wars
The beauty is that everyone's an authority
By ART BUCHWALD
Columnist for The Los Angeles Times Syndicate
The beauty of the Star Wars defense system is that every
one can discuss it with authority, because no one, including
the people in charge, have any idea of what it is.
I realized this when I attended one of those Washington
cocktail parties where the power elite gather to exchange gos
sip and information that only decision makers are privy to.
“Is it true,” I asked a source, who has one of the largest
offices in the Pentagon, “that Star Wars will become a bar
gaining chip in the Soviet-American arms talks?”
“Nuts,” he said defiantly. “If we ever decide what it is, we
will never give it up.”
“Isn’t it easier to give something up in arms talks that we
don’t have, than something that we do?"
“Not if they have it, and we don’t.”
“Do the Soviets have a Star Wars defense?”
“They must have or they wouldn’t want us to give up
ours.”
“Maybe they don’t have it, but hope we’ll go ahead with it
anyway,” I suggested. “Did it ever occur to you that the rea
son the Soviets are making such a big thing of it is because
they want us to spend all our money to develop it, so we won’t
have any left to make the weapons they don’t want us to
build?”
“Of course, it’s occurred to us,” he said. “But our answer
to them is there’s no price you can put on national security.
Once we figure it out, all our other weapons will be obsolete.”
“How can you say that when you have no idea what it is?”
I asked.
“We may not have any idea what it is, but we do know
what we want it to do —and that is blow up every Soviet mis
sile before it hits its target.”
LETTERS:
New video
game proposed
EDITOR:
I propose a new video game: Indiana
Jones Goes to the Library. It would por
tray the saga of one who sets out on the
long perilous journey between Medical
The Battalion
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Sciences and the Vet School Library. To
achieve his objective, Jones must either
drive or walk. Walking gives a higher
score but he must:
• negotiate a contruction zone, with gi
ant machines rushing around blindly,
steep drops of about three or four feet,
metal lattice and wire entanglements
and broken boards with nails sticking
up, or
• skirt or climb a giant dirt mound, an
avalanche waiting for a person to drop
on;
• negotiate a parking lot between
swampy lawns, where cars move ran
domly and parked cars pounce (some
say this’is the hardest who do it daily);
• find the right door in without getting
stopped by construction fences, locked
doors or falling into a Bottomless Pitfall;
and
• negotiate an interminable windowless
maze of passages and detours.
For extra points, it can be round trip,
with Jones at least one way carying a
stack of very expensive books and irre-
placable papers which will be ruined if
dropped or blown away in the Texas
wind if not clenched tightly.
If Jones drives, he must negotiate:
• the winding litui (plural of lituus) of
driveways going the wrong way to go
the right way, with cross traffic that
doesn’t
stop or yield, and pedestrians who think
the laws of right of way surmount the
laws of momentum of moving vehicles;
• Finding the right parking lot and then
finding a parking space amid randomly
moving cars that don’t stop, and parked
cars that leap out;
• crossing the lot if parking is possible,
as in above;
• Finding the right door as above, and;
• negotiating the maze from another
direction.
Brooks H. Rohde, Ph.D
Research Associate
benches throughout our campus so un
comfortable?
Why are they made of concrete, with
out back support, too big and long,
without the cover of neighboring trees?
Why are the benches so ill arranged?
More generally, why are the plazas
throughout our campus hardly ever
used?
What can be done to create a friendly
atmosphere?
Ben Aguirre
College Station
Citizens have right
to protect themselves
or not
Guilty
guilty?
On Dec. 22,
four teen-agers re-
quested money
from a man in a
subway train in
Lower Manhattan.
What each
youth got, rather
than money, was a
bullet from a .38
revolver. The
would-be victim fled,
manhunt began.
The four were seriously
1 f convicted, Goetz faces a substan
prison sentence - and for what?Th
politicians we proudly call leaders,
now making it a crime to protect oi
own life.
If the police can’t provide enoy
protection to the people, what are
supposed to do? Give in to all thecii
and criminals? I don’t think so. Citij ;ssi the group
By MAR
Rc
A "straight" i
ervices? Imposs
Not(|iiite.
Lvnn Scanna
iiigv major, is a
arollidal unive
Although she
emester, Scann
and a massive
“That’s a tall order. Will Star Wars be able to do that?”
“We may never know, but neither will they. Once we in
stall it in the sky no one will have the slightest idea if it can do
the job. But it will keep the other side guessing. And that’s the
best deterrent there is.”
A man who has one of the largest offices in the White
House joined our group. “The president wants Star Wars be
cause he believes once we develop it we will no longer have to
depend on mutal terror to avoid nuclear war.”
“But the president says he dosen’t know what Star Wars is
either,” I pointed out.
“He’s not a scientist and dosen’t claim to be one. But he
believes in it more that anything he has ever advocated. Be
sides, since he’s proposed it he has to go ahead with it, or he
would be sending another wrong message to the Soviets.”
An assistant secretary, who has one of the largest offices
in the State Department, said, “even if Star Wars doesn’t pan
out the way we envision, it will still be worth the cost just to
show our NATO allies that we have no intention of leaving
them in the lurch. If nothing else, it will strengthen the West’s
commitment to repelling the Soviet military threat.”
“Then our allies are for it?”
“They are as long as it doesn’t cost them any money.”
A labor secretary said, “When you’re talking about Star
Wars, you’re talking about the hundreds of thousands of jobs
it will provide for every defense contractor in the nation.”
“I take it then,” I said, “that everyone in the government
is sold on it?”
“They beter be if they want to kee^ their jobs in this ad
ministration.”
“But how much will it really cost?"
The Pentagon man tittered, “When it comes to funding
Star Wars, the sky’s the limit.”
wounded,
and one seems to be paralyzed for life
from the waist down. Three of the four
teen-agefs had police records, and po
lice found three long, sharpened
screwdrivers on them when they were
taken to the hospital.
New York Mayor Ed Koch, a stern
law-and-order advocate, quickly con
demned the shooting and declared that
“Vigilantism will not be tolerated in this
city.” Governor Mario Cuomo also de
nounced those who cheered the “Lone
Ranger” and lectured that impatience
with justice is “dangerous and ...wrong.”
Even though many policeman felt
good about the man plugging the
punks, they also knew that once he had
struck, and won praise, hundreds of
other lone operators might be inspired.
Large numbers of New Yorkers, fed
up with encountering bullying punks on
the street or subway, phone in to declare
their support for the unknown loner.
Eventually, Bernhard Hugo Goetz,
37, a self-employed electronics expert
from Manhattan, turned himself over to
police in New Hampshire.
Goetz, a victim of several muggings,
was charged with four counts of at
tempted murder and one count of crim
inal possession of a dangerous weapon.
kill or catch as many criminals as the
lice do. Individuals have the ri|
protect themselves. ,
Every year, the U.S. Governmt . 1 [ < | ) 1 I £"J 1 1/< ( , | |
spends much more money on iorei M me lie was i:
defense than on domestic defeii i the group
when, in fact, more people havebei lamed about (
killed in violent acts in the U.S. than Scannapieco
acts of war. How do we expect ourcoii lieni ' HM
try to be safe from other countryswin |
the government can’t even protecttln q S ;m‘that it
own citizens from domestic acts of u |t g () i n g to
lence? tith this type <>l
1 he problem stems from a numben 11 * C()
things, but the main problem is thattl Ie ^’ ^ tanua P
1 a ws ar e too lax. I f c r i m i na 1 s face "^'Tjjneir
tougher consequences for committii j^y (me e | se j () i r
crimes, they might not resort to crime I believe in wha
a career. “It doesn’t r
The Goetz incident may deter othe * rs() i> s sexual
criminals from further crimes, buto fJ rson ‘! 1 "!
, . , . . • • , , able to the col
the other hand, it may give cnmmalstli t re allv should
comfort to commit f urther crimes. Ifi lt iice."
is convicted to the fullest extent oftk Scannapieco
law, other citizens in Goetz’s shoes mi wt is one oi
feel more imtimidated by the authoriti * lln f! s stra b'' 1
than the criminals. With this in
the criminals will feel safer about coAJ^
milting crimes. - pajority suppi
People shouldn’t become vigilanti
and set out to rid the world of crime,
they do have the right to protect thi
selves when the need occurs.
The only thing Goetz is guilty of,
not Fighting back sooner.
Kevin hula is a senior journalism majot
and a weekly columnist lor The Bam
ion.
There is more to your
food than meets the eye
Univ-'rs
Despite (ft
exually oik'i
dren, presebo
inue to ch<>«
traditional pa
itudy indiede
In a stulv
[he relation^
creativity a Ml
materials, di
Rogers fo(w
So yon think all those
crunchy bits in pea
nut butter are pea
nuts? And you think
that all those little
can
Patrice
Koranek
f iieces in your orange juice are the pulp
rom oranges? Think again.
rom oram
One of the most enlightening classes I
have taken in college was VPH 404 -
Food Toxicology and Safety.
We learned that the First federal food
laws, the Food and Drug Act and the
Meat Inspection act, passed in 1906,
were not strictly enforced because gov
ernment agencies didn’t have the power
to inspect ractories or restaurants.
In t938 the Federal Food, Drug and
Cosmetic Act was passed giving inspec
tors the power to shut down establish
ments that were unclean. The 1938 law
made it harder for processors to cheat
on the ingredients in its products.
Through the years many more laws
and amendments to the laws have been
passed to ensure food sanitation. After
all of that you would think that the food
you buy is free from Filth and foreign
substances. Well, think again.
The professor in VPH 404 uses trans
parencies. The last transparency he put
up was headed “1972 Filth Guidelines.
According to the guidelines every three
and a half ounces of peanut butter
have two rodent hairs and 50 inseti
fragments. And that is the allowable
amount. So much for peanuts being the
crunch in your sandwich.
Wait, don’t think changing the k
of sandwich you eat w ill help. Wheat can
have one rodent pellet in every pim
T hat means the bread you eat is yukky
too.
Fruit juice, that delectable beverage
you drink to wash down the peanut but
ter and jelly sandwich or use to quencli
your thirst after a long walk from /n
Rollie to Zachry can have up to 10
eggs in every eight and a half ounces.
Chocolate lovers beware. Accordin]
to the guidelines chocolate can have 151
insect fragments per eight ounces. And
all this time you thought chocolate was
only fattening.
Now that you’ve read this and de
cided to drastically change your dietary
habits, stop. The Food and Drug Ad
ministration has tested all of these prod
ucts and many more and have found
that it is perf ectly safe to eat them. So go
on, enjoy your next dinner.
Patrice Koranek is a senior journalism
major and is a staff writer for The Bat
talion.
New
Year’s
Resolution
f-XS'A }’< TMtWt-
J WILL BUV ALL SPARE
PARIS AND COFFEE
MAKERS AT THE
hardware store.
Campus lacks
nice atmosphere
EDITOR:
I would like to be told: why are the
.1 WILL NOT DOZE
OFF IN A CABlNEf
...I WILL NOT SAY, "THERE
YOU GO AGAIN” WHEN
REAGAN RAISES TOES.
O
...I WILL LEAVE MY
AGE, NAME, AND
SIGNATURE THE
WAY THEY ARE.
...NO MORE TW1NKIES
UNTIL 1988.
WILL NEVER GRCWEL
IN PUBLIC FOR A JOB
FOR MORE THAN TWO
MONTHS.
I WILL NOT SALIVATE
WHEN I HEAR THE
YEAR 1988>.
patterns m
!)«
play center-
tm
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