Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1988. január-június (42. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)

1988-01-28 / 4. szám

Thursday, Jan. 28. 1988.

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ

11.

AH1ERKAR HURGARIARS

THIS LETTER WAS PUBLISHED

IN THE N.Y. TIMES

To the Editor:

The best-kept secret of the Reagan- Gorbachev summit - and potentially the most portentous for global well-being during the 21st century - was the agreement "to promote broad international and bilateral cooperation in the increasingly important area of global climate and environmental change."

The world community of scientists, through the International Council of Scientific Unions, is developing an international cooperative effort to study global- change in its broadest context. Scientists from all quarters of the earth, under the chairmanship of Prof. James McCarthy of Harvard University, has been appointed to lead the effort. More than a dozen national academies of science (including those of the United States, the Soviet Union and China) have convened committees to provide the scientific and technological infrastructure. The

program, conceived before the discovery of the Antarctic "ozone hole", will address that issue and other threats to the global environment. At stake is the continued robustness of the thin film of air, water, plants and soil through which biogeochemical cycling provides the lifesupport system to sustain an expanding world population.

This inherently international and intrinsically interdisciplinary program will bring to bear on questions of the structure and metabolism of planet earth the talents of thousands of natural and social scientists in industrialized and developing countries. The program will unleash the wizardry of computers, communications and modern technology, the power of global observations from space satellites and the reservoir of knowledge about the earth that is the heritage of the international geophysical years and successor programs.

An exciting adventure of the human mind and spirit is in prospect. It has powerful implications for society - including the capacity to replace the specter of fear for the planet's future with a vision of hope in an increasingly interdependent world. A determined scientific community is poised to proceed. This part of the summit statement is an encouraging sign that a political will to go ahead is emerging. It is a good omen in an otherwise troubled, endangered and uncertain world.

Thomas F. Malone President Elect, Sigma Xi,

The Scientific Research Society New Haven

In the past three years but especially in 1986, Hungarian agriculture has been stricken by drought. The Hungarian government pays the total damages of those agricultural complexes which became loss-making because of a more than 20 percent deficit caused by drought. Where damages are less, state farms and cooperatives are indemnified by the government proportionally.

IF YOU LIVE IN THE WHITE HOUSE,

DONT THROW STONES

The GEE-WHIZ-I-GUESS-I-FORGOT

HUMBUG AWARD goes to Ronald Reagan for wrongly attacking the Democratic Congress for what he claimed was its history of spending America into a record national debt. "I've repeatedly asked the Congress for less money and they have turned around and given more to spend..." Reagan said. Columnist Michael Kinsley did some simple arithmetic, however, and discovered that Reagan's statement, like so many others, was pure myth. In the six years that he's been in charge, Reagan has sent Congress budgets totaling $3.14 trillion. Congress did hot increase Reagan's spending proposals, Kinsley points out; to the contrary. Congress actuaUy scaled them back by $11 billion! Since Reagan took over, federal deficits have totaled $1.4 trillion, compared with $999 billion for the previous 200 years.

HUNGARIAN

SCIENTISTS

head international organizations

Hungary is a member of almost a thousand international organizations of various kinds, ranging from the political and professional to the religious. In many, Hungarians are closely involved at the highest level. Here are some of them:

HANDS GO BACKWARD ON "DOOMSDAY CLOCK"

CHICAGO, HI. The keepers of a "doomsday clock" moved its hands backward 12/17 for the first time in 16 years, citing the recent Soviet-American summit meeting as a step toward peace.

The hands of the clock, hanging in the offices of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, were pushed back by three minutes to a position six minutes before the symbolic midnight hour representing nuclear holocaust.

The setting of the clock's hands is determined by the magazine's board of sponsors, 45 scientists of whom 16 are Nobel laureates. The original Board included Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The new position is only one minute closer to midnight than the seven-minute reading the clock showed when it was created in 1947.

"The I.N.F. Treaty, combined with improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations and greater international concern about common security matters, are significant first steps in a new direction," an editorial in the journal's January issue said, referring to the treaty on intermediate nuclear forces that President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed at the summit.

Iván T. Berend, president of the Academy of Sciences, is an executive member of the International Economic History Association.

Dénes Berényi, an academician, is a member of the Scientific Council of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

József Bognár, an academician, is a member of the Council of the United Nations University in Tokyo, and of the Club of Rome. Gyula Csikai, deputy minister of culture and an academician, is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.

József Fülöp, an academi dan and rector of the Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest, is a foreign member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

János Harmatta, an academician who represents the Academy of Sciences on the Union Académique Internationale, is president of the International Association for the Study of the Cultures of Central Asia.

Béla Köpeczi, minister of culture and an academician, is an honorary doctor of the Sorbonne, Paris.

Kálmán Kulcsár, deputy gen sec of the Academy of Sciences, is a member of the Council of the International Sociological Association.

István Láng, deputy gen sec of the Academy of Sciences, is a member of the World Commission on Environment and Development and of the editorial committee of the journal “ World Resources Report". .

Ferenc Márta, vice-president of the Academy of Sciences, is on the editorial committee of "International Reviews in Physical Chemistry".

György Ránki, an academician, is vice-president of the Comité International des Sciences Historiques.

János Szentágothai, a member of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences, is an honorary doctor of Oxford University, and a member of the Vatican’s Pontifica Academia and of the editorial board of “Neuroscience”.

Pál Tétényi, an academician and chairman of Hungary’s State Office for Technical Development, is a member of the Council of the International Congress of Catalysis. József Tigyi, president of the Department of Biological Sciences at the Academy of Sciences, is gen sec of the International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics.

Forty archeologist from twenty countries visited Szolnok to participate in a conference on the Neolithic Age. Following the conference held in Greece two years ago - which summed up the findings of research in the Aegean region - the Hungarian meeting was able to make a new contribution to the subject.

The analysis of the material unearthed at five major Stone Age sites on the Great Plain during the past decade shows that the northernmost influence of the Aegean culture reached as far as the Great Plain during the Neolithic Age. This was substantiated by the exhibition opened at the same time as the conference which aroused great interest within international archeological circles well in advance.

Good morning/afternoon. Jó napot (yo nuppot)

Please. Kérem (keyrem)

Thank you. Köszönöm (kussunum)

I am a foreigner. Külföldi vagyok (kylfeldi vudyok)

I would like to buy/ask... Szeretnék venni/kérdezni... (seretnaik How much is it? Mennyibe kerül: (menyibe keryl)

Where’s the... ? Hoi van a... ? (hole vun u)

Entrance, exit. Bejárat, kijárat (beyahrot, kiyahrot)

Arrival, departure. Indulás, érkezés (indoolahsh, eerkezeysh)

Smoking, non-smoking. Dohányzó, nem dohányzó (dohahnzoe, nem Excuse me. Bocsánat (botchahnot)

Cheers! Egészségére! (egeysh-sheygeyreh)

In Tokyo, journalists were presented with the emblem which from now on may be the distinguishing sign of Hungarian products to be marketed in Japan, as well as the emblem of Hungarian-Japanese relations in tourism. The emblem was made by Isioka Eiko, Japan's best-known woman designer.

A DOZEN HUNGARIAN

phrases