September/October 1980
By the Mother Earth News editors
THE HUMAN TOUCH: Within two years after Motorola, Inc. sold its unprofitable Franklin Park, Illinois television plant to a Japanese firm—which uses virtually the same American work force—the number of sets being turned out jumped from 1,000 to 8,000 per day . . . while the defect rate dropped from 60% to 1%. The success is credited to the quality of the relationship between management and personnel.
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NATURE KNOWS BEST: The forest industry contends that the use of herbicide sprays will increase future forest growth . . . allowing harvesters to cut more timber today! However, a 1978 study indicates that. killing off young alder trees by spraying actually leads to reduced Douglas fir yields, since the leaves of the red alder provide the evergreens with fertilizer, and its roots support nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
MICKEY MOUSE AGAINST HEALTH FOOD! Walt Disney Educational Media Company has prepared four film strips that supposedly attack the health food industry. For example, one of the strips (called "Is Natural Healthy?") is said to refer to health food "faddists" as being people who are overly concerned about chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and food additives!
ANIMAL STOP SIGNS: It's been found that pairs of special reflectors—placed 10 to 20 yards apart—frighten animals away from roads (when hit by car lights, the disks give the appearance of red eyes glowing in the dark). The devices have brought about an 80% reduction in collisions with animals on Austrian highways . . . and the Animal Welfare League is encouraging their use in this country, to save both animal and human lives.
A POLITICAL MACHINE: Omaha, Nebraska's mayor, Al Veys, decided to "personalise" his campaign with "canned" telephone messages. However, the mayor's computerized machine failed to cut off at 9:00 p.m. as programmed, and all through the night prospective voters were awakened by telephone calls, and the words, "Hello there, I'm Al Veys, and I'd like you to ...."
THE WHITE HOUSE "GLOBAL 2000 STUDY" —which has been called everything from "very conservative" to "positively optimistic"—concludes that by the time today's baby graduates from college, he or she will face a world where one fifth of all now-existing species have become extinct . . . one third of the world's trees will have been cut down . . . much of today's farmland will be desert . . . and both floods and droughts will be more common throughout the worldl
THE GREAT AMERICAN MONUMENT: By state order, a vault will be constructed to hold toxic wastes illegally dumped by Hooker Chemical Company in Montague, Michigan. The structure will encompass an area larger than 13 football fields . . . extend 800 feet on each side . . . rise 50 feet in the air . . . and go down another 20 feet underground. (Future archaeological excavators may be in for a few unpleasant surprises!)
