroom. I say let them use them, and see to it that they use them well. ” Readers Guest viewpoints, in addi tion to Letters to the Editor, are welcome. All pieces sub mitted to Readers’ forum should be: Forum • Typed triple space • Limited to 60 characters per line • Limited to 100 lines State Jury indicts Jar capital murder A grand jury meeting in special session in Beaumont Wdlinesx, insisted the Dome be■ cleaner for their annual meeting. W’itut*^ Paul Stevens saidtk trodome was clean when they airived but tin s wanted t,, u. GI cleaner for their meeting which runs through Sunday and is ripe to attract 55,000 of their sect. On Tuesday all the Astrodome'll w’ere mopped and the seats scrubbed. Blue law challenged FI PI The Texas Supreme Court in Austii, Wednesday upheld tk stitutionality of the state’s Sunday eh,sing l.m saying it FI exercise of the state’s police power. Cjjbson Distributing CS|§ had filed suit against Downtown De\ ch||’H"'nt Association of dll Inc., challenging the constitutionality ,,| the so tailed "hliu>|ivj w contending it violated the due process mid equal protection d»r W the U.S. Constitution. Jogger escapes jail S p James Jackson, a forgery defendant it, step with the times (tra his jail uniform down to boxer shorts aqd I shirts and joggedH i" freedom Houston sheriffs offu.,. IN s .iiu heroism even though it came a little late — 34 years l a te Then w hich got lost in mounds of paperwork and bureaucratic shufe presented to LaRosa. an Upper Providence, Pa. district jutil ceremonies in Media, Pa., Tuesday . 'Tin very proud to Iff ceived this medal today, he said. "\ Jittle late, but I’ll LaRosa. 53, confined to a wheelchair because of injuries suffnii 6. 1944. in World War II. was honored for his part at Nornffl June 8. 1944. Striking postal workers raUtj Offduty postal workers carrying warnings of a possible Mr*! verged Wednesday on post offices across the nation and on! Service headquarters in Washington to protest what thr\ i a Ibu in labor contract negotiations. Vincent Soinbmtto, presidentuid York City local of the National Association of Letter ( .urim,* chartered busloads of workers from his area would join thuuai others for the Washington demonstration The unions hao-prt* an $1,100 raise the lirst year of a new contract and $865 fort hr« year, plus provisions for cost-of-li\ ing increases. PC G] G B1 D G FAA to pay damages The Federal Aviation Administration in L>s Angeles was«9 to pay nearly $1. 4 million and was held responsible for > airplane crash in which a student pilot and his teacher were!# U.S. District Judge Peirson Hall ruled that the FAA ait traft troller, who was not identified and was not named in thedaafi failed to warn flying instructor Zoitan Szilard and Im student = Clement, of turbulence from the wake of a plane larger tk® single-engine Piper Cherokee during landing on the night ofI> 1974. f Minor oil spill clean-up start A 2,000-gallon oil spill, possibly from a barge, stainf* Mississippi River downstream from the French Ouarter, thf Ui Guard said in New Orleans Wednesday. The spill was classis^-vj,^- minor and an oil clean-up company installed booms to coiit» , n ^ pockets. A Coast Guard spokesman said investigators traced tin , and suspected it came from a barge. He said the oil aboard the o jj would he analyzed to determine if it matched with that in tfajj-i The spill extended from Esplanade Avenue to St. Matirisi U Booms were erected at the Esplanade Avenue wh. irf. ChahiK^gy and near the Industrial Canal. they gs ai Tor World p ling y_pff Boy killed in graveyard A 16-year-old boy, disobeying his father by returning to Iooilfl| arms cache he found in a graveyard, w as shot to death by soldifij^B mistook him for a terrorist, an army statement in Belfast, Ireland, said. John Boyle, three weeks short of his 17th birf found a package in a graveyard Monday night and reported it 1 father, a Roman Catholic farmer. The hoy returned to theci'fl 1 Tuesday, picked up an Armelite rifle and was immediately si® Weather Clear to partly cloudy today, tonight and tomorrow withco’ tinued hot temperatures. High today near 100, low toniS mid 70s. High tomorrow near 100. Winds from the southed at 10-14 mph diminishing tonight. 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