OMNI August 1979

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    ROBERT A.heinlein:ir-lECTIONS ONSPACE TRAVEL ANDT^:^:io

    the slowestandbeautiful

    CARLSAGAN:: DWARFS, UTTL"GREEN MEN ANDTALESpF THE* ANCIENT

    " ASTRONAUTSPLUS?SILICON VALLEYJAWS 2000 -UFO:over Iran -the

    little space probethatcould

    109 BP'0.00 DKr

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    onnruiUGUST 1979EDITOR & DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONEEXECUTIVE EDITOR: FRANK KENDIGART DIRECTOR: FRANK DEVINOEUROPEAN EDITOR: DR. BERNARD DIXONFICTION EDITOR' BEN BOVADIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING: BEVERLEY WARDALEEXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT: IRWIN E. BILLMANASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: KATHY KEETONASSOCIATE PUBLISHER (INT'L): FRANCO ROSSELLINI

    K 1 m

    CONTENTS PAGEFIRST WORD Opinion Jerry Grey 6OMNIBUS Contributors 8COMMUNICATIONS Correspondence 10

    12FORUM DialogueEARTH Environment Kenneth Brower 14

    16SPACE Astronomy Mark R. Chartrand IILIFE Biomedicine Bernard Dixon 20

    OFFICIAL CIRCLES Politics William K. Stuokey 22THE ARTS Media 24UFO UPDATE Report James Oberg 30

    35CONTINUUM Data BankWHITE DWARFS ANDGREEN MEN Article Carl Sagan 44SANDKINGS Fiction George R, R. Martin 50

    54WIZARDS OF SILICON VALLEY Article Gene Bylinsky andZhenya LaneTHE NOTEBOOKS OFLAZARUS LONG Pictorial Robert A. Heinlein 60JOHN D. ISAACS Interview Joseph E. Brown

    Orson Scott Card7076QUIETUS Fiction

    SHARKI Article Kenneth Jon Rose 80THE FOX AND THE HEDGEHOGALOFT

    Fiction John Anthony West 86Pictorial Nick Engler 90

    VAGABOND Humor David Searls 98STARS Comment Patrick Moore 129EXPLORATIONSWARNING COLORS

    Travel Michael Cassutt 130Phenomena Peter Parks 140

    GAMES Diversions Scot Morris 144LAST WORD . Opinion Joyce McWilliams 146PHOTO CREDITS 128

    Cover art for this month's Omnis a painting by the Englishartist Peter Goodteitow,entitled The Illustrated Man.Goodfettow, who was born in1950, studied at the CentralSchool of Art in London His artreflects elements of thesurrealist and symbolist schools.4 OMNI

    OMNI 1979 (ISSN 0149-8711). U S Voiume 1 Number 11 Copyright 1979 by Omni International Ltd. All lights reserved. Published,nl in IheUnited States and simultaneous,, in Canada by OMNI Publications International Ltd =* "J*

    7006. DistributedMDislAflon Ltd. 16-18^

    inwhde i I in- t F "shers An, sum :.- 1 -en,Son and real places or persons living or dead is coincidental. Subscriptions^ U.S., *FO-JWW C;ra* LV i- r , etc..toOMNIMagazine,PO.Box908,

    ,735. Posimastei. Send form 3579 ,o Farmingdaie addiess. Tel, (516) 420-1894. Second-class postage paid at NewY k N , al esponsoiitr to return unsolicited edcon i mailerportions published thereot .emain the sole property ol Omni International. Letters to OMNI or Us editors becomei the property ,ot themagazL and are assumed intended tor publication and lepubiication in whole or in part, and ma, therefore be used tor such purposes

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    Again we'vecompromisedone of mankind'smost impressive andmost usefuladvancements inorder to save afew bucks up front

    Whatever happened to the Grand Tou' ofthe solar system? Why was Skylab, theon.'/ U.S. space station, lost in a fierydescent to Earth? Why are the Canadians,the French, the Germans, the Japanese,and the Russians developing moreadvanced communications satellites thanthe Americans, who pioneeredspace-communication technology? Why isthe space shuttle having so manyproblems7Because the U.S. space program:

    operates on a shoestring, that's whyBack in the days of the race to :he moon

    there were virtually no limits on spacespending. National prestige was at stake.

    But times are different now. The VietnamWar, double-digit inflation, and burgeoningsocial concerns have generated a majorchange in public attitudes. Proposition 13haunts the halls of Congress and the WhiteHouse. The "suit? Whatever does gotdone gets done literally on a shoestring.

    Item: The Grand Tour, a remarkableopportunity to swing scientific spacecraftpast all the outer planets of the solarsystem- an opportunity that presentsitself only once in centuries was deemed"too expensive. The recent Voyage' flybyof Jupiter, spectacularly successfulthough it was, could have been theforerunner of equally successful visits tothe outer planets, but the Grand Tpurmission was delayed out of existence, its"window" foreclosed by the inexorablemovement of the planets around the sun.Item: Skylab plummeted to Earth. Therewas much furor about the prospectivedanger of that reentry, but few personsrecognized the real tragedy of Skylab'splunge: It signified the loss of the oniy U.S.space station. What was the reason forfailure? In 1969 NASA's recommendationfor a permanent manned orbiting stationsurfaced during the post-Apollo mood ofnational parsimony. We launched Skylabinstead a lash-up literally throwntogether out of hardware left over from thecanceled final Apollo missions (albeit withalmost wondrous skill and success). Thecrux of this penny pinching, however, wasthat it could have been placed in a higherorbit, which would have kept it in space fordecades, at a cost (in 1972-73) of only afew hundred thousand dollars.

    Item: The United States decided in 1973that communications-satellite technologywas sufficiently well developed to beturned over to industry. Now there'snothing basically wrong with thatphilosophy. But U.S. industry did notpickup the long-term, high-economic-risk research and development, which Isclassically the government's role. Foreign

    governments, however, jumped in with lotsof francs, marks, yen, and rubles. TheCarter administration finally recognizedthe signs- six years late. America is nowplaying catch-up ball in the only profitable,tax-revenue-producing business in space.

    Item The much-heralded space shuttle.whose first orbital test was originallyscheduled tot March 1379. will be iucky toget off the ground by March 1980. Thesame old shoestring philosophy did NASAin again. In 1971 the Office of Manage-ment and Budget said, in effect, "You getfive billion dollars. That's it. Not a pennymore. Go do the best you can."The result is an ungainly; only partly

    reusable camel (a horse designed by a,committee), lacking the reusable orbitaltransfer vehicle ("space tug") so criticallyneeded for many of its projected missions.We'll have a shuttle -which is great- butit will be at least a year late (and mission"customers" are already stacked up solidfor the first two or three years), it won't benearly as efficient, reliable, cost-effective,or flexible as it might have been, and it willstill cost a billion dollars more than theoriginal shoestring estimate.-Again we've compromised one of

    mankind's most impressive and mostuseful advancements in order to save afew bucks up front.

    Perhaps the most graphic denunciationof this shortsighted budgetary attitude -was offered by Norman Cousins in anaddress to the American Institute ofAeronautics and Astronautics' annualmeeting in Washington last February:

    "The world will end neither with a bang nora whimper, but with the strident cries of:it!.e men devoted to cost-benefit ratios. Ifcost-benefit ratios had governed ourhistory, Socrates would have become ababy-sitter, Newton an apple polisher,Galileo and Giordano Bruno court jesters.Columbus would have taken out a gondolaconcession in Venice. Thomas Jeffersonwould have become a tax collector, JohnMilton would have written limericks . . . andAlbert Einstein would have changed hisname and stayed in Germany"Space technology is too valuable no,

    too necessary to our national and globawell-being to be developed on ashoestring. The lessons are there to be _iearned. Let's do it right from now onl DOJerry Grey, the administrator of publicpolicy for the American institute ofAeronautics and Astronautics, is theauthor of Enterprise, a new book thatfocuses on the space shuttle. \

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    DRJlfUIISU!

    i hey're calling it the new mecca ofhigh technology, and nothing likeit exists anywhere else in the

    world. Birthplace of electronic games andhome computers, of some of the world'smost advanced supercomputers, ofimpressive laser technology, and ofmachines that can understand humanspeech and can talk back, Santa ClaraValley has become home to the twentiethcentury's most daring and innovativeexplorers. Known familiarly as SiliconValley, this stretch of land between theSanta Cruz Mountains and San FranciscoBay provides the setting for a techno-logical revolution of startling proportions.

    "It's where two bright Stanford students,William Hewlett and David Packard,started their company in a one-cargarage," says Fortune magazine writerGene Bylinsky. "Hewlett-Packard nowemploys 42,000 people worldwide, withannual sales approaching $2 billion-"

    In "The Wizards of Silicon Valley" (page54), Bylinsky and coauthor Zhenya Laneprofile those scholars and soldiers offortune who have made Silicon Valley thetechnological haven it is today. OneEnglish-born computer manufacturersays, "The effect on Earth of Silicon Valleywill be as dramatic over the next twocenturies as the effect of Dr. LouisLeakey's discoveries on the evolutionof man."

    "Earth was the only choice left," said Dr.OzmoZdilmidgi, mission director atThought Propulsion Laboratory (TPL),8 . OMNI

    about the most recent space probe."Everything else was too far away and toodamned expensive, except maybe themoon. And who wants to go there? We'vebeen there about six times, and it alwayslooks like Winnemucca!"Because of meager funding, scientistsat TPL were forced to scrap their long-established plans for exploring thelesser-known outer planets and concen-trate instead on much more "convenientbodies." Despite subtle differences, all thefindings concur on one point: Theredefinitely is life on the third planet! AuthorDavid Searls provides the humor in"Vagabond" (page 98).

    During the past 30 years attempts toprotect ourselves from shark attacks havegreatly improved. Researchers arebecoming more confident that antisharkdefenses will be both inexpensive andtotally effective in the not-too-distantfuture. Marine specialist Kenneth JonRose presents a detailed glimpse of someof these incredible devices in "Shark!"(page 80). The day will soon arrive whenyou will enter the sea without fear ofattack, allowing the shark to play its properrole as merely an animal, with commonanimal instincts, not the mindless monsterwe've made it out to be.

    Undoubtedly the strongest science-fiction story to come along in a long time,"Sandkings," by George R. R. Martin, willbe remembered as one of Omni's mostoutstanding works, You won't want to missthis gripping tale of mounting horror and

    suspense that's guaranteed to make youflesh crawl. Keep the lights on; the terrorstarts on page 50.

    Crafty, stubborn, quick on the trigger,and "smart" are all outstanding traits ofRobert A. Heinlein's memorable charactLazarus Long. Since his first appearancin Heinlein's 1941 novel Methuselah'sChildren, Lazarus Long has become onof science fiction's most popular per-sonalities. We've added color to thisvenerable character, to form a stunningpictorial"The Notebooks of LazarusLong" (page 60).

    Besides providing yet anotherappearance by the ever-popular OrsonScott Card ("Quietus," page 76), thismonth's fiction offers the versatile JohnAnthony West ("The Fox and theHedgehog," page 86), whose worksinclude Serpent In the Sky: The HighWisdom of Ancient Egypt (Harper & Row1979), a nonfiction novel, and a few workof fiction, Call Out the Militia (E. P. Dutton1967) and Osborne's Army (WilliamMorrow, 1967). West is currently workingThe Sound of Healing (Wildwood), anonfiction work scheduled for 1980publication in the United Kingdom.

    Finally, Carl Sagan contributes anintriguing expose in "White Dwarfs andGreen Men." The astronomer-lecturerexamines the ancient-astronaut theoriemade fashionable by pop archaeologistErich von Daniken and others, withparticular emphasis on the Dogon tribeMali. Turn to page 44. OO

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    3 GUCCIONEeditor & publisherKATHY KEETON

    associate publisherOMNI INTERNATIONAL LTDTHE CORPORATION

    Bob Guccione {chairman and president)Kathy Keeton (sen/or vice-president)

    Irwin E. Billman {executive vice-president)Anthony J. Guccione {secretary-treasurer)

    EDITORIALEditor in Chief: Bob Guccione; Executive Editor:Frank Kendtg; Managing Editor: J. AndersonDormar Scot Morris; Arti-cles Editor: Edward Rosenfeld; Fiction Editor: BenBova; Humor Editor: Bill Lee; European Editor: Dr.Bernard Dixon; Associate Editors: Owen Davies, Kath-leen Stein; Assistant Editors: Richard Levitt, KathleenMcAuliffe, Eric Rosen;CopyCft/ef:GinaE. Grant; CopyEditors: Robert Boylan, Charles J. Attardi; EditorialAssistants: Suzanne Stoessel, Christine Pullo, SusanCapuioiContributingEditors: Monte Davis, Dr. Christo-pher Evans, Dr. Patrick Moore, OBE, Durk Pearson,

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    Strebrnjak 96, Zagreb, Yugoslavia.AUGUST

    CDRnnnuaiicMToajsWorth a Thousand WordsSince the late 1950s and early 1960s thephenomenon of unidentifiable objects inthe sky has progressed from'"flyingsaucers" to U.EO.s to UFOs (distastefullypronounced you-foes), out of which hasdeveloped the study of "ufology" Themania of the previous decade has beentempered somewhat in the 1970s to thepoint where more rational approaches arenow taken in the investigation of thisphenomenon.The gallery of such photographs carried

    in your April issue is perhaps the cream ofthe crop of UFO images, and I wasimpressed by the fact thatthey werepresented in an objective light and notheralded to be either genuine or fake.A picture is worth a thousand words,some say; I would submit that in the caseof UFOs such is anything but the case.Much store is placed in photographstoo much. The emphasis placed on aphotograph during a UFO investigation isusually blown all out of proportion. In fact,if it cannot be proved that a photo was"doctored" or faked in some way, then it isclassed as genuine, and the wholeincident gains an almost indisputablecredibility. This is akin to saying, Becausethe moon covers the sun during a solareclipse, then it must be the same size. It isall a matter of perspective.A photograph should be a very weaklink in the chain of evidence compiledduring a UFO investigation. The moreempirical, unfakable evidence is the realthing to zero in on during an objectiveinvestigation.

    Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who is mentioned inthe copy accompanying the excellentphoto layout, would, I am sure, agree withme on this point about photographs.

    Indisputable evidence will not begathered through pretty pictures. Crosscorrelation and checking out of similaritiesand differences between cases willprovide the best base to work from.The bottom line is this: Seeing is

    believing, but a photograph is only asgood as the paper it is printed on.Jon Stone

    Nova Scotia, Canada

    Brilliant SpiderI have, in the course of a not-too-lengthybut overwhelmingly well-rounded lifetime,indulged myself in absorbing as muchprinted matter as can possibly bedigested. On occasion I have been movedby word or script to thank variouscontributors to my self-indulgence fordoing so brilliantly. I do so now, to SpiderRobinson, for "God Is an Iron" [May 1979],And, though not at all as an

    afterthought, to Omni magazine, forconsistently making my choice ofself-indulgences so delightful.

    Jana ElliotDallas, Tex.

    Fearsome FacesOf all the interviews published in Omni sofar, I find E. O. Wilson's certainly the mostmind-prodding one, since it deals sodirectly with all of us [Interview, February1979]. The sociobiological explanation ofracism and xenophobia originating from apredisposition to identify with one's owngroup (or to mistrust strangers) makesmuch sense. These feelings, be they weakor strong, show up in all societies. A goodexample is found in that same Omni issue.I am referring to Kenneth Brower's Earthcolumn, in which he expresses hisuneasiness at the aspect of Guayaquil'sinhabitants. Our "gringo" eyes may findthe indigenous faces a little fearsome atfirst, but to say that they are cutthroats isgoing too far. I've had nice times withpeople in southwestern Colombia, who,when I first met them, filled me withdoubts. One can't necessarily judge bylooks alone. John E. Lattk

    Caracas, VenezuelNewts in Dark CavesYour correspondent R. F. Norman [May1979] may have been misled by theprecise wording of my interview [January1979]. Nevertheless, the text did containmy comment that Natural Rejection couldbe called Natural Selection, but that theformer name is "more descriptive."When newts that live for many gener-ations in dark caves become blind, orCONTINUED ON PAGE 128

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    ALOGUEFDRURflIn which the readers, editors, andcorrespondents discuss topics arising outof Omni and theories and speculation ofgeneral interest are brought forth. Theviews published are not necessarily thoseolthe editors. Letters for publicationshould be mailed to Omni Forum, OmniMagazine, 909 Third Avenue, New York,N.Y. 10022.

    Ominous PlateauIn his interview with Omni [March 19791Arthur C. Clarke inveighs against the"astrology people" who prophesy globalcalamity in 1982.These prophets of doom are not

    astrologers. They are two Cambridge-trained physicists, John Gribbin andStephen Plagemann, whose best-sellingpotboiler, The Jupiter Effect, exemplifiesthe kind of irresponsible and fallaciousreporting Clarke attributes to the fringe.The theory advanced by these sci-

    entiststhat the planets falling within a60-degree arc on one side of the sun willseriously affect the earth is not sup-ported by past experience. It is notsupported by anything, least of all byastrology.

    Clarke's and Frank Kendig's mutualcontention that Uri Geller has beendiscredited is totally unsubstantiated.Geller has been subjected to rigorousscrutiny on three continents, and thefindings are conclusive: His abilities areparanormal. Furthermore, professionalmagicians were indeed called upon toobserve Geller for legerdemain and toattempt to duplicate his feats. Themagicians were hopelessly outmatched. Irefer to Charles Panati's The Geller Papers(Houghton Mifflin, 1976) for an objectivetreatment of this matter.

    Both Clarke and Kendig cite magicianJames Randi as having categoricallyrefuted Geller I would like to know wherethis singular fact has been documented.To be sure, Randi is a very efficient mouth-piece for the debunking fraternity; hepersonally profits from maligning Gellerand the entire paranormal population, buthis credibility is seriously in doubtJohn Wheeler's recommendation that

    parapsychologists be kicked out of theAmerican Association for the Advance-ment of Science now raises the paranor-mal debate to an ominous plateau.By purging science of the parapsy-

    chologists, Wheeler is removing the onlycreditable means by which paranormalclaims can be effectively investigated.

    BrendaCalia ThomasSt. Paul, Minn.

    Computer WarfareI was fascinated and distressed byJonathan V. Post's article "Cybernetic War"[May 1979]. The technology representedexemplifies modern science's mostfantastic achievements in recent history:computers, lasers, nuclear physics, etc.But these achievements areovershadowed by militaristic implications.It is unfortunate that as soon as adeveloping science is recognized ashaving military capabilities, it is clothed insecrecy in the name of "national security."The advent of ever more complicatedand spphisticated weapons has escalatedthe arms race to hysterical levels. It hascreated a vicious circle between the scien-tists, the military, and the paranoid public.Sooner or later we will be forced to take aresponsible look at the continuing build-up of arms in the world, before it istoo late.

    Stuarl D. MacDonaldLos Gatos, Calif.

    I enjoyed very much the article "Cyber-netic War," and I can attest to the fact thatthe military is steadily becoming moredependent upon computers for our nation'sdefenseAs Post stated, computers and lasers

    have their futures inextricably linked, but tosay that "lasers can be used directly asweapons" makes me somewhat skeptical.

    Granted high-energy lasers canvaporize flesh and metal. But it would nottake much to render the aggressor's lasertotally useless. Any substance that did notabsorb the electrons of the laser beam atthe specific wavelength in which they were"generated" would be guite safe from suchan attack. Furthermore, the energy

    required to power such a laser would haveto be tremendous. As only 6 percent of alaser's total input can be effectivelyutilized, that plus the distance the laserbeam would have to cover to destroy atarget at a safe range would only lessen theeffectiveness of that weapon.As a taxpayer, I hope that the govern-

    ment, for purposes other than navigationtracking and communications, will keeplaser technology out of the war field andspend our tax dollars on more worthwhileprojects. STG 3 Alan Majeski

    U.S. NavySan Diego, Calif.

    In an article entitled "Cybernetic War" theauthor, Jonathan V Post, mentions thatscientists in Geneva have recentlyannounced the first containment ofantimatter. I have always thought thatantimatter was strictly a fictional deviceused in the television series Star Trek. I donot recall ever hearing of such anannouncement being made. If this is true,don't you think the majority of your readerswould like to hear more about it? I knowwould. I was somewhat surprised that insuch an article there would be so littlementioned about something so bigl Omnis the only magazine for which I have stoodat the newsstand, waiting every month foreach issue lo be put on the shelf. Pleasekeep 'em coming.

    David G. MorrisonSan Francisco, Calif.

    One year ago scientists at CERN in Genevawere able to store antimatter for the firsttime by using a technique called ICE, orstochastic cooling. The system utilized a2-billion-electron-volt storage ring thatcontained the antimatter for a period of 85hours. Ed.In his article "Cybernetic War," Jonathan V.Post spoke of the use of antimatter as aweapon and of how it would be controlled.Post spoke of antimatter as one substancethat could destroy every type of regularmatter. But what he did not mention, andprobably did not think of , is that there mayCONTINUED ON PAGE 135

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    EARTHBy Kenneth Browerr. Carl Koford led the way pasttall, gray rows of museum cases,then up a flight of stairs and

    past more museum cases. We were in ascientific mausoleumthe Museum ofVertebrate Zoology of the University ofCalifornia at Berkeleyand the navy-graycases filled the place. The air was cooland smelled faintly of naphthalene. At thefar end of the room, bone-white atop thenavy gray, too big to fit inside, was theskull of a gray whale. Dr. Koford turnedhard right, into an aisle between twonavy-gray rows. He did not have to pauseto read the number. He knew this aisle byheart.

    "You can tell the condor case," he said,nodding upward. "It's the biggest one." Hewas right. The case labeled "Cathartidae"was twice as long as the others. Hereached high to undo the hasps.

    Koford is a trim, graying man : retirednow, but youthful in his movements andexpression. He wore an old red-checkedshirt, with frayed holes in one shoulder. Hisface was pleasantly weathered from a lifespent observing animals in the fieldvicunas in South America, monkeys inPuerto Rico, prairie dogs on the prairie,and, at the beginning of his career,condors in southern California.He removed the front panel, setting it on

    the floor. An invisible cloud of naphthaleneescaped the case and enveloped us.Inside the case were tour horizontal trays,and Koford rolled out the lowest. For aninstant I felt like a relative called down tothe morgue to identify a cadaver. Clearly,though, the corpse on the tray was no kinof mine. The bird was enormousin life,condors weigh nine kilograms ormoreand it lay on its back. There weretwo others supine behind it. 1 studied thegreat hooked beak, designed to tear atcarcasses. I ran my finger along a foot,which, uncurled, would have had the spanof a human hand. With a fingertip I testedthe pinpoint of a talon, designed to hold acarcass down while the beak tore. Therewere, I knew, only about 30 condors left inthe wild. It occurred to me that sometimeearly in the next century, perhaps sooner,the only California condors on the planet14 OMNI

    might lie supine on trays like these.I read the labels. The condor's scientific

    names were felicitous. The condor and theother American vultures belong to thefamily Cathartidae, from the Greekkathartes, "a cleanser," from katharos,"pure." The etymology recalled the dignityin what might sometimes seem a grislyoccupation. The vultures are responsiblefor a catharsis of the landscape. Theirjob is to take things down to the boneagain. The condor's generic name isGymnogyps, its specific name califor-nianus. Gymnogyps derives from gymnos,Greek for "naked," and gyps, Greek for"vulture." The condor's head and neck arenaked of feathers, an adaptation thatallows the bird to clean itself more easilyafterthe gruesome work,

    "This one is a juvenile male shot nearPasadena in 1908," Koford said, fingeringa tag tied to the foot. 'And this one wastaken in 1886." He burrowed his fingersinto the downy neck of another young bird,as if searching for something there. "This

    One of the last of the California condors.

    one is still pretty downy," he said. "It wasprobably killed the same year it came outof the nest."He demonstrated how the young birddefends itself in the nest. Putting his headdown, he hissed and hit at me awkwardlywith his wingtips. Then he lookedembarrassed. He had forgotten himsefr fora moment and had become a condor.

    Several detached flight feathers lay atthe foot of one bird, and Koford nowpicked up two of them. "Individualfeathers are over twenty-four inches long,"he said. Holding a feather in either hand,he extended his arms, pointing the feathertips outward. "The length of the wingbones is about the same as in a human'sarms. So this would be the wingspread."

    "Eight feet?' : I estimated, too quickly."Nine," he said. He stood with his wings

    extended. He had forgotten himself again.For a moment, there in the narrow, navy-gray aisle, he soared.

    Riding the wind currents above thechaparral-covered California hills, condorsmake a musical, whistling sound as airspills past their pinions. 'As if," PeterKaplan has written, "all the grace andfreedom of flight were expressed in a fewsinging notes."The distinctive feature of condor flight is

    high stability in soaring. The condor's"loading"its ratio of body weight to wingsurfaceis heavy, nearly twice that ofthe turkey vulture. Turkey vultures canascend more quickly, but in any kind ofturbulence they wobble markedly bycomparison. Sailing on the thermals,condors hold rock-steady. Humanobservers, even experienced ones, oftenmistake condors for transport planes, andplanes for condors. Condors can soar foran hour without flapping their wings. Theycan glide for eight minutes or more withouturning and can travel about 16 kilometerson one tack.Gymnogyps is a survivor of an epochwhen the scale of life was larger. In thePleistocene Era condors appear to havebeen more abundant in North Americathan black vultures or turkey vultures. Thesmaller vultures, perhaps, were unable toCONTINUED ON PAGE 134

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    Bv Mark R. Chartrand III

    | y the end of next month, much of. our information about the planetI Saturn will be obsolete. Pioneer

    11 will fly past Saturn on September 1,giving us the first-ever close-ups of thatunusual gaseous giant.

    Not allot our information will bechanged. We have long known exactlyhow much time Saturn takes to go oncearound the sun (29.46 of our years), howfar it is from our system's central star (amean distance of 1.427 billion kilometers)and that its orbit is slightly elliptical andinclined 2.5 degrees from the earth's orbit.What we will find is unknown, but wehope for detailed views of the planet's"surface"really the top of Saturn'satmosphereand of its satellites. We willlook for a magnetic field, new rings, andpossible new satellites.Through most of our history Saturn's

    rings remained unknown, for the eye alonecannot see them. In 1610 Galileo, with hisfirst crude telescope, saw that Saturnseemed to be in three pieces, and hewondered whether the planet had

    handles, or "ears." It wasn't until 1655 thatChristiaan Huygens saw more clearly, witha better instrument, that Saturn had a ringaround it. At the same time he discoveredTitan, Saturn's largest satellite and thelargest moon in the solar system.More satellites came into view as

    telescopes were improved. In 1671Giovanni Domenico Cassiniwho movedto the new Paris Observatory andchanged his name to Jean-Domi-niquefound lapetus, and in thenext year he discovered Rhea. In 1675 hefound that there was not just one ring, butat least two, separated by a dark gap,which he named Cassini's Division. In1684 Cassini discovered two more moons,Tethys and DioneA century passed before Sir William

    Herschel found a pair of moons, Mimasand Enoeladus. It was Herschel who firstmeasured the planet's rotational speedMeasuring Saturn's speed had proved to

    ' be very difficult, because Saturn has novery prominent features that can betracked as the planet rotates. Herschel

    Voyager 1 mosaic of Jupiter foretells the revelations Pioneer 1 1 will soon send back from Saturn.16 OMNI

    found that Saturn iurns in a little more thaten hours, just slightly more slowly thanJupiter. This means that an object onSaturn's equator is traveling 36,900kilometers an hour just slightly less thanthe escape velocity of Earth and a quartethat of Saturn itself.

    Another half century went by beforeGeorge Phillips Bond, an American, founthe satellite Hyperion (in 1848), and yetanother 50 years passed before WilliamPickering found the real oddball ofSaturn's system, Phoebe, Not only is thissatellite much more distant from Saturnthan any other, but it is moving counter toall the others, in a retrograde orbit. UntilPhoebe's discovery only one otherretrograde satellite was knownTriton, oNeptuneand the discovery of Phoebecaused considerable consternationamong astronomers. One anonymousastronomer committed his vexation toverse, with a parenthetical addition by thlate Donald Menzel, of HarvardPhoebe, Phoebe, whirling highIn our neatly plotted sky,Phoebe, listen to my lay,Won't you swirl the other way?Never mind what God has said;We have made a law instead.Have you never heard of thisNebular hypothesis?It prescribes, in terms exact,Just how every star should act,Tells each little satelliteWhere to go and whirl at night.(Disobedience incursAnger of astronomers,Whoyou mustn't think it oddAre more finicky than God.)And so, my dear, you'd better changeReally we can't rearrangeAll our charts from Mars to Hebe,Just to fit a chit like Phoebe.Now we know that Saturn has at least 1

    satellites, Janus was discovered in 1966,and an unnamed one, the innermost, wafound just last year. Pioneer may show usothers.There are some odd things about thes

    satellites. Titan has a thick atmosphereconsisting of hydrogen and methane. ThCONTINUED ON PAGE 137

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    E

    LIFBy Dr. Bernard Dixon

    ne year ago this month aminuscule bacillus growing incanned salmon produced a rare

    tragedy'in Great Britain. The immediateresult was four serious illnesses, two ofthem fatal. Over the long term, another direconsequence befell the food companyconcerned: a 2-million (approximately$4-million) shortfall in profits.The cause of all this, Clostridium

    botulinum, measures 1 micrometer byabout 3-4 micrometers (one millionth ofa meter); it is not easy to grow evenin the laboratory. Yet the accidentalcontamination that led to its proliferationinside a single can of John West salmon,marketed by Unilever, triggered offhorrendous infections of a sort that hadbeen unknown in the United Kingdom forat least 20 years. The fatalities and latermassive losses in sales provide a grimreminder of the influence of microbes onhuman affairs.

    C. botulinum is not a common cause ofhuman disease, as are typhoid andcholera bacilli and the legions of variousbacteria that ravage us from time to timewith food poisoning. These malevolentmicroorganisms are pathogenic bydesign: Their life-style involves invadingour guis, producing disease as they go.C. botulinum is feared for its consummateskill in manufacturing the most potent toxinknown to mankind. Given the rightconditions, it does so in foodstuffs. Andthe resultfor anyone ingesting it is sudden,calamitous, and invariably fatal illness.One peculiarity of this pathogen is that it

    is an anaerobe: It multiplies only in theabsence of oxygen. Otherwise, in theaerated conditions that are necessary formost bacteria to flourish, it merelysurvives, as a hardy spore, awaiting thenext period of oxygen starvation. Bottledor canned food can provide thatcircumstance. Even if only one tiny sporehas escaped sterilization, C. botulinummay thrive. By a quirk of biochemistry thebacillus then synthesizes its deadlybotulinus toxin. Ten millionths of a gramcan kill a person. And the form of death ischillingly abhorrent. The toxin paralyzesnerves of the eye and throat, dilating the20 OMNI

    pupils and making speech or evenswallowing impossible. Thick, vile salivainterferes with the victim's breathing, andthe muscles then weaken, precipitatingrespiratory paralysis and death bysuffocation.

    Despite the fact that they receivedspeedy treatment (chiefly huge doses ofantitoxin), two of the four persons strickenwith botulism in Britain last summersuccumbed to the poison. Bacteriologiststraced the organism to just one damagedtin from the False Pass Cannery in Alaska.For three months, while investigationswere being conducted, Unileversuspended all sales of tinned salmon andrecalled products made at the plant. Saleslost then and since slashed the company'sprofits by an amount comparable with themillions of dollars lost earlier this yearwhen Britain's road-haulage network anddocks were immobilized by a lengthystrike of truck drivers.

    Thankfully owing to modern develop-ments in food processing, C. botulinumhas become a rare and unnatural

    Incut

    scourge of Homo sapiens. Yetthe same bacterium visits frequentdisease upon wildlife. Botulism is themajor natural cause of death of ducks inthe western United States, for example,The scenario here is interesting. Strongwinds wrench aquatic plants adrift,leaving them uprooted along a shore orlakeside. Invertebrates feed on the rottingvegetation, and, as the oxygen level. falls,C. botulinum begins to multiply in theputrid mass. Ducks consume the infected,poisoned material and then die, theirbodies becoming riddled by furtherbacteria, making more poison toperpetuate the outbreak. Flies settle on,and feed off, the decaying carcasses; theflies help to promote the wider spreadof disease.

    But what is the purpose of this virulenttoxin? Unlike snake venoms, it cannot beconsidered a defensive weapon againstpredators. Unlike the endotoxins, whichare partly responsible for the foodpoisoning caused by Salmonella, it is notpart of the structure of the bacterium itself.The toxin plays no apparent role in theinternal metabolism of C. botulinum. If theorganism is deprived of its ability to pro-duce toxin, it grows just as well as before.Although research on the precise

    mechanisms and molecules involved inmicrobial disease has burgeoned recentlythe purpose of this fiendish poison is stillunknown. Its existence is all the morepuzzling when we remember that, unlikeviruses, many bacteria do not need tocause disease. All viruses are necessarilyparasitic, and all are capable of causingdisease. This is certainly not true ofbacteria, in general, and certainly not trueof C. botulinum, in particular.When antibiotics were first discovered,scientists puzzled over their significance.Did bacteria really make such substancesso that man could turn them into drugs totreat infections caused by other bacteria?Not at all. We now know that antibioticsplay an important role in regulatingmicrobial populations in soil and water. Yetwe still do not understand why a humblebacillus, deprived of oxygen, generates apoison more lethal than plutonium. DO

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    E r E

    OFFICIAL CIRCLESBy William K. Stuckey1 ew men contrast more sharply inbackground or appearance thanSenator Mark Hatfield, the

    handsome Baptist college dean andOregon Republican, and Karl Hess, thewriter, welder, and supporter ot the BlackPanthers, Barry Goldwater, the SDS, theBirchers, Prince Piotr Kropotkin, and theright not to pay federal income taxes.Under the surface, however, they are not

    only ideological brothers, but ideologicalMean Little Brothers. Hatfield is about theonly living politician whom the politics-hating Hess would support for thepresidency, and Hatfield notes {seriously?)that he would ring doorbells for Hess. Bothbelieve that individuals can learn andaccomplish just about anything they wantto and will not only lose ground but slideblissfully toward slavery if they allow anylarge institutiongovernment, corporation,church, union, etc.to do the learningand accomplishing for them. They believe,in short, in neighborhood government as abasic governing unit of the United States,and to hell with both public and privateBig Brothers.

    Hatfield, by far the more mainstream ofthe two, would pass laws to provideneighborhood independenceallowingtaxpayers, for example, to retain up to 80percent of their federal income taxes touse for local purposes. The free-wheelingHess would have his small communitiesdeclare unilateral independence fromWashington by using a combination ofscience, technology, and town-hallmeetings.

    Rather radical thinking, until you realizethat politicians as diverse as RonaldReagan and Senator EdwardKennedyalong with Tom Hayden andother elements of the old New Lefthavespoken kindly of increasing aneighborhood's independence fromgovernment and from corporations byemploying "community technology" tofulfill its own survival needs. Note also thata Carter-appointed PresidentialCommission on Neighborhoods this pastspring reported that the flourishingneighborhood-government movementcame into being because of the public's22 OMNI

    pervasive frustration with Big Brothergovernment and that it "represents ademand for debureaucratizing America."Community Technology , incidentally, is

    also the title of Hess's latest book (Harper& Row). Any 1980 presidential candidatewho ignores it stands to lose the trulyconsiderable vote of the "Don't Tread onMe"s; the national referendum supporterswho want not only to send Washington amessage but to make it binding; the1984-is-nearly-here intellectuals; and theKarl Hessian tech-erhooders who shout,"I'd rather do it myself." There are a lot ofmean little brothers out there. (Prediction:Governor Jerry Brown of California soonwill imply that he was the silent coauthor ofCommunity Technology. Hess, however,doesn't coauthor anything with anybody.)Hess not only preaches what I call

    populist science; he also practices it. Howhe drifted into it, what he did with it, andwhat he is doing now should become oneof the great American folktales.

    Hess, a Filipino-German, who is asAmerican as Plymouth Rock, was born 56years ago in the Adams-Morgan

    Karl Hess, author of Community Technology.

    neighborhood of the nation's capital (nowpredominantly black and Hispanic). Hismother taught him how to readhedoesn't believe in schoolsand, in shortorder, he dropped out of high school atfifteen, was a Washington city editor attwenty, and began writing speeches forthe Republican party. He capped thatcareer with his 1964 speech for BarryGoldwater, and particularly with that (then)most controversial phrase: "Extremism indefense of liberty is no vice; moderation inpursuit of justice is no virtue."

    (In his book The Dosadi Experiment,Frank Herbertauthor of Dunecreated,a most Hess-like society, the Gowachins,who gave their highest honors to thoselawyers who most thoroughly discreditedthe law.)Goldwater lost in 1964, and Hess was

    out of a job. He drove trucks, learnedwelding, and by the late 1960s washanging around with the Black Panthersand the Students for a Democratic Society.An astonishing change, observers noted.Not at all, as Hess told me recently overthe kitchen table of his self-built solarhome in West Virginia."The SDS was like Senator Robert A.

    Taft come to life, a superb organization,"he remarked as my jaw unhinged. "Theybelieved in participatory democracyand that's my passionandisolationism they called it anti-imperialismwhich is fine with me. AsPresident, I would immediately breakrelations with all nation-states andestablish ties with all neighborhoods onEarth, But I was particularly close to thePanthers, absolutely the best of the blackgroups. They were straight individualistRepublicans in their actions, althoughtheir newspaper was bullshit."

    Hess drifted back to Adams-Morganand, with his wife and a physicist friend,began an astoundingand highlysuccessfulexperiment in little-brotherself-reliance. He became frustrated withNew Left partisans who would talk theoryinto the night but didn't know how to doanything. He wanted to prove thattechnology was greatnot a killer ifyouunderstood and controlled it. He wanted ::CONTINUED ON PAGE 127

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    TELEVISION

    THE ARTSBy James Delsoni ven before Star Wars and 2001- Ai Space Odyssey brought thei feeling of space home to Earth.

    American television audiences had flownto the moon and beyond. They were ledinfo the vast reaches of space by noneother than Walt Disney. Disney meldedtogether a variety of diverse scientific andtechnical elements to present a trulyrealistic approach to the special effects ofspace travel. Disney's three-part televisionseries on space. Man in Space, Man andthe Moon, and Mars and Beyond,presented first in the 1950s, was producedand directed by Disney animator WardKimball, with scientific input from Wernhervon Braun, Willy Ley, Dr. Heinz Haber, andDr. Ernst Stuhlinger

    Kimball, now retired from the DisneyStudio, still runs the only private backyardrailroad and model-train museum in thecountry. He talked recently about thetelevision trilogy and suggested we seethe new Disney release, King Arthur andthe Astronaut.

    "George Pal, the creative force behindDestination Moon and The Conquest ofSpace, was dealing with science fiction,"

    Kimball related. "He took all sorts ofliberties with space and even more withthings that might happen there. Thiswasn't a bad thing. Pal made wonderfufilms, but you had to lose yourself in hislogic. It was a different scale. But we dealtin something that was a little more logical,using known facts."Collier's magazine had run a seriesdealing with space as the Fifties began,showing what the leading scientists of thetime predicted for the future of colonizationand travel in space and the military use ofspace. Disney borrowed both ideas andscientists from the articles to create whatwas originally planned as a one-shotprogram, to be called Rockets and Space.

    "Walt called an initial meeting, at whichhe said, 'Let's do something following theCollier's articles and Von Braun's theoriesand so forth.' We came up with a generalconcept and then filled up the whole roomwith all the aspects of the intended show,Rockets and Space. He looked at all thisduring the second meeting and said,'Gee, you've got enough here for twoshows.' At our third meeting I said, 'Look,we have this idea of breaking off a third

    ;i-rt{i.

    A "space walk" as depicted for television, in the Disney production of Man and the Moon.24 OMNI

    segment to deal with Mars.' It was comingin very close to the earth at that time, fiftymillion miles or something. Waif said,'Yeah, right away.'Immersed in his dream of Disneyland at

    the time, Disney gave Kimball con-siderably more creative freedom than hewould have allowed earlier. "He might havegone for more of a documentary feel,downplaying the fantasy stuff, but hetrusted me to do it well," Kimball said. "Wedidn't know exactly what the state of theart was when we started the picture. Wecould only get it through Von Braun. At thetime he was working on his first satellite.Explorer 7 . He was doing it almost as ahobby. But to understand the situation, youhave to get back to the initial reasons forthings.

    "The Navy was always fighting the AirForce, which was fighting the Army, and alfor prestige reasons. For appropriations.For budgets. The Navy wanted to have theprestige of launching the first satellite, theVanguard rocket. I don't know how VonBraun felt about it, but we had alreadydeveloped Explorer 1 , and the Navy knewhe was taking appropriations money todevelop his sideline when he wassupposed to be working on modernizingand improving the V-2 missiles. But hewasn't interested in killing people Hewanted to take the lead in space travel.Well, when people got wind of his satellitework, they told him to stop. He was verybitter about it for a time, because hethought America could have beaten theRussians into space by a year.

    "It was our idea to bring Von Braun in asan expert. And he jumped at the chancebecause he was trying to publicize hisidea. Collier's had been the best coveraghe'd had, but he realized the potential oftelevision. Millions of people would belooking at a Disney show, and with theprestige of the Disney name this would bea big step forward in his campaign to getthe Pentagon off their ass and dosomething about the space program."

    200): A Space Odyssey was the firstmajor film to use what is now known as the"hardware" approach to outer space,because of the rough look of theCONTINUED ON PAGE 142 .

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    THE ARTEBy Stephen DemorestThey are powerful magic to anartist, these visions that come

    sliding out of the black box at thepress of a button. He casts an imageunder the spel! of three swooping coloredlights, and it returns vivid as adreamtextured, richly colored,hallucinated.

    Born and bred to be imitative drones forthe business world, color-copyingmachines like 3M Corporation'sColor-in-Color and the Xerox 6500 havesurprised and captivated their masterswith the infinite range of their personalities.After a decade of continuous exploration,new ideas capable of sustaining an artist'srelentless addiction to discovery keepfloating out of the slot. Thanks to uniqueassistance from the scientific community,the color copier has become the moderngraphic artist's most essential new tool.

    "I think the machine is an intimatemiracle," says Patrick Firpo, coauthor ofCopy Art, the first thorough layman's guideto the copy machine. Firpo, who used tostage rock-and-roll light shows at NewYork's Fillmore East, got hooked on copy

    art when publishers rejected his proposalfor a book of album-cover art but flippedover the quality of his Xerox color samples."it's really instant gratification; you push abutton, and thirty seconds later you seewhat you've got. Then you can make somechanges, push the button again, and outcomes a modified version. It's ideal as afast, inexpensive way to develop themes.

    "We've found a lot of artists using copymachines, from Robert Rauschenberg topeople just fooling around in Des Moines.Peter Max had a color machine he wasusing for drawings, Larry Rivers works withmultiples. He'll take a sketch and copy itand then color it in fifteen or twentydifferent ways until he comes up with thecombination he wants. I would say anymajor artist who's had anything to do withprinting has at one time or another fooledaround with color xerography. IfMichelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci hadhad a Xerox machine, they'd have whaledwith it."

    Dry copiers are based on anelectrophotographic process that wasdeveloped in 1938 by Chester Carlson.

    Jack Kaminsky made Guggt28 OMNI

    nheim by superimposing three b/w photos on color Xerox.

    Basically, a photoconductive surface ischarged with static electricity, whichattracts a dry powder. The powder is thentransferred to paper or fused to it by heat.Carlson spent ten frustrating years beingrebuffed by companies such as IBM,RCA, and Kodak before the HaloidCompany agreed to back what it calledxerography ("dry writing") and madestock-market history.

    It wasn't Xerox, though, but 3MCorporation's Don Conlin and Dr. DouglasDybvig who came up with the firstdry-color machine in 1968. theirColor-in-Color system involves red-,green-, and blue-filtered light exposuresthat successively zap iron-oxide powderon coated Mylar sheets. This intermediateimage conducts heat that causesmicroencapsulated yellow, magenta, andcyan dyes on the other side to burst, thusprinting a multihued blend on the plainpaper.During their investigations, Conlin andDybvig took the unusual step of consultina veteran artist, Sonia Landy Sheridan. Asa teacher, she has been concerned with abroad range of imaging systems for over30 years, the past 10 as head of theGenerative Systems program at Chicago'School of Art Institute. She seems to havescant respect for those who "don't knowmore than to press a button" and willpatiently lecture you like an old-fashionedschoolmarm on the classic "Meet Mr.Wizard" home-style techniques involvingcarbon paper, static electricity, and lemonjuice."We have a program here-that's ten

    years old and that's trained maybe tenthousand people with the help of 3MCorporation. We've set up machines fromnorthern Minnesota to Texas, and ourstudents have taught at UCLA. The youngpeople coming up now have not justdiscovered this stuff. The teaching hasbeen going on for well over a decade."

    Nevertheless, the simplicity of the copyoperation encourages anyone coordinateenough to stab a button to try his hand(actually just his finger) at creating "art."Color machines are now available at copycenters in most major cities, and the ratesCONTINUED ON PAGE 133

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    What kind ofmanowns hisown computer?Rather revolutionary, the whole idea of owning yourown computer? Not if you're a dipiomat, printer, scientist,

    inventor. . . or a kite designer, too. Today there's AppleComputer. It's designed to be a personal computer. Touncomplicate your life. And make you more effective, qIt's awise manwho owns an Apple. J^*.If your time means money Apple can help you ,WJmake more of it. In an age of specialists, the most ^* ,successful specialists stay away from uncreativedrudgery. That's where Apple comes in.

    Apple is a realcomputer, right to the core. Sojust like :big computers, it manages data, crunches numbers, keepsrecords, processes your information and prints reports. Youconcentrate on what you do best. And letApple do the rest.Apple makes that easy with three programming languagesincluding Pascalthat let you be your own software expert.Apple, the computerworth not waiting for.

    Time waiting for access to your company's big main-frame is time wasted. What you need in your department

    oti your deskis a computer that answers only to you.Apple Computer. It's less expensive than timesharing.More dependable than distributed processing.

    Far more flexible than centralized EDP. And,fOj, at less than $2500 (as shown), downright-*fU affordable.iXP) visit yur *ocal computer store.Hfc You can join the personal computer

    revolution by visiting the Apple dealer inyour neighborhood. We'll give you his namewhen you call our toll free number

    (800) 538-9696. In California,(800) 662-9238.

    Apple Computer, 10260 *^fc0*Bandley Drive, -.WlJP^^Cupertino, WCiO^CA 95014. .rf*

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    E

    UFD UPDATEBy James Obergm early three years ago aspectacular UFO appeared inthe night sky over Tehran,Iran. In past ages comets were said toforetell the fall of kings. Perhaps in thisspace-minded era flying saucers fulfill thesame function. Turmoil was soon to topplethe shah.The UFO chased by Iranian Air ForceF-4 fighters on the night of September 19,

    1976, spawned a baffling story, claims of acover-up by the United States, and alegend that went far beyond the drab factsof the event. Late in 1977 the NationalEnquirer selected the incident as the"most scientifically valuable" UFO case of1976. A special "blue-ribbon panel" ofUFO experts sponsored by the newspapertestified that the Iranian UFO representeda genuinely unexplainable phenomenon.

    Skeptics, of course, quickly pointed outthat the UFO "experts" had relied princi-pally on a two-page summary prepared bya bored U.S. Air Force officer who had

    attended the debriefing of an Iranian F-4crew and on some news clippings and afew telephone calls. Nobody, it seemed,had actually researched the case. Theyhad merely agreed that it sounded like agood story.

    Better yet, considering Iran's politicalsituation, it seemed certain that nobodyelse would ever be able to investigate thestory adequately. Thus, the reported UFOcould remain safely unidentified forever.But the mystery of the UFO was due moreto the political confusion surrounding theincident than to the details of the caseitself.

    It certainly sounds like a good story.During the thrilling encounters the Iranianpilots appear to have been in fear for theirlives. Earthly explanations seem weaknext to human terror.

    Shortly after midnight on September 19,1976, Mehrebad Air Force Base receivedseveral phone calls. Some civilians hadspotted a bright light in the sky and were

    UFO flew along a rural road in Diamante Entre Rios, Argentina, for a few minutes in July 1976.30 OMNI

    concerned. The officer in charge, MajorGeneral Yousafi, went out to see forhimself and saw a bright starlike object.(In fact, the planet Jupiter was near itsmaximum brilliance in the east.) A checkwith radar at the Babolsar and Shahrokhiair force bases showed nothing unusual.

    But Yousefi, surprised by the brillianceof the light, decided to scramble an F-4Phantom jet, an extremely unusual event,as most Iranian jet pilots are veryinexperienced in nighttime air operations.UFO investigators have been frustratedbecause the UFO's direction and thepursuing Phantom's flight path have neverbeen adequately described. Explanationsand searches for contradictions in theaccounts are therefore fruitless.According to a debriefing summary

    given by the U.S. Air Force, this F-4suddenly experienced a communicationsblackout and returned to base. Since ithad been chasing a UFO, though there isnothing to indicate that it had gotten close,the experts immediately decided that theUFO had caused the blackout.A second jet had been launched ten

    minutes after the first. It, too, tried toapproach the UFO, which appeared torecede constantly as the pilot, LieutenantJafari, approached. (That, incidentally isexactly how a distant light in the sky wouldhave appeared.) But suddenly the UFOseemed to attack the second F-4.

    In the published accounts the pilotreports seeing an object suddenly breakaway from the main UFO and come at thejet head on. Jafari tried to fire an AIM-9missile, one of the Sidewinder series, but"his weapons-control panel went off" andfroze his attempt. At the same time hiscommunications blacked out.These reports, based on tape record-

    ings of the air-to-ground communications,were played for newsmen the followingday. What is interesting about them is thatthe account of the failures on the first jetwas based on a story told by the secondpilot the next day The tape recordingsplayed for the reporters evidently failed tomention the loss of communications.The electrical failure on the second jet,

    however, seems to have been quite real.

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    The pilot panicked and put his plane into asteep dive as the smaller UFO zoomedright at him, then passed inside his turnand slid back to the origi nal object for "aperfect rejoin."Such maneuvers are remarkable. If they

    had taken place as described, however, itwould have been even more remarkablefor Jafari to see them. In fact, he thoughtthe object was getting closer because itwas getting brighter. In a dead-onapproach the object would not appear tomove in the sky at all. As for themaneuvers seen during the pilot'spanicked dive, they seem similar tomaneuvers reported by other pilots who,misjudging the range to an unknown lightin the night sky, have miscalculated theobject's flight path.

    Based on the information at hand, wejust do not know what took place betweenthat jet and the light. We may never know,and this uncertainty must please UFOexperts who have been touting the casewithout ever investigating it.The story is not over, though. Another

    object appeared, dropping from thepurported mother ship. The F-4 attemptedto approach it, and the pilot reportedseeing a light on the groundpresumablythe one that had dropped from the UFOsome minutes earlier. The light dazzledJafari's eyes, wiping out his night vision.

    While returning to the air base, Jafarinoticed some radio interference. Later hereported seeing another UFO pass overhim. When prompted, ground controllersin the airport tower also saw a light in thesky.The UFO story was everywhere in the

    Tehran newspapers for days afterward.Military attaches at the U.S. embassynoted the account, had it translated, andforwarded it to Washington. The Iranians,meanwhile, seemed puzzled. But as timewent by, they were less and less alarmed.Early in October the shah himself broughtup the encounter during a ceremonial visitby American astronauts. They, too, wereunable to explain it.The actual event had barely ended

    when the myths began to grow. First camea story that the U.S. government wastrying to hush it up by keeping its filessecretfiles that were nothing more thantranslations of Tehran newspaperaccounts and an account of the Iranianpilots' debriefing. Later stories told of ahumanoid space creature that hadattacked local farmers during thedogfight In St. Louis, Missouri, UFO buffsclaimed that the Iranian jet had beenkidnapped by the UFO and that the pilothad never been found. The Iranian UFOwas well on its way to becoming a classic.

    Official sanction of the case came lastJanuary 31, when the National Enquirerpublicized the decision of its experts. Thepaper gave a check for $5,000 to theambassador from Iran at the timeArdeshir Zahedi, on behalf of the fourpilots, an airforce general, and an32 OMNI

    air-traffic controller. Since the Iranianmilitary personnel were not allowed toaccept cash gifts, the money was donatedto the Red Lion and Sun, the Iranianeguivalent of the Red Cross.According to Dr. James Harder,

    professor of civil engineering at theUniversity of California at Berkeley anddirector of research for the AerialPhenomena Research Organization, along-established civilian UFO group, "thecase was particularly important, becauseit provided evidence for long-rangejamming of fire-control electronics. Youcan always jam communications, but [thecapability] to jam the electronics of firecontrol within the plane is something thathas not been firmly established before."

    Another panel member, Dr. FrankSalisbury, a plant physiologist at UtahState University, dismissed any possibleexplanations beforehand: "If a UFO cannotbe explained as a natural or psychologicalphenomenon, hoax, or secret weapon,

    UFO above Indonesian waters, 1976.

    then it's of high interest to scientific UFOinvestigation. This case meets thiscriterion. Too many witnesses in highlyresponsible positions were involved for usto think of hoaxes or hallucinations."

    This statement presents a summaryjudgment, its list of alternatives isincomplete. And as far as "secretweapons" are concerned, the panellacked the top-secret Soviet records forthat date. Even Iranian and Americanrecords were unavailable. That avenue ofresearch is definitely still untrodandlikely to remain so forever.

    Harder and Salisbury, along with panelmembers Dr. John L. Warren, of the LosAlamos Scientific Laboratory, and Dr. LeoSprinkle, of the University of Wyoming, inLaramie, were evidently convinced thathere at last was a UFO case that could notbe solved by archskeptic Philip J. Klass.Klass, a Washington-based aviationjournalist and author of two books on UFOcases he claims to have solved, has madea habit of investigating the National

    Enquirer's "best cases" over the years. Hehas often uncovered information that thepro-UFO investigators had not found orhad chosen not to tell the public.

    Klass's difficulties in attacking this casewere compounded by distance and by thweb of military security that had beenwrapped around it. The language barrierpromised to throw more snares in his pathIn fact, some cynical observers of thestrange world of UFOria privatelysuggested that the Iranian case had beenchosen over a hypnotic-regression UFOkidnapping in Kentucky primarily becausit would prove impossible to research.

    If so, the panel has been partiallysuccessful. Klass has not yet issued a fullreport on his investigation. Recently,though, he told Omni that he has turnedup some very interesting details. "I havetalked with several American technicalrepresentatives who were in Iran," herecounted. "Two were at Shahrokhi. Theyoffered an explanation for the electronicoutage experienced by the second F-4."Klass promises to publish his findings inthe near future.The dramatic story of the panicked pilo

    Jafari, trying to fire his Sidewinder missilewith a frozen weapons-control panel alsoturned out to have been garbled in theretelling. Experts from the Tactical AirCommand told Klass that the weaponspanel has nothing to do with theSidewinder, which is fired from anotherelectrical circuit entirely.

    "Most important to me," Klassconcluded, "the Iranian Air Force nevercalled in American experts to do athorough checkout for damage."

    In examining this case, Klass noted thafireballs had been seen in the skies overMorocco that same night, and aPortuguese jet liner had reported a brighfireball over the eastern part of the AtlantOcean. To some, this suggests that theUFO was streaking westward at highspeed. To skeptics, it reveals the existenof a bright meteor shower that could havhelped confuse the frightened Iranianpilots.Because of recent events in Iran,

    nvestigations seem to have reached adead end. But Klass is continuing tosearch for American engineers who werein Iran at the time. The idea that the ."sighting" was really a series ofcoincidences and panickedmisidentifications, while possible,has not yet been established.

    Without a thorough investigation, thisranian case should never have receivedthe official pro-UFO enddrsements that ihas garnered. Nor should it be so widelyflaunted as the best proof that UFOs arereal. Of course, it could be the best if theare no better cases to rely on. That in itsewould be a harsh indictment of the qualitof UFO evidence available today!Anyone recently returned from Iran wh

    has insights into this case can contactPhilip Klass through this column.DO

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    coruTimuufui

    v_D

    V_ OGLast November a worker at Union Carbide's Texas City,Texas, vinyl chloride plant complained to the Occupa-tional Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) thathe and a number of his fellow employees had sufferedcam tumors. Two weeks later inspectors from OSHA found that

    1 1 workers did indeed have tumors. A quick check of Monsanto'sTexas vinyl chloride plant turned up five more cases.The workers suspected all along that their jobs were givingthem cancer. OSHA's conclusion was more guarded: "The inci-dence would appear to be higher than expected" and "one of thechemical agents associated with this type of tumor is vinyi-chlo--ide monomer," read the OSHA statement of February 14, 1979.By this date, however, most of the brain-tumor victims were

    already dead. A computerized early-warning system might havesaved them. Unfortunately, most human carcinogens today aredentified only after the workers have died."The truth is that we do not know who is exposed to what

    carcinogens and how much exposure they have," admitted Dr.Marvin Schneiderman, associate director of science policy forthe National Cancer Institute (NCI) and former director of SEER

    : Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results). SEER was establ-ished by NCI in 1973 to obtain information on the incidence of,and mortality from, tumors in the United States. It gets its informa-Bon from 10 million hospital records. But hospitals often fail torecord job histories accurately or completely. "If we were to takethose records literally we would believe that all occupations wereeither 'retired' or 'housewife,' " Dr, Schneiderman said.The information provided to SEER includes area of residence,

    site of tumor, condition of the patient, and how the diagnosis wasestablished. But even such meager information can pay off.SEER epidemiologists picked up a high incidence of lung canceralong the southeast coast and in Maine. They placed an indus-trial map over the area and discovered a concentration of wood--dustry facilities. They thought that this was the answer. Butwhen investigators went into the area, they were surprised attfhat they found. Instead of the wood industry being the common"-nominator, shipyard work during World War !l was. The iung-;cicer victims had been employed years before in places wheressbestos, a lung carcinogen, had been used.SEER epidemiological studies have also made correlations

    between Sun Belt states and skin cancer; estrogen use andmelanoma (a deadiy skin cancer); estrogen use and cancer ofthe uterus; smoking and lung cancer in women; and, for some asyet unexplained reason, a decrease in breast cancer in womenunder forty years of age.The information developed by SEER has already saved some

    lives and could save many more. However, the entire agency hasonly 35 workers and a total budget of $20 million. Compared tothe cost of cancer$30 b/7//on per year the amount is ludi-crously spare. To be more effective, Schneiderman said, morethan ten times the staff would be needed and a reporting systemwould have to be set up for the entire nation.SEER personnel, for instance, would like to follow the health

    records of residents in the area of the nuclear accident at ThreeMile Island. The ideal way to do so would be to base records onsocial security numbers, but federal law states that such num-bers may be used only for purposes of social security. Schnei-derman has mixed emotions, as do other epidemiologists, ifsocial security numbers or some other effective tracking systemwere used, would the information gathered then be vulnerable tolaw enforcement officials, insurance companies, and employ-ers? No one would deny such Big Brother dangers exist. How-ever, safeguards could be established. Epidemiologists couldbe protected by confidentiality laws, just as doctors, lawyers,and clergymen are. Codes could be used and participants couidbe given a choice of providing further information or remaininganonymous.

    Every primary cancer diagnosed should be reported to acomputer facility. Pertinent information, such as current andformer places of employment, current and former areas of resi-dence, family medical history, habits, hobbies, and diet, shouldbe included, impossible? Impractical? Such information alreadyexists about most of us. Credit bureaus and insurance com-panies base decisions upon such data.

    With sufficient information, epidemiologists could pinpointthose cancer-causing agents to which we are exposed, andsteps could then be taken to protect us before it is too late. For thevinyl-chloride workers in Texas, the clock ran out.We have a choice. Risk privacy or risk cancer.-RUTH WINTER

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    CDQJTimuunnPSORIASIS CURE

    If you're one of those un-fortunates afflicted with "theheartbreak of psoriasis,"there's a new cure: Take abath in the Dead Sea.

    Dr. Willy W Avrach, direc-tor of the Dead Sea Interna-tional Psoriasis TreatmentCenter, has found that amonth of bath treatments inthe fabled body of water isjust as effective as traditionalhospital therapy, accordingto the Journal of the Ameri-can Medical Association .The highly saline waters of

    the Dead Sea, in combina-tion with ultraviolet rays fromsunlight, can clear up theskin disease. And the resultsare spectacular. Of the 1,631patients whose data wereanalyzed by Dr. Avrach. 95percent showed improve-ment during the four-weektherapy session. Forty-fourpercent had recurrenceswithin four weeks after the

    Dead Sea mud bath; The watersmay be good for the skin.36 OMNI

    sessions, but this rate com-pares favorably with othertherapies, which have recur-rence rates ranging from 45percent to 95 percent.Joel DavisFOOD APPEALThe texture of your foodmay be more important in

    appeal than taste. "Foodslike potato chips, raw car-rots, and nuts are popularbecause of texture, not be-cause of taste. And somefoods, like lettuce, haveprominent texture but notaste," explains Dr. ChoKunRha, associate professor offood-process engineering atMassachusetts Institute ofTechnology. Her present goalis to find foods that mighthave better structure, or tex-ture, than the real thing.

    "Free-water release"(juiciness) is one prime con-sideration, says Dr. Rha. Anda promising material for con-trolling water release is thecell-wall material of cranber-ries after their juice has beenextracted.A tiny amount of the cran-berry material mixed withwater becomes likeapplesauce. Tasteless, thecranberry ceils catch waterin tiny sacs, much as juice isencapsulated in fruit cells."The capsules, with an aver-age diameter of about tenmicrons, could be layeredwith protein from soy or corn,and help solve the problemof the 'juicy steak' goal," Rhasays. Cranberry-cell wallsalso offer the prospect ofmaking synthetic fruit orother foods, including"caviar" and food spreads. Alton Blakeslee

    SF INVENTIONSComputers, lasers, holo-

    grams, test-tube babies,communicationssatellitesscience fiction

    Robert Heiniein "invented"Waldo, a remote-control arm.has invented these andmany more.

    Cleve Cartmill wrote, in a1944 story called "Deadline,"a detailed description of theatomic bomb. Yet neither henor the rest of humanity thenknew about the secret workof the Manhattan Project.One of the greatest SFwriters, Robert Heiniein,predicted correctly a longhiatus in space explorationafter people walked on themoon. He also invented, in a1940s story, the mechanicalarm, or Waldo, that is usedtoday to move radioactivematerial.Space warps, the fic-

    tionalized tunnels throughthe universe, may somedaybecome reality. Scientistshave already discovered

    black holes, the remains ofcollapsed stars that suck inall matter and light aroundthem. They have speculatedabout white holes that spitout matter. Theorists believethat these black and whiteholes may somehow be con-nected as tunnels throughspace and time.

    Even SF movies have beenprophetic. German film-maker Fritz Lang wanted toheighten the drama of his1929 movie, Woman in theMoon. So he added acountdown from ten sec-onds. Later NASA adoptedthe idea of counting back-wards for the spaceprogram. Kenneth Jon RoseBEES AND MELONSAs if producing honey and

    cross-pollinating flowersweren't enough, bees havenow been found to be usefulfor growing melons. The U.S.Agriculture Department hasdiscovered that placingbeehives in cantaloupefields increases both thesize and the number ofmelons.

    Four hives, each contain-ing 30,000 bees, on an Indi-ana farm caused enoughextra pollination to increasethe number of melons by 23percent. In addition, indi-vidual melons averaged 10percent heavier than those ina control group 2.2 kilo-grams each, instead of 2.0.

    Researchers believe thatone hive per acre is enoughto induce the changes. Al-ready the demand for bee-hives is up sharply amongmelon farmers. Stuart Diamond

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    OLD CONDUCTORSThere's something healthy

    Ecout conducting a majorsymphony orchestra, ac-icrding to a California

    Philharmonic, is now 90."I couldn't find a prema-

    ture death in any of the greatconductors," he says.

    Not only do leading mae-stros die at advanced ages,

    Igor Stravinsky lived to be 88. Longevity of conductors has beenattributed to world recognition and "gratifying stress."physician and amateurmusician. Dr. Donald H. At-las, of the school ofmedicine at the University ofCalifornia at San Diego,found that the mean age ofdeath for 35 famous conduc-tors selected at random was73.4 years.The life expectancy of theaverage American male isonly 68.5 years. .Some conductors died atvery advanced ages, includ-ing Leopold Stokowski, at95; ArturoToscanini, at 90;Igor Stravinsky, at 88; WalterDamrosch, at 88; and BrunoWalter, at 85. Although nowomen were in the groupstudied, Dr. Atlas notes thatNadia Boulanger, the firstwoman to conduct a fullconcert of the New York

    but they remain productivealmost until their death. Atlasbelieves that the "sense offulfillment that comes withworld recognition" contrib-utes to the longevity of con-ductors. Stress is oftenpresent, but it is "gratifyingstress." Atlas discounts thetheory that the energetic armwaving of today's conduc-tors provides exercise thatprolongs life. The early con-ductors, he noted, scarcelymoved their arms; yet they,too, reached advancedages. Barbara Ford"Law of Thermodynamics:1. You cannot win.2. You cannot break even.3. You cannot get out of thegame."

    Anonymous

    WEIGH-INA process that will touch

    every American was quietlycompleted last fallthestandardization of weightsand measures for the firsttime in 100 years.Each of the 50 states,Puerto Rico, the Virgin Is-lands, and the District ofColumbiawere given 53 setsof weights and measures bythe National Bureau of Stan-dards. Copies of these mea-sures will be distributed tolocal inspectors, who willcheck everything from thecalibration on gasolinepumps to the scales in thesupermarket. Weights andmeasures that are off byeven a fraction of a percentcan cause the overcharg-ingor underchargingof millions of dollars a year.The standards from which

    these measures were madeare no longer physical, ex-cept for the kilogram, whichis defined by a platinum-indium cylinder. The meter,once defined by a platinum-indium bar, is now definedby wavelengths of light. Thesecond, once kept by care-fully built mechanical clocks,is now measured by theradiation cycles of acesium-133 atom. S.D.THIRSTY TIGERS

    Bengal tigers have beenkilling people in certain re-gions of India andBangladesh for decadesbecause the tigers don'thave enough fresh watertodrink, according to a studyfinanced by the WorldWildlife Fund.The research concluded

    that most of the 40 humandeaths caused by tigerseach year in the Sunder-bansa 1 ,300-square-kilometer area along the Bayof Bengalcould be pre-vented if the tigers had morefresh water. Forced to get bywith salty water, the felinesundergo a chemical imbal-ance that can be correctedby eating humans, who con-stitute high-quality food,Hubert Hendrichs, the Ger-man scientist who authoredthe study, reported.The victims are usually

    honey collectors, fishermen,or woodcutters who frequentthe mangrove swamps thatcover most of the Sunder-bans. The latest tiger popu-lation in the Sunderbans isestimated at 430.

    In an attempt to end thehuman carnage, the govern-ment of India plans to buildgiant troughs in the regionand to fill them with freshwater for the tigers.S.D.

    What doyou servea thirsty tiger?Anything he wants.

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    caruTiruuurmMIRAGEA "high latitude" mirage

    that makes distant lands vis-ible may explain how Norseseamen discovered NorthAmerica around a.d. 1000.The high latitude, or Arctic,mirage differs from othermirages in that it reflectssomething that actuallyexists, in this case a reallandscape that lies 6e/ow, orbeyond, the horizon.Two University of Manitoba

    (Canada) scientists, Wai-demar H. Lehn and H.Leonard Sawatzky, specu-late that the mirages allowedexplorers to "see" betweendistant landfalls in the NorthAtlantic. Lehn has calcula-tions showing that the feat istheoretically possible.An Arctic mirage is

    caused by a temperature in-version created when the airimmediately above theearth's surface is colderthan air at higher elevations.

    Under these conditions, lightrays are bent around thecurvature of the earth. Thestronger the inversion, themore bending. With a highdegree of bending, theearth's surface looks like asaucer, and landscapes andships normally out of sightbelow the horizon are raisedinto view on the saucer's rim.The effect can last for daysand cover thousands ofkilometers.Lehn and Sawatzky spec-

    ulate that an Arctic mirage al-lowed Eric the Red to seeGreenland from his homein Iceland and emboldenedhim to make the 300-kilo-meter voyage despite con-trary winds and currents.There is at least one re-cent report of this mirage. In1939 a sea captain saw amountain in Iceland from500 kilometers away. An Arc-tic mirage is the best expla-nation for the sighting.Barbara Ford

    Photos are identical except that in photo at left the lake is frozen andthe air higher up is warm, causing wall-like mirage above horizon.38 OMNI

    THE WORST OFASBESTOSAdd asbestos to the list of

    miracle products with a darkside. Asbestos has been

    exposed to asbestos fiberswhile constructing ships dur-ing World War II. Research-ers say that as littie as oneday's exposure has beenfound to cause cancer three

    Warren Beatty (shown with Julie Christie) turned the hair dryer into aphallic symbol in Shampoo. Now it's a potential health hazard.used widely as a fi reproofing,heat-resisting, and noise-controlling materia! inceilings, brake linings, iron-ing boards, insulation, ce-ment, and furnace-patchingcompounds. Now the miner-al's fibers are being linked tolung cancer.The U.S. Consumer Prod-

    uct Safety Commission hasasked for the voluntary recallof millions of hairdryers,which may be blowing as-bestos fibers into the facesof their users. Authorities arestill trying to gauge thehealth effects of asbestosflaking off from school ceil-ings, for which it was usedextensively until the early1970s.

    Moreover, several millionnaval-shipyard workers were

    decades later. Asbestos hasalso been found in the drink-ing water of Atlanta, Boston,Philadelphia, San Francisco,and Seattle.Compared with other can-cer risks that people facedailyfrom cigarette smok-ing to eating food addi-tivesasbestos exposure isnot considered particularlydeadly. But scientists believethat it is another of the mate-rials that is contributing tothe rising rate of cancer,which claims 1,000 liveseach day in the UnitedStates.S.D."Our time is a time forcrossing barriers, for erasingold categoriesfor probingaround."

    Marshall McLuhan

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    SOLID HYDROGENScientists have taken a

    major step toward turninghydrogen into a metal, whichthey think could become a

    Liquid hydrogen: Pressurecan turn it into a solid.superconductor, leading tofar more compact and effi-cient electric generators andtransmission lines. Hydro-gen is the main stuff of theuniverse and is contained inthe sun, water, and thehuman bodyBy creating tremendouspressures with diamond-anvil cells, two scientists ofthe Carnegie Institute'sGeophysical Laboratory,Drs. Peter M. Bell and Ho-kwang Mao, developed anew form of solid hydrogenthat they believe brings themcloser to making metallichydrogen. Soon, they hope,they may demonstrate thatmetallic hydrogen might bemade at room temperature.

    Beginning with liquid hy-drogen, the experimenters

    increased pressure until theliquid was converted into adense crystalline solid atroom temperature. Morepressure increased thedensity.The solid form of high-

    density hydrogen couldmake an efficient, nonpollut-ing fuel for nuclear-fusionreactors or could become arocket fuel, aircraft fuel, orexplosive, says the NationalScience Foundation, whichrecently released the Car-negie research. A.B.SOLAR ECONOMICSA solar-collector system

    can supply twice as muchheat in New York City as inRochester, New York, ap-proximately 420 kilometersaway. Billings, Montana, getsas much solar energy as St.Louis, Missouri, whoselatitude is about 800kilometers to the south.How far south you live isnot necessarily the key indi-cator of how successful asolar-collector system in yourarea will be, according to theNational Oceanic and Atmo-spheric AdministrationfNOAA). Cloud cover, al-titude, and air pollution alsoaffect the amount of solarenergy that a building re-ceives.NOAA's Air Resources

    Laboratories in Silver Spring,Maryland, has published abooklet showing the relativesolar-heating value forlocalities throughout theUnited States. The reportassigned the regions aroundLake Ontario and in centralWashington State a heatingvalue of 1 , the lowest. KeyWest, Florida, was rated

    highest, with a 60, but mostof the country is rated be-tween 2 and 4.The report, of course, as-sumes that there is an identi-cal efficiency for ail so-lar collectors. To comparevarious systems and to ob-tain general information onsolar energy, you can call theNational Solar Heating andCooling Information Centerin Philadelphia, toil-free,800-523-2929. Or write thecenter at Box 1607,Rockville, Md.20850.S.QSAY CHEESE!

    At this very moment theU.S. government may betak-ing a picture of your house.And for a reasonable fee youmay be able to buy one ofthese pictures.NASA and the U.S.Geological Survey (USGS)are capable of photograph-ing our country (and others)

    from the air and even fromouter space. NASA andUSGS research and aerial-mapping aircraft provide abird's-eye view of our worldfrom 610 to 19,716 metersoverhead. Landsat satellitesprovide even loftier picturesfrom 920 kilometers up.Skyiab, which orbited muchlower, has also contributed tothe government's photoalbum of the earth.

    All of these photographsare available to the public.Black-and-white prints, somecolor slides, and even infra-red images can be had forprices ranging from $1 to $50.To order photos, write to:

    User Services, EROS DataCenter, Sioux Falls, S. Dak.57198. You'll be sent a pack-et of information and anorder form. If you want aspecific areasuch as yourold neighborhood in theBronxindicate it on a roadmap or give latitude andlongitude coordinates.

    SNS&at* . : ':>^w:,:'

    EROS has a full library of photographs all for saletaken fromhigh-altitude planes and spacecraft. Above: the San Francisco area

    .

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    CDRJTiruuunnUFO TIPS

    Nine percent of adultAmericans have seen an un-identified flying object(UFO), according to a recentGallup poll. This meansthere have been about 13million UFO sightings. Unfor-tunately, many witnesseswho report sightings provideinadequate information.

    There's always the chancethat you will be the one con-fronted with that once-in-a-lifetime UFO sighting.Here's what to look for tomake your UFO report a sig-nificant one: Note the precise time ofday and how long the UFOstayed in sight. "Measure" the object'ssize, but avoid descriptionssuch as "big as a house." In-stead, estimate size in de-grees. Compare the UFO tothe size of the moon (half adegree), the width of yourthumb held at arm's length(one and a half degrees), orthe width of an outstretchedfist {ten degrees). Describe its position in thesky. Don't say it "hovered 200feet away," as distance isvery hard to judge. Estimateits altitude in degrees abovethe horizon. Again, you cando this by using fist or thumbwidths. If you can also supplycompass directions, all thebetter. Note specific details:shape, color, or changes inshape or color. Most important, get otherwitnesses to write down theirobservations as soon aspossible after the sighting. J.Allen Hynek, astronomer anddirector of the Center forUFO Studies, says40 OMN!

    multiple-witness cases arefar more valuable to UFO re-searchers than single ones.

    There's a good chanceyour UFO will turn out to be anatural phenomenon

    J. Alien Hynek stresses need foradditional witnesses.(meteor, aurora, cloud) or aman-made device (airplane,weather balloon, satellite).But if you see somethingtruly baffling, report it to oneof the major private UFO re-search groups. (Governmentagencies may accept yourreport, but nothing will bedone with it. ) Each of the fol-lowing groups will respectyour privacy, if you wish, andyou can be sure the reportwill be examined by an ex-perienced investigator: Cen-ter for UFO Studies, 1609Sherman Avenue, Evanston,III. 60201; Aerial PhenomenaResearch Organization ,3910 East Kleindale Road,Tucson, Ariz. 85712; MutualUFO Network, 103 OldtowneRoad, Seguin, Texas 78155.Terrence Dickinson

    LOW-CAL SEXIndoor sportsmen who

    think they are keeping inshape by doing their work-outs in bed are in for a rudeawakening: Mother Nature isthe original energy conser-vationist. No matter how en-thusiastic or athletic yoursexua! activities, your bodyconverts calories to energyat the stingy rate of 4.5calories per minuteor 270calories per hour.

    Researchers at CaseWestern Reserve UniversitySchool of Medicine discov-ered this fact while conduct-ing studies on postcoronarypatients who wore continu-ously monitoring electro-cardiogram devices. Theoriginal purpose of the studywas to discover how stressfulsexual activity is on the heartof the postcoronary patient.The findings: Sex was lessstressful than many people'sjobs. Heartbeats of 1:

    minute were recorded duringoccupational or professionalactivity in contrast to an av-erage of 1 1 7.4 beats perminute during coitus.

    Thus, while your chancesof suffering a fatal coronaryduring sex are "virtuallynonexistent," according toDr. V. K. Tallury, a New Yorkcardiologist, sex won't makeyou thin, either. It would takethe sexual athlete about 13hours to lose a pound ascompared to 7.5 hours for atennis player. And if it tooktwo martinis to get youinto the mood, you mightfind your workouts ratherfat


maline - National Weather Associationnwafiles.nwas.org/digest/papers/1979/Vol04No3/1979...maline VoL 4, No.3, August 1979 LATE SUMMER GALB WINDS OFF COASTAL OREGON-WASHINGTON John

maline - National Weather Associationnwafiles.nwas.org/digest/papers/1979/Vol04No3/1979...maline VoL 4, No.3, August 1979 LATE SUMMER GALB WINDS OFF COASTAL OREGON-WASHINGTON John

August 1, 1979

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1979. Convocation address delivered on August 20, 1979

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OMNI January 1979

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2008 NCHS Data Users’ Conference Omni Shoreham Hotel Washington, DC Wednesday, August 13, 2008.

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