University Daily Kansan, April 1, 1985
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Dalian, Kansai USP$ 604.600 is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kansai 6045, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and final periods. Second class postage paid at Lawn, Kansai 60443 Subscriptions by mail are required. Bye-Bye $2.75 in Douglas County and $1.80 in Lafayette County to the county. Student address changes to the University Dalian Kansai 118 Stauffer Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kansai 6045
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Drunken driving
No sober person favors drunken driving.
No sober person favors a drunken A quick review of the endless grisly statistics on alcohol-related traffic accidents and fatalities will persuade anyone that driving while intoxicated is a bad plan.
anything after pounding six or seven brews, or tipping a handful of gin and topics, statistics seem meaningless.
Every night, people with dulled motor skills and twisted judgment climb into automobiles and try to beat the odds.
Because the fear of being mangled or killed doesn't work as a deterrent to drunken driving, Kansas lawmakers are trying a different kind of scare tactic.
g a different kind of scale debt Legislators are trying to instill the fear of the law.
Legislators are trying to install the fear of the law.
No sober person wants to be arrested, jailed, fingerprinted,
treated like a criminal and prohibited automatically from driving for a month.
For many, the threat of arrest is more concrete than the possibility of ending up in the hospital or the morgue.
The Legislature is trying to make this threat more severe. A special six-member conference committee of senators and representatives is hammering out a stiffer law.
The greatest point of contention is a proposed mandatory 30-day suspension of driving privileges for first-time offenders.
Many lawmakers think this penalty is too stiff. They argue that first-time offenders can be rehabilitated through educational alcohol diversion programs.
However, several representatives have offered substantial evidence that first-time offenders are responsible for the great majority of serious alcohol-related accidents.
Some lawmakers also oppose the license suspension because it could cause people to lose their jobs if they are unable to get to work. Permission to drive only to and from work would easily resolve that dilemma.
Another major proposed change would make having a blood-alcohol level of more than 10 percent sufficient evidence to support a drunken driving conviction.
evidence to support a driver's ability. This makes sense. Kansas is one of only eight states that still requires prosecutors to prove that the blood-alcohol level in the accused driver impaired the driver's ability to safely operate a vehicle. The flat 10 percentage should stand as ample evidence.
The proposed bill shows no mercy for repeat offenders, but everyone agrees on that part.
one agrees on that plan.
The bill should be merciless toward first-time offenders,
too.
Maybe the fear of dire consequences would scare a few drunken people enough to stop them from climbing into their cars and becoming first-time offenders — or statistics.
Get out the vote
Taking 20 minutes out of your day tomorrow could help make a difference in Lawrence.
Voters will go to the polls to choose three city commissioners and three school board members. A bond issue for improvements to the Holcom Sports Complex is also on the ballot.
One city commissioner or school board member probably will not affect drastically the lives of most Lawrence residents. Even fewer KU students will notice the difference if Mike Amyx wins a city commission seat or Sandra Praeger does or neither of them does.
And one vote may seem insignificant when hundreds of other voters cast their ballots.
But the key is to understand the cumulative effect.
One Howard Hill or Mona McCoy will not a City Commission make.
But add, say, a Nancy Shontz or perhaps a Bob Pulliam, count the ballots, and determine the winners. In the end, the figures will add up to form the group of people who make a lot of the decisions for the city.
The school board will see a similar situation. One member will not make the decisions for the entire board. Most of the time, those elected will have to work and argue and compromise with several other board members to arrive at decisions that they think best.
The school board will see a similar cumulative effect.
Voting in an election works in a similar way. It's not one vote alone that will decide the winners in most cases. But the votes add up and certain people are chosen to serve, to make decisions about the city of Lawrence and the school district.
The cumulative effect can make a difference.
Take a little bit of time tomorrow to vote.
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 300 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and hometown, or faculty or star person of the Kansan also includes individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
Does the United States support genocide? No, way, you say. So then why has it not ratified something seemingly so deserving of support as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide or Genocide Convention?
Genocide treaty lacks real value
The Convention was a response by the United Nations to Hitler's attempted genocide of the Jews during World War II. Its purpose is to make genocide a punishable offense under international law, as is the production and trade of narcotics.
of genocide. Article II defines it as any of five acts "committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part" any of four specified groups: national, religious, racial, or ethnic groups.
Drafted in 1948, the Convention took effect in 1951 after 20 nations ratified it. In all, 96 nations have signed it. In the United States, however, through nine Senate hearings over the years, opponents of the Convention have successfully prevented its approval.
Last year, the Reagan administration came out in support of its ratification, but since has conditioned that support on the attachment of an amendment which effectively would emasculate the Convention's provisions for enforcement.
While there are scores of problems with the treaty, two are salient. The first deficiency is the very definition
Four of the five acts require no blood to be shed for genocide to occur. Included are the forcible
Staff Columnist
transfer of the group's children; infliction of "serious bodily or mental harm," and imposition of measures designed to "prevent births within the group."
The question is how broadly or narrowly this language will be interpreted. The United States has been accused of genocide in Vietnam. The Black Panthers accused the federal government of conducting a policy of genocide against their group. Even financing of birth
control clinics in the Third World has spurred genides of chenecio. It looks like a whole new can of worms opens in such interpretations.
Moreover, political groups are not included in the definition. The Soviet Union objected to their inclusion in the original draft. Economic classes are not in the definition either. This is convenient for the Soviets and their communist allies: What types of enemies do they have, by their own definition, other than political and economic ones?
Thus the convention would not be applicable to mass murders committed by communist governments such as Cambodia's. Or at most, the non-communist world would say that the treaty is applicable and the communist states would disagree but that is how things stand now.
This means that, in the words, of then-Senator Sam Ervin, D-N.C. "we give an international tribunal the power to tell the president of the United States and the Congress and the courts what they have to do."
The second major problem is article IX, which vests jurisdiction of all disputes involving allegations of genocide with the World Court. Grover Rees III, a professor at the University of Texas Law School, states that the mere allegation of genocide is sufficient to trigger compulsory jurisdiction, not just over foreign policy matters but over domestic matters as well. And unlike the recent fiasco at the World Court
The World Court, Ervin said, has the final authority to make "all decisions with respect to the interpretation and application and fulfillment of the treaty."
with Nicaragua, jurisdiction would
not be revocable. (1024)
Convention proponents, attempting to assuage the fears of opponents have said that "in the unlikely event the U.S. were found in violation, as a practical matter that would be where it would end."
Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for human rights, wants the Senate to ratify the treaty. He says failure to do so "puts us on the defensive in a number of debates" on human rights issues.
That statement illuminates the only practical significance of the Convention. It is just another propan ganda tool to be used on the battlefield of world opinion. It is not to punish those guilty of genocide.
"IT'S YOUR BABY NOW"
Mobile phones give no rest
Now this is truly alarming.
I was flipping through a mail order catalog put out by a company called The Sharper Image. In case you haven't seen mail order catalogs lately, they're not what you remember from 20 and 30 years ago.
Gone are the potholder hangers and doily racks. Catalogs used to be chock-full of inexpensive knick-knacks apparently designed for a grandmother's parlor. Today you're just as likely to find top-priced electronic devices and high-tech toys.
So I was looking through The Sharper Image catalog when my eyes hit a certain item. I stopped right there. My blood ran cold.
"Now, imagine the scene a different way. Anywhere you are, important clients can reach you instantly. And business associates, your broker and your client, your assistant anytime — from the street, your even poolside at the club庙. With sound quality and services like the best office telephone systems."
The catalog copy painted this scenario: "You firmly located a pay phone but now your client is gone." The catalog should not more. More frustration you don't need
The headline read: "Hotline in an attache. For the person who can't afford to be incommunicado."
And there 'it was': a portable telephone built into a briefcase.
Now, there is something going on in this country. A wise and respected social commentator has given it a name: "The Twitching of America."
The symptoms are many; Federal Express packages, beepers, car telephones. The underlying sickness is that people are no longer willing to
allow themselves to relax and take a deep breath, even for a minute.
Business people who 10 years ago might have checked their messages the next time they got to a phone now wear beetles clipped on all the time.
Business people who 10 years ago might have dropped a letter in the mail now insist that it be shipped overnight — and insist that incoming correspondence be sent the same way.
Business people who 10 years ago might have started the day at 9 a.m.
A businessman is walking down the street. The phone in his briefcase rings. He pops open the briefcase and continues along the avenue, arguing
Even airplanes are getting into the twitching of America. Air-to-ground telephones, operated by inserting credit cards into specially manufactured devices, are beginning to appear on certain flights. If they are a financial success, you can expect to see them proliferate.
upon arriving at the office now own car telephones so the day can start as soon as they leave home.
But this new machine — this telephone-in-a-briecase — has got to be the ultimate danger to the nation's sanity. Think about it — the person who carries the thing never has to get off the phone, not even for a minute.
A businesswoman is riding the bus home from work. She can't find a seat; she is standing in the middle of a crush of people. Suddenly she remembers that she forgot to call a key account. She pulls open her briefcase, dials the number and begins an animated conversation.
A lawyer is out to lunch. He is talking with one client across the table when the phone rings in his briefcase. He reaches down and answers it. Another client is on the line. Now, the dilemma: to continue talking with his lunch guest, or to talk with the caller on the phone.
about the terms of a contract as hi fellow pedestrians stare at him.
with the caller on the phone. Reluctantly, but not really so. Because no one is going to force anyone to carry these briefcase phones. But if the twitching of America has progressed as far as I think it has, the things are going to be a big hit.
All of a sudden, beepers are going to seem old-fashioned and somehow impotent. Today a person can walk down the street and feel wired in and connected because his beeper goes off to tell him that he should call someone.
But tomorrow that same person will hear his beeper and look next to him on the sidewalk, where another person is answering a ringing phone in his briefcase and already talking. Not too many days will pass before the first person has a briefcase phone, too.
This is more than just another mildly amusing high-tech invention. If these things catch on, the day of walking down the street happily minding your own business is over forever.
If high technology can't improve the arrangement devised by Christopher Sholes more than a century
Improving things has its trouble
As long as society is tampering with genetics, it is only natural that somebody should start tampering with the typewriter keyboard
United Press International
DICK WEST
ago, then my faith in modern automation has been misplaced badly.
What I particularly object to are the home keys "asdf" for the left hand, "lkj" for the right. That semicolon must go, even if it turns millions of touch typists back to the hunt-and-peek school.
Far from deserving a finger of its own, the semicircular belongs on the top row with the asterisk. In these days, the asterisk is used in the sign it used much more frequently.
Some reforms are needed. But a fear that the modernists, who are ready have persuaded some government agencies to experiment with a new keyboard, won't stop at the typewriter.
used when the same is true of the alphabet at large. It has 26 letters, of which only five are always vowels. Yet every word in the English language has a vowel sound. Some of the consonants that are easily reached obviously are being underworked.
For one thing, the calendar that you and I know and love, especially on Friday, is vulnerable.
I'm not saying a seven-day week is perfect. An eight-day or a six-day week might work better. But weed at least are symmetrical Months, the other hand, are downright messy. It is time to update the calendar.
A clock, you know, has only 12 hours, although a day, the last time I looked, had 24.
Some have 30 days; some 31 (an
there, the semicolon). And one but
28, except in leap year. We have
31 (an imbecile poem is 6e
all straight.
Timekeeping also may be in another type of overhauling.
Digital timepieces correct the discrepancy to some degree by designating p.m. periods. While this may be a boon to those who have difficulty distinguishing 2 o'clock in the morning from 2 o'clock in the afternoon, a more difficult mystery of whether noon and midnight are a m. or p.m.
The only solution I can see is the Army way of designating noon or 12-hundred hours and midnight or 24-hundred hours. The Navy system of marking time with bells only add to the confusion.
Nor are Fahrenheit thermometer entirely safe. The metric system already has been at work there.
We are told that metric weights and measures provide a more logical method of indicating the size and importance of things than the means we use now.
Thus far, a determined resistance has preserved the old ways in non-scientific endeavors in the 1950s and early 1960s; key board falls, nothing is safe.
Clarification
Because of an editing error in Thursday's Kansan, a guest column by Norman Forer, associate professor of social welfare, did not clear a state Foreer's view that pre-World War II American anti-Semitism conditioned the official U.S. policy on non-intervention in the Holocaust.
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