: Page 40 RAIN June/July 1983 TOUCH AND GO We finally received an announcement about the annual “eggciting” Chicken Flying Meet, held in May near Rio Grande, Ohio. Last year's event brought 1500 people and 175 chickens. However, to date, the record flight by Lola B., a 15 ounce barnyard bantam hen from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, of 302 feet 8 inches, has not been broken. Formosa Invades the United States We noticed an ad in Verbatim, a thoughtful journal about language, that the country of Formosa is going to export a new beer into the USA, calling it Taiwan On. Then, we found out that there is an invasion taking place near Hallandale, Florida, where a kind of termite from Formosa is spreading. This termite is reported to be able to disintegrate a pressure-treated four-by-four in less than a year. Everything Is Connected Climatologists have given the name of El Nino to an area off the coast of Chile, which may be the cause of California's unusally wet winter. El Nino, an area of the Pacific Ocean with a temperature 6 to 8 degrees above normal, may have diverted the jet stream along the Pacific Coast, forcing more storms to move across the mainland through California. One speculation about the cause of El Nino is the presence of methane in the atmosphere which has increased by 1.7% a year since 1965. This increase may be a result of the clearing of forest lands in the tropics, especially in the Amazon watershed. Pacman Cancer Videogame A hospital in Houston, Texas has developed a version of Pac-Man that is modeled on the cellular theory of cancer. The Pac-Man-like T-Cell lymphocytes scurry through a maze of “normal cells" in search of orange “tumor cells." East West Journal Information Era Firsts The Artculture Resource Center in Toronto published a 20,000 word suspense novel which was written in six and one-half hours by Burke Campbell, and distributed to users of the Readers Digest owned SOURCE information utility within sixteen minutes after it was completed. A spokesperson for the Source declared it to be the first truely electronic novel. In other firsts, George Stickles and Debbie Fuhrman exchanged their marriage vows in the presence of “online" guests, those who listened in via their CompuServe connection—an information utility similar to the Source. The minister administered the ceremony using his own computer terminal. Longest Acronym Award SCNVOSOPTOHOPR (Steering Committee of National Voluntary Organizations for Service to Older Persons in Their Own Homes or Other Places of Residence). The committee was set up with 138 elected national voluntary organizations as a result of the 1971 White House Conference on Aging. RAIN 2270 NW Irving, Portland, OR 97210 (503) 227-5110 --.i Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 1890 Portland, OR
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