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-- C.A. Beard

Editorial:

On last month's Fix;

the answer to last month's Fix,

 "Should people who live in areas that are known to be frequented
by natural disasters (floods, hurricanes, drought, etc) continue to expect 
the Federal govt. to bail them out?"

No. Two years ago, California passed a couch potato tax that punishes those who eat fatty potato chips and other TV snacks. The goal is to discourage the consumption of unhealthy foods. Everyone is familiar with the sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Lawsuits are under way throughout the country to make tobacco companies, not the govt., assume the costs of lung cancer health care. Examples are rife where the govt. tries negative reinforcement in the form of taxes to steer public behavior. So why prop up urban populations, in disaster prone areas, and use public money to pay for those disasters?

Note this is not is not to say that the people along SD-MN Red River should not see some help. Their region has not seen a flood of this magnitude for (supposedly) 500 years. But for people who live along coastal areas of the East Coast's hurricane ally, on known earthquake faults, or regular river flood plains, they should either obtain insurance - or accept govt. bailouts with the proviso that they will be relocated to safer ground.

On Unions, Pride and a Phone;

This week, Sheryl has been visiting in the Great NW, and despite my intention of sneeking off to enjoy some time with her, a series of disasters prevented it. First off, I should say that the only other physicist has been gone this week, hence your's truly has been covering three simultaneous installations, in three different hospitals, separated by 20 miles. Now in some places, where some actual planning had gone into these projects, this would not neccesarily have been as bad as it has in fact turned out to be. Here, it was panic stations.

• Monday morning opens with water backing up from a film processor becuase union plumbers didn't think it necessary to remove a plug from a drain. Of course, had they bothered to test that the drain drained, they might have done so.
• The morning continues with patient data computers failing throughout the institution becuase the host that feeds them data goes down for a backup every night at 1:30 and noone who tends that machine can be bothered to write a script to reinitiate the connections on reboot. In fact, this exact problem has been known about for over a year, but the relevant parties assured each other "We're really serious now, we'll get 99.9% uptime." So serious in fact that absolutely nothing was changed, and the nightly failures continue.
• A CAT scanner that was to be acceptance tested by a group retained for that purpose, could not be tested since the group in question had only gotten 3 days notice of the event (they require six weeks) hence yours truly was called in to test the machine. Nevermind that I don't have the proper equipment and was given a whole four hours notice. Then they have the gall to ask midway though testing if I could hurry up becuase a pateint "has already been waiting 2 hours."
• Tuesday opens with the daily net link down call to IS.
• Workstations that worked in the old hospital have been moved to the new and required a change in their networking address. Consequently, no one can see those machines anymore and the "top notch" vendor representative (who confessed he had been with the company a whole 3 weeks and didn't know what a DNS was), did not know how to set up the machines, and forbade me from trying lest I break the Warrenty.
• Wednesday opens with the daily net link down
• And continues with the GE installers sharing with me that virtually all of the 200 Ethernet ports that were "installed" were in fact totally dead, requiring a troop of IS/Networking people to come by and activate the ports.
• Thursday opens with the daily link down call to IS.
• Continues with another install where the vendor Rep complains that the dedicated phone line for his equipment's Modem is dead, no dial tone, despite my being informed the previous week by our Telecomm group that the line was "installed."
• And I spent the pm helping an MD wire up his research lab, whereupon he tries the video link, which does not work, and he tells me I don't know how to wire things. In reply, I bet him $5 dollars that the reason the gear didn't work was that the power outlets were probably dead. After all, I was told by the Unnion electrition only the day before that the new outlets were "installed." I plugged a 110V lamp in to each of the 3 new outlets. It lit in one.
• Friday opens with the daily call to IS that the link is down ...

• "You're coming here in a really exciting time. We're upgrading everything!" Translation: Thank God someone will be downhill from me to take the blame when the fertilizer hits the axial turbine.
• This is one of the highest grant earning U's in the country! Translation: We're so cheap that even 100% clinical staff are let go after 3 years if they don't pick up 1/2 their salary on grants.

The last word? You'll really like this. I was told Friday that the first week in May (when I start teaching), the state will be inspecting the U, and the first week in June (when I'll be getting married) the inspector will be at the new hospital, for which we have no test data on the new machines. And if we fail, the state can close us down.

Guest Editorial:

Survey: Many Scientists Belive in God
by Natalie Angler of the New York Times

Many scientists believe in God by the most mainstream definition of the concept. Repeating a famous survey first conducted in 1916, Ed Larson of the U of Georgia has found that faith among scientists has not budged regardless of the scientific advances of this century.

Then as now, 40% of responding biologists, physicists and mathemeticians said they believed in a God who, by the survey's strict definition, communicates with human kind and to whom one may pray in expectation of an answer. In both surveys, about 15% claimed to be agnostic or have no definite beief. About 42% in both said they did not believe in a God as specified by the survey, but whether they believed in some other form of deity was not addressed.

The figure of true believers is much lower than that usually cited for Americans as a whole. Gallop polls often show 93%. But given the survey's exceedingly restrictive definition of God - narrower than the Gallop polls - and scientists tendency to say exactly what they mean and nothing more, the 40% figure is impressively high.

More revealing, say experts, is the stability of the results. The fact that scientist's private beliefs remained stable across a century defined by change suggest that orthodox religion is no rarer among the intellectual elite than among the general public. The survey appears in this month's issue of Nature.

Larson did not survey the particular creed, he merely wanted to see what has happened in the 80 plus years since the renowned psychiatrist James Leuba asked 1000 randomly selected scientists if they believed in God. An atheist, Leuba predicted that doubts of God would grow as eduction spread, and Larson wanted to use Leuba's exact methods to see if the prediction has held up.

Letters:

Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 08:52:07 -0500
From: Doug Wilken 

Dear Steve,

In response to your question 

"Should people who live in areas known for their natural disasters
 continue to get federal funds for recovery?"

My first inclination is to note that just about anywhere can easily
become a natural disaster.  Think of tornado alley between the
Rockies and the Appalachians.  :)

I see no harm in federally assisting such recoveries.  Just don't
call it a constitutional right.

-Doug

Quotes(s) of the month:

 A guy was flying in a helicopter when the pilot lost all electronic 
navigation. It being Seattle, there was a dense fog. The pilot admitted
he was lost and flew to the nearest visible landmark - a skyscraper - in the
hope that he could get bearings to the airport. The pilot asked the passenger 
to make a sign and hold it up so the office workers could see it. It said, 
"Where are we?"

 The office workers scribbled for a bit, then held up their own sign. It
said, "You're in a helicopter."

 The pilot chuckled, turned left and flew directly to the airport.

 Amazed, the passenger asked how the pilot did it.

 "I knew that we were at the Microsoft campus," he said.

 "How could you tell that ?"

  "Who else would give you a technically correct, but totally worthless 
answer?"

Fix of the month:

News:

Washington;

If approved as written, the referendum would demolish the existing outdoor stadium, and built two replacements: a covered one and an outdoor one (to play baseball in on clear days). The real estate and construction costs would be covered by King County tax hikes. Allen would merely agree to buy the team.

Ed: Wouldn't it be nice to say, "I'll buy that car if you pay the taxes, insurance, fuel and maintenance?"

Virginia;

Texas;

The encircling police have repeatedly told reporters that, "This will not be another Waco", but at least to 13 ton armored personnel carriers have been devlivered by the Natl. Guard (in a move that probably violates the Posse Commatatis Act).

RIchard McLaren, the Republic's leader, claims to have already filed papers with the U.N. that he represents a separate country, and as such considers his group to be at war with the US law enforcement. He also claims to have stashed several tanker trucks of gasoline around the compound, which he will use to start a giant wild fire if attacked.

Washington D.C.;

2. April 28: A TV special was aired starring Tom Hanks (plus an all star cast including Robin Williams, Rob Reiner, Colin Powell and Bill and Hillary Clinton) which extolled the virtues of volunteers in public service. This show follows on the heels of Powell's announcement of his plan to cooperate with the Clinton's on boosting community volunteer efforts for sanitation, policing, teaching, and other tasks. The message seems to be that people are not volunteering enough, and if they would, many more problems could be solved.

Ed: Actually, it is a fact that volunterism reached an all time high under the Reagen administration circa 1986-87. About the time G. Bush was making his "thousand points of light" comment, the numbers were already declining.

I would make two observations on this. First, when people are being taxed at higher and higher rates, they have to work harder to care for themselves and have less time to volunteer. Second, since we are being taxed more, what has the money bought? Aren't teachers supposed to teach and policepersons police?. If the govt. is willing to admit that it's programs have failed, and will drop taxes if volunteers take up the tasks, then we'd have something to talk about.

Norway;