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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1986)
Tuesday, April 1, 1986 Page 4 Daily Nebraskan clitoris Nebraskan University of Nebraska-Lincoln 1 IS n Laws of science say 'no' Evidence continues to mount against President Reagan's Stragetic Defense Initiative, widely known as "Star Wars." Both the scientific and political, community dispute the adminis tration's claims about the plan's technical feasibility and costli ness. A recently reported poll of physicists demonstrates that most of these scientists don't think the plan can be technolog ically feasible anytime in the foreseeable future. This contra dicts the optimistic forecast of an early 1990s development pre dicted by Lt. Gen. James A. Abrahamson. A Senate study confirms the scientists' perspective. It also reports a number of other diffi culties with the plan. The Senate study points out that the difficulties in SDI development have greatly in creased since the first feasibility studies were released several years ago. First, most of the progress made in SDI technology hasn't been in the area of advancing the deployment date. Rather, the research to date has served only to prove that scientists don't know much more than they orig inally thought they didn't know. They know that the gulf between where we are and where we would need to be in order to deploy the system is much wider than originally suspected. Second, the study points out that original assessments of the program assumed no Soviet measures to counter the SDI's strategic threat. That is, the first optimistic indications of SDI effectiveness assumed that the Soviet missile systems would re main like they were at that time. Welcome, coach NU basketball future is promising Nebraska's new basketball coach Danny Nee has an impressive track record. He turned an ailing Ohio Uni versity team into conference champions in just three years and received two consecutive NCAA tournament bids in his six years at Ohio. Let's hope Nee can do the same for Nebraska. Nee replaced Moe Iba, who resigned March 14 after Nebraska's 67-59 loss to Western Kentucky in its first ever NCAA tournament bid. Nee is definitely qualified for the coachingjob. He had a 107-67 record at Ohio. Nee was a member of Al McGuire's first recruiting class at Marquette University in 1964-65. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Nee was a high school teammate of Lew Alcindor, now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, at Power Memorial High School. Nee also was an assistant to Notre Dame, basketball coach Richard "Digger" Phelps for four Vi.ki Kutsha, Editor, 472-1766 Thum liabrukiowicz, Managing Editor Ad Hudler, Editorial Page Editor James Honors, Editorial Page Editor Chris Welsrh, Copy Desk Chief mm The study states that this assumption is clearly wrong. The Soviets would not sit still while SDI deployment threatens to neutralize their strategic capa bility. Instead, the study reports that the Soviets could make their missiles 10 times more dif ficult to neutralize with the SDI system than the defense depart ment originally assumed. Billions upon billions of dol lars fruitlessly sunk in a still born SDI program can hardly be afforded by the nation. There are those who argue that the United States cannot afford to merely sit by and let the Soviets develop a SDI-like sys tem of their own. But the laws of science are not politically biased. Technological feasibility is not altered when the scientist steps from the West to the East. If the Soviets want to waste billions of ruples chasing a ghost, let them. Additionally, the only feasible use of any such SDI system elim inates the reason for its exist ence. The Washington Post re cently reported one scientist working on the project as saying that the only effective means of countering all the problems with SDI would be to have "joint U.S. Soviet battle stations." That is what Reagan proposed in his debate with challenger Walter Mondale during the last presi dential campaign. Yet if Reagan thinks that the United States and Soviets can jointly develop and administer such a powerful anti-nuclear sys tem, a better idea seems to be to save all the money, sit down with similar seriousness and prevent the need for SDI through joint nuclear disarmament. Either way, it's time to give up SDI as a necessary or feasible means of averting the nuclear threat. years before he accepted the Ohio University coachingjob. Nee's teams are known for their fast-paced offense and pres sure defense. The combination makes basketball exciting and could once again fill the Bob Devaney Sports Center with loyal Big Red fans. Another of Nee's strong points is his recruiting ability. He al ready started recruiting, but he is at a great disadvantage be cause basketball national-letter-of-intent signing day is April 9. Despite the time dilemma, Nee could be fairly successful because of his solid recruiting contacts in major urban areas, such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. UNL Athletic Director Bob Devaney, UNL Chancellor Martin Massengale and any others who helped select UNL's new bas ketball coach should be com mended for their choice. Welcome to Nebraska and best of luck, Danny Nee. HAD i-UialA ENOUQU. ujjJC j EU? - My l K Jk WealtSwelderlv re Money should be There are, in life, small moments of recognition that produce a click, a glottal stop of consciousness. Finally, once and for all, you know something is out of whack. Maybe it happens when you read the statistics again and, at last, it sinks in. Today a child in America is six times more likely to be poor than an elderly person. Maybe it happens when you notice a line on Form 1040. Everyone older than 65, no matter what income level, is entitled to a second personal exemp tion. For me, it happened as I read a tale of the joys of aging written by Sheilah Graham. The Hollywood gossip colum nist wrote about a house in Palm Beach and pleasure trips abroad. Almost in cidentally, she added: "This is a small matter, but it gives me satisfaction to pay half-fare on buses and trains and only $2 at the movies." Click. It's not that I begrudge Ms. Graham her "satisfaction" nor do I know the bottom line of her bank account. But somehow I do not think she is the per son we had in mind when we thought of bus subsidies "and senior-citizen dis counts, or when we established social programs and tax policy. Something has gone out of whack. We have looked at the elderly too long as a single class. By and large, they are no longer the "ill-clad, ill-housed, ill nourished" population that Franklin Delano Roosevelt described. The coun try has done a remarkable job of chang ing the portrait and so have the elderly themselves. Today, the rate of poverty among those older than 65 is lower Letters Separation of church and state preserves free society I found James Rogers' column. fDailv truth in terms nf thp ssrrifipp nf .Tpsne what C,tA Viotoc onA thoro ic nlwnvs I found James Rogers' column, f Dailv Nebraskan, March 19), to be most interesting. I would agree with him that religion constitutes an effective embodiment of a particular value sys tem. Furthermore, it is an important aspect of the cultural cohesion and continuity of those who share it. How Rogers gets from this point to challenging the wisdom of the separa tion of church and state is, however, beyond me. He in fact succeeds only in demonstrating its necessity. While Rogers' vocabulary is a refresh ing change from the semi-literate money, grubbing drivel of TV evangelists, his conceptual development does not ex tend far beyond theirs. He states that Christian societies are successful be cause God blesses his people, appar ently at the expense of those he does not claim as "his." Rogers, in fact, seems to have detail ed information regarding the nature and opinions of the almighty. He main tains that only Christianity encompass es all truth and offers a rundown of that ..j s sir granted for need instead of age than among the rest of Americans. We've made these changes at a cost that we find easier to calculate than to remedy. This year, the working popula tion will pay $200 billion in Social Security taxes. Those benefits have increased 46 percent in real terms since 1970, while the real wages of those who pay them have declined by 7 percent. More than half of the money from all the social programs go to the 1 1 percent of Americans who are elderly. Ellen Goodman Samuel Preston of the University of Pennsylvania explains: "The transfers from the working-age population to the elderly are also transfers away from children, since the working ages bear far more responsibility for child-rearing than do the elderly." This isn't a time for elder-bashing nor do I have the stomach for genera tional warfare. We can't replace the stereotype of the impoverished old with a new stereotype of the entitled old. But it is important to update poli cies to match the new reality. As Pres ton says, "If the main purpose of social programs is to help people who are poor have more resources, it doesn't make sense to use age as an indicator of poverty." There is already some pressure to right the imbalance within and between address and phone truth in terms of the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins, his resurrection three days later and, I assume, the promise of immortality to anybody who buys the story. I couldn't care less what kind of hocus-pocus Rogers cares to indulge in, but I find the above construction most amusing coming from a man who rejects humanism because it "fails to pass the test of intellectual credibility." In any event, Rogers knows what God likes and, by sheer coincidence, God likes Rogers and those who share his theology. How many times have we heard this muddle-headed nonsense before? How many times must we see its mani festations before we learn the lesson? From the programs of extermination referred to in man's earliest writings to the grisly events on a farmstead near Rulo, history is replete with examples of what can happen when man pre tends to know the mind of God. That very act of faith, as comforting as it might be, is frought with danger. For if you know what God loves, you know ap Eoeoief its generations using the tax structure. We now tax half the Social Security of elderly couples with incomes over $32,000 and put that money back into the Social Security Trust Fund. As for Medicare, some reformers recommend raising money from the 40 percent of elderly who pay income taxes and using it to lower Medicare premiums for low-income people. Other politicians, from Pat Moynihan to Pres ident Reagan, want to raise the per sonal tax exemption for all but the highest income brackets to $2,000 as an aid to families with children. Only 38 percent of the voters in the country live with children. It is an arti cle of faith among politicians that the elderly will think of themselves first. But I am not so sure or so cynical. In that same article, Sheilah Graham wrote, "As an older person, I don't have to worry about the future. I am in the future." But then she talked of giving something to her grandson. This is the other model that older Americans respect: the family. In the family, when it works right, we do not send our children to summer camp while our parents are without food. Nor do we send our parents to Florida while our children need clothes for school. We make adjustments; we balance the checkbook according to need. It is time to re-balance that checkbook now not by a standard of age alone, but using the calculator called fairness. 1986, The Boston Globe Newspaper CompanyWashington Post Writers Group Goodman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Boston Globe. Brief letters are preferred, and longer letters may be edited. Writer's number are needed for verification. what God hates, and there is always the temptation (or is it a duty?) to be the earthly agent of your deity. Rogers' agreement with the under statement that value systems based on religion warrant "scrutiny" to deter mine how they can be utilized while minimizing the risk of violence and oppression clearly illustrated by their history is of little comfort. If Rogers is like most theists, he has inspected his theology and determined that it would be a good way to run the world. Contrary to what Rogers thinks, I do not believe that atheists advocate the clear separation of church and state because of any "cultural advantage" it entails. Rather, atheists (and, I might add, growing numbers of enlightened theists) support the separation of church and state because it avoids the tangible and frightening possibilities that history demonstrates to be attend ed upon the investment of a deity with the powers of the state. Steve Haack graduate student