AlO-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 6, 1999 UwmwEws* OPINION Worth Something Thanks to soaring prices, academic agricultural and biological journals, which for 200 years have provided information on advances in biology, food production, plant diseases, and animal science, are likely to go the way of the plow horse That’s the view of a Cornell University faculty task force that has been studying the problem. Subscriptions to the 312 research journals studied by the panel are as high as $5,000 a year and nine of the scholarly journals studied now cost more than $3,000 a year. In 1994, the panel’s report says 24 of the biological titles were from commercial publishers, as opposed to university, government, and society publishers. “If subscriptions continue to rise at their present rate, the end result will be the extinction of many journals—because they will no longer be commercially viable—and drastic reductions in scope of many university library journal collections,” says Kraig Adler, Cornell vice provost for life sciences, professor of biology, and chair of the task force. As prices increase beyond inflation, more libraries are forced to cut journal subscriptions. The costs of the journals are then spread out over an ever-decreasing number of institutions at still-higher prices that even fewer institutions can afford. We have long decried the overall decreasing dollars available for agricultural research as food production is strangled by laws initiated by the opponents of agriculture that make it illegal to farm. To maintain our world food production leadership, we must keep moving ahead with new technology advances. But as our nation’s farming enterprises are forced to shut down and move to more favorable ag production business climates in Central and South America, there is less and less incentive for major companies to invest research dollars in the U.S. A decreasing enterprise gives no promise of an agricultural market large enough to provide a return on research investments. The Cornell study seems to us just another manifestation of an ongoing trend. What good are the research studies we do have if other researchers, students, agribusinesses, and farmers can’t have access to the findings. The Cornell report asks the question, “How can faculty combat the trend of escalating subscriptions?” The answer is suggested that researchers could decide not to submit articles to high-priced journals and that university researchers could withhold their editorial services from the journals. Academics, it says, must be aware of the implications of their publishing patterns and of the subsequent costs to the institutions and their readers. We might also suggest that a lot of these research findings could be published in Lancaster Farming free of charge. This may not bring the research author the prestige of being published m a $5,000 technical bulletin, but it would get the report in the most sought publication in Penn State University Libraries’ archives That should be worth something. Berks County Holstein tour, departs Fleetwood Grange Hall 7 a.m., return 8:30 p.m., Fleetwood. Ag Outlook Seminar, Berks Coun i-3Dim. Philadelphia Flower Show, Pen nsylvania Convention Center, thniMarclM4^^^^^^^^ Fanning Alternative Business, Walgreen’s, Bethlehem, also March 15. N.W. Pa. Cattlemen’s Association Annual Meeting, Mercer Coun ty Extension Center, Mercer, 7 p.m. Utilizing MUN Test Data and * -L- ❖ Farm Calendar* W,t . sl&c,J.! Using DHIA Records, Della Family Restaurant, Delta, 10 a.m.-noon, and at Hoss’s Steak and Sea House, York, 6:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Understanding Disease Treatment of Turf and Ornamental Plants, Lebanon Ag Center, 10 __a.jp.-pood. Solancc Young Fanners meeting. Soil Evaluation, Solanco H.S., 7:30 p.m. York Pesticide Update Training, Vegetables and Field Crops, York Extension Office, 9 a.m.-l 1 a.m. or 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Cooperatives: The Key to Your Success, Arena Restaurant, Bedford, 9 a.m.-2;30 p.m. Lancaster County Holstein Club We never know when a power outage may occur. Thus, it is very important to keep your stand by generator in operating condition at all times. Some tips to help prevent stand by generator problems are: 1. Keep the generator clean and in good working order. 2. Operate automatic units once a week to ensure controls are functioning. 3. Operate the generator once a month under full load and long enough to reach normal operating temperature. 4. Make sure your generator does not back feed into your electrical supplier lines, and 5. Check fuel level daily to make sure the generator did not come on when you did not know it. Your children qualify for Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage when your family income is within certain limits. This income may be from jobs that do not provide insurance, from self employment, from alimony or child support, from survivor benefits or other sources. Most children who qualify for CHIP receive free coverage. For others, CHIP coverage is at monthly rates much lower than insurance usually costs. CHIP is administrated by the Pennsylvania Insurance Department, but the coverage is for quality medical services through regular insurance companies. Qualification depends on family size and income. For a family of four including parents, you qualify for free CHIP if your annual income does not exceed $32,900. CHIP covers regular check ups and immunizations, prescription drugs, emergency care, certain dental, vision, hearing and mental health services, diagnostic testing and up to 90 days of hospitalization in any year. For more information call 1-800-986- KIDS. m. Horse Pasture Workshop, Moun toursville Presbyterian Church, 6:30 p.m.-9:30 pan. Farming Alternatives Business Series, Hunterdon Exttcnsion March 16. Pork Quality Assurance Meeting, Danville Buying Station, 7 p.m. Pesticide Training For Core Cre dits, Berks County Ag Center, Leesport, 7:30 p.m.-9 p.m. Shippensburg Young Adult Far- To Check Generators Have Children's Health Insurance To Calibrate Liquid Manure Spreader Calibrating manure spreaders Annual tour to upstate Pa. and southern New York, departs Farm and Home Center, 7:45 a.m. and returns II p.m. Office, Flemington, NJ., also (Turn to Page A 34) is a very important key in making sure you are following your nutrient management plan while protecting the environment. According to Leon Ressler, Lancaster County Extension Agriculture Environmental Agent, for most liquid manure equipment, getting the proper application rate is a matter of adjusting ground speed. One method of calibrating can be done by spreading a full load in a square or rectangular pattern with the typical overlaps. Calculate the area covered in acres by multiplying the length in feet by the width m feet to obtain the square feet of the area covered. INCARNATION, ANYONE? March 7, 1999 Background Scripture: John 1:1-18; 20:30, 31 Devotional Reading: Psalms 33:1-9 The late Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick said that, when Jesus first began his ministry, many people said, God sent him. Throughout Jewish history, God had sent an ample supply of prophets, rulers, champions and so forth. After a while, however, says Fosdick, “that sounded too cold, as though God were the bow and Jesus the arrow.” So, some prob ably went on to say, God is with him. And for a while, that seemed adequate. Jesus could not do what he did unless God was with him. Eventually, it was not enough, so that people began to say God came in him. “That was not so much the theology at first as poetry,” said Fosdick. “It was an exhilarating insight and its natural expression was a song. God can come into human life! they cried. God has come into human life!” That is what the incarnation means. In beginning his gospel the Evangelist used a very special Greek term: Logos. The English rendering of Logos—Word—is rather weak by comparison. This Greek philosophical term was introduced about 500 years before the birth of Jesus, proba bly by Heraclitus of Ephesus. Stoics and Platonists under stood the term to mean “the mind of God,” reflected in the rationality, order and harmony of the universe. To Jews, the “Word of God” represented God’s penchant for expressing and revealing him self creatively. In Psalms 33:6 we read: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made...” The prophets were given the “word of the Lord,” In Proverbs 8:22-31 God’s wisdom is the word of God, as William Hamilton puts it, “a portion of God extended into the world.” Later, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria attempted to merge the Greek and Jewish concepts, both of which were impersonal in their nature. When John the Evangelist used Logos in the opening of his gospel, however, he used it in a way that they had probably not anticipated: “And the word became flesh and dwelt among Then divide this number by 43,560 to determine the number of acres covered. Next divide the number of gallons in your spreadei by the number of acres covered. This answer is the number of gallons spread per acre at the speed used for this calculation. After you have determined the application rate for the first load, repeat the procedure for different ground speeds. This will give you a good understanding of the spreading rate over a range of operating conditions. Feather Prof's Footnote: "If you can dream it, you can do it." Walt Disney us, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). This was a giant step, for he is saying that to many of us was unthinkable: the creative, expressive faculty of God became a human being! As much of God as can be expressed in human nature is what we encounter in Jesus Christ. GOD’S CHARACTER Christians have played kinds of semantic and percentage games with the concept of incar nation. It is impossible. Jesus was not 50% human and 50% divine or any other percentage breakdown. The best that we can say—that he was 100% human and 100% divine—is good poetry but lousy mathe matics. The fact of Christ, says Dr. Carnegie Simpson, “does not indeed show us everything, but it shows us the one thing we need to know—the character of God.” A. lan Burnett comments: “In other words, God must be like Christ. The character of the Creator cannot be less than the highest He has created, and the highest is that babe born to Mary on the first Christmas morning.” J.B. Phillips’ translation of John in The Gospels puts it with beautiful clarity: At the beginning, God expressed Himself. That Personal Expression was with God and was God, and he exist ed with God from the beginning. All creation took place through Him... So the Expression of God became a human being and lived among us. (Macmillan, 1953) The human mind can never comprehend the Creator of the cosmos. We can never analyze God’s nature nor devise a theol ogy that adequately explains how he works in this world. But, because of Jesus Christ we can know all we need to know. We can entrust ourselves to the mercies of a God whose charac ter is glimpsed in the life of Jesus. The incarnation, however, does not stop with Jesus Christ. St. Irenaeus tells us that “The Word of God, Jesus Christ, for his great love for mankind, became what we are in order to make us what he is hiipself.” The object of Christian disciple ship is for each of us to incar nate God in our own lives, how ever imperfectly. Lancaster Farming Established 1955 Published Every Saturday Ephrata Review Building 1 E. Main St. Ephrata, PA 17522 -by Lancaster Farming, Inc. A Stemman Enterprise William J. Burgess General Manager Everett R. Newswanger Managing Editor Copyright 1999 by Lancaster Farming
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers