Fun_People Archive
6 Feb
Cheap labor & longevity

Date: Mon,  6 Feb 95 23:10:00 PST
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Cheap labor & longevity

Excerpts-from: WhiteBoard News for February 06, 1995

Seattle, Washington:

U.S. Representative Jack Metcalf, who campaigned last fall as a tough-on-
crime candidate, hired prison inmates to help him in his election bid.

Campaign records show Metcalf hired a company called Washington Marketing
Group for $9,000 to conduct telemarketing.  The group employed convicted
felons at the Monroe State Prison to dial up voters a week before the
November general election and talk about the Republican and Democratic
candidates in the 2nd District.

The voters were told the candidates' views on the death penalty, increasing
taxes and property rights, and then asked whom they might vote for.  The
voters weren't told that the telephoned questions were coming from inside
the prison walls at Monroe.

Metcalf edged out Democrat Harriet Spanel for the 2nd District seat.

Metcalf's campaign manager and current deputy chief of staff, Chris Strow,
says he didn't know the telemarketing company was using prison labor.  He
said Friday he wouldn't have used its services if he had.
==========

Tasmania, Australia:

A sprawling pine tree recently examined on a rain- soaked mountain in
Tasmania could be more than 10,000 years old, perhaps making it the world's
oldest living organism.

The Huon pine is a 2.5-acre tangled mass of limbs and roots covered in part
by thick moss.

Ancient pollen from the tree, found in sediment taken from a nearby lake
bed, is 10,500 years old, according to Ed Cook, a Columbia University
tree-dating specialist.

Tree-ring samples bored out of the pine revealed that the last 30 years have
been the warmest in 2,000 years.

"In the past 3,800 years there has only been one other 30-year period that
has been warmer than the current episode of global warming," said Cook.

© 1995 Peter Langston