Best Emails Yet

I know I'm not the lone blogger receiving crazy emails. It's part of the territory. The funniest have been from Nazmul. Yesterday, he sent me this request:

Dear Melissa,

Would you please tell me about clothe free or nude society?

Last week he sent this:

Dear Melissa,

My name is Nazmul, I am 19 years old, right now studying Economics in university and I live in Bangladesh (Bangladesh is located in South Asia).Lately I have learned how operate computer as well as internet. I have gotten your e-mail number through searching internet.I shall write some thing to you honestly. When i was in school,the main topic of our conversation among friends was girls,prostitution,nude,pornography.Since my childhood i have been dreaming to go to America.But now it is impossible to visit USA for a boy of third world country.As a doctor would you please tell me about prostitution,pornography,nude society,child pornography illicit relationship between boys and girls?Hope you will reply to my e-mail.g. Good bye.

I didn't respond to these emails. But I'm tempted to say that in America, people don't wear clothes. People have sex all the time. The only reason for the internet is really good porn. Prostitution is a right confirmed by the constitution. And boys and girls get their sexual education from public school teachers.

Come to America, Nazmul. You'll love our nude society. I would say he has a skewed perspective of America, but, really, who are we kidding?

Interesting Things You Should Know

I'm going to start on a spiritual note. What is it like to be spiritually abused? A Christian talks about how her ten years in spiritual darkness.

"Did Wright matter?" Yes. Wright will matter in the general. And Gaius writes about the failure of the press in dealing with Obama. As an aside, BlueCrabBoulevard has such a pleasing layout. And I really like the date next to each post. The whole website is restful. Obama is omniscient. Aren't all saviors? Oh, and MKH highlights the press bias with photographic proof (via Cassy at Wizbang) . Amazing that the MSM can do what they do with a straight face. Give me a break.

Something more to worry about if you're so inclined: Geomagnetic storms.

I love Firefly. You know this. Nerd alert: So does Rachel. Shiny! (For what it's worth, I'm a Mal girl, myself, but I do so, so love Kaylee. She is just yummy!) And I'd like to remind Firefly lovers why Mal is hotter than Jayne. When Jayne sold out his crew Mal nearly blew Jayne out the hatch. Captain Malcolm Reynolds showed Jayne who was boss. Yes, sir!

Why is there no sympathy for Muslims claiming discrimination? Canadian Muslims cry foul and Mark Steyn defends himself and answers.

It is time to discuss the ugliness that are Crocs. They are fine for children. Although, they do leave kid's feet stinky in adult rugby player ways. Whew!

No freaking way! Al Gore is an opportunist? Nooooo..... It's perfectly fine to exploit the deaths of over 60,000 people to bring up your pet theory. Perfectly. Fine.

Is the middle class drowning in debt? No.

Cry a sartorial tear for Hillary. If you can muster the emotion.... No tears here.

Stephen King hates the military and he's a moron. Sorry, to family members who love him, or rather, love his freaky writing.

Be careful talking sexy on the internet. Don't say you haven't been warned.

The right to free speech is trumped by the right to an abortion. What?

You know the dude who imprisoned his daughter? Yeah, well he raped someone back in the day, was convicted and spent time in prison, but guess what? Stupid Austria doesn't keep that crime on the books after fifteen years so it's like it never happened. And when his daughter went missing, no one asked because no one had the info to ask. You have got to be kidding me.

60 years of Israel. Why weren't they named Jewland?

Just a reminder to hit the awesome blogs in my blog roll. They are there for a reason. I love them!

Jailed Mororrocan Facebook User Freed

This is good news.


Update: Oops! Link fixed.

Cancer On The Internet

The problem with diagnosing cancer is this: you rarely feel pain until it's too late. You have unexplained weight loss that you welcome. You tire easily. You slow down a bit and adjust but you often don't feel that bad. And when you finally feel pain, it's often too late.

Gaius over at Blue Crab Boulevard notes that 40% of internet activity is cancerous. How long until the body dies?

The botnet problem shows no sign of easing. Security firm Damballa pinpointed 7.3 million unique instances of bots carrying out nefarious activities on an average day in January - an astronomical leap from a daily average of 333,000 in August 2006. That included botnet-delivered spam, which accounted for 91% of all e-mails in early March, up from 64% last June, says e-mail management firm Cloudmark.

Writer's Strike

The Writer's Strike hasn't bothered me content-wise although I do feel bad for all the people who are losing their jobs while the entertainment business is out of business. It seems that writers may have picked the worse possible time to strike. No one may want their product when they return, if you believe these numbers. People are moving to on-line entertainment.

Welcome, friends!

Revenge of the Nerds

At the Apple store, Target, even Sears in the treadmill and weight bench department, a nerd greeted and helped me do something new or learn something different. These were kids with holes in their ears, black, dyed hair, eyes sparkly with curiosity and they brimmed with earnest intelligence.

They weren't the jocks or the in-crowd, but they were certainly the popular ones. They have information that everyone needs.

One thing I like about this new technological era is that the generations are brought together in a way. The elderly and Boomers as well as X'ers like me deferred to our young betters. They felt helpful and they were.

I love how technology doesn't discriminate. Old, young, fit, flabby, plain or fabulous, you can be a part of this world.

This Stanford study would seem to disagree with me in some ways. For example, the more people use the internet:

... the more they lose contact with their social environment.
This effect is noticeable even with just 2-5 Internet hours/week, and it rises substantially for those spending more that 10 hours/week, of whom up to 15 percent report a decrease in social activities. Even more striking is the fact that Internet users spend much less time of talking on the phone to friends and family: the percentage reporting a decrease exceeds 25 percent - although it is unclear to what extent this represents a shift to e-mail even in communicating with friends and family, or a technical bottleneck due to a single phone line being preempted by Internet use.

But I don't know if this is true. When my friends and family are online, we talk back and forth via chatting. The information might not rise to the level of a phone call. In fact, I don't really like talking on the phone anyway. In some ways, the internet has connected people.

What do you think?

Technology, especially the internet has made me
	Less connected with family
	More connected with family
	No change
pollcode.com free polls

Cyber Bullies

The latest way for kids and adults to pick on others falls in the traditional category: gutless. In times past, a bully, backed by his or her stooges would terrorize some hapless individual. Now, the bully doesn't need a posse to provide interference. He or she can use the internet.

It's a growing problem:

Studies conducted by the cyber-stalking advocacy group Working to Halt Online Abuse (WHOA), show that 31 percent of reported cases of Internet harassment began through e-mail, and 17 percent through instant messaging (IM) in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

Other research has yielded similar findings. Dr. Christine Suniti Bhat, a professor in the department of counseling and higher education at Ohio University, found IM to be the most common way kids harassed each other over the Internet.

Parents must monitor their child's social group both at school and on-line. The intimidation can be brutal.

Anyone can eventually be a target of stalking. It's easy and convenient for the person with lots of time on his hands to harass others on-line. The laws need to catch up to the times.

Internet Addiction

According to the test, I'm totally in control. My number is 35. I can quit anytime. Sure. Sure.

Are the results valid if I shaded the truth to make myself look better?


H/T Ann Althouse whose number is a 42.

Nigerian Scammers Get Creative With Your Friends

Imagine that you send out an email to your friends begging for emergency money, but oops! It's not you, it's those nice Nigerian princesses who need some unearned cash.

The information superhighway is a dangerous place friends. Like the Captain on Hill Street Blues said, "Be careful out there."

Comcast Censors Users

In the spirit of openness, Comcast (not the Federal government) is interfering with some websites ability to transmit information. This is a disturbing trend to me. Why? There is not enough competition in the marketplace for consumers to find a better rival product. Cable companies essentially have a monopoly and then they engage in this type of behavior. An industry where there were multiple competitors where one wanted to shoot himself in the foot? Well. More power to him.

Internet Searches

Check out the top searches worldwide. My favorites are highlighted:

The top searchers for other keywords were as follows (in order from first to third place):

"Jihad" - Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan

"Terrorism" - Pakistan, Philippines, Australia

"Hangover" - Ireland, United Kingdom, United States

"Burrito" - United States, Argentina, Canada

"Iraq" - United States, Australia, Canada

"Taliban" - Pakistan, Australia, Canada

"Tom Cruise" - Canada, United States, Australia

"Britney Spears" - Mexico, Venezuela, Canada

"Homosexual" - Philippines, Chile, Venezuela

"Love" - Philippines, Australia, United States

"Botox" - Australia, United States, United Kingdom

"Viagra" - Italy, United Kingdom, Germany (could this explain the birthrates Mark Steyn?)

"David Beckham" - Venezuela, United Kingdom, Mexico

"Kate Moss" - Ireland, United Kingdom, Sweden

"Dolly Buster" - Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia

"Car bomb" - Australia, United States, Canada

"Marijuana" - Canada, United States, Australia

"IAEA" - Austria, Pakistan, Iran

What do you make of this?

Do You Know This Woman?

Photo: Josh Olson captures the essence of evil. Isn't she harmless looking?

I have learned the hard way that some people aren't what they seem. Most people are kind, average people just doing the best they can in the world. But there are those individuals out there who just seem needy, lonely and maladjusted but they're really people who are angry, entitled, deviant, and sometimes violent. Once the change is made--to view people in terms of filling the unmet need in their life, that people are things to be used for one's own purpose--these people cross the line from pathetic to pathological. They are dangerous.

The internet is a haven for these dangerous people as too many victims have learned.

The woman pictured is such a danger. She is a message-board lurker who conned a woman into 1) believing that she was a man named Jesse James 2) that Jesse James was in love with the victim 3) Jesse James convinced the victim to become engaged with her (as him) 4) Jesse James had a life-threatening health problem and 5) Jesse James died. And then, the evil woman, pretending to be the fiancé Jesse James sister, visited the victim and became real-life "friends" with her. That is, this con-artist was staying in the victim's house.

And then the friends of the victim did some checking. You can read the post at the above link to find out the rest of the story.

I had a family member who lived life like The Law lurked around every corner looking to "git 'em". Mostly, the conspiracy theories raged because this person had good reason to fear The Law. To live the life of a cynical, mistrustful person is to reveal much about one's own character.

However, it can be damaging, too, to ignore clear signs of strangeness. If something doesn't add up, don't try to make the equation work anyway. Listen to that little voice. Or as Oprah says, "When in doubt, don't."

Internet safety site resources.

H/T Boing Boing