Fun_People Archive
8 Nov
WhiteBoardness 11/2/94

Date: Tue,  8 Nov 94 13:58:24 PST
To: Fun_People
Subject: WhiteBoardness 11/2/94

Forwarded-by: <joeha@microsoft.com>
Excerpted-from: WhiteBoard News for November 02, 1994
==========

Seattle, Washington:

The theft Saturday night from a locked car parked on 20th Avenue had a touch of
the unusual.

No, it wasn't the minor damage to the car door.  And no, it wasn't the $250
pair of prescription eyeglasses that was taken.

It was the other item reported stolen: "The Club," a $50 anti-theft device.
==========

New York, New York:

Land's End, the cozy catalog people, just announced the arrival of recycled underwear.

Is this our worst nightmare?  Actually, the company is offering thermal
underwear in a fabric made from recycled plastic bottles and (5 percent) Lycra.
 Well, all right.  But it does give one pause.  The undies are $22 for the tops
or bottoms.
==========

Atlanta, Georgia:

The execution date for smallpox virus has been tentatively set for Friday, June
30, 1995.

Death will come by pressure cooking in an autoclave followed by incineration,
in Atlanta and Moscow, the two repositories of smallpox virus.  There is no
plan to mark the destruction with a ceremony.

Smallpox is the only human disease to be eliminated.  The World Health
Organizations (WHO) declared the world free of the infection in 1979, two years
after the last naturally occurring case of the disease was found in Merca, Somalia.

Since then, the more than 50 storehouses of virus samples have been
consolidated to two: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta
and the Moscow Institute for Viral Preparations.

A WHO committee recently voted 8 to 2 to recommend destruction of the samples
next June.

[Although this is quite a victory for modern medicine, it also serves to remind
us how close modern medicine came to vanquishing tuberculosis before it got out
of control and became a major health hazard again.  It's really not over until
the incinerator singes (as it were) and the virus "execution" really is a
significant event ...  -psl]

© 1994 Peter Langston