gender-neutral pronoun

[James A. Landau]

It had to happen.  From a training manual for insurance agents:
"Failure of any person to maintain a complete record of all the complaints
which it has received..."

The general election ballot in my home town of Linwood New Jersey lists one
Constantino ROZZO as running for the US House of Representatives on the
"Sociality Party USA" ticket.  As a quick check up column G shows, this is a misprint
for "Socialist Party USA".  There is also column D for the "Socialist Workers
Party" and Column F for the "Socialist Equality Party."  This one-third of
the ballot devoted to various flavors of Socialists actually makes me nostalgic
for my college days, when to modify an old saying, "Where you have six
Socialists, you have seven political parties."

More seriously, there are 28 candidates for various positions.  Of them,
starting with "Dick" Cheney, we have six who are listed on the ballot under
obvious nicknames, specificially "Dick", "Joe", "Willie", "Chuck", "Bill", and
"Jim".

Web site www.danrathermustgo.com did an on-line survey of 35,000 responders.
The result of interest to the ADS-L is "How should we refer to the scandal
over the memos".  Results:  "Rathergate" 80%, "Memogate" 10%, other 7%, and
"Docudrama" (easily the best selection) a measly 3%.

Overheard at synagogue: "If you don't know the Hebrew alphabet, you're going
to have a tov time."

On the Fox TV telecast of last Sunday's game between the Eagles and the
Browns, one of the reporters used the proverb "Eagles may soar, but groundhogs
don't get sucked into jet engines."  I wasn't paying close attention, but I
believe the reporter managed to put a new meaning to the proverb, as he was
discussing the advantages of the Brown's running game.

        - James A. Landau