Thursday, June i
en on the
three years
ds have home computer:
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nternet.
s are logging onto the Wet
>r more often thanboysare
Tools will likely surpas
the primary gateway toth
or children by 2005.
e notion that
Idren are an
rging market
9 longer true.
They have
emerged.”
— Peter Grunwald
it of Grunwald Associates
Thursday, June 8, 2000
Page 5
THE BATTALION
Blood on the fairway
New golf courses could create interesting rivalry
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ersity honors
er and Fonda
DU IS (AP) — A university de
honor Ted Turner andjarf
intly for their dedicationtoei-
ntal causes.
the celebrity couple ait
I their separation.
.irner will go solo Thursdayt
lis World Ecology Award fro"
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ornia Grill is no more,
suburban Dallas restaurant
led the Baja California Gn
signs and references to thef*
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settlement approved this#
lias County judge,
rock group sued last mo
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tation KTVT.
group's Hotel California
i million copies, making
the top sellers of all time.
•art of the settlement reach
y, the restaurant cannot
nusic exclusively.
C ontrary to all the jokes, the City
of Bryan is not a ghetto. Any
one saying to themselves,
"Yeah, but down past the train
tracks..." should take a one-and-a-half
hour drive south to downtown Hous
ton and poke around the Fifth Ward.
Funny how there are no Cafe Capris —
or even Dairy Queens, for that matter
— in the poorest parts of that city.
So while Bryan may be far from the slums, two parties
are competing to improve the area and attract visitors
with a pair of first-class golf courses. The City of Bryan, in
partnership with Texas A&M, is planning a lush, 27-hole
golf course to be surrounded by up-scale (i.e. expensive)
homes. The Traditions Golf and Country Club will be lo
cated in West Bryan and will be designed by Jack Nick-
laus and his son. On the other side of town, Miramont De
velopment Corporation is scheming up a course of its
own. Their plan is a 22-hole wonder in East Bryan, which
will have the same costly
homes around it, but unfortu
nately will not be designed by
anybody famous.
So thanks to these two
groups, Bryan, a city long not
ed for its rich golf history, will
see the addition of nearly 50
holes of golfing glory. At first
glance, new courses and coun
try clubs seems like a perfect
match for A&M's surrounding
community. The Traditions course is pursuing former stu
dents as members, and with a historically all-white
school, a cozy "members-only" country club seems like a
good idea. However, even if A&M drags in every old Ag
who has ever stepped onto the links, the Bryan area can
not support two new, full-scale golf and country clubs.
Even though the Pebble Creek Country Club is doing
well, Bryan's Municipal Golf Course and the Texas A&M
University's course look like they are slowly going to
waste. B-CS is not a large golfing community — it has a
hard enough time keeping the Putt-Putt golf course alive,
Vying for the pennies
of B-CS golfing patrons
may be tough, but
competition, like love,
will make a man do
strange things.
and that place even has windmills. Besides, nothing
would ruin Bryan's working-class community like a
bunch of uppity white males with score cards.
Unfortunately, it seems too late to stop the construction
of these facilities and surrounding upper-crust neighbor
hoods. Instead, the courses and country clubs should have
to continue their competition by fighting for support from
the City of Bryan. With any luck, this will set the stage for a
Malthusian 'survival of the fittest' contest with the winner
going on to cater what golf-enthusiasts it can attract. As for
the loser, nobody wants to see another course lay fallow.
Therefore, the less-successful course should get turned
into a full-sized miniature golf course a la Cad-
dyshack 11. While this new ultimate miniature
golf palace may put the old one out of
business, at least local high school se
niors will still have a windmill to make
out behind.
Vying for the pennies of B-CS golf
ing patrons may be tough, but compe
tition, like love, will make a man do
strange things. The ri
valry should start out small,
perhaps with each side trying
to outdue the other for mem
ber's attention. First greens fees
could go down or members could
get free lunch buffets in the coun
try club. Before you know it, the
courses will be offering "Rock &
Golf" specials with '80s rock and
glow-in-the-dark balls to attract
the elitists of tomorrow.
But sadly, these ploys will probably not be enough for
one of the courses to rise up as the premier, members-only
cracker barrel of Bryan, Texas. The Traditions and Mira
mont courses will probably have to take more drastic
measures. It is not horribly presumptuous to suspect
members from rival courses will harbor animosity toward
each other and may take out that aggression in a choreo
graphed Leonard Bernstein climactic street fight straight
out of West Side Story.
One can only hope that the competing courses could
settle their dispute with song and dance alone, however,
things may turn violent. First Bryan gets two new golf
courses, how far off is an 18-hole steel cage death match?
Nonetheless, this struggle could turn into a spectator
event, garnering much needed resident attention. Never
forget, this is the community that damn-near sold out
Reed Arena when the WCW came last year.
However it is resolved, the competition between
Bryan's two new golf and country clubs is practically in-
RUBEN DELUNA/Thk Battalion
evitable. The town may not be a hood, but it is not big
enough for Traditions and Miramont. B-CS might support
two new Wal-Marts or two new Sonics; but not two new
expensive, members-only country clubs and golf courses.
So, for the sake of not watching yet another set of fairways
grow brown, let there be war. At least the WCW enthusi
asts will come.
Eric Dickens is a senior English major.
News service hurt by religious group purchase
WWII veterans deserve memorial
I n the words of
Neil Young,
"It's better to
burn out than to
fade away."
Unfortunately,
this phrase is a fit
ting epitaph for
United Press In
ternational (UPI). The news wire ser
vice enjoyed its heyday in the '50s,
with notable scoops including the first
report of President Kennedy's assassi
nation in Dallas. Accordingly, UPI
earned the majority of its 10 Pulitzer
Prizes during this period. It had a ro
bust network of affiliates across the
country with a staff of news icons in
cluding David Brinkley and Walter
Cronkite. Profit margins, however,
have plummeted steadily since those
days as the scars of two bankruptcies
and three failed owners in the past
decade remain. What once was a vi
able competitor to the Associated
Press has now become a joke — a
skeleton crew of 157 employees. Sad
ly, UPI today is merely a silhouette of
what it was in its glorious past.
Two weeks ago, UPI hit rock bot
tom. It was announced that UPI is to
be purchased by New World Com
munications Inc., publisher of the The
Washington Times. More alarming is
the fact that New World is the news
arm of the ultra-conservative Unifica
tion Church, a cult-esque ministry
founded by Rev. Sun Myong Moon.
The church's antics have been docu
mented for years with practices rang
ing from mass weddings to "aggres
sive" recruitment techniques.
Predictably, the media has been in
an uproar since the sale's announce
ment. "To me, UPI just died," said
Sam Donaldson, ABC anchorman.
This sentiment is understandable
and justified — the notion of an ex
tremist church pulling the strings of
a once-respected news wire borders
on blasphemy. Gone is the journalis
tic need for impartiality and in its
place is the threat of propaganda
and self-promotion on behalf of the
UTiification Church.
Even if the church somehow man
ages to keep their noses out of UPI's
content, the damage ha? already been
done. The bottom line is that as long
as New World controls UPI, the pub
lic and the media alike will have no
faith in the stories UPI puts out be
cause of lingering doubts.
Not surprisingly. New World was
quick to address this concern soon af
ter the purchase was announced. New
World representative Larry Moffitt as
sured that the wire service will main
tain its "editorial autonomy."
"UPI will maintain its editorial in
dependence and build on its reputa
tion for honest, fair-minded reporting
that has made it an essential and re
spected news agency for genera
tions," he said. No offense, but is that
not along the lines of a fox guarding a
hen house? Does New World really
expect people to have faith that they
will not, at any time, forcibly promote
their agenda through UPI?
It already looks like New World
has shot itself in the foot. Moffitt has
stated that New World will encour
age executives at UPI to promote
"customized" news in areas such as
morality, religion and family issues.
In any other context, these sugges
tions would be a wonderful addition
to any newspaper. But with the Unifi
cation Church behind these changes,
the line between a legitimate report
ing and a church newsletter becomes
severely compromised.
Sadly, there has already been one
sizable casualty due to this purchase
— Helen Thomas, UPI's famed White
House correspondent for the past 57
years. Often called the "dean of the
White House press corps," Thomas
enjoyed the honor of asking the first
question at every news conference.
She has followed eight presidents
and was prepared to take on her
ninth. Soon after the sale's announce
ment, Thomas turned in her resigna
tion. She chose to quit rather than
work for the questionable new own
ers. If Thomas' lack of faith does not
call into question New World's possi
ble motives, nothing else will. Since
UPI's rapid decline, Thomas has be
come an ironic symbol, a reflection of
the company's history — resilient and
dependable, yet old and outpaced.
Through this sale. New World and the
Unification Church have destroyed
that legacy in one swipe.
MARK
PASSWATERS
David Lee is a senior economics and
journalism major.
O n Memorial Day, the small
southern Virginia town of
Bedford dedicated the Na
tional D-Day Memorial. Bedford
was chosen as the site of the memo
rial because the town lost more
men per capita (106 of its 3600 resi
dents) on D-Day than anywhere
else in the nation. This Veteran's
Day, the National World War II Memorial, a $100 million
project, will be dedicated in Washington, D.C.
Both of these monuments are well-de
served shrines to those who fought
and died in the second World War.
These veterans deserve every ounce
of praise that can be heaped upon
them. There is simply one question that
needs to be asked: What took so long?
It is a terrible indictment of so- <:
ciety that it took Spielberg's mas
terpiece, Saving Private Ryan, to re- f
store the sacrifice of our
grandfathers to the public's con
sciousness. While memorials were
built — quite justly — for those who
fought and died in Korea and Viet
nam, the veterans of the most horrific
war in history were largely ignored.
Perhaps it was the last bit of rebel
lion that our parents had stored up to
pour on their own parents. Maybe it is
because our nation is just plain igno
rant. Whatever the reason for this ab
surd delay of gratification, those of us
who did not fight and suffer owe
those who did a great debt. It is time that we jeff smith/t
repaid them, with interest. That recognition
may start with blocks of granite in Washington, but it
must not stop there.
The men and women of the "greatest generation,"
as it has been called, faced an evil that most of us to
day cannot fathom. The best our generation has for
public enemy number one is a dithering idiot like
he Battalion
Saddam Hussein. In the 1940s, there were villains ga
lore, including Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and
Hideki Tojo, who had to be confronted and bested by
the average citizen.
Each one of these horrible individuals shared a
common objective: the destruction of democracy
everywhere. Most of us recognize names like Eisenhow
er, MacArthur or Patton. Some even know future-fa
mous politicians like John Kennedy, George Bush and
Bob Dole served in military during World War II. Unfor
tunately, we do not know the names of common Ameri
cans who did their duty and, quite simply, saved the
world as we know it. Even more tragically, we know so
little about the half million men whose bodies
lie in cemeteries throughout Africa, Europe
and Asia. Each day, more and more veter
ans of World War II leave us to join their
comrades in the great beyond. There is
much we can learn before they are all
gone. This nation is sorely in need of a
> reminder that there are things worth
fighting for, and that each person has
the courage to do what is required of
them. The pain and sacrifice of those
who gave their blood during World War
II is powerful proof that some things are
worth fighting for, no matter what the cost.
The insidious disease that was spread by
the protesters of the Vietnam war must be
expunged from our collective soul before it
destroys our ability to stand up for the
rights of our nation and mankind.
As the memorials to honor those who
fought in World War II begin to sprout up
across the nation, it is time for all citizens
to give these veterans their due. It is not a
stretch to say that because of these people,
we are not speaking German, Japanese or Russian.
Their generation was forced into the greatest con
frontation in history and won it. By following their ex
ample, maybe we can prevent a repeat occurrence.
Column exhibits errors,
confusion about GPS
In response to Sunnye Owens’ June 7
column.
The factual and technical errors in the
article are too numerous to mention in one
letter, although I will mention a few. For in
stance, Owens states that the although
GPS "costs [sic] the government $12 bil
lion to develop, GPS does not charge com
panies for access to the data.”
First, the GPS was developed in the
’70s, and there are no more "develop
ment" costs. Maintenance, perhaps,
but not development. Secondly, "GPS"
cannot charge anyone for anything.
"GPS" is a system of 24 satellites in
geosynchronous orbit who, I assure you,
do not charge bills. If anyone did charge
for use of the system, it would be the
U.S. military, who developed, owns and
maintains the system.
Thirdly, with even a rudimentary knowl
edge of the GPS one would know that it
does not contain "data" that users "ac
cess." The 24 satellites continuously
MAIL CALL
broadcast their location and time, and
GPS devices can receive that data and tri
angulate a position. As far as recouping
costs, the system more than paid for it
self in the Gulf War.
The concept that the GPS could tell
employers details of employees actions
is false. All that the GPS can do is tell a
user where he or she is at that moment.
For someone else to track your move
ments, you would have to carry around a
GPS receiver and some sort of transmit
ter to transmit the GPS data to the per
son tracking you.
Statements such as "The GPS moni
toring system should be illegal when it is
used id a improper way such as monitor
ing employee bathrooms" demonstrate a
misunderstanding of the technology.
The GPS is not capable of monitoring
bathrooms. All the GPS can do is trans
mit the time, and all GPS receivers can
do is use that transmission to calculate
the receiver's current location. If journal
ists are going to comment on technology
they don't understand, at least keep the
facts straight.
Adam Mikeal
Department of Physics
The Battalion encourages letters to the editor. Let
ters must be 300 words or less and include the au
thor’s name, cldss and phone number.
The opinion editor reserves the right to edit letters
for length, style, and accuracy. Letters may be submit
ted in person at 014 Reed McDonald with a valid stu
dent ID. Letters may also be mailed to:
The Battalion - Mail Call
013 Reed McDonald
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX
77843-1111
Campus Mail: 1111
Fax: (409) 845-2647
E-mail: battletters@hotmail.com
Mark Passwaters is a senior electrical engineering major.