Todd Stadler's blog

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Ah, e-mail! Is there anything that allows people to so easily demonstrate their lack of understanding? To which, of course, the answer is, "Yes, pretty much anything will do," but the point I'm making right now is about e-mail.

I got in to work this morning to find that the lovely folks at Industry magazine had sent unsolicited e-mail to me containing a press release for some event. (This spamming came as a bit of a shock, given that everything I know about Industry from a cursory read of their wonderful Web pages, seems above-board, and not at all scammy.)

But more important than the content of that quickly-deleted e-mail was the fact that its sender — let's call him Mr. Root A. ListDotIndustryMagazineDotCom — sent it via a list that anyone can post to. Including, most notably, replies to the original spam.

Perhaps that doesn't mean much to you, so I'll give you a rough run-down of the contents of my e-mail inbox this morning:

• From: root@list.industrymagazine.com

  Subject: Industry Magazine Hosts the First Annual Gala to Benefit the Orlando Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

• From: Deidre Barry

  Subject: UNSUBSCRIBE

• From: Ed Cartwright

  Subject: UNSUBSCRIBE

• From: Nancy Limberis

  Subject: Re: UNSUBSCRIBE {the subject of every subsequent e-mail}

  Content: This is the 3rd email to me in the last hour! Why is this Unsubscribe coming to me? Please remove any emails "@{domain}.com" from your list immediately.

• From: Lynn Peterson

  Content: Help - how do I get off this list??

• From: Dean Wild

  Content: please REMOVE me from your list!

• From: Cynthia Conner

  Content: Please take me off of whatever list you have. I keep receiving these emails from a variety of individuals and don't understand why they come to me. You are violating federal law by sending these emails!

• From: Steve Hewitt

  Content: I am not sure why I received your e-mail with a request to unsubscribe, but yours is not the only one I am receiving. I did not send you the notice below, and can not unsubscribe you from receiving other notices from Industry Magazine.

• From: Kirk Woundy

  Content: Please remove any emails @{domain}.com from this list as well.

• From: Theresa Gerardi

  Content: Quit sending me this!!! This is about the 6th one!

• From: Frank Trotta

  Content: this e-mail is not from {our company}. thank-you

• From: Emerson Blake

  Content: The same thing is happening to me -- I am receiving requests to unsubscribe people, but I have nothing to do with the original message.

• From: Jan Wilson

  Content: Please unsubscribe us from this mailing list. I'm getting messages from others as well.

• From: Wally Lage

  Content: You're beginning to piss me off.

• From: Ed Cartwright {Again!}

  Subject: UNSUBSCRIBE

• From: Steve Hewitt {Again!}

  Content: I am not sure why I received your e-mail with a request to unsubscribe, but yours is not the only one I am receiving. I did not send you the notice below, and can not unsubscribe you from receiving other notices from Industry Magazine.

And so on. Oh the humanity. A confusing mishmash of people yelling at some invisible entity and other people protesting that they are not that entity. Sometimes both.

Thankfully, ten hours or so after the original spam was sent, people figured out the whole messy feedback-loopiness of it all and stopped complaining. But it reminded me of the problem of public nuisances: how do you stop them without becoming one yourself?

As an example of that problem, I present the following drama, which took place in my head upon hearing a couple talk too loudly on the bus the other day:

Couple: {Loudly} Blah blah blah ...

Me: Hey, could you guys talk more quietly? No one wants to hear about your Pine-Sol® issues!

Person #1: Hey buddy, why don't you shut up? Nobody asked your opinion, either!

Me: Listen, I wasn't talking to you, I just wanted this couple to ...

Person #2: I have an idea. Why don't you both shut up so we can all ride in peace?

Person #3: Everybody, please shut up! You're not helping by yelling at everyone to ...

Person #4: Aaagh! If everyone would stop yelling at everyone to shut up, then everyone would shut ...

Person #1: Look, don't go tellin' me to shut up! You're yelling, too!

Person #2: Fine, let me be the last person to tell everyone to shut up, and then it can be quiet!

Persons #3 and #4: Who do you think you are?!

Person #1: Why do you get to be the last person to tell everyone to shut up?

Person #2: Fine, then you can be the last person to tell everyone to shut up!

Person #3: What, are you abdicating from your Shut-Up King throne and handing power to me, Your Hushness?

Person #4: You haven't shut up yet! When're you gonna start?

Hmm. I didn't really plan a way out of that scene when I started it, so I guess I'll have to end it there. But I think my point is clear: the problem isn't that e-mail makes people stupid. It's that both e-mail and buses make people stupid. And both should be outlawed.

Overheard on the bus

On the bus ride to work, the two people behind me were talking so loudly that I couldn't read, so I had little choice but to listen in. By their own words, they were (former?) speed users, and they had spent most of the bus ride talking about which of their acquaintances (including one of their mothers, it would seem) had stolen from them, and whether that was a big deal or not.

However, as the bus passed a taco cart on the side of the road, the following conversation ensued.

She: Hey, did you see that?

He: What?

She: I wanna buy a cart like that — a hot dog cart!

He: Aw, no you ...

She: Yeah! I once saw two of 'em for sale in the paper for like $2000. I've always wanted to run a hot dog stand.

He: When you gonna find time to sell hot dogs? On the weekend?

She: No, I could sell the business and run a hot dog stand.

He: You're gonna sell the carpet business? For a hot dog stand? Where'd you put it?

She: There's lots of places! I could ...

He: {As we pass by the Goodwill center} Like what, in front of Goodwill?

She: Oh! I know the perfect place! {She mumbles it to him}

He: No, you gotta keep those carts clean and worry 'bout the health department and stuff.

She: Well, that'd be your job. I thought of the location, and you'd be in charge of cleaning it.

He: Whaddya want me to just ... Easy-Off® the whole thing? That stuff makes you sick! Remember that one time I got really sick? After I drank Pine-Sol®?

She: Well, I ...

He: Man, that Pine-Sol® messes you up!

She: You're just mad because I thought of the perfect place for the hot dog stand!

He: No, I'm mad because I drank Pine-Sol®!

Well, I think the lesson is clear. Kids, don't do drugs. Or Pine-Sol®.

Clinton: do not vote for me

In a recent New York Times article, Hillary Clinton laid out a fairly convincing case for why I should not vote for her.

First of all, let me express my gratitude for this. I was always pretty sure I wouldn't vote for Clinton, but now I know. And, of course, knowing is half the battle. I assume the other half of the battle will involve some sort of caged, hand-to-hand combat between Sen. Clinton and myself. Or possibly a meaningless primary vote. Either way.

Clinton's main argument against her candidacy was laid out in New Hampshire, where she pointed out that "If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that [2002 Senate vote authorizing use of force in Iraq] or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from." Point taken.

This is all the more true when one realizes that Clinton could not, grammatically, be a candidate who "has said his vote was a mistake." Maybe this is why she has a hard time talking about that vote — she is not aware that the noun "mistake" can, in fact, take a female, third-person pronominal modifier.

But beyond this simple, powerful argument, Clinton lays out a two-pronged case for why people should vote for her (at least those not already ruled out in the above case):

1. She is not like George W. Bush.
2. She is a lot like George W. Bush.

For example, according to her advisers, Clinton "believes it's self-evident that the Senate Iraq resolution was based on false intelligence."* Bush also thinks bad intelligence was a problem. And like Bush, she doesn't feel that she's personally wrong for ignoring the contrary intelligence and going ahead with the war. However, where they differ is that Clinton feels that Bush was wrong to ignore the contrary intelligence and go ahead with the war.

Clinton's advisers also said "she would not cut off financing"* for Iraq — a position Bush agrees with, though his administration has made clear that "Congress has control over the purse strings. They have the right, obviously ... to cut off funding." In contrast, however, Clinton submitted a bill in the Senate to block sending more troops to Iraq, putting her at odds with Bush, and also seemingly with the constitutional notion of the President as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, not that the Constitution is running in 2008.

In all fairness to Clinton, her positions on the issues of funding (Congress' role) and control (the President's role) of troops may stem from some confusion as to whether she is already the President or perhaps still a member of Congress. As one adviser noted, "Mrs. Clinton likes to think and formulate ideas as if she were president."* I could see why it would be confusing.

Clinton's advisers say she "doesn't want to be [seen as] vacillating [or] flip-flopping"*, choosing instead to highlight "her resolve and her willingness to buck Democratic conventional wisdom,"* — all positions she shares with the President. Bush and Clinton differ, however, in that Bush is a Republican. But Clinton's bipartisanship transcends such political labels and, in apparent homage to Bush, sees herself as strong and tough, an image that "apologizing might hurt."*

Like Bush, Clinton "believes that a president usually deserves the benefit of the doubt from Congress on matters of executive authority."* And though "she would want the same deference as president [that she has shown to Bush], ... she has said she would not have sought authority to go to war if she had been president."*

The similarities with Bush extend beyond mere politics, of course. Like George W. Bush, Sen. Clinton likely would be a political nonentity if she did not have a family member who had previously been president. However, even in this similarity, Clinton has differentiated herself in that she is not the son, but rather the spouse, of a former president — a role that Bush has so far rejected for himself.

So, in summary, Clinton believes Bush's surge is wrong, but thinks Congress should abdicate its constitutional authority over funding for additional troops, while (unconstitutionally/pointlessly?) attempting to control troop movement. However, Congress should give the President the benefit of the doubt and deference. Her vote to authorize force in Iraq was not a mistake, though it was based on faulty intelligence, and she would not vote the same way today. But Bush was wrong to act based on that faulty intelligence, although he should have the benefit of the doubt.

To summarize further, "Look, just vote for me, okay?" Or, as a someone once said to the contrary, "there are others to choose from."

*These quotes are of the cited New York Times article itself, and not (necessarily) taken verbatim from an individual's speech, as most of the article tends to summarize what Clinton's advisers said.

The opposite of bacon

Our house has smelled like bacon for the past week, since Julia and I made some very tasty bacon-wrapped cream-cheese jalapeños for a Super Bowl party, then decided to use the leftover bacon for spinach salads this week.

This is all well and good because, hey, it's bacon. However, it being winter, we also have most of the doors in the house shut so as to keep the hot rooms hot and the cold rooms cold (sort of a McDLHouse, if you will).

The upshot being that, if you visit a non-kitchen room that has had its door closed, you suddenly find yourself smelling what can only be described as the opposite — or lack — of bacon.

Have you ever stared for a long time at a simple image and then looked at a blank wall? Because your eye has become accustomed to looking at the image, you see a negative version of it where there is actually nothing. It's like that with this smell. You've been walking around so long smelling bacon and (sadly) getting used to it, that when you walk into an unbaconated room, it smells wrong.

Anyhow, in case you were wondering, in an olfactory sense, the opposite of bacon is apparently some kind of sickly-sweet strawberry. Now you know. And science takes a step forward.