European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - February 21, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Clearing it All up on Montana res and Bull scrotum Dave Barry As the More that 4 million regular readers of this column Are Well aware i Pride myself on my accuracy i do not report Idle speculation or gossip. Let s say happen to hear a Rumor that vice presi Dent Gore likes to relax by putting live spotted owls through a salad shooter. I am not going to follow the procedure used by top journalism professionals which is to write vice president Gore report edly likes to put live spotted owls through a salad  that Way you the Reader will have just the facts and can draw your own conclusion about this Issue and decide whether it might also involve baby pandas. The Point is that i have High journalism standards and that is Why today i am so upset i am tempted to commit suicide by drinking vending machine Coffee. Because it turns out that some of my recent columns contained factual errors. Yes. These errors were spotted by vigilant readers who took time out from their Busy schedules to write letters and so today i want to set the record straight on certain matters. 1. Montana is not North of Canada. Actually i never said Montana is definitely North of Canada. What i said in a column about a trip to Montana is that it is possibly North of can Ada. This resulted in a Stern letter from Reader Lena Anderson who states you must be one of the uneducated Young that never cracked a geography  she sent me two maps of the United states and i am embarrassed to say that they clearly show that Montana is not North of Canada at All. It is North of Iceland. So i owe an apology to Ander son As Well As to a number of Canadian readers who were greatly angered by another column i wrote recently in which i identified Canada As a nation located near Buffalo  As anybody who has Ever cracked a geography Book will Tell you what i should have said was a Moose preserve located near Buffalo  sorry 2. Military food tastes Good.  recall the column i wrote after my wife and son and dogs and i conducted a taste test involving the meals ready to eat Resan army Tacti Cal food concept. Our conclusion was that res were the Ideal food for certain military situations mostly involving captured enemy spies perhaps you would like some of this beef Stew no i la talk. But you would t want to feed it to anybody on your own Side. Apparently this column aroused the Dan Derby capt. Bryan Dion who is in charge of army recruit ing in Southern Oregon. Dion contacted his local newspaper the Eugene ore., Register guard which conducted a taste test of its own with a six person taste panel. The panellists consumed a variety of res. Then using a 10-Point rating scale they All died. No seriously the panel gave the res a rating of 8.1 on the taste scale. This is clearly a scientific re sult because it contains a Decimal Point. Even More convincing is the fact that the taste panel included get ready a school District food service director. If anybody would recognize a delicious shelf stable food substance it would be the person responsible for the menu options at a Public school today s featured entree tuna re Morse. So i am forced to conclude that i along with several Hundred thousand military personnel have been mistaken about res. They taste wonderful and if the army happens to have a few extra tons of. These culinary treats stacked up in warehouses it should deliver them perhaps via Large air Force bombers to Oregon which is just North of Montana. 3. The league of women voters does not endorse Bull scrotum. My annual Holiday gift guide for 1992 included among other gift suggestions a genuine Bull scrotum which looks sort of like a hairy handbag and is sold by goods company barbeque in Houston Texas a nation located near Tulsa okla. The gift guide included the following statement Don t be fooled by cheap imitations. This is the Only Bull scrotum endorsed by the league of women voters and the Rev. Pat Rob  w. O. Boomer this is inaccurate. I have Here a letter from Reader Howard Smith who writes both my wife and i Are proud members of the lev and resent your using its name. Bluntly i find your remarks to be denigrating uncalled for and insulting. Further by tacitly associating the lev with Pat Robertson you have added guilt by association to your  so for the record the league of women voters docs not endorse Bull scrotum or engage in any other activity that would detract from its Mission which is the worldwide distribution of Amway products. Incidentally i did not receive any letters from the Rev. Robertson on this As we can safely make the journalistic Assumption that he does in fact endorse this particular Bull scrotum in conclusion let me express my gratitude to the readers who pointed these errors out. I invite any. Other Reader who finds an error in my columns to please Contact me David Broder co the new York times 12345 12345th st., Washington . 12345. Thank you and your Fly is Down. The Miami Herald  military life in Europe by Charles Kaufman Page 28 sunday february 21, 1993