And In The U.S., They're Forced To Buy Retail (fwd)

Subject: And In The U.S., They're Forced To Buy Retail (fwd)
From: Karen Kay <karenk -at- NETCOM -dot- COM>
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 1995 13:08:56 -0700

A friend of mine sent this to me. I thought it touched on a lot of the
things we've been discussing before. I apologize if you've all already
seen this before.

Karen
karenk -at- netcom -dot- com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Forwarded-by: bostic -at- CS -dot- Berkeley -dot- EDU (Keith Bostic)
> Forwarded-by: cate3 -at- netcom -dot- com
> From: Mateo -dot- Burtch -at- eng -dot- sun -dot- com (M. Burtch--Specialist in Courier Font)

> The Society for Technical Communication (STC) released its annual Report
> on the Status of Technical Writers today. This report, issued by the
> STC's Writers' Committee on Technical Scribes, monitors the civil and
> human rights of technical writers throughout the world and documents
> abuses against them. It also includes a handy quick-reference guide to
> basic Fortran compiler options.

> Overall, the report noted that the situation for technical writers the
> world over is "precarious, and, in many cases, is worsening rapidly. In
> particular, writers in the Third World routinely live in poverty and
> squalor." (The report noted that this may apply to other people in the
> Third World as well.)

> The report concludes:

> To the twin I-beams of Democracy and Freedom one may add those of
> Technical Accuracy and Good Visual Layout. But these too are
> threatened by mankind's age-old nemeses: Bigotry... Hatred ...
> Right Justification. If the human race is not only to survive,
> but to prosper in the heart and in the mind and in the soul,
> technical writers must practice their ageless craft unencumbered
> by fear, privation, or schedules.

> Some of the highlights of the Committee's report include:

> o Worldwide deaths involving courier font have increased 9% over the
> past two years.

> o Canada recently passed legislation making the passive voice the
> national language.

> o In China's remote Dimsum province, oxen are used in place of
> technical writers, with no apparent loss of readability.

> o In North Korea, police departments no longer use electric cattle
> prods to torture dissidents, replacing them instead with extremely
> slow and finicky daisy wheel printers.

> o The Frame Technology Corporation now touts its product as
> "disposable."

> o Torture of technical writers by roving gangs of hooligans known as
> "editors" is rampant in Northern Ireland, where sectarian violence
> between different spellers of "filesystem" runs out of control.
> One particularly gruesome form of punishment is "chopping":
> holding a writer down and then cutting the dangly thing off his
> cedilla.

> o A similar practice is "stet-ing," the continual removal and
> replacement of chunks of text, leaving the writer dazed and
> confused. (Or more dazed and confused, to be exact.)

> o A worldwide shortage of #2 pencils has left many technical
> writers in poorer countries unable to take notes or doodle
> during meetings -- forcing them to pay attention or end the
> meeting by flinging live poisonous insects at the other attendees.

> o The Baath Socialist party of Syria has introduced the use of
> cuneiform stone tablets, which jam PostScript printers.


> What can you do? Lots. Send a letter to the head of government of one
> of the cited countries; include a diagram with mixed fonts and at least
> one incorrect cross-reference. Show them you mean business. Or write to
> the UN High Commissioner on the Status of Technical Writers, stating that
> you are categorically opposed to the use of mustard gas during staff
> meetings and that you're still having problems figuring out which way the
> darn CD is supposed to go in. Or you can have a fundraising party,
> inviting all your technical writer friends and promising them that if they
> give a donation to Save the Tech Writers you'll cancel the performance
> art you had scheduled for the evening.

> A copy of the report is available from the Copy Center and from your local
> samadzat.

> --Mateo Burtch

> (c) 1992 Mateo Burtch
> Yes, you can forward this; just keep my name attached to it or I'll publicly
> link you with Ron Reagan.


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