THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 12, 1996 TAG: 9608100017
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 80 lines
The safety switches were what?
Virginia Power revealed earlier this month that two switches controlling safety monitors at the Surry Nuclear Power Station, about 40 miles west of Norfolk, were set in the wrong position for as long as 10 years.
In fairness to Virginia Power, it should be noted that 10 years to a geologist is a short time. Still, 10 years is a fairly long time for a safety switch to be set wrong at a nuclear-power plant.
We've never read the nuclear-power-plant safety manual and wouldn't understand it if we did. Still, we'd recommend that these two sentences be added to it: ``Set safety switches in the proper positions. Check them occasionally.'' Students told, ``Don't gamble''
Norfolk city high schools will require athletes and coaches to attend gambling clinics this year. The requirement follows a report, never verified, that a high-school basketball player shaved points. During the investigation, police uncovered evidence of gambling by fans, though not by students.
About 2,500 athletes and 250 coaches at the five schools will attend the clinics at the start of each sports season.
Youths used to be taught that gambling was morally wrong or stupid or both. Now, of course, gambling is a major source of state revenue, about half of which goes to support schools.
Our one concern about the clinics is that students might become more interested in gambling when they hear adults say, ``Don't.'' Virginians all
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Patrick Henry, Robert E. Lee - these were the human images most strongly identified with Virginia.
But the first inhabitants of what became the Old Dominion were descendants of migrants from the Eurasian land mass to North America - ``Indians.''
Spaniards might have been the next Virginians, but Spain was busily exploiting other regions of the New World. So the English were the first Europeans to gain a foothold in Virginia, in the 1600s. Africans, brought in early on during the Colonial period, became the third distinctive population group.
Immigrants are still coming in. The Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies reports that Fairfax County, Arlington County, Alexandria, Prince William County, Albemarle County-Charlottesville, Henrico County near Richmond, Montgomery County to the west and Virginia Beach and portions of the Peninsula in Hampton Roads are the places where newcomers from faraway places with strange-sounding names are likely to settle. Nearly one in four of Arlington County residents is foreign-born.
The most-recent arrivals from abroad tend to be Southeast Asians or Hispanics. Virginia isn't what it used to be. Which may be more or less what Powhatan thought when Englishman John Rolfe married his daughter, Pochontas. No shorts, no shirts
One of the big stories at the PGA Golf Championship this past weekend concerned caddies' shorts.
Female caddies can wear them. Male caddies can't. Why not? Tradition. Rules.
The championship was contested this year in Louisville, where high heat and humidity - keeling-over weather - are the August norm.
If the males can't wear shorts, let them go shirtless. The caddies don't get to play, so at least they ought to be comfortable. Grass-roots movements for sale
There was a time that ``grass-roots'' meant something. A grass-roots movement was an attempt by the little people to tell folks at the top a thing or two and maybe to gain an even break.
Nowadays grass-roots movements can be bought and sold. Lobbyists in Washington pay for them all the time.
Last week on the Peninsula, the owner of Patrick Henry Mall in Newport News admitted that he was helping to finance opposition to a proposed multimillion-dollar shopping mall that would compete with it.
The name of the supposedly grass-roots group is not Patrick Henry Mall vs. the Proposed Mall. Oh no. The name of the opposition group is Citizens to Save Endview. The group's concerns, at least the ones originally expressed, were to preserve the environment and a historic site. But the real goal appears to have been to limit competition. Not for the first time, a grass-roots movement has turned out to be, well, soiled. by CNB