Month: November 2007

Anti-forward ammunition

 

Gently inform a loved one that forwarding hoaxes and chain letters is a waste of everyone’s time.

I just got this. Get it to everyone fast as possible!

>> Important! Pass it on....
>>
>>> THIS IS NOT A JOKE! I confirmed it on Snope!!!! Please forward this 
>>> to everyone you know! In order to reach us mroe quickly the 
>>> government chose to release this message in e-mail form and you are 
>>> lucky to get it! The major news sources will not air this story until 
>>> tomorrow.
>>> Rick
>>>

>>>> * * *
>>>>
>>>> Washington, D.C. - The President has just declared a state of 
>>>> emergency due to the proliferation of a dangerous new strain of 
>>>> e-mail virus. Now believed to have been created by Iranian 
>>>> terrorists, the Scientific Advisory Panel concluded that the virus 
>>>> is now included in every hoax and chain letter circulated on the 
>>>> Internet. The content of these messages are believed to cause 
>>>> temporary hypnosis, placing the reader in a zombie-like state, in 
>>>> order to coerce the victim to redistribute the message without 
>>>> investigating its veracity or utility. Victims in quarantine were 
>>>> observed infecting dozens more colleagues and family members, in 
>>>> each case exposing the private e-mail addresses of all past victims. 
>>>> Due to the virus's logarithmic growth, estimators have estimated 
>>>> loss of time alone in the billions of American-hours.
>>>>
>>>> Research found that with each new victim the message grew in length. 
>>>> The President stated the many right brackets and exclamation points 
>>>> in the messages add to their "hypnoticness" and urged Americans to 
>>>> look out for these signs and delete the dangerous messages 
>>>> immediately. Also released was the Internet address of a new 
>>>> government site informing the public of five new US laws enacted by 
>>>> Congress yesterday regarding future handling of e-mail:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.netmanners.com/5-rules-for-forwarding-email.html
>>>>
>>>> All Americans are urged to visit the above sight and be on the 
>>>> lookout for any suspicious messages.
>>>>
>>>> White House staff
>>>> Official US governement
>>>>
>>>> * * *
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
> 
>

That URL again is http://www.netmanners.com/5-rules-for-forwarding-email.html.

NPR music + Stephin Merritt

 

NPR just launched their new music site, which nicely gathers music stories and media from a lot of different NPR shows. My favorite feature: Their media player is Flash-based. It’s a little quirky in Opera, at least, but so much better than the works-some-of-the-time WMP plugin that Opera used, and don’t get me started on Real.

Stephin Merritt was invited to be the first (at least I can’t find any others) participant in All Songs Considered’s “Project Song“. They gave two days use of a studio and engineer and asked him to create a song based on a photograph and phrase. They have video of the process and song, which turned out pretty good. It’s loop-based like those on The House of Tomorrow, but with less noise and reverb (please bring back the noise and reverb). The song’s subject might make a good villian for Lemony Snicket.