ECHOES AND UPDATES

". . . Your article on 'wopersons' amused and intrigued me.

I started my career as a technical writer in 1947 and am still at it. Although I have encountered discrimination occasionally because I am a woman, I never felt the need to resort to coercion to main-tain my professional integrity. Thank you for your recognition."

Mary Catharine McKay, Los Angeles, Calif.

Fusion update: there is news of progress from IBM and India on Jones-type cold fusion, which is not important for energy in the near future. In F&P fusion all is quiet; the only interesting item this month is an unconfirmed rumor that Dr G. Schloessow and Dr J. Wethington of the nuclear engineering dept. at the U. of Florida can turn the process on and off and control the amount of heat produced, and that they have detected both tritium and neutrons. However, the report comes from The Economist, a notoriously un-reliable source.

I have placed full-page advertisements in the American Spec-tator (Nov. '89) and Reason (Dec. '89) to stop the forcible repatriation of the Vietnamese Boat People and to open US borders to these courageous and industrious people. Copies of the ad are available from AtE.

Before ecoporneur Brodeur set off the false alarm about as-bestos-caused lung cancers, he was into the "Zapping of America" by microwaves. But he failed: in a Wall St. J. survey (9/19/89), consumers rated the microwave oven the second most important household appliance, just behind the smoke alarm. In 1980, only 15% of all US households had a microwave oven; now the fraction lies between 75% and 80%. Brodeur is now beating the alarm about electric power lines [AtE Sep 89], but the effective refutation of his bunk would take the rarest of animals: utility executives with spine. The flacks of N.J.'s PS&G, for example, have published several oversized pages of waffling and platitudes without once giving the numerical comparison between household appliances and power lines. Such pusillanimity will result in an Environmental Impact Statement for every new power line, and the N.J. rate payer will shell out the rate increase, while Brodeur's garbage will go from edition to edition.

Never before in 22 years of Golem Press did I have to reprint a bumper sticker. But rifle-toting Deng grinning "Gun control paid off." sold out in four weeks. $1.25 each, 5/$5, 12/$10 before it sells out again.