Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 27

TEie columnists: CirowC.J.Jim Klobuchar Newsroom evolves from whiskey slugs to bubble blubs I got into the I "What's thisr I 5 I got into the "What's thisr newsraDer strange. aauarium wnnlH tv nir manv surprised passersby ask. "A bubbler," they are told. "A what?" is the response. "A bubbler," they are told Sea Bubbler." business in St.

Lcuisin 1970. On my first day in the office, I was greeted by the guy who covered the baseball team. He had a cigar in his mouth, a grapefruit in one Docket of his Doug Grow i I 2 5 9 I 3 t- 1" 1 ie I a 1 111 1 a4t fc.v- y'C The newspaper, for example, has hired a consultant called a "workplace archaeologist" Among other things, the workplace archaeologist has said we must clean our desks. Messy desks, we've been told, cause workplace stress because messiness infringes on the "work space" of other people. Many of us never had heard of workplace archaeologists.

We were very surprised, then, to be told by a workplace archaeologist to tidy up. But nothing surprised us like the arrival of a Sea Bubbler. The Sea Bubbler was purchased after one of our New-Age-workplace committees did some brainstorming. The committee members were thinking about what could be done to make our office a happier, more relaxed and more productive place. There was talk of how running water helps soothe souls.

One of the committee members suggested that a trout stream running through the middle of the office would be nice. But, after some discussion, it was decided that a trout stream probably would be almost impossible to get into the third floor of a newspaper building. members of the committee believed. Water and colorful little fish. Very relaxing.

4' But that idea was nixed when a committee member reminded the others about the horrible odors that often come from the communal refrigerator we have in the newsroom. All committee members agreed that if employees couldn't clean up their refrigerator, a newsroom aquarium probably would quickly become a grim reminder of mortality. Someone had seen the Sea Bubbler -advertised in a catalogs that specialize in computer furniture. The ad for the Sea Bubbler reads: Sea Bubblers. Shimmering bubbles have a relaxing effect on clients and are a great diversion when you need moment's peace.

Each is constructed'? of a unique channeled panel with hood and base. Bubblers include air pump, tubing, check valve and light bulbs. Made in the U.S.A Mfr. Sugg. Retail $950.

By ordering from the catalog, the Sea Bubbler could be purchased for 'V $499.99. I was very surprised that a bubbler could be had for such a price. I imagine the old baseball writer would be surprised, too. sport coat and mmnm carrots in the other pocket. "On a diet," he said, slapping his belly.

"Let's go get a drink." I thought of the old baseball writer Wednesday, probably because that was the day a bubble machine was moved into the Star Tribune newsroom. A Sea Bubbler, it's called. The Sea Bubbler is located about 10 paces from my desk. It is about 6 feet, 6 inches tall and a couple of feet wide. It has clear plastic sides.

It's filled with water. And it bubbles. Nothing more. Nothing less. It simply bubbles and bubbles and bubbles.

The bubbler is supposed to make us relax. The bubbles, in all sorts of colors and sizes, do draw out many reactions. There's usually a long pause. Then laughter. Or anger.

Or scorn. But so far there hasn't been a lot of relaxing around the bubbler, at least not that I've noticed. Through it all, though, the Sea Bubbler keeps on bubbling, each bubble a reminder of how different our office life is now from what it was a few years ago. Newspaper offices used to be raucous places, filled with profanity and smoke and people who smelled of whiskey. We went smoke free long ago at the Star Tribune.

Even the little smoking lounge, where reporters on deadline could go and nervously puff and write, has been closed. Those who smell of alcohol are urged New-Age Sea Bubbler to soothe newsroom souls for a mere $499 Some of the changes seem reasonable enough. Some of them have been bom of computer technology, which has created whole new areas of workplace stress and injury. to get treatment. And where it once was common in most newsrooms to find a bottle in the drawer of a reporter's or editor's desk, having alcohol on the premises these days is an offense that can lead to termination.

But sometimes the changes get very Talk turned to an aquarium. An PEOPLE (now KARE). As recently as two Sports' Horner i 1 1 1 an epidemic, and it's going to affect 1 gets top honor At the Minnesota Broadcasters Association convention today in Will-mar, TV and radio sportscaster Jack Horner will be given its "Pioneer Broadcaster" award. Horner, who now lives in Apple Valley, started his broadcasting career in 1935 at KGFK-AM in Moorhead, Minn. But he earned the nickname "Mr.

Sports" after he moved to KSTP-AM in one 01 ineir iovea ones. In the report, Seaward chronicled the decision of fellow breast cancer and chemotherapy patient Colleen Sha-pelle to go through treatment without a hairpiece. Like Shapelle, Seaward is motivated to appear in public sans wig, because "It's who I am." Veggie bugger A bit of intrigue was injected into a promotional visit by Linda McCartney and her ex-Beatle husband, Paul, to Seattle to promote Linda's line of meatless frozen entrees. The McCartneys' publicist issued a statement saying the duo's security team found an electronic bug stuck under a table at a Seattle house rented for a top-level meeting. Linda was to discuss her latest recipes at the meeting with executives of Fairmont Foods of Minnesota which manufactures the product line under license.

'There are a lot of people who would like to get their hands on Linda's ideas for her food of the future," publicist Geoff Baker said. The couple's response? The release quoted Paul McCartney as saying, "Personally, I think it's daft and I can't see the need for all these frogmen all over the place." years ago, he was doing sports commentary three times a week for KFAN Radio. Since 1973, he has done a weekly sports program for the Minnesota state services for the blind. Previous "Pioneer Broadcaster" honorees include sportscaster Hal-sey Hall and Stanley E. Hubbard of Hubbard Broadcasting.

Noel Holston Hats off to her In a field where photogenic tresses are an industry standard, TV news anchor Sydney Seaward has taken a brave step. Near the conclusion of a special report on breast cancer treatment that aired repeatedly Thursday on Houston's KNWS-TV, Seaward removed her ash blond wig before the camera, revealing her own hair loss from recent chemotherapy. By doffing the wig she has worn during broadcasts of the all-news station since May, Seaward hopes to raise public awareness about cancer and its treatment. "My goal is to demystify cancer and chemotherapy and to show that treatment is nothing to be afraid of," said Seaward, 38, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in March. "I want to show people they've got to listen, because breast cancer is The lion's share of publicity Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who plays the middle son on ABC's hit TV series "Home Improvement," was protected by a police officer at the actor arrived at the European premiere of the Walt Disney film "The Lion King" In London on Thursday.

Thomas was the voice of the young Simba for the latest Disney animation production. The premiere benefited the Elton John AIDS Foundation. John wrote the movie's musical score. 1944 to broadcast University of Minnesota football. On Dec.

7, 1947, Horner broadcast the first TV program for KSTP-TV a 25-minute potpourri that included film highlights of the Army-Navy football game and a kinescope of Prince Philip's marriage to Elizabeth, England's queen to be. His other milestones include the first Gopher football telecast (1948) and the first TV appearance of the Harlem Globetrotters (1949) playing the Minneapolis Lakers. Horner subsequently did TV sports for KEYD (now KMSP) and WTCN -ii mi urn .1 Associated Press 1 J-; ft RegionMetro Meditation touted as crime-fighter Hasselmo says money will cure what ails 'IT Study presented builds the case for 'Maharishi effect' By Kevin Duchschere Staff Writer The University of Minnesota will slip from the ranks of the nation's leading universities unless state funding is increased in the next two years. President Nils Hasselmo said Thursday. In his annual State of the University address, delivered before several hundred people at the Humphrey Institute on campus, Hasselmo defined the university's future in stark terms if the proportion of the budget going to higher education continues to decrease.

"If we do not reverse this devastating downward trend, the flagship university of this state, yes, all of higher education in this state, may lapse into mediocrity, deadly mediocrity," he said. "That is my basic message today. The University of Minnesota is in jeopardy." Hasselmo outlined a $137.6 million spending plan for the next two years that he said he has shown to the Board of Regents and will lay before Gov. Arne Carlson and the Legislature. The money would be used to boost faculty and staff salaries, recruit new professors, maintain university facilities properly and improve student services.

A third of that amount would go to salaries, another third to advance the goals of Hassclmo's University 2000 plan to divide the university into two research and career-oriented units, and nearly one-fourth to the physical plant He displayed a graph showing that the portion of the state budget that goes to higher education has dropped by 21 percent since 1987. "It will take $137 million to begin to restore what has been lost over a decade or more," he said. To pay for the spending. Hasselmo is asking the state for $77.7 million during the next two years, which is 5.5 percent more each year than the proposed state budget The university would add $30.3 million from increased tuition, an increase of 5.5 percent each year. It would add $28.2 million saved from reallocating uni-.

versity resources and $1.5 million in other revenue increases. Hasselmo said his proposals won't succeed without support from faculty, students and support staff. (Catherine James, executive vice president of the Council of Graduate Students, said students will join Hasselmo as long as he is firm with the Legislature. She also wanted more details on the proposed 5.5-percent tuition increase. "That's just an average figure," she said.

Hasselmo ought to put more money in the pockets of university workers before adding bricks and mortar, said Kathy Kleckner, president of AFSCME Local 3800. The union represents more than 4.500 clerical, technical and hospital workers, 1 By Conrad deFiebre Staff Writer Advertising couldn't sell Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's plan for a violence-free society through mass meditation, so now his followers are trying science. But they're not getting much help from their white-bearded leader. In a nationwide series of news conferences Thursday, a study was presented purporting to show that 4,000 people practicing the Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation last year in Washington, D.C, reduced violent crime throughout the city by 18 percent It was, according to the study's principal investigator, "the largest sociological experiment in history" and the 42nd consecutive scientific confirmation of the "Maharishi effect" on social harmony. The mass meditators were even given credit for raising President Clinton's popularity during June and July 1993.

But before these wonders could sink in on reporters and TM devotees gathered it SO sites from Asbury Park, to Ventura County, the Maharishi himself pronounced the study "a waste of time." Speaking by telephone from his headquarters in Vlodrop, the Netherlands, the man who taught the Beatles to meditate added: "Modern scientific research the whole thing is a fraud. expect anything good to come out of it" At thW point, doen so TM adherents listening at the Maharishi Vedic School on St. Paul's Summit Av. began to gasp and titter. Was this the thanks the Maharishi's American scientific minions could expect for a meditation demonstration and study costing nearly $6 million? (That included a $1.8 million cost overrun.

Remember, though, this all happened in Washington, and some things even meditation can't change.) "Scientific proof is of no avail," the Maharishi continued. "From now on, we will mind our own business." That should have come as welcome news to public officials the nation over, although the guru said later that his efforts to bring about "heaven on earth" will continue. Two years ago his followers plastered American newspapers with advertisements offering their services to combat urban crime with meditation at a price. For the Twin Cities, the tab was $455 million to hire 500 "coherence rcating experts" for five years. The campaign fell as flat as a meditator's brain waves.

No one bought in. A urn pie of official reaction was provided by Minneapolis City Council Member Walt Dziedzic when he was asked if 500 meditators could prevent crime. "Not unless they're the criminals," he said The Maharishi's followers apparently took Dzicdzic's suggestion to heart. On the basis of the study, now they're proposing that young, unemployed people statistically the most crime-prone as well as prison inmates be trained to spread good vibrations instead of chaos throughout society. "We need to institutionalize a new profession in society coherence-creating," said John Hagclin, head of the Maharishi's Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy.

He also proposed that 1 percent of the U.S. military forces simply meditate, serving as a "professional peacekeeping force." Police could have similar units, Hagclin said, although he acknowledged that "they're in a different business, combatting violence with viole-ice." He said the study did not compare crime levels during the 1993 mass meditation with those recorded in other periods, but rather with a "time series prediction" of what crime should have been during the study period based on temperature, precipitation and other factors. July 1993 was quite warm in Washington, so the study predicted high level of crime. That was borne out for the first three weeks of the study, when homicides, rapes and serious assaults chugged along at Washington's typical 180 per week. But then, according to the study, the number dropped suddenly to about 150.

The likelihood that it happened by chance was 8 in 100,000, Hagclin said. More likely, he said, relative harmony broke out because the number of meditators flocking to Washington Trom 82 countries rose from initial 800 to 4,000 by the study's end. So powerful was their effect that crime levels stayed low for three weeks after the TMcrs left town, Ha-gelin said. In the early 1980s, the Maharishi's followers took credit for a three-year drop in Washington's murder rate. This time, however, they made no mention of an overall year-to-year increase of six murders during the lest period.

Hagclin, a Harvard-trained physicist who was also the 1992 presidential candidate of the Maharishi's Natural Law Party, said the study's protocol was validated by an independent scientific panel of 27 people, most of them nonmeditators. One of the 27 was Emanuel Ross, a civilian research analyst with the District of Columbia police who was reluctantly assigned to the project by his supervisors. He said the study's baseline numbers were correct, but wouldn't speak for its statistical methods. "Their methodology is their thing." Ross said. "We're not making a statement on that.

We didn't monitor how many people were doing what they were supposed to be doing." As for the study's purported conclusions, he added: "There's a lot of things that impact crime that don't have anything to do with anything. There could be many reasons for a decrease in crime. Maybe it just got so bad that people didn't go out anymore." ,1. V. 0 0ll'4MttkaV404MAMaa4ll kaWsKnpnA.4MaV4hMflk4iaJa4l Jfh if.