pam governale
reporter’s notebook
Travellers' advisory: it will be safe to travel in
California during 1982 The Jupiter Effect has been
cancelled until further notice
The what?
You must be a University student Sixty percent of
you needed a hint in a recent informal poll before you
remembered what the Jupiter Effect was
It has to do with planetary alignments, earthquakes
on the San Andreas fault
And California falling into the ocean in 1982?
It was supposed to, but it probably won't Let me
explain — it'll come back to you
Once every 170 years or so, all the planets line up.
more or less, on the same side of the sun That align
ment magnifies the planets' gravitational pull on the
sun, and causes extra sunspot activity in that particular
sunspot cycle
Is that true?
Sure Unless you ask the local astronomer, but
never mind him
Why. what did he say?
James Kemp of the University physics department
says sunspots are more complicated than that
OK. OK. So what next?
So sunspots cause earthquakes
At least they’re associated with increased
earthquakes, you can look at the historical records and
see for yourself
Who thought all this up?
Two scientists, John Gribbin and Stephen
Plagemann, in 1974 They thought sunspots might
cause earthquakes because the solar wind is increased
during sunspot activity
r
Solar wind is ionized, magnetized particles that
travel outwards from the sun at nearly the speed ot light
When it comes close to the earth, it produces effects
such as disrupting radio waves, causing the Aurora
Borealis
And earthquakes?
They're not positive Could be because the solar
wind causes changes in weather patterns, which cause
the shifting of large air masses over the planet's
surface, which in turn — am I going too fast7 — causes a
tiny little change in the length of time it takes the earth to
rotate, and that might be just the jolt that
that shakes up the San Andreas fault
Bingo
Let me get this straight Planets lining up cause
extra sunspots, which increases the solar wind, which
induces more bad weather, which changes the earth s
rotation time and that produces an earthquake
Graphic by Man Oafhings
Who ever heard of weather patterns causing
earthquakes?
You sound like Brian Baker in the geology depart
ment He couldn’t think of a single reason why sunspots
could possibly cause earthquakes
The theory would be perfectly reasonable, except
the sun isn't behaving exactly right
One of the theory's authors said last year that the
maximum sunspot activity already occurred during this
sunspot cycle and now is decreasing, before the
planets even got a chance to line up in 1982
He said maybe he got the year for maximum
sunspot activity wrong but there were extra earth
quakes
But not on the San Andreas fault
A few quakes shook the fault up. but it was nothing
out of the ordinary I guess he was disappointed
Sounds like a merchant of contusion and terror
Funny thing, Baker said the same thing
1
Photo by David Corey
Daniel Berrigan, pacifist
Activist pacifist says
U.S. faces ‘cheap death’
"I don't believe pacifists belong in a
corner,'' radical priest Daniel Berngan said
from the FMU ballroom stage on Friday night
The man famous for burning draft records
during the Vietnam War gave a gentle but
resolute speech on Americanss' spiritual
enslavement to the main project of a dying
culture cheap death '
Reflecting on his latest year of working
with the peace movement on the east coast,
Berrigan talked about the social numbing he
sees in the United States
There is a murderous indifference to the
value of human life and — as in Germany under
Hitler — the judicial system is corrupt accept
ing the elimination of unprofitable and un
productive' people, he said
Berrigan also indicted the trend of nor
malizing the abnormal, ” in which nuclear arms
are considered normal while those supporting
the truly normal are outlawed and jailed He
proposed an active pacifism " suggesting
that any social change worth having has come
about by people breaking unjust laws in defer
ence to a higher law
Audience question topics ranged from
WWII to draft registration to fasting in Ireland
On Reagan's decision on the draft Ber
rigan said it is a testing of the waters' by
American leaders to see what they can get
away with
Bobby Sands and others who fasted in
Ireland participated in an honorable and
important expression of conscience he said
Vietnam veteran Ron Phillips expressed
disgust over the naming of nuclear submarines
U S S San Francisco (after Saint Francis) and
U S S Corpus Christi (Body of Chrisf) Ber
rigan agreed and suggested, tongue in cheek
that future names could include U S S Yah
weh and U S S Buddha
On nuclear arms limitation he said There
cannot be anything except tyranny in the U S
and the U S S R with (an) arms race "
Berrigan answered a question on in
dividual action by telling listeners to look
around for nuclear installations and think
tanks "Such property should not be allowed to
pollute the human landscape " He stressed tax
resistance because "they can't make their
bombs without your money "
Encapsulating the rally-like atmosphere of
the evening, Berrigan wrapped it up by saying,
"good (pacifist) work and moral understanding
heartens us coast to coast "
He left the stage, but not to a corner
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