Assorted thoughts while in a holding pattern over O'Hare... I recently returned from England where I spent time checking out the overseas markets and attending a machinery auction. Buyers came to this auction from all over - Germany, Italy, Switzerland, India, Australia, America - and the prices were astonishing. Often buyers were paying in pounds sterling the same amount or more than they would have paid in U.S. dollars.

Thousands of miles from here, a political and religious leader has ordered a man killed. The Ayatollah Khomeini is offended by a book Salman Rushdie has written; therefore, he has decided this author must die. So what? Executions are ordered all the time in this world. The man who signed this order doesn't interest me. Neither does the book. It's all happening in another country. It has nothing to do with me.

At the time I'm writing this editorial, the new year is barely two weeks old. The air and the papers are still full of those inevitable end-of-the-year estimates of how far we've come in one area or another and how far we have to go. Analyses of the future, both grim and humorous, abound. There are even more of these laundry lists of PROBLEMS TO BE SOLVED IMMEDIATELY than usual, since a new president will be inaugurated in a week or so. Everyone had advice for George Bush on what to do first and how to do it. Some of the advice is sound, and I hope he's listening; however, reading all these position papers can be a depressing exercise.

These lines, interesting enough, are from the notebooks of an artist whose images are part of the basic iconography of Western culture. Even people who have never set foot in a museum and wouldn't know a painting by Corregio from a sculpture by Calder, recognize the Mona Lisa. But Leonardo da Vinci was much more than an artist. He was also a man of science who worked in anatomy, botany, cartography, geology, mathematics, aeronautics, optics, mechanics, astronomy, hydraulics, sonics, civil engineering, weaponry and city planning. There was little in nature that did not interest Leonardo enough to at least make a sketch of it. Much of it became a matter of lifelong study. The breadth of his interests, knowledge, foresight, innovation and imagination is difficult to grasp.

A few years ago, during a presidential election campaign, I saw an editorial cartoon that depicted a man standing outside a voting booth with a bemused expression on his face. Over the door to the booth was a quotation from Dante: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." Unfortunately for all of us, the grim jest is just as timely now. Once again, when we make our choice for president this year, the pick seems to be between Mr. Well-He's-Not-Actually-Awful and Mr. At-Least-He's-Not-The-Other-Guy. A candidate who can arouse truly positive and hopeful feelings in the electorate is once again not on the ballot.

IMTS is back in town, From Sept. 7 through Sept. 15, the largest industrial exhibition in the Western Hemisphere will fill one of the largest exhibition centers in the world. A show of this magnitude is a little like the 500 lb. gorilla in your dining room - hard to ignore.

"It's not so much the rocks in the road that wear you down as the bit of gravel in your shoe," says the old maxim. Little annoyances over which we seem to have no control are the ones that take their greatest toll and raise our frustration level to the highest point. I feel fortunate to be the editor of a magazine, so I at least have some means to vent my frustration.

"We have met the enemy and he is us," says Pogo, the cartoon character. The enemy is the crisis in our educational system, and "crisis" is the only term that accurately describes the situation. It is every bit as serious, if not more so, than the crisis that followed the Soviet launching of Sputnik in 1957 - and for many of the same reasons. Our failing public education system threatens our position int he global political and business arenas; and this time, it's not just the Soviets or the Japanese who need to be taken seriously as competitors. Every country int he world that graduates better prepared students than we do - and there are a great many of them - has us at a competitive disadvantage.

This issue's editorial is a reprint of the keynote address given by Michael Goldstein at the Computer Aided Gear Design Seminar held at the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA on November 9, 1987.

A medieval philosopher once said that if he knew for certain the world was to end tomorrow, he would be sure to take time to plant an apple tree in his garden today. The recent events in the world financial capitals have seemed a bit like prior notice of something cataclysmic, but like the philosopher, we can still find some reasons for hope in the face of an uncertain future. The good news for our industry is that four important efforts on the part of various organizations promise to have long-term positive effects on both the gear and machine tool businesses.