Day: September 19, 2006

Everything that is must have some sort of raison d’être, mustn’t it? Otherwise, what’s the point? Now, it doesn’t have to be a good purpose or even a notably sensible one, but everything MUST have some sort of reason for its existence.

I think I may have discovered the raison d’être for SPAM. Consider for a moment: how many people are going to be positively influenced by unasked for email or blog comments/tbs clogging inboxes (or moderation queues) touting pr0n, “male enhancement” products, get rich quick schemes, Nigerian bank accounts or any of the other dumbass pitches?

OK, we know from the evidence that there are plenty of folks who are dumber than a bag of hammers, cos SPAMmers wouldn’t keep on spending their money, time and other resources sending out such massive floods of junk for no return at all, now would they? So maybe that is the most obvious reason for SPAM: there are enough genuinely stupid people—as in fewer active brain cells than a head of cabbage—to keep SPAMmers awash in the cash they suck from such idiots.

But is there a higher purpose that SPAM serves (I mean besides the lofty purpose of royally pi$$ing me off–a worthy end in and of itself, some might say)?

Well, yes, of course there is. I refer you to my previous comment about SPAMmers sucking $$ off stupid people and my post earlier today about how stupidity ought to exact a price. The more $$ SPAMmers (or any scammers for that matter) can suck off stupid people, the less stupid people have to spend. In a best case scenario, this could result in some stupid people not having enough $$ left for their grocery bill, and being really stupid, they might, just might, be too stupid to find someone to rescue them.

With any luck at all, SPAMmers could be helping stupid people kill themselves off.

But that’s stretching our luck a lil too far, I fear.

*sigh*

Oh, well. For a brief instant there, I thought I was onto something…

Asking Ferdy for comment…

This is an open trackback post. Link to this post and track back.

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Some links to interesting (and some infuriating) posts/articles/pages I have stumbled across in the last few days:

Flying “car” (not really, but sorta-semi-almost).

Mother jailed for homeschooling. In Germany, but who can doubt educrats and at least some politicians in this country don’t harbor similar desires?

UPDATE: a followup from a reader:

“This is the companion article to the one you linked”:

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/139

Stücher called upon all Christian parents in Germany to withdraw their children from the public schools which, he says, have fallen into the hands of “neomarxist activists propagating atheist humanism, hedonism, pluralism and materialism.”

Well, of course they have. Just as they have in these sorta United States.

The Age of Horrorism. I don’t fully agree with Martin Amis’ points, but the article’s worth a read. 5-parter.

Rick does an alleyoop with the pass from the Pope, all over poor lil Muzzies’ hurt feelings cos of Benedict’s comments… (What a fortuitous juxtaposition: Benedict=good words. Pope speaks truth and Muslims are upset… par for the course.)

And in the same vein, Abbagav looks at current events and includes this lil aside,

Sure, the Pope has sent a message that religion and violence don’t mix, and been greeted with an Islamic response not unlike the retort one would expect from Moe if Curly complained he was too violent — pick two fingers.

And…

Kris lends more perspective on the “Religion of Peace” (MHWA).

UPDATE #2: The Random Yak voices the definitive post on the Pope’s remarks and the tantrums thrown by the follwers of The Butcher of Medina.

And…

“Religion of Peace” MHWH…

And, while we’re (very rightly) roasting Muslims, how about a couple from Woody? Here and here. (It’s the SECOND link on that last one that lampoons the followers of the Butcher of Medina. The first link–in the second “here”–is NSFW.)

And…

CrusadeS! (WTG, Angel. :-))

Linknzona: The President’s Little Red Book for Illegal Immigration. Must-read.

“Right to know (nothing)”? Dan Rhiel has the Rhiel deal…

And lastly, for those with a desire for a lil light macabre play, here’s the latest Dead Guy on the Sidebar.

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As I said, this is an open trackback post. Link to this post and then track back. If you want to host your own linkfests, check out

Also note the other fine blogs featuring linkfests at Linkfest Haven.

Woman Pays $14,000 to Lease Rotary Dial Phone

The part that gets to me is the comment by a family member:

Strogen’s family is outraged by AT&T’s actions. Strogen’s granddaughter, Barb Gordon said “It’s taking advantage of the elderly. People our age wouldn’t even consider leasing a telephone.” Gordon also expressed her anger and pointed out the obvious that “If my own grandmother was doing it, how many other people are?”

“Taking advantage of the elderly”? How long has it been since everyone who’s paid any attention at all (and has more than two active brain cells) has known that leasing rotary phones from Ma bell is unnecesasary? Sure, the woman’s in her 80s now, but she was only in her 50s or 60s when such information became common knowledge. Anyone stupid enough to pay a $10/month rental/lease fee for a piece of trowaway technology really ought to be paying that money as a fine for stupidity.

But no, our society wants to put bumper guards on life, now… and that’s making us ever more stupid and incompetent. In our economy of abundance and our society of cocooned ease, we are breeding whole generations of incompetent, lazy nincompoops and whimps (or over-reacting hyper jackasses). As a small example, the other day a young nephew of mine asked about some DOS commands so he could play around on an old computer his family had aquired. Almost stumped me. Windows (and Linux, for that matter) are so graphically-oriented, so easy, that I rarely use DOS commands any more, rarely write batch files, rarely even see the command line.

Enstupiating ease. That’s a critical danger to our society. That and cocooning, bumper-guarding children throughout childhood and adolescence to the extent that they never grow up to be really competent adults but sheeple who always need someone else to take care of them, instruct them in how to do things. Incompetent at learning or doing nearly anything on their own.

Filled with an always present undercurrent of fear.

Take a “discussion” I’m having elsewhere with a gal who prides herself on being a swimming inbstructor (for nine whole years! woo-hoo!). Her claim to expertise? She is the ONLY swimming instructor she knows or has even heard of who can teach someone the breast stroke in half an hour!

Gime a break! When I was eight, I saw someone doing a breast stroke in the public pool we frequented. I thought it was cool, so I did it too. (And yeh, if my lifesaving and WSI instructors years later are to be believed, I apparently did it right.) A few minutes later, I “taught” my six-year-old brother the breaststroke. How? “Hey! look what I can do!” “I can do that too!” “Show me.” So he did. Simply by copying me.

Big stinking deal.

But no, not today. Today, apparently it takes instruction by a professional for today’s incompetent whimpy kids to learn an idiot-proof breast stroke. And it takes (apparently) 30 whole minutes to do so. Gee, people really are getting stupider by the minute. Growing up, I never met anyone (who already knew how to keep their head in the water) who couldn’t pick up the breast strooke in under 5 minutes, “instructed” or not.

And so it goes. “Education professionals” (filling positions that formerly would have been filled by teachers) are talking (again) about how training wheel teaching methods (oh! That’s another experience! I never knew there were such things as “training wheels” as a kid. Just got put on a bike and pushed off… ) can cripple students’ intellectual development.

Yeh, it’s all talk.

*sigh*