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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 13, 1995)
VIEWPOINTS EDITORIALS. OPINIONS LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Environmentalist hunger strike will change little ■ OUR OPINION: !• .•<: , /, is worthy, but the tactics are ineffective "If you don't incut our demands, wc will refuse to eat," For a while. Two environmental at tivists arc staging a hunger strike to protest the logging of old-growth forests While hungei -trikes have boon t>ff«K tive for Mahatma Gandhi and mem frets of the fnsfi Republican Army, they only work when Ihe strike! s are willing to die for their c hum?. Are Tim Ream and Shan non Wilson willing to go the distance to save the North west 's timber from becom ing two-bs fours? Both have said they intend to stop before they do any perma nent damage to their bodies, so death is probably out of the question. ft's doubtful, despite the worthiness of the cause, that this public demonstra tion of self-induced suffer ing will have any effect on the logging of Oregon's tim her The federal government approved the cutting of pro viouslv protected forests as part of a larger budget bill this summer Two hungry guys with a lent and a Will Bat Fot 1... sign area t about to stop powerful tim ber lobbies and the anti reg ulatory Republican Con gress. These types of demonstrations only post pone the inevitable and irri tate the very people protest ers are trying to influence Public protest is most effective when it involves the rights of people The civil rights movement of the t>(K, the freeing of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid in South Africa, the gay rights movement. the women's suffrage and equal rights movements were all effective bet ause thev were .ihle to ryillv pop ular support around human suffering. It's difficult, if not impos slide, to inspire the same kind of passion and momen tum for our forests. They're worthy of that level of com mitment. hut they probably won't get it Which is why domonstnt ' ems -.lit h as the hunger strike seem }>olntless and a little silly The participants are only willing to take the strike to a pre-illness level, and as sue ii. they have already shown their hand to tin' opposing players No bureauc rat ts going to lose sleep over Hearn s emp ty stomach Rather than t hannelingso mu< h energy to reverse something that has aireads taken place, these two men would do better to turn their attention to preventing future logging. Write commentaries for local papers Ask people to sign jietiUons Call our elected officials Form a lob bv. Watch CNN All of these activities would do more to save the planet's ecosystem than a month of uncomfortable camping. Environmentalists are to be commended for iheir commitment to saving our forests, but it's time to examine thoir lai ties This movement is different than other grass roots uprisings, and it needs .< new set of weapons. Ream and Wilson should come out of the rain Being vvet, hungry and weak won't help them or us in the fight ahead. 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S»®n* W. -4-’n IfecftMf >.X!J\| •mimu MR** Cut*** iusxrrmc* *069 Coaoo*v Wmiftt* .ia^ft'ary rt»vj^ 0f|lrk*itt4Mi a##! jofsnar Jo*^ 1 a*« Willi M*U12 CiM»ittH'if*-*| 14* 3712 M*4*4J IgnfKUL UtWT L ART*<j*l u/Eft •“Ti MSL£ flftTiflOAL I pttASf LCr /AE Cx< r Blood JVw©£7 CuABol 'S 'JoT OK! chaustc* rr<«woi.o6Y ~~ Science may point to existence of God Over the gates of the temple of u trru e are written the words Vc must have faith It is a quality who h the JLmmurndepending • •n whom sou talked to), this class tJealt ss nil the fundamentals of both quantum mcchan ics ami quantum s hetnisiry Now . as much as I hate to admit it, I didn't really team much in this class Don't get me wrong, the pro fessor ss as great, it's just that yiw can't really ilo much ssith only a term's ssorth of quantum nick knacks. If you're going to do anything ss ith it, you need a Ph l) However, there ssas one very interesting thing I learned, am! that is that God just might esist between the atswns ssithin the very bowels of modem science and human umlerMamlmg _ i. lentist cannot dis/ieme utth t/iit /‘Ian, A act term I had the wonderful pleasure of tak mg Chemistry 41 V l*hs steal ('hemistry Affectionalch knossn as p-Chem (or Hell' In quantum mechanic* (the vtudy t>* physks at the Uumic level!, there iv an experiment that pmfev votv juvt love to show to undergradv for the primary rcavw that it views with vtuilents' heads and actually forces them to think 11m little giviviy iv called the two-slit expert mens Imagine it you will a wall with two shiv cut into it On one side you hase a phsston gun ami on the Nnr Ctancy .»!!«-( men? is a pnotograproc pule when you snoot that gun, the photons haxe an equal opportunity to go thrinigh either sin. (This i* because of the wavc-ltkr nature of the photon and bunch o( *>thrr stuff that would give both you am) me 4 headache, trust me) Thu process produces an interference pattern on the photographic plate t ou might be thinking, so what, quit wasting my time " The interesting part 1* that no one knows which slit each photon passed through without using a detec tor However, when a detector is used, the interference pattern changes drastically. So what it ail boils down to is that if you don't know w hich slit the photisns have traveled through, you get one interference pattern, but if you Jo know w hich slits the photons have passed through, you get an entirely different pattern. Everything is still (he same in both cases, the slits arc identical, the phot tins are all the same, and (here’s no other holes in Ihc wall. The only thing that changes is whether or not you know which slits the phiWixts have pasved through. After this was all evplamed to me (in much greater depth, mind you), 1 pulled my twain out of the blender and asked myself this question Docs anything physical change if the only variation in the experiment is what the observer sees ’ The answer I got back was no noth ing changes Talk about a kick in the head. Everything I had learned in science up to this point told me that science c»»uld reasonably explain or prr diet everything in nur universe, and that the only wav the results front an experiment would change is if you actually fooled around w ith the it. The experiment wasn't supposed to give different results based on thought alone. It was just a little hit too weird I asked the professor, in his opinion, if he believed that this was a link between the physical am) metaphysical Much to my consternation, he said yes Vk ith that, all science seemed to go flying out the window Then it all flew right back in again. Vou see, gravity was still working, as was every other law of nature The only thing that had changed was that in my mind, physics and theology had just then gone off to l-as Vegas to get hitched God (or whatever you care to call him) was not only messing with my head, but with my subatomic panicles as well. I was getting a lit tle bit paranoid There had to be a rational explanation for all ol this xhhi w.isn ( s.i mucn an cnmv living ivmni tnc ipiarks but rather the embodiment of everything we ibm't understand wrapped up into one neat little pack age k this simply another exercise In mental masturba turn ' IVrhapv But think about il Ibe lirvt time a caveman stink his head out of his save and experienced lightning arid thunder, it probably scared the hojec/us out of him He didn't know what the hell it was. or more importantly, whs it happened He couldn’t explain it. so he came up with the most rational reason he could Someone or something else had caused the tire to fail (torn the sky to frighten him. Regardless of w hat he called it. Mr Caveman had juvt come up with the notion of God That iv. some thing much more powerful than he was and who he couldn't really delmc physically Then, as time passed and the human intellect grew, this notion of God was pushed aside Now we can explain what lightning is and that the earth isn't at tbc ccntcr ol the universe But God is still in charge of those things wc still don't understand such as the notion of an afterlife, the wail, and that damn two-slit experiment. Eventually, perhaps thine things will also be explained by sc ience, but thete is one thing that scicikc will never be able to explain away, and that is the very human spirit w hich created God in the first place. Jesse / Bohrer-Ctancy. a senior majoring in bio chemistry. is a columnist for the Emerald. LETTERS POLICY The Oregon Daiiy Emerald will attempt to print litre's conta mng comments on' topics of inter est to the University community letters to the editor must be limited to no more than 250 words, legible, signed and the identifica tion of the writer must be verified when the letter is Submitted The Emerald reserves the right to edit any let ter tor length or style
