Here's today's junk mail.... Number 4!
Friday, September 03, 1999
If you are new to the elite group of indivuduals who get this fine piece of literature and, for some strange reason, you actually want to see the previous junk mail, go to:
http://xpda.com/junkmail
The pictures of today: Tennis Shoes! I read once that it's the epitome of poor taste to put a picture of your tennis shoes on your web page. So naturally, here they are:
tennisshoes.htm
Political terminology is a pretty funny thing. Politically Correct is a political term that means "in style, politically." Style is the key here. Speaking out of style can be considered insulting or uncouth, or even worse: being from Oklahoma.
These keywords are "magic" and mean something special. The infamous "news media" (a political term) propagates keywords for us to use in everyday life. It's kind of funny how old political terms get stale and they have to make up new words for the same thing.
For example, look at "welfare." That's not such a bad word. When the government started giving money to people who needed it, they figured they were providing for the general welfare of the citizens, just like the Constitution says. So they called this "welfare." But then welfare began to get a bad image. This was because the "undeserving" were getting some "undeserved" money. Also, poor people sometimes appeared rather unattractive.
[ Let me get sidetracked for a moment if you thing attractiveness is not important. Why, do you think, will a "save the dolphins from the tuna nets" activist go out after a hard day of protesting and eat a lobster that was just thrown live into a pot of boiling water? It's because lobsters are ugly, and dolphins are cute and cuddly. Appearance is not important? Ask the lobster! ]
At any rate, the term welfare brought up images of people on the dole, high-crime neighborhoods, etc. It brought unattractive images to mind. It got stale. So they changed it to "economic assistance." Then that got out of vogue, and it turned into "assistance" of one sort or another, and the latest is "services." Each iteration seems to get less descriptive. For example, if you had never heard of the term "human services" in context, how could you ever figure out what it meant? Something limited to humans doing or getting a service... let's see, that would either be a tire repair shop or a hospital, right?
One of the new terms politicians are throwing around now is "hate crime." This is getting dangerously close to the "crimes of the mind" like they have in Turkey and some other countries. It means if you commit a crime while you're thinking bad things about someone's race, religion, national origin, or foot size, you should get extra punishment. So next time you shoot someone be sure to tell the him to have a nice day. (Whether you should tell him this before or afterwards is open to debate.) I realize that in the previous 2 sentences it was not politically correct to use "him" when it could have been either a "him" or a "her," even though Mrs. Slinkard said to do it this way in the second grade. But the fact is, most people don't hate girls enough to shoot them so I used "him."
When someone shoots or beats up someone else, I think there's a good chance that there's hate involved. But that's not good enough. You have to hate someone for a good reason to qualify for a hate crime. Or a bad reason. I'm getting confused now. I better change terms.
How about "mean spirited?" If you're mean-spirited, it means you're not nice. But this sounds more polished. So when Mr. Clinton accuses Mr. Gingrich of being mean-spirited, it only sounds like he is tattling to 92 percent of the population. If he says "Newt was mean to me," a full 94 percent would consider it tattling. So mean-spirited it is!
One of the best political terms is the new (2 year old) name for the Future Homemakers of America. They're now the "Family Career and Community Leaders of America." Probably not a bad organization, but the name is sure not very explanatory.
Another picture of today -- Rural China. I took this in 1993 north of Beijing.
china14.jpg
Microsoft had a small problem this week. A while back they bought Hotmail, a free email service. You can go to hotmail.com and get a free email address, and then send and receive email over the web. This is web-based email, so you don't use Outlook or Eudora or anything like that, you just go to http://hotmail.com on the web to read and send email.
Someone noticed recently that the web site checked your password once, and assumed that you were still authorized to access the other pages once you've logged in. Seems logical, but if you took the URL from one of the deeper pages and went directly to it, you wouldn't get asked for your password. No big deal, EXCEPT you can replace your user id in the URL with someone else's and read their email too! (Or at least you could until last Sunday when Microsoft fixed it.) Lots of web sites all over the world had instructions on how to read other people's email on hotmail.com. This was such an obvious blunder in web programming that a lot of people couldn't believe it was true until they tried it. Microsoft President and CEO Bill Gates said, "Oops."
Paul Armstrong and I rode the Hotter'n Hell Hundred last Saturday in Wichita Falls, but they closed part of the 100-mile course. Why? Becase it was TOO HOT! Now, what's that race called again? I wrote them and recommended a name change to the "Pretty Warm 78." I did get a nice reply back from the director explaining why they closed part of the course -- something about wet bulbs and ambulances. HHHundred pictures:
http://rwebster.com/hhh100
My oldest son Brian (yeah, he's 17 now) sold 2000 platinum for 205 US Dollars on eBay. Platinum is the money used by characters in the internet game Everquest. US Dollars are money used to buy things you can touch. You get platinum by selling stuff and doing other nefarious deeds on Everquest. People are buying and selling Everquest money, weapons, etc. on eBay. When Brian got his dollars, he got online and his Everquest character gave the platinum to the purchaser's Everquest character. Amazing.
Y2K Update: Nothing of importance happened today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today today......
More than 200 people will be killed this weekend in alcohol-related accidents. Don't drink and drive.
Source:
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/ncsa/pdf/TSF96_1.pdf
An interesting place:
http://www.bikiniatoll.com/
And finally.... the biggest BS of the week: "Justice Department Raids FBI Headquarters..." This was nothing but a planned P.R. stunt to make headlines. I'm not real clear on how they hoped to profit from it, but it's pretty dumb and a waste of money at any rate. Maybe Janet Reno thinks she'll look innocent? In my opinion, the tear gas grenades didn't start a fire and the fact that they were used is not important. What's stupid is the way it's been covered up. Maybe they should read about Watergate.
And the last picture of today is a portrait of Mike, hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park:
rockymountain.jpg
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