BROWNING SAYS OF HIS OWN WORK: "iT ISN'T SCIENCE..."

Our Channel 13 Behind the Headlines program, until now seen on Wednesday evenings, will move to Tuesday evenings at 8 beginning this week. The change is necessary so as not to conflict with the new city council meeting times of Monday and Wednesday evenings.

We are interested in your comments on how we might improve Behind the Headlines and make it more interesting and informative.

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Not all is gloom and doom and recession.

Don't be surprised when the coming year contains at least one, if not several, announcements of major new industrial employers coming to our community. Though announcements cannot be made at this time, various officials are at work on a number of promising developments. Any of these could mean significant boosts to our employment base in the Greater Cape Girardeau County/North Scott County area.

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In all that has been reported and written about the highly dubious earthquake "projection" by Iben Browning, I had never seen the following comment from, as it were, "the horse's mouth." The following is a direct quote from Browning as reported in a Scripps-Howard News Service article published this week:

"What I propound is not science. It is based on science ..." Iben Browning. (Whatever that means PDK).

Not exactly, shall we say, a credibility-enhancing statement. Draw your own conclusions. But I wonder: Do you suppose that just perhaps, by Wednesday, we might all resume living our lives?

Some day this whole incredible episode will be an object of detailed study. It will be studied by historians, sociologists, psychologists and other students of human behavior as an instructive lesson in the capacity of one man with dubious credentials and a questionable method to radically influence the behavior of masses of human beings.

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Let's call it The Education of George McGovern. The former South Dakota senator and 1972 Democratic Presidential nominee entered into the bracing world of private business a couple of years ago when he invested in a Stratford, Conn. hotel.

The 67-year-old McGovern, easily the most liberal presidential candidate ever nominated by a major party until Michael Dukakis came along, is the managing partner of the partnership that owns the hotel. This is true even though McGovern lives in Washington; he has spent many weekends working at the hotel property.

McGovern's partnership, reports the Wall Street Journal, filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors last month.

Earlier this year, before the bankruptcy filing, McGovern had been reported as saying, "I wish I had done this (private business venture) before I had been in the senate and run for the presidency. I would have had a better perspective on what it's like to run a small business ..."

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Speaking of the competitive world of private business, none is more competitive than the restaurant trade. No one who has never been involved in ownership or management of a restaurant can fully understand just how demanding is the daily job of managing a restaurant.

A familiar name in our area's restaurant trade is back, with a top-to-bottom remodel and a bright new atmosphere and menu. I was fortunate enough to be included in a group that got a sample of the new Papa D's restaurant Saturday at a grand re-opening session (it opens to the public Monday morning at 6:00). The "old" Papa D's had been rented out to a tenant who has now departed the scene, and the new operation is being run directly under a Drury Industries, Inc. management team.

A tip of our hat to the ever-enterprising Drury organization.

Bulgarian author Tzvetan Todorov writing in the June 25 issue of the New Republic:

"Several German intellectuals have had hard words for their fellow citizens who flung themselves on the West German shops as soon as they could ... These could only be the words of people who have forgotten, or never knew, the personal humiliation inflicted by the permanent lack of the most elementary consumer goods: the humiliation of silent and hostile lines, the humiliation inflicted on you by salespeople who seem angry to see you standing there, the humiliation of always having to buy what there is, not what you need. The systematic penury of material goods strikes a blow at the moral dignity of the individual."

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John Lukacs, author, professor of intellectual history and scholar at Chestnut Hill College, and native of Hungary:

"Just as two wrongs do not make a right, the opposition of two stupidities does not mean that the truth is somewhere in the middle: what it means is that the atmosphere of discourse has been clouded and corrupted beyond reason."