C-Message Weighting Messaging System (408)-377-7441 ===================================================== B A S E L I N E N E W S - N O V E M B E R 1 9 9 3 ===================================================== "News about technology and technology policy" - including an electronic digest of published reports - This Month: =========== - Valley Farm Transportation - British Aircraft Mishap: Stuck Microphone - Telephony articles: Intra-LATA carriers and Telephone Jargon - Trident Missile system safety =========== SIGNALS OF INTEREST (MHZ) 151.775 Mumford's Towing, Menlo Park (not much traffic) 159.090 Monterey County Sheriff, Salinas (repeater, 114.8 Hz.) 451.400 AT&T Communications, Loma Prieta (repeater, not much traffic) 452.725 Airport parking lot shuttle buses, San Jose International (S) 457.5375 AAPCO Airport parking lot attendant booths, San Jose Intl. (S) 460.375 Santa Rosa Police, Santa Rosa (R) 460.5625 Paging system link,north Marin county, possibly unlicensed 488.4125 Fremont Fire Department, Fremont (R) 488.6375 Santa Clara County,Transit Operations, Light Rail (R) 854.7625 Oliver de Silva, San Jose, Channel 4 (road construction) HAVE TRUCK, WILL TRAVEL Valley Farm Transportation uses a UHF repeater to support their operations in California's central valley. If you listen to 461.450, you'll hear their Vacaville repeater during the business week and on weekends. The company moves trailers of farm commodities from fields to wholesalers. The repeater seems to have no trouble covering Merced to Chico. Of course, when you put the antenna on top of a tractor twelve feet above ground the signal is bound to go farther than from the roof of a Pantera. Not only do the units put a solid signal into the repeater, the audio is clean as well. The system is businesslike, though you'll never hear a callsign. We've seen a lot of radio systems that were poorly matched to the user. This one is a good match and is well maintained. "Yeah John, when you're done in Byron, start heading for Livingston and call me back when you're in the area..." AIRCRAFT MISHAP A British couple flying in a Cessna 150 near Edinburgh made an embarrassing mistake last month. According to the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, the aircraft's radio somehow locked in the transmit mode. Other aircraft on the channel heard a conversation where the couple debated whether or not they should have sex above 5,000 feet and join the mile-high club. As the conversation advanced, it got steamier, then stopped altogether. Air traffic controllers were frustrated by the event which prevented them from giving the pilot instructions and caused a number of other aircraft using the same channel to switch to an emergency channel. The article quoted controllers as saying, "We've been trying to raise you for 50 minutes," after the pilot switched off the arrant transmitter. ["People In The News," SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 9 October 1993, pp. 4A] SYSTEM CHANGES: MORE ON 911 Santa Clara County's 911 call processing facilities were moved in late September from San Jose 18 (Foxworthy) AT&T 1ESS to a 5ESS switch at another location. The move is part of a Pacific Bell plan to serve the entire Bay Area 911 system through three AT&T 5ESS digital switching systems. The 5ESS switches are not dedicated to 911 traffic: they also carry all other residential and business call traffic inside the local "wire center" or area. There are separate data lines from 911 answering points to the telephone company line record computer. The data link to the Data Management System Automatic Line Identification computer (DMS/ALI) retrieves the caller's address based on telephone company line records. How does Enhanced 911 know what jurisdiction your house is in? It doesn't. In the case of Santa Clara County, the Intelligence Division at County Communications works hard to make sure their database -- which defines the jurisdictions associated with each address -- is accurate. The Intelligence Division works daily to research reports of incorrectly-routed calls and to add jurisdiction information to new buildings. These records are examined so that accurate information will be in place when an emergency call is received. On rare occasions, the line records are corrupt or do not exist. With any large database, there are bound to be a few inaccurate records. Dispatchers whose name appears on a list submitted to Pacific Bell's internal security can call Pacific Bell directly and get the information from other telephone company databases. The dispatcher would call Pacific Bell and ask for the address associated with a telephone number. The telephone company security representative would hang up and call the dispatcher back on the agency's official telephone number in order to authenticate the call. (Police departments often use this as an investigative tool to find the address of an unlisted number.) [Source: information obtained pursuant to the California Public Records Act and two anonymous sources.] CHANGES TO LOCAL TELEPHONE SERVICE A California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) ruling in September means California telephone customers will be allowed to choose which carrier will handle their Intra-LATA calls. Before the decision, all calls within local service areas (Intra-LATA) were handled exclusively by the dialtone provider. Local phone companies, such as Pacific Bell and GTE California, had a monopoly and other companies were not allowed to carry local calls under CPUC rules. The CPUC decision will take effect on January 1, 1994. Telephone customers in California will be able to select inter-exchange carriers (IECs) like MCI, Sprint, and AT&T to transport calls within their local service area. In the Bay Area, the service area encompasses area codes 408, 415, 510, and 707. After 1 January, calls to Pleasanton or San Francisco could use any carrier you choose. The disadvantage of this arrangement will be a rate increase on monthly charges for telephone circuits. The cost of each phone line or number will increase by several dollars per month, dependent upon what kind of service you currently have. Historically Intra-LATA calls have been overpriced in order to subsidize the cost of basic telephone service. The theory was that telephone service should be affordable to all residents. Call volume (and revenue) generated by businesses placing Intra-LATA calls during the day was skimmed to underwrite the monthly rates of residential customers. Both the cost of physical circuits and the cost of calls inside the service area will now be priced nearer to their actual cost. The advantage of this new arrangement is that calls within the service area will be much less expensive. If you frequently call bulletin boards inside your local service area, your monthly bill may decrease. Further, if Pacific Bell or GTE California had poor-quality circuits to an area you frequently call, you may be able to use AT&T or MCI circuits to go around the problem. Many carrier circuits we use seem to have timing and level problems. The ability to use another carrier may be a great benefit in the struggle to get telephone carriers to maintain their trunks. If they don't provide clean circuits, astute callers will simply use another carrier. [Source: California Public Utilities Commission bulletin board, Pacific Bell bill inserts.] TELEPHONE JARGON by Jon Cereghino ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Block diagram of a telephone circuit: (underground (aerial (service cable pair) cable pair) drop) central office<--------------->cross<----------->|<------------>customer connect pole or site pedestal A telephone number such as 555-2345 is assigned in software to a port on the central office switch. The port on which the number appears is determined by people who account for, and assign, ports. Any port can be assigned any number so long as the number fits into the local dialing plan. (In the case of WATS, private networks, and some other services, the number plan may be incompatible.) The port appears as two connections (tip and ring) just as it does at your home. The connection to this port, called the "office equipment," appears on a rack called the main distributing frame (MDF). The office equipment (OE) has a number such as 002-001-019 (a grid location) that tells which rack, and the x- and y-coordinate grid location in that rack where the OE wiring appears. This address establishes a system to keep track of the ports where the wiring for a specific telephone number appears on the MDF. A wire jumper connects the OE to a cable pair at the central office. A telephone number such as 555-2345 might have an OE of 001-002-053 and be assigned an underground pair in the thirty one cable pair twelve forty four (31:1244). In this case, a wire jumper would connect the OE location 001- 002-053 with the cable pair 31:1244. Thousands of similar connections exist alongside this jumper. The number 555-2345 would be connected to the subscriber in the field through wiring on poles and in the customer's home. At one end lies the switch connected at the OE, at the other is a jack with the customer telephone plugged into it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- aerial cable: In some circumstances this refers to cable on poles and in others, it refers to cable from the cross connect toward the customer. In the second case, it is called aerial for accounting purposes even if it is physically located below ground. b-box: a cross connect balanced: measuring both the tip and ring sides of a cable pair shows they are going about the same distance. The length of the cable pair conductors looks electrically similar. Engineers express "longitudinal balance" in decibels but field technicians just look for equality between conductors and not a specific measurement. binding post: In terminals and cross-connect boxes, cable pairs are terminated in studs, punch down blocks, or screw terminals. The binding post is the terminal number. These are usually counted top-to-bottom, left-to-right. breakdown set: a battery operated unit used to arc-weld defective cable pairs. A typical unit applies 400 volts at 1 ampere to burn telephone circuits with faults like "swinging grounds" and "crossed with battery". The fault is welded open or shorted, making the defective connection easier to locate. Employees are warned to stay away from the areas where these are being used. breakdown shoe: see breakdown set. c.o. termination: If Manufacturing Company suddenly orders 1,200 centrex circuits for its new office building, the telephone company instantly needs 1,200 new pairs. It's likely that the telephone company Plant Engineering people didn't pay to install 1,200 "extra" pairs. So, the pairs would not be readily available. Engineers have to design and find a route for new cable. This could take months to complete and involves installing a new cable that runs all the way from the telephone company central office to Manufacturing Company. This involves checking for underground conduit space, perhaps digging up streets, and/or pulling cable between poles. Useage: "We are going to have to do a c.o. termination." cable and pair: Numbers assigned for accounting purposes that define a pair of wires. An underground pair appears at a location on the main distributing frame in the telephone company central office. The wire pair usually has continuity to a business or residence. Example of a cable and pair designation: "twenty one cable pair twenty three forty four." cable locator: See: locator cable trouble/failure: A fault with a cable or splice causing a large number of customers to go out-of-service or experience problems with their service. cable vault: The area where cables leave the central office building. carbons: a fuse that is part of a protector at a customer location. See coils. It prevents lightning or other foreign voltages from energizing telephones and injuring customers. carrier: generally encompasses all forms of multiplexing many telephone circuits onto a single or few pairs. The word carrier is also used to describe equipment used to multiplex microwave radio and fiberoptic basebands. circuit designation: The number used to identify circuits that do not have an ordinary telephone number. This is a separate number from the cable and pair. A circuit may include several cable pairs and/or a carrier channel between two central offices. A two-way radio remote control circuit might be identified with a number similar to 70RTNA908443. "70" identifies the originating central office, RTNA means it's a specific kind of radio remote-control circuit, and the last numbers are its identity. Alarm circuits, data circuits and other private line circuits have different designations. clear and balanced: measuring both the tip and ring sides of a cable pair shows they are going about the same distance, (longitudinal balance). Further, there are no ground faults, shorts, or other problems measured on the line. clr,balanced,open out: measuring both the tip and ring sides of a cable pair shows they are going about the same distance. Further, there are no ground faults, shorts, or other problems measured on the line. There are no telephones connected to the line, (open out). climbers: pole climbers worn on lower legs to climb poles without steps; also called "hooks". closure: a permanently sealed terminal where cable pairs and service drops are connected. Connections are usually potted in epoxy. They are waterproof because of the epoxy potting but are inconvenient to change! CMS: Cable Maintenance Service: a department dedicated to resolving cable trouble such as cut buried cable and cable that squirrels have chewed holes in. CPE: Customer Provided Equipment: problems with a circuit or number are often blamed on, or traced to, customer wiring or phones. COCOT: Customer-owned coin-operated telephone. A non- telephone-company coin phone. coils: a fuse that is part of the main distributing frame. It prevents lightning or other foreign voltages from damaging the switching equipment. It also makes the connection between a jumper on the main distributing frame and the outside world. coin: a coin collector; a pay telephone. coin-collect battery: The central office puts approximately +170 volts one side of the coin phone's pair. This causes a solenoid in the phone to actuate, collecting the deposited coins. Customer-owned coin phones supply their own power for this purpose. Some newer telephone company coin phones operate without the central office sending voltages. coin-return battery: The central office puts approximately -170 volts one side of the coin phone's pair. This causes a solenoid in the phone to actuate, returning the deposited coins. Customer-owned coin phones supply their own power for this purpose. Some newer telephone company coin phones operate without the central office sending voltages. compressor: a pole-mounted air compressor that dries ambient air and pumps it into a pressurized cable to prevent moisture form getting into the sheath. construction: department responsible for installing new cable, poles, and the like. count: Pairs of wires carrying each telephone number are assigned reference numbers called cable and pair. Example: "twenty one cable pair twenty three forty four." The numbers are assigned for accounting purposes and define, in the case of an underground cable, a location on the main distributing frame in the central office. A group of pairs of wires, say a hundred or five hundred pairs, is referred to en masse as a count. Use: "She's working in the same count as you are in the twenty one cable." cross connect: A type of connection box, usually large, green, and with (a) swinging door(s), used to house connections (jumpers) between underground and aerial cable pairs. Some of these boxes are pole- mounted: some at ground level and older ones with elevated seats. New ones are often on concrete pedestals at ground level. cross with battery: a short between pairs usually caused by a connection or cable with water or corrosion in it. Two or more telephone numbers are shorted together. DA/DA operator: directory assistance (operator); the kind you talk to when you dial "411". frames: the area where Intechs work making and breaking connections to the main distributing frame (MDF). Jumpers are run to connect cable pairs (to customers) and office equipment (the switching equipment). front feeds: poles carrying the telephone wiring (outside plant) are in the front of buildings along a street. "Give me a short": An employee in the field will often ask for an Intech to short a vacant pair that tests good in all other ways. This short proves continuity from the field all the way to the main distributing frame in the central office. It proves a pair has DC continuity and can be used to connect a customer's service. ground: a low (roughly >3 megohm) resistance between the tip or ring conductor and ground. heat coils: see coils. hooks: climbers; a J-shaped appliance with a sharp point that straps to employee's lower legs hooking under boot sole in front of heel; used to climb poles without steps; also called climbers. "ick-ee-pick": A p.i.c. cable filled with a non-water-soluble gel. The gel repels water so that the cable will not fail, or will fail more slowly, if the sheath leaks or the cable gets submerged. In-tech: an inside technician; a technician who works inside a central office. ladder truck: An aerial lift truck with a bucket that elevates employees up to hardware on poles or elevated cable to perform work. line transfer: also called a line and station transfer. For example, a new phone number is ordered by a customer served by Pole 3, Main Street. Pole 3 has 16 connections: the 10 cable, pair 1-16. None of these pairs is vacant/available. Pole 2, Main Street has the 10 cable, pair 8-23. Pair 22 is vacant. A technician moves the customer connected to pair 16 at pole 2 to pair 22 at pole 2, leaving pair 16 available for use at Pole 3. Several customers may be shifted to different pairs to make room for a new circuit to be installed. locator: an individual who goes out to mark the locations of buried telephone cables and service drops so that persons digging holes for swimming pools and trenches don't knock out telephone service. loop: a short or low resistance; see also: subscriber loop. Use: "That pair has a ninety volt loop." Old telephone company meter faces are only marked in volts so convention is to read resistances in "volts". maintenance: another name for Cable Maintenance Service. Useage: "We'll refer this repair ticket to maintenance." messenger: the steel cable that holds up a telephone cable that is stretched between poles; used for tensile strength and to support the cable's mass. mid-span: mid-way between two poles. open: the telephone circuit has an "open" if a conductor is broken somewhere in the circuit. open in: the circuit is open looking from the main distributing frame "in" toward the office equipment. The coils may be out. open out: the circuit is open looking from the central office main distributing frame toward the customer side or looking out toward the field. This is a normal condition if no phones are plugged in. OS: Operator Services: encompasses operators for Intra-LATA calls and Directory Assistance operators; the operators you call when dialing "0" were previously called Traffic Service Position System (TSPS) operators. p.i.c. cable: (plastic insulation coating): a cable, usually between 25 and 2,000 pairs, that has plastic, colored insulation. Each wire is identified by a single color. A 10-color system allows visual identification of individual wires. pedestal: A terminal for buried telephone cable where service drops attach to a cable pair. Usually looks like a green metal post: some are rectangular and some oval with flanges. POTS: plain old telephone service, a regular 7-digit telephone number. private line: A circuit that does not connect to the public switched network. protector: a device at the customer's end of the circuit that prevents lightning or other foreign voltages from energizing telephones and injuring customers. Look for a 10 gauge or larger ground wire. pulp cable: a cable, usually between 25 and 2,000 pairs, that has wood pulp insulation. Wires have no identification and are sensitive to moisture. When these cables are accidentally cut, each individual wire must be identified (from both sides) and spliced one at a time. rear feeds: poles carrying telephone cables are in the rear of buildings along a street. ring side: Each telephone circuit has two wires called "tip" and "ring". The ring side is the one that makes a dial tone when your phone is connected between it and earth ground. It is supposed to be on the right side of all connecting blocks and jacks and is the red wire. sheath: The outer covering on a telephone cable. Plastic, armor, and lead are three materials commonly used. For obvious reasons, lead sheath cable is rapidly being removed and the lead recycled. shoe: a device allowing test equipment to be plugged into a customer circuit at the main distributing frame in the central office. short: a low resistance side to ground: when measuring voltage and capacitive "kick" (longitudinal balance), the technician checks measurements from earth ground to the tip and ring conductors. Useage: "What's that pair look like tip-side to ground?" "I've got a tip-to-ground short." span: The distance between two poles. Example: "Two spans west of Pole 4 Main Street..." splice case: A metal or plastic case where two or more sections of cable are spliced together. These cases often are located in manholes (personholes?) or on above-ground cables near poles. splicer phone: A temporary dial tone. strand: a messenger subscriber loop: a telephone circuit with a subscriber telephone on the end of it. swinging ground: a short between earth ground and a pair usually caused by a connection with water or corrosion in it. The value of the short changes - or swings - as a result of the voltage applied by the test meter being connected. Older telephone company test meters only show "volts" on the face, so the value of the short is often read as a "fifty-volt swinging ground". swinging loop: a short between pairs usually caused by a connection with water or corrosion in it. The value of the short changes - or swings - as a result of the test meter being connected. Older telephone company test meters only show "volts" on the face, so the value of the short is often read as a "fifty-volt short". temporary dialtone: One of a bank of several telephone company test numbers typically used by splicers to communicate with one another when connecting multi-hundred pair cables or troubleshooting them. An employee in the central office connects the telephone number to an unused cable pair for as long as it is needed. tip side: Each telephone circuit has two wires called "tip" and "ring". The tip side is the one measuring nearest to earth ground potential. tone: Telephone maintenance employees use tone generators to locate a pair in a large number of wires. The tone makes individual pairs easy to locate through inductive pickup devices. Use: "send me some tone"; "I've got tone on it." transducer: A device that signals the existence of pressure in a pressurized cable. Some telephone cables have dried, compressed air pumped into them to keep water out of breaks in the sheath. underground cable: cable from the cross connect toward the central office. Called underground for accounting purposes even if it is on poles. USA: Underground Service Alert, a cooperative service that locates underground utilities before trenches are dug to prevent damage to buried facilities. WATS: wide area telecommunications service; Inward WATS lines are known to most people as 800-numbers; outward WATS lines are usually invisible to the user. wire out of limits: A connection made to a terminal that is not closest to a customer's facility or residence. Sometimes there are no circuits available on the pole closest to the customer's facility or home. Thanks to Jon Cereghino for this article on telephone jargon. TECHNOLOGY PREDICTIONS An article in the 17 October issue of WEST magazine describes Intel's Andy Grove. Grove, a hard-working prophet in the computer world, asserts that personal computers (PCs) are a communications tool. The Intel leader believes that facsimile (fax) machines and telephones will be overshadowed by the use of PCs. "Personal computers will be the primary computation and communications device for mankind," he declared. The increasing use of fax, video and data communications equipment is reflected in traffic measurements of calls placed over the public switched telephone network (PSTN) says Fred Sammartino of Sun Microsystems. AT&T claims that 40% of telephone calls are data, fax, and video traffic. The French telephone carrier Minitel asserts 50% of call traffic is non-voice data calls. Expanding on present trends, the composite data rate of all digital traffic in the U.S. will double every two to three years. This trend will lead to voice calls quickly becoming less than 1% of the total U.S. PSTN bandwidth used. Data rates for video and data calls will increase exponentially while prices for carrying this bandwidth will fall exponentially, claims Sammartino. This situation will lead to a communications revolution more profound to society than the introduction of the transistor. While 1950s electronics saw devices where tubes were used in amplifier and switch circuits, current technology permits thousands of transistors that work faster and use less power to be packaged in very small housings and operate on battery power. Likewise, drastic increases in available communications bandwidth will allow relatively inefficient communications modes (like full-motion NTSC video, for example) to be carried on residential telephone circuits. Because high speed data will be relatively cheap, voice bandwidth will be an insignificant part of the overall data stream. As local cable television companies become dialtone providers competing with the current local exchange carriers (LECs), Sammartino predicts voice telephone service may shift to a flat monthly connection fee with no additional fees for calls placed. He claims that just as current electronic equipment designs make inefficient use of individual transistors in ICs, future communications modes will be inefficient with bandwidth. Equipment designers who take the time to make designs where bandwidth is used efficiently will be too late to market with their product. Sun's Sammartino believes that Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) will form the communications backbone that will support future digital communications. ATM is scalable and is recognized as an international standard. Part of ATM's success is due to its format being developed recently by a coalition of people including industry and users. In contrast, ISDN was originally an international standard developed over a period of years. The original standard has been warped into individual standards with each country's ISDN being slightly different from others. [Sources: WEST magazine, 17 October 1993 and a lecture by Fred Sammartino of Sun Microsystems at Stanford University.] WHITE HOUSE LAN The Clinton-Gore White house is using 300 networked PCs to organize operations. According to THE G.D. NEWS IN REVIEW, a publication of the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, the White House uses Microsoft LAN, Word For Windows, FoxPro, and Excel software packages. The White House switchboard used a cord board "out of the 50s" when President Clinton took office. The new staff arrived to find rows of IBM Selectric typewriters and old key telephones. ["Editorial Realm (with bullets, et-cetera... )", THE G.D. NEWS IN REVIEW, The Geologic Division Newsletter, United States Geological Survey, Western Region, #83 April 1993, pp. 2.] RAILROAD HISTORY TOUR A railroad history tour of the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge will be conducted on 21 November. Reservations are required and the van tour will be limited to 13 people. The South Pacific Coast Railroad used to wind its way through the refuge. The tour begins at 1 p.m. and lasts three hours. San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center, One Marshlands Road, Fremont, (510) 792-4275. DOS THROUGH THE AGES MS- and PC-DOS has gone through an evolution since its inception. The original article, Version 1.0, operated an IBM PC. The original PC came with 16K of RAM and a single 160K floppy disk. Version 1.0 (1981): DOS operating system released Version 1.1 (1982): Support for 360K double-sided diskettes added Version 2.0 (1983): Support for the new PC-XT with a 10MB hard disk, ability to boot from the hard disk, create subdirectories, and redirect I/O. Version 2.1 (1984): Added PCjr support Version 3.0 (1984): Supports 80286 systems, 20MB hard disks, a new 101-key keyboard, and 80286 real mode. Version 3.1 (1985): Added PC Network 1.0 support Version 3.2 (1986): Added 720 diskette, PC Network 1.1 and PC Convertible support. (The ideal DOS for XTs). Version 3.3 (1987): Added PS/2 support, 1.44MB diskettes, and 80386 real mode support. (Patches for PC-DOS Disk I/O problems on PS/2 models available free to licensed users from IBM; MS-DOS 3.31 improved on 3.30) Version 4.0 (1990): Added support for large hard disk partitions (>32 MB). This release was followed by a Version 4.01 that allegedly improved on problems with the 4.0 release. Version 5.0 (1991): Added the ability for parts of DOS to be loaded into upper memory, leaving more conventional memory free for applications. Improved memory management for those who own 386 or 486 processors. Version 6.0 (1993): Improved on the feature allowing parts of DOS to be loaded into upper memory, leaving more conventional memory free for applications. Includes a disk compression utility allowing more data to be stored on an existing fixed disk. [Source: own observations and Iaccobucci, Ed, "Why a New System?" OS/2 PROGRAMMER'S GUIDE, (Berkeley: Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1988) pp.3.] STRESS You have probably seen cartoons defining stress. Few of us understand the implications of stressful lifestyles. An article by Neerad Lal in the 27 October issue of the STANFORD DAILY claims that the effects of continual stress are seriously damaging. Two hormones, adrenaline and glucocortoids, are produced by the body in response to stress. Over extended time periods, these hormones can cause high blood pressure, stroke, and brain damage. Individual brain cells are destroyed by long-term exposure to these hormones because chemical changes brought about by the hormones cause the brain cells to physically damage themselves. Stress is believed to slow mucous production in the stomach, resulting in ulcers. Stress is also believed to reduce the production of sexual hormones, slow growth, and may even affect the immune system's proper operation. [Neerad Lal, "Stress Stalls Sex Hormones, Causes Brain Damage," STANFORD DAILY, 27 October 1993, pp.7.] UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORIA STUDENTS GET EVEN Six student government members at the University of California, Santa Barbara were upset at fees that Regents have increased drastically every year. In spring, the students wheeled their fees -- hundreds of pounds of coins -- into the office where student bills are paid, writes Amy L. Rinehart of the INDIANA STUDENT. Rinehart, quoted in U. THE NATIONAL COLLEGE MAGAZINE, claims that it took four hours for U.C. employees to count and roll the dimes, nickels, and pennies. [Source: Rinehart, Amy L., "UC Milks Students for Every Last Dime," U. THE NATIONAL COLLEGE MAGAZINE, August/September 1993, pp. 11.] NUCLEAR PHOTOS An exhibit of photos taken by Patrick Nagatani explores the photographer's view of nuclear weapons testing in New Mexico. Titled "Nuclear Enchantment" -- apparently a new angle on the state's "Land of Enchantment" slogan -- are on display at the Stanford Art Gallery near the end of Palm Drive. Hours are Tues.-Fri. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sat.-Sun. 1 p.m. - 5 p.m. through December 12. TRIDENT MISSILE PROGRAM RISKS TOO HIGH SAYS STANFORD PHYSICIST JOHN HARVEY John R. Harvey is a physicist who runs the science program at Stanford's Center for International Security and Arms Control. Harvey says there are design concerns with the existing Trident system. In an article by Katherine O'Toole in CAMPUS REPORT, the physicist says that reduced risks brought about by the demise of the cold war warrant a redesign of both C-4 and D-5 models of the submarine-launched Trident. The article says risks of the operational Trident system were acceptable at the height of the cold war but need to be reexamined now. The Trident system's safety was first questioned publicly in 1990 when the topic came up in a House Armed Services Committee hearing. Before that, the Department of Energy and Department of Defense had debated the problem internally for years. Harvey says the conventional high-explosive and plutonium in the missile's warhead is too close to the solid propellant motor. The explosion of a solid motor could release ten kilograms of highly-toxic plutonium into the atmosphere. An accident at the Trident bases in Silverdale, Washington (near Seattle) or at Kings Bay, Georgia (near Jacksonville, Florida) could expose local residents to an increased cancer risk, causing 20-3,000 cancer deaths (over 30 years) in addition to the 750 that are expected as a public average. Harvey has several suggestions that would reduce the impact of modifications on the effectiveness of the weapons system. He recommends the motor propellant be replaced with a less-hazardous propellant and that high explosive in the warhead be replaced with a more stable insensitive high explosive (IHE). Lastly, one of the eight reentry vehicles could be removed to recover range lost by reduced motor output. [O'Toole, Katherine, "Safer Design needed for Trident Missile System, scientists say," CAMPUS REPORT, 27 October 1993, pp.1,16] VOCABULARY EDITORIAL: SUBROGATION WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY ENCYCLOPEDIC EDITION defines subrogation as, "the substitution of one party for another as creditor so that the new creditor succeeds the first creditor's rights in laws and equity." While subrogation is generally considered a legal concept, it is increasingly becoming a social one as well. Take MTV's "Beevis and Butthead" cartoon as an example. The news media carried a story in mid-October about some children in Ohio who set fire to their mobile home after watching a "Beevis and Butthead" episode where the characters set fire to items. The children's fire killed their two-year- old sister. One interview with a neighbor revealed that the kids had played with fire prior to the episode. According to the news media, setting fires is a common practice on the MTV cartoon. Were the kids encouraged by the cartoon to set the fire? Where was the mother while her children were watching MTV? Is it appropriate for parents to let young children to watch this kind of television show? Is it MTV's fault the child died for airing the show? Why does MTV air a show with this type of content in a cartoon format likely to be enticing to children? Is it the mother's fault for poorly supervising the children? Civil attorneys will certainly offer some answers to us soon. Insurance companies are on the subrogation bandwagon, too. If you are involved in a collision with another vehicle, the insurance carrier will try to split the claim with any other entity that can be identified as a factor in the crash. Perhaps there is a history of blowouts with your "Lardteca 500"* tires. If the insurance company can suggest a possibility that a tire failure contributed to the accident, they will go after the Lardteca Tire Company to pay part of the claim. In another example, imagine that your car has an engine fire. Moreover, imagine that the fire investigator says the carburetor was where the fire started and the carburetor was recently rebuilt by ZYX Carburetors. The insurance carrier might go after ZYX Carburetors to pay part or all of the claim. ZYX Carburetor's insurance may have to pay. People often blame others for their for their failures and only accept accountability for events that are positive. "I earned the pay raise by working hard to improve my company's service," an individual might claim. But when caught speeding, the same individual might claim a variety of reasons why they are not accountable. "My speedometer is not accurate," or "That cop was picking on me because I have a red car," might be cited as reasons for the ticket. Never mind the fact that the person in control of the vehicle was travelling faster than the posted limit! What if the reverse held: people claimed no accountability for their successes. Imagine that the people who were responsible for the last space shuttle launch took no accountability for the event. "I didn't really intend to launch the shuttle, we just saw a rocket launch on 'Beevis and Butthead' and that lead us to try the same thing." THOUGHTS for November... ------------------------ "An implicit consequence of [limits on the release of radioactive material]... is that no radiation exposure can be assumed to be absolutely safe. The main issue is therefore the acceptability of the presumed potential risks, in relation to both the acceptability of other risks by society and the benefits expected by society from the operations causing the exposure." From: PRINCIPLES FOR ESTABLISHING LIMITS FOR THE RELEASE OF RADIO- ACTIVE MATERIALS INTO THE ENVIRONMENT, International Atomic Energy Agency, 1978. "...the development of union intelligence hangs always on the development of management intelligence. When management combats collective bargaining, however subtly, the demand within the union for soap-box orators and strong men becomes irresistible. It is impossible for the union to build a central committee of political economists and production-minded leaders when negotiations are still in the brick and tear-gas stage." Russell W. Davenport, THE DYNAMICS OF INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942) pp. xii. "Lets say a Silicon Valley high-tech engineer is living the good life and buys an Infinity [brand automobile]. He shifts all that money to Japan, and six months later he gets laid off because his company can't compete with Japan. He never connects the two." Paul Tsongas "I'm Pro-Accordion and I vote." (Bumper Sticker) _____________________________________________________________________ Thanks to individuals who contributed information for Baseline News. * Lardteca Tire Co. is an imaginary company created for discussion purposes only. ________________________________________________________________________ Article on telephone jargon is (C) Copyright 1993, Jon Cereghino, All rights reserved. (The document was edited for brevity and clarity). Apologies to Jon for including it in last month's "This Month" header ________________________________________________________________________ Baseline news is not affiliated with Bay Area Scanner Enthusiasts (BASE). Baseline News (C) Copyright 1993 C-Message Weighting Messaging System (408)-377-7441 1200/2400/9600/14400 baud. As long as you distribute this file in its entirety, (including this statement) it is okay to redistribute, print, or copy this file for any lawful purpose without other restrictions. (end)