Mar. 18, 2003 - 21:53 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

The Cap'n Said

We have had no word about our friend Wilma today. We hope no news is good news.

I had a nightmare last night, I dreamt that Saddam shaved off his mustache and had all Iraqi men do the same. Then he named an Iraqi street sweeper Saddam and sent him out to serve the exile while Saddam did his business as usual. The Bigdaddy of Baghdad struttin' his stuff. Thank God I woke up.

I see in our paper that there is a new outfit, The Anti-spam Research Group which was formed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. In 1982 they defined the standard known as the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP which still processes all e-mail today.

They are trying to devise a method to prevent spam.

Quote, "Suggestions posed in the research goup's mailing list range from replacing SMTP to adjusting other Internet standards in order to stymie unsolicited mass mailings. Some experts advocate changes that would demand the identity of every mailer or an alternative mail system altogther that involves trusted, verified senders. And some have gone as far as to suggest requiring paid postage."

This paid postage bit bothers me. If it could be set up that any e-mail that is unsolicited attempting to make sales or gain any kind of advantage would have postage paid on it -- that would be fine by me. But the danger of thinking that way is, I think, that eventually we all would have to pay postage on our e-mails. I would hate to see that get a start. Which as far as I can see would kill internet communications as far as we are concerned.

It will assuredly be difficult because many businesses use e-mail heavily. But it would certainly be nice that this scattergun method of spamming e-mail addresses at random from some sucker list could be stopped.

Junk snail mail I can toss immediately without reading it. Or if I am in a bad mood, I cut my name and address from anything showing it, stuff the rest of the paper including the cut up envelope the whole thing came in, into the postpaid envelope and putting it in the mail box.

But it is more tiresome to delete thirty or forty pieces of spam. The darn things have to come up on screen before I can push the delete key -- and that sometimes takes more time than I have patience.

We are at peace for right now here in Denver as there is the "No Call" law, with heavy penalties for abuse. It is so nice, when our phone rings we know it is not a telemarketer. It is so easy to hang up on political and religious arm twisters, they are the only ones exempt from the law but as far as I am concerned they shouldn't be. They can send all the snail mail they want to, they pay for it and they don't have to pay for e-mail - thus sticking their foot in my door for free.

The snow is living up to its name this time. It is an up-slope storm. A storm that goes more or less north of us and then whips back west and buries us. I watched the doodle bug they use to clear our walks, a motorized thingy in operation this afternoon and it was having a rough time moving the snow out of the way. It had to back up and ram again. Too wet and heavy.

It continues to snow as of 10:30 PM MST.

Reminds me of the story that was often told when we were out camping and it got rainy or windy. It was a circular thing that could be repeated over and over. "The wind was blowing sixty miles an hour, the soldiers gathered around the campfire and the Cap'n said to the first lieutenant let's have a story and the story went like this, the wind was blowing sixty miles an hour, the soldiers gathered around the campfire and the Cap'n Said . . . . . . . . . . . .

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