Easy Way to Count Bugs
For the farmer or researcher who thought he had everything, a firm in Grass Valley, Calif., is selling a computerized bug counter.
Resembling small mailboxes, each counter holds a special scent that attracts a single type of insect. When a bug flies through the entrance, it breaks an infrared light beam and sends a signal back to a computer at the farm or research station’s headquarters. With the information, a farmer can decide on how, when and whether to use pesticides, said Lenny Feuer, who developed the counter for Automata Inc.
The counters sell for $250 apiece--not including the computer. As for the bugs, they fly to the back of the trap and hit a glue-covered piece of paper. There they stick fast, shrivel up and die, marketing manager Mary Ann Townsend said apologetically. “Sad but true.”
Montgomery Rift
Don’t invite to the same party: Tom Weisel, head of Montgomery Securities, and Gary Shansby, managing general partner of the Montgomery Consumer Fund, a leveraged buyout fund.
Their dispute flared recently after Shansby issued a press release that played down his group’s connection to Montgomery Securities. “Montgomery Securities promised to raise money for us and to bring us deals, and they did neither,” Shansby snapped when asked about the announcement.
Montgomery Securities, Weisel countered, “raised some $50 million” for the fund. “Shansby is a very difficult guy,” Weisel added. Then he phoned Shansby to complain.
During the call, according to Shansby, Weisel called Shansby an (expletive deleted) and threatened to sue. “It’s completely out of line,” Shansby said. “He did not raise the money and he ought to get out of fantasyland.”
Only His Mind Flies
Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was a featured speaker at a Technology Center gathering for high school students in San Jose on Saturday. The center, which promotes careers in the microelectronics industry, got Asimov to “attend” by organizing a two-way, interactive video conference linking New York and Silicon Valley.
It isn’t that he’s afraid of flying, insists Asimov. “I flew in a plane once while I was in the Army, and I just didn’t like it,” he explains. Indeed, he adds, sounding a bit like Woody Allen, “I prefer not leaving Manhattan.” Would the futurist accept a seat on a space flight? “I’d love to get a ticket on a rocket--so I could give it to someone I like.”
Exotic Travel? Never Mind
From Sonoma, Calif., comes word of a $10-million lawsuit charging Pacific Bell with gross negligence. It seems that as a result of a typographical error in the Yellow Pages, Banner Travel Service was advertised as specializing in “erotic” travel.
“My client has been getting an endless stream of prank calls since the book came out two months ago,” says attorney George Altenberg. Worse, he claims, “her business has substantially declined” as embarrassed clients stayed away in droves. Pacific Bell declined comment, but it did waive the $230 monthly fee for the ad.
Fly In, Drive Out
Rather than take its clients to a ball game or the ballet, an outfit that sells copiers and other office equipment let them throw paper airplanes into the open sun roof of a new car. And the winner got the car.
This Fun in the Sun Roof Competition was staged recently by Ameritech Communications in a hangar at Northrop University in Inglewood, where 100 representatives of companies got to throw paper airplanes--after standing still for copier demonstrations.
Several planes sailed inside the 1988 Pontiac Fiero on the first couple of rounds. Vicki DeBeau, a bank administrative assistant from Camarillo, won it on a fly-off with the only accurate toss.
Jack Finnell, president of the sponsoring company, called the event “a break from our traditional advertising.”
