Editorial
1 Mike Reilley, Editor, 472-1766
tvt tPa^y 1 i ieanne Bourne, Editorial Page Editor
ri ; ^en Deselms, Managing Editor
! Mike Hooper, Associate News Editor
University o Nebraska-Lincolrt ! ^cott Harrah, Night News Editor
1 Joan Rezae, Copy Desk Ch ief
Linda Hartmann, Wire Editor
Pickles charitable
| Pickle card gambling should be preserved
State Tax Commissioner
Don Lcuenbergcr says
I Nebraska has the loos
I csl pickle card laws of any state
; that sells them. He has formed
an advisory committee to
; tighten regulations.
“The wide-open nature of
j this rcintorccs that element of
; compulsive gambling,” Lcuen
bergcr said in a Sunday Joumal
I Star article.
A Department of Revenue re
port says Nebraskans spend an
average of more than $67 per
pet son per year on pickle cards.
Nebraska ranks third among 12
states that sell pickle cards.
The commission will study
the continued existence of
pickle parlors, which they mink
i may result in compulsive
pickle card gambling.
Where pickles are sold
doesn’t make them more or less
addictive. Whether gamblers
buy pickles in bars or pickic
parlors doesn’t change the risk
involved, the thrill of winning
oi the possibility of compulsive
gambling.
One pickic parlor worker
said her customers are recover
ing alcoholics or women who
don't like the bar atmosphere.
Opponents of regulations on
pickle parlors also cite the chari
table aspect of pickic parlors.
Nine percent of pickic parlor
profits goes to charities. Three
percent goes to the state in a
pickic tax.
But if pickic cards generated
as much revenue as horse racing
tracks, the state lax commis
sioner probably wouldn’t be
trying to regulate the industry. |
To say pickic parlors pro
mote compulsive gambling
would force the state to regulate
all gambling, such as horse rac
ing.
Necessity to be reality
, for Lincoln's phoneless
icrally sponsored as
iancc prpgj-tim to
tvidc low -income
with telephone
! service soon will be a real ip n
Nebraska.
According to a Sundav Jour
nai-Slar article, about 25,700
Nebraska households do not
have telephones. Surveys snow
about’ 3 pcrccir of those do not
! v tni them. B u t the rest — about
| 22,000 people — want them but
| can’t afford them.
The program. Lank Up Amer
ica, uses long-distance profits to
pay half the installation and con -
nection charges for those Jow
incomc households that qualify.
Phones used to lx considered
a luxury . These days they arc
oractically a necessity. If emer
gencies happen, a phone puts an
ambulance or the fire depart
ment minutes away.
It is humanitarian — Robin
Hoodish — that the phone com - I
pany uses profits from long-dis
tance calls to pay for the instal
lation.
Letters
Use of last names
confusing, reader says
This is a question mainly directed
to reporters, although it also applies to
most (or all) scientific reports. I have
certainly seen it used most often in the
Daily Nebraskan, probably because I
• read it so often.
When there is a story that involves
a woman, once her full name is men
tioned in the introduction, readers arc
forced to read her last name repeat
edly (For example, if the last name is
David, then we read, “David said. .
.”). Occasionally, this might be re
placed by “she said... “ This does not
seem to help as “David” and “she” do
not agree in gender. I don’t mean
names arc or should be divided into
two groups by sex, but some names
have been used dial way and wc arc
used to them. Why not use the first
name? It is the individual who is in the
story (good or bad) and not the family,
and for identification purposes the
full name is mentioned once.
You might ask, what is the point?
After all, that’s how men are identi
fied, too. It should be different for
women. In this male-dominated soci
ety (not in numbers), reading from
time to lime names that arc obviously
used by men shows it’s the man who
is important. Ifyoudisagree,don’tget
mad, but read the next paragraph.
When a woman gets married, she
loses her last name (which, of course,
was a “male” name) to her husband’s
last name. How would the husband
react if his wife asked him to use her
last name or, worse, that the last
names of their children be her first or
last name? I think this question might
be raised sometime in the future when
women break the wall of discrimina
tion and might be worth discussion by
sociologists or whomever. Or am 1
dreaming or creating a problem that
never existed and will never exist?
What do you say?
Michael Gebre
graduate student
Editorial Policy
Unsigned editorials represent
official policy of the fall 1987
Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by
the Daily Nebraskan Editorial
Board.
According to policy set by the
regents, responsibility for the edi
torial content of the newspaper lies
solely in the hands of its student
editors.
TO
u that DOES 'T... SOMETHING'S SoT TO Be Ootu£
ABOUT THAT HOLE IN THE OZ-ONE < “
Year of Dragon will decide future
Chinese cat year slips out hack door while dragon awaits
Enter the Dragon. What kind
ofagrisly Pandora’s Box has
the cunning Chinese yin-cat
opened?
Round about early October, you
could tell the cat was slipping. It used
to sit in the comer, curled up on ?
chair, saying, “Why don’t you all just
go take? flying..using only its cold
green eyes. Sometime in October,
though, it had used up its nine conniv
ing lives and was simply making a
nuisance of itself That velvet veneer
ol black fur was moiling off and
Charles j
Lieurance
/■ i
: 2
everyone could see the caf for just
what it was: big, black, spoiled ver
min that couldn’t even make it
through the whole damn Chinese year
without showing its true colors.
Like Ronald Wilson Reagan — the
big 666 — who maneuvered his way
skillfully through the Chinese years
of the Monkey, Rooster, Pig (there
was a year), Rat, Ox and Tiger, the Cat
is showing definite signs of wear. The
cal may even be the calendar critter
most responsible for the physical,
mental, spiritual and political deterio
ration of our president. Isn’t it just like
a feline?
The monkey brought him to
power, appropriately. The rooster
saw him clucking and strutting his
way into the hearts of America. The
pig brought out his cold, ruthless side
and saw those poor souls who’d actu
ally been taken in by his “true blue
American values” spiel (see Neil
Young) abandoning ship like hot
wired lemmings. The year of the rat
saw even the Republicans wondering
what sort of weird George Romero
walking-dead flick they’d created. In
the year of the ox, he simply wouldn’t
lay down and die in the road to have
his pathetic, worn carcass picked over
by those refugees who tramped the
ditches of America searching for
higher ground. And in the year of the
Tiger, he’d become so pathetic that
most folk said things like, “Well, he
sure is a tiger to keep going like that
with cancers on his nose and little
explosive krakatoas on hi?; kccstcr..
The cat is objective. He is the
silent, bemused spectator. He is bad
luck because he is uninvolved in the
affairs of humans. He stares and his
non-voice strikes terror into the hearts
of the guilty and makes the virtuous
wonder if their virtue has any signifi
cance in the big scheme of things. The
cat breeds inertia; everyone sits per
fcctl> still anil waits until the cat
leaves the room.
But we re all going to watch this
cat leave and maybe follow it outside
to bca: its crummy little head in with
a brick. It sat still through the heinous
crimes of Oliver North and the Poin
dexter monster. It sal still through the
political atrocities of L-dwin Mecsc,
who sodomized the Constitution so
badly that even the cal was impressed,
although it never said so. It sat still
while Ronald Reagan tried to parade
all manner of legal dead weight
through Supreme Court nominations.
But there is justice in the universe,
because when the cat tenses its
nduiitnes anu gracetuily leaps from
his chair, sofily prowls through the
kitchen and heads out the back door
into the snowy night of New Year’s
morning, there will be a dragon wail
ing.
I just wish the fight were a little
more fair. Wc can only hope the
dragon toys with the little feline
menace for a while before slam-dunk
ing it down its green slimy gullet.
The dragon is here either to destroy
evil or to champion it. In other words,
cither the thunder lizard will do a
Pete’s Dragon and allow Jesse
Jackson to saddle it up and ride it to
the White House lawn or it will arch
its armor-studded back and lash its
tail over all that is decent and fair,
making Pat Robertson a shoc-in. It’s
pretty much an even bet. The dragon's
probably been waiting a long time tc
do some ass-kicking of some sort or
another; it might not even be particu
lar about whose ass it kicks. After
watching that damn cat sit thereon the
chair for 365 days, it might choose
Pete “Pierre” DuPont as a jockey and
take him directly to the White House (
— no explanations, just asa sick joke.
The problem with chimeras is that
they’re notoriously unpredictable.
The dragon may have gotten con
ceited and decide dial, in the interests
of high Wagnerian drama, it might be
nice to have Paul Simon in bow lie and
grandma spectacles on its back sing
ng what is reportedly the Illinois
senator’s favorite tune, “The Battle
Hymn of the Republic.”
Il won’t mutter that the American
public has about as much chance of
electing a man named “Pierre” (no
matter how often he insists his name
is “Pete” and that the name on the
birth certificate is a hospital misprint)
to the highest office in the land as it
has of electing a spotted-tongued
gecko. It won’t matter that Paul Si
mon is a loony political anachronism
with the same name as a wimpy,
politically anachronistic pop singer.
The candidates will put their opinions
on automatic pilot and float on an
amorphous cloud of party line all
across these United Slates, and the
Dragon will choose one to be the
leader of the doomed. Because long
ago logical choices based on anything
more than video handshakes and
media-friendly hairstyles were for
ever denied this nation, the Dragon
now must choose. Its choice will ei
ther lead us quickly to a merciful
Armageddon or to a slow, merciful
recovery of the will-sapping swine pit
that has been the 1980s. We deserve
the former: we need the latter.
Meurance is a senior knglish mj|jor and
Daily Nebraskan arts and entertainment edi
tor.
Students, teachers need
to establish relations
In response to the article, “Educa
tors arc calculating calculus changes"
(Daily Nebraskan, Dec. 4), man)
points need to be summed up more
accurately.
In general, the average student
taking calculus is overwhelmed by all
of the homework. However, taking
the time to sit down and figure out
. .:.... * j *
problems is a very helpful learning
experience for anyone. Even the
mathematicians do not like having to
sit down and constantly figure out
problems. Students should at least try
to figure out the problems assigned.
Teachers, while teaching over
sized classrooms of students, have to
concentrate on their subject matter
while making eye contact with their
students. This proccssof personalized
leaching is very difficult. Thus, stu
dents should try to get to know their
professors. If possible, students
should schedule appointments with
their professors.
Showing an interest in each other,
the student motivates the teacher and
the teacher motivates the student. The
best learning takes place when there if
an active participation by both the
student and professor.
Tim Becker
math and physical science