UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kanas editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of the authors.
March 28,1980
TMI—One year later
One year ago today, the worst nuclear accident in the history of American commercial nuclear energy has been caused by Three Mile Island near Harriburg, Pa.
Seventy-two hours ago, General Public Utilities Corp. filed a $500 million negligence suit in a New York City federal court against Babcock and Wilcox, the manufacturer of the Three Mile Island reactor.
And 48 hours ago, Republican presidential candidate, Rep. John B. Anderson, R-III, told an audience of more than 4,000 people in Hoch Auditorium that he would not support further licensing and construction of the facilities on plans until strict regulations had been passed and implemented.
One year later, the TMI power plant still remains crippled and dormant although cleanup operations have begun. One year later, residents from the Harrisburg community are still pleading with Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners to permanently dispel fears of latent radioactivity, future side-effects and disastrous replays. One year later, all that really stands between TMI and another nuclear power plant accident elsewhere is a set of proposals made by the NRC and hollow reassurances by nuclear in-
dusty officials that their plants are much safer since TMI.
The oil wells of the Middle East are running dry—at least those that feed the pipelines previously directed toward the United States—or are becoming so costly to tap that they are no longer an economical energy source for the United States. The millions of American dollars that are being pumped into foreign coffers should be pumped into other energy sources, developing or renewable energy sources and making safe to the core those energy sources, such as nuclear reactors, that already have served the nation well.
In the energy power struggle, the United States nuclear energy industry is trying to tame an atomic ion at feeble whip-and-chair cosmetic techniques, but content that these standards provide adequate protection for innocent power users. Atomic energy can be used to combat the sludge of dirty oil politics and the United States' pathetic dependency on foreign energy sources. It can be used complacently or carelessly. Three Mile Island was the last warning.
1. an expert recently said, "Three Mile Island was the salvation of nuclear energy IF nuclear energy can survive Three Mile Island."
Focus on sun's uses destroys its mystery
BY JOHN'S COLE
ork Times Special Features
By JOHN J. COLE
New York Times Special Features
BRUNSWICK, MIA – During the
2013 solar eclipse, on earth,
the sun has seldom been seen solely
in its current modes; as a fusion phenomenon
to be duplicated, or an energy source to be captured and exploited. It has, instead,
become a powerful dimension of wonder, of reverence, of mysticism, magic, worship, gratitude,
artistic inspiration, and an awareness of the great mystery of vividly absent from today's perceptions.
Yes, we have astronomers, we have physicists, we have more knowledge of the sun than ever before. But in a paradox, the sun's knowledge has increased, the sun's metaphysical significance has decreased and the data of its vital statistics
Just as we shall never be governed best leaders choose only for their height, not for their intellect. We do not establish a good and true relationship with the sun until we re-explore its contents and retrieve its own utilities with its mysteries and reinvent it with the full measure of meaning for humanity! just the sun has acquired cease to be our sole source of life on this earth millions of years ago.
THE WONDER IS that a force as pervasive as the sun's could have been as minimized as it has since been the start of the Industrial Age. One has only to consider the relationship with this planet to comprehend the totality of its effects on our lives.
The sun provides heat and light; wonders it, we would indeed freeze in the dark. It is the parent of the wind, the progenitor of clouds, the creator of rain, the sprouter of mountains, the source of sunlight on our sun's arc in the heavens. Our surises and sunsets are to witness its daily passage—a journey that moves a perpetual dawn around the globe, inspiring bird songs in a place from meridian to meridian there is never enough when this earth is without natural music.
THE SUN TAMES glaciers, is the alchemist that draws life-giving oxygen from the plants of land and sea, and is the
massive gravitational force that holds each celestial sphere of our galaxy in its proper orbit. Without the sun, humanity would long since have been lost in space.
Echoes of that knowledge reverberate within us, unconsciously, whenever we awaken to a bright dawn. We say we 'feel great' in the clear sunshine of a new spring, and then we feel our way around us we are feeling is the sun's own reawareness that the natural order of things is in place.
We say "it came to me in a flash" when a camera, like a microscope or imagery is one of interior illumination, of a light within the mind, of a small sunburn flashing within the cellular satellites our eyes are fixed on.
THE PARALELLES are no accident; the electromagnetic energy that allows brain-cell communication is a duplicate of the sun's radiations. Although this earth captures but a fraction of that energy (the magnetically unfastened on our sister planets and the moon), it is, on balance, more than enough, not only for our survival, but for our flourishing.
We can comprehend, and have proved, the mathematics of the solar energy equation. What we have been unable to do in recent years is to acknowledge the sun as our primary natural presence—metaphysicality. We cannot accept that we would not view the future with anxiety but with the certainty that it could be lived fulfillingly, in harmony with the natural.
WE MUST BEGIN to see the sun for its wonder as well as its warmth; for its history as a living entity and its relationship to the individual as well as its relation to earth. Only by reinvesting the sun with these dimensions can we hope it as a besign and primary energy source.
The sun has, after all, been around for 4,000 million years, and we (are in agreement) that it can be at least 5,000 million more. It behaves us—energy crisis or no energy crisis—to get to know it in its fascinating aspects, not only because of the technological imbalances of this, our generation, that we could have been led so far from the sun. Our solar balance needs
John J. Cole is writing a book about the sun.
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Coming recession will curb inflation
New York times special TIME
LEXINGTON, Mass. — Septicism has
greeted President Carter's proposed anti-
inflation program.
Bv OTTO ECKSTEIN
Are the budget cuts real? Is the program just a political play to pre-empt Reagan territory, or to be followed by renewed easi-come, easy-to-wollicies?
In this misma of doubt, we may fail to see that a historical turning point may be at hand.
The budget's heavy tax burden will win down up purchase power. His high tariffs will stop the private credit explosion. Energy conservation will be reinforced by that political will.
The government is willing to run a recession. And a recession will become almost inevitable because of current interest rates, balancing the budget, and the need for more power arising from paying the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' bill.
ECOONISTS' IDEAS, public attitudes and political needs will change, not just for
1980, but for the indefinite future. Once the budget is balanced, politicians would find it difficult to run deficits again. The Federal Reserve has also learned its lesson, and it is would repeat its traditional误用 of excessive ease in the first years of recovery.
Will the new policies reverse the 15-year deterioration in our core inflation rate? The new problem is not the 18-year price increase, but the figure exacerbated by OPEC price increases and the Consumer Price Index mismeasured housing costs. The rubber and capital costs, moving near 20% of
OPEC cannot double its prices so soon and mortgage rates will peak. Recession will get rid of the demand pull on prices. So temporary abatement of inflation does lie ahead.
BUT A RETURN to normal economic progress becomes possible only if traditional growth of productivity resumes and we become less dependent on PPEC.
The president's import surcharge of 10 cents a gallon on gasoline will gradually reduce consumption by 200,000 barrels a
day. The enormous price increases of OPEC plus domestic decontrol will also elicit conservation.
Realistically, the 1890's prospect for imports remains unchanged in a dry-land day regime. With Japan and other high-growth countries headed for larger imports and the Soviet Union Fading away, the United States remains in turnover. Thus, OPEC will retain the ability to strike an occurrance price
WE HAVE SUFFERED at the hands of OPEC, but the United States has not had to妨炎 of gasoline rationing, mass unemployeeing of gasoline worsening inflation induced by OPEC. There is time to reduce imports by manpower and equipment for convert electric plants to coal, renew nuclear power expansion or exhaust our depleted oil and gas reservoir by a quicker injection.
The recovery of productivity poses a further set of complex tasks and choices. It is generally accepted that routine business-tax incentives can produce an improved
capital-labor ratio. That is, tax incentives can provide a rate of increasing machinery and that one-third of the recent loss in productivity, rather than should provide the resources for such tax increases.
TO MAKE FURTHER progress on productivity, the U.S. must improve its international trade performance so our industry would benefit from extra market access to raw materials. Germany crowd us out of world markets, our manufacturing productivity will suffer.
No one asserts that the Carter program is the whole answer. But the president has, after decades of policy and encouraged the Federal budget to control credit growth. The coming recession will give us time and opportunity to be prepared to go back again. This could be the turning point.
Otte Ketstein, a member of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Council of Economic Advisors, is president of the economics at Harvard University and specializes in formulating consult firm that specializes in formulating consult firm.
Cruelty, injustice alive in institutions
Such sadness there is in this world, such cruelty, such neglect and ignorance. In the laws and institutions created to give protection there is much to be ashamed of
Recent news stories have revealed thousands of sterilizations performed on patients in mental institutions, wagers on the deaths in hospital patients, hospitals that are liable for the poor, and the need for a law to protect people who give aid to accident victims.
Frightening information that seems only to prove we not bettered our care of the indigent, incompetent or unfortunate.
Sterilizations of the mentally ill, retarded and imprisoned is a practice out of Nazi Germany. Yet, a Virginia newspaper has found that the involuntary sterilization of children in the German army in many states. At least one, Virginia, was sterilizing patients in the early 1970s.
The practice of sterilization of the institutionalized is just one of the ways normal people have discriminated against the forensically trained public because reasoning behind the practice was to
kate pound COLUMNIST
prevent persons considered incompetent from producing 'genetically defective' offspring. The sterilization procedures were often done without the knowledge of the "Apperectodiumes" were, in reality, hydrotherapy, vasectomies and ectavations.
STERILIZATIONS CONTINUED, were even encouraged by laws, long after scientists realized that mental illness, as the name implies, is not necessarily genetic traits.
Legislators and institution administrators allowed the sterilizations to go on, following the dictates of an ignorant and bigoted public. The "normal" citizens of this country were those who are not different. They refuse to know the facts about the handicapped.
Mental illness is rarely genetically caused. As many cases of mental retardation have been reported as abuse by genetics. Epilepsy is rarely passed from parent to child. A tendency for criminal activity is usually environmentally uncontaminated. Mental illness, physical handicaps and epilepsy are not contagious; they are not the living and working with them.
BUT LAWS HAVE condoned the belief
Laws have also allowed hospitals to "dump" indigent patients on state- or county-run medical care, in the Kansas City, Mo. Medical Center, in Kansas City, Mo., regularly has to shuffle patients to fit in at hospitals where the hospitals who are not able to pay medical bills to treat a person on the basis of income and level of insurance coverage. Discrimination against indigent persons is signed and inhuman as any Jim Crow law.
that people who deviate from what is accepted as normal cannot function in our society. Laws forbade the marriage of epileptics and the retarded. They allowed retarded children and the poor aged to be included in institutional hells. Laws permitted the indefinite hospitalization, without treatment, of those deemed incompetent.
HOSPITALS ARE MEANT to give aid to the hospitals filled with hope and charity. Plus example of charity, turning away those who most need help, though, is to give them food and warmth.
Staff members of a Las Vegas hospital made wagers on the times of death of intensive care patients, and may have sped or delayed death, according to several newspaper reports. Gambing on death, and trying to persevere life made the final pain of his game. Good god, didn't that kind of h贪昏恶感 ill-advised with Adolf Hofler?
The greatest irony of all is that laws must be passed to protect the Good Samaritan who aids the injured. In an era in which it is hard to be sure someone, anyone other than a licensed doctor
physician, nurse or paramedic can be sued for giving aid at the scene of an accident.
NAIVE GOODY-TWO-SHOES types accept help accidented people. Precise help please. If those sly people don't persist in helping others, they would never be sued for everything they did.
Sad, isn't it, that charity and concern go unappreciated, and are even discouraged, while abuse, neglect, bigotry and ignorance are allowed by law to exist.
What is frightening, though, is that the people who enact those laws, abuse their power and take control of the indigent and ill very likely commit their upstanding citizens doing their Christian duty. As though those were the ex-convicts in Nuremberg at the war crimes trials in Nuremberg.
Grad students want loan rights back
To the Editor:
In two Kansas articles, Feb. 28 and March 3, Cliff Kaha, director of the circulation treatment of the KU library system, made some sense to the administration of extended loan privileges for graduate students" would like to elaborate on this topic from under-exposure or further obfuscation.
Until mid-October of last year, graduate students, with a letter signed by their thesis authors, received the library card from the science libraries an extended loan card (a "green card") that entitled them to check out books for four weeks. This policy was in effect for the science collection because the material in these collections dominated by journals, serials and periodicals.
Then, with little or no warning to the head librarians of the science libraries, the green curriculum of the private privileges would be given to anyone except faculty. Ph.D. candidates who had passed their comprehensible exams, and employees of the research and Biological Surveys.
In a failure attempt to get an explanation, I went to the Reference Department of Wichita State University where his chairman stated why I should be an extension of my green card privileges. This cure-all was recommended by the combined science libraries, Richard Johnson.
I was told that no further green cards were forthcoming because "... they have been issued to freely and indiscriminantly ..." I can only marvel at this explanation
Haka attempted to smooth ruffled feathers by stating that the loan policy had been changed to standardize loan privileges for members of the class. He went on to pooh-pooh the idea that any patron (let alone a graduate student!) would really need to check out a book for their class. Haka heard it for "standardized libraries." You have forgotten one thing however: the collections in the various libraries are not more evident than in the science libraries.
In a statement to the press, Haka attempted to ally fears of a vendetta against master's students by saying that the ex-convict was not the only person because of "abuses" of the policy. Unfortunately, when Haka went on to cite those abuses, he listed only overdue fines and criminal charges against members. It should be noted that the very segment of the libraries' constituentity who are apparently the biggest offenders are apparently the highest judges under the extended loan policy.
because it was, in fact, the head librarian at each one of the science libraries who gave final approval, by signature, for the issuance of a green card. The KU library would issue the card to conduct an index description (or incompetence?) within its own ranks by penalizing its patrons.
I agree four months is a long time to keep a book out of circulation. But I do not agree overnight is long enough to allow my use of bound journals. My work (and the work of others) must be kept in reference to journals and serials. I do not have an infinite amount of free time to
Ron McDowell
St. Borocebel, Wis., graduate student
My tuition and taxes go to maintain my KU library system. I assume that it is maintained to be used, not just serve as a resource for the university, but also as loan policy is hampering my research and, in is, short, preventing me from making full use of the resources of the library system. I am most satisfied with the opinions of those patients who would be most affected were solicited by the library system before the extended loan政策 changed. In short, I want my extended loan students to have access to my students. I resent being singled out as a "whipping boy" because of the incompetence of the libraries' own staff, or as a sacrifice to the standardization."
spend in the library abstracting such material. Nor do I have unlimited funds to photocopy such material.
To the Editor:
Freedom of choice unquestionable right
My thoughts on some topics that have received much column space but little adequate discussion lately:
On registration and the draft: A person should volunteer to be shot at. Similarly, a person should volunteer to kill. The sanctity of life rests on an allail that will not desecrate
On raising the drinking age: The age of majority (voting rights, property rights, etc.) is 18. The 18-bar scene is a gross social
activity, and beer sold to 18-year-olds is a factor in auto accidents. But so is liquor sold to middle-aged state legislators. What we are talking about here is freedom. All persecutors must be freed the freedom to choose their entertainment, be it beer, liquor, or wrecking their car.
On women's rights: It's high time everyone realized that the male/female distinction is not social, or behavioral or discursive social or behavioral distinctions that might be observed exist only because we've been exposed many years that they. They are not real.
Russ Ham Kansas City, Kan., senior
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