Grady Ward's Moby lexicon project is now in the public domain, available from ILASH (Sheffield) as a 26MB download or as subfiles for Moby Hyphenator (185K entries); Moby Part-of-Speech (230K entries); Moby Pronunciator (175K entries); Moby Thesaurus (30K root words, 2.5M synonyms); Moby Words (610K words and phrases); Moby Language (word lists in 5 languages); and the complete and unabridged Moby Shakespeare. or . [Malcolm Crawford , sci.lang, 7/18/96. David Joslin.]

Microsoft is replacing the thesaurus in its Spanish-language Word 6.0. Customers were apparently offended that the word "Indian" listed synonyms "savage" and "man-eater," while "Western" was paired with "civilized." "Lesbian" and "pervert" is another controversial pair. [SJM, 7/6/96, 1C. Also THIS is TRUE, 7/7/96.]

MISTIC (Minumum Intelligent Signal Test Item Corpus) is a WWW-based effort to create a "conscious" software system. To contribute to the knowledge base, visit and enter statements or questions with T/F values: The Moon orbits the earth (true); people have feelings (true); etc. [Christopher McKinstry , net-hap, 7/15/96.]

"Legislators do not merely mix metaphors: they are the Waring blenders of metaphors, the Cuisinarts of the field. By the time you let the head of the camel into the tent, opening a loophole big enough to drive a truck through, you may have thrown the baby out with the bath water by putting a Band-Aid on an open wound, and then you have to turn over the first rock in order to find a sacred cow." -- Molly Ivins. [Eric Scouten , 7/96. Bill Park.]