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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 8, 1988)
A Hm 4? CLINICS AM/PM Clinics Page 8/The Battalion/Tuesday, March 8,19| Minor Emergencies 10% Student Discount with ID card 3820 Texas Ave. Bryan, Texas 846-4756 401 S. Texas Ave. Bryan, Texas 779-4756 8a.m.-11 p.jn. 7 days a week Pr Walk-in Family Practice </> ■s o S< 3E N OH Wild Wednesdays All day Wednesday order any 16” 2 item pizza and 2-16 oz. bottles of Coke® for only $9.95. 693-2335 822-7373 260-9020 1504 Holleman Townshire Center 4407 S. Texas Tax included in price. No coupon necessary. Not valid with other offers. Limited delivery areas. Our drivers carry less than $20.00 Get Ready for Spring Break When your lighting conditions are less than v* ideal, pick up some Kodachrome 64 film... and Students! Work Smart. Work Simply... With Hewlett-Packard! £» uj uj ';t-j u hi .'-r 11C $47.00 12C $65.00 15C $65.00 17B $90.00 19B $140.00 27S $90.00 28S $190.00 41CV $140.00 41CX , $200.00 71B $500.00 AUTHORIZED HEWLETT-PACKARD DEALER 505 Church Street • College Station, Texas (409) 846-5332 A&M professor: Low SAT scores for students not cause for alarm ) By Jerry Bolz Reporter Although Texas has a low na tional ranking in scores on the Schol astic Aptitude Test, this is not cause for alarm because the scores do not always accurately reflect what stu dents learn in high school, says Vic tor Willson, a professor of educatio nal psychology at Texas A&M. SAT scores depend on who takes the test, Willson said, so unless you have a random sample of students, no correlation can be drawn from courses students have taken, he added. In the last few decades, lower achievers began taking the test be cause college became Financially more accessible, Willson said. This may be a reason that the av erage SAT score in Texas has been lower. state to state. “I might have faith in it if there was a random sample,” he said. A small percent of students take the test, he said. It’s not a majority in any state. Another problem with the SAT is that it only measures a subset of the Dr. Dean Corrigan, dean of the College of Education, agreed. “There has always been a correla tion between poverty and low test scores,” he said. Willson said that historically, the SAT was designed to give colleges an idea of a high school student’s achievement. “It is strictly an achievement test and has nothing to do with intelli- S ence, as defined by psychologists,” e said. Corrigan said the test is being Joe Bob Briggs enjoys success after drive-in days DALLAS (AP) — With financial success that includes a new cable television contract, an autumn com edy tour and a planned movie, “Na tional Lampoon’s Topless Bar,” could an observer conclude that Joe Bob Briggs has gone establishment? “As Joe Bob, I will not do any thing that violates my ethical prin ciples. But I will do anything for money,” says author John Bloom, the creator of the rednecked per sona that shocked and titillated the readers of his nationally distributed drive-in movie reviews. After six years of the scathingly sexist reviews as the world’s only drive-in movie critic. Bloom says his Joe Bob persona has acquired a life of its own. “I am a lot less schizophrenic be cause I have totally become Joe Bob,” says Bloom, 35, who recently auctioned publishing rights to his third book, tentatively entitled “White Like Me.” But the going was rough for a while. Three years ago, Bloom resigned from the Dallas Times Herald under pressure from the black community after writing his “We Are the Weird” parody of the “We Are The World” song that raised millions of dollars for the African famine relief effort. He took several months to re group, occasionally penning col umns while pursuing syndicate dis tribution of his “Joe Bob Goes To The Drive-In” reviews. Creators Syndicate now carries the feature. These days, Bloom says any target is fair game — except one. “There are no sacred cows except Wayne Newton,” he says. “Don’t even think about making a crack about him. He’s still the king.” But everything and everybody else beware: Joe Bob has called women bimbos, Hispanics Meskins and blacks Negroes. Some newspapers and their read ers have taken offense, and Bloom jokes that his column has run in as many as 50 different versions due to censorship. Joe Bob, however, is getting less of a rise out of readers these days. Less than 1 percent of his monthly letters now are hate mail, and the misanthropist’s writings are even be ing compared to satirists Jonathan Swift and Ring Lardner. “I am starting to worry,” Bloom says. “As time goes on, it (the column) gets censored less and less. “There are less and less words considered taboo,” he says. “There was a paper that used to routinely censor ‘bimbo.’ It has a kind of mys tique. But there are no raunchy four-letter words in the column.” Bloom says his “White Like Me” book will have lots of the blood, brawls and bimbos that have become part of his one-person genre. It will be a collection of reprints from his review column, syndicated in about 50 newspapers nationwide. Bloom’s literary agent, Ann Whit ley, is not disclosing monetary fig ures for Bloom’s third book’s pub lishing rights, auctioned on Jan. 26- 27. She says only that Dell Publishing Co. Inc. “bought the book at a higher royalty and higher advance” than other bidders. Dell also published two earlier books, “Joe Bob Goes to the Drive- In” and “A Guide to Western Civili zation, or My Story,” an autobiogra phy, after Bloom settled a lawsuit against the Times Herald over rights to Joe Bob’s name. “Two months ago, Tom Wolfe got a SPA million at an auction for a book full of exclamation points,” Bloom says. “If 15,000 exclamation points are worth that, then this dribble is worth $3.5 million.” Meanwhile, Bloom says he hap pily has found that there is life after newspaper work. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Bloom says of his resignation from the Times Herald. “I had gotten into that mindset of thinking that I had to have that weekly paycheck, the security of a daily job, and what I found was it is a lot more fun and a lot more free dom. “I’ve done a lot of things I would never have been able to do at th- thinking that I had to have that weekly paycheck, the security of a daily job, and what I found was it is a lot more fun and a lot more free dom. “I’ve done a lot of things I would never have been able to do at the newspaper, including stand-up com edy and putting out at least one book a year. It was a blessing in disguise.” Another tour of stand-up routines was planned this year, after Bloom received standing ovations in Dallas, Austin, Phoenix, San Francisco and other cities. On The Movie Channel, Bloom is a permanent host with his “Drive-In Theater” on Friday nights. Bloom even plans to write a more serious, general-interest column un der his own byline. “I have a way of thinking about things that goes against the grain of pop culture,” he says. “It will be cur mudgeonly. In that sense, I’ve never been an intellectual. I would always rather be at a (Dallas) Mavericks game.” Joe Bob’s favorite movie is still “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” al though he’s not too happy that a scene in the sequel, based on his sec ond book, was cut 11 days before the film was released. “I still have not become used to the entertainment business totally,” Bloom says. “It is crazy. I used to work a whole half-year to make what you make on TV in two days. “The idea that I have been in the wrong business all these years is slowly dawning on me,” he says. “I am not going to be able to handle this. Basically, everyone in show business has too much money. The people you never heard of all have too much money.” --^ Aggieland photographers Information session Thursday, March 10 7 p.m. in room 014 Reed McDonald used by many as a political instru ment. Willson agreed with this. “Politicians are saying we need better education or new curriculum because of low test scores,” he said. “There’s a political desire to simplify everything to one number, but edu cation is much too complex. People and legislators from this campus on up have far too much faith in single test scores.” C w Willson compared our society’s thinking to that of China. “The Chinese Empire spent 3,000 years testing civil servants and teach ers and systematically excluded their creative people from society,” he said. Unfortunately, Willson said, the United States will probably see more tests. “We have a test-oriented society that thinks that one more test scon will solve complex problems," I* said. Millions of dollars are spent toi velop a single version of the SA Willson said. It costs over $100 write a single qustion and then ram; more to publish, he said. Corripi agreed. “The money we’re spending i crazy,” Corrigan said. “We mal; charts and never get back to help students,” he said. He said the test should notk given unless students are toldwk; they did well on, and helpedI what they haven’t learned. The National Assessment of Ed, cational Progress gives a test tit Willson said comes closer at bei; | random and matching student’sci riculum. He added, however, no test is designed to give g numbers. An Society counci uled f form ( ing pr< “Tit the A April will h Presic “Then dents tickets The consid tion ar com mi Jim dent creatic to be Weeke Linguist keeps up with twisty turns in modern English By Marcena Fadal Reporter English is a constantly chang ing language, says Dr. Garland Cannon, a professor of English and linguistics who has published more than 100 books and articles on linguistics. “Linguistics is the systematic comparitive study of languages,” Cannon said. “It is a very in volved definition, but that’s the basis of it.” Cannon has done a linguistic study of the English language, he said. “I have analyzed almost 14,000 words and I’m able to tell you ex actly how English is changing to day,” Cannon said. “We are quite sure that English, for example, is adding tens of thousands of new words every year and the great bulk of it will mercifully die.” The data for this study comes from new-word dictionaries such as the Merriam-Webster and Clarence Barnhart dictionaries. “I would not have the time to actually go out and listen to peo ple talk,” Cannon said. “They (Webster and Barnhart) have done that and obviously the value of the conclusions depends upon the value of the collections. If the collections are shabbily or inaccu rately done, then obviously all of my conclusions are skewed.” Cannon, who received his bachelor’s and doctorate of En glish from the University of Texas and his master’s from Stan ford University, recently com pleted a new book, “Historical Change and English Word-For mation,” which compares the change of language, he said. “My new book tries to put in perspective the way language has changed over 1,400 years as op posed to the way it is changing now,” Cannon said. “Also, say 20 years from now, my book will be taken and the new data will be set in and that will be compared so we can see how language has changed between 1980 and the year 2000.” The continuing changes of En glish have made it diflicult lot Foreigners to learn the language he said. “It would create very large problems,” Cannon said. “Alotof these words may be offensive to people’s sensibilities, and I don’t mean vulgar or obscene. The) strikingly break the pattern. And so somebody learning English,or any foreign language, is going to have a great deal of problems with some of these words.” Some words that break the pat tern of correct English are “cra zy” and “given.” Both words are adjectives but also are used as nouns. “These are functional shifts," Cannon said. “This is where you take a word that belongs to one part of speech and you move it into another part.” Cannon said another func tional shift occurs with “0.D This abbreviation for overdose is now used as a verb, he said. Other abbreviations that can be confusing — acronyms — involve the shortening of words by using the initial letter of each word. Some examples are SALT |f (Strategic Arms Limitation! Treaty), REM (Rapid Eye? Movement) and TESL (Teaching; English as a Second Language), Cannon said. By studying the new words and the new ways older words are used, he said, researchers can un derstand how English has! changed. Cl to af HC talkin she v vided the at lated nearh Ro! along neigh er’s d< Nei police tion v\ its hei “Sh serves up, i said. 1 after hadji On driver don 1 quain Spenc Aft “For the first time in the his tory of scholarly language we have large collections of new words,” Cannon said. “If you then analyze all of these words, we know the precise process by which language is changing.” HISD racks up $6000 for 976 phone calls Che brir toF HOUSTON (AP) — Public school employees racked up more than $6,000 worth of telephone calls to hear sexually oriented stories, for tune telling and other pretaped mes sages available on 976 numbers, the Houston Chronicle reported Sun day. Houston Independent School Dis trict spokesman Larry Yawn said last week that HISD has had an average of $500 to $700 in 976 charges per month for about a year. Yawn said it is impossible to deter mine who placed the calls because of the large number of employees,! cations and telephone lines involve The district has more than 2$ telephone lines at 232 schools and- several administrative office buit mgs. District officials moved last wet to participate in a free program ■ Southwestern Bell Telephone Co have 976 numbers blocked fronii telephone lines. He said officials began monito| ing the 976 calls made at the scho< and the central administration buik! ing about a year ago. HOL pound Jay Dee the Ho Rodeo grand c John: gin Futi named his steei Houst< Tomm\ The Ste last yeai DEFENSIVE DRIVING CLASS TICKET DISMISSAL - INSURANCE DISCOUNI March 9, (6-10 p.m.), March 10, (6-10 p.m.) March, 25 (6-10 p.m.) March 26, (8:30-12:30) FIJLirS 845-163 Go With Battalion Classified 845-2611