Yes it is true; it's good to be loved. I must say that I am a bit overwhelmed at all the attention they shower on me. I feel honored but a bit awkward about all that attention.

So what am I rambling on about? Unsolicited e-mail; SPAM. Yes you can empathize with me. You know all those nifty little messages that arrive in your electronic mailbox each and every day of the year. Personally I like to check my mail every so often just to see if anything new has arrived. Just kidding.

Actually, I (like you), despise all that junk mail. But all the fuss over me as a potential consumer or joiner of something offered in those messages makes me wonder just how effective those clowns think their junk mail is going to be..... It was with this thought in mind when I set out on a brief experiment last week to see just how much spam would be directed at me and how long it would take to reach my mail box storage limit. Assuming the deluge continued at the same rate, I would receive at least 40,144 messages. That is the 772 spam mailings this week and at least the same for the next 51 weeks.

At what point does this all become too much? Does anyone in their right mind actually think I could ever even consider opening all those messages, let alone respond to any of them! Over 40,000 messages and that is just my yahoo account. I don't even look at the thousands of crap messages that appear in my MSN mail box (an address I have NEVER even used, not once). I realize this stuff is sent in the hopes of finding a gullible person to actually respond to an ad. But they are missing the point. Even a novice can and does search the Internet when they are looking for something that interests them.

It's well past time that legitimate merchants and sites end this practice and rely on getting their site noticed through search engines and legitimate requests from web surfers. This would leave only the nefarious sites to contend with (the vast majority of the culprits). There are plenty of legal and a few technological means to deal with those turds. We need only the will and a bit of international cooperation. This cooperation is not nearly as difficult as most politicians claim. Much overseas data is fed to us through a few narrow data pipelines that can be easily controlled. So let's make an effort to eliminate this theft of our time and bandwidth.

Spam.... More to follow soon on this annoying issue.

Just a quick note to get this blog started:

So where is the outrage? A rather simple question, but one few seem to be asking these days.

Let's jump into the wayback machine with Sherman and Mr. Peabody and set the time for about 1994. The Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and the Clinton Administration was not amused. We now jump forward several months. The Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, a former university professor was offered an advance on a book about his political views and experiences. I believe the advance was rather large at the time, something like $2.5 million. Left-wing politicians led a rapid campaign decrying the inappropriateness of the advance. One of the loudest complainers was First Lady Hillary Clinton. Eventually Gingrich gave the advance back to the publisher.

So we jump back into the wayback machine and land in 2000. We find that Senator elect Clinton will receive an $8 million advance for a book about, drum roll please: her life, the Clinton administration and her political views and opinions. Come again? $8 million for a book advance. Funny how an $8 million advance has generated absolutely no discussion. A sum greater than three times what Gingrich was offered for the same work. Yet there is no outrage...... Funny world we live in today.