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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 5, 1984)
Tuesday, April 3, 1984/The Battalion/Page 3 m ■e 6 percent m- ites from k :ily when you dorms whid er four yean it’s an 85 pei re cake is its. A stickn nt or a 60 hours cost' price will Ik )f red | out —a led then tkf ■rn lies in ind the ti its have bra ap. The re ?d it was o get ca yrave injuslitt ig next fall eking up tht already grad' reases 1 increment! eral years. gents and ad had the fore :ost increasfi aken them etter have resulted e deal for tit have notli he last fc most sell >t of living urnalm m ■ for The Bit bora lory net'!- §•, editing M Department of not exceed 0 a IT reserves length but #1 he author's iit‘ I and must if number of tk guest editoriib uiries to the Ed- shed Month] 8cM regular st xaminafm ft >.75 per setnts- 15 per full fat quest. 216 Reed » Jniversity, Cd entitled exdt of all newsdit eproductiond College Station Sen. Patton was both tough and sensitive, historian says By ROBIN BLACK Staff Writer lalf-god, half-man: General GeorgeS. Patton Jr. So says military Historian Martin Blumenson. Blumenson revealed the more human side of the Army |ieral to a sparse crowd in Rudder Auditorium Weclnes- Jaynight in the first address of ilie Gen. Earl Rudder Military Lecture Series. Calling Patton a rough, .tough, flamboyant yet sensitive m, Blumenson said the gen eral was “athletic and profane.” “The man was a four-letter »rd in either case,” he said. Blumenson said Patton’s pri vate image was quite different from his public image, whose Fierce bravado was a put-on to cover his emotional nature. “Underneath the warrior was a very sensitive man,” he said. “He thought that showing emo tion was an undesirable military trait.” “Patton dressed and looked the part — a showman and an actor, and he expected the same from his troops,” he said. The often controversial man suffered from shortness of breath and anxiety, Blumenson said, that stemmed from his ob session with success. Patton’s dream of success be came evident during his years at West Point, he said. “‘Do your damnedest, al ways,’ he wrote to himself at Westpoint” Blumenson said. Another passage in Patton’s diary, he said, was “Never stop until you have attained the top — ora grave.” Some of Patton’s more flam boyant traits almost caused his downfall, Blumenson said. “The slapping incident in Sic ily almost ended his career,” he said. In the incident Blumenson referred to, Patton was visiting a military hospital in Sicily, visit ing wounded soldiers. He came upon a soldier hos pitalized for combat fatigue, was overcome with emotion and slapped the man, telling him he was letting down his buddies and his country. The event sparked an order from General Dwight Eisen hower that he make a public apology. Patton obliged, but it was one of the hardest things he ever had to do, Blumenson said. “No man ever held the atten tion of the world so completely as Patton just by sheer force of his personality,” he said. ^ Parmer calls for debates By KATHLEEN REEVES Reporter State Sen. Hugh Parmer, Democratic candidate for the 6th Congressional District, said Wednesday that he is challenging one of his oppo nents, Dan Kubiak, to a series of televised debates. Parmer said he sent a tele gram to Kubiak’s home invit ing him to join in his request for free television time from Fort Worth, Waco, Bryan and Houston stations for a public debate. N He said if they can’t get free air time he is willing to pay half of the expenses for a series of 30 minute debates. Parmer, who made the an nouncement during a brief stopover at Easterwood Air port, said he would like to ask Kubiak how he stands on the repeal of Texas’ right-to- work law and his position on the domestic content legis lation. Parmer said he opposes the repeal of Section 14(b) which allows Texas the right to have the right-to-work law. He said he also opposes labor-sup- ported legislation requiring imported cars to include American parts. He said this legislation would mean in creased costs to the American consumer of both foreign and American made cars. “It would also throw us into a foreign trade war which would have disastrous effects on Texas farmers and ranchers.” he said. Parmer said he doesn’t want big labor endorsments because it would be too much money and power from a sin gle interest group. He said he would rather have the sup port of individuals in the union, but not the union as a group. Kubiak has the sup port of the big labor organi zations, Parmer said. Parmer, who is facing a number of candidates in the May 5 Democratic primary, said he wants to discuss the is sues face to face instead of through the press. Scientists still looking for proof By DAVE SCOTT Staff Writer The presence of black holes in space will never be 100 per cent substantiated with the pre sent technology. Dr. Kip S. Thorne, a professor of The oretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, said Wednesday. Thorne said the theories of the existence of black holes are widely accepted throughout sci ence, but that scientists are still looking for definite proof. “People who want to wiggle out of the theories of black Wes can still do so,” Thorne said. “We are still looking for a confirming signature in gath ered data that says Tm a black hole.’” Right now black hole re search depends on measuring X-rays from outer space, but Thorne said, finding that “con firming signature” depends on measuring gravitational radia tion and not X-rays. Thorne said the needed gravitational radiation detectors probably won’t be available un til the next century. Black holes are believed to be formed when a star runs out of fuel and begins to die, Thorne said. The star then stops rotat ing and begins to shrink in size. The shrinking causes an insta bility within the star which causes it to collapse, Thorne said. A black hole is the result, he said. The gravity of the enor mously dense star is so powerful that nothing can escape it, Thorne said, not even an object traveling at the speed of light — 186,000 miles per second. In contrast, an object must obtain a speed of seven miles per second to escape the pull of the earth’s gravity, he said. About the only way to locate a black hole is to look for its in fluence on the things around it, Thorne said. And this has led scientists to find black holes in two different types of environ ments, he said. One area where black holes are believed to be is in binary orbits with normal stars, the star and the black hole orbit around each other, Thorne said. Scien tists can measure the disrup tions in the emitted X-rays when the black hole circles in front of the star, he said. CseOx CHANELLO’S PIZZA 'O mm PIZZA PARKWAY SQUARE696-0234 $1 Off Two Item Or More Pizza ONE COUPON PER PIZZA EXPIRES S'' 5/84 NORTHGATE846-3768 ^ MSC ENDOWED LECTURE SERIES \\ I don't see myself as unique. I've been in a position that's unique by Students equally divided on capital punishment happenstand. // Alexander Haig y KIMBERLEE D. NOR RIS Reporter Students seemed nearly jually divided for and against capital punishment in a forum sponsored by “Insight Into the News" Wednesday afternoon. The “Insight” program, 't'liich holds informal discussion current controversial issues, sled representatives of Am ity International, a world wide human rights organization in the forum. Nita Heimann, secretary of ihecampus chapter of Amnesty International, said AI believes that capital punishment is inhu man and denies the executed his basic right to life. “Killing is never justified by the fact that it is condoned or carried out by the state,” she said. The representatives from AI — Heimann, Margaret Lasater- Smith, and Craig Estlinbaum — asserted that capital punish ment is not administered equally or fairly, that it is not a deterrent to murder, and the executed are not always guilty. Some students agreed with the AI representatives, al though individual reasons for agreement varied. Others were vehemently opposed. Dr. Douglas K. Glascow, an assistant management profes sor, said criminals in this coun try have little fear of the conse quences of murder and other violent crimes. “The basis of any legal system is that punishment deters cri me,” Glascow said. “It is provea- ble fact that countries that en force capital punishment have much lower murder rates.” “Put simply, states that do not execute capital offenders are executing people who are killed by murderers, because those murderers would be deterred by a stiff capital punishment law,” he said. Perspectives on U.S. Foreign Policy April 19, 1984 tickets at MSC Box Office 4r Memorial Student Center /! Speciocula^ Cvesufuj, Bryan and College Station’s finest and most complete party clothes and formal wear store •Tuxedos (rental) •Formals (long & short) 900 Harvey Rd. Post Oak Village Mon., Wed., Fri. & Sat. 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. Tues. &Thurs. 10 a.m.-9 p.m.