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November 1, 1999

A living wage	Rodents drum up a defense
A toxic Oz?	Communication more than just the spoken word

A Living wage

The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Oct. 8 that San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano's living wage proposal would cost the city and private employers approximately $250 million a year according to a study prepared by economists at San Francisco State's Urban Institute. The study, disclosed at a meeting of the San Francisco Supervisors Living Wage Task Force, indicated that a mandatory minimum wage of $11 would cost contractors $91.7 million and le ase holders $163 million each year. SFSU economics department chair Michael Potepan,who helped prepare the study, said that paying the mandatory wage would force the city to make a choice. "Either you pay for service to compensate for higher costs…or if we're asking organizations to compensate through efficiencies, we have to expect service cutbacks," he said. "It's just unavoidable."

In a recent issue of Science News, biology professor Janet Randall explained her research on the unique behavior exhibited by kangaroo rats and gerbils when confronted by deadly snakes. Randall found that after observing the snake intently, as if to size the predator up, Australian kangaroo rats drummed their feet at the snakes in an apparent effort to ward the it off. In a separate study, she noticed similar behavior in Turkmenistani and Uzbekistani gerbils. "I really didn't expect the gerbils to do this," she said. When they came within striking distance of snakes, she found, the gerbils warily approached, whistled, and thumped the ground with their feet. Randall's findings appeared as part of an article on the effort by scientists to assess the way animals gather information, particularly in situations where a potential threat exists.

A proposal to build a Wizard of Oz theme park on a site on the Kansas prairie where an army ammunition plant once stood is running into opposition because of environemental concerns. The Oct. 9 edition of the National Journal reports that the proposal, if accepted, would be a first because the developers, not the government, would be responsible to clean up the toxic site, which is polluted with nitroglycerin, heavy metals and asbestos. Lenny Siegel , executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight at SFSU, said that the early transfer plans, where a site could be transferred if the private entity agreed to clean it up, are "fine in theory but, in this case, not in practice." Such plans work best when the site is turned into an industrial park or transferred to a different government entity. Siegel asserts that since the Oz site, which will include not only the theme park but also housing developments, will be heavily used by children, it is an inappropriate candidate for early transfer.

Diane Brady, Connecticut Bureau Chief for Business Week, quoted Jeffrey Bettger, assistant professor in special education at SFSU, in a personal story she wrote for the Oct. 11 issue of the newsweekly. Brady writes of her deaf sister Elise's struggle to acquire speech, her eventual decision to learn American Sign Language in college, and her pursuit of a career where she could use both. Brady says that many people now view deafness not as a disability, but as a cultural difference with its own natural language. Brady quotes Bettger as saying that the issue is not learning how to speak, but learning how to communicate. He says that for him the debate comes down to "the unobtainable desire to make deaf children hearing and make them perfect at a spoken langugae, vs. the understanding that language-including sign language-is merely a tool used for communication and learning."

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