Earlier this week, Byron Davies sent this plea to all-ai:

> ... We need you -- and every Lisp person you know -- to
> send a fax in support of Lisp to the House Subcommittee for District of
> Columbia Affairs. This Subcommittee has the responsibility for revitalizing
> the city of Washington, D.C. They have been persuaded that Lisp, symbolic
> computing technology, and the applications that these make possible, could
> provide a key technological boost to this program. ...

Some of you cynics might think that the only way that symbolic computing technology can help revitalize DC is by planting some of the lovely petunia Symbolic flower pots (made during last week's GSB) around the city's more prominent crack houses.

But no! Lisp can do so much more to eliminate urban blight, drug abuse, unemployment, the homeless, and crime. Why do you think that inner city youth resort to drugs? It's because they lack a role model; a wizard, if you will. Give them the ray of hope that the eval/apply wizard has provided to thousands of people from a book cover or from appearances in 6.001 lectures, and those youngsters will choose to cadr a list rather than a crack pipe.

Imagine the employment opportunities that can be provided by a factory that produces right _and_ left parantheses. Did you know that while the US is a world leader in semicolon production, it lags far behind the European and Indonesian sweat shops for parantheses? It might not pay much, but a job at the parantheses factory is better than no job at all.

Give someone a repeat-until loop and they can eat until the loop ends.
Give someone a lambda, and they can eat for a lifetime.

Help us elect Lisp-friendly politicians by coming to a rally at this week's

   G   I   R   L     S   C   O   U   T     B   E   N   E   F   I   T

7th floor playroom
February 28, 1997
5:30 pm