"Is It For Me?": Bell Telephone System is This Week's World's Fair Sponsor

For those who forgot, we began seeking alternative sponsorship at this site in the face of unstable valence properties in Dow Chemical's "Human Element." Last week, we read "Documents show that Dow Chemical has been pressing India to disassociate the firm from the 1984 tragedy," in Chemical and Engineering News (August 6, 2007, Volume 85, Number 32, p. 26). It's about how Dow is seeking to use some of its P.R. funds not just to plaster every magazine and website you've ever seen with their Human Element ad campaign, but to downplay (cover up, misrepresent, distance, poo poo, make appear as if they have nothing to do with--we strive for a bevy of synonyms here, an array, if you will, an assortment, a range, a Whitman's Sampler) their relationship to Union Carbide and the Bhopal disaster. They couldn't use that budget to compensate victims of the company they acquired in search of assets, not liabilities. They're busy spending it on a campaign to explain why they don't have the money. Pace Vonnegut, so it goes.

So here to save the day, to keep the site running, this week's World's Fair Sponsor is none other than Bell Telephone! And you know why? We'll let Bill and Sue and Jimmie and Grandma answer that: because "In many, many ways the telephone is a real friend of the family." You can trust Bell Telephone to be there for you. They are a class act. We can vouch for it. "And everything is more likely to be all right when there's a telephone in the home," they tell us.

Good for you, Bell. Welcome aboard. We think you'll have a long history in this country. As a wise stonecutting man once observed, everything lasts forever.