Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 27, 1986)
A>. Page 2B/The Battalion/Wednesday, August 21, 1986 CALL-AMERICA PHONE! And save up to 30% on every long distance call For a limited time Call America will give you a free AT&T Trimline desk top or wall telephone when you sign up for Call America long distance service. The phone retails for $79.95 and includes a one-year warranty. Just pay our $10 initial fee for residential service and get your free phone. Call America is the lower priced, higher quality long distance com pany in Bryan-College Station. You cah Call America for up to 30% less than the other guys—less than MCI, less than AT&T, less than Star-Tel. Mo WAITING in lines. No BUYING a phone. NO DEPOSITS. And the best long distance at the best price in town. Call more. Pay less. And get a free phone. callAmerlca 106 E. 26th / Bryan, TX 779-1707 If you 're considering retirement. Consider moving to Walden. Come home to Aggieland. Our stereotypes of senior adults (and retire ment housing) are fading. Thank goodness. Seniors are retired from routine, sure. But they are still busy, active and alive. They want to travel, to go, to learn, to grow. And they want a carefree environment that supports independent living in a safe, secure surrounding without daily drudgery. If you are considering a retirement move, please give us a visit or a call. We are a warm, caring community built for active senior adults. Amenities include: • Close to Texas A&M and its educational, cultural and sports activities • 24 hour security and support staff • 2 excellent meals (and private kitchens, too) • transportation • laundry and dry cleaning service • weekly housekeeping • activities, travel, library, exercise, spa, pool, etc • parking, storage, elevators, convenience store, etc Walden Dr. Jarvis and Alma Miller, managing directors Walden on Memorial 2410 Memorial Drive/Bryan 823-7914 Lack of doldrums upset D.C.’s ‘serenity expert’ P y ** n R iiv-hi WASHINGTON (AP) — What ever happened to the summer dol drums? “It should be quiet, but it isn’t,” said Charlie McDoldrum, an expert on the lack of activity that overcomes the nation’s capital every August. This is the month when every body in Washington is someplace else getting away from it all. The president is on his ranch exercising his cutting axe on dead trees; Con gress, having temporarily run out of words, is out of town finding new ones; nothing is stirring, not even the House. McDoldrum, an imaginary being who reappears Brigadoon-like every August when a journalist’s mind turns to finding news in a vacuum, ticked off some of the activity that has disturbed the serenity. There was that tax revision frenzy that churned up half the month and still hasn’t died off. There was that eerie groan coming from the big, marble monuments to bureaucracy all over town when the Cramm-Rudman budget cutting effects were calcu lated. August should be the month in which government takes a breather from the rest of the year, when the bureaucratic pulse slows to co matose. It’s generally a time when no one gets into a sweat over the composite index of leading, coincident and lag ging economic indicators, the gross national product, the consumer price index, or capacity utilization. It’s a time when one is challenged by whether the surf is up, not the monthly deficit. Instead, McDoldrum pointed out, “this year we have had to worry about South Africa and sanctions, drought, hurricane, Nicaragua, the space shuttle, the Rehnquist-Scalia nominations, Nancy’s maid and the impeachment of Judge Harry Clai borne. Even politics didn’t take the vacation it’s supposed to. We had the Michigan mishmash and the South ern primary, for crying out loud. I Hading e summit. the fallout fromHovement :agan ye; nes. The gro g goverr unist con $9 millio thing to do with cycles, petHme is app a seven-year itch. Help. In addit There is an argument iciT lot both theories on whyiktl August law of doldrums I defiled. ■nidi to c ■as sparkt las turtle Iniiider R Hroup’s ne Supporting the seven-veiH “I have theorv, the record showsibMety. I he gust 1979, a year of highduHie not st; during the last DemocraitHm to be deucy, there was so littledorHVelch, in capital that Jimmy CarterstiHremem 1 from Baltimore to WashitifHiom the 1 show support for the tran>;*tliat her h system — made headlines. ■nailers. | A meml “Then there are the baby strikes at the Baby Bell telephone compa nies and USX, which we wouldn’t get upset about except that news ac counts remind us that it was for merly U.S. Steel, the activity over getting another Reagan-Corbachev McDoldrum, who worksiiB ibutor, 1 ginia newspaper, glumls ijjidering st that the only classic doldnH The story coming out of Washiit(tHhanged ( August was the reopeninfpjphvsician venerable old Willard Hotel eight years. :es< Firms had 'engines in geah test SDI spurred missile labs m r WASHINGTON (AP) — Three years before President Reagan startled the nation with his Star Wars dream of basing nu clear missile defenses in space, the Boeing Co. created a special office to line up ballistic missile defense contracts that experts predicted were on the way. “We got an early start,” Mike Gamble, who became strategic defense coordinator for Boeing in 1980, said. At the time, the company had several dozen con tracts with the Pentagon on pro jects that were later consolidated under the Strategic Defense Ini tiative, nicknamed Star Wars. “In 1980, there was a percep tion here that some of the emerg ing technologies could be used for ballistic missile defense,” said Gamble, interviewed by tele phone from Boeing headquarters in Seattle. The situation was much the same at Hughes Aircraft, Lock heed, McDonnell Douglas and Rockwell International, compa nies which are among the top 20 Pentagon contractors and the top 10 doing Star Wars business. Despite the conventional wis dom among many politicians and scientists that strategic defenses were impractical because they could be overwhelmed by offen sive weapons, the perception was growing among the weapons lab oratories and defense contractors that ballistic missile defense was becoming technologically possi ble. Thus when Reagan surprised most of the world with his March 23, 1983 speech calling for Star Wars research, the big defense contractors already had their en gines running. After the speech, the Pentagon swept various missile defense re search programs into the new Strategic Defense Initiative Orga nization and proposed spending $26 billion on them through 1989, an increase of about $9 bil lion over planned spending. Gon- gress is paring Reagan's plan by about one-third, back closer to the original spending levels. HOLS Houston Wars, the research has ptH 0ri | ta< j l * ei ahead. H <les, l “Suddenly, the contndi found themselves drenchd dollars,” said Joseph Cam^ an analy st with Paine Webtiei New York rom ultr; )e availal , . . . ibility to ; 1 o a large extent, thebim _ t j ie | n contracts to the major cot] lions involve what the Pent calls “terminal defense,"slto« down nuclear warheads ass from space toward© he world tuniversi irop Much of the work on motets used simi space-based components, sat: lasers that experts say are dea tonauts’ away from the weapons sta?t being done by smallercontpaa universities, and federalweap laboratories, although somt these contracts are also goaij aeach or the giants. Astronomer Carl Sagan,a Wars opponent, argued an cent Washington debatethatl are use( l While business nides many in the scientific, and political commu- remain skeptical of Star tagon spending on Strategic fense is creating “a steanti effect in the weapons indu which may force a lateradc tration to deploy the system which Reagan ordered reseats “It’S a Si Pitts, a al opton he 1960s pace and Pitts’ l teople w sunny clii About fitted IT terns are must blit Pitts says Si: Today’s entrepreneurs not big risk takers, survey says 25 ARLI’ tve year here W' roaming NEW YORK (AP) — The entre preneurs who start today’s new com panies seem to be very different from those who founded the great corporations at the turn of the cen tury or before. The oldtimers, biographies indi cate, created their companies to own, manage and develop. But new comers, a survey suggests, are very much interested in sharing the risk with the public rather than going it alone. Asked at a meeting earlier this year, 30 of 37 entrepreneurs said they expected their companies to be acquired in the next five years. Most said they had been approached about a business combination in the preceding year. This, perhaps, didn’t displease the author of the survey, Baltimore- based New Enterprise Associates, a venture capital firm that runs big risks with small companies — many destined to fail — in search of a rare big payoff. Like others in the venture capital business, NEA believes it cannot know enough about the companies it finances. It examines all the figures, and it sits on the boards. It monitors executive performance. Sometimes it fires. It has access also to the various studies of psychologists, sociologists, economists, behaviorists and others who have examined the species in recent years with probing questions about parentage, neuroses and the like. But NEA, which invests for lim ited partnerships, sought to know its own entrepreneurs rather than ac quire redundant information about the species in general. It invited 40 of its entrepreneurs to a gathering at Napa, Calif. The average age of the companies surveyed was 2.6 years, with average 1985 revenue of $7.9 million. Sales grew by an average of 29 L percent last year; this year they are expected to grow 176 percent. The entrepreneurs are a confi dent bunch, as expected. At a time when larger companies are paring payrolls, they expect to increase their work forces by 39 per cent. And they plan to spend no less than 34 percent of revenue on re search and development. Overall, they aren’t especially worried about a recession. Asked to express their concern about a possi ble recession, only 13 percent said they were very concerned. Sixty- three percent said “somewhat.” Twenty-four percent said “not at all.” But they worry — a great and view their venture asa& emotional risk, even more soil financial risk. Asked if failure* mean a great financial loss,II cent said yes. Asked if it wotiH great emotional loss, 58 pertS sponded af firmatively. They worry especially al»j new tax proposals, which ip nalize the capital gains thal* : of them seek as individuals eliminate the investment tail which they rely on to finantt growth. Groups propose solutions to ‘crisis’ in teaching field and the Hanch m And kids kne was for; flags of Republu and the That with the niultimi! way belt Callec 105-acn ter oper all-inclu adults ai Toda size, err tains ar daily at expects lion by t “Base WASHINGTON (AP) — In the play “A Man For All Seasons,” when an ambitious young man named Richard Rich asks Sir Thomas More for help in securing a government job, the chancellor urges him instead to become a teacher, saying, “You’d be a fine teacher, perhaps even a great one.” “And if I was, who would know it?” the aspiring politician com plains. To which More rejoins: “You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that.” More’s advice fell on deaf ears. Today, under less dramatic circum stances, many young, talented peo ple are loathe to even consider a ca reer in the classroom. The teaching profession is in a time of turmoil. Teachers have al ways had complaints about their pay, status and working conditions. But an impending shortage of new in structors now has pushed some edu cators and civic leaders to call for radical changes in the way teachers are trained and how schools are run. Two high-level panels — the Holmes Group, composed of educa tion deans from several dozen re search universities, and the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Econ omy, an offshoot of the Carnegie Corp. — are calling for the bachelor’s degree ineducat Teacher colleges, and ed« departments within univt' have been a target of critid decades about lax stant “Mickey Mouse” methods cc and poorly prepared gradual It has become an increasing popular choice for colleges# Until recently, teacher silt made it possible for schools' 11 new teachers despite a f traction in the pipeline campuses. But that situation! 1 idly changing. With elementary enrollmen' ing again thanks to a babyW and with many teachers nead tirement age, public schools# hire a million or more new# over the next decade. The Holmes and CarneJ 1 formers want all prospective ers to major in the liberal at 1 ences and humanities and to» most of their professional f, tion in graduate school, in nships and on the job. Carnegie is currently funds development and other effort the groundwork for carrying key recommendation: creat# national standards board to teachers. the laq state,” s Cc PRA Pat Ho. living it Wire last wir vary re normal born e> But i makes! on the almost has tak “An. mg, thi Hoctor place s. Hoc active who n and trr Hoc The A tionall where animal