Newspaper Page Text
2 » The Red and Black . Thursday, May 10, 1990
BRIEFLY
■ UNIVERSITY
SA gets involved with voting, measles vaccinations.
The Student Association passed a resolution Tuesday to support Vote
*90 and to establish a Student Voter Registration Council. Also at the
meeting, SA Adviser Tom Cochran encouraged SA senators to
volunteer to work four-hour shifts at campus measles vaccination
sites. Cochran said there is a definite need for volunteers and this is
an opportunity for SA to prove that they are concerned about
students. SA members elected junior Sen. William Perry president
pro tern and approved the appointment of senior Sen. Suzy Hendricks
as secretary.
■ STATE
ALBANY (AP): 400-mile march protests death penalty.
The leader of a 400-mile pilgrimage to protest the death penalty said
Wednesday that some politicians advocate capital punishment
because it's easier than solving social problems that contribute to
violence "Politicians are having a heyday with the death penalty,"
said Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun from New Orleans
who witnessed three executions in Louisiana “It’s simplistic.” Thirty-
one death penalty foes arrived in Albany Wednesday afternoon for a
five-mile march in the rain and a forum in the evening at a church.
The national Pilgrimage for Abolition of the Death Penalty began on
May 5 outside Florida’s death row at the state prison near Starke,
Fla., and is scheduled to arrive in Atlanta on May 18.
BAC0NT0N (AP): Rural town gets first black mayor.
Vpters have elected the first black mayor in this south Georgia town
of 800 people. Clayton Marcus Sr. defeated his opponent, Steve Fudge
Sr., by a vote of 137-62 in Tuesday’s city election, in which about 65
percent ot the registered voters cast ballots. Fudge is a former
Baconton police chief. Marcus, 67, succeeds J.B. Tyre, who is retiring
after six two-year terms in office. “I’m a black man but I feel I got a
good number of white votes," said Marcus, a storekeeper who retired
from Georgia Power Co. and has lived in this Mitchell County town
for 40 years. Marcus cited clean streets and anti-drug measures as
two of his top priorities.
ATLANTA (AP): Miller advocates insurance reform. Lt.
Gov. Zell Miller unveiled Wednesday a seven-point plan to lower auto
insurance costs in Georgia, including a fiat 10 percent rate rollback.
Miller caiied for a 10 percent rollback in auto insurance rates, a
change in law to require prior Insurance Department approval of all
rate increases, the gubernatorial appointment of an insurance
consumer advocate, and prohibitions against canceling the insurance
of drivers filing relatively small damage claims. ‘The people of
Georgia are angry about auto insurance, and I don’t blame them,”
Miller said, adding that car insurance rates shot up 109 percent in
Georgia from 1982 to 1988. ‘The only thing going up faster than
Atlanta’s crime rate is car insurance,” he said, taking a jab at the city
Young served as mayor from 1984-90.
BOSTON (AP): Doctors cautious about new AIDS drug.
Two new reports conclude that the experimental drug DDI is a
promising weapon against AIDS, but a top government researcher
cautions doctors and patients to “suspend judgment” until much
larger studies are finished. The latest work found that the medicine
improved AIDS patients’ blood counts, increased their energy and
helped them put on weight. But it also shows that the treatment can
cause severe, even life-threatening side effects. ‘There is some
evidence that it inhibits the AIDS virus,” said Dr. Howard A.
Liebman of Boston City Hospital. “The important question is: Will the
spectrum of toxicity prove to be the limiting factor of the drug? Will
that make it not any better than AZT and perhaps worse?” Doctors
hope that and other questions about DDI will be answered by a major
new study under way at hospitals across the United States.
WALTON, W.Va. (AP): Man defeats sister in election.
An accountant beat out his sister by 100 votes for a seat on the Roane
County school board. “It was a close race from start to finish,” C.
DeVaughn Moore said Tuesday night after edging his sister, Judith
Shafer, on a vote of 1,253 to 1,153. Shafer, 46, a Walton postmaster,
wasn’t around to congratulate her brother. “She wasn’t tnere. I
haven’t seen her today," Moore said. Moore, 42, an accountant, said
he just wanted to serve on the board, not challenge his sister. “I was
the first one to file from this district and that was my goal,” he said.
“It wasn’t to beat an opponent no matter who the opponent was.”
■ WORLD
TOKYO (AP): Navigation system for cars introduced. A
new car navigation system that uses satellites to plot a vehicle’s
location and displays it to the driver on a computer map will go on
sale next month in Japan, said Toru Yokomizo, spokesman for
Pioneer Electronic Corp. The system, which goes-on sale June 21,
connects to a car’s audio system and uses special compact discs to
display color maps of any part of Japan, Yokomizo said. The AVIC-1
device uses signals from satellites to automatically calculate the
vehicle’s location. It indicates the location with a red dot on the maps,
which are displayed on a four-inch flat color screen, he said. The
driver can choose from five levels of detail in the maps, which also
include names of thousands of restaurants, hotels, and entertainment
facilities and the services they provide, he said.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP): Mermaid restored. City
welders have repaired the Little Mermaid, the 74-year-old landmark
in Copenhagen harbor which was slashed by a vandal’s hacksaw,
police said Wednesday. The attempt to decapitate the girl-sized
bronze statue may have occurred several weeks ago, inspector Ole
Wagner said. Police were alerted Monday by an engineering student
who found a deep gash in the neck when he was studying earlier
repairs. The municipality works department Tuesday welded the 7-
inch wound and covered the scar with patina, leaving a barely
noticeable discoloration. The original head was severed and
disappeared in 1964. It was replaced by a new one cast from the
original mold. In 1984 vandals amputated an arm, but it was found
and rewelded.
UGA TODAY
Meetings
• UGAZ1NE will meet tonight at
6 at the journalism building in
the Macintosh lab, on the second
floor. The public is invited.
• The International Business
Club will meet tonight at 7:30 at
the Tate Student Center in Room
139.
• The Culture of the South
Association will meet tonight at
7:30 at the Tate Student Center
in Room 138.
Lectures/Seminars
• Thomas Lovejoy, Brazilian rain
forest expert from the
Smithsonian, will speak today at
4 p.m at the Tate Student
Center in the Georgia Hall. His
topic is “The Environment:
Decade of Decisions." The public
is invited.
• A seminar titled “Whole Brain
Learning” will be held today at
5:30 p.m. at Clark Howell Hall in
Room 119. The public is invited.
No preregistration is necesaary.
• The Georgia Writers’ Reading
! Series presents a seminar titled
“Writers in Progress” tonight at
7:30 at Park Hall in Room 265.
The public is invited.
Announcements
• The All-Campus Homecoming
Committee is looking for local
bands to play at the Tate Student
Center plaza for Homecoming
| Week, r or more information, call
549-8610.
| • The Athens Area Emergency
I Pood Bank is accepting
volunteers and donations of food
and grocery bags. Bring
donations to the Food Bank, 640
Barber Street between 9 a m.
and 1 p.m., Monday through
Friday.
Items for UGA Today must be
submitted in writing at least two
days before the date to be printed.
\ Include specific meeting location,
speaker's title and topic, and a
contact person's day and evening
phone number. Items are printed
on a space-available basis.
Because space is limited, long
announcements are shortened.
Alternative to altruism
Speaker praises ‘virtue of selfishness’
By GWINN BRUNS
Contributing Writer
There is an alternative to altr
uism. It’s a code of morals based on
the philosophy of objectivism.
Peter Schwartz, a promoter of
the philosophy of Ayn Rand and
her “virtue of selfishness," made an
attempt Tuesday to denounce altr
uism and ofTer a moral alternative,
rational selfishness.
Schwartz spoke to about 60
people in a speech sponsored by the
Objectivist Club at the law school
auditorium.
“We’re all admonished to give up
our material confidence” to fulfill
need, he said.
People today look to “need, as a
fundamental moral standard," and
he said he vehemently denounced
this self-sacrifice.
Schwartz speaks on Rand’s phi
losophy all over the nation. He is
an editor of the Intellectual Ac
tivist New sletter, a member of the
Ayn Rand Institute, and is author
of many self-interest books similar
to those by Rand.
Rand was author of four fictional
works — “Anthem”, We the
Living", ‘The Fountainhead’ and
“Atlas Shrugged,” as well as nu
merous non-fictional essays and
periodicals in which she proposed a
doctrine of capitalism and selfish
ness.
He said Rand saw self-sacrifice
as a vice, and he maintains her
philosophy.
He said, “Only the rational can
be in your interest,” and if one ex
amines the concept of selfishness,
one sees it’s a concern for self-in
terest.
The objectivist leads an “inde
pendent, genuinely selfish life,”
while the altruist resolves to “be a
parasite or a host,” he said.
He said a systematic code of
ethics based on egoism is the key
tool to a prosperous life of reason,
purpose and self-esteem.
The objectivist has a commit
ment to reason, and “the primary
virtue for man is rationality,” he
said.
Schwartz said that as an al
truist, "you have no moral right to
exist" without giving away money
to people who offer nothing in re
turn.
He said he feels such suffering is
the only goal of self-sacrifice.
All the currerit evils come from
the doctrine of altruism, and yet
altruism is the dominant philos
ophy in America today, he said.
He then said, “Totalitarian
enslavement is the altruist ideal."
A laissez-faire capitalist system
is the only means to achieve
freedom, and the world should be
composed of rational, selfish
human beings, he said.
He ridiculed the altruist who
strives for the public good, because
altruism doesn’t comply with one’s
self-interest. He said such a life is a
“moment to moment life of the
jungle."
Publicly funded programs are
criminal, and the fact that people
use public schools is no different
than robbing a bank, he said.
The speech was followed by a
question and answer session, and
many students seemed quite dis
concerted by his proposals of eg
oism and selfishness.
T thought his definition of altr
uism was something other than
what altruism is," said Maureen
Maher, a senior English major. She
questioned his stand on technology
and the environment.
Schwartz said he’s opposed to
the environmentalist movement
because it goes against capitalism
and technology, which are essen
tial to survival as he knows it.
Terrell Austin, a senior English
mfyor, said, "I think that objec
tivism has created an imaginary
opponent to altruism. He wants to
ignore the question of spirituality
except in cases where no self-in-
Schwartz said he’s
opposed to the
environmentalist
movement because it
goes against
capitalism and
technology, which are
essential to survival as
he knows It.
terest can be seen, or is apparent.”
Michael Woodard, a senior phi-
losophy major, said Schwartz’s pro
posals were absurd.
“His whole argument on laissez-
faire capitalism is riddled with con
tradictions. Under unbridled capi
talism, we witness the worst
abuses possible," Woodard said.
Woodard said of the objectivist’s
virtue of selfishness, “I think sel
fishness puts man at war with his
fellows because his only interest is
his own good, which would inevi
tably lead to anarchy.”
The Objectivist Club meets
every Tuesday night at 8:30 at the
Tate Center.
TONITE!
Academic Success Series
TODAY! WHOLE BRAIN LEARNING
Thursday, May 10 5:30-7:00 p.n.
Learn effective techniques which can significantly reduce
study time and lead to greater recall and comprehension.
NO ADVANCE REGISTRATION NECESSARY
Come to Clark Howell Hall Room 119, Lobby Area, 542-3183
’OUNSELING
& TESTING CENTER
rlf
75C
Rolling Rock
„ Bottles
Monday, May 15th
Vv^Normaltown
coupon coupon coupon coupon coupon coupon coupon coupon coupon
W.A. Cooper's Bar & Grill j
Home of the World Famous
1 20 oz. FISHBOWL |
Buy any menu item and get 2nd
I item of equal or lesser value 1/2 price e
| • Pool Tables • Sundeck • Seafood |
~ • Pinball • Burgers • Wings
| • Video Games • Steaks • Babyback Ribs §•
\ Tell 'em bout us down the road. =
1 4410 Lexington Rd. Open M-Sat. 'til 2 a.m. g
coupon coupon coupon
Expires 4 15-90
coupon coupon coupon
COLLEGE
Air Conditioning
Two Beautiful Swimming Pools
Two Lighted Tennis Courts
Weight room and Sauna
2630 Broad St.
(near Shoney's and the
Beechwood Shopping Center)
• On the ATS busline and easily
accessible to all parts of Athens
»Children's Play Area
»Furnished apartments available
r AO A A AO Office Hours
548-1148 M F
Sat
Sun
10-5
1 -5