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by Jim Earle
CONGRATULAT/OWS
COACH METCALF ANO THE
BASKETBALL ERS
Opinion
Spring is for the dogs
I hate spring.
Most people look forward to spring, but not me. To me,
it’s a waste of time.
I hate the weather. I actually like cold fronts. The cold
weather gave me something to gripe about to my wife. I d
rather have six months of weather that could freeze my
wrists off than three months of baseball weather.
I hate the way the people act. Everyone says love is in the
air. Well, so is pollen, my friends. Everywhere I look, young
lovers are walking across the campus sneezing on each
other. How romantic.
It’s also election time on campus. Ugly election signs will
soon appear everywhere. I wish I had a can of gasoline and a
book of matches.
But, I think the thing that I hate the most about spring is
the insane practice of bringing dogs on campus.
Dogs have no business at Texas A&M University. Neither
do a lot of the students, but at least they shoulder some of the
financial burden of running the school. The dogs don’t even
pay student service fees.
It’s not that I don’t like dogs, but I like to think that this is a
university and not an obedience school.
If the dogs served some purpose, then it wouldn’t be so
bad. But all I have ever seen dogs do on campus is sniff
bicycles, leave surprises under trees and attract Frisbees.
Nothing is more boring than watching a dog chase a thrown
Frisbee across a lawn; if there is such a thing as a visual
cliche, that’s it.
—Roy Bragg
the small society by Brickman
The Battalion
U S P S 045 360
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Editor
Associate Editor . .
News Editor
Asst. News Editor
Copy Editor
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Roy Bragg
.... Keith Taylor
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Staff Writers Nancy Andersen,
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Opinions expressed in The Battalion are
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Editorial policy is determined by the editor.
Viewpoint
Nii
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Wednesday
March 19, 1980
for
Connally, Baker candidacies
doomed to failure in 1980
By DAVID S. BRODER
The two Republicans who entered the
1980 presidential race with absolutely gilt-
edged leadership credentials were elimin
ated last week. Sen. Howard H. Baker, Jr.
of Tennessee left the contest after falling to
fourth place in Massachusetts and Ver
mont, and former Gov. John B. Connally of
Texas was finished off by the failure of his
full-court-press effort in South Carolina.
Does that say more about the process or
the personalities involved?
It surely says something about the pro
cess that men as gifted and credentialed as
Baker and Connally could be driven to the
showers as early as they were. Like such
Democrats in past years as Averell Harri-
man, Ed Muskie and Scoop Jackson, Baker
and Connally have learned that the qual
ities that gave them prestige, influence and
power over a long period of years in other
arenas of politics would not necessarily
earn them serious consideration in this
kind of presidential selection system.
One does not have to believe that either
man should necessarily have been the Re
publican nominee in order to assert that a
process which weighs their acknowledged
talents so lightly is itself suspect.
Baker is the most principled and skillful
Republican leader in the Senate since
Robert Taft. Connally is the compleat (cq)
politician — a compelling speaker, a
smooth television performer, a tough back
room operator.
You have to wonder about a selection
system that discards such qualities so
easily.
But if Baker and Connally are alike in
being presidential hopes are as dissimilar as
their backgrounds and approached to the
contest.
Baker is the lifelong Republican who, in
1973, took on the burden of judging the the
incumbent Republican President s role in
the greatest poilitical scandal of the cen
tury. Connally is the lifelong Democrat
who, in that same year, embraced Richard
Nixon and the shaky Republican cause.
Baker’s part in the Watergate hearings
was that of the reasonable man, picking his
way through an implausible, almost un
thinkable situation. He won admiration in
that role, and it colored his approach to the
presidential race.
In the campaign, as in the Watergate
hearings. Baker presented himself as the
somewhat detached, careful counselor,
steady but not spectacular in the swirl of
events. He would pause for a few seconds’
reflection before answering a question, and
he always had time for a story.
He thought last summer that his early-
starting rivals might enjoy fleeting ro
mances with the Republican voters would
look for somebody with the comfortable,
durable qualities he possessed.
In that hope he was disappointed.
Connally s mistakes was the product of
his own bravado. For the 20 years I have
known him, John Connally has never
doubted he could sell anyone on anything.
He thought that his party-switching would
be seen as a matter of principle not oppor
tunism, because that’s what he said it was.
He thought his links with Lyndon Johnson
and Richard Nixon wold be seen as assets,
not liabilities, because that’s what he said
they were.
In all his life, John Connally had met
very few people he couldn't persuade of
what he was saying, whether they were
jurors in a Washington courtroom or the
captains of American industry .
By ANGEL!
Ca
Monday was
andidate posi
•lections.
The electior
tudent gove
fall Associa
Iggies, yell le
md the Grade
,, , , , , elections will
His shock at the sales; unH) ff s w iH b<
Republican voters was evesT
Baker’s chagrin at those voter. Nine polling
to his charm anc commonss students to
In a historical sense, it mlMi
candidacies that wereboniH
sides of the Watergate espoS-jf
foredoomed to failure in a piittB|
no wish to relive that time -a
But the collapse oljohnCc(;^W ■''l/"V
paign says something else as. J.
an enduring myth that corpjU
km" pulls the strings in Aint-L J_ 4j J
No one in modem times M (
money, the energy and them. .|
corporate leaders to the eittvS-t'
nalfy. By BE'
And those powerful menp. j '
not only to elect their her hit of the
but even to deliver Inin tlinlining to l ex
the poor old l)n)keii-downRepBp orm °
t\ which they are suppose4b^P ow ^, oat
stock and barrel tactions perf
It sort of shakes your faith W the
da’s and Tom Has den’s vie* I* AS commf
America. In its first n
ears, the sh
(c) 19X0, The Washington! bidder Auditi
We continuetomonik
the situation \*ry closely,
and, although I wld hesitA
1 believe tnaiL
can safely say that were
in one Kell of a mess
.m.
The show st
lutterfly Me
lusic by Osc
“Show Boat
len and won
board the
boat ph
I
Ca ttle em bryos being sold in U. K.
By BRYAN SILCOK
International Writers Service
A unique auction took place not long ago
at Reading, a town in southern England.
Though bulls were as usual the main anim
als on sale, breeders for the first time bid
for extraordinary livestock — cattle in the
form of microscopic frozen embryos.
The marketing of these fetuses signalled
a new achievement for Britain’s Agricultu
ral Research Council, which has been
pioneering the development of embryonic
breeding. And it means that scientists may
soon be turning out cattle from eggs fertil
ized in the laboratory — just as they have
already engineered the birth of a test tube
baby.
The transplant of embryos from one cow
to another, a technique origninally tried as
far back as a century ago, has now become
routine.
Roughly 10 days before coming into oes
trus, or heat, a “donor’’ cow is injected with
a fertility drug known as pregnant mare
serum, which is similar to the drug some
times used in cases of human infertility.
Hormones in the serum will cause her to
produce as many as 40 eggs, though about
10 is more usual.
The cow is then inseminated artificially
with semen from a prize bull. A week later,
under a local anaesthetic, her uterus is
flushed out to recover the fertilized eggs.
The eggs are checked under a micro
scope, and the healthy ones are each im
planted in a different “host’ mother — an
operation that requires only minor surgery.
A small incision is made in the flank, the
uterus is drawn toward the cut and the
embryo shot into the animal at the right
spot through a syringe.
For the egg to take, the recipient
mothers must be at the same stage of their
oestrus cycle as the donor was. In due
course, the “host” cow delivers a calf gene
tically unrelated to her.
The advantage of this innovation is that it
enables an especially good cow to have
dozens and, in theory, even hundreds of
offspring— which permits a farmer to build
up a first-rate herd faster than he could
through natural methods.
The Agricultural Research Council re
cently took this technique a big step further
by inventing a method for freezing the
embryo. Stored in liquid nitrogen at minus
196 degrees centigrade, the embryos can
be kept for months and even years, thawed
and used as if they were fresh.
Frozen embryos are an exceptionally
economic way to transport livestock, since
they are far easier to fly from one part of the
world to another. For instance, 50 cows in
New Zealand were implanted not long ago
with frozen embryos sent by air freight
from Britain.
The price is high. Companies charge ab
out $800 per pregnancy, with no fee if the
operation fails. But the cost is bound to
decline as techniques are streamlined.
A non-surgical method of implanting the
fertilized eggs would make the exercise
cheaper, and that is being studied. So
would a higher pregnancy rate. Under pre
sent conditions, some 75 percent of fresh
embryos and about 50 percent of frozen
ones work.
The investment would pay high yields if
a farmer knew beforehand whether he was
getting a bull or a calf. Researchers are now
trying to solve that problem by dividing
embroys into two in test tubes, so that they
can test one of the twins for sex characteris
tics. Meanwhile, they are approaching the
fertilization of eggs in testtufe|
One of the major difficulties i'l
tube f ertilization of eggs removr;!
from the ovaries is to put themt l |
maturation process that normal' [
side the body. This is the sameol
confronts human test tube batel
Scientists of the Agriculturalf]
Council have already had some;'
the limited test tube maturati I
removed from a cow. They pro'l
returning the partially matureeCi
cially inseminated heifers,whict j
ly produced calves.
The next crucial step, 1
lization of eggs, will reVolutionElJ
breeding industry. SlaughterW
ready souce of cheap eggs, am
careful selection could improve^
of animals.
All this could he accomplishdl
er, without the philosophicalaE;j
discussions that attended the W
first test tube child. Besides, is 5 !
know, cows cannot tell the dm
(Silcock writes on science a
gy for the London Sunday Time'!
ish weekly newspaper
n
thotz
By Doug Gu
R]
_, . CjONNA GO
THAT alumnus
VISA