🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <24031@galaxy.ucr.edu> tgrupe@watnxt11.ucr.edu (Todd E. Grupe) writes:

>Is there any truth to the rumor that the future Vice-President changed his  
>name from Albert Goret to avoid the obvious negative connotations?

No, it's more complicated. In 1938 International Business Mammals
introduced the Model 991 General Operational Rodent, Electronic, or
GORE, answering the need on the part of American businesses to have a
family pet that could be used to back up multi-megabyte disk drives
(which did not yet exist, nor would they for quite some time; this was
not the last time IBM made the mistake of relying on vaporware.) In
1976 they introduced the smaller Multitasking Gorette, later shortened
to Goret. After only 37 hours on the market the goret was recalled and
all inventory destroyed, for reasons never made clear by IBM's Gore
Division chief, Hiram Braxalt, who died in 1977 in a tragic accident
involving a 15-ton fork lift and several bowls of grape Jell-O.
Several units were never recovered, however, and the rest is history.
But as for the VP-elect: his father, Eddie Albert, named his son Gore
because he looked like an IBM GORE as an infant (and still does, but
that's another story). Upon entering politics, Gore Albert changed his
name to Albert Gore to fend off association with Eddie Albert, then
embroiled in the so-called "Tennesee gerbil incident" that nearly cost
him his career.

The above is paraphrased from the book I'VE CREATED A GORET: THE
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MAMMAL STORY by Prince. 

--
- Rich Holmes
"In general, the dance music of P.D.Q. Bach -- although we have no
 documentary evidence of this -- suggests that one of his legs was
 shorter than the other." -- Prof. Peter Schickele