he Battalion
ol. 89 No.37 USPS 045360 16 Pages
College Station, Texas
Monday, October 23,1989
Did we win?
The Aggie sideline rejoices after A&M quarterback Lance
Pavlas scored on a quarterback sneak from the 1-yard line
late in the fourth quarter, putting the Aggies ahead of Baylor
Photo by Mike C. Mulvey
University 13—8 at Saturday’s game. The Aggies went on to
defeat the Bears 14—11 and improved their conference re
cord to 3-1. „
See story on page 9.
Quake victims
try to recover
after disaster
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Res
cuers euphoric over finding a survi
vor in a collapsed freeway resumed
work at a frustratingly cautious pace
Sunday, and earthquake-shaken
Northern Californians mapped
strategy for Monday’s commute
through “gridlock.”
Longshoreman Buck Helm, who
spent four days in a tomb of Inter
state 880 concrete and steel, was in
critical-stable condition at Highland
General Hospital in Oakland with
some slight improvement, hospital
officials said.
Engineer Steven Whipple, hailed
as a hero of the rescue, said he was
checking the fallen double-deck
freeway for stability on Saturday
when he spotted the back of Helm’s
head with his flashlight, and then
saw a hand wave at him.
“It stopped my heart,” Whipple
said. “I thought maybe the wind was
blowing and that’s what caused it. I
thought I might be losing it.”
Helm regained some function in
his kidneys, damaged by severe de
hydration, and his lung condition
improved slightly, Dr. Will Fry said.
He was still in the intensive care unit,
and still was having difficulty mov
ing his left leg.
“He is not out of the woods yet,”
Fry said.
While the city rejoiced at Helm’s
rescue, the number of dead pulled
from the 1-880 disaster rose to 38,
including a 4-year-old boy, bringing
the earthquake’s toll to 59, with
thousands injured and homeless and
dozens still missing. Damages
topped $7 billion.
At the 1-880 rescue site in indus
trial downtown Oakland, six sweeps
of the area where Helm was found
with sniffing dogs and electronic
gear turned up no signs of other sur
vivors.
Digging to remove cars and bod
ies was delayed because the double
deck freeway, which collapsed on
top of itself, shifted under the
strains of aftershocks, wind and even
the rescue work itself.
Workers placed giant airbags, hy
draulic jacks and wood timbers un
der concrete sections, and used
truckloads of dirt to build a sturdier
foundation, according to Kyle Nel
son, a California Department of
Transportation spokesman in Oak
land.
“The problem is we still have to
proceed cautiously and deliberately
even though people are encour
aged,” Jim Drago, another CalTrans
spokesman, said.
Officials also closed five more el
evated blocks of 1-880 south of the
destruction because of newly de
tected cracks.
Meanwhile, a half-dozen im
promptu tent cities have sprouted
up around Watsonville, the battered,
largely Hispanic city south of San
Francisco and closer to the epi
center.
Hundreds of residents there are
so traumatized by the quake, its af
tershocks, which have been both
strong and numerous, and the mem
ory of the Mexico City earthquake
that they refuse to go indoors.
Official didn’t investigate; Professor explains earthquake,
spent budget, paper says seismic waves to geology class
AUSTIN (AP) — The head official of the Texas
louse General Investigating Committee in 1987 and
988, spent the panel’s entire budget although the
roup met once and did not formally investigate any-
ling, according to a published report.
State Rep. Charles Finnell, chairman of the House
General Investigating Committee in 1987 and 1988, ex-
austed the panel’s entire $40,000 budget, mostly
trough travel expenses and payment to employees of
is House office, according to records reviewed by the
\ustin American-Statesman.
The rest of the committee’s two-year budget ex
cuses included temporary clerical help, more than
3,000 copies of documents, decorative memorial cita-
ons and certificates for constituents, the newspaper
eported.
Finnell, D-Holliday, defended his committee spend-
tg and said he used the budget to personally investi-
ate hundreds of tips, but none warranted attention of
tie full committee.
“I checked two or three tips a week,” ranging from
omplaints about state agencies to allegations about
irongdoing by lawmakers, Finnell said. “There was not
role for a legislative investigation.”
Finnell said the tips kept him and his staff busy.
Tim Green, Finnell’s legislative aide from March
987 until August 1988, disputed that.
“I never really did anything for the committee —
naybe two hours’ worth of work the whole time I was
with (Finnell),” Green, whose salary was paid from the
committee budget for 12 of the 17 months he worked
for Finnell, said.
“I think I sent one letter to the attorney general re
questing an opinion,” Green said. “That was it.”
House business office records obtained under the
Texas Open Records Act show Finnell spent more than
$5,900 of the General Investigating Committee’s two-
year budget traveling between Holliday and Austin.
Rep. Doyle Willis, D-Fort Worth, took over as chair
man of the committee in January.
“I don’t think the committee really did anything” in
1987 or 1988, Willis said. “Nothing I know of.”
Finnell acknowledged that might be the impression
some people got. He said the committee office was
closed most of the time and the panel’s business was
conducted in his Capitol office.
“Each chairman runs the committee his own way,”
Finnell said. “I didn’t have any complaints ... I felt like
I did a good job. The committee was operated the way it
should be operated, and just because there were not
any subpoenas or whatever — that’s not the way to mea
sure the success of that committee.”
Finnell currently heads the House Rules and Resolu
tions Committee, which has a two-year budget of
$46,500. The nine-member panel acts as a clearing
house for resolutions and monitors House rules while
the Legislature is in session.
By Melissa Naumann
Of The Battalion Staff
The seismic wave from Tuesday’s
San Francisco earthquake traveled
1,000 miles in three minutes, a
Texas A&M geologist said Friday.
Dr. Karl Koenig, associate profes
sor of geology, explained the earth
quake’s seismograph, a paper show
ing the measurements of the
magnitude of an earthquake, in his
geology class.
The P wave, the wave of compres
sion that reaches a seismic station
first, went from Santa Clara, Calif.,
the epicenter of the earthquake, to
El Paso in three minutes, Koenig
said.
Although the seismograph
showed action for more than an
hour after the first wave, the
movement after the P wave and the
S wave, the wave that follows the P
wave, was just reverberations from
the initial shock, he said. He com
pared the continuing motion to
waves in water, saying that one wave
generates another.
At any seismic station, a minimum
Chess champ Kasparov whips
Deep Thought computer twice
Police question
teenager’s role
in fatal shooting
HOUSTON (AP) —A 16-year
old boy was questioned in connec
tion with the death of a man whc
was inadvertently shot during a
confrontation between rival high
school football fans, police said.
The teen is a junior at Madison
High School in southwest Hous
ton, homicide Sgt. Dave Collier
said. The boy made a statement
to police Saturday and was ex
pected to be turned over to the
juvenile detention courts, he said.
Collier said the fatal shot was
not intended for George Allison,
21, but for three students from
Willowridge High School, whose
football team beat Madison 28-21
Friday night. The three Willow
ridge students had driven to the
mobile home park, where about
100 Madison students were hav
ing a party.
“Somebody handed him (the
suspect) a gun and said, ‘Shoot at
them,’ and he shot at them,” Col
lier said. The shot struck Allison,
who was standing nearby, in the
chest. He was taken to Ben Taub
Hospital, where he died at 1:12
a.m. Saturday.
NEW YORK (AP) — It was a bat
tle of two chess champions — one ac
tive and outspoken, known to sip
tonic water during matches, the
other sitting quietly on a desk, taking
in a different kind of juice.
World chess champion Garri Kas
parov, who hasn’t lost a tournament
since 1981, met Deep Thought, the
winner of this year’s World Com
puter Chess Championship, for two
games Sunday.
The human won the first game af
ter more than 2 hours when the
computer retired from the game af
ter Kasparov’s 52nd move. He won
the second match after 2 hours when
the computer surrendered after 37
moves.
“I expected it,” Kasparov said.
“It’s a good player but without posi
tion and experience.”
Kasparov said after the first game
he realized early on that he would
win when the computer missed some
tactical opportunities and was not
able to analyze all of the champion’s
decisions.
“I don’t mind who’s sitting oppo
site me,” said Kasparov, who lives in
the Soviet city of Baku, in Azerbai
jan. “If a computer should win, of
course, I would have to challenge it
to protect the human race.”
Murray Campbell, who helped
create the computer at Carnegie-
Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said
it appeared there was a bug in the
computer during the first game.
“It wasn’t looking at the right
“I
■ expected it. It’s a good
player but without position
and experience.”
— Garri Kasparov,
world chess champion
moves,” he said after the first match.
“It wasn’t given a chance to show its
best style of play.”
Commentator Shelby Lyman, who
helped arrange the match, said be
fore the games that Deep Thought
was “clearly the first chess computer
with the potential to draw blood and
defeat the world champion. Kaspa
rov has never played a machine at
this level, and it will make moves he
may not expect. This will be histori
cally interesting.”
But one of several hundred spec
tators, chess grand master Larry
Christiansen, complained that com
puters are “killing the creativity of
chess. A lot of the beauty of chess is
coming up with an original and
beautiful idea. Now, with comput
ers, everything is known.”
Nine-year-old Conrad de Marez
Oyens disagreed. He has been play
ing against computers for three
years — and prefers them to human
counterparts.
“When you play it, it’s always a
good game, even if you lose,” he
said, predicting that human chess
skills will improve because of com
puters.
Deep Thought, created by five
graduate students at Carnegie-Mel-
lon University in Pittsburgh, can
analyze a possible 700,000 positions
on the chessboard per second.
Deep Thought evaluates the mil
lions of possible board positions cre
ated by each sequence of five moves
it imagines.
of three different seismometers is
present to measure three different
directions of movement: vertical,
north-south and east-west.
His seismograph, obtained by Dr.
Vickie Harder, A&M professor of
geology, from the University of
Texas at El Paso seismic station,
measured the vertical movement of
the earth.
The 1906 earthquake in San Fran
cisco, Koenig said, which measured
8.3 on the Richter scale, was at least
four times as intense as Tuesday’s
earthquake.
The earthquake in China late
Wednesday had nothing to do with
the quake in California, he said.
Koenig said that, after the quake,
a Dallas man called to ask if the
earthquake could have been related
to underground nuclear testing that
was being done in Nevada. Incidents
like this reflect a growing interest in
science on the part of the public, he
said.
“A populace that is concerned
about these things is a populace that
will learn about these things,” he
said. “This is our world — are we
messing it up doing things we think
will improve it?”
Mattox pushes for lottery
to fund education reforms
By Melissa Naumann
Of The Battalion Staff
A state lottery will pay for edu
cation improvements and anti
drug action if Jim Mattox, attor
ney general and Democratic gu
bernatorial candidate, has his
way.
Mattox, speaking at the Brazos
County Courthouse Friday, said
his estimates show a state lottery
can generate between $500 and
$700 million a year, enough to
support his plans for new prisons,
drug treatment programs and ed
ucation improvements.
He said his war on drugs will
include drug testing as well as re
habilitation for people as they
pass through the criminal justice
system.
“Less than 5 percent of people
who need assistance or rehabilita
tion are provided that,” Mattox
said.
Formerly a criminal prosecutor
in Dallas County, Mattox said he
is the only candidate for governor
who has prosecuted a drug
pusher or “ever actually fought
against drugs and crime.”
“I want the pushers to meet
‘the slammer’,” he said. “As gov
ernor, I’ll see to it that they do.”
Mattox said new prisons must
be built or existing ones ex
panded so prisoners can serve
more of their sentences.
“I’m tired of a system that lets
the criminals out of jail before
their victims get out of the hospi
tal,” he said. “When we get these
people in jail we’ve got to keep
them long enough to rehabilitate
them.”
The race for governor comes
down to the issue of a state lottery
versus new taxes, Mattox said.
“I’m the only candidate who is
unequivocally opposed to new
taxes, unequivocally opposed to a
state income tax and firmly in fa
vor of a state lottery,” he said. “As
a Southern Baptist, I understand
the concerns of my fellow church
members (about the lottery), but I
know that the Legislature needs
new revenue to fund our drug
and alcohol abuse programs,
crime efforts and our educational
system.
“No one will be forced to buy a
lottery ticket, but anyone who
does will not only earn a chance at
the jackpot, they will also be help
ing to pay for education and the
war on drugs.”
Photo by Km thy HMvemMn
Attorney General Jim Mattox