SPECIAL SEALED SECTION

J iTjTll NOVEMBER 1991 .SEALED: 'if-IUi STATE-SUPPORTED IT. ECUTIONS ' d»:d ^ . CHILDREN STRANDED

EXPERIMENT CAN'T GO HOME onnruiNOVEMBER 1991

EDITOR IN CHIEF & DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE PRESIDENT: KATHY KEETON EDITOR: KEITH FERRELL GRAPHICS DIRECTOR: FRANK DEVINO MANAGING EDITOR: PHIL SCOTT ART DIRECTOR: DWAYNE FLINCHUM

10 24 First Word Tools By Martin Sheen By Sandy Fritz The actor •-—W ^^( Popcorn's informational journeys to Rome to ask #e«M 4H kernels; the Church to past-life cards; and more. intervene in the Gulf War. .. 27 12 a Artificial Intelligence Omnibus By Joan Griffiths The Who's Who Designing a computer for of contributing authors a gorilla 14 c ><^ can drive you ape. Communications 28 Readers' writes W >. Political Science By Tom Dworetzky 18 Bush's education vouchers Books would allow By Robert K. J. Killheffer parents to use government The events in a money to new novel eerily parallel HH\i - mmk send their kids to private the recent school. Soviet upheaval. JK'r .. B 30 20 ( ' Transportation Wheels By Martin Caidin By Mark Fischetti tiafr^Sfc- A new NASA spacecraft Get a charge out of looks a lot like driving with a project canceled 30 GM's electric cars. years ago.

22 The need to explore pushes man into uncharted territory 32 Space seeking answers and new questions, as the Animals By James Oberg cover by Chris Moore (Artbank/London) reminds us. The By Jessica S peart Will the failed coup kill Soviet Union led the world into space, but A state-of-the-art forensics or revive the August's failed coup may ground its space program. lab doggedly Soviet space program? (Additional art and photo credits, page 67) tracks down poachers.

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le reproduced lilarity between places ! person.! msntmnad in [ne rHcrior- AFO—$24 one year Canada :y,:: L.S.. Af-O. aad Canada lea--t-oae.l-8Gu- - 369 S6E-4. Tht publisher f.i SG l;j aid all i-gh:s in poii.ons ihareof f ema Ihc so property of Omni Publical No- oocc-io no o-coeiy o' :'-£ nags? re onnrui 33 70 Continuum Interview Fore! Now you can play By John Stein golf without the Nautical archaeologist hazards of rain, lightning, or lost balls; discoveries have rewritten racing pigeons that can't history books. find their way home; and more. 78 Fiction: Vampire State 40 By W. E. Gutman

Cruising the Eclipse What could happen if we By Frederik Pohl continue to There goes the sun: ignore street children? Science devotees booked passage 105 on a cruise Antimatter

ship to get a good look at Giving it all up for UFOs; the decade's monster rat best solar eclipse. visits France; and more. 50 118 The Light Stuff Star Tech By Beth Howard Techno-tools of tomorrow After nine years of waiting, work, 122 and more Electronic Universe waiting, an engineering By Gregg Keizer professor's Two fun experiment, sponsored programs give you by Omni, close-ups

finally made it into space. of the planets and the 56 weather. 128 Fiction: Skinner's Room 93 By William Gibson World of Electronic Games Games San Francisco's outcasts Special Section By Scot Morris have made Dateline: 1999. After a hard day at work, you plop down in A 3-D the Bay Bridge their front of the TV to unwind. But instead message, sans glasses. home. One of watching a witless sitcom, you're playing a startlingly re- 136 of the first to claim the alistic video game or a game of one-on-one bridge, Skinner basketball. You switch to an equally strenuous mental Last Word

now sits atop it, nursed exercise— manipulating a politics campaign. By Robert Bixby by a young You finish the evening by joining Christopher Columbus on Get ready girl who has never known a his historic voyage. A computer provides all for the latest ecological

different world. these experiences; it's not just for spreadsheets anymore. problems.

81 Suffer the Children By W. E. Gutman Hundreds of children wander the hostile streets of Guate- mala, stealing, begging, and selling their young but no longer innocent bodies. And they are dying and disappearing at an alarming rate, unspeakably tortured by those entrusted to protect them; the police. —

FIRST IAJDRD

ORDER IN THE COURT:

"And nation shall not lift up sword against nation"

By Martin Sheen

Mother Teresa Tuesday, February 26, 5:00 talked to each other largely was p.m. (Rome time). Joe and I made for another forty-five minutes responsible for our way up the Piazza San Gre- like three old friends, my returning gorio to the residence of the Mis- Wednesday, February 27. After to the Catholic sionaries of Charity and rang the meeting with Mother Teresa, the faith, and bell. Mo sooner had we begun to Pontiff, as part of his regular mid- now perhaps this settle in than a tiny sister ap- week general audience, issued a

peared smiling in the doorway. It strong statement against the hor- tunity to thank rors Gulf. her was Mother Teresa oi Calcutta! I of the war in the personally. was astonished at her size. Not tall- Thursday, February 28, 6:00 er than five feet, she could not a.m., Missionaries of Charity Chap- have weighed more than 90 el. On Mother Teresa's invitation,

pounds, yet I had never in my life we returned for a Mass of celebra- experienced a more powerful pres- tion. Earlier that morning the ence. She was simply overwhelm- news of a cease-fire in the Gulf ing and overwhelmingly simple, had reached us in Rome. which made her completely dis- Was there any meaning in our

arming. As we rose to greet her, journey? Did it have any impact she took our hands in hers and on the course of the war and the Monday, February 25, 6:00 p.m.', gave us each a blessing. beginning of peace? Who can

JFK International Airport. Flight "Now, what can I do for you?" say? In his traditional Urbi et Orbi 111 for Geneva departs at 7:30, she asked. Joe said that he had speech given on Easter Sunday,

giving me ample time to reexam- been moved by the Spirit to draw Pope John Paul II was vehement

ine what I am doing and recon- up a legal petition for the World in his criticism of the Gulf War. He sider going on a "peace pilgrim- Court in The Hague, to sue for a repeated the moral chastisement age" with Joe Cosgrove, a brilliant cease-fire in the Gulf; that he need- that he had used since the war's and dedicated public defender. ed to present this brief on behalf beginning, but in an unusual mo- Joe's plan was simple: We of a state, since the World Court ment, the Pope also called the would go to Rome, meet Mother does not acknowledge individu- war a "violation of international

Teresa, and ask her to present his als as litigants. "I never heard of law." To place a secular label on legal brief to the Pope, who, in a World Court," Mother Teresa this terrible event was a dramatic

turn, would approach the World said. Explaining that it had been move by the Holy Father. Was it Court and demand an immediate founded when the UN charter had coincidence that the brief Mother cease-fire in the Gulf. Wishful think- been ratified, Joe gave the brief had given to the Pope on our be- ing? Pure nonsense? Perhaps an to Mother in an envelope ad- half outlined the illegality of the

equal measure of both. dressed to Pope John Paul II. war based on "international law?

6:45 p.m. I am now firmly re- After a reflective pause, Moth- Perhaps. A letter, dated three solved to tell Joe of my intention er Teresa said, "You know both days after Mother Teresa's meet- to withdraw from the sophomoric Saddam Hussein and Mr. Bush ing with the Holy Father, and writ- misadventure. After listening pa- have ignored the Holy Father's ten by the Vatican secretary of

tiently to me, he asks, "How can plea to end the war. I also wrote state, thanked Joe on behalf of we determine what's in store for to both of them, but neither one the Pontiff for the information giv- us before we even take the first of them responded." She told us en to him. In its final paragraph,

step?" I have to agree: More of- she had considered going to the letter bestowed the Pope's ap-

ten than not, it was the unplanned Baghdad to see Saddam. ''What ostolic blessing on us. A fair re-

journey that proved more fruitful good could I do?" she asked. ward for our humble effort, remind-

and more rewarding. I have What good? I thought, recalling ing us once again what Daniel Ber- been moved by the Spirit to join how she had caused an immedi- rigan has always taught: Our

this peace pilgrimage, and I de- ate cease-fire during the civil war work for essential human needs cide to trust that Spirit. We are pil- in Lebanon simply by her pres- seeks not results but instead has grims — not diplomats— and we ence in Beirut, Mother Teresa fi- its remuneration in the goodness, surrender to lies in nally said, "I'm going to see the the Tightness of the work itself. must what _

store for us and stop trying to de- Holy Father tomorrow, and I will And that is a blessing of apostol-

termine the work of grace. give it to him then." Relieved and ic proportion. DQ —

ormruiBus

WRITES OF PASSAGE: Our writers leave the comfort of home to see" the world through prose-colored glasses

much of our learning is orbit, shifting standpoints to offer definitely unless we make chang- a secondhand story, new views ot the earth — and es now." For more than three remotely controlled make waves in the growing knowl- months prior to his trek, he and ready-made. Press a button edge pool. pored over horrifying statistics and circle the globe in 30 min- Frederik Pohl ("Cruising the compiled on the street children.

utes—without leaving your favor- Eclipse," page 40) calls it sci- "But nothing could prepare you ite chair. But where does all the ence chasing. "I've taken four big for what you see in Guatemala." information come from? Who col- trips this year: Africa, France, Chi- Deciding to delve full fathom in- lects it? A breed of intensely cur- na, and most recently, Hawaii," to the ocean to hunt for buried ious people, the activists of knowl- Pohl says. "Science is my favor- treasure, Omni called John Stein

edge, the doers and diggers, are ite spectator sport and I don't al- ("Interview," page 70). An inter-

driven out exploring by a need to ways need to go far to find it. The national banker by day, he was see the world firsthand. In this best spots are within thirty miles thrilled at the opportunity to return

month's Omni our writers chase of my home." Author of Gateway to an old fascination: the sea. "I the sun and moon, burrow the and The Space Merchants, Pohl haven't had the time for scuba div- ocean floor, and send ideas into hits bookstores again this ing recently, but I've been follow- month, collaborating with Isaac ing the work of George Bass for Asimov on the environment, in years," Stein says. As the father Our Angry Earth (Tor Books). of underwater archaeology, "a bar With statues tumbling and of gold doesn't excite Bass," Stein states altered daily in the former says. 'The wealth of his excavation

Soviet Union, what is the future of lies in its power to change history." the space program? Omni con- While exploration's rewards are

tributor James Oberg (Space, obvious, it requires persistence.

page 22), flew twice to Baikonur, This is what most impressed as-

the Soviet "space city," which re- sociate editor Beth Howard in her sulted in the PBS Nova special dealings with Duke Clockwise from University pro- "Russian Right Stuff" and an Om- fessor Franklin bottom: H. Cocks ("The Beth Howard, m feature article (October 1990). Light Stuff," page 70). "This had

"To actually see what I had been in the works for many Robert Killheffer, been studying for thirty years years," says of the James Oberg, Howard Omni seemed an unending series of de- Get Away Special. "It was so ex- and John Stein. lights," Oberg says. In addition to citing for Cocks to have his inven- his day job at NASA Mission Con- tion actually go into space, but he trol in Houston, he writes and lec- had to endure many roadblocks. tures frequently when he's not There were innumerable delays back at the ranch in rural Gal- three in the last month alone." veston County, Texas. Editorial assistant Robert Killhef- —More down to Earth — tragical- fer (Books, page 18), chose to re- ly "Suffer the Children" (page view Norman Spinrad's novel Rus-

81) is the result of Omni president sian Spring (Bantam) because it so Kathy Keeton's longstanding in- closely —and uncannily— mirrored terest in and concern for the fu- the reality of recent events in the So- ture of our children, on both a glob- viet Union. "Spinrad traveled all al and a local level. To further over Europe and into Russia to re- explore this troubling subject, inter- search this book. His experience national editor W. E. Gutman em- lends an immediacy to the novel

barked on an eye-widening trip to that it wouldn't otherwise have Guatemala. Reflecting on his sev- had," says Killheffer. A writer for en-day, 24-hour vigil with the coun- Publishers Weekty as well as the try's street children, Gutman managing editor of The New York says, "These issues affect the fu- Review of Science Fiction, he is al- ture in human rather than tech- so a piggish collector of porcine nological ways and will do so in- chatchkas. DO UNDISCZOVEFIEE1 CZCILIIMTR- connnnufuiCATOfus

THE WORD ACCORDING TO OUR READERS: Taking issue with' statistics and beliefs, getting to the heart of the matter, and finding the original Omega

Rash Belief Born-again Candidate Father Andrew Greeley [First Word, Au- Your August issue is an enlightened mas-

gust 1991] may be correct that people's terpiece. I would only suggest that per- religious beliefs have not changed haps the spirit of God will flow among

much in the last 60 years. But his opin- us more readily if we minimize precon- ion that journalists and academics ceptions. Thus, Murray Cox's statement "have... drifted away from their religious "All religions presuppose the existence origins" is a rash statement at best. Per- of God" [Forum] assumes there is no haps because they have traditionally institutionalized open-ended religious been our foremost advocates of free- search for truth and meaning. Unitari- dom of thought, action, and belief, an Universalism, however, is such an en- they find those ideals more divinely in- terprise for which he is a likely candi-

spired than chauvinism, self-righteous- date. I also would assume that not ness, intolerance, and dogmatism. everyone who reads the Morris Berman Audrey N, Glickman interview will "hear the protestation." All

Pittsburgh I hear are bells. Carol Benson Hoist Religious I Director of Education - . : :.-- Am the Keymaster . According to "The Mind of God" [Au- Unitarian Universalist Society gust], neuroscientist Michael Persinger Verdugo Hills, CA "doesn't believe the answers [in the

search for God] lie in the cosmos, but Growing Pains in the human brain." Actually, God did Until reading the August Interview with

first try hiding the key to his existence Morris Berman, I thought the tendency in the cosmos. In fact, he tried one to move to a horizontal axis was part of

spot after another, but no matter growing up. I now understand that it is, where in the universe he tried, human in part, an act of spiritual desperation.

beings somehow managed to find it. Fi- While I don't have any answers either,

it nally, he came up with the perfect spot I appreciate the questions and agree and hid the key in the human heart be- is better to know than not know. cause he knew that was the one place Eleanor Roberts no one would look. Owensboro, KY David Siskin New York City Point Taken "The Mind of God" reminded me of a Faith No More book titled The Phenomenon of Man in which au- I agree with Murray Cox [Forum, Au- (Harper and Row, 1959), gust] but object to Andrew Greeley's thor Teilhard de Chardin developed a opinions [First Word]. From my own thesis similar to Frank Tipler's. He even

personal experience, coupled with the called it "The Omega Point." I suggest historical reality of such events as the that Tipler's theory actually originated

Inquisition and the Holocaust, I cannot with De Chardin. place faith in some benign and all- Shaun Q. McMahon powerful force that could possibly allow Westwood, KS atrocities committed against beings sup- posedly created in his own image. Frank Tipler replies: Teilhard had the Must we meekly accept the existence right idea about the Omega Point but of God because statistics indicate tacked the calculations to solve the nine out of ten people pray in a week problems. We were both struggling or because 95 out of 100 individuals be- with the same questions concerning fu-

I the lieve in God? I don't think so. ture human evolution, but have Katherine Ann Nelson advantage of 30 years of new science American Humanist Association and theory. My theory is his theory Amherst, MA done right. OO BOOKS

TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE: A science-fiction writer inadvertently turns soothsayer

By Robert K. J. Killheffer

sounds like something out of again, forcing him to redraft his space program. Following the Itrecent headlines: A moderate book. "This novel went through Reed children's opposite but con- Soviet president struggles to many drafts," Spinrad recalls, "be- verging paths, Spinrad examines hold his country together as the cause when I started writing it the forces shaping both America republics declare independence events such as the German uni- and Russia today, pointing out and militant old guard hard-liners fication seemed far in the future, the good and bad of each and tanks roll grumble; through Mos- but as I wrote, most of the things hinting at ways for the world to

cow streets, and a coup led by I had been thinking of started to tap the best of both systems,

Soviet Army commanders places come-true." In the end, Russian Spring is the president under arrest, de- Science-fiction writers some- about living for a dream. For

claring martial law. ... But this is times try to predict the future, at Reed, it is the hope of space trav- not a front-page New York Times least in general terms, as they ex- el, for himself and for humanity at

story. It's a pivotal scene from Nor- trapolate from current events and large; for Bobby, it is the vision man Spinrad's latest novel, Rus- perceived trends to create a pos- of an America restored to its sian Spring (Bantam, $22.50), pub- sible future world. But rarely place as a champion of freedom lished in September and written does science fiction parallel real and progressive values; for

Spinrad's novel long before the abortive August events as closely as Spinrad's Franja, it is the chance for Rus- foretells the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. plot mirrors reality. Still, recent sia to emerge from centuries of breakup of the Spinrad began writing Russian events don't mitigate the novel's backwardness as a leader of Soviet Union Spring in 1988 and as the novel impact. "If I had another draft to equal standing in the advance- and offers hope progressed he found his fictional do, I would have written the ment of human culture. Spinrad's for the future. prophecies fulfilled again and coup attempt in," says Spinrad. vision strikes to the heart of our

"In the final draft I do refer to a world's current morass. His desire

'Time of Troubles,' vaguely. I to slip the shackles of history, think events validate the book." abandon our inherited biases, But there is much more to Rus- grudges, pettiness, and most of sian Spring than an eerie forecast- all, inertia, and start anew to ing of current events. The novel build a world in which our best centers on Jerry Reed, an expa- qualities are accented is exactly triate American living in Paris, what we need now. Spinrad who fled an increasingly reaction- gives his readers a worthy goal ary, repressive, and militaristic toward which to work. United States to work with the As we confront the changing European Space Agency in the face of our relationship with the semi-unified Common Europe. Russians, making vital decisions Through Reed's story, Spinrad about aid, alliance, trust, and trea- blasts America's failure to pursue ties, Spinrad's positive outlook its early success in space and criti- might make all the difference. cizes the ongoing militarization of Some readers, who know Spinrad our space program. from his previous science-fiction Alongside Reed's story is the books, may feel that Russian tale-pf his two children, illuminat- Spring is not a science-fiction nov-

ing the larger issues of world pol- el at all because of its clear roots itics. Bobby Reed inherits a vision in contemporary events. But Rus- of an idealistic, enlightened Amer- sian Spring, using the techniques ica from his father and he ven- of future extrapolation to com- tures into the benighted United ment so movingly on our current States in an attempt to find and world situation, does what sci- rekindle that spirit. Jerry's wife, So- ence fiction and only science fic-

nya, is a career Soviet bureau- tion can do: It shows us where we crat, and their daughter, Franja, might be headed and offers absorbs her mother's love of and thoughts on how we can make faith in the newly expansive So- the best possible real future with viet system, enrolling in the Soviet the tools we have. CXI UUHEELS

A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM:

" GM's electric car will soon be on the streets

By Mark Fischetti

ou've got to run to the 200,000 cars annually. Massachu- pense, electric cars have many ^B^J m 3ll, so you pull the plug setts and New York recently adopt- long-range benefits, both econom- I from the electric outlet in ed similar rules. ic and environmental. Because

your garage, yank the cord so it The electric car that is GM's re- they don't use fossil fuels, the retracts into the back of your car, sponse to the new laws will have cars themselves create no air pol- get behind the wheel, and put the a maximum range of 120 miles lution. They will produce some in- vehicle in gear. You turn out of and a top speed of 75 miles per direct emissions, however, as pow- your driveway and zoom up the hour. But the vehicle is no souped- er plants generate the additional

street, your electric car making up golf cart: It will roar from to electricity needed to recharge the about as much noise as an elec- 60 mph in a startling eight sec- cars. Taking these increased pow- tric razor. onds. Made from strong, light- er-plant emissions into account,

Such a scenario moved a giant weight aluminum and plastic, it some studies show that electric step closer to reality when Gen- sports a sleek shape that makes cars will still produce, per mile, 98

eral Motors recently announced it 33 percent more resistant than percent less carbon monoxide

it would be the first major auto man- any standard car to the dragging and nitrous oxides, 25 percent ufacturer to mass-produce an elec- effect created by air passing over less carbon dioxide, and about tric car. Production will begin in the car body at high speeds. Al- the same amount of sulfur as several years at a plant capable so, its specially designed tires conventional cars. of turning out 25,000 vehicles a roll twice as easily as those Electric cars don't cost much year. GM will market the vehicle made of conventional rubber and to maintain because there's no as a second family car, based on weigh only 12.5 pounds each. need for oil changes or tune-ups,

Wailing for a 2,200-pound, two-seater proto- All these improvements will no radiators to fill, and no filters Detroit: Small type called the Impact. come at a price. While GM won't or spark plugs to replace. Recharg- firms have Clean-air legislation, not rising comment on what the production ing the battery pack takes from beaten General gas prices, has provided the stim- model might cost, auto analysts two hours to eight hours and Motors to ulus to produce electric cars af- estimate the price at between costs about half as much as a com- the streets with ter similar efforts failed in the Sev- $20,000 and $30,000. "We can't parable amount of gasoline. Over their own enties. New California legislation build some glory car that's too ex- 100,000 miles, an electric car electric cars, like requires that, by 1998, vehicles pensive for anyone to buy," says winds up costing at least $5,000 Florida-based without tail pipe emissions consti- spokeswoman Toni Simonetti. less than a gas guzzler, including Sebring Auto- tute 2 percent of each auto- "But the car has got to perform the cost of replacing the £1,500 Cycle's Zzipper, maker's fleet sold within the like a regular car or consumers battery pack every 20,000 miles. which state. By 2003 that figure must won't buy it." Those batteries present elec- sells for 59,000. rise to 10 percent, or more than Despite the hefty initial ex- tric cars' only serious environmen- tal problem. Replacing the GM pro- totype's 32 ten-volt lead-acid bat- teries, similar to a typical car bat- tery, every couple of years will cre- ate a huge increase in toxic lead waste. Each year, car owners al- ready dump some 20 million dead batteries, each containing roughly 18 pounds of lead. To help remedy the problem, lead- recycling legislation has been in- troduced before Congress. With tougher pollution laws and increas- ing environmental awareness spur- ring the refinement and produc- tion of electric cars, the historic New Year's Eve of 2000 could very well find celebrators driving to parties in whirring cars with wall- socket plugs. DO — —

THE POSTCOUP BLUES: The future of the Soviet space program looks" more uncertain than ever By James Oberg

The ultimate nightmare of stay in space until March, when held influential positions in the space travel is being the next relief mission arrives. rocket industry. The houseclean- stranded in space due The cosmonaut's predicament ing that followed the failed coup to a mechanical, medical, or or- resulted directly from the ongoing attempt saw the resignation of oth- bital dynamics problem. But political and economic crisis in er officials in the space and mis- when the first spaceman actually the former USSR. With the col- sile industry, such as Oleg Shish- became '"stranded" this year, the lapse of the Soviet economy, "lux- kin, head of the aerospace min- cause was entirely terrestrial: His ury" items such as space explor- islry, who had toured NASA country had run out of money. ation have become prime targets space facilities only a month be- Sergey Krikalev is the flight en- for cutbacks. The public mood fore. Space officials feared the gineer aboard the Mir space sta- has swung solidly against "space worst, perhaps even the cancel- tion. When he kissed his new extravaganzas" at a time when lation of the Buran shuttle and the wife good-bye last May before basic consumer goods, such as shutdown of Mir blasting off for Mir, he expected razors, soap, even medicine and However, the defeat of the mil- No room to see her again in October, food, are scarce. itary plotters also indicates that on the racket: when he and his mission com- While still a maverick populist, the worst may be over. Massive Cosmonaut mander would be relieved by Boris Yeltsin campaigned for cuts may now at last be possible Sergey Krikalev the next crew. election on a reformist platform in the armaments industry, must wait Each relief launch is subsi- that includ- whose hard-line officials had resist-

until the next dized by a foreign guest ' ed major cut- ed earlier budget-trimming at- tempts. .With those officials gone, their pet projects are fall- ing under the budget ax. Space funding, especially for applica- tions programs, could be spared further reductions due to the sud- den vulnerability of the much juic- ier military budget. Meanwhile, cosmonaut Krika- lev remains in orbit, stranded by the collapse of the program that launched him. The Mir. Earth's first_multimodular space station,

remains unfinished, its oldest sec- tions already wearing out before the final sections can be Soyuz rocket cosmonaut, who pays dearly in backs in space exploration, launched. Housekeeping and re- arrives in March hard currency to spend a few Once elected president of the Rus- pair chores occupy nearly all of to end his days at Mir. Even so, Soviet sian republic, he favored only the crew's time. ten-month stay space planners realized by mid- space projects with clear-cut Yet the cosmonauts grimly at the Mir summer thai they couldn't pay for earthside applications. hold on. Abandoning Mir now, space station. a planned November flight, Similarly, Soviet president even temporarily, could bring which would carry a guest from Mikhail Gorbachev, as early as about the end of the cosmonaut the Kazakh republic—the home 1987, ordered space officials to program for years. The Soviets of the Baikonur space, center cut back on exploration and re- once billed Mr as a beachhead to appease independence-mind- search. He also cut the space into the universe, a "highway to ed officials there. budget 10 percent per year for the cosmos." But for Sergey Kri-

So the two launches were com- three years in a row. kalev and his colleagues, it has bined into one carrying a cosmo- The political upheavals in Au- become a last-ditch stand, their naut to relieve Krikalev's com- gust enhanced the power of one remaining chance to pre- mander, an Austrian, and a Ka- many of the Yeltsin antispace of- serve a space presence until zakh guest. Thus the seat intend.- ficials, Furthermore, several coup somehow, someday—their socie- ed for Krikalev's replacement was leaders, such as Oleg D. Bakia- ty can once again commit to occupied, and he was "asked" to nov and Vitaly K. Doguzhiyev, reaching toward space. DQ NOU) HEAR THIS! METLIFE MAS MUTUAL FUNPS.

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FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: Manipulating consumers, new sounds, past lives, and sweetening your home

By Sandy Fritz

Companies how to position their grading the sound quality, open- products to make profits. ing the doors, some say, for large- The ten future consumer scale pirating operations. trends defined by Popcorn are per- Last July a royalty agreement suasively argued but marred by was reached between DAT man- the imperative voice. Despite the ufacturers and music companies, book's silky delivery and probing so equipment and tapes should

inquiry, it's clear that Popcorn and appear soon. This book covers ev- her customers will spare no effort ery aspect of human perception to promote and sell their prod- of sound and technical advances ucts. This is science in the service in equipment and explains how of marketing. the new technology works. THE POPCORN REPORT. DAT: THE COMPLETE Faith Popcorn. Doubleday Curren- GUIDE TO DIGITAL fSAFEKHOME cy, 1991. $22.50 AUDIO TAPE. TEST PIUSES: Good ideas. Delton T Horn. Tab Books, 1991 r NTJ MINUSES; Arrogant. THE VERDICT: Mesmerizing. PLUSES: Illuminating. MINUSES: A little too bright The "Nostradamus of Market- at times. ing" (one assessment of Ms. Pop- THE VERDICTj Technical. corn) uses elementary psycholo- gy, anthropology, and sociology "Scat," said America's music to gaze into the future of Ameri- industry to DAT. Why? A single can culture. Then she advises Big DAT can be copied without de-

SAFER HOME TEST KIT. THE PHOENIX CARDS. Unconventional. DSK, 325 North Oakhurst Drive, Susai i Sheppard. Reincarnation MBSWSiSs A questionable Suite 404, Beverly Hills. CA >. Destiny Books, One. premise. 90210. £59.95 Street, Rochester, ' VT TME VEKDICts Clean fun. PB-WSES: You can finally take ; . 1991. S25.95 control... A ca'Tl-ar-ci-Soo.K combo thai MINUSES: ...but try hard not cJaimsto "read and interpret to overreact your pasMifs influences" may ;"' THE VERDICT: Utilitarian. d ayebrciws. but it's re-' ally gooc clean run. You select,

s oven test in from a deck of 28 faceup cards this kit revealed slight leaks from seven images that appeal to- the microwave here at Omni. Now yen, Then you consult the accom- staffers can be seen darting out panying guice (or iruerprelaiiori. of the room when they microwave According to Sheppard, the- their potatoes. images you se:eci hint at -past Our water is lead-free, and li- .; i:i i i r-iKing some since-most of us sit in windowless time to bone up. on your past cubicles, the ultraviolet ray alert because they may be- system was unnecessary. These come- -in the Nineties- tests, and two others for radon con- what' astrology was. in "' centration and carbon monoxide, e Seventies, rein- are extremely simple carratrg 'What's to use, but, unfortunately, we are unable to ver- ify their accuracy; the guide also provides easy-to-follow tips for tak- ing care of the problems. DQ ARTIFICIAL inJTELUEEfUCE

GORILLA MY DREAMS: Designing an ape's computer poses unexpected challenges

By Joan Griffiths

her recent birthday, her to sign, "Ivle girl know." Asked shaped and spaced buttons, ForKoko the lowland gorilla several times in different ways each with a full-color picture adapt- asked for a voice. Be- about an unfamiliar voice, she de- ed from an ASL gesture, cover the cause Koko is no ordinary gorilla, clared, "Rotten." She made no neg- screen. Touching an icon acti- her wish will soon be granted, ative comments upon listening to vates the corresponding word though fulfilling it took much her final choice and several times stored in memory. As Koko choos- more time, effort, and ingenuity signed self-referentially, "Goriila es words, they accumulate in a than expected. myself good." large bar at the top of the screen, Koko signs at least 600 words Designing a computer to house and when she touches it, the in American Sign Language (ASL) Koko's new voice proved more whole sentence plays. If she wish- and understands more than 1 ,000 difficult. To absorb the gorilla's es, however, the words can be spoken words. Everyone around strength, hardware engineer Tom heard immediately. her talks all the time, and her in- Ferrara used solid aluminum for The touch screen remains a ability to make human sounds frus- the inner structure and a polycar- stumbling block to the Apple trates her. bonate sheet for the cover. The designers. Working with Micro- Fortunately, Koko sits on the ad- unit sits just 29 inches above the Touch Systems, mechanical engi- visory board of Apple Computer's floor (to which it's bolted), a com- neer Mike Clark produced sever- Vivarium Program, an ambitious fortable height for a gorilla who al optically bonded capacitive effort to understand the nature of hunkers on the ground. The de- screens, but Koko inadvertently Koko may intelligence. Several Apple scien- signers placed the ventilation scratched them all. Gorillas walk be smarter than tists agreed to design a special slots in the rear to direct foreign on their knuckles, grinding grit your average Macintosh, complete with voice, materials that Koko might depos- deeply into their skin. When she gorilla, but she for Koko. it, such as bananas or toys, away touches the screen "it's like grind- still needs A daunting task lay before from the CPU, which has eight ing the bottom of your shoe across help from care- them: designing a computer that megabytes of memory and a 40- the screen," says Ron Cohn of the taker Francine Patterson to is safe for a gorilla as well as safe megabyte hard disk, Gorilla Foundation in Woodside, from a gorilla. During her excited After testing HyperCard and Su~ California, one of Koko's teachers. learn to use her moments, 260-pound Koko ca- perCard, Yaeger set out to write MicroTouch has developed a new specially reers about her room at 20 miles a special interface, called Lingo, optical guard coating that should designed Apple an hour and exerts about 2,000 for Koko. Seventy uniformly do tne trick. DQ Macintosh. pounds of concentrated force, the equivalent of a ten-pound shot trav- eling at 100 miles an hour, Before beginning work, the Ap- ple computer scientists met with Koko to tell her about the project and to help her pick out a voice. As might be expected when talk- ing with a gorilla who not only un- derstands human speech but al- so continues the conversation, a few misunderstandings occurred. For example, software engineer Larry Yaeger told Koko he and his associates were from Apple. Be- cause the fruit is her favorite treat, she enthusiastically exam- ined each person's briefcase or bag, looking for apples. Earlier, four women had record- ed three sentences, which were then digitized into a HyperCard stack. One of the voices belonged to a woman Koko knew, leading — — —

POLITICAL 5C1ERJCE

THE ABD'S OF PUBLIC EDUCATION; Private schools might not be better and may Well be worse By Tom Dworetzky

Janueri wun 2000 ers, has "been hammering this enough to make them good little Deer Mista Bussh— point home, armed with a new workers and nothing about the

/ gradiated frum wun study showing a key flaw present rights and duties of citizenship ov yur privat skools u made with in virtually all previous research like speaking out against abuses yur Amerika 2000 plan bak in suggesting private schools do a of power, S & L ripoffs, and acts

1991. Boy wuz it fun and did i better job: twisted statistics. of corporate malfeasance. Private lurn a lot. Thanx fur ledin ma They don't compare similar kids. schools can promote bogus sep- foks uze tha vauchurz ta pik a The most important factor turns aratist theories. They can also be gud skool fur me. out to be the parents' education ripoffs, like so many vocational Luv, levels. Control for that, by com- schools and diploma mills that ad- Ronny paring kids whose parents have vertise on matchbooks. Welcome the future American the same schooling, and you 2. Disadvantaged, difficult stu- high-school graduate, courtesy of find no significant differences on dents can be dumped by corpo- the education president's Ameri- National Assessment of Education- rate bottom-line bean counters. ca 2000 school reform proposal. al Progress test scores in math be- Think the companies will show a

Devoluiionary SF fantasy or fact? tween students i l public and pri- little heart? Know anyone laid off The skinny on Bush's scheme: vate schools. by a big company lately? This Private schools are better. than Let's assu the administra- short-term thinking will make ed- public ones, so let's privatize. The tion knows this by now. Why, ucation cost more, not less. In- _ cornerstone of this allegedly free- then, push for choice vouchers— stead of paying about $4,500 a market approach is to deregulate and the subsequent gutting of year to educate a kid, we the the educational system by giving the public school system? Con- taxpayers can look forward to as- parents vouchers that pay for sider a few possible explanations: suming the hidden cost of a gut- in privatized their kids to attend whatever 1, Public schools must by law ted public system— the $25,000 schools schools they want. The aim is to teach a curriculum that contains a year per kid for incarceration. only kids who make all schools, public or pri- politically unpopular subjects in Jail, after all, is the graduate pro-

vate, slug it out on the "level" play- these cynical and divisive times gram for school dropouts. entrance exam ing field of the marketplace. Hey, topics such as desegregation, evo- 3. Privatizing schools is part of and whose why not? Everyone knows that pri- lution, and safe sex. Private institu- an administration shell game to re- parents can pay vate schools are great and pub- teach anything they duce taxes temporarily. The short-

the difference lic ones stink, right? bloody well like. term benefit: Get reelected. We between tuition Wrong. Turns out that public A corporation- will end up with thousands of me- and schools do just about as well sponsored diocre schools lacking any qual- vouchers would or badly— as private institutions. school can ity assurance. The really good be eligi- Albert Shanker, president of the $»! teach stu- schools will be oversubscribed. American Federation of Teach- dents just Vouchers and' privatization will effectively deregulate schools, ex- posing once again the fallacy in the argument ihat free market pol- icies are always better. Remem- ber how wonderfully laissez-faire worked for our banking system? Rewarding public schools that

show improved results is the bet- ter way. Vouchers and privatiza- tion aren't the answers; they're the final nail in education's coffin.

If the President thinks this plan will work so well for education, why doesn't he let us use vouch- ers and choice for the whole fed-

eral budget? In that case I could choose to use my vouchers for ed- ucation, not H-bombs. DO TRAfUSPORTATIOftJ

WHAT KILLED THE DYNA-SOAR? This experimental spaceship was in the right place at the wrong time

By Martin Caidin

June 12, 1967. Search- phere, like a flat stone skipped bore uncanny resemblance to Dy- lights play silently against across water, back into orbit. As na-Soar, would race into space.

a swept-winged, batlike the program began building Some people even called it a machine resting atop a huge steam, Dyna-Soar begat Dyna- "space shuttle." Prophecy?

three-barreled Titan III booster. A Soar II, Dyna-Soar III, and then Dy- But Air Force funds for the proj- computer rushes through its final na-Mows. The latter was a highly ect dried up again, so NASA

seconds of countdown. The giant advanced Dyna-Soar III to be rushed ahead with its own spouts flame against steel and a used as a Manned Orbital Weap- winged piggyback designs. dazzling sun rises into the night on System. As data poured into (That, too, died, eventually to re- sky. Dyna-Soar accelerates away Systems Command, everyone surface as the delta-winged shut- from Earth riding atop a rocket wanted in on the project. Astro- tle, approved by Nixon in 1972.)

slingshot that will hurl it into orbit nauts began training, launch Now it's 1991 and the ghost of at five miles a second. sites were designated, and the Air Dyna-Soar has been resurrected Well, almost. The spaceplane Force shifted its programming to in multiple forms. Seems the ini- tial idea was so good that France

is developing its Hermes winged spaceplane, the spitting image of

the old X-20A. Japan is hammer-

ing out its HOPE unmanned and manned shuttle, another winged spaceplane. Meanwhile the Ger- mans are'planning their Sanger winged spaceplane project, and the United Kingdom looks fondly on its own HOTOL program. Every one of these designs ech- oes the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar, the spaceplane that refuses to stay dead. And now, nearly 30 years after DOD dropped the guillotine on Dy- was officially called the X-20, nick- leap far ahead of anything the So- na-Soar, NASA {tied in with the Air all over again: named the Dyna-Soar. Dyna- viet Union might produce. In fis- Force) is rushing development of Dyna-Soars Soar promised stunning ability in cal years 1961 through 1963, the the HL-20 personnel launch sys-

just about every facet of space- program received $273 million for tem. It will boost above a Titan IV reeled as the flight: a unique amalgamation of accelerated development. rocket (Dyna-Soar's booster was

HL-20 personnel aircraft, missile, and spaceship Then, in 1964, under "pressure the Titan III), It has a length of 30 launch system. technology, all embodied in a sin- from the top," the Department of feet (Dyna-Soars was 35 feet), a gle powerful bird. But a combina- Defense (DOD) canceled the wingspan of 23.5 feet (Dyna- tion of budget cuts and the stel- whole ball of wax. From a brilliant Soar's was 20.4 feet), and will lar success of NASA's Mercury concept well into development, Dy- weigh 22,000 pounds (Dyna-

space program killed the Dyna- na-Soar became as defunct as its Soar weighed 11,390 pounds). Soar, putting on the back burner predecessor, the dinosaur. Oh yes, the HL-20 will be tested

a machine that this country need- Well, the X-20 died. But it just with airdrops from a B-52. The Dy- ed desperately 30 years ago and wouldn't stay dead. No sooner na-Soar test program called for air- still needs today. had DOD buried Dyna-Soar than drops from the same plane.

When the program got under the Air Force, with NASA cooper- So it seems that we blew sev- way in 1957, spirits soared at Air ation, rushed to develop a huge eral hundred million dollars,

Force Systems Command. Stud- aerospaceplane that would lift dumped more than 30 years ies promised the ability of Dyna- from the ground in piggyback fash- down the toilet— and with a new Soar not only to orbit above Earth ion. The main booster would be name and a slightly different but also to "dive-glide" as low as flown back home and the upper shape, Dyna-Soar is very much 20 miles for bombing runs and winged stage, which anyone alive and kicking. A rose by any then "skip" or soar off the atmos- with even myopic vision could see other name is...Dd — .

AfUlfUlALS

POACH BUSTERS: Who you gonna call? A Scotland Yard detective agency for animals By Jessica Speart

Even as the herd of elk Resulting in 20 indictments, the rology lab, where researchers per- grazed peacefully on pub- so-called Pee Glow case is one form electrophoresis, or protein lic lands in New Mexico, of the first success stories of the separation. Inserted in a gel and poachers were plotting a crime, forensics lab, which is quickly earn- subjected to a 200-volt electric finally closing in on the beasts ing a reputation as the Scotland shock, proteins bend in patterns and nabbing more than 100 of Yard for animals. Run by Ken God- that can be compared with sam- them. Loading the elk onto dard, former director of the Hunt- ples to determine the species. trucks, they headed for Canada ington Beach Crime Lab, the $4.5 A new technique called a poly- but were stopped by federal million laboratory in Ashland, Or- merase chain reaction also allows

agents just beyond the state line egon, is doing what 350 U.S. fo- scientists to read the genetic in Antonito, Colorado. rensics labs do every day: link sus- code in DNA samples. If deer Until now, law enforcement of- pect, victim, and crime with phys- meat, for example, is found in a ficials would have been hard- ical evidence. But while most freezer in Miami, DNA fingerprint- pressed to prove that the elk labs solve crimes involving one ing can link the meal to a herd in their antlers earmarked for the species—man —this one handles Yellowstone. The smallest sample Asian black market—were not pri- the rest of the animal kingdom. of blood or tissue, even if found vately owned ranch animals as "It's like landing on a brand-new on a hunter's shirt, will provide a claimed. This time, however, the planet," Goddard says. positive identification. And unlike officials shone ultraviolet lights on The effort comes none too cruder techniques, DNA evi- the elk's urine. To the poachers'' soon. The United States is contrib- dence is indisputable in court. chagrin, the urine glowed, the re- uting more than ever to the esti- The area of criminalization, how- sult of a harmless powder con- mated $2 billion illegal world wild- ever, has presented the lab with America's cocted by the National Fish and life market. Most often the slaugh- its primary challenges—and break- wild elk Wildlife Forensics Laboratory. tered animals make their way to throughs. A $250,000 scanning are safe once Park officials had dispersed the Asia, where their parts are used electron microscope and a 250 more, powder in hay on state wildlands. as aphrodisiacs and as antidotes protractor helped to break the thanks to a Only elk baited off these lands, to ailments including cancer and back of the illegal ivory trade special the agents reasoned, could have hemorrhoids. Afresh gallbladder, when forensic scientists Ed Espi- forensics lab. eaten the treated hay. for example, sells for around noza and Mary-Jacque Mann

$500. Dried and ground, it will used them to differentiate be- bring in $1 ,200 an ounce. Elk ant- tween mammoth ivory, which can lers, believed to be most potent be bought and sold legally, and when they're "in velvet," en- elephant ivory, which cannot be gorged with blood, fetch up to traded. Both ivories have what are $400 an ounce. called Schreger lines that differ Indeed, the lab itself attests to according to the'species. And the

the grisly carnage. A mutilated ti- research team is close to being ger's head, severed bear paws, able to determine the ivories' age and bags of crushed tiger bone through protein degradation. and ivory shavings are just a few Meanwhile researchers have of the specimens in this little high hopes for another high-tech shop of beastly horrors. tool, the gas chromatograph Armed with the latest technol- mass spectrometer, used at the ogy, the lab has taken on the Olympics to detect drug use in ath-

poachers with a passion, using a letes. The machine will make it pos- multidisciplinary approach. The sci- sible to determine the chemicals entists start with morphology, mak- and toxins used on animals. ing identifications by comparing With such an arsenal of resourc-

features like fur, hides, feathers, es, the lab is poised to halt the or claws of confiscated animals grisly business of poaching. with herd samples. "There's a growing sense among When a species can't be iden- poachers thai the easy life is go- tified this way, muscle, blood, tis- ing to come to an end," Goddard sue, and soft organs go to the se- says. DO —

conrnruuunn FAIRWAY TO HEAVEN:

Pebble Beach is yours for the putting, thanks to virtual reality. Also, nuclear mudslinging and the bonny tides of Scotland

Let it be known. Virtual reality Raise your hand and a re- al golf is here, and it is good. waiter arrives, opening a

It's good because golf frosty bottle of beer. Ooops, takes tons of time. Hours for a that's not virtual reality. tee time, hours to play a In Manhattan 1 played Par round, in sunshine if you're T at Midtown Golf and the Club, lucky, in hail and brimstone if World Trade Country you're not. Add lost balls, torn- and InGolf at the Eastern up greens, and the threat of Athletic Club in Brooklyn lightning and Lyme disease, Heights {there are Par T and and you know why 20 million InGolf courses around the na- American duffers at one time tion). Both systems cost their or another consider beating owners more than $30,000, their clubs into plowshares. about the price of a member- Enter virtual reality golf. ship in a fancy country club. Instead of spending the It'll cost you about $25 an night trying fitfully to get hour, and both use real balls, some sleep in your car (in the though InGolf's ball contains hope of getting a tee time at an inserted mirror to be posi- your public links), you enter a tioned precisely on a tee. private room, press a button, Both promise extreme ac- and voila, you're at majestic curacy (Par T says to within surfside Pebble Beach, or a yard). My feeling is that the stately tree-lined Pinehurst II, two systems tend to come up or the European Champion- short on the drives and long ship Links of Quinta do Lago, on the slices—but then

Portugal (all through a large again, I usually come up screen on the wall and the miracle of software behind it). short on my drives and long on my slices. Drop a ball on the plastic turf, dial up wind velocity—nae Par T uses thousands of photos of real courses blown up wind, nae golf, say golfs sadistic originators, the Scots- onto the screen, whereas InGolf paints its fairways and InGolf's In pix- pinch yourself to see if you're dreaming, and let it rip. greens like a giant video game. advantage: a in better with its surround- Now if you live in the city, worse, New York City, where eled re-creation the ball melds 7 million souis are shoehorned into a few unescapable ings; for example, it has a shadow, splashes with the ap- square miles, you've really got something, don't you think? propriate glub in water, ricochets with a rifle crack off tree Disadvantage: You're wondering whether Don- The two different systems I played, InGolf and Par T, use limbs. always infrared beams, photo-optical detectors, and computers to key Kong will appear to stomp you into a divot. track the ball's velocity, spin, and direction. Whack your A tree in your way? Par T conveniently ignores the fact. drive against the screen, the computer computes, and a (Midtown Golf swears they're going to fix that.) The simu- blurred facsimile hooks or slices down the fairway. Then in- lated ball on the screen looks more like a whizzing alien stead of having to search for the ball, or even schlepp than a golf shot. InGolf's trees are identical, like a cartoon least, through the grass to get there, the screen instantly chang- it is a cartoon —and golf's joys are, for us hackers at es, and without flexing a muscle you're peering at the flag- largely aesthetic. stick or at the trunk of a tree. Of course, standing in the sun with the wind in your hair Select your next club (after spotting the digitized yard- and, after taking a whack, watching your golf ball waft into age) and hack away again. Finally, hopefully upon reach- a cloudless sky can never be simulated. Neither can shiv- ing the green, the plastic grass at your feet metamorphos- ering in the rain, waiting forever to hit a shot, or losing half es into a putting surface. Drop your ball on a prearranged a dozen balls on your first hole after staying up al! night to spot, knock in your putt, dial in your score, and it's on to the get a tee time. Hey, you can't have everything. next championship hole. —BOB BERGER " "

coruTiruuunn

CLEANING UP WITH plants could be pumped MUD through bioreactors seeded with the microbe, which can

Mud: Politicians sling it, be cultured fairly rapidly,

pigs wallow in it. Now mud Lovley says. The dissolved has a chance to clean up its uranium would then be image as well as uranium- transformed into metal solids contaminated waterways and that could be easily removed, nuclear waste sites. leaving purified water to be Led by Derek R. Lovley, returned to the environment. scientists at the U.S. — Khephra Burns Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia, have found that a "We should all be concerned strain of bacteria common to about the future because mud transforms uranium, a we will have to spend highly soluble radioactive the rest of our lives there. -eial. into a solid hat can be —Henry Longfellow

THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL CORNEA TRANSPLANT ON

RECORD TOOK PLACE IN 1 835. A BRITISH millimeters in diameter. THE VISION RING ARMY SURGEON IN INDIA REMOVED THE CORNEA The Brazilian surgeons A FRESHLY KILLED ANTELOPE People with minor vision reported that the two- FROM AND problems may soon be millimeter incisions healed GRAFTED IT ONTO THE EYE OF HIS PET ANTELOPE. abie to throw away their in three days, says Thomas glasses or contact lenses. A Loarie, president of Kera- California company has Vision, which devised the easily isolated in wasiewa~8r RARE BREED devised a tiny, transparent polymethyl methacrylate and filtered out. plastic ring, which, when ring. In addition, the patients The bacterium, a rod- Nearly a century ago implanted in the eye, re- felt no pain and couldn't shaped microbe known as ranchers attempted to start a shapes the eye to correct the even feel the implant. Loarie GS-15, usually gets its cattle ranch on New patient's vision. The ring expects the procedure's energy from a similar Zealand's remote subantarc- flattens the eye's curvature to cost to be competitive with reaction involving the trans- tic Enderby Island. When correct nearsightedness, that of such other types of formation of iron. But the venture 1 failed, the steepens it to correct corrective eye surgery as laboratory experiments show ranchers abandoned the farsightedness, or makes it ac : al keratotomy and laser that it derives twice as cattle to fend for themselves. more uniform to combat sculpting, which can cost much energy from metaboliz- Remarkably, the animals astigmatism. more than $1 ,500 per eye, ing uranium. survived to the present day. Known as the intrastromal Three-phase clinical trials The findings not only "help New Zealand scientists corneal ring, the device, of the procedure will be . to explain the presence of have begun collecting

" just three tenths of a nv limete 1 conducted with 600 patients uranium ore in certain semen from the cattle, an long, worked perfectly at locations including the sediments, but more import- early shorthorn type now with three eye patients at Bethesda Eye Institute in St. ant, they provide a possible extinct elsewhere, in an the Escola Paulista de Louis and should be com- ".echanism for cleaning up attempt to broaden the Medicina Hospital in Sao pleted in the mid-Nineties. environments contaminated world's bovine gene pool, Paulo, Brazil, last March. In —George Nobbe with soluble uranium at a very Because the Enderby an outpatient procedure rapid rate," says John Stolz, Island cattle have never been there, surgeons needed "Live so that you wouldn't an assistant professor of exposed to antibiotics, only half an hour to embed be ashamed, to sell the biology at Duquesne Univer- microbiologists have taken a the ring in the connective fa!r::iy parrot to the town sity in Pittsburgh. keen interest in studying tissue of the eye, anchoring gossip. Wastewater from uranium the bacteria in iheir digest- it in a channel 7.5 —Will Rogers. mining and nuclear power ive systems. 34 OMNI Doctor of animal science SURF POWER Hugh Blair of New Zealand's Massey University, who is Civil engineers at Queen's organizing the semen collec- University in Belfast have tion, believes that the found a way to use the waves cattle could provide a much- crashing onto Scotland's needed alternative to island of Islay to power the "specialized, high-perform- siand town of Port na Haven. ance animals." The prototype facility relies Ironically, the move to not on the rise and fall of preserve the cattle's genetic tides, but on columns of material was prompted water from incoming waves by plans to exterminate the that rush into a 120-cubic- animals as part of a pro- meter concrete cham- gram to turn Enderby Island ber atop a rock gully at the into a wildlife preserve. shoreline. The water com- — H. J. Cording presses the air at the top of

YOU CAN'T FLY the club. "It's normally HOME AGAIN about a six-hour trip." Puzzled, Kluge contacted On June 8, 1991, the experts at the University of Kenai Peninsula Racing Alaska in Fairbanks, who Pigeon Club released 58. told him the pigeons had experienced racing pi- likely fallen victim to violent geons from King Salmon, solar flares-. Alaska. Two weeks later To guide themselves, the only five pigeons had made birds rely on the earth's their way horns to Kenai, magnetic field, which was 230 miles to the east. disturbed by frequent "Thaf s an extremely low solar flares in June,

rate of return," says Bill according to geophysics . Hang ten—kilowatts, thai is: Civil er-.g.nssrs at Belfast's Queen's KlUfle, president-elect of and electrical engineering University have turned the power of waves into electricity professor Robert Hun- sucker, The flares and the chamber, driving a long distances without resulting' magnetic storms turbine, according to engi- dissipating energy," disoriented the pigeons. neers Alaister Thompson Thompson says. "The higher the latitude, the and Trevor Whitaker. When The demonstration plant more disoriented they get," the waves recede, they will run off and on for

leave a vacuum in the en- the next two years of tests, ;J[^L What about fhe wayward closure that sucks air financed by England's fliers? "If we were going to back in, continuing to power Department of Energy. have stragglers, odds are the turbine. At 1 ,500 rev- Thompson and Whitaker they would have come in by olutions per minute, the plan further study of the now," Kluge says. "These normal speed of a standard chamber's design but they birds probably kept flying ^^^"^fflr electrical generator, the are confident that wave and flying, believing- they demonstration plant can pro- power can eventually meet were headed in the right duce 40 kilowatts of electricity needs along the .' direction. Some might have electricity, enough to keep west coast of Britain as [-_^^__ --H gone a thousand- miles all the lights aglow in Port na cheaply as coal and with Solar flares make racing before. Stopping to rest." Haven (population: 200]. less damage to the environ- pigeons lose their way. — Steve Nadis "Atlantic waves travel very ment.—George Mobbe 35 . . "

cofUTiruuunn

FARMING THE SEA shore '.than inland, Compe- BREEZES tition for real estate has .also cut the. amount of land' Picturesque windmills dot available for siting hun- the landscape in Den- dreds of windmills-. On the mark and other northern downside, offshore wind European countries- Now generators cost more to windmills have begun rising build and operate. "We're from the icy. sea off the hoping' that the ihcreaset southern -coast of Sweden 0 ,: ;rgy w rnpen- as part of a plan to harness sale for the high, the winds to power the .says Qlof Sandberg of the entire country. National Energy Admin- Lastfall. the- world's first istration in Stockholm:

ocean-based windmill be- . During a five-year test,

gan operating in a. corner of energy officials will monitor

Sweden's Hand Bay. With, a the: Hand Bay turbine's .

diameter of 75 feet and performance and its- effect anchored by'three concrete on local fishing and

legs, the rotor rises 123 feet shipping/ if all goes well, above the Baltic Sea. Sydkraft plans to build.'an Sydkraft, one- of the- oceanic-wind energy "farm"

country's two major utilities, of 98 windmills, it's

operates it as well as estimated' that 60 of -these EAT IT, WEAR IT, OR Easson theorizes. . Sweden's largest land- farms would, be needed to DUMP IT ramigeria gets by in its

based windmill, replace- Sweden's nuclear .

' watery environment by ab- Sydkraft. put the- new power' plants, which are A Seventies Saturday sorbing such nutrients windmill out at sea because scheduled to be phased Nigh: Live sketch touted the as iron, he says. breezes are stronger out by the year 2010:. wonders of Shimmer, both The bacteria also carry a and more consistent off- — Sieve Nacs a dessert topping and a floor negative electrical charge wax. Zooglan has even that causes them to bind with more diverse uses: It's a heavy metals of the sort ihickering and lubricating found in wastewater, making agent in food and cosmetics, them clump together and

and it's just about ideal for settle into a residue easily sepa- cleaning up wastewater. rated from the water. Produced by a bacterium Easson and his colleagues called Zooglea ramigeria, think that, using genetic Zooglan bas'caliy consists oi engineering, they can design polysaccharides, long a process to produce enough otrirg.; of sugar molecules, Zooglan for cleaning up according to Donald D. wastewater on a large scale. Easson, a biochemical engi- Easson envisions grow- neer who conducted much of ing the bacteria in tanks, his research at the Massa- isolating and harvesting the chusetts Institute of Technol- strings of molecules. ogy. Exactly what Zooglea —George Nobbe ;es Zooglan for remains something of a "Nothing wears clothes, but mystery. "It could be an ener- Man; nothing doth gy storage source that need but he to wear them.

: i "it- :j.ac":o- o need ".o survive.' —George Herbert a "" .

coruTiruuunn

management techniques," animals are eaten in various [ike the control of parasites parts of the United States, and disease, Homan says. Homan says, Western- For all of giant rats' good ers draw the line at eating points, don't look for rat rats.— Peggy Noonan meat at your supermarket. The researchers have no "When you say you agree plans for major commercial on a thing in principle, you production or even the mean you have not the importation of rat meat from slightest intention of carry-

Africa. Even though musk- ing it out in practice. rats and other "bush" —Otto von Bismark

ROBBING FISH OF reach the age of 4, Checking historical rec- ords, Rowell found that in

In an attempt to repro- . 1893 half the female cod duce before landing in a population became mature fisherman's net; codfish in once they reached. 75 now mature. centimeters long. Nearly RAT RANCHING the .North Sea. earlier than, they did a 100 years later, half the' BY AGE 35, WHEN THE century ago, says Cathy females are becoming How do you feed the HUMAN SKELETON Rowell, a doctoral, biology . fertile at- 50 centimeters. hungry poor in Africa? Let HAS REACHED ITS PEAK student at England's Unf- "I looked at other them eat rats. MASS, BONES CAN versify of York. indicators, like tempera- Like the Gambian and A female cod can live up ture," Rowell says, "bui tne cane cutter rats, or nkumbi, BEAR 24,000 POUNDS to 20 years, reproducing pattern of change provides found in nearly a third of OF PRESSURE PER every year from the, age -of dramatic evidence that it is Africa. Considered a delica- INCH WITHOUT SQUARE 3-or 4. But now, Rowel], human- activity that is cy there, the cat-sized BREAKING. says, there is a 60 percent forcing the cod. to change rodents are tough to catch, chance each year that- so rapidly. This is one of the so a team at the University cod witfbe caught in the few known cases of of Wisconsin (UW) has the idea of domesticating the : heavily trawled North Sea evolution occurring ai: a begun domesticating them giant rats. He contacted once it reaches the legally direct -result of human for backyard rat ranching. Tom Yuill, associate dean of harvestabteage.Only 15. behavior rather than as a Such "microlivestock" UW's School of Medicine, percent. of the- fish currently .gradual' response to chang- have many advantages, having noticed Yuill's work survive to breed at the age es in. the environment. according to Jane Homan, with the National Research of 3, and. only 5 percent —Ivor Smullen veterinarian and associate Council's Board on Sci- scientist in the university's ence, Technology, and Inter- international programs office. national Development on , The critters eat local plants, tapping underutilized re- require no special feeds, sources around the world. have little impact on the Yuill and Homan subse- environment, and can be quently began collaborating raised in backyard pens on the rat project, and much as Westerners might they have since received a keep chickens. Any extra grant to perfect rodent meat can easily be sold at ranching and started a the local market. colony of Gambian rats in Mbakulirahi Malekani, a Zaire. Domesticating the professor at Zaire's Universi- rats "is really a case of trying ty of Kinshasa, came up with to develop appropriate 38 OMNI .

LAST JULY OMMI JOINED A FLOTILLA OF SUN WORSHIPPERS ON A VOYAGE INTO THE TWILIGHT ZONE CRUISING THE ECLIPSE '**! O

7:27 A.M., July 7, 1991. We're ninety-six hours from the eclipse, but some of the dedicated eclipse fans are already out on the starboard railings of the S.S. Independence, squinting anxiously at the sun. It's good and bright, right this minute. That's pretty much the way you'd expect the sun to be here in these sunny Hawaiian waters, and the good news is that if the moon were going to slide in front of it today instead of four days from now you'd surely say that it was being eclipsed, all right. The bad news is that you wouldn't be able to make out some of the fainter outer corona because there's a thin, high fan of cirrus that starts at the horizon and spreads out over the eastern sky. It won't keep you from getting a sunburn, but it's just enough to fuzz out the fainter patches of coronal light. Maybe our luck will be better on July 11.

Maybe it won't, too. Pacific skies are cloudy. I've flown over this ocean twice in the last few weeks, fourteen and a half hours from San Francisco to Hong Kong, and there was never a minute when I could look out my window and see no clouds in the sky at all. This morning there are fluffy little clumps of cumulus all over the eastern horizon. Twenty minutes later, while we're eating our breakfast papaya and omelets on the fantail, a cou- ple of clumps slide right over the sun, and that's the kind of thing that can really spoil an eclipse for you.

ARTICLE BY FREBERIK P0HL THE SUN AND MOON DON'T CONSULT HUMAN WISHES WHEN T8EY MEET, TYPICALLY IN THE MIDDLE OF AN OCEAN, JUNGLE, OR SIBERIAN WASTELAND

Of course, on the Independence we'll be a moving tar- tive, a bundle of teachers at all levels, retired senior citizens get. We should be able to dodge a few cumulus shadows. from assorted walks of life, and— unusual for a cruise ship, We'd better do it, too. There are 800 passengers who have but not really unexpected for this one— a great many work- booked passage on the Independence for the sole and sim- ing scientists: astronomers, physicists, mathematicians, bi- ple reason that they want to see the sun go out. If they don't ologists, chemists, computer people, and one or two who see it with their own eyes some of them are going to be thirst- don't exactly say what it is they're working on, but whose ing for blood. home base is one or another research facility of the De-

Eight hundred on the Independence, 800 more on its sis- partment of Defense. ter ship, the Constitution, heaven knows how many others Then there are the kids. There are dozens of them. We aiming to be out at sea somewhere in Hawaiian waters, on happen to have lunch one day with a bright, well-mannered anything from a kayak to a catamaran, so they can get a seven-year-old named Michael, traveling with his grandpar- good look at the Nineties' best eclipse. ents and doing his best to be good company ... but clearly

The great thing about the July 11, 1991, eclipse isn't just yearning to get it over with so he. can get back to his Nin- that it's a good long one (more than four minutes of totality tendo. The adults have other entertainment: movies, hula les- right here; some other eclipses give you only seconds) but sons, cards, contests, cabaret shows, and "us"— astronaut that its path sweeps right over a lot of places where people Michael Collins, photographer George Keene, meteorologist like to go anyway. Once it leaves the Big Island its next Joe Rao, and generalist (which is to say, science-fiction writ-

~|' 4

stop on land is the tourist havens along the Mexican coast; er) me. This will be Keene's eleventh eclipse, and he has so Baja California is standing room only, too. Other eclipses spectacular photographs of the last five to prove it. Joe Rao have been in far less desirable (or, for that matter, accessi- is the weatherman who will try to pick out the clearest piece ble) places. Ttie sun and moon don't consult human wishes of ocean for us on the morning of the eleventh, besides when they meet. The moon's shadow can strike the earth which he has seen and photographed several eclipses him- anywhere on its sunlit (or, of course, temporarily nonsunlit) self, while Mike Collins, on his way around the moon on Apol- face from the North Pole to Antarctica, and it has a distress- lo 11 in 1969, saw all the personal eclipses a person might ing habit of in doing so the middle of an ocean, jungle, or want. I am low man on this particular totem pole. All I have Siberian is ,. wasteland; when scientists wanted to check the memory of that ancient 1925 event— and now Joe Rao

;. out Albert Einstein's relativity predictions by observ- breaks the news to me that I was several miles too far south

I ing the May 29, 1919, eclipse they had to goto an and east at the time to see real totality, so that all I actually

ir Africa's of it. island Gulf Guinea to do got was about a 99.99 percent partial. I never knew that. I

, some of our shipmates was five years old. All I knew was that the sun went out.

I on the Independence might do We sail after sunset. When it's full dark and we're well away ' the same thing. Some of them from the light pollution of Honolulu and Waikiki, Joe Rao have seen three, five, as many takes a bunch of us out on deck to look at the constella- ^as a dozen total eclipses in tions. Captain L. Richard Haugh has turned off all the lights ^ one part of the world or an- the rules of the sea will allow, and the seeing is good. other, i anywhere from New This is a good place to see the southern constellations,

York's Central Park (that and these are good ships for the purpose. Especially if you wasway backin 1925; Isaw want to take pictures. They were originally built as Atlantic most of that one myself) to the liners, with glamorous histories, until the Hawaiian-American China Sea, and they all want Line rebuilt them to cruise the islands. They're steady pho-

| more. They come in all shapes and tographic platforms because their propulsion is gentle sizes, our shipmates do. Over the steam rather than the sometimes jittery diesel motors.

[ week we're at sea I meet an Army 7:28 A.M., July 8. We're tied up at the port of Nawiliwili,

' chaplain, an advertising execu- Kauai, and if the eclipse were this morning we'd be in pretty Finally, aVCR everybody and his dog can program.

74-year-old lady check your TV listing for the Plus Code, then punch it in. | Rjght now, a sweet

5 holding a baseball bat over her Its as simple as that.

covering Its another miracle from the people who introduced I VCR. A mother is her

J's ears while Dad tries to television and still sell more of them than anyone else, record a show. Neighbors gather on the sidewalk to The people who still lead in VCR sales, witness a man on his roof, preparing to drop his VCR. Phone 1-800-556-1900 and inquire about diis new RCA

We have heard you all. VCR with VCR Plus+, or see your RCA dealer. He knows,

So we introduce the first VCR that makes recording better than anyone besides yourself, how it feels to record a a show as easy as watching one. This new RCA VCR has play-off game and wind up with a home shopping show

VCR Plus+ built m. To record a show, after initial setup, Changing Kntortaizmieiu. Ag-.uii: ItC/l — —

good shape. The high cirrus veil is remote control from as far away as the been socked in for three days, and the gone, and although there are some Greenwich Observatory in England solar astronomers are biting their nails. hefty cumuli around, we shouldn't but because the seeing is so good. At They really want to get this one in. It's have much trouble dodging them. two and a half miles up, the mirrors are not their only chance, quite. Sooner or There's one unwelcome develop- placed well above much of the earth's later there will be another total eclipse ment. The trade winds blow steadily air and most of its obscuring water va- passing over their heads, but, on av- from the east at these latitudes, but for por—most of the time. erage, they come back- to' the same the last few days they've been taking Still, I know from personal experience place only once every 350 years. some time off. Now, in the absence of that even up there the seeing some- The Mauna Kea astronomers don't re- the trades, dust from the erupting vol- times goes sour. I'm an observatories ally need a total eclipse to study, for in- cano in the Philippines has backtracked fan — everything from the Big Eye on stance, the sun's corona. They do it all to our air. Besides burying Clark Field, Mount Palomar to the Bigger Dish of the year round. They make their own eclips- Mount Pinatubo is making a faint, al- radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Ri- es, when they want them, by sliding a invisible, most silvery sheen over the co—and once when I was staying in Hi- sun-sized opaque disc into the optics Its sky. dust has made some gorgeous lo I couldn't resist the temptation to of their telescopes, and with the bright sunsets, but sunsets get almost take we can a look. Against advice I rented a solar disc hidden the corona pops any day, and it's for the best possible four-wheel-drive vehicle and made the right out. But then sunglow lights the air

' view of the total eclipse that we've col- climb. The advice had been good. It around the image, and besides, the lectively traveled all these miles. wasn't a fun drive: narrow road snak- chance of comparing the natural Mauna Loa isn't the Big Island's on- ing up the mountain, high winds that eclipse with the coronagraph studies ly towering mountain. The other is Mau- made the Jeepster slither back and lets them check their simulation, and any- just trifle taller forth na Kea, a and crowned on the loose gravel, with 500-foot way they certainly want to see it. with astronomical observatories. drops and no guardrails, and a freez- They've been setting up for this once-in- That's one of the other graces of ing, sleety tempest at the top, There several-lifetimes photo opportunity on this July 1991 eclipse: Its path of total- wasn't going to be any seeing that day, Mauna Kea for a long time, and the ity over goes smack one of the world's Not even sight-seeing; I turned right clouds that are now hovering around largest aggregations of big telescopes, around and headed back down— and the top of the mountain have never

on the peak of Mauna Kea. The reason was lucky, I guess, because the next been more unwelcome. so many institutions have put their big- day the road washed out in the storm gest instruments isn't there because the and a party of astronomers was stuck On deck a passenger asks me if we're astronomers like sunbathing on the on the mountain for three days. going to see Baily's Beads. I couldn't beaches— actually, of pro- they're much the And not doing much better be more pleased, because I happen to gramming for the telescopes is done by now. The peak of Mauna Kea has know the answer to that one: "No."

Baily's Beads are the little necklace of bright points of light that you some- times see around the eclipsed sun at totality. They come from the mountains on the rim of the moon; at an exact

matchup the valleys between them let light from the sun's rim through. But we won't see them this trip, be- cause on this eclipse the moon is a tad

too large; it will overlap the disc of the sun and thus cut off not only Baily's Beads but a little of the inner corona, and the reasons for that are that the moon happens to be about as close to

us (at 222,380 miles) as it ever gets,

and also simply that it's July. The season of the year matters. The earth's orbit around the sun isn't a per- fect circle; it's stretched out a little to become an ellipse, and the sun isn't ex-

actly at the center of it. What makes things nice for the Northern Hemisphere is that when it's our winter we're at the part of the orbit that's closer to the sun, and now in July we're the farthest from it—94,552,000 miles or so instead of the average distance of around 93,000,000.

This makes our Northern seasons a lit- tle milder than those south of the equa-

tor, but it also makes the sun relatively a little smaller for this summer eclipse. Thus there will be the moon's overlap and no beads.

Carried away with this success, I go on to demonstrate some eclipse-view- v as * - ps,* 1950.

.<3^ «Si^

You always come back to the basics: j —

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, [ Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.

fistful of flavorvm

ing techniques. The ship's owners but through a 30-power tele- lainly they're going to want to attend the the geology of the Hawaiian islands. dried up, began to be slowly eroded by and they probably produced their own

If still have passed out cards containing patch- scope I find two big ones close togeth- lectures. Even if it means missing the They're definitely volcanic, but they're the wind, rain, and waves. lava tubes. so, they're probably es of totally exposed photographic film er and a speckling of tinier ones, like ukulele lessons. also situated a long way from the "ring The independence is going to there and reasonably intact—there's not to look through, which is one first-rate grains of black pepper on a melon, of fire" around the Pacific Ocean, spend most of the day in the port of Hi- much erosion on the surface of the

way to do it. The patches are about as With all this activity there should be 7:28 a.m„ July 9. We steamed all night, where colliding tectonic plates produce lo on the Big Island of Hawaii. The new- moon to break them up as it would on

nearly totally opaque as you can get— some fine flares to see at totality. and this morning we're anchored off the Mexico's Parfcutin and Washington est island, it still has the active volca- Earth —and because of the light lunar

if you hold them over a light bulb, the At night George Keene gives a slide Kona coast of the Big Island. If the State's Mount St. Helens and all the oth- noes of Mauna Loa and Kilauea. I urge gravity they're probably much bigger bulb is invisible— but through them the talk on the planets of the solar system eclipse were right now we might ers, up through Alaska and down all the science chasers in the audience than Kilauea's, as much as 1,000 feet sun is nicely visible, looking like a tiny and some of the more glamorous other squeak by—the sun's there, all right, through Kamchatka and Japan. Hawaii to take the 40-minute drive up to spec- in diameter and miles long.

orange hanging in space. telescopic objects. The cruise director but it isn't perfect. It's dimmed by sits right in the middle of the biggest tacular Volcanoes National Park so So there's a bit of good luck for any There are other ways of seeing the has scheduled the talk for the ship's some clouds over the mountain. tectonic plate of all, where you don't ex- they can see the craters. future lunar colonists. They probably sun without risking your optic nerve, too, 125-seat theater, yet there are 200 or Of course, on the eleventh we won't pect volcanoes to be. Yet the islands The other lecturers have been talk- would be looking for a safe place to

and 1 demonstrate some of them to my 300 other passengers milling around be this close to any mountains. We'll be are nothing but a long string of volca- ing about the exploration of space live underground, away from the dan- rapidly growing audience, which some- who want to get in and can't, anything up to 50 miles offshore, but noes, the newest one, the Big Island, particularly Mike Collins, who has ger of radiation from solar flares. If

times gets up to as many as four. I The thing is, the people on the Inde- when I look off to where- we'll be on the to the south and east of the island arc; been there. Curiously, there's a connec- they could find a convenient lava tube of they lot of excavation: dig show them how to make a pinhole in a pendence are not your usual passen- western horizon what I see is a pretty the others growing older as they tion between the lava tubes Hawaii could save a

stiff sheet of paper and hold it over a gers. Some of them are normal enough discouragingly thick cloud bank. Forty- stretch off to the north and west, past and the prospects for lunar coloniza- down to the tube, slap a coat of seal- white surface; the pinhole becomes a to just want the usual sea, sun, and shop- eight hours from now that one will be Kauai, as far as the eroded surface tion — maybe. A lava tube is formed ant on the walls, fill it with air (probably

lens and the image on the surface is a ping, and for them the eclipse is just long gone ... but what will take its atolls and underwater seamounts that when the lava spilling out of an over- imported from Earth). perfect tiny replica of the sun. A larger a nice little added attraction, but the place? We're not that far from the In- end the chain. flowing crater or vent rolls down a hill; All that, of course, contains several image can be made by using binocu- overwhelming majority are a different tertropical Convergence Zone—the lat- What made them? A "hot spot," a the lava moves in the form of fingers, maybes— of which the biggest is that, lars or a small telescope — not looking breed. They are among those lucky few itudes that sailing-ship masters used to place under the solid Pacific plate like chocolate syrup dripping down the maybe, we will sooner or later go back through it, of course, because that's a who have discovered what a grand spec- call the doldrums—which is the place where the magma was a little hotter and sides of a sundae, and the outer sur- to the moon, this time to stay.

rapid way to achieve blindness, but let- tator sport science is. I understand where the light and fickle winds go in more buoyant than the stuff around it, face of each finger begins to cool al-

ting the light from the eyepiece fall on them well, for I am of their blood. Like all directions and can pop up a disturb- and so it pushed its way up through the most at once. After a while the outer sur- Around midnight we all get an unad-

a surface. Or you can simply use a mir- them, I try to chase science wherever ance on short notice, So weather fore- rock to make a volcano. As that volca- face hardens, forming a sort of pipe vertised bonus, namely a chance to see

ror to reflect an image on a wall. I go, from marveling at fossils captured casting in these latitudes is tricky, and no grew, it became an island. But then that contains the molten rock pouring some serious volcanism in action. It's worth looking at even before the in the polished marble lobby of a Man- the captain pores over the meteorolog- the Pacific plate, slowly moving north- through its interior. When the source We don't have to chase this science eclipse, because this is an active peri- hattan skyscraper to 2, 200- year-old irri- ical reports with Joe Rao. east, pulled that first volcano away pool of lava dries up, the lava inside very far. All we have to do is look over

od for the sun just now—many flares, gation projects in China. I have found In their talks Keene and Rao are cov- from the hot spot, and another began spills out. The hollow tube remains, the rail, because the Independence is

many sunspots. With the naked eye I people like these among the geysers of ering the skies and the weather, so in its place. And so on while the older though it is covered by later flows. rounding the southern shores of the Big

can't of Iceland in Africa's Rift Valley. I too, Island, that's Pele see any sunspots on any our and Cer- when do my first lecture I talk about ones, their renewing lava flov^s having The moon once had volcanoes, and where Madam 46 OMNI has been spilling her lava into the sea about under our keel at one point, and At midnight we're under weigh to the for the last few years. Villages have no more.than 5,000 feet away—but un- offshore point where we hope to see the been buried, tropical forests set afire, fortunately, those 5,000 feet are all wa- sun go out, and Joe Rao is pacing the and still the flow oozes down. ter, straight down. Its name is Loihi, It deck. We're already a long way from Hi- From the ship the first thing we see will be a while before this young lo, but the clouds have followed us. The is a spattering of ruddy lights along the volcano's lava flows lift it above the sur- best he can count is three stars, and slope of the mountain. At a distance face, but then Loihi will be another is- those only for minutes at a'time. It's wor- they look like the campfires. They aren't. land, and Hawaiians of that date will ry time on the Independence. He They're what volcanologists call "sky- have to add a ninth bar to their state spent an hour at the weather station at lights." As the lava tubes cocoon their flag— about a million years from now. Lyman Field in Hilo, and the best the red-hot contents on their way downhill, maps and the forecasters could offer the tubes sometimes crack and bright 7:28 A.M., July 10. Sun up, sun glorious; was a fingers-crossed "maybe." sludge peeps out. And then, when if the eclipse were today instead of to- But there's nothing to be done they reach the beaches and the surf, morrow we'd have it in the bank. about it now, and we all go to bed—for the streams explode into clouds of Half an hour later, though, it's not so five or six hours, max. steam, brightly lit from the fiery lava, glorious. The clouds move in, a drizzle shooting off rockets of red-hot rock in starts, before long it's pelting rain and 7:28 A.M., July 1 1 . This is it . . . and we all directions. You can see this fountain- if there's a sun in the sky there is no way lucked out! It's gorgeous, it's happen- ing firework display 20 miles away. for anyone on this ship to find it, But ing, and it's clearly in sight! There are three of these steam infernos hey, what did you expect? We're dock- We're at latitude 19' 30' 42" North working now, and as we get closer we ed in the harbor of Hilo. and longitude 156° 32' 54" West, 33 can hear them, too: hissing and spat- Hilo is sited on the wet eastern side and a bit miles off the Kona coast. tering, occasionally a distant gunshot of the Hawaiian mountains, where the Clouds are all around us. The Intertrop- sound. In a lifetime that has given me trade winds get lifted up and cooled off, ical Convergence Zone has done its chances of close-up inspections of a causing them to drop out all their ac- number around us, and high cirrus and number of volcanoes, I have never cumulated burden of moisture before go- cirrostratus, mixed with Philippine vol- seen anything like it. ing on to the (usually) dry Kona coast cano dust, are coming at us from one

That's not quite all. There's another on the west. What that moisture does direction, while low, thick island marvel nearby, though we can't actu- is fall as rain on the umbrellas of the peo- clouds are heading toward us from an- ally see it. ple of Hilo —200 inches of it in an aver- other. But we're in the clear! There's a

That one is the next Hawaiian island, age year. It makes for wondrously lush doughnut of clouds above, but the cap- already growing under the surface of tropical forests and gardens— but don't tain has put us in the hole of the dough- the sea; it is nine miles offshore, or just forget that umbrella. nut, and we can clearly see the sun coniinjldonpageie- / ':

Shown slightly smaller

than actual size

of 10" tall, including

A premiere from the Franklin Mint Museum Collection Omni goes into Earth orbit on a mission to test a pre new space material

y bag. As Get Away Special Con- it cooled, it formed a test ol 1982. The NASA

repre- $3,000 Get Away tab as

ers may use this technol- RAPH BY MALCOLM KIRK ing experiments testing everything bles into molten metal. "A beam made from the embryonic growth of sea ur- of foamed metal is much stiffer than a chins to psychic spoon bending in solid beam of the same weight," space. Omni's judges, including phys- Cocks says, "because the bubbles ex- icist Robert W. Bussard, inventor of the pand the material to a much greater interstellar ramjet, narrowed their choic- cross-sectional area, away from the nat- es to one: Cocks's novel scheme to cre- ural bending axis." ate ultralight metal compounds of Foaming the metal in a microgravity magnesium, aluminum, and lithium in ze- environment prevents the bubbles ro gravity. The judges deemed his con- from escaping from the heavier metal. cept the likeliest to advance the cause Foaming should also save precious of space development. space on shuttle missions. "For build-

If such structures as an elaborate ing small satellites, it's not worth the trou-

space station are ever to get off the ble," Cocks says. "But if you build some- ground, they will have special require- thing that has many thousands of tons ments: Primarily they must be strong but of material and you can lower the ton- weigh little, since ail building materials nage by a factor of two. saving maybe

must be shipped from Earth. twenty shuttle flights, then it becomes

Alloys of those ultralight metallic el- worth it."

ements, Cocks theorized, just might fit The favorable strength-to-weight ra- the bill. Such metals are rarely used on tio could lend other space ventures a Earth because they react with the atmos- hand. Cocks envisions using the phere, corroding when exposed to ox- foamed metals as a resilient satellite ar- ygen and humidity. mor, the need for which will grow along In previous research Cocks, a 1963 with the burgeoning volume of space MIT graduate and professor of materi- debris. "We're talking about the als science at Duke University's chance of satellites being hit at veloci- School of Engineering, had noticed a ties unachievable on Earth— thirty-five fortuitous relationship between metal thousand miles per hour," he says.

density and reactivity: It appears to be "When you consider the prospect of a natural law that the density of materi- manned satellites, the need for shield- als goes down as their chemical reac- ing becomes obvious." tivity increases. The ultralight metals also boast one

"What this means is if you want to intriguing environmental benefit. If a sat- have extreme lightness in metals, then ellite equipped with these reactive ma-

those metals will turn out to be chemi- terials reentered the atmosphere, it cally reactive," Cocks says. would burn up quickly rather than haz-

For example, metals like platinum ardously scatter its debris on Earth, as and lead are dense but not reactive. Skylab did in 1979. Iron is less dense and more reactive. Developing such promising concepts

Lithium is lighter still and extremely re- was one thing. It was still a long way active. (Reactivity is not an issue in from dreaming up an experiment to ac- space, which is free from the earth's cor- tually having one in the can. Cocks put roding atmosphere.) to work a group of eager young under- If light metals could satisfy the graduate engineering students who'd weight requirement of space construc- signed up for a new course, space tion, what about the prescription for engineering. Unlike in the standard col- strength? Cocks believed the answer legiate fare, the class would actually lay fn foam. Some 3D years ago see a tangible outcome: hardware that Wernher von Braun suggested that light- would fly in space. The group's uni- weight, rigid structural materials could verse consisted of an aluminum canis- be created in space by injecting bub- ter, less than 20 inches across and 15

COCKS AND HIS STUDENTS FACED

dauhtihb comma:

THE EXPERIMENT COULDN'T RELY OH

THE SHUTTLE'S POWEH

SUPPLY OR THE ASTRONAUTS. inches high, that could withstand Cocks's experiment hardware had to be foamed metal will fare against those par- sound levels as high as 145 decibels vacuum sealed. Yet in order to pass in- ticles whipping about in space. and temperatures ranging from 110°F spection at the time of launch, Cocks The Duke University team joins an -296° to F. It would weigh no more than was forced to prepare twice the num- elite group — the small percentage of 60 pounds, about the same as a fully ber of chambers necessary for the pay- Get Away Special experimenters loaded backpack. load, the idea being that three cham- whose projects actuajly work after The class faced a daunting set of test- bers, selected at random by NASA safe- they've met the program's extraordinary ing criteria. Get Away rules mandated ty engineers, would be opened to test requirements. "For the first time we that the experiment could not rely on the vacuum seals prior to liftoff; if the have foamed light reactive metals un- the ship's power supply or personnel; seals held, the three remaining cham- der zero gravity," says Cocks. "That has the astronauts aboard the shuttle bers would fly. never been done before." would only activate the battery-operat- Then Cocks left the six chambers un- He is the first to applaud the students ed experiment and turn it off again der an active vacuum pump system whose efforts and enthusiasm over the with a single switch. he'd installed in a Duke basement lab. years kept the project alive. "One of the

In the first year or so the student "That was the only way I could guaran- unsung benefits of the space program teams filled up as many as four labs in tee that over a period of years the pos- is encouraging students to go into sci- the engineering school building. "We sibility of their slowly leaking would not ence and engineering," he says. "Our were under pressure a couple of times lead to the experiment being bumped experience certainly bears that out." Sev- because there were launch opportuni- off the flight," Cocks says. "The only eral of the course's students, he says, ties we could have taken but in fact we way I knew to do that was to maintain have gone on to pursue careers in the

if missed," Cocks says. "I felt we them under vacuum —which I did con- space industry. rushed we'd fail the safety checks." tinuously for six years." NASA has encouraged Cocks to re- Extraordinary checks at that: NASA In the spring of 1990 Omni finally got test his light stuff on a future shuttle required that Cocks identify the source mission, possible if Cocks is able to se- and the use of every experiment com- cure another Get Away slot. Yet the pro- ponent. A safety data package that cov- fessor may first take a brief break from ered all safety aspects of the experi- space to catch his breath. "NASA's in 6 One of the ment had to be submitted three phas- system does work," he admits, "but it es, each phase more detailed than the unsung benefits of the works slowly." last one. space program Still, shuttle launches have a way of Finally a satisfactory design emerg- making up for a lot of grief. Early in the is ed. In quartz vials, a mixture of the var- encouraging students morning on June 5 it was raining hard ious light metals—magnesium, lithium, to go into at Kennedy Space Center, and the pros- and aluminum —and titanium hydride pects for launching looked pretty grim. science and engineering. would sit inside a chamber capped In all, the engineering professor had with an "extrusion channel" in the Our experience made three trips to Kennedy during the shape of an I beam. It would work like shuttle's final preparation. The first was clearly bears that out. 9 this: Beyond the inexorable pull of the that tense critical check of the vacu- planet, battery power would melt the ums. The second time was a scheduled alloy and release hydrogen gas from launch when engineers discovered a the hydride. The gas would bubble flaw in the hardware responsible for guid- through the molten alloy, foaming it and the thumbs-up from NASA to fly the pay- ing the spacecraft back into the atmos- forcing it through the channel, thus mold- load on a mission scheduled to lift off phere and delayed liftoff for four days. ing a miniature I beam. the following August. Cocks was under- That time they came within 40 minutes With the hardware now approved, standably nervous about those vacuum of launching. Cocks had had no the Omni-Duke payload was assigned seals. Yet each of the three test cham- choice but to pack up his car and his to a flight onboard the shuttle Discov- bers passed the final safety check. wife and twin sixteen -year-old sons and ery, Unfortunately, timing was every- Further delays eventually pushed the drive the 12 hours back to North Caro- thing: The flight was to follow the ill- launch back another nine months, to lina, only to return three days later. fated Challenger mission of January May of 1991. Finally, with a sigh of re- Now Cocks stood with his family and 1986, which killed all of the seven as- lief, Cocks gave over the canister and 200 or so other visitors on the viewing tronauts aboard. saw it lifted into the cargo bay of the stand peering anxiously out at the Get Away Special experimenters now shuttle Columbia. launch site and at the nearby monitors. faced new roadblocks. "After Challeng- The next time he saw it, several anx- NASA will not launch in rain or through er all the rules changed," Cocks says. ious weeks after the ship's return to more than 4,500 feet of cloud cover, "No combustible materials of any type Earth, he was looking at three small I and there was plenty of that. whatever would be allowed on. We had beams made ot the reactive alloys and "But there was this large patch of to the thing do whole over again." yearning to get them back into the lab blue sky," Cocks recalls, "and it was drift- Cocks's student crew was forced to re- to test them for their resiliency and ing our way. Then, my gosh, the blue place 147 of pieces a combustible strength. The miniature I beams were patch drifted right over and they heat shrink tubing with Teflon tubing. each composed of different metal com- launched through it." They also threw out the hydrogen foam- binations: magnesium-aluminum, mag- A collective whoop went through the ing agent, substituting a magnesium sub- nesium-lithium, and aluminum-magne- small crowd as the sound wave from Co- stance. This in turn meant remixing the sium-zinc. lumbia's mighty engines rolled over various metal alloys to allow for temper- NASA has also offered to evaluate them. Fale, Cocks remembers thinking. ature differences. the material's ability to withstand high- "In spite of all that technology, we still Other safety standards proved even velocity impacts. Then Cocks will have depended on that tiny patch of blue sky more vexing. The foaming chambers of . some idea of how well his funny drifting over us." DO 54 OMNI "

,,._ but nobody ms to hear, fn the jungle ,*.i 3«l t of Skinner's jacket sl~

n of smoke up at the

the cigar. Licks his lips. "I am living now," he hotel, one hun- dred fifty days." His jacket is to cold glass cheek , too, but not like Skin- the bridges nearest'

'. tflialiBB! BrWl'r riJ

ies from the bridge. touches her, cold finger o FICTION BY WILLIAM GIBSON ale lobby with its PAINTING BY DOUGLAS FRASER room, this caulked b

:ket: the knife's blade, opening it,

i longer than her little fin- i

ger, shaped something like its ' body- against her thigh. He blinks with- at the click. He's having trou- ck un- bie focusing. "C iteadily, grinning wetly and Fifty days." integrity of its span within a ligatures of taut and rusting day,

seams and elbows sueded le of Brigl paie with wear, a jingle of w,.,, ,.. ing decade of the previi vings chine screws, tl KwJWmBwPH H it mm around—D-rings, zip-pulls, firmly to boottop, belt, or ebrating," he says, and skin, bright henna. Sounds THE RUSTING SPAN OF SAN FRANCISCO'S BAY BRIDGE I a different color. You the city through the

3 of clear )

Sometimes he re

n: Life is there. He bers building the roor lember when he The bridge's bones, its l tinguish comrr ed tendons, are iost within an programming. accretion of dreams: tattoo parlors, shooting galleries,

stalls stacked with c perhaps a dozen coats of stained years of men's mag- white latex paint. Higher re- azines, chili joints, premises flective index than alumi- of unlicensed denturists, fire-

num foil, he thinks, 17,464 strands per cable. Facts. Of- betting shops, sushi cou

^fe^^« void through which facts t ble, facts and , a tortilla facto- connection. ry, Chinese greengrocers, liq-

Its clothes hang from mis- uor stores, herbalists, chi- --"d iron coat hooks ropractors, barbers, tackle at precise intervals shops, and bars. These are dreams of corn-

ally corresponding with the --'-- originally intended for .~hicular traffic. Above

she is. Looks at the pictures in National Geographic,

pet he took f rot office block. Memory flickers like liquid scure occupation.

ree months befc,^, „ .

i the bridge in

f fruits and vegetables ' h their goods spread -'—-, lit by r—

t the bridge? TiW

. No, she says, the the bridge. San from up the coast. She'd come from that direction her- self, down past the stunted

She stared back into the ying to bed. Foam, topped with a sheepskin, bottom sheet

SKINNER'S ROOM IS A CRAMPED, CAULKED BOX OF OLD TEN-PLY BOARD, PERCHED AND HUMMING IN THE WIND carts. Neon scavenged from the ruins beer, the bicycle slung above the little He looks up at her, mouth full of of Oakland. How it ran together, bar. The walls inside were shingled soup. blurred, melting in the fog. Surfaces of with picture postcards. Nights, he She guesses his hair must've been plywood, marble, corrugated plastic, pol- slept curled behind the bar. One morn- blond once. He swallows the soup. "Eu- ished brass, sequins, Styrofoam, trop- ing the place was gone, Fass with it, rope what?" Sometimes he'll snap ical hardwoods, mirror, etched Victori- just a broken shackle swinging in the right into focus like this, if she asks him an glass, chrome gone dull in the sea wind and a few splinters of timber still a question, but now she's not sure air— all the mad richness of it, its random- adhering to the galvanized iron wall of what the question is. ness— a tunnel roofed by a precarious a barber shop. People came, stood'at "Paris," he says, and his eyes tell her shack town mountainside climbing to- the edge, looked down at the water be- he's lost again, "I went there. London, ward the first of the cable towers. tween the toes of their shoes. too. Great Portland Street." He nods,

She stood a long time, looking, then The girl asks him if he's hungry. He satisfied somehow. "Before the devalua- walked straight in, past a boy selling says no. Asks him if he's eaten. He tion ..." Wind sighs past the window. coverless yellowed paperbacks and a says no. She opens the tin foot chest She thinks about climbing out on the cafe where a blind parrot was chained and sorts through cans. He watches her roof. The rungs up to the hatch there on a metal perch, picking at a chicken's pump the Coleman. are carved out of sections of two-by- freshly severed foot. He says open the window a crack. four, painted the same white as the The circular window pivots in its oak walls. He uses one for a towel rack. Skinner surfaces from a dream of a bi- frame. Gotta eat, she says, Undo the bolt. You raise the hatch with cycle covered with barnacles and your head; Your eyes are level with sees that the girl is back. She's hung his She'd like to tell him about going to the gull shit. Nothing there, really. Flat leather jacket on its proper hook and hotel but she doesn't have words for tarpaper roof, a couple of two-by-four squats now on her pallet of raw-edged how it made her feel. She feeds him uprights: One flies a tattered Confed- black foam. soup, a spoonful at a time. Helps him erate flag, the other a faded orange Bicycle. Barnacles. to the tankless old china toilet behind windsock. Memory: A man called Fass the faded roses of the chintz curtain. When he's asleep again, she closes snagged his tackle, hauled the bicycle When he's done she draws water from the Coleman, "scrubs out the pot, wash- up, trailing streamers of kelp. People the roof-tank line and pours it in. Gravi- es the spoon, pours the soupy water laughed. Fass carried the bicycle away. ty does the rest. Thousands of flexible down the toilet, wipes pot and spoon, Later he built a place to eat, a three- transparent lines are looped and bun- puts them away. Pulls on her hightop stool shanty leached far out over the dled, down through the structure, pour- sneakers, laces them up. She puts on void with Super Glue and shackles. ing raw sewage into the bay. his jacket and checks that the knife's

Sold cold cooked mussels and Mexican "Europe ..." she tries to begin. still clipped behind her belt.

"I think this would 'be a good lime to end our session." She lifts the hatch in the floor and walks in the direction of Oakland, past know about that?" climbs through, finding the first rungs racks of old clothes and blankets "No." of the ladder with her feet. She lowers spread with the negotiable detritus of the hatch closed, careful not to wake the city. him. She climbs down past the riveted "Why did they?" face of the tower, to the waiting yellow She finds Maria Paz in a coffee shop Maria Paz looks at he/ over the Zip- basket of the elevator. Looking up, she with windows on the bay's gray dawn. po. "Nowhere to live. Bridge closed to ..." sees the vast cable there, where it The room has the texture of an old fer- traffic three years swoops out of the bottom of Skinner's ry, dark dented varnish over plain heavy "Traffic?" room, vanishing through a taut and glow- wood. As though someone's sawn it Maria Paz laughs. "Too many cars. ing wall of milky plastic film, a green- from a tired public vessel, lashing to the Dug them tunnels under the bay. For house; halogen bulbs throw spiky outermost edge of the structure. (Near- cars, for maglevs . . . bridge too old. plant shadows on the plastic. er Oakland, the wingless corpse of a Closed it before the devaluations. No

' The elevator whines, creeping down 747 houses the kitchens of nine Thai money. One night the people came. No the face of the tower, beside the ladder restaurants.) plan, no signal. Just came. Climbed the she doesn't use anymore, past a patch- Maria Paz has eyes [ike slate and a chain link. Chain link fell. Threw the con- work of plastic, plywood, sections of tattoo of a blue swallow on the inside of crete in the bay. Climbed the towers. enameled steel stitched together from her left ankle. Maria Paz smokes Dawn came, they were here, on the the skins of dead refrigerators. At the Kools, one after another, lighting them bridge, singing, and the cities saw the bottom of the fat-toothed track, she with a brushed chrome Zippo she world was watching. Japanese airlift, climbs out. She sees the man Skinner takes from her purse. Each time she food and medical. National embarrass- calls the African coming toward her flicks it open, a sharp whiff of benzene ment. Forget the water cannons, sorry." along the catwalk, bearlike shoulders cuts across the warm smells of coffee Maria Paz smiles. hunched in a ragged tweed overcoat. and scrambled eggs. "Skinner? You think he came then?" He carries a meter of some kind, a She sits with Maria Paz, drinks cof- "Maybe, he's old as you think. How black box, dangling red and black fee, watches her smoke Kools. She long you been on the bridge?" wires tipped with alligator clips. The bro- tells Maria Paz about Skinner. "Three months?" ken plastic frames of his glasses have "How old is he?" she asks. "I was "born here," says Maria Paz.

been mended with silver duct tape. He "Old ... I don't know." smiles shyly as he eases past her, mut- "And he lives over the cable saddle The cities had their own pressing diffi- tering something about brushes. on the first tower?" culties. Not an easy century, America She rides another elevator, a bare "Yes." quite clearly in decline and the very con- steel cage, down to the first deck. She "The. tops of the towers . . you cept of nation-states called increasing-

"A day without being put on 'hold' please." ly into question. The squatters were al- She reaches the first elevator, the In Skinner's dream now they all run for- lowed to remain. Among their numbers cage,, and leans back against its bars ward, and the police are hesitating, fall- were entrepreneurs, natural politicians, as it rises up its patched tunnel, where ing back. Overhead the steady drum of artists, men and women of untapped en- the private lives of her neighbors are the network helicopters with their lights ergy and talent. The world watched as walled away in tiny handmade spaces. and cameras. Thin rain falls as Skinner they began to build. Shipments of ad- Stepping from the cage, she sees the locks his cold fingers in the chain link vanced adhesives arrived from Japan. African squatting in his tweed overcoat and starts to climb. Be'hind him a roar A Belgian manufacturer donated a boat- in the light cast by a caged bulb on a goes up, drowning the bullhorns of the load of carbon-fiber beams. Teams of long yellow extension cord, the motor police and the National Guard, and Skin- scavengers rolled through the cities on of his elevator spread out around him ner's climbing, kicking the narrow toes broken flatbeds, returning to the on fresh sheets of newsprint. He looks of his boots into chain link as though bridge piled high with discarded build- up at her apologetically. he's gone suddenly weightless— float- ing materials. "Adjusting the brushes," he says. ing up, really, rising on the crowd's

. The bridge and its inhabitants be- "I'll climb." She goes up the ladder. roar, the ragged cheer torn from all came a tourist attraction. Always keep one hand and one foot on their lungs. He's there, at the top, for the ladder, Skinner told her, don't think one interminable instant. He jumps.

She walks back in the early light that fil- about where you are and don't look He's the first. He's on the bridge, run- ters through windows, through sheets down, it's a long climb, up toward the ning, running toward Oakland, as the of wind-shivered plastic. The bridge nev- smooth sweep of cable. Skinner chain link crashes behind him, his er sleeps, but this is a quiet time. A man must've done it thousands of times, un- cheeks wet with rain. is arranging fish on a bed of shaved ice counted, unthinking. She reaches the And somewhere off in the night, on in a wooden cart. The pavement be- top of this ladder, makes a careful trans- the Oakland side, another fence falls, neath her feet is covered with gum wrap- fer to the second, the short one, that and they meet, these two lost armies, pers and the flattened filters of ciga- leads to his room. and flow together as one, and huddle rettes. A drunk is singing somewhere He's there, of course, asleep, when there, at the bridge's center, their overhead. Maria Paz left with a man, she scrambles up through the hatch. arms around one another, singing someone she'd been waiting for. She tries to move as quietly as she can, ragged wordless hymns. She thinks about the story and tries but the jingle of the jacket's chrome hard- At dawn, the first climbers begin to to imagine Skinner there, the night ware disturbs him, or reaches him in his scale the towers. they took the bridge, young then, his dream, because he calls something Skinner is with them. leather jacket new and glossy. out, voice thick with sleep. It might be

She thinks about the Europeans in a woman's name, she thinks. It certainly She's brewing coffee on the Coleman the hotel on Geary. isn't hers. when she sees him open his eyes 1

"I thought you'd gone," he says. Why Nikon "I took a walk. I'm not going any- where. There's coffee." He smiled, eyes sliding out of focus. no-focus binoculars are "I was dreaming ..." "Dreaming what?" ... we were sing- "I don't remember the only ones to look into. ing. In the rain ..." She brings him coffee in the heavy china cup he likes, holds it, helps him drink "Skinner, were you here when they came from the cities? When they took the bridge?" He looks up at her with a strange ex- YOU NEVER pression. His eyes widen. He coughs HAVE TO FOCUS on the coffee, wipes his mouth with the I ! back of his hand. "Yes," he says, "yes. ON ACTION 1 In the rain. We were singing. I remem- AT A DISTANCE. ber that." "Did you build this place, Skinner? This room? Do you remember?"

I "No," he says, "no . . . sometimes don't remember ... we climbed. Up. We climbed up past the helicopters. We

. . fell waved at them , some people ... at the top. We got to the top ..." UNLIKE OTHER "What happened then?" NO-FOCUS He smiles. "The sun came out. We BINOCULARS, saw the city." DO YOU CAN USE

Copyrigt ^hi- THEM TO VIEW st appeared SUBJECTS in the exhibition catalog V -n^ary San Fran- cisco, published by trie San Francisco Mu- AT CLOSE seum of Modern Art. DISTANCES.

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Late summer is not kind A few months a year this to College Station, home office is haven to the fa- Texas. But you'd nev- ther of underwater archae- er know it in this office, ology. For 30 years George where cold air pumps, as in a Bass has lived with the deep-sea bathysphere, giv- challenge of uncovering the ing the room the cool sweet most precious sunken treas- taste of compressed air ure of all: knowledge—histori- from a scuba tank Volumes cal knowledge of Bronze line the walls, great books Age mariners, Babylonian and of the ancient world that whis- Byzantine merchants. Egyp- per of lost secrets and hid- tian pharaohs. Finding the old- den treasures. There is some- est book on record is just one thing at once mystical and of his accomplishments. Indi- scientific here, not unlike ex- ana Jones got nothin' on him. ploring the depths of the Most of the time Bass ocean floor. It's no accident. works in the field. That could

PHOTOGRAPHS BY HENNER PREFI be on or beneath any large body of out how we had to adapt normal water. But much of his research is in land techniques to the underwater

the seas off the coast of Turkey, world. Throughout the Sixties I spent where numerous ancient shipwrecks much more time thinking about div- have yet to exhaust their mysteries. ing technology than about archae-

Bass is not the ancient mariner but ology. Now I think almdst nothing

a fit and youthful fifty-eight. When he about the technology. was ten, he and his brother tried to Omni: You've wrestled with finding a make a diving helmet, which he nev- name for your field of study. You go er tried out in the water. Even as a from "underwater" to "nautical" archae- graduate student at the American ology. Why? School of Classical Studies in Athens, Bass: "Nautical" comes from the Bass admits he. never got around to Greek word naos, meaning ship. And actual diving, even though "I proba- we specialize in studying ships, wheth- bly had more books on diving than er they're underwater, under land, or archaeology on my desk." In fact, he in rivers. We now have specialists in

strapped a scuba tank on his back hulls or rigging, whereas I deal main- only once before his first major exca- ly with the cargoes and possessions vation in 1960. of crew and passengers. In the early Yet he was "fated" for the work. Sixties, in Archaeology Under Water,

With a master's degree in Near East- I said we don't call people jungle, or ern archaeology from Johns Hopkins, mountain or desert, archaeologists. a Ph.D. in archaeology with a special- The same should hold true for us, ex- ty in the Bronze Age between 3000 cept for those who specialize in and 1000 B.C., and a desire to dive, ships per se. I'm an "underwater" ar- he was the right man in the right chaeologist only in the sense that

place. In 1959 photojournalist Peter what I do is underwater. All of us who Throckmorton approached the Univer- pioneered this field worked first in

sity of Pennsylvania, where Bass was terrestrial archaeology, to which I re- a graduate student, with news he'd turn from time to time, found a Bronze Age shipwreck. "We Omni: You are more interested, didn't know at the time," says Bass, then, in ships than harbors, inland

"that it was going to change ideas lakes or the wells at Chichen Itza? about the entire relationship between Bass: Yes. Our institute is excavating the Mycenaeans, Bronze Age the sunken city of Port Royal, Jamai-

Greeks, and Phoenicians. If I hadn't ca, which went down in 1692 in an had a background in Near Eastern earthquake, but it's sort of an anom-

It's and preclassical archaeology, I aly. shallow, and therefore good might not have realized the signifi- training ground for our teams. We

cance embodied in this wreck," hope to continue there, but it's not nau- In 1973 Bass founded the Institute tical archaeology. of Nautical Archaeology, which later Omni: Has the emotional strain of joined forces with Texas A&M Univer- working underwater lessened over sity. That's how an ocean explorer the years? came to live in a Texas prairie town. Bass: It's not so adventurous as Its elite graduate-level program in- when we started out working from cludes only around ten students a small fishing and sponge boats, or an year, about a third of whom come old wooden barge that leaked badly. from outside the United States. Bass Now we have a steeHhulled tifty-five- remains an active and enthusiastic foot vessel with a decompression teacher, evaluated by students as chamber onboard. In the last several one of the best. That honor, he says, Omni: You really didn't learn scuba years we haven't missed a single ranks right up there with receiving the until a few weeks before your first dive, because on-site we have a full- National Geographic Society Centenni- trip to Turkey in 1960? time mechanic, captain, and physi-

al Award, which recognizes him as Bass: The excavation of that ship- cian, I find it more pleasant working one of the century's great explorers. wreck off Cape Gelidonya led to my on an underwater site than on land.

He is currently excavating a four- learning how to dive, and I thought it Mealtime conversations are more in- teenth-century B.C. shipwreck at Ulu would be a one-summer lark. But teresting because you have mechan- Burun, Turkey. The oldest known there were two things that challenged ics, physicians, and photographers

wreck in the world, it may represent me at the time. One was the site's his- and not just archaeologists who a royal ship carrying copper, tin, torical significance. And now we're go- think archaeology all day, gold, silver, ebony, glass, amber, and ing back there where we thought Bass: Do you find more valuable infor- resins from one king to another. The we'd excavated everything thirty mation underwater than on land? vessel's loss in antiquity, Bass years ago, and finding evidence we Bass: In some respects, yes. The thinks, must have been devastating. couldn't with more primitive equip- wreck we're excavating now at Ulu Bu-

—John Stein ment. The second thing was I figured run shows how often things have dis-

OMNI 9 —

land appeared on because they've cause I'd done a land dig, I hadn't in a completely new light. It changed

been destroyed by humans. We have dived in three years. This was only the ideas about trade; it even had an im-

the earliest examples of tin and glass second or third dive and I hadn't pact on our interpretation and dating of ingots found, and the first examples of planned it carefully, I was about one hun- Homer. And we discovered the oldest logs. ebony We have six tons of cop- dred fifty feet deep when I ran out of "book" ever found, a wooden writing tab- per ingots. All this raw material, and air. My reserve didn't work. Those let in a vase of pomegranates about more, would have been manufactured were the years before we had see- five feet tall. We found not only seeds into finished products or goods when through gauges where you always but parts of pomegranate skins. The it arrived in port and simply disap- know how much air you have. My part- book was probably sitting on the lid and

peared without a trace. A century of ex- ner and I had split up. I would have someone hid it inside to keep it safe cavation in the Near East and through- drowned had he not noticed me and from the elements. out the Aegean yielded not a tin or come to my assistance for buddy breath- Omni: Why at one point did you think glass ingot. We have dozens of them ing when he saw me struggling toward about changing fields?

on this one wreck— plus the only gold the surface. Bass: I left underwater archaeology in bit scarab ever found of Nefertiti. Had We're a superstitious about our 1 969, when I spent time in a decompres- that remained on land, it probably safety record, so we don't like to brag sion chamber with a dead sponge div-

would have been melted down eventu- about it. We've had around fen thou- er who died while we were trying to ally and made into something else. sand dives on just this most recent treat him. And I thought, I don't want to

The Greeks regarded their bronze stat- wreck. That's a lot of deep decompres- stick around until I pull a dead friend their ues as highest works of art. Virtu- sion dives at one-forty- to one-eighty- from the water, So I didn't work in un- ally all we have came from the sea, most- feet depth. derwater archaeology for four years. I

ly pulled up in fishermen's nets or Omni: What is your most thrilling mo- started a dry land dig in southern Italy,

found by sponge divers rather than by ment underwater? but as I worked there, I missed the ex- archaeologists. Twenty-three years ago citement of finding whole objects rath- in Turkey, with side-scan sonar in our er than bits and pieces. We were try- little two-person submarine, Asherah, ing to find out about the introduction of we found a three-hundred-foot-deep certain types of pottery and domestic 60ur aim is to wreck that had yielded three bronze stat- animals into the region, I thought, If ues to fishermen's nets. Our photo- excavate one merchant ship they came across the Adriatic from graphs suggest there are more bronze from every century present-day Yugoslavia, there must be statues under the sand on this wreck. one shipwreck out there that's going to

We hope to get back to it soon with of antiquity. Then we'd tell us as much as digging here year af- deep diving, which requires mixed gas- move to warships, ter year. es, like heliox, rather than just com- I missed the sea. There's something ferry and fishing boats. pressed air. special about .working on the sea. And

Omni: Some of your colleagues have We'd tell the I especially missed the comradeship of gotten the bends. Have you? the mixture of people who go into un- entire story of seafaring.

Bass: In 1985 I had a very minor case, derwater archaeology. Anofher thing a bit of nagging pain in my elbow that that made me go back to it was Eric disappeared in our decompression Ryan, a dear friend who suffered an air chamber. The same year we had the embolism and never did regain full second serious case we've had in thir- Bass: I know you won't believe this, sensation down one part of his body. ty expedition years when our physician but— never. The hair-stands-up-on-the- He told me I should go back to it, that was paralyzed from the waist down. He back-of-my-neck excitement comes in it had all been worth it, that of course treated was and almost completely the library at, say, three a.m. When I you can be safe if you just sit in your in the cured chamber. The one thing we first went down at Ulu Burun I was think- house all day, but there are things oth- had in common is that we were both in ing, Where are we going to put the air- er than that. our fifties. When I began in 1960, I was lift? How are we going to map it? With Another reason I'd given it up was be- of the youngest member the excava- only twenty minutes, you don't have cause I was told by the chief of United

tion; I realized I old- I suddenly was the time to be overly romantic. enjoy the States Navy salvage that I was running est. That's when I decided I'd been div- feeling of being underwater, the free- the largest diving operation in the ing enough. dom. But diving is not where the excite- world in 1969. No one, he said, had up The wreck at Ulu Burun is one hun- ment comes. We don't understand the to thirty divers going down one hundred dred forty-five to one-eighty feet deep. significance of something when we thirty feel twice a day, six days a week

I'm find it. directing the project, but the Even a gold medallion from the for three months a year. I was doing fieldwork is directed by a graduate stu- Bronze Agent's pretty, everybody this while teaching and publishing dent. If we do another wreck, say, to it, it one wants see but just finding hasn't without even a secretary. Well, what I hundred feet down, I'll work at that got that tingling excitement of suddenly did was form the Institute of Nautical depth. year, realizing it For about a week every we means something important. Archaeology. Now I don't have to per- return lo the site at Cape Gelidonya Omni; How did your academic back- sonally buy all the equipment each where I started. Other than that, I'm not ground help on your first excavation? year, end up with a hammer and nails diving anymore, Bass: A Near Eastern archaeologist packing it in crates, carry it on dollies

Omni: Have you ever had panic set in might have thought everything onboard to a rented truck, d.rive it to the ship, at a site, because of equipment failure? was Near Eastern; a preclassical archae- ship it to Turkey, and get it through cus- Bass: In twenty-five years of very active ologist might have thought everything toms all by myself. diving, I was really only frightened was Bronze Age Greek. With a back- Now the equipment is ordered by our once, and when I say frightened, I ground in both, I saw the influence of mechanic in Turkey. Our boat is kept

I thought the mean end was near. Be- , Phoenician culture on Greek civilization up by our captain, who is also a diver

76 OMNI CON'i !NUE.:.' ON PAQE 108 HYPERFICTION BY W. E..GUTMAN

22:10—A rank, sulfurous ha- lo hangs low over Manhat- tan. Driven by icy gusts, ten- taclelike fingers of swirling amber gases swoop toward the slime-slick pavement, probing deep behind yawn- ing doorways, arcades, and

In the Year of Our Lord 2091, open season on street children has been declared, and Lady Justice wears an ugly face

tropolis, for the thousand and one night creatures that stalk its streets, for the

near living I will ferret out and kill. Fifteen years is a long time. I must speak out.

It all came together a cen- tury ago with a salvo of state- ments and counterstate- ments tailored to help save political face while giving the citizenry the impression that justice was served. In time, words got sharper, less con- ciliatory, and violence, spo- radic and extemporaneous, grew bolder and deadlier with each secret municipal emergency meeting. No one protested. Not a single voice was heard. It was too late. Justice — like truth-— the stronger of two conflicting arguments, jus- tice, the paradox suspended on the point ot a sword, had put on its ugliest face. The La- dy had taken off her blind- fold and was winking lasciv- iously at the oligarchy. And the carnage began. Tis now open season, and the blood of children, thinner than water, coalesc- es with putrid rivulets of swill and excrement that hug

ILLUSTRATION BYJOANIESCHWARZ IN THE LAND OF ETERNAL SPRING. WHERE DEATH IS OFTEN THE LIGHTER OF TWO SENTENCES, A GROWING NUMBER

TO EVERLASTING HELL DY AGENTS OF THE STATE

THE PHOTOGRAPHS ON THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE SHOCKING. THEY ARE INTENDED TO BE. YOU MAY NOT WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO SEE HOW OTHER NATIONS TREAT THEIRS. BILLY GRAHAM "IS TOD BDSVTO COMMENT ON THIS ISSUE." —THE BILLY GRAHAM EVANGELISTIC ASSOC.

OTHER PARTS E. Dawn rises on Guatemala City's sixteenth-century cathedral, flushing the | TEXT BY W. GUTMAH gles Irom a blistered lower lip. He reeks of sweat and urine and glue. "Un quetzal, Senor, dame u CHILDREN nave with shafts of spectral radiance suffusing the altar and marble and quetzal por favor [please give me a quetzal]" he ventures, OF THE conspicuously embarrassed. I stop, dig I I colonnades, crystal chandeliers, richly carved gilt pulpit, and solid mahogany pews with a celebra- SLEEP into my pockets, averting his eyes. He does not fit the part but he has that look that mendicants and WORLD." tion of light over the forces of darkness. | tramps have that is best unheeded, unacknowledged, a liquid gaze in which float the cadavers of IN DOORWAYS For Jorge, sunrise heralds the start of another perilous journey. He has just spent the night in a F. hope, will, and purpose. I surrender all It —THOMAS my change. isn't much. I mumble an apology in broken fetid culvert girding the cathedral's northern flank, drowsing into a thin, turbulent sleep, one | eye Spanish and walk away. STROOCK. Jorge follows me, ambling along sideways like a crab, tugging gently at my trained against the creeping shadows, a keen ear attentive to any sound louder than his heartbeat. sleeve. He wants to shake my hand. He needs to touch and be touched, with love not lechery, with ON SIDEWALXS O.S. Normally, Jorge beds down with his friends Pedro and Felipe under a pile of filthy rags, sharing reassurance I not rancor. pat a grimy cheek, drawing a nit-infested head toward my bosom. Jorge THROUGHOUT scraps of food pilfered at an outdoor stall or recovered from the garbage pit. Normally, they huddle puts his arms around my waist and begins to weep. 'Torque to AMBASSADOR TO lloras? [Why do you weep?]" I ask. like newborn pups, seeking warmth, sharing a bag or two of cobbler's glue until the noxious fumes "Porque estoy en el intierno [Because I am in hell]," he tells me. Jorge GUATEMALA dries a sea of bitter tears, yank them from the grips of hunger, cold, and fear. But these are not normal times. Beatings, torture, blows into a small plastic bag lined with a sticky amber substance— cobbler's glue— then avidly sexual abuse, rape, and extrajudicial executions have been on the rise in Guatemala, and Jorge, breathes in the caustic fumes. flood of A words gushes forth. I don't understand them all but his | Pedro, and Felipe have decided to split for a while, to disperse, to find safety not in numbers but in expression speaks volumes of the pain, the hopelessness, the cruel absurdity of life. solitude and stealth like hunted | animals. Jorge is eleven. Pedro and Felipe are twelve and nine, respectively. They all look half their age. Jorge's eyes are red, the pupils dilated, the eyelids puffy and moist. yellowed cigarette butt A dan- Life is cheap. They may never grow up. Or old. —

EVERY ENCOUNTER WITH AN ADULT CARRIES THE RISK OF ABUSE AND VIOLENCE. "THE DARK

DAYS OF GUATEMALA'S DEATH SOUADS AND MASSACRES ARE NOT VET OVER." —NEW YORK CONGRESSMAN TED WEISS

Eyewitnesses now in protective custody in North America, and graphic photography obtained by International in releasing its 1991 report, "and become the casualty of political expediency."

I Omni, confirm that Guatemala's ninos de la calls—children of the street— are being subjected to a In Latin America, a region historically traumatized by social and political turmoil, branded by wild I spree of tortures matched only by the Holy Inquisition. Many children were abducted, beaten, burned swings from dictatorship to anarchy and back, human rights violations are legion. And in Guatemala,

I with cigarettes, subjected to mock executions, and sexually assaulted. Some had their ears torn off a country kneaded by volcanic and seismic upheaval, where lush mountains and precipices and neat-

I (they had heard too much), their tongues ripped out (they had spoken out), and their eyes gouged ly cultivated escarpments join to form a lush landscape of extraordinary beauty, crimes against humani-

(they had seen compromising deeds) before the merciful coup de grace applied, generally ty in other the world- | was a often eclipse the excesses recorded parts of

blow to the head or a bullet to the base of the neck. Others were pushed into the countless ravines Embarrassment, if not outrage, at Guatemala's apathy, at its unwillingness to address what has I

that gird Guatemala City's shantytowns, stinking chasms littered with garbage and human waste, and begun to draw sharp public and press attention, at long last prompted the United States—Guatema- I

patrolled It by feral dogs and cats. will not surprise the reader, therefore, that I set out for Guatemala la's military and economic godfather— to suspend weapons deliveries last December. Expressing | and carried out the better part of this assignment—strapped in a lightweight bulletproof vest oblig- grave concern over what he termed "an escalating spree of violence, disappearances, and extrajudi- ingly supplied by Point Blank Armor and aimed at protecting me not against crime lords or common cial executions," Representative Jim McDermott (D., WA), one of a two-member congressional fact-

| felons but soldiers and cops. finding team that toured Guatemala, told Omni at a press briefing that U.S. foreign policy in Central I

While the Nineties have witnessed dramatic political changes that culminated in victories for human America has been "an unending disaster. We've had a history of picking the wrong sides, of aiding I

rights, violations continue to defile a world already crippled by war and disfigured by famine and and abetting despotic regimes." Reminded that the United States is the only Western nation that re- I

| disease. "We've seen human rights take a backseat to trade or diplomatic concerns," said Amnesty fuses to sign and ratify the 1989 UN Children's Rights Convention, Congressman McDermott, express- heart. engaging in both homosexual and heterosexual prostitution. ins ing dismay, held out little hope for an imminent change of stealing, begging, and Those at greatest risk are the children inhabiting the streets of Guatemala City. According to In- recent months, Amnesty International has recorded an escalating number of complaints of hu- THE CHILDREN IMMOLATING ITS Bruce Harris, the tireless executive regional director of Casa Alianza, a charitable agency that works man rights violations against Guatemala's street children, including harassment, threats, beatings, WHO PAY with street children, offering them shelter, food, clothing, counseling, medical attention, and legal torture, "disappearances," and extrajudicial executions reportedly carried out by the police, who frequent- CHILDREN, five such kids, perhaps as many as twice that number we ly patrol the streets in plainclothes or pocket their badges to avoid identification, and agents of pri- THE PRICE. THIS support, "There are at least thousand — GUATEMALA MAY may never know for sure," aged five. to eighteen, doomed to the sidewalks and rank alleyways of the vate security firms acting under license from the National Police and the Ministry of the Interior. TRAGEDY VERY WELL capital. Many have been orphaned by the so-called 30-year-old counterinsurgency operation in the An Amnesty International USA spokesperson told Omni that "the policemen involved in these abus-

MUST STOP." altiplano—the highlands—much of it funded and orchestrated by the United States. Some were aban- es," officers moonlighting as executioners on behalf of local municipalities and private businesses, BE DEPRIVING doned by parents no longer able to feed a growing number of hungry mouths. Countless others "are seldom brought to justice, even more rarely tried, convicted, and imprisoned. We [Amnesty Inter- —ELIE WIISEL, ITSELF have fled a home life punctuated by deprivation, brutality, and sexual abuse. "For the hordes of kids national] are very concerned at the delays, irregularities, and blatant reversals connected with official NOBEL | that end up on the street," says Harris, "life turns into a sordid blend of boredom, reckless improvisation, inquiries. Children's rights have taken a backseat to trade or diplomatic concerns." OF A FUTURE.

PEACE LAUREATE and ever-present danger. Every encounter with an adult— sometimes even with their peers— carries Street children do commit petty crimes. They also sniff glue. Most are severely malnourished, and I the risk of exploitation, abuse, and violence. All are undernourished. All are in precarious health." the sensations induced by the glue help overcome hunger pangs and numb them against the chill Precocious and opportunistic, at once ubiquitous and invisible, los nifios de la calle scour open of night. Over time, the fumes destroy brain cells and can cause death. They also produce hallu- garbage dumps for food, sleep under parked cars, in doorways, and on sidewalks. Most survive by cinations and the reckless courage to steal. THE ATLAS OF SHAME: CHILDREN'S RIGHTS VIOLATIONS WORLDWIDE

There are more than 100 mil- force and beatings of young Palestinians. lion street children around HI MAURITANIA: Beatings and executions. the world who live in fear ev- 03 MYANMAR (formerly Burma): Beatings, torture, ery day of their lives. Accord- and extrajudicial executions. ing to Amnesty International, S3 NIGERIA: Executions of minors.

many of these children "dis- ED PERU: Caught in the crossfire of war, hundreds I appear," are beaten, illegal- of Peruvian children, some as young as ten, have ly detained and confined, been killed by the army. sexually exploited, tortured, m PHILIPPINES: Sexual exploitation and extraju- and systematically killed by dicial executions. agents of the state. EB ROMANIA": Nazi-like forced increase in pop-

I ALBANIA: Beatings, torture, and confinement. ulation during the Ceausescu regime resulted, fol- I

I ARGENTINA: More than 200 children have "disap- lowing the revolution, in thousands of orphaned and

I peared" since the late Seventies. abandoned children, most of continue to whom | ~~t BOLIVIA: Illegal internment and torture. live in squalid conditions.

I BRAZIL: Nearly 460 children and adolescents EE3 SOUTH AFRICA: Harassment, illegal detention, were killed by death squads last year beatings, torture, and extrajudicial executions. | ~I CHAD: Illegal imprisonment and torture of chil- SE SRI LANKA: Sexual exploitation*, abductions, "dis-

I dren related to "politically subversive" adults. appearances," and illegal imprisonment. U CHINA: Selling of child brides*. Children were EE3 TAIWAN: Sexual exploitation."

I among the more than 1 ,000 people killed in Beijing Effi THAILAND: Sexual exploitation." during the Tiananmen Square massacre. SI TURKEY: Beatings, illegal detention, and torture. | ~~l EL SALVADOR: Disappearances, illegal deten- m USA: Police brutality. The United States Supreme |

I tion ano extrajudicial executions carried out by Court has ruled that execution of juvenile offend-

both the military and the police. ers as young as sixteen is not specifically prohib- I

~~l GUATEMALA: See story, ited in the Constitution. Twenty-four states current-

I IRAQ' More than 400 children have been de- ly permit executions of juveniles; 14 states currently I h-isc by the police and the military without trial, have such prisoners on death row. >r|jrt:d and judicially or extrajudicially executed. ISRAEL/OCCUPIED TERRITORIES: Excessive Sources: Amnesty International, "Author's sources. —

"Every year forty-two thousand chil- icapped. Dr. Cossich has run out of says infinitely more about his death dren die of preventable or curable dis- fingers., "...and when cholera crosses than about his brief existence, laconi- eases in Guatemala. But nobody into Guatemala, as it soon will, the chil- cally recording his final words: "I only cares. Corruplion and inertia prevail," dren — street children in particular wanted to be a child; they wouldn't says Dr. Carlos Cossich Marquez, shak- are doomed." let me." ing a white head of close-cropped Cossich also tends to the growing The thirteen-year-old Nahaman—he hair. Chief of pediatrics at Guatemala's number of children caught in the web barely looked ten — died'last March af- General Hospital, Cossich sees lots of of violence that stretches across Gua- ter four policemen found him and nine children in the course of a day. Many temala. "In addition to bullet wounds, other street children, aged six to four- come from the streets. Some go direct- punctures, and slashings sustained in teen, sniffing glue. The officers, witness- ly to the morgue. the streets in the course of a day, we es said, seized the glue and began pour-

"Diarrhea, dehydration, parasitic and see an increasing number of battered ing it over the children's heads. Naha- contagious diseases, severe upper and children, children with severe burns, lac- man resisted. The commanding officer lower respiratory infections, we get erations, dislocations, and fractures sus- yanked him to his feet by his ears, them all," says Dr. Cossich. "We're al- tained at the hands of their parents and threw him back to the ground, and kick- so beginning to see infants with congen- other adults. ed him viciously in the stomach, ruptur- ially contracted AIDS. Gonorrhea is "Malnutrition"—85 percent of Guate- ing his liver and breaking six ribs. A spreading at an alarming rate." mala's children are chronically—malnour- friend of Nahaman's who had narrowly Dr. Cossich extends the fingers of his ished, according to Cossich "in addi- escaped the onslaught said that his left hand and enumerates other startling tion to illiteracy, abject poverty, and un- screams of pain could be heard three statistics: There is only one doctor for sanitary conditions, can all be directly blocks away. Screams, laughter, and every 1,400 inhabitants and only 36 hos- traced to a government that has abdi- howls are hard to tell apart in the dark- pitals in a country of 8.2 million people; cated one of its most fundamental re- ened, slop-splattered alleyways of Gua- 52.5 percent are under the age of sev- sponsibilities: education. We have a temala City. The police then abandoned enteen. Guatemala is the only country long way to go," sighs Cossich. the children, leaving Nahaman for on the American continents lacking a At the foot of the majestic Agua vol- dead curled up on the ground. pediatric hospital. Guatemala suffers a cano rests a small cemetery with white- When the children returned about 30 56.3 percent infant mortality rate. washed mausoleums and tired wood- minutes later, Nahaman had managed Eighty percent die because of inade- en crosses bent by age and neglect. to move a few feet. He had lost bowel quate pediatric services. Out of every At the Casa Alianza plot, where the and bladder control. He was uncon- 3,500 children who are treated for broken vestiges of youth and innocence scious. Someone had covered him burns, only 700 survive. Of those, 70 per- are laid to rest, a simple marble tomb- with paper flowers and a piece of cent are deformed or permanently hand- stone for Nahaman Carmona Lopez white crepe, as is customary in Guate- —

WORLD OF ELECTRONIC GAMES QUIET ON THE SET: INTERACTION! BY KEITH FERRELL

Over the past decade we tronic storytelling, are com- have seen interactive elec- ing down. tronic entertainment evolve And if it can't be done to- from simple black-and-white day, it will tomorrow. As the video games to full-color, hardware side of the busi- stereo-sound, nearly full-mo- ness focuses on the devel- tion participatory "movies." opment of true multimedia More than ever before, the products that merge televi- player becomes a part of the sion, high-quality audio, game she or he plays. and sophisticated comput- And more than ever, "inter- er technologies into a seam- active" becomes an accurate less whole, the boundaries description of the process, of what constitutes an en- rather than an item of mar- tertainment "reality" will vir- keting jargon. tually disappear. Participa- How far can "electronic tory entertainments will games" go? In a series of emerge on a levei unimag- "snapshots from the future," inable a decade ago. Indi- Omni looks at emerging viduals will be able to technologies, the potential choose their own preferred offered by increasingly am- realities, their own electron- bitious game designs, the ic worlds of entertainment. future of interactive electron- You will be able to visit

ic entertainment. these worlds on your own,

It's a bright future. A case playing solo, or you can trav- can be made for en- el in groups. tertainment designers and Those groups may be as programmers being the small as two people vying most talented of all software against each other over a artists. Certainly in the best video game deck. Or as games, there's an ease of large as many thousands use, a simplicity and ele- of on-line gamers playing gance of design, that our through a telecommunica- word processing and spread- OMNI LOOKS AT EMERGING tions net. "Have it your sheet designers would do TECHNOLOGIES, THE POTENTIAL way" will take on whole new well to emulate. OFFERED BY INCREASINGLY levels of meaning, More than that, there's a AMBITIOUS GAME DESIGNS, AND THE information itself will be- gathering sense in the en- come a vital aspect of tertainment software indus- FUTURE OF INTERACTIVE game design. We will see a try of whole new horizons ELECTRONIC ENTERTAINMENT blurring of the lines be- being opened for develop- tween entertainment and ment, electronic frontiers being read- sions. And software designers love education: You'll be able to learn ied for exploration. The great suc- nothing better than pushing the edg- while you play, and play while you cess enjoyed by both personal com- es of a technology. Depth of play learn. There will be no "royal road" puter and video game console man- a game design's ability to continue to learning, but the electronic road to ufacturers has served to liberate the delivering entertainment after the in- education may be a little less steep. software industry. itial excitement subsides—is a hot ar- What does all of this mean? Software is what sells computers ea among designers. Where are our interactive playthings and video games; software is what How do we enhance the illusion? taking us? appeals to consumers. How much can we do? How far can That's what this special section of The hardware manufacturers under- we go? Answers are beginning to Omni is all about. Call it a look stand this, and each new generation emerge: Long-perceived limitations ahead, a glance at what might be pos- of equipment makes possible more are tumbling. The walls between tel- sible. just a few years from now. convincing illusions, more satisfying evision and computers, movies and Welcome to the Vtorld of Electron- entertainments, more fulfilling diver- software, fiction on paper and elec- ic Games. "

WORLD OF ELECTRONIC GAMES

GRAND ILLUSIONS HAVE WE DISCOVERED HOW TO MAKE INTERACTIVE FICTION INTO INTERACTIVE WORKS OF ART?

We are a bit more than a stakes are cheapened in decade into the interactive retrospect. Respect for audi- entertainment revolution. ence is another essential as-

Has it become an art form pect of art that more game yet? Let's quibble and say: designers could acquire.

yes and no. What's needed above all Yes, emphatically so, in is an infusion of aesthetic in- that we're seeing increasing spiration fronr more tradition- numbers of games that rep- al art forms: the painting, resent a specific point of the novel, the opera, the view, that encapsulate a vi- play, the motion picture. sion of the world particular Too many of our games be- to an individual creator. tray the fact that their cre- To achieve a true interac- ators are schooled primari- tive art requires the creation ly in other games. There

of new tools, new grammars, are still more programmers new approaches to entertain- than storytellers making inter- ment aesthetics. Interface de- active fiction. Most charac-

: - sign —the searc h for : ra "i s p ai ters are blips on the ency," for a breaking down of screen rather than fully re- the barriers between electron- alized beings. Until that ic worlds and flesh-and- changes, we're unlikely to blood players—is the focus see interactive stories as of constant research, refinement, and the most significant challenge facing memorable as their non-interactive innovation. When we forget we have a our electronic artists and storytellers. predecessors. This is not to say that joystick, mouse, or keyboard at hand, We will soon begin seeing some differ- interactive art should mimic tradition-

we are closer to entering a work of art ent types of interactive storytelling. al forms. Far from it. What we're look-

than playing a video game. Is it art yet? The answer is no, am- ing for is a new art form, one that The best contemporary interactive biguously so. learns from the past while inventing

game designers are seeking to en- Sofne of the ambiguity is techno- its own future. Motion pictures, still hance their illusions by deepening logical. Graphics, sound, motion: All in their first century, have become

the relationship between player and must come together to create a' believ- the dominant art form of our age. Per- game. On a simple level, this in- able illusion. The goal, some feel, is haps interactive art can go as far. Per- volves options such as the ability to interactive fiction as striking in image haps, coupling the rapidly increas- select gender and appearance for in- and sound as motion pictures. ing power of the computer with the

teractive characters. More sophisti- Achievement of that level of technol- insights and abilities of the artist, it cated interactive dramas give play- ogy, at prices mass audiences can can go farther.

ers the opportunity to create whole afford, lies no more than a decade Even if interactivity doesn't be-

detailed biographies for themselves in the future. come our dominant art form, it can and their point-of-view character. But ambiguity flows from the cre- become a full member of the artistic Those biographies in turn affect the ators as well. Too often game design- community. To do so, though, we interactive character's relationship ers undermine their accomplishment must have interactive entertainments with other characters, and with the by inserting unnecessary and distract- that can be judged by the very electronic world of the story. The di- ng asides into their work, "winking" at same standards as other forms of lemma in this approach lies in the the audience and reminding them entertainment. Not the same criteria fact that when we read a traditional that, after all, it's only an electronic necessarily— times, not to mention novel or watch a play or movie, we game. Imagine Scarlett O'Hara saying, art forms and aesthetic expectations, are able to step outside ourselves, "After all, tomorrow is another fiction- do change. to see and learn from the example al day," and you get an idea of the Plot, character, insight, story.. .art and responses of others. Interactive dimensions of the problem. These are the real worlds for our in- fiction reflects, of necessity, our own Even more grotesque, we encoun- teractive creators to explore. These choices, our own responses. We ter too many games in which the play- are the aspects of artistic creation play out our electronic dramas be- er is teased— or insulted— for mak- that will finally propel interactive en- fore an interactive mirror. ing the wrong decision, for losing the tertainment out of its infancy and in- Resolving this dilemma is perhaps game. If that's the payoff, then the to adulthood. — Keith Ferrell Rule the — —

WORLD OF ELECTRONIC GAMES VIDEO JUNKET JUNKIES INTERACTIVE PLOT LINES ALLOW YOU TO WATCH TALES ON TV THAT YOU CAN CHANGE TO SUIT YOURSELF

You whisper "Don't go in press the controller. Up fnere"under your breath as pops a list of choices, or a the movie's main character narrator's voice gives you peers around a corner into the options. a dark, and utterly danger- This style of moviemak- ous, place. "Don't be so stu- ing demands a revolution- pid," you add as insur- ary change in storytelling. ance, as if she could hear Simple plots will mark the you from the couch and first efforts, if only because through the VCR, the footage needed for the We're stuck with what film- alternative tracks eats up makers give us. There's no space that might ordinarily way to change the action, go to complicating the force the players to strike tale. Taking their cue from out in new directions, or al- interactive game designers, ter the ending to make it directors and screenwriters more realistic and palata- will build adventures that ble, or even more maudlin. make viewers eager to Linear plot lines take us assume a primary role. Stor- from start to finish; if the ies of suspense, mystery, director, actors, and cinema- crime, and fantasy will like- tographer are good we may ly lead. off. Pornography forget about the real world won't be far behind. for a couple of hours. If Interactive videos may they're not, we can't do still have a single ending much about it but walk out. most computer role-playing Home entertainment of games do now, after all the late Nineties may but the route you take to change all that and motion that ending may differ wild- picture storytelling in the ly from your neighbor's. process. Courtesy of the Even such peripheral enormous storage capacity issues as video rentals possible by the end of the would be affected. Since it decade, we'll watch tales might take half a dozen rent- on the television that we can ographic memory crystals are also als to puzzle out the entire story, you change to suit ourselves. blazing fast, retrieving data in huge might simply buy the thing instead.

The key doesn't lie in silicon but chunks, fast enough for full-motion vid- That makes sense in economic in crystal. New methods to store im- eo and film. With that much elbow- terms, too, since such films are strict- mense amounts of digital information room, innovative directors could cre- ly for the home. No one will sit in a are now working their way through re- ate the first interactive films, with mul- theater and put up with someone search labs, heading for commercial tiple — and certainly intertwining else's choices when he can head and even consumer applications by threads of plot. Like their role-play- home and watch his own movie. the turn of the century. By shining la- ing and adventure computer game In some ways, the digitization of ser light through a photoreactive crys- forebears, interactive videos will let America will let all of us become tal, these memory makers can re- you pick and choose the direction, film directors, ordering story chang- cord data in three-dimensional pat- if not the outcome, of the story. At cru- es and altering actors' movements. terns of light and darkness. Such hol- cial plot junctions—you never know Not all movies will be in such form ographic storage crystals may hold where they are, but part of the fun is few will at first—but enough to give as many as a trillion bytes, enough in finding them —you can turn your us a taste of the power that people to fill a stack of computer discs four character from one plot direction and like John Huston, Orson Welles, and miles high, enough to store a feature into another, or even change points Steven Spielberg have enjoyed. film in HDTV format. of view. Shoot now or run away. Say Once we've sampled that wine, it Stuck in a cartridge no bigger farewell or stay. Switch to the villain's may be a long time before we sit pas- than the video game cartridges that role, or is he a villain after all? When sively in a'darkened theater again, you now slide into a game deck, hoi— you think there's a diversion ahead, —Gregg Keizer OMNI —

A NEW WIZARDRY A Ten years ago. Wizardry set the standards in ^| FRP. Now. after two million copies have been sold ds have been won, uusmiu ruryt; raises and redefines lards. This new Wizardry, the truest sy Role Playing, will mputer, your mind and your sen; \of adventure to their very limits. True FRP Simulation! Like atrue game master. Bane of the Cosmic

Forge rolls the dice, consults its charts and Mm applies the rules. From the 400 items of armor \ right down to their weights - to the realistic — - incorporating Primary and ^-everything, absolutely Iculated.

Full-Color, Animated Graphics!

You'll see swords swinging before your

eyes; creatures of all shapes and forms will \ move before you,- spells coming from your magician will swirl through the air. You'll walk under gargoyle-laden arches and watch candles flicker in their sconces. Your PC's internal speaker will play

igitized sounds without any add-on ,;

. . .swords swinging, monsters'

;r and spells letting fly.

Uncompromising Variety!

• 11 Races • 14 Professions with Ranks • Dozens of Weaponry, Physical and Academia skills

ellbooks. 462 spell combinations • Multiple Armor Classes

Artificial Intelligence! Find the ancient and cryptic dwellers who can aid

you in your quest. Talk to them as you would your

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latest in programming technology could the full dimensions of conversation this real be possible.

SIR-TECH

Now Available for: MS-DOS. Amiga & Macintosh FORLD OF ELECTRONIC GAMES WORLD OF ELECTRONIC GAMES

The cocoon is nearly complete. Add al computer that looks nothing like a tion picture. You change the story at dials up opponents by telephone. Sev- another component or two to the RACK 'EM PC: It's a pizza-sized box two inch- critical junctures by pressing a few eral electronic game networks sport rack, and your home entertainment es thick, with no keyboard in sight. burtons on a pad that looks like a thousands of subscribers, who visit

center will provide fantastic worlds UP Though it may have cut the technolog- television remote control. waiting areas and challenge others where all rules are off, where you de- ical edge four years earlier, now it's By the late Nineties, a few daring to one-on-one or multi-player bouts. turns, IN REC into inter- cide how the story where mu- YOUR simply inexpensive. Equipped with filmmakers have ventured In a matter of moments you can as- sic and sound and pictures combine stereo sound and 256-color graph- active cinema for the home, produc- semble enough on-line players to out-

to you in millions of ROOM ics, this faux not only plays your ing brief video that fit amuse new PC CDs can be a flight of jets or link up with a ways. All in the comfort and safety high-end simulation-style games but played half a dozen times before al- friend down the block or across of your family room. No lines, no BA5H HEADS, BOP manages the entire center at the ternatives are exhausted. Their town for some two-player football. In

long drive, no dark corners. THROUGH same time. It also doubles as your works sell briskly, if only because some cities you can even dial an ar- The missing element? A comput- MAZES, AND BARREL home PC, linking small terminals game publishers still haven't discov- cade and play head-to-head against er in disguise. By the middle of the DOWN throughout the house for office ered the story subtleties that movies almost any machine. Your opponent decade, no home rec room will be RACETRACKS work, personal finance, and the have honed for half a century. Your may be dropping in dollars, but finished without a black box that's kids' schoolwork. center plays these films, too, and you're only paying for the call. part computer, part video game ma- WITH Touch a switch and a CD drawer lets you switch viewpoints and The home amusement cocoon of chine, part compact disc player, and YOUR REMOTE slides out. No albums in here, shunt the story toward a new ending. 1995 can compete against most out- part telephone. Set among a stereo CONTROL though, but video games on com- Arcade games play in the home, side entertainment, whether movies receiver, high-definition television, pact discs instead. Full-length sagas too. Specialized video game ma- or music, because nothing stacks speakers, and VCR, this box is the ips, Zenith, Matsushita, IBM, Commo- that set you role-playing through dun- chines connect to the system's cen- through mazes, and barreling down up against the make-believe uni- brains behind home electronics. dore, and Apple. What seems sophis- geons or on alien planets. Murdei tral brain to play the descendants of racetracks. Nearly all are retreads of verse you can create with computer Nearly a third of American homes ticated today—hundreds of colors, mysteries where you're the star de- today's driving, shooting, and jump- popular standup arcade games. In and video games. The fastest-grow- already have its ancestor cabled to fast-moving images, and cartridges tective, with unknown actors in sup- ing games. Shove the slender cred- fact, you can take the flat cartridge ing art form of the decade —one

their television sets. Nintendo, Sega, jammed with silicon chips—will look porting roles. Or time travel to Cust- it card-sized cartridges in the video to the mall, play a few rounds, save that attracts emigrants from film, an- NEC, and SNK are the names on box- primordial in four years. er's Little Bighorn, Nero's Rome, and machine, grab the same controller your game, and then finish at home. imation, and fiction— games are es today. Tomorrow those names The core of tomorrow's home thea- Henry's Agincourt. All feature video thai you use to play CD games, and But you don't have to play against ready to take on the twenty-first cen- may be joined by Sony, Tandy, Phil- ter and arcade is a multimedia person- snippets nearly as smooth as a mo- you're bashing heads, bopping just the computer. Your home arcade tury. Are you?—Gregg Keizer

-.- '" <: -•"' -'--/'- •'•• •'.'- •--, '- '- - •• - - " '.-:.v v .. ^v-" > *' -; .y- , NKS So realistic, voull think you're there gg* m

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THE ELECTRIC BODY POLITIC YOU AND YOUR TELEVISION BECOME STRANGE BEDFELLOWS IN THE DIPLOMATIC GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

. If politics makes strange bedfellows, Or you can fry larger fish and evil electronic twin may laugh in then computers are drawing up the take on the New World Order elec- your face, Offer land for peace at the sheets. Already used by pundits and tronic construction set. The Soviet Un- right price and the computer Israel- pollsters, politicians and their parties, ion may have dissolved like so is may give you the nod. computers tell us who's on first, much Wicked Witch, but you've still Coups and revolutions can come point out the crucial issues, and call got foreign aid to hand out. Third home, too. Video and computer elections long before the last vote's World wars to fight, and natural re- games will re-create the dissolution

cast. Why not put them to some sources to retain. Before you set of the USSR and its eventual recon- good use and have them turn poli- your home entertainment center's struction as the Soviet Republic. Ev- tics into a real entertainment form? CD spinning, you pull down the lat- erything from the 1991 coup and ec- Re-creating politics on your est game stats and formulas from the onomic rebirth to possible civil war home amusement system won't be publisher's computer so that you and anarchy will chart a course on

easy. Distilling political science to a start ptaying from today, not yester- your TV screen. It may not be histo-

set of computer algorithms is notori- day. You can even save the game, ry, but it'll be grand entertainment. ously difficult, especially if you ex- post your positions and predictions Future politics would work just as

pect everyone to agree with your for all to see, and hope the real weil. What if the United States frac- assumptions. But game designers news matches yours in a month or tures along Balkanized lines? Does have probed the the federal govern- body politic with ment go to war a sec- works that reduced ond time to hold the detente to a danger- Union together? In a ous two-step and computer re-crea- shrank banana repub- tion you can find out lic machinations to a without harming a three-way toss-up be- soul. Space civics tween left, moder- can be just as enlight- ate, and right. By the ening. In a solar sys- middle of the dec- tem where Mars and ade, political simula- the moon have tions will be more so- been colonized and phisticated, if no Jupiter's satellites ex- less' opinionated. plored and exploit- Few things match ed, what will be the the feeding frenzy of 2&RHK is- burning political American presiden- sues? At your home tial elections for com- entertainment cen- edy, drama, and de- ter, you can dabble ceit. Putting that on your home tele- two. Imagine— millions of political ex- in treaties, boycotts, and blockades vision screen —with you able to de- perts prognosticating about future on an interplanetary scale. But why cide the next step or plan the next turns of events. We might discover stop there? Most science-fiction campaign—may reduce our politics that we know as much as the talking games are simple excuses for ar- to a simplified version of reality, but heads on CNN. cade shoot-'em-ups. Why not make then, isn't that what television does We may even turn into a country real aliens with cultures so. ..so ali- already? By the 1996 election, you'll of peacemakers. Tranquillity in the en, ..that just communicating is a be able to play along at home, cour- Middle East may have eluded nine chore? Add conflict and you've got tesy of some smart game designer. presidents, but maybe you can do a the perfect mix for stellar diplomacy, You'll get the basics, from fund-rais- better job. Using advanced artificial Games like these have the poten- ing to buying TV time, but you'll also intelligence, a computer game tial for entertainment as well as edu-

have the freedom to make it up as could put you in the shoes of the sec- cation. If we find it hard to win in a you go along, Want to smear the op- retary-general of the United Nations, computer or video political game, we position with a timely leak about an bargaining and negotiating with the may develop sympathy for the real extramarital affair? Want to hit back computerized rulers of Israel, Syria, politicos. Or pay a bit more attention with allegations of draft dodging? Go Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and every other play- to what they're really doing.

ahead, it's just a game. A great role- er in the world's worst flash point. It may be the best thing that ever playing game. Threaten sanctions and Saddam's happened to politics.— Gregg Keizer

) OMNI THE 1991 DEMO Powerpak A NEW SOFTWARE DEMO EXPERIENCE! PREVIEW-AND PLAY-OVER $200 WORTH OF THE LATEST GAMING SOFTWARE!

The 1991 Demo Powerpak is no ordinary software sampler. It lets you experience each game by playing it! Play-not just watch- the opening levels of the hottest new software releases. Get the "feel" of how each game plays, and decide which games you prefer before you buy!

The 1991 Demo Powerpok includes playable previews of:

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE* DANCER ZONE-HEAD TO HEAD Enter the world of spies and Intrigue AGAINST TOP GUN'S BEST* in this new adventure offering from A new flight simulation experience Konami Software, Create your from Konami. Learn jet fighter tactics own agents, set up wiretaps, and from three veteran war aces, thrill to don disguises, as you try to stop an multiple target views Including "missile underworld plot to topple the cam, "and fly missions solo or in government! simultaneous, two-player split screen! M

MARTIAN MEMORANDUM WORDTRIS FACES...TRIS III

Private eye Tex Murphy is back In a A new challenge from the TETRIS You'll meet some pretty strange hilarious new interactive movie people at Spectrum HoloByte, The fast characters playing this addicting Soviet adventure from Access Software, For action, falling blocks now have mind-teaser from Spectrum Holobyte.

the first time, players will be able to letters on them, which players try to Falling block pieces of famous and interact with full motion video charac- form into words. Time is of the not-so-famous faces must be stacked ters on a disk- based product, as they essence as you try to maneuver letter In the proper order (mouth to chin,

help Tex face murder, romance, flies to spell words, as they fall from eyes to nose) to form complete faces. deception, and prophecy from present the top of the screen Into the well. If Remember there are no points for day San Francisco to the year 2039. you like TETRIS, you'll love WORDTRIS. "double chins' In this game!

You'll also receive a complete, ready-to-run version of "Best PC Games" as a special bonus, This disk contains 9 challenging gomes! There are also discount coupons enclosed with each 1991 Demo Powerpok to use toward the purchase of your favorite PC products,

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/ORLD OF ELECTRONIC GAMES WORLDS OF WONDER SPEND THE DAY SAILING WITH COLUMBUS, FROLICKING WITH A TYRANNOSAUR, OR CHASING AMERICA'S MOST WANTED

- You're never too old to play you guide life as it devel- pretend. Everyone likes io ops from single-cell crea- lose himself, and a few tures to intelligence. Others hours, in the imagination of put you in the shoes— or a moviemaker or writer. Pre- paws or claws—of specific

tend play lets us step out- creatures to see if you can side the mundane and prac- survive the laws of the jun- tical into the exciting and gle. Try out a tyrannosaur impossible. No little sur- for size, for instance, to see

prise, then, that one of the what it took to keep the ty- most popular ways to play rant lizard on his feet. computer is with a through More simulations— all as worlds of make-believe. much fun as educational' Simulations, as these re- will follow. Medicine won't creations are often called, al- be as mysterious once you ready reproduce the intri- have piloted a white blood cate workings of an ant col- cell through the blood- ony, a city, even the entire stream. Enhanced by actu- planet. But as computer al footage from fiberoptic and video game machines probes through arteries, power up in the next few veins, and the heart, your years, expect simulations to home arcade will add mon- follow suit, bringing even strous microscopic invad- more impressive 'oauiios to your tele- grams will let you play with the cli- ers, herds of corpuscles, and vision screen. mate. Create cold fronts and send enough current to really toss you Historical replicas, long a main- them barreling out of Canada. Mix around the body. stay of computer simulations, will air masses over the Mississippi and Criminology is within the grasp of take on new dimensions. Though mil- watch tornadoes form over the even the rankest detective when the itary simulations will continue to Plains. Hurricanes, too, are just a key computer or video machine lends a draw an audience, those with more press away. Form them from tropical hand. Crimes— some based on real- direct learning connections will find depressions, and by adding just a hic cases— are up for grabs. Using a place on more home entertainment touch more heat io the ocean waters, the homicide squad's tools of fiber systems. You and your kids will .be turn them into raging monsters that matching, fingerprinting, DNA exam- able to retrace the steps of the most eat up the Atlantic seaboard. ination, witness reports, and the famous explorers. Retouched video Astrophysics is beyond most of like, you have a chance to crack the returns the scenery to its pristine us, but we'd love to build black case. It's even possible to put un- state, while period maps and pro- holes, make stars go nova, or put solved crimes on disc to turn millions fessional narrators provide color and two galaxies on a collision course. into amateur investigators.

commentary. The experience—wheth- Super space simulations make it pos- Scores of other worlds may turn er you're alongside Lewis and sible. Simulating science fiction may up on your home entertainment sys- Clark, Sir Richard Burton, Columbus, seem like a contradiction — after all, tem. Almost anything can be con- or Cortes— puts you in charge, lets SF isn't even real—but it'll draw play- densed to the size of a compact you make the decisions from start to ers, too. Imagine an in-depth treat- disc or cartridge, though lots may finish, and makes you live with the ment of planetary exploration, with get lost in the translation. Nuclear consequences. Can you take Magel- extras from sensor scan interpreta- power plant management, empire- lan's place and still circumnavigate tions and orbital observations to land- building from Caesar to Victoria, and the globe? What would it take for fall and the inevitable search for life. even archaeology can be distilled to you, as Robert Scott, to beat Amund- Each new planet or system in the the small screen. Add a bit of dra- sen to the South Pole? series would be released on a new ma and render the re-creation in near- Nature, too, can be confined to compact disc or cartridge for a never- photographic fashion with lots of the safety of the home arcade of ending simulation. sound effects, voice-overs, and pe- the mid-Nineties. First to appear will Why stop at alien worlds? Why not riod music, and you have an inter- be sophisticated weather models. mimiclife with your computerized active experience that's impossible Just as current simulations let you amusement park? Some programs to really live through. around with cities, will mess these pro- take the broad approach and let But you'll want to try.—Gregg Keizer

? OMNI **»«**«

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R I S R

Another Eastern Mock falls. There's a new TRlSon.the block. Its name is WORDTRIS keeps raining vowels and consonants until WORDTRIS. And if you love fETRIS, this latest fast-action, you've collected enough words to move to the next level, falling block, Soviet game will boggle your mind. or the well fills up. Of course, each successive round ups This time the falling pieces are letter blocks. Form them the ante as the blocks fall ever faster. But you can choose » into words and score points. As your difficulty level to match

• your skills, each block falls, it pushes down and select from I the blocks below, producing an single player, cooperative, I ever-changing kaleidoscope of competitive, head-to-head or I letters where scoring oppor- tournament modes. The

- built-in 30,000 word diction- i tunities appear and vanish verifies I at the blink of an eye. ary even the most obscure word. Create words horizontally or " Set vertically but don'tput all your the difficulty level at ikfcrXY;CP-:Of.L:iv^d=r i . E's in one BASKET. Because 10 and you'll find WORDTRIS every time a word lines up, poof! those letters disappear, harder to keep up with than the changes in and the blocks below pop up to fill the spaces. So when- Eastern Europe. J ever you earn points you stir up the alphabet soup. And WORDTRIS. Another great I suddenly that falling M has no HOME to go to. game from the TETRIS people. Mtt{3>m and Mac/Madi.

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AnJTinnATTER UFO UPDATE: UFO researchers say their work involves endless stress and dep their families of time, energy, and love

apist David Gotlib re- ports similar strains. Gotlib spends hours providing therapy for abductees and also

ers. Between the n letter and UFO confer-

time." He deals with the pressure by reas- sessing his commit- ment to UFOIogy ev- ery six months. "I'll close down the letter," Gotlib

WhE "when I get a re Butthe UFOIogists \-'^-S -

: --.; :: .> '-. themselves say their | ; V profession is costly and stressful, exacting an enormous toll on earning DC, office of Citizer

:ity and family life. The pain and pressure of the has literally \ work, they say, is rarely mentioned on the talk show UFOs. Bryant, a Pe circuit or in UFO magazines. Stressful career prob- home is, for instance, have plagued investigator Rich- UFO the Nat

d is now on the board of the Fund rating was improved on

I, Says Hall, "UFOs on mv resume sands of dollars and fil e getting straigt

pie University in Philadelphia, he can't find enough poti hours in the day for either activity. When push came notes, "bee to shove, Jacobs says, he chose to study abductions, tions or ulti But a senior member of his department at Temple in- G"

,.,,,.-.... formed him that he would have to go back to regular pen..^ ^., . . ; , historical scholarship it he "hoped to advance in his is critical because "the abduc Mil j his fam- most important thing that ha .., ...... jabreak. AfUTIfUlATTER

I SWORDID FEATS

I age fifteen she contracted to b

ve father, I attributed the poet's way led to curvature of the

;houlder obviou: a famous portr department of the Rad- enerally ca

i healed. practice. For a long time,

i British bio- chemist David Young has | d to vindi-

I cate Elizabeth. After clothes hid a hip deformity. I sword handle, like a toy

DAN MANNIX CAN SWALLOW A SABER WITH A 26-INCH BLADE BECAUSE HE'S ESPECIALLY TALL. BUT HE LOST ONE COMPETITION TO A SHORTER SWORD SWALLOWER WHO WEIGHTED HIS STOMACH DOWN WITH A HEAVY MEAL. ^»

"reported on her painful paroxysms and muscle twitching. This eventually says, "is exactly that of

artists train by swallowing a crude ball of wadding

around a lead pill attached to a length of cotton." ngE ntic a: . Berkland uses we find that his results high high tides and low low not significant" S tides to tell when an years ago Hunger airec^

earthquake will occur, and a full-time project evalu- says Berkland, "but I do want to advance science, the lost-pet classified i ating earthquake predic- in local newspapers tc tions, and, says Hunger, protect the public, and get determine just howbigXhe "it died out from lack of the information out.

quake will be and where it success." Animals have a sense of

will hit. But Berkland is deter- the forces at work in 1 " The Chinese have long mined to go on. With the nature," Berkland adr studied animal behavior assistance of a Menlo "They can feel when and tides to psych out Park entrepreneur, he has change o earthquakes, and recently set up a monthly feeling confuses them. Berkland thinks they're newsletter called Syzygy When that happens, they right on. Indeed, just (14927 East Hills Drive, react instinctively—they before the World Series CA 951 27) and run and don't stop running quake, "the number of a telephone information until their senses tell them missing cats in the line(1-900-226-JOLT)to ick Huyghe

; reached twenty- seven, when normally GIANT RAT rats—never reach the there are only three or size of the creature four," says Berkland, "and Scared of mice? Be allegedly spotted in the number of missing thankful you weren't in ranee. "Beavers, on the dogs shot up to fifty-eight." Abbeville, France, recent- c ther hand, can some- The message from the ly. A ratlike albino animal mes weigh close to a animals could not have the size of a dog hundred pounds," Jack- 1 been more obvious. Two supposedly appeared in son says there's no way weeks before the quake | that community, terrifying to know just what kind of two infant whales beached much residents and out- animal caused so | Four days before a 7 themselves on Ocean maneuvering would-be c ommotion, but he's Beach in San Francisco rodent hunters. skeptical that it was a rat 1 a rare pygmy whale Sherry Baker According to witness- species.— | led up at Santa Cruz. es, the creature was Pigeon fanciers, noting nearly three and a half their birds were flying the feet long and weighed ^^£fe 1 coop, had even canceled close to 16 pounds. ggjagPr^'jj^Lvfll their races begi Veterinarian Gerard Dela- ^ 1 first of October. xv bie, who finally killed the .^'-^jp5^ 1 ite Berkland's suc-

animal with a lethal , predicting the injection, at first believed the critter was a rat.

But University of * x unorthodox method. W a Georgia wildlife specialist 'ryto B' Jeff Jackson points out WSL ,.-< that rodents commonly m*. called rats—Norway rats, house mice, and roof in Golden, Colorado, and wreck, what are your first thoughts? wooden tablet with its wax writing sur- irUTERVIEUU Bass: It.s date. Judging the forms of faces is something mentioned by Ho- antiquities— Bronze Age, classical mer, but previously people didn't think Greek, Roman, Byzantine, medieval, these existed in the Bronze Age [3000 and has a degree in business admin- or later— Is fairly easy. Then we raise a to 1000 B.C.] when the Trojan War took istration. The vessel simply arrives on few diagnostic artifacts to pin down the place. They did. With materials from the site with all the compressors, gen- date to a century. During the last dec- eight cultures on this vessel, we have erators, fresh-water makers, chambers, ade we've found seventy-five to eighty a broad spectrum of how they worked galleys full of food. We have conserva- ancient wrecks along a small part of the together. Our discoveries bring to life tors working full-time in Turkey mend- Turkish coast. contemporary correspondence be- ing pottery. We even have full-time il- Our ultimate aim is to excavate one tween various kings describing the trad- lustrators drawing the material, and pho- merchant ship from every century of an- ing and types of goods that were on the tographers doing beautiful underwater tiquity. Then we'd have told the entire "ships. We can't work without reading photographs and the detail photogra- story of hulls and pottery, weights and these ancient documents. And now peo- phy in museums. coins and everything. Then we'd per- ple studying documents have to pay at- Omni: Do you ever have trouble with ma- haps focus on types of merchant tention to what we're finding. rine life at the site? ships, then move to warships, ferry- Colleagues working with me on a Bass: Until three years ago, we'd nev- boats, fishing boats, and so on, Es- wreck only one thousand years old at er seen a shark. But recently at Ulu Bu- sentially, we'd like to tel! the story of sea- Limani, Turkey, think that's even more run a shark goes by maybe one hun- faring with firsthand evidence, A set of important. The curator of Islamic art at dred greatest meters away. Our fear is too!s from a ship of every period of an- the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New that the site seems almost a breeding tiquity would tell the history of tools bet- York said that had we not found all ground for a kind of scorpion fish. So ter than it's been exhibited on land. these types of glazed bowls, which we we keep a spear lying at the site. Omni: What's so important about the date to about a.d.1025, art historians Twice people have gotten scorpion Bronze Age shipwreck you're excavat- would have dated some of them to the fish spines into their fingers on land and ing now? ninth and perhaps twelfth century, almost gone into shock from [he pain. Bass: It has an impact on the history of With its three tons of medieval glass on- If a diver put his knee on one at one- maritime trade, on international rela- board, this wreck contains more Islam- sixty feet and suddenly panicked, he'd tions, and even Egyptology. The scar- ic glass than all the collections in all the be in serious trouble. I don't know why ab of Nefertiti suggests to some Egyp- glass museums in the world— then you there are so many here, but every year tologists that she was coruler of Egypt multiply it by ten or a hundred and we have to kill about half a dozen. with her husband, Akhenaton. It has an still don't come up with a reasonable Omni: When you come across a impact on the study of literacy. This figure. Not being an expert in medieval

or Byzantine art, I decided to farm out most of the work to those specializing in categories of the find. But Fred Van Doorninck, who started with me in 1961, said, "George, you've got to get emo- tionally and intellectually involved in the wreck. You've got to publish part of

it yourself."

So I took the dregs, the little miscel- laneous finds that would be passed over in one or two sentences in the av- erage archaeological report. "And we found eight bone spindle whorls" or "We found fragments of three combs,"

they'd say, leave it and at that, I took

the spindle whorls. It was fairly easy to find out they were carved somewhere along the Syro-Palestinian coast. But why were they on this ship? Everything's carried for a reason. By plotting their position on our plan

of the site, I found they were not scat- tered randomly but in specific clusters in areas where fishermen were repair-

ing their nets. It dawned on me that may- be fishermen were spinning threads to

mend their nets. Then I stumbled onto something written by an Arab a centu- ry before the ship sank saying that spin- ning goat hair was a manly thing, un- like spinning flax, which only women did. We analyzed a few fibers of thread still surviving in a lead net sink-

er. It was goat hair, Then I talked to an eighty-three-year-old fisherman who . A On the 25th Anniversary ffMK of STAR TREKfyou are invited [/> to take your place on the bridge fTfrm of the U.S.S. ENTERPRISE:"

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Don't worry/ said goat hair was the best thread for

his nets. It doesn't absorb water like. wool. An Ottoman net turned out to

have goat hair as well. Finally I ran into a reference from the Thirties about mod- ern Danes mending their nets with spin-

dles and whorls. "That clinches it," I thought. "That's what they were doing." Then a history professor wrote me, saying that one spindle whorl found at the Viking site in Newfoundland led them to reason that a woman must

have been present. But if, in fact, these were not used just by women, this might not be a more permanent col- ony but just a fishing station. Rethink- ing what a single spindle whorl means could change our ideas about the dis- covery and colonization of early Amer- ica by the Vikings. Omni: Did the Minotaur or Labyrinth actually exist?

Bass: I believe the story is a mytholog- ical representation of the downfall of King Minos of Crete, where we know the bull was worshipped. In his exca- vations at the Minoan capital and at Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans found many depictions of double axes, and the

word for that in antiquity is labrys. If you look at this mazelike palace today, you'll see the bottom floor is in corridors. That fact could easily have led to the idea of Theseus being lost inside and finding his way out only with the aid of a thread laid out by Minos's daughter Ariadne. Theseus, king of Greece, kill- WHAT LITTLE TRAFFIC there is in ing the Minotaur could represent the My- cenaean Greek dominance of Crete by Lynchburg, Tennessee can be brought to a overcoming the Minoans. standstill Mallard Atlantis, too, may have a basis in by a hen. fact. Some people would say Plato sim- ply made up the story to make a point. This one came from over by our limestone cave But it's not impossible that the destruc- tion of the island of Thera by volcanic spring, where Jack Daniel discovered water so eruption led to the story of a civilization right for (it's iron- sinking beneath the waves. I don't whiskey making think Atlantis is out in the middle of the Atlantic somewhere. free), he built his distillery alongside. Omni: Have any of your findings veri- Of course, that meant sharing the fied mythological stories? Bass: Everything we've found on our property with a few ducks. But to wrecks has tended to corroborate what Homer, who presumably lived in have a source of water this treasured, the late Iron Age [after 1000 B.C.], wrote about the Bronze Age. We found we've always been glad to stop brushwood dunnage, a protective liner underneath cargo, on the Cape Gelido- for friends who value it as much nya and Ulu Burun ships. Homer has Odysseus putting brushwood dunnage as we do. in the boat he built to leave Calypso's island. Homer often wrote about Phoe- SMOOTH SIPPIN' nician metalworkers and sailors. People TENNESSEE said, "Well, it's anachronistic." But our WHISKEY wrecks have shown the Bronze Age

Phoenicians were active seafarers and Tennessee Whiskey • K-ii% alcohol hy lolume (80-86 proof. • Dsslrller; m- Jack Daniel Distillery, metalsmiths or at least seemed to be lem Motlow. Proprietor, fioute 1, Lynchburg (For 361), Te PtttcedmtheNat , carrying a lot of metal around the East- _ misd Slates i 9

ern Mediterranean. Iron Age Phoeni- sank much more precisely than carbon all the cannons and anchors of iron. cians became tremendous explorers 14, thermoluminescence, or pottery. We've used sonar in the Mediterrane- and seafarers, sailing out into the Atlan- Omni: Might some of the pottery be a an with success. I believe ours was the tic. There's reason to believe a Phoeni- lot older than the wreck itself? first group to find an ancient shipwreck cian sailor circumnavigated Africa. Bass: Ah, yes. If you were to have din- with side-scan sonar back in 1967. Omni: What's the significance of the ner with me, you'd have a cup that be- Omni: And that's strictly finding a pro- glass ingots you found at Kas? longed to my great-grandmother or a tuberance underwater?. Bass: In 1972 Leo Oppenheim, a Near plate of my wife's great-grandmother. Bass: Right. Once we did a three- Eastern linguist, speculated that a We tend to keep pottery, porcelain, or month random survey down the Turk- brief passage in cuneiform on a four- china for generations. I didn't think" it ish coast. Half the time we used side- teenth-century clay tablet suggested would happen on ships, where things scan sonar and underwater television. the king of Tyre was shipping raw gel broken by the rolling and pitching. We found one wreck. Then we went glass to the Pharaoh in Egypt. Now We first dated the Ulu Burun shipwreck with sponge divers and found a dozen we've found on a ship from that peri- in the first half of the fourteenth centu- wrecks in the next few weeks. They od, probably sailing from the Levantine ry, based on a Bronze Age Greek cup would go to a spot and tell us precise- coast where the king of Tyre lived, doz- and pitcher. But the Neferfiti scarab in- ly where to dive and there would be the ens of cobalt-blue glass ingots unique dicates that date is at least half a cen- wreck right there. in the world. They are chemically iden- tury too early. That pottery was simply Omni: What are the inherent difficulties tical to Egyptian and Mycenaean blue old and still being used. of underwater mapping? glass. So all the blue glass in the east- Fred Van Doorninck has proved Bass: Only the limitation of time. If we ern Mediterranean was probably being some amphorae on later ships were in went to saturation diving, where the div- shipped from one area where someone use for more than a century. It's incred- er could work seven hours a day, we'd had a secret recipe for making it. ible that something as fragile as pottery beat that problem. Now each diver Omni: What's so important about gets twenty minutes at a time twice a

trade patterns? day. I spent a large part of the Sixties Bass: They're not! [laughter] Okay, developing new methods of mapping un- they tell how ideas spread. If my ideas derwater, first with various grids, Ihen •I planned roving about Phoenician seafarers in the a with photography and eventually ster- Aegean are correct, some theories wheeled habitat in which for eophotogrammetry, three-D mapping about Near Eastern influences on clas- months you'd with stereophotographs as is done by sical Greek civilization may be more ac- airplane. We developed a system that curate than some scholars admit. I like travel along the seabed and uses a submarine—that's now standard to think that archaeologists' findings find unlimited on all small research submarines that increase understanding of the throughout the world. But on this past could help us make better judg- numbers of wrecks. You'd Bronze Age shipwreck, we've gone ments. How can we really make deci- carry oxygen; your back to meter tapes and triangulation. sions on politics, religion, or morals if It's very accurate, and there's nothing batteries would be ballast. we don't know how these things actu- to break down. ally came about? Omni: Can you tell if pollution has af- Omni: Aside from carbon 14, what's the fected the wrecks? most accurate dating of age? Bass: So far, they seem to be insulated. Bass: A large number of coins. One could have been used in cargoes, put I've heard horror stories about the 1926 quarter in your pocket doesn't in holds, and taken out scores of times sludge being a half meter thick off the mean much. But if we find sixty coins over a century without being broken. coast of well-populated areas of Italy all from about the same date, never lat- He's even shown where the handles and France. But I don't think it's gotten er than a certain year, we can assume have broken off and their stubs have under the sand and hurt anything yet. the ship sank about the time the coins been filed down. They'd put a new slip I can certainly see the difference in Med- stopped. After coins, pottery. You can or wash of clay on the pot, carve new iterranean pollution. When we used to tell by sight whether a car was made graffiti, and use it again and again. Dat- dive it was so clear you'd go three in the Thirties or Fifties. Like cars or cloth- ing is always an educated guess, un- months without seeing anything. Now at

ing, the styles of I less find inscription pottery changed. can you an saying, "I, times when I'm decompressing I seem look up a piece of pottery in the library Captain So-and-so in the year of So-and- to be swimming in a sea of plastic and date it to within a century, some- so's reign," and of course that's a bags. Millions of bits of plastic; it's like times even to a few decades. dream. But we'll find it one day. a ticker-tape parade. This is in an iso- The greatest breakthrough for the Omni: How do you pinpoint specific lated part of Turkey. study of ancient ships will be when we wreck sites? Omni: Do you think underwater colo- have a complete dendrochronology [dat- Bass: In the Mediterranean, sighting re- nies are practical? ing of wood age] going back to the mains one hundred percent the eyes of Bass: Not at the moment, except per- Bronze Age. Peter Kuniholm at Cornell sponge divers. But the sponge indus- haps as research stations. And remote is devoting his life to building up such try is dying, so there's not many more vehicles and submersibles are doing a sequence a of tree rings from the pres- years of that In the Caribbean, docu- lot of that work. In the late Sixties I ent day in the Aegean and eastern Med- ments in Spanish archives describe planned to design a roving wheeled hab- iterranean. He's taken drillings from very where a wreck is. Then you can go itat in which for months you could trav- old cedars in Lebanon and in Byzan- look for it with a magnetometer. There el along the seabed and find unlimited tine churches. If we have a piece of is little or no iron on these ships in the numbers of wrecks. Your batteries keel or brushwood, dendrochronology Mediterranean, whereas I've gone out would essentially be your ballast and will tell us exactly when that wood was on a reef in the Caribbean and found you could send these to the surface or cut. It will indicate the year the ship four wrecks in one morning because of have them recharged with cables. 114 OMNI You'd carry oxygen, scrubbers, C0 2 go that route, you should never bull- they've ail been looted. In one, the hull and so on and just live fora month do- doze any kind of building because some- was dynamited and broken into one ing what sponge divers do to find so day everything will be archaeological. week before our team got there. Be- many wrecks; move slowly along Ihe sea- In the case of the Titanic, there's an ar- tween the time our crew went down and bed. Well, I stopped that kind of design- gument for leaving it alone. Some struc- made a sketch of it and came back, ing. No one took me seriously because tures are simply so famous, so much a a hole had been blown in the middle.

I was an archaeologist. I couldn't get part of our cultural environment, they Off France and Italy, "most visible government support for the fresh should be left alone. The Titanic is a land- wrecks in sport-diving depths have ideas we were way ahead of the engi- mark and should be left alone for that been stripped clean of their amphorae. neers on. The Navy "finally gave us a reason, not for the same reasons as leav- In 1976 we surveyed site after site grant to develop our stereophotograph ing a Bronze Age shipwreck alone. where there had been huge piles of technique, which is now standard prac- Omni: What are your views about this amphorae described, and every single tice for mapping the seabed from whole mess of admiralty law or lack of one was gone. small submersibles. law that seems to protect more sites on As for what happens to wrecks in Omni: In 1989 you got the Navy to de- land than sea? The notion of marine sal- open seas in the middle of oceans, I'm classify some detailed maps of the vage is in a real state of flux. not wise enough to judge. There have ocean floor that they'd withheld be- Bass: I testified before Congress to get been Mediterranean countries that cause of concern over Soviet subma- the bill passed to protect historic ship- have said the material from those rine activity wrecks and had no trouble whatsoever wrecks should return to the country of Bass: You didn't get that from me! And countering and beating the best law- cultural origin. This is such a nutty idea.

I don't it know whether helped much. yers oi treasure hunters. I was pleased The Greeks were making bronze stat- What I'd like to get declassified are ae- to see senators on C-Span using my ues in what is now Turkey and Italy. rial surveys. You can spot ballast piles word-for-word arguments: Why is it all Does that statue go to Greece, Turkey, in shallow water. With water-penetrat- or Italy? Imagine a jury listening to ar- ing film we might be able to go deep- chaeologists argue for ten years on the er. When I approached the United evidence of what nationality a ship isl States government about satellite or aer- We don't know .the nationality of the Ulu ^There's good reason ial pictures, they told me to go to the Burun ship. There's something there Turkish government. When the Turkish for countries to be nervous from Egypt, Cyprus, the Syro-Palestin- military heard about that, they got so ex- about archaeologists ian coast, and Greece. Where does it ercised it almost stopped our work in go? I'd only hope it would all stay to-

Turkey forever. as spies. Every professor I gether and go to one museum. There's good reason for countries to had was in the OSS Omni: What do you think of Mel Fish- be nervous about archaeologists as er's handling of the Atocha7 in World War II. Who knew spies. Every archaeology professor I ev- Bass: The Atocha was not archaeologi- er had was in the OSS in World War II. the languages cally excavated, and I'm not happy Who else knew the countryside, languag- and mountain paths better?? with any wreck that's excavated in that es, mountain paths as well? There was manner. We know to the centimeter a saying, the Greek mountains were where everything is found. I spend end- white with the parachutes of British ar- less hours making color-coded maps of chaeologists being sent in. My uncle, Ihe distribution of things on our an archaeologist, was in the OSS and right to tear up a historic shipwreck wrecks. The treasure hunter and archae- was dressed like a French peasant. when you can't do it to a land mon- ologist cannot really cooperate. The ar- Omni: Was the real reason the Titanic ument like the Alamo or Mount Vernon? chaeologist wants to take as long as pos- got explored because the government I could find an Indian burial mound, bull- sible to do things, whereas the hunter saw an opportunity to use equipment doze it, and sell the pots' and say it's has to move as quickly as possible to that might have military applications? free enterprise. People would say, make a profit. I've just written seventy-

I Bass: That's what heard, and I "That's immoral; send him to jail." Pre- five pages on a pair of scissors we wouldn't be surprised if it's so, We our- viously in American waters you could found ten years ago. We didn't know selves found this deep statue-bearing do that; the new law stops it. they existed until last year. Since these shipwreck in Turkey because of our con- The treasure hunter will take this ar- were found with part of a delousing tract to evaluate three new types of side- gument: "There are millions of ship- comb and a razor, it seems like a little scan sonar. I said at the time to Cap- wrecks out there; how come they're so barber's kit. That got me into the area tain Snyder, who later became ocean- worried if we go after these few Span- of shipboard toiletries. These would ographer of the Navy, "Why in the ish gal. eons?" Unfortunately, the treas- have been overlooked by treasure hunt- is world the Navy paying a bunch of ar- ure hunter and -the archaeologist will ers and sucked up the air lift. chaeologists to test sonar''" He said we be going after the same ship because In the end a big part of our work is could it do much more cheaply. We had it is an important one. There are very just curiosity— knowing that sailors on our own submersible; the Navy had afl few known ships from the early period a thousand-year-old ship had problems the regulations and red tape. We of New World exploration, Ihe time direct- grooming their hair because of lice. could just go out and do it. They ly after Columbus. We know more Just a tidbit. In that sense it's like an in- weren't interested in what we found; about how Greek and Roman ships teresting hobby. I'm not being cynical, they just to which wanted know type of were built than those of Columbus and but I don't want to exaggerate the im- sonar would find it the best. the explorers who immediately followed portance of archaeology any more

1 Omni: Should the Titanic and Bismarck after him. than any other activity humans take be left as underwater monuments? Our institute has been looking at pleasure in. But if we only worry about Bass: They're not archaeological; they wrecks in the Bahamas, Turks, Caicos, growing food and making bridges, may become archaeological. But if you and elsewhere. Without exception, then we won't be human. DO 116 OMNI STAR TECH

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For entertaining science, fiddle with the solar system and tinker with the weather

By Gregg Keizer

Electronic entertainment's worlds spinning on your with asteroids. Watch the tation also makes it easy to jammed with ballistic screen, animated in enough July 11 total solar eclipse or understand which way Schwarzeneggers, aliens who detail to let you watch Jupiter's even slip on 3-D glasses to the wind's blowing, or how trade like Levantines, and Great Red Spot revolve, plot Jupiter's flock of the temperature's falling. robots who never heard, of and see the seasons change satellites. And when you've Similar to USA Today's Asimov's laws. Sometimes on Mars. More than 60 produced a majestic trip graphs, color bar-style maps even video games, frenetic moons, 1 ,300 comets, arid through the system, record- illustrate current condi- pace and all, go stale. 4,600 asteroids populate triis it to disk and play it back tions-. The nearly 150 TV- But science fact can kill electronic solar system, effec- later like a NASA video. quality maps range from silicon time just as easily 'as tively offering nearly every This is an outstanding actual satellite photos to science fiction. To prove the known body and pushing simulationof orbital dynarcv color-enhanced -radar point, switch on your PC and even 386 PCs to their process- ics that not only holds your images of storm cells sweep- take a tour of the solar ing limit in [he bargain. attention but is as entertain- ing across the Plains. Some system with ARC Simulation Stand anywhere on Earth, ing as anything that calls of the professional- quality Software's Dance of the on any day from 4600 B.C. to itself a game. For more maps and charts are updated Planets (IBM PC compati- a.d. 10000, and zoom in on information contact ARC in real time, showing, for bles; to be honest, the any planet or moon. Or see Simulation Software, Box instance, lightning strikes as 1974, Loveland, CO 80539; they happen. (303) 663-3223. You pay for the fun of For a down-to-earth scien- watGhing the weather, tific diversion, Software though. Late-night calls to Toolworks' Accu-Weather the Accu-Weather database Forecaster (Mac, IBM cost 10© per minute, plus PC and compatibles) lets your long-distance charges. you tinker with the same The toll-free number costs meteorological data that more—190 per minute. many television and radio Add the $9.95 monthly stations use to predict minimum and you can rack tomorrow's climate A door up some big bills fast. to a sophisticated private Even so, getting current meteorological database, conditions and forecasting Forecaster fnay not put you data takes only four or five on the six o'clock news, but minutes in most cases,

it beats talking about how although downloading the

cold it gets. And you don't television -style maps takes have to.know much more a lot longer. program all but requires a the sights from 270 astro- about the weather than a TV As fun as it is to play fast 386 PC and really does nomical units out. Mag- meteorologist. meteorologist, Accu-Weath- best on a 386 equipped with nify the view up to 32,000 Select two of the more er can't model the weather. a math coprocessor). It may times and you can watch than 900 available Mafional You carft play with tem- not be a game, but it's as Saturn's rings turn, Jupiter's Weather Service reporting perature, humidity, baromet- big a video kick as anything moons flit across its sur- stations, decide how many ric pressure, and tropical with a laser pistol. face on the screen, or even other major stations Fore- winds, for instance, to Imagine your own super spot Pluto and Charon. caster polls, and then pick create a hurricane and

Voyager, a robotic explorer For a unique perspective, the information you want. watch it surge across the flashing through the solar sys- look at the. solar system from The program dials the coast. Or observe the tem snapping pictures from far above or below the Accu-Weather database, re- formation of a tornado. But any place and any angle. ecliofic plane, a great grand- trieves the data, and then Software Toolworks presi- Forget those stargazing stand for asteroid and builds charts, graphs, and dent Tom Ligon finds such programs that display tiny comet watching. maps— all automatically. possibilities intriguing. dots, as if the sky were a pin- If s easy to re-create All this can make for Dance of the Clouds? pricked velvet screen. historical comet flybys or information overload, but What stirring scientific fun Dance of the Planets sets see future close encounters Forecaster's presen- that would be! DO 122 OMMI of three of the boys were soon found, Promised anonymity and baited by a GUATEMALA All bore.messages carved in the unmis- $20 bribe, a Guatemala City cop told CONTINUED FROM PAGE 90 takable language of torture: Their ears Omni that "the crime rate has been spi- had been sliced off, their eyes burned raling out of control. There are more mala when children die. Nahaman was out. And in a traditional warning to and more gangs of street children, taken by ambulance to San Juan de Di- witnesses not to "sing," their tongues They've been giving us a, lot of trouble. es, a state-run hospital. No police re- had been carved out. The other five It's bad for business, bad for tourism, port was filed—he was registered as boys were never found. bad for our national image," explained "XX" (unknown) — nor was a medical ex- "Hopefully, they were killed first;" the officer. "We cope as we can. We am performed. said Comatose, Nahaman Bruce Harris, who brought charg- obey orders." I had heard this some- was suffering convulsions and urinating es against Nahaman's executioners. where else. It is the same kind of crass blood. In addition to six fractured ribs, "But that's not the way it's usually official insolence that has time and the boy sustained two broken fingers done around here." Harris ought to again blocked investigations into a num- and open wounds to his cheeks and know. Harassed by Guatemalan police, ber of recent human rights violations, head. Seventy percent of his hair had he and his family had to leave and now including the assassination of several to be shaved, as it was covered with reside in Mexico. prominent Guatemalan "centrist" politi- glue. He also had a three-inch gash on In a larger sense, Nahaman's words cians, a lawyer, scores of human his back. Surgery was performed in an also underscore the vulnerability of in- rights activists, more than 50 Guatema- attempt to repair Nahaman's liver and nocence and truth in the eternal con- lan and U.S. journalists, anthropologist save his life. Despite recurring con- test with the forces of evil and injustice. Myrna Elizabeth Mack Chang (whose vulsions, no brain scan was ever The four policemen who were finally de- murder, it was recently confirmed, was done. He never regained conscious- tained in connection with his death ordered by a high-ranking member of ness and died ten days later. have been sentenced to prison terms the Guatemalan security forces), U.S. In their brutal yet eloquent simplici- of between 10 and 15 years. At this writ- citizen Michael Devine (abducted, tor- ty, Nahaman's last words serve as an ing, however, government-led efforts tured, and murdered by a group of men epitaph for the 40 or more Guatemalan are being made to release the officers. that included soldiers), and children's children who shared his tate, all killed The rationale: Alleged typographical er- rights advocates, including a Casa Ali- this year in the unrelenting underground rors in court documents filed by Casa anza staff worker. police-led campaign of extermination. Alianza invalidate the ruling for some rea- According to a U.S. State Depart- In one incident, eight street children son, thus prompting the authorities to ment report, "Reliable evidence indi- were kidnapped from a downtown neigh- conclude with characteristic sophistry cates that [Guatemalan] security forc- borhood by men in a jeep. The bodies that there is, therefore, no case. es and civil patrols committed, with al-

The essential guide to using astrology in your daily life.

Includes step-by-step

instructions for drawing and interpreting birth

charts, plus background information on the solar system, and rea

life case studies.

nd coptea of farters' Astrology Give your family a better IQ this Christmas. most total impunity, most of the major human rights abuses. These include „.jrtesr "lit oi'tht „™ C- III .; jlMik't LY'."L-W .lild extrajudicial killings, torture, and disap- .urn intelligent price tk._._ .r.ThelQ 9110 and the 10 Tutor the Intesi ikiiMiico troni InnerQne.-i, pearances of, among others, human m uiie o! the rial pLiniii:!- at [\-ivn.il gvwrh d,A iiifh'u'iivr.i technology. rights activists, unionists, indigenous peo-

r- ri-,i:j:.ii'i'is, I : .: ple, and street children.... Security forc- The IQ9IK -otter- 11 nr.gi":; , jeep relation es are virtually never held •accountable for these violations.. With few excep- tions, the government has failed to investigate, detain, and prosecute those perpetrators of extrajudicial and politically motivated killings who were unwilling to investigate cases aggres- sively if the military was thought to be involved. It is likely that military officials also shield lower-ranking personnel in- volved in killings. Approximately 400 policemen were discharged for a vari- ety of abuses, including corruption." Ex- policemen, however, are usually reset- tled as bodyguards or in a variety of pri- vate security assignments—and contin- ue to carry guns. The reign of terror that grips Guate- mala has also thwarted investigations into the brutal abduction, torture, and rape by Guatemalan police of Sister Di- anna Ortiz, a U.S. nun working with chil- dren. Her story was reported earlier this year by ABC's Diane Sawyer on Prime Time Live.

Guatemala City is a dusty, noisy me- tropolis that has grown and spilled over its own limits, physically and economi- cally. Like a festering sore, far from the opulent estancias and chic town villas Now you can explore CHAOS in where the well-to-do live in splendid a hands-on, visual way! Best- isolation, (three percent of Guatemalans selling science writer James own ninety-eight percent of the coun- Gleick, and Autodesk, Inc., a lead- try's arable land) the city has spread, ing software company, have collabo- tentacle-like, into pestilential slums, rated to bring the fascinating new along sunlit ridges and down the worlds of CHAOS to your IBM* slopes of dank garbage-strewn can- personal computer. yons where barefoot children, chickens, Discover your favorite Mandelbrot cats, and dogs share a common pre- regions. Explore strange effrac- tors. Alter the chaotic dance of carious existence. It is. in one such pendulums. Make slum, named Limon, that thirteen-year- magnets and ycurown fractal landscapes. old Angelica agreed to meet us. With a price on her head, stalked by the Generate never- before-seen color sound. policeman who has repeatedly raped chaos patterns in and James Gleick's CHAOS: The and threatened to kill her, Angelica now Software" will enable you to create moves from hovel to hovel, hiding dur- stunning images for graphics, learn- ing the day, earning a few quetzales ing,orjusiforfun! $59.95 at night selling herself. We found her in a room with oaro cindcro.ock wa Is. seal- ed at the edge of a cot, her feet, pitted by insect bites and skin lesions, rest- ing on the dirt floor, under a leaking corrugated sheetmetal roof held by waterlogged and rotting wood beams. On the streets since she was eight, Angelica saw her mother murdered by the woman who now lives with her fa- ther. She started drinking when she was ten. A man tried to seduce her when 1-800-688-2344 she was eleven. She escaped and was placed in a shelter where she was homosexually molested by an older girl. She has been sniffing glue for the es, frozen in a point in space where Church cannot be linked to the k. lings past three years. Caught stealing trin- God is said to dwell, exude pain and per se, it directly and indirectly bears kets from a variety store, she was disillusionment, betrayal and stupefac- a burden of guilt by denying women dragged by a policeman into a cul-de- tion. Every once in a while, almost me- access to birth control and abortion, sac behind the store, where she was chanically, Angelica casts a forlorn by censuring the teaching of safe sex, repeatedly raped and sodomized. The glance at the holy icon, perhaps for by disallowing the use of contracep- officer then shoved the barrel of his gun reassurance. But in her large brown tives, and by exhibiting gross indiffer-

into her mouth and, with a smile, threat- eyes all I see are false hopes and bro- ence to the causes and consequences ened to kill her if she talked. "Still smil- ken promises. of overpopulation. ing," and as if to punctuate his threat Outside, the vultures have resumed Contacts in Guatemala have quietly with a small sample, he kicked her in their abominable vigil, gliding overhead admitted that the Church has done far

the stomach "so hard that I nearly faint- like black-winged angels at a witches' less than it could on behalf of the chil- ed from the pain." The policeman had Sabbath, awaiting death, smelling it, tast- dren, "partly because of a lingering an-

not bothered to remove his shield and ing it almost. Surely, I reflect, even God tipathy by law enforcement agencies Angelica memorized the number. She must find Limon a very bitter fruit. against the clergy, and partly because staggered into a hospital where she blurt- For most of Guatemala's street chil- of its own inertia and a traditional ob- ed out her story and was treated. De- dren, the nightmare begins at concep- structionist policy that curiously places spite a formal complaint lodged on her tion, an act advocated and sanctified greater emphasis on the unborn" than behalf and forensic evidence submitted by the Church and soon trivialized by on the living. to a local magistrate, the policeman, the postpartum experience. Life there- While it is true that a number of ac- while identified three days after the in- after has neither meaning nor value. tivist priests and nuns have been exe- cident, was never charged. "Forensic Aloof and ethereal, Guatemala's Cath- cuted in Guatemala and elsewhere in evidence" goes bad after two days and olic Church has the solid backing of Latin America— frontline soldiers are may no longer be used in a Guatema- some mighty friends who have demon- always in the line of fire — princes of the lan court of law. strated greater obedience to ideology Church rarely, if ever, face similar dan- In a corner of the room, under the pal- than altruism. Continuing to bow to in- gers. In the case of Guatemala, the lid rays of a bare 40-watt bulb around terests stretching from the Vatican Church's actions, or lack thereof, on which a squadron of flies keeps circling, down to powerful Christian right-wingers behalf of its most vulnerable flock, the propped on a table littered with rags with close ties to the murkiest segments company it keeps, the tenacity with and old newspapers, rests a tall, garish- of U.S. intelligence and paramilitary which it controls its dominion, the ly painted figurine, a Madonna and communities, Guatemala's Church has arrogance of its double standards, child whose introspective, tortured gaz- little time for street children. While the all speak louder than words and all too "

perceived Al office for additional information. sadly point to what can be YOU CAN HELP only as a depraved indifference to hu- • CHILDHOPE, 333 E. 38th St., New man life. If this article has struck a chord, a let- York, NY 10016; (212) 983-1422. This inertia was dramatically illustrat- ter to your elected representatives is a • CHILDREN'S RIGHTS INTERNATION- ed during my visit to Guatemala when, good start. If you desire further informa- AL, 21 S. 13th St., Philadelphia, PA not to be outdone, Guatemala's first tion or wish to help the children by mak- 19107; (215) 569-8850. and second ladies —both touted as ing a contribution, contact the following • COVENANT -HOUSE, 346 W. 17th St., staunch supporters of children's organizations: New York, NY 10011-5002: (800) 999- rights, and both who claim pedigreed 9999. blue blood ancestry— failed to appear • AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA, • PLAN INTERNATIONAL USA, 155 for a prearranged interview. No apology 322 8th Ave., New York, NY 10001; Plan Way, Box M024, Warwick, Rl or explanation for their lack of interest (212) 807-8400. Or contact your local 02886-1099; (800) 556-7918. was ever offered-. "There is no justice in Guatemala," Bruce Harris comment- ed as we parted. "Kids are abandoned <7ffi> STARE-E-0'S by their families, persecuted by the Ironically, I ^^ state, rejected by society." PRIZE PUZZLE! noted, it is those most apt to help re- ^^ dress the "Sins that Cry to Heaven for Identify the objects re-E-0 below . 500 winners will be Vengeance"—oppression of the poor free, full color poster! "Seeing" and the orphans—whose hearts have not easy! To see the objects, diverge your eyes as if looking at i turned to stone. faraway object. The two dots will fuse, forming a third central Guatemala's coat of arms consists of dot. When the divergence is correct, slight, controlled variatioi two crossed rifles with fixed bayonets in the placement of the random dots are perceived by the brain as crossed boarding sabers and two depth cues. Shapes will appear to float above a textured back- flanked by two olive branches on a ground. Some see the image in seconds. Others find it more field of double blue and white. A nation difficult. If you can't see it, let someone else try. If they of contrasts, it continues to live by the succeed, perhaps they can help you. Still don't see? — order oui rifle. Sabers keep on rattling. Both are Stare-E-0 Starter Kit. We guarantee: it will be revealed! trained on easy targets. Inexplicably, as if guided by an irresistible urge to self-destruct, Guatemala, by immolat- ing its children, may be depriving' itself of a future. Can the olive branch ever prevail? OQ

POSTSCRIPT, A week after my return to New York, I received an urgent dis- patch informing me that the Casa Ali- anza shelter in Guatemala City had been peppered with machine-gun fire. The unidentified assailants, "four heav- ily armed men in a blue BMW" (most like- ly policemen implicated in brutal crimes against street children) "threat- ened to kill the director, the staff, and the children.

A week later, I was also informed that a seven-year-old street boy had been beaten to death by police. His head had been bashed, his eyes gouged. Positive identification could not be made. That same day, a fifteen- year-old boy was dragged by police to High quality, full color calendars and posters with variations on the outskirts of Guatemala City where the Stare-E-0 technique. The Starter Kit has instructions, special he was savagely beaten and burned lenses, more examples and catalogue. Guaranteed to get you "see- over 90 percent of his body, including ing"" too! Price: $5, refunded with an order! Calendars for

. , for a catalogue of his genitalia. Christinas — $20 00 or, just enter the contest N.E. Thing Stare-E-0 gaze toys. Satisfaction guaranteed. . .and we News of the bludgeoning to death of mean it! Wait till you see them !!!1 the Financial Times correspondent in Send Check or Money order to: Guatemala reached me at this writing.

IfiC S ' ware - Make your Sources tell me he was working on the 2-E-O's S40.00 ongoing Bank of Credit and Commerce P.O. Box 1827 equest a demo floppy! international scandal. This brings to Cambridge, Mft 02139 Credit Cards: (617) 621-7174 more than 50 the number of journalists World's Hardest Maze, killed in the line of duty in Guatemala Third Eye, Training Wheels since 1978. Death goes on. $15,00 each; Full Set: $35.00 —W. E. Gutman —

BAfUlES

Traditional 3-D glasses won't help you find the message concealed in these random dots

By Scot Morris

The blur of random dots on this page conceals a 3-D

message. Your job is to see the message and then

decipher it. We'll print the solution "in a later issue. In the past, you could see Ihree-dirnensional illusions only when wearing' special glasses with red and green lenses or with polarized lenses to separate "left eye" and "right eye" images. Or you could put a card between your nose and the page to separate the two printed images. Computers, however, now allow creators to make single 3-D images

1

on paper . Created by computer graphics whiz Dan Dyckman, our so-called single-image random dot stereogram is 980 pixels (picture ele-

ments) wide. "First I draw a strip of random dots, one hundred eighty pixels wide, your vision is blurred. to split Then gently let your gaze Keep your gaze there and appear. down the left side of the. the image. drift down the rectangle. the illusion will screen, with .each pixel Each eye should see two You should now see some You. need the proper having a fifty-fifty chance of circles, for a total of four. images in the dots, divergence, accomplished being, black or white," Now bring your visual Don't be discouraged if by fusing the two middle depth on circles. And you must hold Dyckman says. "Then 1 copy attention to the middle two, you can't see the columnof dots one Make them come together the first try. Some people your gaze long enough for hundred eighty pixels to the. and fuse into a single circle, need only a few seconds your brain to decode the

right. Each dot is printed You will see only three cir- before they -see it, but most depth information. also pro- exactly where it was before, cles and. you may perceive require as long as 20 minutes. Dyckman has except that within a certain depth in the central circle, Only a few cannot see it duced a Macintosh program after half or so. for your own contour—say, a circle as if it were rising out of the even a hour making each dot will be shifted one page like an overturned If your eyes converge the images. For more informa-

place to the left. When the polystyrene cup. Itmayalso images on the page itself, tion, send a self-addressed,

image is fused in your feel as if you're looking you won't see any depth. stamped envelope (SASE) vision, the brain will interpret through the. page. You must let your eyes to Dyckman at 300 First this area as a circle floating Some people may find it diverge "past" the page in Avenue, Suite 4-B, New above the background." easier to achieve the effect order to see the image York, NY 10009-1844. Holding the page about by crossing their eyes. In in the illusion. It's like looking N. E. Thing Enterprises one foot in front of you, look that case, the depth images out a window at the also sells poster-sized

at the two circles above the will be reversed. buildings beyond it but still random dot illusions, For image. Blur your vision and Having fused the middle being aware of what's on the information and samples

relax your eyes, as if you circles, maintain your window itself. send an SASE to One were looking at something gaze for a few seconds. and When you can fuse the Kendall Square, Building

several feet away. It may give your brain time to make two circles, you know your 200, Cambridge, MA help to blink one eye while sense of the visual field. eyes are properly diverged. 02139. DO 128 OMNI Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Carmen Sandiegq

Now Carmen's taking the fifth Amendment. And every-

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^Pa^^^B Chronoskimmer 450SL, your I crime-dog "Stretch" and the

1 ,300-page "What Happened ItsJ When!*" you're in hot pursuit — encountering the people, With brJiiam VGA gntphn;, di.giri.zt places, and events that rmtik, sound effe/.rr and ambient, una shaped America. You have i jirmen '.< more utiinuiwd rhan ever. a lot of time to cover — from 986 A.D. to the present — but not a lot of time.

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ECOLOGICIDE: Emerging environmental woes threaten Planet" Earth By Robert Bixby

Writer, editor, mind. Life will still carry on much will happen at once. In fact, it and ecoterrorist the same. may be too late already Robert Bixby But while all ihe attention has ECONOMIC RELAPSE studies ecology centered on mainstream ecolog- (or the lack ical issues, a legion of festering It cannot have escaped your no- thereof) from the problems have begun to emerge. tice that everybody's broke. smoggy No one talks about them, though There isn't enough money to foothills of the they promise to be even more dev- keep us healthy, fed, clothed, Smoky astating than the ones that grab and educated. Mountain range. the headlines. Government agencies are For example, automotive ex- hard at work figuring out ways to haustion. Does your car look allow you to select the necessities tired? Mine does. you want to continue in order that the rest may be discontin- DEPLETION OF THE TIME ZONE ued. Would you prefer police or Notice how rushed you are late- fire protection? Food, clothing, or ly? How there never seem to be shelter? Some have advocated enough hours in the day? Most of turning major American cities in- us attribute this to busy sched- to theme parks, complete with There seems to be no end to the ules, raising kids, and working 16 sewer tours to see the alligators ecological disasters either pend- hours a day. and subway tours to see the trog- ing or already in full swing on But in fact, the very essence of lodytes — anything to make or Space Raf! Earth. We've heard life itself is shrinking. Think back save a little money. the scientists' dull whine about to when you were young. An As an alternative to the long, the greenhouse effect for many hour spent in idleness could last successful All American Cities years now. forever. An eternity might pass as competition, a new contest to be And what was once the thin- you lay on the couch, watching named the Loathsome Bolshevik ning of the ozone is now consid- dust motes drift in a shaft of sun- Municipality has been designed

ered a receding ozone layer, lead- light as you awaited Howdy to help instill pride in the neglect- ing many scientists to recom- Doody while Mom warmed up ed residents of Newark, Boston, mend simply combing. the ozone some milk in a saucepan to mix and Detroit. The only thing stand- over from the side to cover the with Bosco. ing in their way is a lack of bare spot. "I've been doing it my- Contrast the leisurely passage funds. Which leads us to... self for years, and no one seems of time in your youth perhaps a — THE GREENBACK EFFECT to notice that I'm almost complete- mere 10 or 20 years ago—with ly bald," remarked one formerly the passage of time today By the By now you're probably in a hirsute atmospheric physicist. time you remember you were go- stale of aggravated anxiety, quak-

Actually none of these so- ing to start taping /, Claudius on ing in your chair, asking yourself called disasters will have much im- Sunday nights, six episodes questions like "How could it pact on most of us. The green- have passed. You buy a tape, ful- have happened?" and "What can effect to melt the ly house promises intending to at least catch the I do to prevent it?" and "Where poles, but unless you live in last few, but already the series is in the world are my nitroglycerin some low-lying coastal area, like over and you're stuck with Up- Key West or Washington, DC, stairs, Downstairs. The answer to these problems this just means that the beach The reason for this phenome- is the same as the answer to any will be a few miles closer. non is time compression. As a re- other problem: money. We need The thinning of the ozone sult, time is passing faster with to raise lots of money. With that boils down to being able to main- each moment. For example, in money, we will buy television and

tain that deep, rich tan just by the time it takes you to read this radio time to spread the word so walking to the car in the morning; sentence, you have aged six even more people will be aware most of us don't spend more months. The universe began of the problems. And they will

than a few minutes in the sun on- With a big bang and it will end then send money. any given day, anyway. You can with a big crunch. Soon there So do your part: Recycle put these matters out. of your will be no time left. Everything some cash today. DO