Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Sat, 23 Jan 1993 17:06:06 EST
From:         Rita Marie Rouvalis <rita@EFF.ORG>
Subject:      Net 14
Comments: To: words-l@uga.cc.uga.edu

This is long, but filled with interesting tidbits.  My former boss
does it to amuse himself, and it's sort of a Meta-EFFector Online
of sorts.  He doesn't know I forward it around, but then again, he
rips all of this stuff off, too.  Ha.

Enjoy.


From van Thu Jan 14 18:18:15 1993
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Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1993 18:17:49 -0500
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From: Gerard Van der Leun <van>
Subject: NET14
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                                14
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boswell@well.sf.ca.us          1/15/93                Noted on the Net
                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
        SILICON VALLEY CEOs MEET RON BROWN ON HIGH TECH HIGHWAYS
                          IT'S...ROBODOG!
     SOON TO BE OFFERED A LEAD ROLE IN NEWTON APPLICATIONS AT APPLE
     PSST! WANNA BUY 5000 INTEL CHIPS THAT FELL OFF THE FEDEX TRUCK?
                          SPEAK, MEMORY!
                   THREADS WE DREAD SEEING STARTED
                      NET ACCESS ITEM OF THE DAY:
                  DEFICIT REDUCTION, UKRAINIAN STYLE
              JUST A GLEAM IN THE EYE OF THE MOTHERBOARD
   RUMORS HE'S GOING TO ATTEMPT TO WRAP TALK.BIZARRE ARE UNFOUNDED
                        DISNEY MYSTERY SOLVED!
                       ALTERNATIVE PHYSICS 201
                       THE VERY SMARTPHONE
                        THE WAY OF KAIZEN
                      (Continuous Improvement)
                         THE POESY CORNER
                 WELL WORTH THE DOWNLOAD AND DISKSPACE

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
      SILICON VALLEY CEOs MEET RON BROWN ON HIGH TECH HIGHWAYS
WASHINGTON, DC -- The Clinton Administration is apparently smiling on an
early move to emphasize its commitment to both infrastructure
improvement and a new telecom highway.  As reported by the San Francisco
Chronicle, a group of the same  Silicon Valley executives who supported
the recent Clinton-Gore  presidential campaign have met with Secretary
of Commerce designate Ron Brown to urge a focus on high-tech issues.

Ron Brown, who has been criticized in some quarters for his close
relations with some Asian high-tech companies for which he was a
Washington lobbyist, recently met with members of the Computer
Systems Policy Project, a group of high-tech executives including
John Sculley of Apple Computer; John Akers, chairman of IBM;
Lesis Platt of Hewlett-Packard; and Robert Allen of AT&T, all of
whom participated in the recent Little Rock Economic Summit.

Of prime concern to the members of the Project is the need to
keep President-elect Clinton focused on the needs of US high-
tech industries while other groups and world events conspire to
deflect his attention.

The Computer Systems Policy Project has recommended the creation
the National Information Infrastructure Council which would be
headed by VP-elect Gore and would spearhead a major effort to
implement and expand joint government-industry research and
development projects.

The Information Industries Association recently submitted a
position paper to the Clinton-Gore transition team in which IIA
Vice President and General Council Steven J. Metalitz emphasized
support for a non-monopolistic information infrastructure which
would facilitate communications and data exchange but would also
feature "strong safeguards" to ward off possible discrimination
against competitors by network operators.

The IIA believes that the government should set ground rules for
the proposed information superhighway but should also discourage
monopolistic control.

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
                         IT'S...ROBODOG!

PALMER, ALASKA -- When the sled drivers yell "mush!" at their dog teams
this year in the Great Alaskan Sled Dog Race, the dogs will be
identified by tiny computer chips about the size of a grain of rice
instead of the low-tech method of dabbing them with paint.

The chips are implanted under the back of the dog's neck using a syringe
and a fat hollow needle. The chips are also used to identify other
animals ranging in size from birds to llamas. Dr. James Leach III, this
year's Iditarod chief veterinarian, says there have been no adverse
reactions.

Most of the drivers say they favor the permanent implant over the messy
paint, which rubs off on the drivers clothes. One driver said: "The
paint always seemed sort of prehistoric. I know I've had red paint put
on my dogs, and people mistake it for blood."

Musher Dee Dee Jonrowe says it's time Alaska joined what he called "the
Robodog" club. "I have one dog that's been "chipped" for three years,
and I haven't seen any bad effects." Jonrowe says he also likes the fact
that "chipping" marks the dog for life.
                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
     SOON TO BE OFFERED A LEAD ROLE IN NEWTON APPLICATIONS AT APPLE

The German news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur has recently reported on
Japanese inventor Kenji Kawakami's "New Idea Academy," which features
his innovations and counts among his most successful products a portable
washing machine that straps onto the user's leg, a traveling necktie
with room for writing utensils and a calculator, padded booties for cats
so they can dust the floor while walking around, and a "solar
flashlight" that provides a beam of light as long as the sun is shining.
                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
   PSST! WANNA BUY 5000 INTEL CHIPS THAT FELL OFF THE FEDEX TRUCK?

SANTA CLARA, CAL. The computer and software industries are a high source
of revenue for California. But they also afford a good income for the
criminal elements. An undercover investigation into stolen computer
parts by local and federal authorities and the FBI in Silicon Valley
has resulted in 30 arrests, according to a published report.

UPI reports the operation resulted in the recovery of more than $3.6
million in cash and stolen property and was the result of a 4.5-month
investigation called "Operation Gray Chip." A total of $2.1 million was
recovered in cash and another $1.55 million in  stolen high-tech
equipment, the report says.

UPI quotes Santa Clara Police Sgt. Mark Kerby as saying: "The
trade in stolen computer parts is one of the largest crime  problems in
the Silicon Valley. So I'd say we just scratched the  surface.

Various locations, from parking lots to restaurants, were used
to stage the stings. The arrests occurred after cash changed
hands. The largest transaction involved $250,000 in exchange
for 5, 000 Intel computer parts.

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
                            SPEAK, MEMORY!

TOKYO, JAPAN --  A device which can translate languages in real-time
between two speakers has long been the stuff of science fiction.
However, Kyoto-based ATR Automatic Speech Translation Telephone
Laboratory claims to have brought the concept into reality with its
development of a prototype automatic speech translation telephone
system. Plans call for the system to be tested in conjunction with
Carnegie Mellon University in the US and Siemens of Germany
later this month (28 January).

ATR Automatic Speech Translation Telephone Laboratory's latest system
can translate human speech in both directions between languages --
Japanese to English, English to Japanese, Japanese to German and German
to Japanese -- on a real time basis, its creators say.

In use, the system works by translating the originating language into
digital signals which are then turned in ASCII text. From there, the
text is automatically translated into the destination language text,
and is "read out" by the machine at the distant end of the link.

The whole transaction takes around 20 seconds, so there is an
appreciable delay when a "conversation" takes place. So far, the
system is limited to 1,500 words in the Japanese-English and Japanese-
German direction, meaning it can only really be used for very basic
daily conversations.

To date, ATR has spent around $130 million on the development of the
system. The slightly bad news is that it is likely to take
another ten years before a practical system for end users comes to
market.

Speech translation is a major project in Japan. ATR was created
by the Japanese Ministry, Prefectural governments, NTT, KDD and other
private electronics firms in 1986. About 50 researchers are studying
and developing the system.

(Masayuki "Massey" Miyazawa/19930112/Press Contact: ATR Automatic
Speech Translation Telephone Laboratory, +81-7749-5-1311)

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
             ZEN AND THE ART OF RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT
"We are not disorganized.  We just have a kind of organization that
transcends understanding." -Jacques Barzaghi, aide to Jerry Brown

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
                   THREADS WE DREAD SEEING STARTED
[Those amazing minds in alt.conspiracy are at it again! Here's some
excerpts from the first post on "the new world order". The poster signs
himself "Newfoundland Puppy", but what is really ominous is the
subtitle: "Part 1 of 87". -- b.]

THE PLANNING OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER
-----------------------------------
PART ONE - PRE-AMERICAN MOVES TOWARD A ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT
-----------------------------------------------------------

The New World Order. It has become a household catch phrase,
recognizable by nearly every member of the civilized world <1>. But what
is behind the New World Order? Is it as innocuous as it seems? Or is it
a program for world domination? This series of articles will attempt to
delve into the mysteries behind the New World Order and uncover what
seems to be a mass conspiracy against all the peoples of the world.

First, let us examine the rise of the concept of global governments
before the rise of Ameri(k)a, and tie this into the modern concept of
the New World Order.

GLOBAL GOVERNMENT THEORIES IN ANCIENT CHINA

Instead of the usual suspects (Greece and Rome) - we find that the
earliest concept of a world government evolved in mainland China c. 1300
BC (in the Ch'ing Dynasty). In a sort of backwater village, a simple
peasant named K'chan Peng Che <2> rose in power in his hamlet to the
level of town mayor. After a decade of rule, K'chan proclaimed himself
to be emperor of the known universe. He named his wife representative of
the peoples of the earth, his two daughters representatives of the sun
and the moon respectively, and gave his son Leng-se charge over the
stars over the sky <3>.

After five years of global rule, the Che family's authority was disputed
by Li Sheng, a farmer who had dabbled in political theory earlier,
writing the renowned text, 'Representation In Asian Political Systems',
while studying in modern-day Beijing <4>. He argued that K'chan had
abrogated his authority by not representing flora and fauna. The
townpeople revolted, and the political situation in the town reverted
to a town council form.

After this failed experiment in global government, the next peoples to
take up the idea were indeed the Greeks. (See next post - The Greco-
Roman Novus Ordo Seculorum).
---------------------
NOTES:

<1> In fact - recent studies show that 89% of first-graders in Ameri(k)a
    when presented with the words "New World Order" on a flash card will
    stand up and perform a "seig heil" salute.

<2> Some texts dispute the name of this forefather of global governing.
    However, who really cares?

<3> Although Leng-se was appointed representative of the stars in the
    universe, he was only six months old at the time, so K'chan assumed
    his responsibilites for the time being.

<4> This text was destroyed in the early 5th Century BC by a craftsman
    who used its pages for sanding a teakwood table. This teakwood
    table now rests in Lyndon LaRouche's study. Coincidence?

[We think not. --b]

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
                      NET ACCESS ITEM OF THE DAY:
                             CYLINDER
The International Society for the Philosophy of Tools & Space

We are an interdisciplinary organization, small but growing, dedicated
to thoughtful discussion about and research into issues concerning tools
and space.  Currently, we maintain a membership list and circulate a
short newsletter.  Our future plans call for expansion - a regular
journal and a number of conferences are possible in the coming year.

Our membership list includes philosophers, artists, computer
programmers, scientists, graphic designers, architects, teachers - as
well as those whose professions are still unnamed. Our society is bound
by an implicit faith in the silent potency of tools, space, meaning and
metaphor, in a wide range of seemingly unrelated fields.  Within the scope
of our  talks to date, members have raised diverse and fascinating issues
for
consideration:

-  A phenomenology of humor, tools and toys
-  Space and the banality of cause and effect
-  Rhetoric and metaphor: language as tool/toy
-  The iconology of computers
-  Speed and annihilation
-  Victimless crimes and crimes of trespass
-  The mechanics of the dreamwork in psycho-analysis
-  Architectural theory and practice
-  Political theories of reterritorialization
-  Viruses: information systems and genetic engineering
-  Media theory
-  Virtual Reality: the emergence of simulacra in social space
-  Transit technology and urban planning
-  Infrastructure catastrophes

The thematic study of tools and space forces us to reconsider and
sharpen the boundaries separating the various specialties of our
members.  Many of us are involved in concrete and ongoing projects which
undo customary lines of inquiry and uncover fruitful new questions in
what was formerly considered "obvious" and explained.  We seek to move
beyond conventional genres without abandoning meaning and beauty for the
sake of novelty.

For more information about Cylinder, including membership materials,
please write us with your name and address.

CYLINDER c/o Graham Harman, Secretary
Philosophy Dept., DePaul University
Chicago, IL  60614  USA
email: cylinder@uiowa.edu

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
                  DEFICIT REDUCTION, UKRAINIAN STYLE
The government of Ukraine is sponsoring a competition, closing Dec. 31,
to determine the best way to seal off the destroyed nuclear reactor that
caused the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986.  The government seeks a
solution that will guarantee safety from radiation for 100 years, and it
is willing to pay whoever designs such a system the equivalent of
$20,000.  The real cost of ensuring such safety, according to U.S.
officials, is closer to $250 million.

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
              JUST A GLEAM IN THE EYE OF THE MOTHERBOARD

BOULDER, CO. -- The University of Colorado unveiled its $300,000 general
purpose optical computer yesterday in what could be a preview of the
future in computing.

The research team, which consists of both faculty and students at
the university's optoelectronic computing systems center, says the
device is presently at about the same state of development as the
vacuum tube computers of the 1950s were compared to today's personal
computers. But they think that will change.

An optical computer uses the basic unit of light, called a photon,
instead of electrons. Photons move at 10 times the speed of
electrons, can travel side by side, and can pass through each other.
Instead of being stored in memory, photons are constantly on the
move, traveling through optical fiber. That allows computing at a
much higher speed.

According to CU Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering Vincent Heuring, optics will become more prevalent in
computing. "Ultimately, computers will be all optical, and they
will be very fast and very inexpensive." Heuring told Newsbytes that
laser beams are used to encode the computer's instructions and data
into hundreds of thousands of tiny light pulses that are stored in
about three miles of spooled glass fiber that serve as the machine's
"memory." Each 12-foot-long pulse, which represents a single bit of
information, completes a loop through the memory spool every
20-millionth of a second. The system currently operates at about
50MHz but Heuring says palm-sized models are expected to reach 20
gigahertz, or 400 times faster.

The team says its next task is to reduce the physical size of the
present unit, which occupies four levels and is about the size of an
executive office desk, to palm size. As the size of the machine, and
the loop, decreases, the operating speed will increase. Heuring, who
stressed that the current model is a proof-of-principle machine,
rather than a prototype, says one practical use for optical
computing is in the fields of computer graphics and virtual reality.
They could also be used for telecommunications, routing information
over fiber-optic channels for telephone, data communications, and
cable television use. The school says such a processor could probably
be built within three to five years with sufficient funding.

CU's machine is an outgrowth of an optical processor developed by
AT&T's Bell Laboratories two years ago. That system used light to
perform simple calculations, but relied on electronic controls.

The school's center was formed six years ago, and is supported by
an annual grant from the National Science Foundation as well as
funds from the Colorado Advanced Technology Institute, the Colorado
Commission for Higher Education, the university, and Colorado State
University. It's the only center focusing on optical computing,
and has an annual budget between $5-6 million, according to
Heuring.

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
   RUMORS HE'S GOING TO ATTEMPT TO WRAP TALK.BIZARRE ARE UNFOUNDED

BERLIN -- The Bulgarian-American artist Christo said Wednesday
he is 90 percent sure of obtaining approval from German authorities to
drape Berlin's Reichstag in silver nylon.
   "The chance for realization of the project was never as good as it
is today,'' Christo, 57, told a news conference in Berlin.
  Christo has sought approval without success since 1972 to ``pack'' --
Christo's term -- the Reichstag, Germany's 100-year-old parliament
building.
   Time now is running out because the Reichstag is scheduled to be
gutted and renovated in preparation for moving Germany's seat of
government from Bonn to Berlin at the end of the century.
  Christo said he had no interest in ``packing'' a renovated Reichstag.
  But with the support of Rita Suessmuth, Germany's parliamentary
president, Christo said he believes he is near to gaining approval from
the German parliament and Chancellor Helmut Kohl for the project.
  If approval is granted, the Reichstag will be covered in 1.1 million
square feet of silver-colored nylon for 14 days in August and September.
  The ``packing'' of the Reichstag by 200 mountain climbers would take
three days and cost between $6 million and $7 million, to be paid by
Christo.
  An exhibition documenting the ``packing'' of the Reichstag opened
Wednesday and lasts through Jan. 31 in the Marstall -- the former
imperial stables -- in Berlin's historic center.
  Christo was born in 1935 in Bulgaria as Christo Javatschev and now
lives in the United States.
  His most famous projects of packing objects in material include a
cliff in Australia, Chicago's Museuem of Contemporary Art, and Paris'
oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf.

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
                        DISNEY MYSTERY SOLVED!
  One of the great mysteries in Disneyanna involves two of the Fab
Five, Pluto and Goofy, as examined in the movie "Stand By Me" when one
kid asks another, ``If Pluto is a dog, then what's Goofy?''
  Good question. Is Goofy a dog, an android, an alien or what?
  David Smith, head of Walt Disney Studio's Archives,has the answer:
``When Goofy made his first appearance in 1932 his name was 'Dippy Dawg'
and later 'Dippy the Goof.' Unlike Pluto, Goofy spoke. Through the years
he has developed more human characteristics until finally he became a
goofy-looking human with dogs' features.''
  For those who love trivia, Pinto Colvic was originally the voice of
Goofy.

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
                     ALTERNATIVE PHYSICS 201
                         By trygve lode

      Ted Holden, of talk.origins fame, has often claimed that future
generations of scientists will look upon him and his beliefs as well as
Velikovsky's with the same sort of reverent appreciation that we now
reserve only for those who have contributed the most to our science and
culture--Madonna, for example.  As you might imagine, this has certainly
set me to wondering, "just what will future universities be saying about
physics in years to come?"

      With this in mind, and with the benefit of reading several of Jack
Sarfatti's articles on sci.skeptic that show a quantum mechanical basis
for precognition, I decided to attempt to channel just such a university
physics course of the future.

      "Ohm...ohm...ohm...ohm...."  (Well, what else would you chant?)

#trance(ON)
#trancemode(FUTURE | PHYSICS | HOLDEN_LIKE)

      "Good morning, class, and welcome to the 2826 school year's first
session of 'Alternative Physics 201.'

      "Science, above all else, is based on evidence; it cares nothing
for what you personally like and don't like and, no matter what your
personal preferences are for how the universe ought to work, in the end,
the theory that best explains the evidence wins.  We can do experiments
in the present, but this is necessarily a limited exercise, since
experiments performed today can only tell us what the laws of physics
are like today.  Mainstream scientists tend to ignore this fundamental
fact and, thus, are hopelessly hamstrung by uniformitarian assumptions
when trying to explain events in the past, many of which simply don't
fit with our current physical theories.  Much better, then, would be if
we could somehow find out what the laws of physics really were in the
past, and then use those to explain past events.

      "Of course we can't just travel back in time and perform our
experiments back then--and, unfortunately, records from even a few
centuries ago are sparse and incomplete.  Back in the early twenty-first
century, all existing records were digitized and stored within the
capacious memory banks of the most powerful computer of all time, the
MegaloMainframe.  High-speed data links fed every remote computer in the
world, eliminating the need for local storage devices which soon
vanished from use.  Libraries became unnecessary with everything being
instantly available through the world-wide computer network that the
MegaloMainframe serviced; books became useful only as collectors' items.

      "Unfortunately, one day a careless user accidentally reformatted
the MegaloMainframe's main storage--and the Sysadmin mounted the backups
and entered the wrong command-line option to the backup program, erasing
all of the world's knowledge with a mistaken keystroke.  Few records
survived the ensuing chaos, and most of what we know of civilization
before 2050 comes from facts that the users of the MegaloMainframe
thought were so important that they printed them out and attached them
to the walls of their places of work--so great was the rioting and
destruction that only a few sturdy, fire-resistant office buildings
remained and even these were ransacked by looters who left little but
those few bits of information that the people of that era valued enough
that they attached them reverently to the walls around them.

      "What can we learn from these past records?  Perhaps most exciting
is the knowledge that even the basic forces of nature were completely
different back then.  Gravity, for example, was far weaker than it is
now, and on smaller celestial bodies like the moon, it was so weak that
pencils would simply float away if released.  Yet, at the time, there
was another force, probably electromagnetic in nature, that held the
planets together and kept their inhabitants from flying off; lunar
explorers used devices known as "heavy boots" to hold themselves to
the moon without need for gravity.

      "It appears that nuclear forces were also quite different in those
days, allowing the formation of many stable elements that are no longer
possible under our current physical laws.  While we may never know much
about many of these now-impossible elements and their properties, we
know from the surviving documents that one of the most important and
widely used of these was an element they called Administratium; another
was a material called Thiotimoline, of which we know nothing at all save
that, when resublimated, it developed endochronic properties.

      "There remain many other mysteries that the ancients have left for
us to explain--what was the popular and powerful technique of chemical
analysis that nothing remains of but the name--the Roble Hall Purity
Test?  What physical laws were there that allowed them to measure
physical beauty (in a unit called millihelens) by the action of boats?
Did the interaction of gravity and the strange electromagnetic forces
of their time permit humans and animals to communicate directly, as they
are shown doing in the few fragments we have found of their most
prestigious scientific journal, the "Far Side"?

      "Perhaps the one tidbit that most tantalizes us today is the
knowledge that the ancients understood the seemingly bizarre laws of
physics they lived under so well that the most famous scientist of their
age, a man we know only as "Murphy" was able to codify them all in a
single grand unified law that bears his name.  Alas, no records of what
"Murphy's Law" was have yet been discovered, so we can only speculate
upon whether this pinnacle of twenty-first century knowledge would still
apply to our world today...."


      Unfortunately, my trance ended abruptly with an eerie,
authoritarian voice demanding that I insert two Trigannic Pu's for
another three minutes; then there was a click, and I was back in my
ordinary, twentieth-century bedroom.

      There you have it, though; Ted Holden's and Velikovsky's theories
seem to be still going strong towards the end of the next millennium, so
perhaps Ted is right after all.

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
                       THE VERY SMARTPHONE

   According to the {Houston Chronicle}, Suzanne Handerson offhandedly
answered a ringing pay phone at a Waco, Texas shopping mall.

   A voice asked, "Hello. Mrs. Henderson?"

  Henderson looked around to see if she was on Candid Camera, or a
program of that sort. On the phone was the man who tends her yard,
calling with a question about the garden. It turned out that the mall
pay phone had almost the same number as her home phone.

   Said Henderson, "It was a question of dialing the wrong number and
getting the right person.  I was speechless."

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
                         THE WAY OF KAIZEN
                    (Continuous Improvement)
                 by Michael.Willett@OFFICE.Wang.com

Many of us in the West focus our attention mainly on quality assurance
through measurement, inspection, testing and management practices.  In
Japan, however, more attention is now being paid to a philosophy--or
perhaps better, an attitude--they call kaizen.  Literally, it means
gradual, continuous improvement, mainly in small matters, in all
aspects of working life.

This practice is explained in a book called Kaizen: The Key to Japan's
Competitive Success, by Masaaki Imai.  The English version is published
by McGraw-Hill, New York.

MOST IMPORTANT

"Kaizen is the single most important concept in Japanese management,"
Imai claims.  "It is the key to Japanese competitive success.  It means
ongoing improvement involving everyone-top management, managers, and
workers."

Kaizen begins with the recognition that any corporation can have
problems. Kaizen solves problems by establishing a corporate culture in
which everyone can freely admit to these problems.

"Kaizen movements are going on all the time in most Japanese companies,"
Imai states, "and most of them contend that management should devote at
least 50 percent of its attention to kaizen,"  He says that Japanese
managers are always looking for ways to improve systems and procedures.
This quest extends even into labor relations, marketing and supplier
relations.

"Engineers in Japanese plants are often warned.  There will be no
progress if you keep on doing things exactly the same way all the time."

WEAK IN WEST

Imai adds that after studying Western business practices for many years,
he concludes that the kaizen concept is non-existent, or at least very
weak, in most Western companies.  "This lack of kaizen helps explain why
an American or European factory can remain exactly the same for a
quarter of a century."

Imai points out that at the same time, some Western companies are
enamored of innovation.  He characterizes this as rapid, radical
change, usually in large matters.  Kaizen, on the other hand, consists
of many small, ongoing improvements in the status quo, as a result of
continuous efforts.

In Japan, he reports, employees are involved in kaizen through
suggestion systems, quality circles, and TQM or TQC programs.  An
important point is that once an employee's suggestion is adopted, the
standard for the activity is changed.  Thus kaizen involves flexible,
changing standards, not a lack of them.

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
                         THE POESY CORNER

The Call of the Politically Correct Shepherd to his Nymph
(with apologies to Christopher Marlowe, who is a Dead White
 European Male and therefore unworthy of study)

  Come live with me and we shall be politically correct
  We'll walk among the spotted owls and every rare insect
  We'll not cheer for sporting teams whose names mock our forebearers
  Or consort with other than the original fur-wearers
       No toxic fission
       No fossil fuels
       No polyester
       No grades in schools
  Come live with me within the old-growth forest near the seas
  Where the dolphins all are safe and swim through nets with ease
  Where the union label grows in our greenhouse-gas-free dome
  And the rain forest stretches out beyond our race-normed home
       No fatty oils
       No silicone
       No ever-present
       Cellular phones
  We'll be perfectly tolerant of all (as if we cared!)
  And we'll hope that we won't be procreationally impaired
  And when we have politically correct young girls and boys
  They'll play in their cloth diapers with our recycled toys
       They'll get their truths from
       Old bitter men
       And never think nor learn
       Less they offend.

Kevin M. Loney 1992.

                     -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-
               WELL WORTH THE DOWNLOAD AND DISKSPACE

The Fall '92 Special Supplement on Usenet News is now
available via anonymous FTP at the Amateur Computerist FTP site.
You can obtain a copy by ftping to wuarchive.wustl.edu. Log in as
"anonymous" and type your email address for the password.

Then "cd /doc/misc/acn" and
"get acn4-5.txt".

If anyone has problems retrieving this issue, please send me
email.

        For the Amateur Computerist,
        -Michael Hauben

PS: Or send me email if you want me to send it to you, or read
alt.amateur-comp to perhaps see if your site still contains the
posting if the issue.

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