textfiles/magazines/TELETIMES/teletimes-94-04.txt

I N T E R N A T I O N A L                  T E L E T I M E S

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<EFBFBD> Vol. 3 No. 3                                  April 1994 <20>
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CONTENTS
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-- Features --

SEPERATE REALITIES: INDIA
  "What can a visitor hope to absorb of India in a short 
  time? Nothing but glimpses, dancers captured in the light 
  of a flash gun. How you see a place affects what you see, 
  how you feel affects what you experience."
  - by Dr. Euan Taylor

TSUKUBA: SCIENCE CITY
  "Founded in the 1970's, Tsukuba is amongst the newest 
  cities in Japan, a nation in which most towns and cities 
  have histories spanning centuries. It's also Japan's 
  Technological capital."
  - by Surekha and Prasad Akella

IMPRESSIONS OF THAILAND
  "Thai society is extremely status-conscious. Your social 
  status depends on many factors: monetary wealth, family 
  connections, relatedness to the royal family, religious 
  standing, and so forth."
  - by Ken Ewing

HAWAII PUBCRAWL
  "But what do you do after you've returned the snorkel gear 
  and showered off your Goldfinger-like suit of number-137 
  sunscreen? Watch TV in your room?"
  - by Ken Eisner

GUATEMALA TRAVEL NOTES
  "I was told of a German tourist who became so seriously 
  dehydrated that a med-evac to Guatemala City was 
  necessary. Once there, his passport was confiscated and a 
  bill for $12 000 was presented for the helicopter ride."
  - by Brian Quinby

TORONTO TO VANCOUVER BY TRAIN
  "Every now and then we pass a lake, completely frozen 
  over, flat and white, smooth as a skating rink. I'd love 
  to walk to the center of a big frozen lake like that and 
  just sit there for a while. I'd feel like the first blot 
  of paint on a fresh silk canvas."
  - by Paul Gribble


-- Departments --

THE LATIN QUARTER
  "On the night Marcos arrived in San Cristobal, he was 
  serenaded by women with hired guitarists outside the 16th 
  century cathedral where he was staying. In Mexico City, 
  women talk about spending a 'fantasy night in the jungle' 
  with Marcos, and others have confessed to discussing their 
  lust for the dashing leader with their psychiatrists."
  - by Andreas Seppelt

  "These are strange times for Mexico - awash in scandal, 
  kidnappings, armed insurrection, assassinations, and 
  swirling conspiracy theories; only four months ago it all 
  seemed so fine."
  - by Andreas Seppelt

KEEPERS OF LIGHT
  "An excellent darkroom technician, Wolchock seldom employs 
  any tricks or manipulative techniques in his work, 
  preferring to concentrate on strong images that present 
  best when simply properly printed."
  - by Kent Barrett

DEJA VU
  "Writing an article in a forum such as Teletimes about a 
  topic like gun control can be quite difficult...It is the 
  author's hope that this brief article will suggest to the 
  reader that further inquiry is required before forming an 
  opinion about the right to keep and bear arms."
  - by Gerry Roston

MUSIC NOTES
  "Long a favorite of critics, John Hiatt has undergone a 
  transformation from angry '70s new waver to tasteful roots 
  rocker, all the while turning out songs that other 
  musicians have lined up to cover."
  - by Jay Hipps

THE WINE ENTHUSIAST
  "Like wine, beer is a wonderful alcoholic beverage that 
  can have complexity, sophistication, and be a delight to 
  the senses. Like wine as well, the majority of beer 
  produced is made to appeal to as wide a market of 
  consumers as possible, and because of this most beers lack 
  the above mentioned qualities. "
  - by Tom Davis

NEWS ROOM
  "Should we limit what represents 'acceptable' opinion, or 
  are universities and colleges places where it should be 
  possible and acceptable to express any opinion without 
  restraint? If there are to be limits on the permissible -- 
  what should they be and how should they be defined ?"
  - by Dr. Euan Taylor, Jon Gould, Paul Gribble

CUISINE
  "Chiles are exceptionally good for you. High in vitamin C, 
  the chile adds flavor to food without adding many 
  calories, sodium, or fat. Poorer countries have known for 
  years that you can feel full on less food if the food is 
  highly spiced."
  - by Brian Silver


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EDITOR'S NOTE
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-- Photo Contest! --

Welcome to the 16th issue of International Teletimes. It's 
my pleasure to announce the first annual Teletimes 
Photography Contest, PHOTON '94! Kent Barrett, our 
Photography columnist, along with a couple of other well 
known Vancouver photographers, will be judging the photos. 
Winners to be announced in the July '94 issue. Prizes have 
not yet been finalized, although we are guaranteeing a 
colour Teletimes tee-shirt to the winner in each category. 
Cash prizes are a possibility if we get sufficient entries. 
The deadline for entries is May 31st. For more details, see 
the official information sheet and entry form at the end of 
this issue. Stay tuned for new developments.

I'd like to ask all of our readers to help us promote this 
contest by downloading the Photon '94 poster from our FTP 
site, printing it out, and distributing copies to 
photography stores and other such places in your area. The 
poster consists of two postscript files (front and back) and 
can be found at ftp.wimsey.com in the /pub/photon_94 
directory. We would greatly appreciate your help.

One last thing before I let you go on to read the rest of 
the issue. I'd like to welcome Ken Eisner aboard Teletimes. 
Ken is a writer from the Georgia Straight, a Vancouver 
Weekly newspaper who will be running a new Arts & 
Entertainment here in Teletimes, starting May '94. You can 
see his article, Hawaii Pubcrawl, in this issue (Features).

Ian Wojtowicz
Editor-in-Chief


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MAILBOX
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-- Los Ego-Boosters --

You are setting a high standard for electronic zines! Keep 
up the good work. Also, it is nice to see that your subject 
matter is not restricted to topics that would be, 
stereotypically, of interest only to net junkies.
  - Seth R. Trotz, Brookline, MA, USA

This is great -- I really enjoyed the editorial content, the 
style, and the inline art (the Gallery show and interview). 
KEEP IT UP. This is the future of on-line journalism.
  - Andrew Shaindlin

THANKS GUYS. WE LOVE ENCOURAGEMENT! LOOK FOR SOME GREAT 
IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MONTHS TO COME...


-- A True Teletimes Fan --

Last month, Martin Janzen became the first reader to donate 
money to Teletimes. We'd like to thank him publicly and let 
everyone know that donations are being saved up to be 
reinvested into the magazine (ie: eventually paying 
contributors, photo contest prizes...) THANKS MARTIN!!! 
(Donation information is provided in the Teletimes 
Staff/Info section.)

On Wed, 16 Mar 94, Martin Janzen writes:
For WWW readers it'd be nice to get an e-mail message saying 
that the new issue is available, without getting all 1600+ 
lines of the email version...

GOOD SUGGESTION. I'VE NOW CREATED A MAILING LIST FOR WWW 
READERS. IF YOU ARE READING THIS ON THE WEB AND WOULD LIKE 
TO GET NOTICES OF NEW ISSUES, MAIL ME AT 
EDITOR@TELETIMES.COM AND I'LL PUT YOU ON THE LIST.


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FEATURES
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-- Separate Realities: India --

You can see a lot of a place without really seeing anything, 
or see very little of it and still see a great deal. This 
was brought forcibly home to me by a recent trip to India. I 
spent just over a week in Rajasthan, travelling, living 
cheaply, seeing things that tourists see. One face of India. 
The second half of my stay was spent in and around Delhi to 
see two of my friends (both Indian) get married. Suddenly, I 
was face to face with (one part of) the real India, not a 
posed photo, not a cardboard cut out for the foreigner, not 
an image from years ago. For the first time I felt myself in 
a fundamentally different place.

What can a visitor hope to absorb of India in a short time? 
Nothing but glimpses, dancers captured in the light of a 
flash gun. How you see a place affects what you see, how you 
feel affects what you experience.

India can be a very cheap place to visit, how much you spend 
can be however much you want, it depends on your tastes. The 
biggest problem with India and the arrival in Delhi is the 
shock of the new. If you are thinking of going (and I 
strongly recommend it) then make a hotel booking for the 
first night before you arrive, and don't worry too much if 
you are getting ripped off by the taxi driver that first 
day. Try and get out of Delhi the first full day, get a 
train to Jaipur, or Jodhpur, or just somewhere else and save 
Delhi for another time. (Speaking for myself, I hated Delhi 
when I arrived, but when I went back a week later it was a 
wonderful, vibrant place. I had changed, not Delhi.) In 
Jaiselmer stay in the walled city if you can do it. By all 
means take a camel safari but don't book one until you have 
looked around at the prices. Some travel guides say you 
should take a full 4 days of camel safari to see the desert 
etc. For me, once you have seen the desert, it is not 
especially interesting, the scenery is quite repetitive, and 
riding a camel is very uncomfortable. The only people I met 
who really, unreservedly, enjoyed their desert trip had just 
hired a motor bike for the day and buzzed off alone.

In general, be prepared for the slowness of things in India, 
if you keep looking at your watch and worrying about your 
schedule you'll go nuts. Don't be surprised or unduly 
worried by long pauses, or painfully slow progress on the 
roads and railways, it is normal. Also stay away from 
anything run by the official government tourist agency. If 
you want to go to the Taj Mahal do not take a bus trip from 
Delhi, take the daily express train to and from Agra. It is 
cheaper, much quicker, gives you much more time and freedom 
to look around, and gets you back to Delhi hours earlier.

That's it for my tourist bit, now what about India? During 
my "holiday" I barely scratched the surface of India. As a 
tourist I never felt as if I was in India, just looking at 
it. A week later I had begun to see beneath the skin of this 
wonderful land and its culture, it was a different place 
from the one I had just visited.

When I was a guest, my experience was undoubtedly shaped by 
the attentions and deference of my hosts although they 
eventually started to relax a little (and so did I). But 
several things have rooted in my mind:

-- In general, the shop keepers the taxi drivers, the 
officials, and practically everyone with any publicly 
displayed reponsibility was a man. Having said that, in my 
friends family there were several daughters, one a hospital 
doctor, one a scientist (doing her Ph.D.) in North America. 
However much one may generalise, it is important to realise 
that things are always changing.

-- The coffee (which I was offered every ten minutes) was 
very milky, very sweet and quite weak. It seemed perfectly 
natural and normal in India but if I was offered it here I'd 
probably spit it out. The things going on around you can 
deeply affect what you find acceptable and even pleasant.

-- Hand shaking. Having once been introduced to people at 
the house (guests, relatives etc.), every time I ran into 
them they would make a point of shaking hands and saying 
hello. I got used to it, but the apparent formality of it 
made me extremely uncomfortable for a few days.

-- Servants. In a moderately well off household, middle 
class, not too fancy by western standards, people frequently 
have servants. In fact, they may lack many of the "modern 
conveniences" many of us take for granted (like a dish 
washer, a stereo system, a coffee maker, a home computer or 
whatever). But they are more likely to have servants, to do 
the washing, the ironing, the cooking, maybe even the 
driving. Human labour is cheaper and easier to obtain than 
many other things and it keeps a lot of Indians employed.

-- Kindness and friendliness. I was overwhelmed by the 
kindness and generosity (I mean social rather than 
financial) of my friends' families. I had begun to accept 
India as a rough, dirty, aggressive, tiresome place, but now 
I found it warm, relaxed, friendly and sophisticated. It was 
suddenly a wonderfully enriching and uplifting experience to 
simply be there amongst these people. (And yes being with a 
well off family must have helped to shape that perception.)

-- Indian society is very different from North American (in 
general). Parents and adults and older people are generally 
more respected. Marriage, children, and a decision to suit 
the family are much more expected and normal than might be 
the case here. It was particularly sobering to encounter the 
real differences in how Indians saw their society. Some 
thought that it was a privilege to be a good son/daughter, a 
fulfilment, a service to others to bring up children, get 
them married, have grand-children, etc. Some saw merely a 
cycle of dependency, look after your kids, teach them to be 
dependent on you until they get married and have job, then 
they will teach their children to be dependent and therefore 
obedient. Is the bottle half full, or is it half empty?

-- Richness. From my place as guest and friend in a 
relatively very well off family, the dirty, squalid, 
crowded, noisy, disorganised society of Delhi appeared 
entirely different. From that point of view it was exciting, 
alive, interesting, vivid, striking, almost intoxicating.

My final feeling (which may pass) is that there is no such 
thing as the truth about any country. There are only points 
of view. I don't mean anything so trivial sounding as 
"different opinions," I mean real substantive differences in 
nature of reality depending on the situation from which you 
see a thing. The true situation, the true nature of society, 
real life, are all subjective (to a large extent). Despite 
the incredulity of some of the more narrow minded people 
around here, I understand why my friends are so homesick for 
that country, why it is home, and this place is not. I have 
always understoood homesickness in an intellectual sense of 
course, though never really felt it. Now I have seen two 
people I know quite well in the North American environment 
slip so comfortably and easily and naturally into a place in 
a fundamentally different life in a society whose conceptual 
basis is different from mine. Now I see them perhaps with 
slightly different eyes because I have seen some of the 
forces which have shaped them. I understand in my stomach 
what they miss (even if I could never feel at home there).

  - Dr. Euan Taylor, Winnipeg, Canada
    etaylor@cc.umanitoba.ca

-- Tsukuba Science City: The City of the Future? --

The chances are that you have not heard of Tsukuba (Science 
City). We don't blame you, many Japanese haven't even heard 
of it! In fact, when we first moved to Tsukuba from Palo 
Alto, California, we were certain that the travel books we 
had read were written by people who had never set foot in 
Japan. After all, weren't the roads nice and wide? and 
straight? and tree lined? Where was the amazing public 
transport system that had been so eloquently described? The 
beautiful, old temples and castles? The ladies in bright 
kimonos? Could it be that we were back in the United States?

Well, not quite. Founded in the 1970's, Tsukuba is amongst 
the newest cities in Japan, a nation in which most towns and 
cities have histories spanning centuries. It's also Japan's 
Technological capital.

Until the 70's, most of the Japanese national labs (run by 
either the infamous Ministry for International Trade and 
Industry, MITI, or by the Science and Technology Agency of 
Japan) were located in the Tokyo metropolitan area. With the 
growth of the Japanese economy, and the realization that it 
was time to start generating the ideas in addition to the 
products engineered elsewhere in the world, the national 
government decided that it was time to expand these labs. It 
was also decided that the labs should be located close to 
each other so as to foster inter-disciplinary work. To 
relocate a dozen labs to a spacious campus, which are home 
to a few thousand researchers, was quite a challenge. As 
almost everyone knows, the cost of real estate in Tokyo is 
astronomical. So, rather than spend a fortune trying to find 
room in Tokyo, someone decided that it was time to build a 
new city. The rest is history.

Tsukuba was placed bang in the middle of a little pine 
forest and some paddy fields, about 60 kilometers north of 
Tokyo. (The pine forest was the only contiguous piece of 
land available within a reasonable distance of Tokyo.) While 
the labs started moving out from the late 70's, Tsukuba was 
formally inaugurated in 1985 when the World Expo was held 
here. In one of the inaugural shows, a wonderful 
anthropomorphic robot from the Waseda University grabbed the 
attention of the visitors. This humanoid played the piano 
along with an entire orchestra in a concert! Having labored 
to build similar machines, I was extremely impressed -- even 
after I visited Waseda and heard that an army (50-100) of 
graduate students had hand coded every motion that the poor 
robot made. The infrastructure that was set up for the Expo 
became the basis for the Science City. 

Today, Tsukuba is home to about 170 000 people associated 
with about 50 government labs, about 50 corporate R & D labs 
and a couple of national universities. (Depending on who is 
counting, and what the criteria are, I have seen numbers of 
up to 190 labs!) By bringing in the multi-nationals along 
side the Japanese corporate and national labs, it was hoped 
that Tsukuba could become another Cambridge or Palo Alto. 
The unstated hope was that the Nobel prizes would start 
flowing in once people settled into this intellectual 
atmosphere. Reality, sadly, is quite different from this 
wonderful dream. What has resulted is an interesting mix of 
good and bad. At the positive end is the variety of 
excellent labs of international stature located in town 
while at the negative end is the fact that folks here do not 
really believe in collaborations. For the Japanophiles 
reading this article, we suggest that you take a look at an 
interesting volume of the magazine, "Science" [see end of 
article] for details on the Tsukuba area, on the national 
and corporate labs in the city, and on MITI's role. 

A city which was founded as far back as 20 years ago does 
not really provide one with much to talk about. So we shall 
only briefly touch upon the life here. Unlike most cities in 
Japan which are unplanned, Tsukuba is a planned city. A 
consequence of this is that there is a campus-like feeling. 
Architecture is fairly standard (brick and glass 
construction in the MITI campus). Buildings are separated by 
paddy fields and open spaces. The city itself is large, 
spanning five smaller cities that were combined to form the 
new city. However, the core of the city is small -- it takes 
less than a half hour to ride through the main part of town! 
As the public transport system is almost nonexistent, bikes 
are a common mode of transport. Of particular interest is 
that fact that the poor public transport system has spawned 
off a Silicon Valley-like atmosphere where almost everyone 
drives around. The wide roads have spawned off their own 
sub-cultures amongst the more lively kids. One bunch, called 
the "bozozukas," attempt to vent their feelings by removing 
the silencers on their Harley-Davidsons and Hondas and 
thereafter proceeding to blast the neighborhoods with the 
deep roar of their powerful engines. Another group meets 
every Friday and Saturday night for a most interesting "you-
stay-in-your-car-while-I-stay-in-mine" dating (mating?) 
drama. They cruise down the road in two's, talking across 
open windows. Things are so different in Tsukuba that we 
have had Japanese friends come up from the more traditional 
Kyoto and Osaka areas, only to shake their heads and wonder 
if they were in Japan or in the US! 

We find this bizarre mix of new and old to be most 
fascinating. So, if you are looking for a place to relax in 
and to mix with the people who are striving to have 
something to do with the future of mankind, while not having 
to mess around with the bustle of Tokyo...Tsukuba is for 
you! If you do decide to head to these parts, remember to 
give us a call! We might even show you around...

  - Surekha and Prasad Akella, Tsukuba, Japan
    prasad@mel.go.jp

Sources
"Science in Japan," Science, Volume 258, 23 October 1992.


-- Impressions of Thailand --

In 1992 we spent two weeks in Thailand as part of a South 
East Asia trip. We spent one week in Bangkok and one week in 
the North, around the city of Chiang Mai. The following 
article describes some of my impressions of Thai culture.

Every few years I get to take an exotic trip somewhere in 
the world. I usually travel with friends and we create our 
own itinerary. Packaged tours have their place, but I prefer 
the adventure of finding my own way around. I typically 
spend up to a year studying about a country before going. I 
like the sense of adventure and challenge that comes from 
finding my way around a strange, exotic place. I always 
embark on a trip with a bit of a fantasy of being like James 
Bond starting a mission.

A Few Cultural Points

One main point of Thai culture is the idea of status. Thai 
society is extremely status-conscious. Your social status 
depends on many factors: monetary wealth, family 
connections, relatedness to the royal family, religious 
standing, and so forth. Personal interactions follow a 
rather strict protocol depending on the relative difference 
of social status between two people (most of this protocol 
goes completely unnoticed to foreigners). The Thai language 
has something like 28 different words for the pronoun "you" 
to be used between differing levels of status (i.e.; 
depending on whether you are talking to someone of higher 
status, lower status, and greater or lesser differentials of 
either, or if you don't know the status of the other).

Another dominant point of Thai culture is what we might call 
a strong element of superstition. For millennia the Thai 
people believed that innumerable spirits populated the land. 
These spirits (which are generally unpredictable) can 
favorably or unfavorably affect the lives of people. With 
this in mind, it becomes important to appease these spirits 
and avoid offending them. At least in some measure, you 
still find this kind of belief in Thai culture. And if this 
belief is not exactly literal, it is at least figurative or 
latent in that Thai culture is extremely conscious of fate 
and luck. Astrologers and fortune tellers are ubiquitous in 
Thailand. There also are numerous national lotteries, and 
one dominant cultural characteristic in Thailand is the 
constant search for the "lucky break." 

People

The Thai people are exceptionally friendly, so much so that 
after a while you begin to distrust it (as if you were being 
set up for something). Occasionally you might really be set 
up -- I got my pocket picked on my last day in Bangkok. 
Oftentimes I think that the Thai people see a Westerner and 
just want to practice their English. You will be walking 
down the street and someone will just start talking to you 
as if they know you well. It can be fun, but it also can be 
so incessant as to become bothersome after a day or two. 

Some Practical Points

The monetary unit in Thailand is the Baht (abbreviated "B"). 
The exchange rate is about 25:1 (i.e.; 1 B equals around 4 
cents US). My trick was to remember that 100 B equals 
US$4.00. 

A map of Bangkok is a must. There are some good tourist maps 
that list interesting things to see. They are also good for 
overcoming language barriers with taxi drivers, bus 
attendants, etc. Your hotel or guest house probably sells 
maps, but if not, there are lots of bookstores around town.

One of the most important rules for Bangkok is DICKER ON THE 
PRICE BEFORE DOING ANYTHING! Except for the bigger stores, 
most prices are haggled. This includes taxis, tuk-tuks, 
street markets, food stands, etc. Especially before riding a 
taxi, tuk-tuk, or long-tailed boat, ABSOLUTELY AGREE ON A 
PRICE BEFORE GETTING IN. 

Transportation

There are numerous ways to get around town in Bangkok. Taxis 
are the most luxurious mode, relatively speaking. Some are 
air conditioned, some are not. 50 B will take you pretty 
much anywhere in the downtown area. Tuk-tuks are a tradition 
in Thailand. These are three-wheeled, two-stroke motorcycles 
with a canopy over the back. Ex-kamikazes drive them. They 
are generally cheaper than taxis, but they are open-air 
vehicles that spew clouds of blue exhaust. Busses are fairly 
easy to figure out. There are bus maps at all the stops. The 
busses cost 4-7 B. For water transportation, there are three 
kinds of boats: water ferries (which simply go across the 
river), express boats (which travel up and down the river), 
and long-tail boats (which are the "taxi cabs" of the river 
and canals). For the water ferries and express boats, you 
pay at a ticket counter on the dock (1 B for the water 
ferries, 4-7 B for the express boat). For the long-tail 
boats, dicker for the price.

Food

Of all the oriental cuisines, Thai has always been my 
favorite. And I must say, the one thing that I most missed 
when I left Thailand was the food! Even an average Mom-and-
Pop foodcart on a street corner had the best-tasting Thai 
food I've ever had. Thai restaurants in the US just don't 
seem the same to me anymore. 

All the travel books warn about the food and drink in 
Thailand, and rightfully so. The books warn against eating 
from any street vendor. After a few days we regularly ate 
from the street carts, and we never got sick. Actually, you 
are more likely to get sick from the dishes than from the 
food, since the dishes might be washed in the local water. 
As a rule, you should avoid drinking any water or fluids 
that don't come from a sealed container. Avoid foods that 
could have been washed in water (such as salads, fruits, 
etc., although fruits that can be peeled, like oranges and 
bananas, are OK). Also avoid foods that have been sitting 
out for long periods of time. 

In general, we thought we could judge if a given food stand 
was okay. The ones we ate from seemed to have fresh food 
that was made daily. Also, if you really get desperate, 
there are plenty of McDonald's, Arby's, and the like (the 
ice and the soft drinks in these places were safe).

Religion and Culture

Religion is an overwhelmingly dominant characteristic of 
Thai culture. You cannot understand Thai culture without 
becoming acquainted with the religious heritage of the 
country, which revolves around Buddhism. 

Buddhism came to Thailand around the 12th century when 
Buddhist missionaries traveled there from Sri Lanka. 
Thailand today is one of the most thoroughly Buddhist 
nations in the world (95% of the population). The country 
has 30 000 temples (450 in Bangkok, 300 in Chiang Mai). Thai 
Buddhism incorporates many of the animist beliefs that were 
prevalent before Buddhism came (such as beliefs in spirits 
of the land and the household). The result is a unique 
religious mix that sets Thai Buddhism apart from Buddhism in 
other countries.

For example, everywhere you go in Thailand, you see what 
look like fancy birdhouses in front of buildings. Some of 
these "birdhouses" are very ornate, like miniature temples. 
In reality, these are "spirit houses." One characteristic of 
these spirits is that they are very capricious and easily 
offended. A big part of the culture for centuries has been 
to appease these spirits and avoid offending them. One way 
of doing this is to keep them away from you, especially out 
of your house. But how do you get spirits out of your house? 
Answer: build them a house of their own, of course. But how 
do you guarantee that they will leave your house and go to 
the spirit house? Answer: make the spirit house "better" 
than your house. You also want to make sure the spirits know 
you have not forgotten them (they might be offended), so you 
leave little offerings (food, flowers, incense) at the 
spirit house from time to time. 

The highest-ranking social class in Thailand is the Buddhist 
monk. (The King ranks #2 behind the lowliest monk.) For this 
reason, there are many rules for social propriety when 
around the monks and temples. For example, when in a temple, 
never sit in a lotus position. This is the position that the 
monks sit in, and for a layman to sit in this position is to 
say that you are equal in status to the monk. (The proper 
way to sit is to bend down with your knees to the floor, 
knees together, sitting on the heels of your feet, with your 
feet pointed behind you.) If a monk approaches you at a 
temple, a Thai Buddhist will bow down three times with his 
face to the floor (the symbolic meaning is that the layman's 
head is lower than the feet of the monk). 

Monks live a very simple lifestyle. They are forbidden to 
have money. They live in very austere quarters. They have 
very few possessions, mainly consisting of their saffron 
robe and a food plate. Monks are allowed to have at most 
only two meals a day: one at daybreak and one at midday. The 
midday meal must be completed before noon, after which the 
monk may not eat again until daybreak the next day. If you 
rise early (around 6:00 AM or so), you will see the monks 
wandering the streets gathering their food for the day. In 
Thai culture a monk collects his food from the people. He 
wanders the area with his food plate (which looks like a 
large pie plate) and the people bring food items and put 
them into the plate. When the plate is full, the monk has 
collected his food for that day. Here in the West we might 
look on this practice as freeloading, but in Thailand it is 
seen as a service. Buddhism in Thailand (unlike the 
philosophical varieties that I have heard described in the 
US) is an elaborate system of "works righteousness" (i.e.; 
it consists of rituals and deeds designed to acquire 
heavenly merit.) One way for a layman to gain heavenly merit 
is to give food to the monks. So, by wandering around early 
in the morning, the monks are providing a service to the 
people by giving them an opportunity to gain heavenly merit.

One of the biggest ways to acquire heavenly merit is to 
become a monk. Thai men are not required to become monks 
during their lives, but they are strongly encouraged. The 
minimum "tour of duty" is one rainy season (about 1-3 months 
-- my sources differ on the exact duration). To become a 
monk, you must be a man (most men who become monks do so 
around age 20). There is a ordination that takes place in 
July (the beginning of the rainy season). You must vow to 
obey 227 rules of conduct, including poverty, chastity, etc. 
You can choose to remain a monk for as long as you want 
after the minimum stay. In the Buddhist scheme, becoming a 
monk not only gives merit to the man, but also to the man's 
whole family. Hence you see mothers urging their sons to 
become monks so that the whole family can benefit. Thai 
women can become Buddhist "nuns", but this does not carry 
the same status (or heavenly merit) that comes from being a 
monk. 

Buddhist temples are fabulously ornate. They usually contain 
many gold images of the Buddha in any of five postures (two 
in a lotus position, two standing, and one reclining -- each 
posture has a particular significance). Conduct inside a 
temple is often different from a Westerner's expectation. 
Particularly, we tend to equate a Buddhist temple with a 
Christian church. The significant difference is that the 
Christian church service is a corporate affair, where the 
people assembled participate as a group. In the Buddhist 
temple, though, the worshipers are very individualistic. 
Each person is carrying out an individual ritual strictly 
for himself or herself, so you can walk around, watch, 
engage in conversation, etc. (i.e.; without seeking to be 
arrogant or obnoxious) and you will not be intruding upon 
the activities around you.

A typical Buddhist ritual consists of the individual 
bringing (or buying) some incense sticks, candles, and a 
piece of gold leaf. The worshipper bows down before the 
Buddha statue, engages is some ritualistic prayers while 
shaking the incense sticks, then lights the incense and the 
candles, makes his or her requests to Buddha, then finishes 
by applying the gold leaf onto the Buddha statue. Requests 
might be for such things as a good mate, success in 
business, winning the lottery, or some other kind of good 
luck. 

Redlight Districts

Bangkok is world-famous for its redlight districts. Sex is 
an outright industry in Thailand. Our guest house happened 
to be two blocks from Patpong, one of the famous districts 
from the Vietnam era.

Virtually anywhere in Bangkok you can get pestered about the 
sex parlors, but this especially happens near the redlight 
districts. The parlors employ people to stand out on the 
sidewalks and solicit customers. Particularly if they see a 
Westerner, they walk up and begin their pitch: "What you 
looking for?" "Wanna massage? Wanna massage?" "Nice girls! 
Nice girls!" If they stick with you long enough, they will 
even pull out their color glossy brochure about their sex 
parlor. 

The unfortunate reality is that many of the girls in the 
parlors are only teenagers (as young as 13). Many of them 
are from country farms where the family needs money so the 
father basically sells his daughter into slavery. In 
addition, about 70-80% of the girls are HIV positive. 
Thailand today is one of the worst hotbeds for AIDS in the 
whole world. It's not just risky to indulge in the sex 
parlors, it's a virtually assured infection.

Final note

Thailand is a fascinating, exotic, exciting place, but it's 
also very wearing. Throughout my time there, I never once 
felt in any kind of physical danger (and we walked all over, 
city and country, at all hours of the day). But, strangely 
enough, at no time did I have the feeling I could let my 
guard down. Particularly in Bangkok, the place never rests. 
There is the air pollution...the incessant activity...the 
traffic...being hounded by tuk-tuk drivers...being 
approached by street vendors...can I eat or drink 
this?...dickering the price for everything. By the time we 
left, we were both mentally exhausted. We are both 
experienced world travelers, but the culture shock still got 
to us. I am glad I went, but I will have to take a good long 
rest before I go back.

  - Ken Ewing, Beaverton, Oregon, USA
    kene@sequent.com


-- Hawaii Pubcrawl --

The beach rules. Don't look for any arguments here. But what 
do you do after you've returned the snorkel gear and 
showered off your Goldfinger-like suit of number-137 
sunscreen? Watch TV in your room? Or go catch Charo in the 
non-stop Polynesian follies at the Hilton (Don't worry: she 
has a contractual clause allowing Joan Collins to step in if 
she gets too old to perform her duties).

I like Hawaii during the annual International Film Festival, 
in mid- November, but when some die-hard urbanites switch 
cities, they find cinema-going too passive, preferring an 
environment which serves up live music with a decent 
daiquiri. The Don Ho virus is rampant throughout the islands 
-- years of forced "hospitality" and a sentimental strain in 
their traditional music have made the Holiday Inn croon 
endemic to even the best Hawaiian singers -- but it's 
possible to step off the tourist-trampled path and find a 
vital, if slightly undernourished, alternative music scene 
in Honolulu.

To answer your first inevitable question: yes, plaid has 
come to Hawaii! While surfwear still dominates club-going 
garb, it's not unusual to see leather jackets, flip-flops, 
and a knee-length lumberjack shirt on the same college-age 
person. (This isn't as absurd as the tropical climate would 
suggest, considering how frigid the buses and restaurants 
are kept. Which seems to suit Doc Martens-togged 20-year-
olds who peer out their windows and, at the first hint of 
rain, dream of exotic Seattle.)

I was surprised at the number of name acts in town: 
Ladysmith Black Mambazzo, KRS-One, Fishbone, and the Violent 
Femmes were gigging at small-hall or outdoor concerts. 
Suicidal Tendencies was at After Dark, an industrial-style 
club on the Nimitz Highway; and C-5, on isolated Sand 
Island, had scored Babes in Toyland. Still, I wanted to 
check out the local angle.

Much of the obvious nightlife in Honolulu is centred in that 
thumb-shaped lozenge of hotel towers and fluffy white 
beaches called Waikiki -- familiar to millions, if only from 
reruns of Hawaii 5-0 and Magnum P.I. Waikiki is cut off from 
the rest of the city by the Ala Wai Canal, and its choicest 
hunk of real estate, smack in the middle, is still inhabited 
by the U.S. military (standing ready since 1893). This makes 
for a rather hemmed-in stroll for trinket-hunting visitors; 
after a few days, it's easy to feel like fish in a large 
circular aquarium. There are no footbridges across the 
canal, and this is most certainly a tourist-corralling 
device. But most of the beachfront entertainment is of the 
hotel-lounge variety, and if you want to get away from the 
Pukalani Brothers's slack-key version of "Feelings", a good 
place to start is the small university district.

The number 4 bus zigzags across the canal and winds uphill 
to the University of Hawaii. The stop across from the 
Varsity Theater (the film fest's flagwaver) lands you in 
front of Moose McGillycuddy's, a dark-wood, top-40 joint 
much like college suds-barns everywhere. Notably, though, it 
hosts a once-a-month, all-night blowout with about a dozen 
local bands. 

I prefer a few at a time, and about two long blocks west on 
main-drag Beretania Street is Anna Bannana's. A beat-up club 
with an amiably split personality, its lower level is a 
classic biker's bar, with pool tables, surly bartenders, and 
Bud on tap; upstairs, a coterie of local bands, like 
Melodious Thunk and the metalheaded Poynt Blankk, play for 
students. The night I went, multi-race/gender house 
favourites Pagan Babies were holding forth with their 
impressively versatile (if slightly synthetic) blend of 
world beat, funk, and jazz-rock styles; the cluttered, 
multilevel room was rocking with serious dance-itude.

Moving further east, just before the Diamond Head area, is 
Kapahulu Avenue, a long strip of T-shirt shops and good 
restaurants. In the middle is the Java Java Cafe, a plain-
looking deli which favours bagel dishes and black-clad 
existentialists. Up some vaguely defined back stairs, I 
found a door, oddly marked "Lost Lizard", behind which a 
terrific jazz group called Money, Sax & Power was cutting 
loose in a Coltrane vein, while scattered patrons sipping 
non-alcoholic beverages sat uncomfortably on folding chairs. 
Java Java has since closed this room, staging occasional 
jazz and poetry performances in the deli proper until it can 
expand into larger premises (two similarly jazz-minded 
coffeehouses are called, appropriately, Cappuccino's and Tri 
Espresso).

Found far west down the ocean-side Ala Moana Boulevard, at 
the end of a nondescript mall-strip known as Restaurant Row, 
is the Blue Zebra, an airy, L-shaped room with good 
acoustics and a reputation for encouraging class jazz acts. 
My first encounter, though, yielded a rather desultory blues 
band, complete with hats and shades. When Dan Aykroyd didn't 
show up, I took off, but a few nights later, the club hosted 
a sparkling piano trio (there were international jazz acts 
at the nearby Honolulu Academy of Arts, which also features 
local classical and new music events).

Also in the Row, Rex's Black Orchid is home to numerous 
hardcore bands, like Action Figures, Cache, and the 
unforgettably named Two Guys and Two Girls. Further into a 
residential neighbourhood close by, I discovered My Favorite 
Eggplant, a cavernous warehouse space recognizable only 
because of a red light blinking over a huge crack carved in 
one cement face. Inside, disconsolate teenagers stared at 
snowy TV screens and faux Greek columns, or danced, semi-
moshingly, to a reggae-grunge band called Red Sessions. The 
gaggle of New York film-makers I dragged there grumbled at 
having to settle for power shakes at the all-ages bar. 
They've since had their revenge: the joint recently closed, 
and is now searching for a less neighbour-annoying location.

Ironically, the most fun I had was around the corner from my 
hotel, at the Wave Waikiki. A steamy, windowless box only a 
few blocks from the beach, the Wave is frequented by guys in 
Gold's Gym tank-tops, and the odd pack of miniskirted women 
practising their model pouts as they make a bee-line for the 
washroom or mezzanine above the stage. 
I went on a Tuesday, which offers local favourites, and I 
was lucky enough to encounter two great bands: Elvis '77, a 
Soundgarden-type noise trio driven by a twin-pigtailed 
drummer; and the Love Gods, an exceptionally tuneful quintet 
boasting inventive, REM-ish songs from frontman James 
Figueira and g-spot guitarist Porter Miller <20> they were the 
one group I saw with breakout potential. Of course, my 
judgement could have been flawed, since Tuesday is also 
"bucket night"; I didn't realize my scotches were actually 
triples until a waiter politely asked me down from my bar 
stool, adding that I could stop cheering the band -- the 
house had already been playing videos for five minutes.

Access

The best way around Waikiki is on foot or better yet, by 
bicycles, widely available for rental. Buses are cheap, if 
not quite plentiful enough, at 85 cents a ride <20> less for 
students! Taxis are needed for Restaurant Row, Sand Island, 
and other outer limits, and are reasonable by mainland 
standards. Here are some venue locations (808 is the area 
code for the whole state):

Moose McGillycuddy's  Waikiki, 1035 University Avenue, 944-
  5525
Anna Bannana's, 2440 S. Beretania Street, 964-5190
Java Java Cafe, 760 Kapahulu Street, 923-9952.
Blue Zebra, 500 Ala Moana Boulevard, 538-0409
Honolulu Academy of Arts, 900 S. Beretania Street, 532-8768
The Wave Waikiki, 1877 Kalakaua Avenue, 941-0424

For event listings, listen to KPOI 97.5 FM (The Edge) and 
KIPO 89.3 FM (Hawaii Public Radio, which actually plays CBC 
news on Sundays), or pick up the Honolulu Weekly, Metropolis 
music magazine, and Artbeat, a hip bi-monthly newspaper.

  - Ken Eisner, Vancouver, Canada


-- Guatemala Travel Notes --

I have just returned (January 6th) from Guatemala. Here are 
some travel notes I wrote:

The war in Chiapas (Mexico) is going to cause problems for 
people who want to travel off the beaten track in Peten. The 
Guatemalan military is increasing its activity along the 
border and is paranoid about gringos given the Mexican 
government's assertion that "foreigners" are involved in the 
revolt. When I flew into Flores, there was so much military 
activity, it looked like the opening scene from the Oliver 
Stone film, Platoon. 

Beware of Tikal Jets. I encountered many people who had 
complaints...overbooking, overselling and selling tickets on 
flights that simply didn't exist.

In Flores, Hotel Yum Kax is a perfectly good place to stay. 
Doubles with ceiling fan run $19 per night. Air conditioning 
is about $4 more but not worth the noise. No hot water but 
in the jungle, who needs it. The hotel has a swimming pool 
which is nice and the staff are very eager to please. 

At the airport, I was quoted 100 Quetzals for the trip to 
Tikal. At Yum Kax it was 30. The hotel ran vans at 4 am (for 
the cosmic folks who want to see the sunrise) and at 7 am 
(for the more laid back types.)

For those who don't understand what happens to the human 
body when it is very hot and humid, let me explain: you 
become dehydrated. If you go to Tikal, bring bottled water 
with you. I was told of a German tourist who became so 
seriously dehydrated that a med-evac to Guatemala City was 
necessary. Once there, his passport was confiscated and a 
bill for $12 000 was presented for the helicopter ride.

In Panajachel, I stayed at the Cacique Inn. Adela Schuman (a 
wonderful woman whose age I won't hazard a guess at) runs 
the wonderful hotel. $50 per night for a double. El Dragon 
is a superb restaurant for dinner (22 to 27/Q) and the Deli 
has great cappucino and eggs benidict (17/Q).

In Guatemala City, Hotel Excell (9a Ave & 15 Calle in Zone 
1) is a great bargin at 95/Q per night. They have a car park 
that is secure. Rooms are large, they include a TV -- but no 
cable -- and have ample hot water from the little heaters on 
the end of the pipe. Restaurant Gran Central (across the 
street from the Excell) serves excellant Peruvian food at 
very low prices and also is very international at night. 

When I was there (December 18th to January 5th) the Quetzal 
averaged 5.78 per dollar at the bank, and about 5.85 on the 
street.

One final note: Guatemala now seems to be more of a drug 
market than a transit point. I received more offers on the 
street to purchase marijuanna from Belize than ever before. 
Rumor has it that the product is of high quality but the 
reality is that Guatemalan jails are are not worth the 
hassle.

  - Brian Quinby, Aurora, Illinois, USA
    quinby@imsa.edu


-- Toronto to Vancouver by Train: Paul Gribble's Journal --

I'm twenty two years old and I've just had a spontaneous 
pneumothorax ("doctorese" for a lung which spontaneously 
decided to collapse). Yeah, I may be complaining, but I 
should be dead. I was blacklisted by my chromosomes. Charles 
Darwin gave me the thumbs down; Natural Selection gave me 
the finger.

Why have we slowed down to 5 miles per hour? I don't mean 
society, I mean the train. I'm on a train -- the "VIA-1 
Canadian" train from Toronto to Vancouver. Oh good, it's 
speeding up again. I've been on it for about six hours now, 
and I'll be on it for another 77 hours. Maybe I should carve 
out the hours on my bathroom wall... Maybe they'd leave me 
to rot in Winnipeg with my surgical scars and my Powerbook. 

I suppose any risk of the lung re-collapsing is not a risk 
worth taking. Dr. Ergina sandpapered the outside of my lung, 
then sandpapered the inside of my chest wall, then slapped 
them together like bologna and mustard on rye (ooh, I think 
it's dinner time soon). He thinks the changes in air 
pressure inside of an airplane might rip them apart before 
they get a chance to bond like crazy glue. I certainly 
wouldn't want to have to press the call-button on my aisle 
seat and ask the stewardess if she happened to have a 
scalpel and a chest-tube on board the aircraft. I can't help 
thinking about that M*A*S*H episode where Radar has to do a 
tracheotomy with a pocket knife and a fountain pen. I 
suppose I'd have to use the tubing from the pneumatic 
headphones -- that is, if they haven't switched to 
electronic ones yet.

Yes, I think it's dinner time now. Maybe I'll meet some 
interesting and amiable people in the dining car and have a 
friendly, comfortable conversation about recently cherished 
events. Maybe I'll sit in front of vile, smelly yobs who 
blow cigar smoke in my face and jeer about the waves in my 
hair. Maybe I'll sit alone and stare out the window. That 
may be the most interesting option.

Yum. I think I'll just eat the cheesecake from now on. The 
halibut was bland. I think they have some sort of rule about 
clustering people together at tables -- preventing people 
from sitting alone. I sat with a woman and her adult son 
(Betty and Bill) and this guy from Brockville, Ontario. 
Betty and Bill are from Vermont. She seemed sweet, he seemed 
like an overgrown hippie. They're going to Vancouver, and 
then to Portland; they say that the equivalent Amtrak route 
through the US sucks big-time, that it's boring and the 
train is in terrible condition. It made me proud for a 
second that two Americans would come to Canada to make their 
trans-continental journey. 

After dinner I went back to my "bedroom" berth. It reminds 
me of a hotel room I had in Japan last summer. The hotel 
room was bigger -- but not by much. Here, at least the view 
changes. There's a sign above the faucets by the sink that 
says "Undrinkable Water." I wonder what's in it? The light 
switch for the light in the closet that houses the toilet 
says "Annex Light." Annex? At least the French below it is 
honest enough to say "Toilette." There's a sign above the 
toilette that says "Please Do Not Flush When Train Is In 
Station." I saw the sign just after I flushed...and then 
realized we were in a station. Oops. I sat in my room with 
the door locked waiting for very angry, very smelly station 
workers to come knock down my door.

I remember dreading this trip, being trapped on a train for 
3 days, but now it's kind of nice to be able to just sit 
here, staring out the window, letting my mind wander, 
without worrying about where I have to be or what I should 
be doing. The view doesn't really change that much from 
minute to minute, it's all just trees and snow right now, 
but it doesn't feel boring or repetitive.

The bed is barely too short. I can fit on my side with my 
knees bent, but on my back, my toes are smushed against the 
wall. I had trouble falling asleep and I kept waking up. 
Whenever the train goes along curved track it rolls you back 
and forth and up and down in your bed. I guess this is what 
it feels like to be a Bingo ball.

I think we're somewhere in western Ontario now. I had no 
idea that the province of Ontario is so wide. We've been 
chugging along for almost 24 hours now and we still haven't 
reached Manitoba! Winnipeg is the next major stop -- a lot 
of people are leaving the train there. The "Map" control 
panel on my Powerbook says Toronto to Winnipeg is 940 miles, 
and Winnipeg to Vancouver is 1160 miles, so I guess Winnipeg 
is technically the half-way stop. We'll probably arrive 
sometime this evening. Maybe I'll get off the train and call 
home. I hope the train won't leave without me. 

I sat in the "Domed Observatory" (the bubble-car) this 
morning as we chugged through the forest. In this part of 
the country the landscape is mostly short trees and 
underbrush. It's not mountainous, but not flat like the 
prairies -- rolling hills, I suppose. It must be ideal 
country for summer camps and family camping grounds. There 
are streams and rivers every few miles, some frozen over, 
some not. Sometimes you can make out a layer of brownish, 
yellowish, frothing filth collecting in a side pool or along 
the shore. A quick scan of the treetops will usually reveal 
a factory, or maybe just its smokestack, spitting stuff up 
into the air. 

Every now and then we pass a lake, completely frozen over, 
flat and white, smooth as a skating rink. We passed one lake 
that was absolutely huge -- it looked like it went on 
forever. I've never seen such a simple display of nature's 
beauty. I'd love to walk to the center of a big frozen lake 
like that and just sit there for a while. I'd feel like the 
first blot of paint on a fresh silk canvas.

Well, I seemed to have missed the prairies completely. 
Yesterday evening around supper-time we left Winnipeg, and 
when I woke up this morning we were in Edmonton, Alberta; I 
think we passed through Saskatoon, Saskatchewan sometime 
around 3am last night. So much for endless fields of 
sunflowers and wheat. I'm actually quite disappointed. I was 
looking forward to seeing the prairies for the first time. I 
suppose it would have looked like tundra this time of year, 
anyway. 

After passing through the entrance to Jasper National Park 
(10,878 square kilometers, collectively declared a "World 
Heritage Site" by UNESCO in 1984) and Disaster Point (a 
stark mass of rock that drops almost straight down into the 
Athabasca River, except where it was blasted for the 
railbed), we arrived in the town of Jasper, Alberta (pop. 4 
000) this afternoon. Now these are mountains! I'm instantly 
jealous of the people who live here. My favourite peaks are 
the jagged ones, with long, sharp ridges and snow-covered 
sides. They look triumphant. They stand tall and proud, smug 
in their knowledge that humans will never create anything as 
large, beautiful, and permanent. They even rise above the 
clouds. I suppose our only rebuttal is to climb them and 
hoot from atop their peaks. 

The smaller, rounder mountains look less victorious. They 
don't seem to have as much energy as the jagged peaks, and 
most of them look patchy and torn from clear-cut logging. 
They look tired and glum. How did trees ever start to grow 
on rocky mountaintops? Will they ever return there in my 
lifetime?

Everything here is covered in snow and ice. Some trees are 
bent over from the weight of it, kissing the ground. There 
are little footprints in the snow atop frozen creeks and 
rivers, but I haven't seen anything smaller than a moose 
walking around in the light of day. They look very disturbed 
when you catch sight of them from the train; kind of like 
you'd look if a bunch of strangers suddenly came barreling 
through your home in a long steel noisemaker. I wonder if 
the animals frolic and have fun in the snow, or if they're 
cold and miserable. Every couple of hours we pass through a 
tiny little settlement, with a few log houses and a road or 
two. I wonder if they live off of the land or off of 7-11 
and J. Crew. 

Tonight we will pass over the Alberta-BC border, losing an 
hour as we change from Mountain to Pacific Standard Time. 
During the night we'll pass through Clearwater, Kamloops 
(doesn't that sound like some kind of kid's cereal? 
Hmmmm...maybe I need a snack), Ashcroft, Boston Bar (yeah, 
and maybe a drink too), Hope, and by first light we will be 
in Chilliwack. Wasn't there a hit single by a band called 
Chilliwack in the early eighties? What was it called? I've 
been listening to too much U2 on this trip.

I wonder what these towns like "Boston Bar" and "Ashcroft" 
are like that they'd schedule the train to go through the 
Rockies in daylight, and these places at night:

Ashcroft, BC (pop. 1,900) gets only 18 centimetres of 
precipitation a year, earning it the title of "the driest 
town in Canada." The landscape is desert-like, and both 
cactus and sage grow in abundance. Erosion has created odd 
formations from the reddish bluffs, such as hoodoos, 
isolated pinnacles of rock that remain after a hill has worn 
away. (From "Enchanting Horizons: VIA Rail's Log to Western 
Canada") 

Oh.

I guess in the high-school of the wilderness, hoodoos aren't 
as popular as towering jagged snow-covered mountaintops. 
Hoodoos probably sit in the library during lunch hour, or 
alone outside, just watching the world go by. Snow-capped 
jagged peaks get all the attention. 

It's pitch dark now as we chug towards Clearwater. I hope 
that's not an inaccurate name for the place. When I wake up 
I will have spent more than 77 hours on the train, crossing 
most of our country by land. I usually make the same trip by 
plane in about 5 hours. On the train I was in constant 
contact with Canada, feeling bumps and hills and curves even 
as I slept: my body on the train, the train on the tracks, 
the tracks pinned to the land by spikes sunk deep into the 
ground. On the plane I look down nervously towards the 
ground, and the view from 30,000 feet up is airplane wing 
and clouds as we speed impatiently over the countryside. On 
the plane I feel like one of a herd of nervous, hurried 
sheep, with no privacy and no personal space. Stewards and 
stewardesses constantly demanding things of me - my boarding 
pass, my attention, my cooperation, my choice of dinner 
entree. My nerves are constantly frazzled by sudden, 
unexpected air pockets and turbulence. I arrive stressed out 
and jet-lagged, luggage optional, Toronto to Vancouver.

Tomorrow we will roll into Vancouver awake and refreshed, 
with an eternal appreciation of the rich and diverse texture 
of the lands we share, but also with a nagging 
disappointment that our lands seem to have been soiled by 
the society which enabled us to make the journey. 

  - Paul Gribble, Montreal, Canada
    gribble@motion.psych.mcgill.ca


------------------------------------------------------------
DEPARTMENTS
------------------------------------------------------------

-- The Latin Quarter --
   Romance in the Hills of Chiapas

In his last visit to Mexico, Peruvian Novelist and former 
Presidential Candidate, Mario Vargas Llosa, caused 
considerable agitation and official outrage when he 
exclaimed, "Mexico, the other Latin American nations stand 
in admiration of you. You are the 'perfect' dictatorship, 
all under the guise of apparent democracy." He was quickly 
hustled out of the country, as much for his own safety, as 
for any further potential embarrassing remarks he might 
make.

Now, Mexico can even lay claim to having the "perfect" 
revolutionary leader. Not since the dark, brooding, 
mustachioed Emiliano Zapata rode his white horse out of the 
hills of Morelia, into Mexico City, has a leader captured 
the imagination and public appeal as the charismatic, ski-
masked leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, 
Subcommandante Marcos. On the night Marcos arrived in San 
Cristobal de las Casas for the recent negotiations with 
Government negotiator Manuel Camacho, he was serenaded by 
women with hired guitarists outside the 16th century 
cathedral where he was staying. In Mexico City, women talk 
about spending a "fantasy night in the jungle" with Marcos, 
and others have confessed to discussing their lust for the 
dashing leader with their psychiatrists.

In these ten weeks since the insurrection began, Marcos has 
certainly not discouraged the romantic fantasies, and many 
women are treating his often poetic "press releases" as 
personal pleas. In San Cristobal, Marcos gave a passionate 
speech, asking, "Why do we (the Zapatistas) have to sleep 
with our boots on, and our souls hanging by a thread?"

However, there is more to Marcos than a mysterious 
revolutionary, sending of romantic sound-bites. Handwriting 
analysts have suggested a man who is extremely intelligent, 
egotistic almost bordering on vanity, often exhibiting a 
mood of omnipotence, impulsive, and occasionally depressive. 
He has demonstrated a clear understanding of Mexican history 
and its even more poignant relevance now, and many of his 
"communiques" indicate a knowledge of military tactics and 
organizational principals. 

His Spanish sounds only lightly Mexican, and his 
conversation is peppered with jokes and occassional phrases 
in rough English. He has joked that he learned his English 
by spending his nights in the mountains reading Playboy and 
Pentagon manuals.

As he has in the past, Marcos has refused to divulge his 
real name or age. While he has admitted to commanding the 
Zapatista's military offensive, he continues to insist that 
his role is subordinate to the indigenous leaders -- thus 
the title "Sub"commandante ..."My commanders are the Mayan 
Indian campesinos."

Rebel leaders have carried weapons and worn ski masks at 
news conferences, but Marcos said they have put away their 
guns, but kept their masks for the present negotiations. "If 
you want to see what faces are behind the ski masks, it's 
easy. Pick up a mirror and look into it!" ... and in a 
recent missive from his camp in the Chiapas mountains, 
Marcos promised, "I am prepared to take off my mask if 
Mexican society will take off its own mask."

Marcos has also shown a clear understanding of the 
international attention focused on Mexico and the subsequent 
pressure that its leaders feel, "What is at stake in Chiapas 
is no longer just Chiapas or even Mexico, but perhaps even 
the free trade agreement or the whole neoliberal project in 
Latin America (sweeping economic changes in Mexico and other 
Latin American countries). Recent changes have brought 
little, if any, improvement in the lives of the poor. "It's 
not because we have great force, but because people are 
saying, 'All right, what happened here? What is going to 
happen elsewhere? What costs are there going to be?" 
Motioning to the reporters before him, he added, "if that 
were not true, you all would not be here."

During their initial occupation of San Cristobal, Marcos 
issued his first communique, "The war we declare is a final 
but justified measure. We have nothing, absolutely nothing. 
Not a dignified roof, nor work, nor land, nor health care, 
nor education." 

As the latest details of the recent accord were read to the 
press by govermnent negotiators (on March 3) in San 
Cristobal, Subcommundante Marcos sat behind, smoking a pipe 
and reading various reports, no doubt preparing his own 
impassioned statement from the men and romantic women of 
Mexico.


-- The Latin Quarter --
   Tragic Comedy Under Aztec Sun

These are strange times for Mexico - awash in scandal, 
kidnappings, armed insurrection, assassinations, and 
swirling conspiracy theories; only four months ago it all 
seemed so fine. The North American Free Trade agreement had 
just been approved by U.S. Congress, the new Presidential 
Candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was given the nod by the 
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, interest and inflation 
rates were at their lowest in years, and Mexico was basking 
in the attention and praise of the international business 
community.

Enter "stage right" a few rebels in Chiapas wielding old 
rifles and rusty peeshooters, led by the charismatic ski-
masked Subcommandante Marcos (many people have suggested 
that Marcos is in fact a Jesuit priest), issuing communiques 
about the lack of democracy in Mexico and the economic 
dichotomy which Mexico's indigenous peoples will only 
further suffer under Free Trade. Throw in a couple of major 
kidnappings (most notably, the president of one of Mexico's 
leading banks, Banamex), daily protest marches by 
campesinos, farmers, and students, and the assassination of 
candidate Colosio, and suddenly Mexico finds itself reeling 
like a "four in the morning" tequila drunk.

Since Colosio was shot on Wednesday March 23rd, in a poor 
suburb of Tijuana, Mexican streets and newspapers have been 
full of conspiracy rumours. Official government press 
releases have insisted that the assassination was simply the 
work of a disturbed 23 year-old mechanic seeking attention 
for himself. But Mexico City's cab drivers know better, many 
insisting that this act of violence was masterminded by the 
unanimously despised Ross Perot, in an attempt to undermine 
the Free Trade agreement! More pragmatic voices have 
suggested that conservative elements within Mexico's 
political system stood to lose under some of the economic 
and democratic reforms which Colosio was preaching.

Mistrust of officials is such that people on the streets 
almost matter-of-factly blame the shooting on anti-
democratic elements within Mexico's ruling class. They 
believe that Colosio was reform-minded and viewed as a 
threat to those dinosaurs within Mexico's ruling class. The 
Zapatista's in Chiapas said as much in their recent 
communique: "The hardliners and the militarist option inside 
the government planned and brought to completion this 
provocation to end all the peaceful intent of 
democratization of the country."

Recent developments in the shooting, with the arrest of a 
second suspect, have only further fueled the conspiracy 
theories.

ln an effort to stabilize the situation, President Salinas 
quickly announced his new choice for his successor, by 
naming Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, former Education 
Secretary, and campaign manager for Colosio. This 
traditional practice of "dedazo" or the "tap" whereby the 
president chooses his successor, has continued for sixty 
years, robbing the public of an opportunity to voice its 
opinion for alternatives. Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, 
one of the few "high profile" and vocal critics of the 
government and its lack of democratic initiative, commented, 
"Mexico is not a country of one or two men, but rather of 
many men, and this authoritarian exercise deprives us of the 
riches of democracy and casts an ominous shadow over the 
electoral process and the elections of August 21."

To add a good measure of comedy to an otherwise tragic and 
ridiculous situation, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, James 
Jones, called Zedillo's choice as presidential candidate a 
bright and competent decision, and predicted the country's 
elections will be fair and competitive.

"It is going to be a very spirited election, and I have no 
idea who is going to win," Jones was quoted in a March 30th 
news conference. Gee-whiz Senor Jones, we'll give you one 
guess! l'm hoping that this statement can be attributed to a 
momentary lapse of reason, or a sudden surge in ozone and 
carbon monoxide levels over the American Embassy. Either 
way, it's painfully "par for the course" when it comes to 
American foreign policy and its apparent awareness in 
Mexico.

The next months will be extremely telling ones, possibly 
determining the course of Mexican political and sociological 
developments for the next decade, at least. I'll keep you 
posted.

  - Andreas Seppelt, Mexico City, Mexico


-- Keepers of Light --
   Matthew Wolchock: Gentleman Photographer

I first met Matthew Wolchock about twenty years ago in a 
howling gale while I was photographing a grated window of 
the very famous Ship Inn, a storied watering hole in 
downtown St. John's, Newfoundland. I was testing a new high 
definition film and he was curious about the project. He 
handed me a card. In yellow type on black it said: Matthew 
Wolchock-Gentleman Photographer. We went inside and had a 
pint by the fire and talked about photography, and we've 
been talking about it ever since.

Wolchock works with a variety of camera formats from 110 to 
4"x5", but the bulk of his work is done with 35mm film. He 
shoots a lot it. He never goes anywhere without at least one 
loaded camera, and he's always looking for shots and 
checking out the light (something to emulate if you're 
serious about becoming a better photographer). He uses Canon 
and Nikon cameras and has an impressive array of them, but 
he's not an equipment snob. One of his favorite tools is the 
disposable "stretch" cameras that come preloaded with film. 

An excellent darkroom technician, Wolchock seldom employs 
any tricks or manipulative techniques in his work, 
preferring to concentrate on strong images that present best 
when simply properly printed. The one exception is his work 
in xerography where he uses collage and hand tinting 
effects, as in his calendar series.

[Photo of "Untitled 1" appears here in graphical versions]

Wolchock's eye for composition is sharp, and he knows light. 
In Untitled 1, the model stands firmly in the centre of the 
frame, balanced, arms by her side, looking out to sea. the 
horizontal stripes in her shirt are echoed in the horizontal 
stripes of dark sea, white foam, silver sand and the black 
beaches of Belle Island. To her left the monotony is broken 
by an angle wave in the centre of the frame and to her right 
this is balanced by the slowly rising shoreline of and 
island across the bay.

[Photo of "Untitled 2" appears here in graphical versions]

In Untitled 2 we have an unusual portrait. A woman lays on 
the floor beside a chair with bright chrome legs. She holds 
some sort of child's toy over her face. The image has been 
printed with very high contrast to give a sharp, eye-popping 
and just plain strange impression.

[Photo of "Untitled 3" appears here in graphical versions]

In Untitled 3 we are presented with a vastly different tonal 
situation. The image of a young man looking very recently 
awakened a tousled bed in gentle morning light. The large 
pale wall area, rather than leaving the frame looking empty, 
becomes the sky in this formscape of skintones and wrinkled 
cotton. The vertical lines of the bedpost lead the eye back 
again and again to the subject's enigmatic smile.

[Photo of "Pizzaman" appears here in graphical versions]

Pizzaman. What can I say? This, er, informal portrait of 
fellow photographer Manfred Buchheit is a good example of 
how it pays to always carry around a loaded camera. It's 
also probably a good example something else, but I can't for 
the life of me think what, unless it's not to let 
photographers with loaded cameras into your house on those 
early Sunday mornings when you just have to get naked and 
eat cold pizza.

That's it for this month. Join our contest. Happy 
photographing.

  - Kent Barrett, Vancouver, Canada
    kent@wimsey.com


-- Deja Vu --
   Exploring Some Myths of Gun Control

[Here is the long awaited rebuttal to Jon Gould's article, 
American in Denial, published in Teletimes December '93. 
Enjoy! - Ian]

Writing an article in a forum such as Teletimes about a 
topic like gun control can be quite difficult. The reason 
for this difficulty is two-fold: First, many well educated 
people who are typically open-minded with respect to 
important social issues have a preconceived notion that guns 
are bad and that eliminating them from society would prove 
to be beneficial. Second, the vast majority of the media 
outlets present a biased view against the private ownership 
of firearms, thus tending to strengthen these beliefs. It is 
the author's hope that this brief article will suggest to 
the reader that further inquiry is required before forming 
an opinion about a social policy as important to liberty as 
the right to keep and bear arms (RKBA).

Before delving into the substance of this paper, it is worth 
noting that this particular issue is decidedly American in 
nature. The Constitution of the United States, the defining 
document of the world's first modern democratic republic, is 
the only national constitution of any modern country that 
specifically forbids the infringement of the individual 
citizen's right to keep and bear arms [1]. Many foreigners 
who observe the US wonder why there is so much controversy 
over this subject. The only reasonable answer is that 
Americans enjoy more freedom than citizens of other nations 
and this freedom was won in a war with England; a war 
sparked by England's attempt to restrict the colonist's 
RKBA.

The remainder of this paper will expose a number of myths 
about gun control including the relationship between guns 
and crime, statistics used by gun-control propagandists [2], 
children and guns, and the underlying principle behind the 
constitutionally guarenteed RKBA.

Throughout the 1980's, violent crime actually decreased in 
America [3]. However, most Americans, when asked, responded 
that crime had stayed the same or risen. What is the cause 
of this dichotomy? The apparent answer is the television 
media - for the first time, in the 1980's, the supremacy of 
major networks were challenged. This lead to a ratings war 
in which each network provided programming for the primary 
purpose of garnering viewership and not for providing a 
balanced perspective on major issues. A recent report on NBC 
showed that a particular television station in Miami devotes 
more than 25% of its on-air time to crime coverage even 
though the crime rate in Miami has fallen precipitously 
since 1980. The networks have successfully implemented the 
"big lie" technique engineered by Geobbels - that is by 
frequently repeating the same ideas, people come to believe 
them despite the lack of corroborating evidence. After a 
decade of this "brain-washing," most Americans believe that 
crime is rampant and in desperation are seeking any solution 
to this problem; a problem that is not as significant as it 
is portrayed to be [4].

One proposed "solution" to the increase in crime is banning 
guns. There are many problems with this "solution." The most 
significant problem is that there exists no evidence to 
suggest that restricting gun among the general populace 
reduces crimes. The gun-control propagandists have yet to 
provide a single example case in which the introduction of 
gun laws has resulted in the reduction of crime. In fact, 
those cities with the most stringent gun control laws are 
the cities with the highest violent crime rates. Many of 
these propagandists make the specious claim that to be 
effective, the gun laws must be applied nationwide to be 
effective because criminals in the cities with stringent 
laws simply get their guns elsewhere. This raises two 
questions:

1. If guns cause crime, why don't the cities with lax gun 
laws, next to cities with stringent gun laws, experience 
similar crime problems? For example, the crime index for 
Alexandria, VA is eight times less than the crime index for 
Washington, DC, and he only thing separating them is a short 
bridge.

2. How is a nationwide gun ban to be enforced? First is the 
problem of the current gun stock in the US, a stock in 
excess of 200 million guns. A large number of owners will 
(rightfully) refuse to surrender their arms. Second is the 
problem of interdicting guns being smuggled into the 
country. For years the government has been trying to halt 
the flow of illegal drugs into the country and they have 
completely failed to even make a dent in the supply. Thus, 
why should anyone believe that a governmental interdiction 
could stop the flow of illegal weapons. Third is the problem 
of manufacturing guns within the country. Every machine shop 
has the capability to produce firearms.

And if these arguments aren't enough to show that gun 
control is not effective and can not be enforced, the gun-
control propagandists must address a more difficult 
question: Why have those jurisdictions that have adopted 
non-discretionary concealed carry laws shown a decrease in 
the violent crime rate that is greater than the national 
average [5]? It would be improper to suggest that the 
proliferation of firearms causes a decrease in crime, 
however, the evidence to support this thesis is far stronger 
than the evidence that guns cause an increase in crime [6].

Gun-control propagandists will some times point to certain 
foreign countries and claim that said foreign country, with 
significantly fewer firearms has significantly less violent 
crime; thus reducing guns in this country will reduce 
violent crime. The flaws with this argument are numerous: 
There is no discernible relationship between the rate of 
private gun ownership and violent crime rates. For example, 
Norway, the European country with the highest per capita 
private firearm ownership rate has the third lowest murder 
rate of all European countries. Northern Ireland, on the 
other hand, has the highest murder rate of any European 
country, but the third lowest private firearm ownership rate 
[7]. Another problems with this argument is that the 
comparisons are static, that is they compare the violent 
crime rates (typically murder) for one recent year only. A 
study of the difference in the murder rates for Canada and 
the US shows that in 1919, when there were no gun laws in 
either country, the US murder rate was 13.8 times the 
Canadian rate. In 1971, after decades of increasingly 
stringent gun control laws in Canada, the US murder rate is 
4.3 times the Canadian rate. Finally, this argument 
completely fails to recognize the vast differences socio-
political differences between the countries compared [8]. In 
summation, cross-national studies intended to show the 
positive impact of gun control, completely fail to do so.

Another issue conveniently ignored by gun control 
propagandists are the number of times that guns are used by 
private citizens to stop crimes. Rather, these propagandists 
parrot simple, but completely erroneous statistics, such as 
"... a gun in the home was 43 times more likely to be used 
to kill its owner, spouse, a friend or child than to kill an 
intruder" [9] [10]. First, this statistic will be examined, 
then some more meaningful ones will be derived. The primary 
flaw with this statistic is the underlying assumption that 
to be useful, a home owner must kill the intruder. Were this 
the accepted measure of the effectiveness of criminal 
deterrence, the police would be asked to provide dead bodies 
instead of live prisoners! Other flaws with this statistic 
include the following: 

-- 37 of the 43 deaths are suicides. No study has ever shown 
a correlation between the availability of guns and suicide. 
Consider Japan - a country with few guns and a suicide rate 
twice that of the US. Also consider Canada - after enacting 
stringent guns laws, the gun suicide rate dropped, but the 
overall suicide rate remained constant.

-- The statistic includes all murders that resulted in 
criminal charges and all unsolved homicides. In many cases, 
justifiable homicides initially result in criminal charges 
which are later thrown out.

-- The statistic included firearm accidents (see below).

-- The study was restricted to one community and is not 
representative of the country as a whole.

-- The original study did not use the phrase "owner, spouse, 
a friend or child," the phrase that has been used repeatedly 
by gun-control propagandists, but rather the word 
"acquaintance." From the original data, 48% of the homicides 
were classified as acquaintance, a relationship that can 
mean anything from friend to the neighborhood drug dealer. 
Furthermore, those relationship listed as familial can 
include abusive spouses.

Thus, the NEJM article can be seen for what it is -- a 
propaganda article intended to incite an emotional response 
in its reader rather than a scholarly article written to 
inform.

More meaningful statistics than those offered by the NEJM 
can be developed. Consider for example, "A privately owned 
firearm is more than 30 times more likely to be used to stop 
a crime than to kill anyone." Several surveys, including 
Kleck [6], have found that private citizens use their 
firearms to stop in excess of 1 000 000 crimes annually. 
There are approximately, in total, 32 000 firearms deaths 
annually (homicide, suicide, police intervention, self-
defense and accidental). Another useful statistic is that 
less than 0.3% of all guns are ever used in the commision of 
a crime. This statistic is found by assuming that each crime 
with a firearm (550,000 such incidents annually) involves a 
different weapon (a very conservative estimate) and dividing 
by the number of privately owned firearms (in excess of 200 
000 000 and growing by more than 1 000 000 annually). 
Lastly, a person is 34 times more likely to die in a car 
accident than to be killed in a firearms related accident. 
There are approximately 48 000 annual motor vehicle deaths 
and 1400 annual firearm related accidental deaths.

Some gun-control propagandists believe that firearms should 
be outlawed because of the "numerous" children who die each 
year year due from firearms. These deaths can be broadly 
categorized into three groups: intentional homicide, 
accidental deaths and suicides. A tactic frequently used by 
gun-control propagandists is to categorize as children all 
persons under the age of 19, and in some cases, persons as 
old as 24 [11]. For the purposes of this paper, the word 
"children" refers to all persons up to 14 years of age.

The death of a child, for any reason, is a tragedy. However, 
outlawing firearms because some children are killed by them 
is illogical. In the year 1990, 890 children were killed, 
either by criminals or law enforcement officials. Of these 
890 children, 283 were killed with firearms [12]. Another 
236 died as a result of firearm accidents for a total of 519 
firearms related deaths. (For this age group, there were no 
reported firearms suicides.) In the same year, a total of 15 
367 children died, so the percentage of children who died 
from firearms is 3.3% of the total. To put this percentage 
in perspective, of those children who died in 1990, 20.7% 
(3182 children) died in motor vehicle accidents, 7.5% (1148 
children) drowned and 6.3% (972 children) died in fires; 
however, no one would be irresponsible enough to suggest 
that cars, pools and matches should be outlawed because they 
kill children. Furthermore, the rate of firearm related 
accidental deaths, for all age groups, has been declining at 
an average of 2.6% annually averaged over the last 50 years.

The last topic to be addressed is the raison d'<27>tre of the 
second amendment to the US constitution, the RKBA for 
protection against foreign invaders and domestic 
governments. The typical gun-control propagandists response 
to this comment is, "You've got to be kidding! Do you really 
expect to hold off an army with personal firearms alone? 
This may have been true in when the Constitution was 
written, but is no longer valid." The simple answer is yes. 
In recent history, there are two clear examples of a lightly 
armed, resident populace holding off the armed might of the 
super-powers: Vietnam and Afghanistan. An even more recent 
example shows the inability of an unarmed populace to defend 
itself from its own government: Bosnia. These simple 
examples should make apparent a simple point: A well armed 
populace is sufficiently capable of defending itself both 
from internal and external attempts to restricts the 
peoples' freedom. And this simple truth is as valid today, 
as it was 203 years ago when the Bill of Rights was adopted.

As a final note, we should all remember those two 
individuals who succeeded in passing the most stringent gun 
control laws of this century: Adolf Hitler [13] and Joseph 
Stalin. Let us keep this historical perspective clearly in 
mind and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

  - Gerry Roston, Pittsburgh, USA
    gerry@cmu.edu

Endnotes
[1] See Halbrook, Stephen P. That Every Man be Armed: The 
Evolution of a Constitutional Right. The Independent 
Institute; Oakland, CA. 1984. Halbrook, attorney and Ph.D., 
traces the evolution of the individual's right to keep and 
bear arms from ancient Greece to modern times. He carefully 
examines the four cases in which the US Supreme Court (SC) 
has referenced the 2nd amendment and shows how in each of 
these cases, the SC has clearly demonstrated that the right 
is an individual right, and not a collective right, as some 
gun-control proponents claim. In addition to this book, any 
study of the writings of the founders of this country, both 
federalist and anti-federalist, will show that the founding 
fathers unanimously agreed that liberty and freedom can only 
be achieved if the general populace is well armed.

[2] Although some readers will take offense to the term 
"gun-control propagandist," the term was chosen to indicate 
that those opposed to the private ownership of firearms have 
yet to produce any scientifically verifiable evidence to 
support their contentions. Rather, they utilize 
propagandists techniques: emotional appeal, scare 
statistics, the big lie, etc.

[3] Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. US Department 
of Justice, 1993.

[4] Another reason that Americans believe that violent crime 
is increasing is due to the wide coverage of the "war on 
drugs," a policy that has dramatically increased the number 
of people arrested for non-violent crimes. One result of the 
increased number of arrests is an increase in prison over-
crowding, which gives the impression of an increase in 
crime.

[5] Since Florida passed a law that requires the issuing of 
a concealed carry permit to any qualified applicant (no 
criminal record or mental illness), the violent crime rate 
in Florida has decreased at a rate faster than the national 
average. Florida will also grant a carry permit to any 
qualified American visitor, a policy that may explain the 
recent increase in attacks of foreign tourists - the only 
group in Florida known with certainty to be unarmed.

[6] The best book for further study of the relationship 
between firearms and violence is Point Blank: Guns and 
Violence in America, Gary Kleck, 1991. Dr. Kleck was 
recently award the 1993 Hindelang Award from the American 
Society of Criminology for "the book published in the past 
two years that makes the most outstanding contribution to 
criminology."

[7] International Crime Index, Interpol.

[8] To strengthen the argument that the vast socio-political 
differences between the countries are the key factor to the 
differences in crime and not the ownership of guns, consider 
that the non-firearm homicide rate in the US is higher than 
that of all European countries except Northern Ireland. 
Simply stated, for some reason, Americans are far more 
violent than their European neighbors.

[9] Erik Larsen, "Armed Force" in the Wall Street Journal 
(2/4/93), from Arthur Kellerman and Donald Reay, "Protection 
or Peril? An Analysis of Firearms-Related Deaths in the 
Home" in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), 1986.

[10] Gun control propagandists like to use the phrase, "If 
it only saves one life, then it's worth it." This author is 
aware of at least three cases in the last year in which 
innocent lives were saved, that would have been lost, had 
the Brady Bill been in effect. For the same period of time, 
the author is aware of six innocent lives lost because a gun 
could not be purchased when it was required. As Benjamin 
Franklin once said, "They that can give up essential liberty 
to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty 
no safety."

[11] A recent report by the Children's Defense Fund claimed 
that 50 000 children have been killed by firearms in the 
last decade. This statement is true if and only if one 
considers persons up to 24 years of age to be children. The 
sad truth is that the US is experiencing a staggering 
increase in violent crime among inner-city teens. The murder 
rate for black males, ages 15-24, has increased by a factor 
of three in the last six years. Since there has not been an 
significant increase in firearms during this period, the 
cause of this increase in violence must be sought elsewhere.

[12] Crime in the United States, Uniform Crime Reports, 
Federal Bureaus of Investigation, US Department of Justice, 
1991. Other data is from the preliminary release of Vital 
Statistics and from Accident Facts, 1990.

[13] It must be remembered that Adolf Hitler was elected to 
office and that the gun control laws passed in Germany were 
enacted in a constitutionally approved manner.


-- Music Notes --
   Perfectly Good Songs: John Hiatt

What do the following artists have in common: Iggy Pop and 
Paula Abdul? Bob Dylan and Conway Twitty? Nick Lowe and 
Willie Nelson? Buddy Guy and Ronnie Milsap?

The answer is that they've all recorded songs by John Hiatt, 
the veteran singer/songwriter whose recent album "Perfectly 
Good Guitar" is finally garnering him the recognition from 
the public that he has always enjoyed with his musical 
peers. Long a favorite of critics, Hiatt has undergone a 
transformation from angry '70s new waver to tasteful roots 
rocker, all the while turning out songs that other musicians 
have lined up to cover. In fact, nearly 100 Hiatt covers 
have been recorded, from Three Dog Night's 1974 "Sure as I'm 
Sitting Here" to recent hits "Thing Called Love" by Bonnie 
Raitt and "Drive South" by Suzy Boggus.

"Perfectly Good Guitar" sees Hiatt playing in a harder style 
reminiscent of his mid-80's albums "Riding with the King" 
and "Warming Up to the Ice Age." This time out, he's brought 
along some more rockers for the ride as well. Producer Matt 
Wallace, best known for his work with MTV favorites Faith No 
More and Paul Westerberg, was pegged for not only producing 
the album but putting the band together as well. Wallace 
paired Hiatt with young musicians like guitarist Michael 
Ward of the Los Angeles-based School of Fish to create a 
revitalized sound. The alternative rock edge was furthered 
in adding Cracker alumni Michael Urbano on drums and bassist 
Davey Faragher for Hiatt's touring band, The Guilty Dogs.

Hiatt's writing on the new record continues to exhibit his 
trademark humor, personal insights, and slightly-off-kilter 
storytelling. While not as introspective as recent albums, 
"Perfectly Good Guitar" continues to explore the mystical 
relationship between love, emotion, and what happens when we 
imperfect human beings give ourselves the opportunity to 
experience such lofty feelings. While the focus of albums 
like "Bring the Family" expressed affirmation of the value 
of love and relationships, this time out Hiatt explores the 
apparent dichotomy of love and freedom, either in 
celebration ("Something Wild," "Buffalo River Home," "When 
You Hold Me Tight"), longing ("Blue Telescope"), or loss and 
betrayal ("Angel," "The Wreck of the Barbie Ferrari"). His 
ability to address these issues without becoming maudlin is 
a tribute to Hiatt's ability to write true to his experience 
and to the musicians, who play it like they mean it. 

After 30 years of writing and 20 of recording, Hiatt's 
popularity is reaching an all-time high. "Perfectly Good 
Guitar" is fast approaching Gold status and has become the 
darling of the new Album Adult Alternative, or Triple A, 
radio format. Hiatt currently has three songs on the Triple 
A charts and "Perfectly Good Guitar" was recently named Best 
Triple A Album of the Year by the Hard Report.

I spoke to Hiatt on March 20 from his hotel in Steamboat 
Springs, Colorado, where he and the Guilty Dogs were 
appearing. The tour is now in California, with upcoming 
dates including March 26 at the Crest Theater in Sacramento, 
March 27 and 28 at Slim's in San Francisco, March 30 at the 
Freemont Theater in San Luis Obispo, March 31 at the Belly 
Up Tavern in San Diego, and April 1 at the Wiltern Theater 
in Los Angeles.

[Photo of John Hiatt appears here in grpahical version]

Jay Hipps: So how's the tour going?

John Hiatt: The tour is going great. It seems like it's been 
going forever, but it's going great. We've been out since 
September, not straight through but 3 weeks out, a week 
home, that sort of thing. 

JH: Was this planned originally? I was under the impression 
that the tour ended December 18 in Nashville?

Hiatt: No, we were always planning to go right through the 
new year. This leg ends April 2nd, I think. We ended a leg 
December 18th, and then we came out again -- we had about 
two weeks off for Christmas and then we started back in the 
Northeast in January. And we've covered the Northeast and 
the Midwest and Texas and now we're up in Colorado and we're 
going out west. We knock it on the head April 2nd and then 
we're starting up again in May for two or three weeks. And 
then we're going back to Europe in June and then we're 
coming back out the end of July with Jackson Browne, we're 
going to do a shed tour. That's six weeks. And then we're 
going to knock it on the head-if we live that long (laughs). 

JH: So that's when you wrap the whole thing up? That sounds 
like a pretty strenuous schedule.

Hiatt: It's basically a full year of touring, which I 
committed myself to when we made the plans to work this 
record. I was real charged up about the music and felt real 
re-energized about what I was doing creatively and it had 
been four years since I'd toured solo. 1990 was the last 
solo tour I did, with the exception of some solo acoustic 
dates here and there. So I figured it was important to get 
back out and play, play for the folks. And the show's been 
going great, and the audiences are ever-growing-we're 
selling out shows everywhere, so it's really been great, 
really been encouraging to me. 

JH: Well, I saw the show in Santa Rosa -- I guess it was 
mid-November. 

Hiatt: Ah yes.

JH: That was a lot of fun...

Hiatt: We've since changed the band a little bit, we've 
pared it down to a four piece, which seems to work much 
better. 

JH: The third guitar player is not around? 

Hiatt: Yes, Corky James is no longer with us. We've got Mike 
Ward from School of Fish on lead guitar and then the rhythm 
section, Davey Faragher, Michael Urbano and myself. It 
works, it gives it a little bit more air. The three guitar 
thing is something I've always loved, but it's very 
difficult to pull off. I think Moby Grape was probably the 
last band that did it well. And look where it got them!

JH: Yeah, hasn't done much for them. When was the last time 
you heard them on the radio? So did Ravi Oli leave a 
disciple there? ["Ravi Oli" was credited for electric sitar 
on the song "The Wreck of the Barbie Ferrari" from 
"Perfectly Good Guitar."]

Hiatt: Ravi Oli is not making any appearances! Although 
Corky was playing Ravi Oli, I was the actual original Ravi 
Oli on the record. So he was a surrogate Mr. Oli, bless his 
heart. But he's still there in spirit. Ravi is ever-present.

JH: So it sounds like you're pretty pleased with how things 
are going. I've heard that you're hoping to do a live album 
from this tour. Is that so?

Hiatt: Well, we've been recording since we came back out in 
January -- we've been hauling around 24 tracks of ADAT and 
recording every show. So, yeah, I would love to put out a 
live record, I would really like to put out a live record.

JH: It seems like it would be a good time because you have 
so much material. Now that you're audience is getting 
bigger, a live album would be a good way to introduce them 
to...

Hiatt: Exactly. Yeah, I feel the same way. Plus, I'm so 
pleased with this band, the Guilty Dogs, they just re-
interpret a lot of the stuff in such an exciting way. I'm 
even more excited about getting into the studio with them, 
which we're planning to do in September.

JH: Are you writing already for that one?

Hiatt: Yeah, I've been writing like a madman. Writing on the 
road quite a bit.

JH: Seems like a good way to spend that time...

Hiatt: Well, you know, it's funny cause it's only in the 
last few years I've been able to do that. I didn't use to be 
able to write on the road, I used to have to be home in my 
little writing room and so on. But I've gotten more flexible 
about that.

JH: One of the things that I've noticed about "Perfectly 
Good Guitar" is that it seems like a sort of return to the 
sounds of "Riding with the King"-era material. What made you 
want to go back to that harder-edged sound? 

Hiatt: I didn't feel like I was going back to it, but maybe 
just going on with it. I guess...I'm just trying to figure 
out how to best put it because it's not like you consciously 
make decisions, or at least I don't, in terms of music. What 
I'm writing and what I'm writing about and how a group of 
songs shape up over a year or two year period what tells me 
what's happened musically, how it's going to be. So in 
hindsight I suppose you can look back and see a design. I 
guess, if hindsight's 20/20, then I'm looking back and 
thinking to myself that whatever I was writing about with 
the last 3 A&M records ("Bring the Family," "Slow Turning," 
and "Stolen Moments"), I was done writing about that stuff. 
I was done talking about myself in terms of a self-inventory 
style of writing. I was just through with that, you know? 
It's like the guy at the party -- you can only talk about 
yourself so long, and if you don't start talking about 
something else, people are going to walk away from you! 
(laughing) So I was just sort of over it. I don't know if 
that's personal development. I think -- I'm sure -- I think 
any writer in his writing life gets into that self-
discovery, that kind of writing where you go into yourself 
and check yourself out. I think you do it more than once in 
your writing life, and I think it's useful for the writer 
and I think it's useful for the listener or the reader as 
well.

JH: But you don't want to make a career out of it... 

Hiatt: Well, you do it when you need to do it. And when I'd 
done that, I wanted to get back to some storytelling and 
maybe revealing some things to myself and/or others through 
that.

JH: I think that's one of the real appeals to your music, at 
least speaking for myself. There are things that I hear you 
address that are real to you and are real to other people 
but that nobody really talks about. 

Hiatt: Well, my whole motivation for writing these songs is 
to connect in just that way you described. I want to know 
that what I'm feeling is not all that unusual. I want to 
know that other people feel stuff like that too. So that's 
why I write about it, to kind of send a flag up a pole and 
see if anybody else says, "Oh yeah..."

JH: Yeah, "I recognize that, too." Well that's interesting. 
Having seen you on stage and how comfortable you are and how 
much fun you have, it's interesting to hear you say that. 
Because it sounds like something where you'd be a little bit 
timid out there, "Here, I'm revealing something..."

Hiatt: Well, I think my comfort level on stage comes from 
some years of having some things affirmed by the audience. 
In other words, by having connected in whatever modest way I 
have in terms of the width and depth and breadth of my 
career, I have that knowledge going into it, that there are 
some people that understand what I'm talking about. But 
years ago, when I started doing this, I couldn't even look 
at the audience when I played. I used to sit down and stare 
at my strings and so on and so forth. So it's been a journey 
for me of connecting with people. 

JH: It's not like the first time you went on stage you were 
the same person we see today.

Hiatt: Exactly.

JH: Getting back to one thing you mentioned about the songs, 
and the direction they take you, it sounds like you let the 
song dictate... 

Hiatt: Absolutely. Over the years, I've tried a lot of ways 
to trick the song into appearing (laughs). Employing 
different disciplines, you know, or superstitions, or 
attitudes, or whatever. These days, and I think that's just 
a result of my personal and artistic development, I seem 
more willing to just sort of go along and see where the 
song's going to go. I don't have as many agendas in terms 
of, well "I want to write this kind of song." In your 30's 
you think you have notions and attitudes and ideas that are 
ever so important to get across to people, so you kind of 
come at it from that angle. But I don't do that so much 
anymore. It's more like an adventure for me these days, to 
see what the little old song is going to be about. It's fun 
and it's really opened up the possibilities of what I want 
to write about or what I'm going to write about because I 
hardly ever know anymore, lyrically, what's going to happen, 
to tell you the truth. I get inspired by a piece of music or 
a chord progression, and then a melody, and then the words 
are the last thing. And that's when you go along with the 
ride, see what happens. 

JH: That's an interesting way to go about it, when you 
consider a lot of popular music today is...people have an 
agenda going into, it sounds like they have a marketing plan 
in mind before they even sit down to play anything.

Hiatt: Well, there is a lot of that, of course there always 
has been in pop music. There's been the Brill Building 
approach or Tin Pan Alley before that. And right now I think 
Nashville's a perfect example of that, just that approach 
you're talking about. It seems more designed to move 
product, have lots of records sold and then have that artist 
go out and collect...money. (laughter). And that's the pop 
machine, it's finally come to country music. Everybody down 
in Nashville is just thrilled with it, but artistically 
speaking, in terms of any artistic vision, it's slim to 
none, in my opinion. There are a few people that are working 
-- again, it's just my opinion -- there are some country 
artists who have an artistic vision, but right now there's 
just a real glut of sort of the "pop fodder."

JH: Well, when you look at someone like Billy Ray Cyrus... 

Hiatt: There's a new kid every week. And it's the same story 
it's always been: somebody young enough and dumb enough 
(laughter) to do what they're told. It's a real producer-
driven thing, right now, producers and record companies are 
in cahoots. Which is why, conversely, to my ears anyway, 
this new rock'n'roll, these new young bands that have been 
coming down the pike here the last four or five years are so 
refreshing. It's so invigorating to me that a music that is 
artistically driven for the most part -- although, sure, in 
any group in any music you've got people just trying to cop 
a thang, or whatever -- but what I hear is real songs being 
written about real everyday feelings that we all have. Not 
being cleaned up for the masses, or prettied up, just "here 
it is." I dig that. 

JH: I guess that's one of the joys of rock'n'roll, really. 
In the early 60's, the record companies had it all pretty 
squared away -- Pat Boone would cover the Chubby Checker 
songs and they'd go about their business just fine. But 
there came about a time when artists broke through that the 
record companies didn't know what to do with, and they found 
an audience and broke free of that whole record company 
control. I guess that's the same thing you're talking about 
happening now. 

Hiatt: Well, there's been many cases of producer driven and 
record-label driven periods where there has been some 
wonderful music made. Motown is a perfect example -- that 
was just fabulous stuff. And Stax, the Stax/Volt era in 
Memphis, the Chess era before that in the 40's and 50's with 
Willie Dixon producing all these great blues acts for the 
Chess brothers up in Chicago. But I think you have to have 
people involved that have some sort of artistic awareness. I 
mean, it's a commercial venture, let's not kid ourselves. 
It's a commercial art. I think that's not only the 
challenge, but I think it keeps you honest as well. I very 
much believe in that. If I just wanted to make records for a 
handful of people who think and look and dress like me, I'd 
be recording for some small label somewhere. I don't want to 
do that -- I want to reach people.

But again, it's whatever your motivation is, and a lot of 
times the motivation is purely dollars and cents, 
unfortunately. But in a lot of other lines of work it's the 
same thing too.

JH: Any word on further activities of Little Village? 

Hiatt: No, no word, all's quiet on the western front. We 
have not spoken lately, but when last we spoke, which was 
six months ago, everybody was still hoping that we could at 
least make one more. I think we all felt like we made an 
interesting record, but we didn't make a really great one. 

JH: Well, the record was good but I think expectations were 
probably pretty high...

Hiatt: For the audience and for us as well. 

JH: I saw you guys perform in San Francisco and it was 
really an incredible show. It was a lot of fun seeing you 
guys work together. There are some great dynamics to the 
things that you four [Hiatt, Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, and Jim 
Keltner] can do. So nobody in the group is averse to playing 
together again? 

Hiatt: No. I think it'll happen. I think it may be a year or 
more before we get in the studio. The biggest problem is 
just getting these four guys together, because we all have 
these different projects. But I think we'll make one. 
There's a great rock'n'roll record in us, I think. 

  - Jay Hipps, Petaluma, California, USA
    jayh123@aol.com

(Article copyright 1994 by Jay Hipps. Print rights 
reserved.)


-- The Wine Enthusiast --
   Beer

Like wine, beer is a wonderful alcoholic beverage that can 
have complexity, sophistication, and be a delight to the 
senses. Like wine as well, the majority of beer produced is 
made to appeal to as wide a market of consumers as possible, 
and because of this most beers lack the above mentioned 
qualities. 

There are now in North America many smaller micro-breweries 
and larger regional breweries that make superior products, 
many of whom have taken brewing in new directions.

Wine is a very simple drink to make. All you need is a 
source of sweet, juicy fruit, - grapes are ideal - and a 
container to squish the fruit into, and wild yeast and 
bacteria will do the fermentation for you. All you need to 
do is pour off the fermented juice, now wine, and voila! 

In winemaking most of the attention is placed on the origin 
and quality of the original grapes. I've argued a great deal 
in this column that viticulture and micro-climate are the 
major determinates of a wine's quality. Wine almost makes 
itself.

Beer-making is a much more complex affair. Though beer 
contains essentially only water, barley malt, other grains, 
hops and yeast, producing (modern) beer is more 
technologically demanding than making wine. (Ancient beers 
made in Egypt or Mesopotamia must have been downright simple 
to make, but probably awful to drink.) 

But like wine, the quality of ingredients, and thus the 
expense, have a great deal to do with the finished product, 
as well as how the beer is made.

Since the end of prohibition, the large breweries bought out 
and absorbed almost every regional and smaller brewery in 
North America, leaving the marketplace dominated by a 
handful a large producers. These producers have largely 
shaped the marketplace in their own image. In an attempt to 
appeal to the widest possible market they have literally 
diluted beer to suit the lowest common denominator. 
Discriminating consumers, that seek beer different from 
mass-appeal products traditionally have bought imported 
beers, many of which, in turn have been bought and produced 
under license by the same major breweries. 

In the early 1980's all of this began to change. Hundreds of 
small micro and regional breweries sprang up, many of whom 
have passed into obscurity, but much of whom are thriving 
enterprises providing stiff competition to the large 
established breweries. 
 
Consumers began to demand more from such a an unlikely, 
inexpensive beverage as beer. Quality beer that had the same 
cachet as trendy wine, that was of course, slightly more 
affordable and accessible, had an immediate appeal.

Consumers also had a belated recognition that beer was not 
something uniquely American or Canadian but was transplanted 
from Europe, and so consumption required a new perspective 
placed upon the experience.

The same recognition struck consumers and producers of wine 
in the early sixties, that a Napa Valley Cabernet or 
Chardonnay could, approach the qualities of a Bordeaux or 
Burgundy.

It was upon this fertile ground that the seeds for a truly 
inventive new brewing industry was founded. Copying the 
styles of old-world brewing was not sufficient, in fact, the 
nature of New World malt and hops made this a virtual 
impossibility. Barley grown in Washington State or 
Saskatchewan was significantly different from European malt, 
and new varieties of hops grown in the Pacific Northwest 
were astoundingly more powerful and rich than any European 
hop.

From this set of circumstances New World brewers have 
created an unique tapestry of variety and richness of beer 
styles by reinventing old and new. Today because of the 
proximity of quality hop and malt producers Washington, 
Oregon, and California brewers are producing a wide range of 
beers that are every bit as impressive as the superb beers 
of England or Germany. Many New England states as well, with 
their rich brewing heritage, are on the cutting edge of this 
fusion of beer tradition and New World materials. 

Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, Yeungling of Boston, Red 
Hook of Seattle, Full Sail of Portland are truly on the 
cutting edge of beer style development producing rich, 
heavily hopped, zesty, quenching styles of beer, that have 
no real equal in European beers. Beer making has finally 
matured in the post-prohibition world of North America, and 
the future looks bright indeed.

  - Tom Davis, Vancouver, Canada


-- News Room --
   Academic Freedom

News Room is a regular discussion column which will cover 
different topics each issue. The column is a transcript of a 
debate or discussion conducted between two participants over 
the net. Each "debate" will usually have a moderator, to 
help keep the discussion flowing, raise some points that 
seem important, and generally keep things orderly and 
interesting.

One of the big advantages of the electronic media is 
supposed to be ease of participation. We hope we can 
stimulate you to take part in our forum, to follow it up, 
comment on it, suggest subjects we should cover (or 
participate in a debate, volunteers are always welcome). 
Readers are also encouraged to e-mail votes for the debator 
they agree with.

Much has been made of the "filters" which select what does 
and doesn't tend make it into print in the big newspapers 
and magazines, the Internet has helped to provide one 
shortcut around some of those filters. The News Room is our 
own contribution to promoting the uncensored discussion of 
ideas between the writers and by people like you. So tell us 
what you think. 

---

Taylor (moderator): There has been a fair bit of coverage 
here in North America of disputes in the area of Academic 
Freedom ranging from visiting speakers being shouted down by 
students (with the willing support of some staff), to 
published opinions which have got students and professors 
alike into hot water. So should we limit what represents 
"acceptable" opinion, or are universities and colleges 
places where it should be possible and acceptable to express 
any opinion without restraint? If there are to be limits on 
the permissible -- what should they be and how should they 
be defined ? What do our two panelists think?


Gribble: My views on the subject of academic freedom are 
well expressed by part of a recent statement issued by the 
American Association of University Professors, entitled "On 
Freedom of Expression and Campus Speech Codes": 

"Freedom of thought and expression is essential to any 
institution of higher learning. Universities and colleges 
exist not only to transmit existing knowledge. Equally, they 
interpret, explore, and expand that knowledge by testing the 
old and proposing the new. 

This mission guides learning outside the classroom quite as 
much as in class, and often inspires vigorous debate on 
those social, economic, and political issues that arouse the 
strongest passions. In the process, views will be expressed 
that may seem to many wrong, distasteful, or offensive. Such 
is the nature of freedom to sift and winnow ideas. 

On a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or 
forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful 
or disturbing that it may not be expressed."


Gould: This debate isn't about "political correctness." I 
don't advocate the prohibition of "unpopular" ideas. Rather, 
Paul correctly identifies the issue when he speaks about the 
proper role of universities. Our difference, however, is 
that Paul believes every individual should have the right to 
say, and continue to preach, whatever she or he desires. I 
would draw the line differently. 

Universities are about knowledge, about acquiring it, 
questioning it, and understanding it. While ideas are always 
open to expansion and modification, there are some facts we 
know to be true. The Holocaust happened. The Pope does not 
control the minds of every Catholic. Asians do not have a 
mass conspiracy to take over the world. In other settings, 
we might ignore these ravings of intolerant and ignorant 
souls. In the university setting, we cannot.

This is not to say that the university should prohibit all 
members of its community from expressing these views in 
every forum. Staff may be prejudiced -- perhaps even faculty 
or students. But when a faculty member sets foot into the 
classroom and puts forth these views in the spirit of 
"knowledge," when he/she advances known untruths as "facts," 
the university has a duty to step in and stop the perversion 
of knowledge. The situation is no different than if a 
political science professor taught that Thomas Jefferson 
were still President. Knowledge may be variable, but there 
are some facts that we can cling to as true. 

The issue, then, is not whether someone's feelings are hurt 
by free speech. (The world is offensive at times.) Rather, 
the question is whether universities will have the courage 
to step in when vicious untruths are passed off in the 
classroom as knowledge. 


Taylor: So where is the line between the prevention of plain 
lies in the classroom and academic works, and the 
suppression of academic free speech ? Can we really accept 
the right of teachers to misinform (that is to lie) to those 
they are responsible for educating ? and how do we deal with 
the much more fuzzy cases (in their times Darwin and 
Gallileo "lied"). Paul, how do you reconcile the conflict of 
freedom and responsibility in this context, do you think it 
is possible to permit complete academic freedom of opinion 
and simultaneously prevent academic misrepresentation of 
facts and ideas ? and Jon maybe you could explain how you 
would want to define "acceptable" and "unacceptable" - after 
all many of today's truths have been considered unacceptable 
or wrong in the past.


Gribble: A university education is very different from an 
elementary school education. In elementary school we trust 
teachers to teach our children facts about the world: how to 
do long division; who the first prime minister of Canada 
was; how a plant converts light into energy. In a university 
environment, the role of the professor is as a facilitator 
rather than a teacher. The role of the university student is 
not as a passive note-taker but rather as an active seeker 
of information. 

Many people (especially students) assume that they are at 
university to be taught truths about the world. They walk 
into a lecture hall and look at their professor, thinking, 
"Okay, now teach me." Almost nothing presented at the 
university level is fact. Everything from theories of 
chemical bonding to theories of the causes of the first 
world war involve interpretation. The role of the professor 
is to facilitate an environment in which a breadth of 
interpretations, mainstream and otherwise, are available to 
the student interested in exploring them. To a large extent 
the student is responsible for his/her own education. The 
student who walks away from a lecture on the industrial 
revolution believing that to be the only interpretation, or 
the student who walks away believing that they were only 
given the opportunity to be exposed to one viewpoint, is not 
living up to his or her responsibility.


Gould: Paul is right that a university education is 
different than primary school, but I also suspect that he 
would be willing to redirect a grammar professor who taught 
that punctuation was no longer necessary. My point is 
simple: while knowledge changes, we as an academic community 
still set parameters as to what is in the realm of the true. 
If professors are expounding ideas, hateful ideas, that we 
believe to be untrue, we as a community have an obligation 
to prevent their instruction as truth in the classroom. 
Separating the true from the untrue is difficult, and we 
should always err on the side of caution and breadth, but it 
is process that we already undertake in others areas and we 
ought to extend it to hateful speech. 

Even apart from this point, we ought to restrict speech when 
the speaker's intention is to harm. Extend assault and 
battery laws to speech. If a speaker utters hateful speech 
with the intent to harm another, restrict him. Note here 
that I would draw the line based on the speaker's intent, 
not whether the listener finds offense. Freedom of speech 
doesn't prohibit offensiveness, simply intended harm.

The obvious objection is that it's difficult to discern a 
speaker's intent. True. But, again, we face these problems 
in other areas of the law where intent must be measured, and 
we ought to be able to do it in the context of speech.


Taylor: So both Paul and Jon seem to agree that some level 
of disagreement is just in the nature of a University 
education. One seems to be maintaining that whilst academic 
freedom is desirable, free speech does not override the 
necessity to enforce some level of commitment to honesty and 
ability to deal with malice and deliberate hate promotion. 
On the other hand we have the view that the necessity for 
free debate puts anything and everything on the table.

I have a point or two I'd like to raise here, purely my own 
opinions following on the points of view expressed above. 
Because this is the end of a rather short exchange of views 
I want to add my two cents worth and hopefully promote some 
reader input. A big advantage of electronic publishing is 
supposed to be the ease of feedback so I hope we will get 
some comments, input, etc. on this. First off I want to say 
that I accept without reservation that the conflict (deep 
and perhaps permanently irreconcilable differences of 
opinion and moral conviction) of ideas and viewpoints is 
necessary to any worthwhile system of higher education. If a 
person can't see another side to a controversy or at least 
appreciate the fabric of views which are directly opposed to 
his or her own then their time at university has in many 
respects been wasted. However, whilst I don't dispute the 
right of Professors and academics (or anyone else for that 
matter) to express views which I find personally distasteful 
or offensive, I do expect responsible behaviour from 
everyone. Academics whether in a University or a Primary 
school have, along with their right and duty to contest 
philosophies and encourage independent thought, a 
responsibility to society. If an academic proclaims that we 
should sterilise the poor, nuke Cuba or Haiti, their 
position as a doctor, scientist, historian, economist, etc. 
can give credibility to the suggestion. They can claim that 
there is a concomitant responsibility to the public good 
(far more than the average Joe).

Being an academic does not put anyone above responsibility 
for their actions and words. I have trouble accepting the 
academic community as somehow divorced from the rest of the 
world. I wish it were so but it isn't and in my opinion that 
is the reality we have to deal with. In fact that is what 
makes the problem such a complex one. If education were 
truly separate from life we could pigeonhole disagreements 
and forget about them. In the real world they can touch on 
the fears, prejudices, opinions and lives of real people who 
have to deal with real consequences. For me the problem 
isn't so much the concept of academic freedom per se, but 
exactly how great a freedom we can allow before we have to 
delineate the corresponding responsibilities to the rest of 
the world and give them priority. 

"Education," as someone once said, "is the ability to listen 
to practically anything without losing either ones temper or 
self confidence." If education has a real central value - it 
is to teach us to deal with deep, fundamental, and directly 
contradictory opinions and desires without coming to blows 
and resorting to personal insult and the suppression of what 
we don't like to hear. 

---

We encourage the readers to e-mail their thoughts on this 
debate to editor@teletimes.com. Be sure to clearly state 
which side of the argument you agree with. If we receive 
sufficient responses, we'll publish some of the readers' 
comments and tally their votes on the subject.


-- Cuisine --
   Chile Peppers

It is ironic that of all the foods native to the Americas, 
the hot chile has yet to be incorporated into the everyday 
diet of the 20th century North American. Especially with the 
habit of eating "healthy" food which is now vogue in the 
United States.

Chiles are exceptionally good for you. High in vitamin C, 
the chile adds flavor to food without adding many calories, 
sodium, or fat. Poorer countries have known for years that 
you can feel full on less food if the food is highly spiced. 

The genus Capsicum contains all of the pepper fruits, 
including the tame Bell, but does not include black pepper 
(Piper nigrum). Capsicum is part of the lager nightshade 
family, related to tomatoes and potatoes both of which are 
also native to the Americas.

Heat

Since the alkaloid capsaicin, the heat producing defense 
mechanism of the pepper, is produced at the junction of the 
placenta and the pod walls, the ribs of the pepper can be 
removed to reduce the "strength" of the pepper. On page 238 
of "The Whole Chile Pepper Book", it states "The seeds are 
not sources of heat, as commonly believed". Thus the seeds 
add nothing to the resulting dish, and might be removed for 
aesthetic purposes.

When working with peppers, be certain to avoid contact with 
skin, as the capsaic in it can cause irritation to the eyes, 
as well as the mouth. Never feed to pets, or unwitting 
children. I would suggest you don't trim your finger nails 
before working with chiles. I have made this very painful 
mistake once. 

Much work has been done to determine the "heat scale" of 
chile peppers, which is measured in "Scoville Units", named 
for Wilbur L. Scoville a scientist at Parke-Davis. His work 
was used to measure capsaicin for the ointment "Heet". For 
reference, pure capsaicin equals 16,000,000 Scoville units. 
The "Official Chile Heat Scale" is reproduced here from the 
Whole Chile Pepper Book:

Official Chile Heat Scale

Rating  Approximate Scoville Units  Chile Varieties
10      100,000 - 300,000           Habanero, Bahamian
9       50,000 - 100,000            Santaka, Chiltepin, Thai
8       30,000 - 50,000             Aji, Rocoto, Piquin, 
                                    Cayenne, Tabasco
7       15,000 - 30,000             de Arbol
6       5,000 - 15,000              Yellow Wax Hot, Serrano
5       2,500 - 5,000               Jalapeno, Mirasol
4       1,500 - 2,500               Sandia, Casabel
3       1,000 - 1,500               Ancho, Pasilla, Espanol
2       500 - 1,000                 NuMex Big Jim, New
                                    Mexican Green 6-4
1       100 - 500	                  R-Naky, Mexi-Bell, 
                                    Cherry
0       0                           Mild Bells, Pimiento, 
                                    Sweet Banana

Help

If by chance you eat more capsaicin than you might like, the 
quickest remedy can be found in dairy products. Sour Cream, 
Milk, and Ice Cream all will help to put out the chile fire. 
While water will eventually wash the capsaicin away, it can 
take up to twice as long to relieve your mouth. 

A Recipe

The following recipe is one of my favorites. It is low in 
everything, other than taste.

Choose the pepper for this recipe according to your tastes. 
I prefer New Mexican Green Chiles, but Bell Peppers, or no 
peppers, work just fine. 

Scallions Wrapped in Tortillas:

Vegetable Oil, preferably Peanut (to resist flaming) 
12 Scallions (Green Onions)
1 Pepper of Choice (Bell, Jalapeno, New Mexican Green, etc.) 
Fresh Lime Juice
4 Flour Tortillas
Salt

Prep

Trim the Scallions, leaving most of the green parts, and 
enough of the root to keep the onion together. Rub lightly 
with the oil. 

Out Doors Cooking

Roast the pepper over a hot charcoal grill, turning often 
until the skin is black and blistered. Place the pepper in a 
bag while hot, this will help steam the skins off of the 
pepper. After 10 minutes, peal the pepper under running 
water. Stem, seed and cut into strips. Set Aside. 

Grill the onions until well cooked, but not burnt; about 5 - 
7 minutes. 

In Doors Cooking

Follow the Out Door cooking directions, but use a broiler in 
place of the charcoal grill. Do not use a griddle (as if for 
pancakes), or a pan. The results are not the same. 

Wrap 3 onions and 1/4 of the pepper strips in a tortilla. 
Sprinkle with fresh lime juice. Lightly salt to taste.

Makes 4 appetizers.

  - Brian Silver
    silver@ctron.com

Sources
DeWitt, Dave and Gerlach,Nancy.The Whole Chile Pepper Book. 
  ISBN 0-316-18223-0 
McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking - The Science and Lore of 
  the Kitchen. ISBN 0-02-034621-2


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NEXT MONTH
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Next month Teletimes will feature Favorite Authors. If 
you've read a really great book recently, or have enjoyed 
the work of a particular writer...send us an article 
describing your experience! Book reviews, biographical 
articles, whatever!

Also debuting in May: Ken Eisner, a professional Vancouver 
writer, will be bringing us a whole new Arts & Entertainment 
section. Look for it soon!

And all you budding photographer types out there, don't 
forget to enter PHOTON '94 (see last page for info and 
form).


------------------------------------------------------------
STAFF & INFO
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Editor-in-Chief:
 Ian Wojtowicz

Art Director:
 Anand Mani

Cover Artist:
 Anand Mani

Correspondents:
 Biko Agozino, Edinburgh, Scotland
 Prasad & Surekha Akella, Japan
 Ryan Crocker, Vancouver, Canada
 Prasad Dharmasena, Silver Spring, USA
 Ken Eisner, Vancouver, Canada
 Ken Ewing, Beaverton, Oregon, USA
 Jon Gould, Chicago, USA
 Paul Gribble, Montreal, Canada
 Jay Hipps, Petaluma, California, USA
 Mike Matsunaga, Skokie, USA
 Satya Prabhakar, Minneapolis, USA
 Brian Quinby, Aurora, USA
 Motamarri Saradhi, Singapore
 Dr. Michael Schreiber, Vienna, Austria
 Johnn Tann, Ogden, USA
 Dr. Euan Taylor, Winnipeg, Canada
 Seth Theriault, Lexington, USA
 Marc A. Volovic, Jerusalem, Israel

Columnists:
 Kent Barrett, The Keepers of Light
 Tom Davis, The Wine Enthusiast
 Andreas Seppelt, The Latin Quarter

Funding policy:
 If you enjoy reading Teletimes on a constant basis and 
 would like us to continue bringing you good quality 
 articles, we ask that you send us a donation in the $10 to 
 $20 range. Checks should be made out to "International 
 Teletimes". Donations will be used to pay contributors and 
 to further improve International Teletimes. If you are 
 interested in placing an ad in Teletimes, please contact 
 the editor for details.

Submission policy:
 Teletimes examines broad topics of interest and concern on 
 a global scale. The magazine strives to showcase the unique 
 differences and similarities in opinions and ideas which 
 are apparent in separate regions of the world. Readers are 
 encouraged to submit informative and interesting articles, 
 using the monthly topic as a guideline if they wish. All 
 articles should be submitted along with a 50 word 
 biography. Everyone submitting must include their real name 
 and the city and country where you live. A Teletimes 
 Writer's Guide and a Teletimes Photographer's & 
 Illustrator's Guide are available upon request.

Upcoming themes: 
 May - Local Authors
 June - Sports & Leisure
 July - Photon '94
 August/September - Education

Deadline for articles:
 May issue - April 20th, 1994
 June issue - May 10th, 1994
 July issue - May 31st, 1994
 August/September issue - June 31st, 1994

E-mail:
 editor@teletimes.com

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 International Teletimes
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Software and hardware credits:
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Copyright notice:
 International Teletimes is a publication of the Global 
 Village Communication Society and is copyrighted (c)1994 by 
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 reserve the right to alter articles. Submitting material 
 means that the submitter agrees to all the above terms.


------------------------------------------------------------
BIOGRAPHIES
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Surekha and Prasad Akella
Surekha and Prasad are in Japan on a two year sojourn from 
their home in the US. Surekha is a Pharmacologist between a 
Master's and a Ph.D.; she is masquerading as an English 
teacher in Japan. Prasad has a Ph.D. in Mechanical 
Engineering from Stanford University (California) and is 
working on the control of robots at MITI's National 
Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. Their common interests 
include people, photography and international travel. For 
the next few months, they will report on life in Japan, as 
viewed through the eyes of Indian-Americans. 

Kent Barrett
Kent Barrett is a Vancouver artist with over twenty years 
experience in photography. His work has been exhibited in 
galleries across Canada from Vancouver, B.C. to St. John's, 
Newfoundland. He is currently working on his first 
nonfiction book and interactive CD-ROM, "Bitumen to Bitmap: 
a history of photographic processes."

Tom Davis
Tom is a wine maker who lives and works in Vancouver, 
Canada. A former brewmaster, a painter and amateur (in the 
truest sense) film maker. Currently a Philosophy 
undergraduate at Simon Fraser University, Tom seeks to start 
his own vineyard.

Ken Eisner 
Originally from the San Francisco area, Ken Eisner is a 
Contributing Editor to Vancouver's entertainment weekly, the 
Georgia Straight, and Canadian correspondent/film critic for 
Variety, in Los Angeles. He has also been a frequent arts 
commentator on CBC TV and radio, and currently reviews new 
movies for CKNW, throughout Western Canada.

Ken Ewing
Ken Ewing is a senior technical writer at Sequent Computers 
Systems, Inc. in Beaverton, Oregon. He is a life-long 
resident of the Pacific Northwest, a graduate of Eastern 
Oregon State College, and in addition to travel, has deep 
interests in philosophy, theology, psychology, and history. 

Jon Gould
Jon teaches law and political science at both DePaul 
University's International Human Rights Law Institute and 
Beloit College. He is a former counsel to the Dukakis-
Bentsen Campaign and has served as General Counsel to the 
College Democrats of America and Vote for a Change.

Paul L. Gribble
Born in Cape Town, South Africa but raised in Vancouver, 
Paul completed his B.Sc. in Cognitive Science at Queen's 
University in Kingston, Ontario. After spending the summer 
in Japan working for a high technology research company, he 
started his graduate studies in Cognitive Science at McGill 
University in Montreal.

Jay Hipps
Jay Hipps is a freelance writer based in Northern 
California. He also writes, edits, and designs "Petaluma 
Business," a monthly newspaper published by the Petaluma 
Area Chamber of Commerce and which was recently awarded 
first place in the California State Chamber of Commerce 
publications contest. His e-mail address is JayH123@aol.com.

Anand Mani
Anand is a Vancouver, Canada-based corporate communications 
consultant serving an international clientele. Originally an 
airbrush artist, his painting equipment has been languishing 
in a closet, replaced by the Mac. It waits for the day when 
"that idea" grips him by the throat, breathily says, "Paint 
Me" and drags him into the studio<69> not to be seen for 
months.

Andreas Seppelt
Andreas is a former Economist with Transport Canada, now 
consulting in Business Communications and Marketing.  He has 
spent a number of years undergoing formal graduate study and 
research in Economic Development and International Trade.  
He currently lives and works in Mexico.

Dr. Euan R. Taylor
Euan grew up in England where he did a degree in 
Biochemistry and a Ph.D. Before moving to Canada, Euan spent 
6 months traveling in Asia. Now living in Winnipeg, he is 
doing research in plant molecular biology, and waiting to 
start Law School. Interests include writing, travel, 
studying Spanish and Chinese, career changing and good 
coffee. Pet peeves: weak coffee, wet socks and ironing. 

Ian Wojtowicz
Ian is currently enrolled in the International Baccalaurate 
program at a Vancouver high school. His interests include 
fencing, Teletimes and sleeping in. Born in Halifax, Canada 
in 1977, Ian has since lived in Nigeria, Hong Kong and 
Ottawa and has travelled to several other places around the 
world.


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------------------------------------------------------------
P     H     O     T     O     N          1     9     9     4
THE FIRST ANNUAL                INTERNET PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST
------------------------------------------------------------

CATEGORIES
People - Send in your best "people" work. Portraits, action 
 shots, kids, whatever. Works will be adjudicated on 
 composition, effective use of lighting, emotional impact 
 and general photographic quality as determined by our 
 judges.
Places - We want to see your grandest mountain vistas, your 
 moodiest urban landscapes. Works will be adjudicated on 
 composition, effective use of lighting, emotional impact 
 and general photographic quality as determined by our 
 judges.
Small Wonders - Flowers, butterflies, thumbtacks or your 
 thumb. Take a little time to send us a little gem. 
 Photomicrographs of vitamin C or pinholes of pebbles. If 
 it's bigger than a breadbox, it's too big for this 
 category. Works will be adjudicated on composition, 
 effective use of lighting, emotional impact and general 
 photographic quality as determined by our judges.
Digitally Altered Photos - Go crazy with this one, or use 
 some subtle pixel filters. Either way, amaze us with your 
 light fantastic. Images will be adjudicated on their "wow" 
 factor by our judges. If appropriate, submit a copy of the 
 image before the digital touch-ups are made.
Humour - Humour says it all. Photos will be judged on their 
 ability to crack up the judges.


DEADLINE
 May 31st, 1994. Winning entries and honourable mentions 
 will be displayed in the July issue of International 
 Teletimes. Teletimes can be read at etext.archive.umich.edu 
 in the /pub/Zines/Intl_Teletimes directory.


ENTRY FEE
 Please write out a check or money order to "International 
 Teletimes" for $10 in US funds for every 3 photographs 
 entered. There is no limit (except your bank balance) to 
 the number of photos you can enter. Our mail addess
 is given below, in the ENTRY METHODS section.


PRIZES
 1st place contestants in each catagory are guaranteed a 
 fantastic colour Teletimes tee shirt with their winning 
 photo printed on the front. Cash prizes will be awarded 
 pending sufficient entries. We are also looking for 
 corporate sponsors to help with the prizes. Stay tuned.


ENTRY METHODS
FTP - Scanned entries may be submitted to ftp.wimsey.com in 
 the /pub/photon_94 directory. Be sure to e-mail us with the 
 name of the files you have put on the FTP site. Acceptable 
 file formats are TIFF, GIF, PICT and JPEG.
E-mail - If you are concerned about leaving your entry in a 
 public directory, you may e-mail your entries to 
 editor@teletimes.com. Files must be uuencoded. Acceptable
 file formats are TIFF, GIF, PICT and JPEG.
Mail - If you do not have access to a scanner, you may send 
 prints to: Teletimes Photo Contest, 3938 W. 30th Ave., 
 Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6S 1X3. If you enclose a return 
 mailer with appropriate Canadian postage affixed, we will 
 make every effort to get it back to you, but we can make no
 promises. Therefore, DO NOT SEND IN ORIGINALS OR VALUABLE 
 GALLERY QUALITY PRINTS. Send "reproduction" quality RC 
 prints, or any prints that you won't go crazy over if they 
 are lost or destroyed. Hard copy images must measure 
 11"x14" or smaller, and have the entrant's name, address 
 and phone number affixed to the back of the image.


DISCLAIMER
 All works remain the property of the original artist. By 
 submitting work to Photon '94, you are agreeing to have it 
 published in International Teletimes and on the World Wide 
 Web.


ENTRY FORM
 This must be filled out and e-mailed (or mailed) to us in 
 order to participate in the contest.

 Date:______________________________________________________

 Name:______________________________________________________

 Address:___________________________________________________

 Phone number:______________________________________________

 E-mail:____________________________________________________

 Titles and file names (if applicable) of photos entered in 

 the PEOPLE category:_______________________________________

 ___________________________________________________________

 Titles and file names (if applicable) of photos entered in 

 the PLACES category:_______________________________________

 ___________________________________________________________

 Titles and file names (if applicable) of photos entered in 

 the SMALL WONDERS category:________________________________


  Titles and file names (if applicable) of photos entered in 

the HUMOUR category:________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

 Titles and file names (if applicable) of photos entered in 

 the DIGITALLY ALTERED category:____________________________

 ___________________________________________________________

 Method of submission (FTP, e-mail or mail):________________

 Method of payment (check, money order, electronic 

 transfer):_________________________________________________

 Amount due ([# of entries] x [US$10] / [3]):_______________