Page 4 University Daily Kansan, April 10, 1981
Opinion
Onward, Columbia
The years of setbacks and delays are about to end. It's just a matter of hours before the stubby-wing spaceship Columbia rises atop a pillar of fire, breaking free of earthy constraints and soaring heavenward.
The launch represents the first American manned space mission in six years. It represents something this country hasn't seen for quite some time—a new adventure. And it represents a whole new age in the exploration of space.
From now on, satellites that go on the fritz won't be written off as multimillion-dollar losses; they'll be retrieved, fixed up and sent back up. Satellites like Skylab could be kept from raining back down to Earth. Permanent space stations can finally be assembled and staffed, stations no more experimental than were the lonely outposts along this nation's great rivers.
For if the reusable spaceship concept proves successful, the way will be paved for the commercial use and eventual colonization of space. Just as Henry Ford's assembly lines made automobiles the transportation for the masses, so, too, will the shuttle make space travel an everyday occurrence.
True, all this won't happen overnight.
And right now, there seems to be very little incentive to go into space.
However, that's likely to change by the turn of the century, when the earth's metal and mineral resources start to
dwindle, just like the oil reserves are doing now. When the moon is needed as a mine for raw materials, the shuttle will be there, immeasurably speeding up the use of outer space to solve the problems on Earth. The day may come—and not too far off—when the shuttle will prove its worth over and over again.
Naturally, just because the shuttle is expected to make space travel almost routine doesn't diminish the dangers of orbital flight; the two astronauts piloting the trial mission are flying a craft that's never been tested in actual launch or re-entry conditions.
Yet the question remains, why venture out into space? It's not because of space-age spin-offs like pocket calculators and Tang. It's because there may be answers out there to solve problems here. Just as the problems of the Old World weren't solved by Europeans staying where they were, it's reasonable to expect that the problems of Earth won't be solved by man clinging to his home planet. This little world, complex though it may be, just doesn't harbor all the answers.
Those answers, however, may be found in the vast expanses of the universe. It may be hundreds, it may be thousands, of years before mankind reaches the stars, but someday man will reach them—provided his will to explore remains strong, and that he doesn't destroy himself here on Earth first.
The University Daily KANSAN
(SPS 60-649) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Tuesday during (June) and July except April, Saturday and Sunday, holidays. Student-class passage fees are $25 per student for each day and $10 for all students for $4 per month for the entire year outside the county. Student subscriptions are a $2 per semester, paid through the student activity fee. Postmaster: Some changes of address to the University Daily Magazine, Fall Hall, The University of Kanaa, Kanaka, Oregon.
Managing Editor David Lewis Ellen Farnsworth
Editorial Editor Dan Monday
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Gerrit Pry
Larry Leebingwood
Turdli Ligh
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General Manager and News Adviser ... Richard Mussel
Kanan Adviser ... Chuck Chowitts
Safety, health, convenience justify government regulation
New York Times Special Features
PHILADELPHA-One of the loudest and most frequentcries among modern demagogues is that the world is governed too much. We admit that it may be so for the full gratification of their selfishness at the expense of other people's rights, and we take it for granted that internationalism is the sole motivation for this cry. But it is not governed enough for the protection of the good against the bad, for the defense of rights, and for the prevention of wrongs.
Our doctrine is that, in our own country, the freest in the world, and in England, much vaulted as the fresc in Europe, mankind is not governed enough, but is left at liberty to do many things which invade the rights of others, while the invaded are left no other protection than their own sagacity, which, as a general rule, is too little for the purpose.
In times that are now called barbarous, statute books were filled with regulations of every kind of business. What was their object? Not taxation for the benefit of kings, as some of the demagogues who now complain of too much government erroneously and ignorantly suppose. The object was the safety of the people. Nearly all those regulations originated in cities, towns and boroughs, municipal corporations or other forms from kings or nobles at the church, for various considerations, the right of self-government, which did govern themselves in everything domestic and made the safety and prosperity of the corporation a primary object of government.
They regulated everything, and especially markets. They established standards for weights and measures, and fines for disregarding them. . . . They invented inspection laws, and prohibited and punished forestalling, regrading and other tricks of monopoly that made provisions dearer and inferior in quality. Hence, they imposed controls on the weights and measures, and other modes of watching for dishonesty which are now denounced as barbaric interferences with free trade.
in outlining, they required of the builder a license, or security for public safety; they insisted upon certain thicknesses for walls, certain heights as the maximum for houses, and certain protections against their tumbling down while being built up. More ignorant than the present machinery, they could not manufacture anything so cheaply, so expeditiously, and in most cases so beautiful, as their posterity of these days. But so far as their knowledge ex
tended, they were a thousand fold more careful of human life, health, comfort and convenience, and therefore made more laws for the security of each, than we of this more enlightened age. If these ancient burghers had less knowledge, they had much more discretion, and seen to have had much more conscience, than we who boast so much of our superiority.
What then shall we do for the security now so habitually and wickedly disregarded? Restore all the complicated machinery of the Middle Ages to their former glory. Knowledge has made some of them needless. But the most enlightened may still be imposed upon by many frauds which can only be detected by scientific inspection, and the most cautious may be blowed up or have their skull cracked by confidence in the machine. In a steamboat foresee the bursting of a boiler? Or those on a railroad the neglect of a switch? Or those in a street the falling down of a new wall from bad mortar? but engineers and architects can foresee such things, inspectors can provide about it, firemen can find fires, and imprisonment for manslaughter or mayhem or other injury, will make managers more vigilant.
The proverb says that a burned child will dread the fire. But of what use for safety is its dread, after it has burned to death? We dislikey the modern system of freezing food and need to be prepared and convenience of consumers to the interest of suppliers, and should prefer a return to the old system, which rendered suppliers responsible to consumers. The world is not governed enough for the benefit of the many, though governed to much in other ways, too little in our own, for the benefit of the few.
"Oh! But such precautions interfere with free trade; they would be a relapse into the Dark Ages when the world is already governed too much. Leave everybody to regulate his own business, and let consumers take care of themselves. Demand and supply will regulate everything, and those who offer the best article cheapest will get all the custom."
Yea! And after they are blown up, run over and crushed, knocked down dead, or poisoned to death, they will discover they have made a supply of gas, a source of supply, and deal with somebody else!
(These are excerpts from Aug. 28 and 30, 1952, editorials in the Public Ledger, a Philadelphia newspaper. The Filmore administration excerpts were provided by Michael H. Frisch, research professor in the University of Pennsylvania's Philadelphia Social History Project.)
For the past two weeks, the Student Senate elections committee has batted around the eligibility of the Party Coalition's candidates for the Board of Class Officers.
What could have been a simple decision, if it had been decided according to Senate Rules and Regulations, has mushroomed into a debate where no one has set deadlines set by the Senate and its committees.
On March 27, the filing deadline for candidates for the Board of Class Officers elections was at 5 p.m. Approximately 15 minutes beforehand, Gib Kurschner, organizer of the Party Coalition, gave a petition for the April 18-19 elections without the authentic signatures of six candidates.
But not everyone agreed with Abbott. Chris Mehl, senior class presidential candidate for BOCO and co-organizer of the Advance Coalition, and Phil Knisely, student senator, were ready to file a complaint against the Party Coalition with the Senate.
To settle the dispute, the first of two farcical elections committee meetings was called.
Kurchers signed the petition for himself and the other candidates with the knowledge of Gail Abbott, Student Senate elections committee cochairman. She allowed the Party Coalition 24 hours to get the original signatures on all the notifications.
"I don't feel that I extended the deadline another day," Abbott said last week. "I feel that my word as elections co-chairman is valid, and if he was correct then we were okay on Friday then that's what I meant."
On a 5-4 vote, the committee first agreed to void the six candidates from the ballot. Then, as argument ensued, Committee Co-chairman Derek Davenport annuled the committee's action because only nine of a possible 61 voting members were present.
At this week's meeting—one supposedly closed to all coalition members, but Kurschner appeared anyway—the vote to allow Party members on the ballot wavered with each count.
The final tally revealed the Party Coalition's success. The coalition received Senate approval to be placed on the ballot, a decided advantage over a write-in campaign that would have been
CYNTHIA CURRIE
the alternative if the committee had swayed against Kurschner's coalition.
The BOCO elections don't deserve the debate that has been provoked by the deadline controversy. It would be more honorable, and perhaps the effects of the decision would be seen as a greater threat to the board's larger mandate. An almost 'Who cares?' it's just the Board of Class Offices' attitude prevails.
That attitude prevails because the BOCO officers really don't make policy or do anything that is even slightly earth-shaking for students. BOCO funds are collected from class card sales, used to organize class activities, the Big Blue Bla and, most notably, class beer baskets.
Until this year, BOCO and Senate elections run on the same ballot. Theoretically, the two are not related, but Senate has given BOCO the use of its nomination ballot boxes and ballots for BOCO's election.
The senior class candidates, the ones involved with the dispute, coordinate the HOPE award contest, the senior breakfast, the All-University supper and the senior class gift.
The BOCO elections, therefore, come under the jurisdiction of the Senate and are subject to
The decision made at the elections committee meeting, to allow a late coalition onto the ballot of an election, can be applied on a larger scope with more detrimental ramifications.
the same scrutiny and have the same capability to proceed that Senate actions and elections would.
Imagine student body presidential candidates filing to be on the ballot until the day of the election. Where would that put supposedly conscious student voters? How could they, with perhaps only one day, determine the legitimacy of a candidate or his qualifications?
Student government at KU is not going to crumble because of the ineptitude of one committee, but when Senate wants to make sure it's putting its best foot forward, actions such as the election committee's definitely take the feathers out of the Senate's cap.
From now on, anyone, at any time, can register to be on a Senate ballot from the time the election is announced until the date the votes are cast. Citing the election committee's decision as precedent, how can anyone who wants to file late and be on the ballot be denied?
The committee's decision was wrong. The Senate had set the deadline, and because BCOC is working under the auspices of the Senate, it is required to obey the deadlines and rules of the Senate. No one whose signatures were forged should have been eliminated from the ballot by the committee.
The decision was blatantly against Senate rules. If the Senate wants to be taken seriously by students on this campus, it would be advisable to make a policy act in accordance with the Senate's own policy.
The Senate's credibility rides a narrow line between disdain and hilarity for many KU students. Without responsible decisions from its members, the Senate takes the chance of becoming a joke, literally, to the students it is trying to serve.
Pot Shots
American know-how put man on the moon and is about to launch a space shuttle into orbit. However, the thrill of traveling above the earth will give you a glimpse of the realization that this same technology gives us.
*Paper trays, like those used in the Wescoe cafeteria, that are too flimsy to be held with one
Somebody telephoned Al Haig with the news.
"The Reds discovered what?" the secretary of state shouted. "Atlantis? What kinda trash is Tass gonna spit at us next? I don't give a hoot about my Marxist myths . . .
hand. Twice this semester my turkey sandwich and because I am not a huge fan of the sandwich under this tarp back under the table.
*Yogurt containers with openings so tiny that it's virtually impossible to get the yogurt out without spilling it on your lap, no matter how hard you concentrate.
-Individual packets of mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise, which, even if you're agile enough to open them, invariably put more on your fingers than on your sandwich.
*Steps, like those in the two Wesco auditoriums, that defy walking. They're too large for one step and too small for two steps, but they hobble up and down them like a wounded dog.
"Where?" he chuckled nervously, sitting forward in his chair. "Coffe of the Portugal,
Yet, check out the new and improved box of Grape nuts cereal. After a long evolution, finally it is possible to open the box without tearing the entire top off. Progress marches on.
His wiped lips of percussion away from his glistening forehead, still listening intently the tense scream.
huh? And what makes the big bears so frigging sure?"
"Damn those commies! They're gonna put missiles in the Strait of Gibraltar, aren't they? Who leaked it to them about this Atlantic bit, anway?"
But suddenly he stopped, sat up straight and slammed his handkerchief onto his desk.
"Okay, so they've got some pictures of rains and such. What are they gonna so about it? Build a missile base?" The ex-general roared with laughter.
He paused and thought strategies. "Plato, huh? A great Western mind, huh? Well, get the boys at intelligence on it . . . the guy's gotta be a double agent."
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In a recent letter to the editor, a student made the complaint that one of the Kansan's Pot Shot writers was wasting valuable editorial space on obviously frivolous topics.
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Already, dozens of American tourists traveling in China have fallen prey to this flighty fate. One minute they were walking in the door of the Big Duck, the Sick Duck (truly), the Wall Street Duck (it's next to the city wall) or any of a number of poultry-serving restaurants in Peking.
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The State Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Protection Agency, have issued the issue, even before Pekaji Duck consumption seems to be spreading to the United States.
And the next minute, they were lying dead as if in blood, their coronary arteries stopped by duck fat.
Meanwhile, no one knows who SIDS (Sudden
Ingested Dyndrome) will strike next!