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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 25, 1990)
ic Battalion 845.' TATE & LOCAL Wednesday, April 25,1990 •cientist enjoys paranormal topics ocably a |. emia. put co n . ■ue that 1 ex ercise tal or ex. :se? ■ ' s a mis- and un< tsafe, difficult aions by aer than turchase heir dis- ly would PAM MOOMAN (The Battalion Staff Science is not just dry calculations — it’s fun, 0. Dr. Tom Adair, a professor in Texas A&M’s lysics department, talked about “UFOs, Horo- opes and Other Nonsense.” Scientists can have in disproving claims of paranormal phenome- on, Adair told members of Students for the Ex oration and Development of Space Tuesday ght. “It’s a shame,(though),” he said. “It’s a lot ore fun believing them than not believing em.” Adair said Albert Einstein’s Special Relativity rmulas state that length, mass and passage of me depend on the speed of an object. In other ords, they are relative to how fast the object is aveling. "(These are) all things you must surely find fficult to believe,” Adair said. “I believe these lings because I can test the concepts of Einstein the laboratory.” However, many people believe in things that mnot be tested as easily, and Adair warned ainst this. “Ask the right questions,” he said. He said his urpose in this talk was to get people to consider both sides and not just accept one view as the answer. The Ber muda Tri angle is a popular.: subject in £•/ y ,<y / / the realm S/s of the su- ‘ , pernatural, Adair said. “They’ve got some great stories,” he said. “I just love ’em!” But the sensationalistic books only give half of the truth, he said. “The rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say, is this,” he said. “They stretch the Bermuda Triangle quite a bit.” A favorite story for those who believe in the powers of the Bermuda Triangle, Adair said, is about five U.S. Navy pilots who disappeared in the late 1940s. But it was not made public that one pilot was an instructor and four pilots were students, who were following the instructor. The instructor got confused, flew north and then turned east, thipking he was over the Florida peninsula. The pilots ran out of gas somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. “If you’ll look at a globe, the Atlantic Ocean is very big out there,” Adair said. There is no doubt that the pilots went down somewhere over it, he added. Being a pilot himself, Adair knows firsthand that it is easy to get confused sometimes. Pilots have to sit down and think about what they are doing and where they are, he said. “And that’s over Texas, and no one claims it’s mysterious,” he said. Horoscopes are also popular among some. “We have the president of the United States controlled by some weird woman in California through his wife,” Adair said. But he added that Nancy Reagan is not having too much influence on the rest of the country as true belief in horo scopes is not too common among the general population. UFOs are another common paranormal phe nomenon. “There are many, many cases of people seeing UFOs,” Adair said. “I believe in UFOs.” He added smiling, “There are lots of objects up there people can’t identify.” Most of these objects are atmospheric things, See Scientist/Page 4 ril 17,1 “s of an pectful. I proud ue they ue. Institu- No. 2, out lit- 'ed and student igroom )uld be any of knows urn on Symposium will examine group conflicts y SUZANNE CALDERON tflhe Battalion Staff The 1990 Symposium On Group lynamics — Conflict Within and tmong Groups, sponsored by Texas i&M’s Department of Psychology n April 26 and 27 at the College tation Hilton, will examine all fac ts of group conflicts. Topics ranging from conflicts in lating relationships to large-scale lolitical controversies will be ad- Iressed during the symposium by eading political scientists and social ind political psychologists. The purpose of the symposium is o look at conflict broadly defined, aid Dr. Jeff Simpson, assistant pro- essor of psychology and symposium vordinator. Among the speakers will be Jan- usz Reykowski, a lead negotiator for the Communist Party in Poland and David Sears, a leading political psy chologist from University of Califor- nia-Los Angeles. Reykowski will present ‘Resolving of a Large Scale Political Conflict: The Case of the Round Table Nego tiations in Poland’, and Sears will E resent ‘Language Conflict as Sym- olic Politics: The Role of Symbolic Meaning.’ The conference is free for A&M faculty and students. Schedule for 1990 Symposium On Group Dynamics: THURSDAY, APRIL 26 • 8:30 - 9:00 a.m. — Introduc tion, Stephen Worchel, Texas A&M University • 9:00 - 10:00 a.m. — Dean G. Pruitt, SUNY-B uffalo, Long-Run Success in Third Party Intervention. • 10:30 - 11:30 a.m. — Myron Rothbart, University of Oregon, In tergroup Perception and Social Con flict. • 11:30 - 12:30 — James M. Jones, University of Delaware and American Psychological Association, Individual vs. Group Identification as a Factor in Intergroup Racial Conflict. • 2:00 - 3:00 —- Cecilia L. Ridgeway, University of Iowa, Legiti macy, Status and Dominance Behav ior in Task Groups. • 3:00 - 4:00 — Gary P. Latha- m,University of Washington, Sensi tizing the Individual to the Group and the Group to the Individual. FRIDAY, APRIL 27 • 9:00 - 10:00 a.m. — Herbert Kelman, Harvard University, Form ing Coalitions Across International Conflict Lines: The Interplay of Conflicts Within and Between the Is raeli and Palestinian Communities. • 10:00 - 1 1:00 a.m. — David O. Sears, University of California-Los Angeles, Language Conflict as Sym bolic Politics: The Role of Symbolic Meaning. • 11:30 - 12:30 — Janusz Reykowski,Po/i'sh Academy of Sci ence, Resolving of a Large Scale Po litical Conflict: The Case of the Round Table Negotiations in Po land. • 2:00 - 3:00 — Caryl E. Rusbul- t,University of North Carolina, Re actions to Conflict in Close Relationships: Exit, Voice, Loyalty and Neglect. • 3:00 - 4:00 — Donald H. Bau- com, University of North Carolina, Marital Distress: A Cognitive/Beha- vioral Formulation. Photo by Eric H. Roalson Horticulture graduate student Kim Poff checks the stalk elonga tion on the plant Vinca Major Tuesday afternoon in a horticulture lab on the west side of campus. These plants have been treated with the growth hormone known as G.A. 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