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How do they know that the guys on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” are actually gay?

While I wholly agree that spam is bad, I wonder if the CAN-SPAM bill will have any real effect. A good portion of the spam I receive comes from areas outside of U.S. domain (i.e. China). This bill will not stop those messages. Further, this bill could be used to punish companies by sending spam without the company’s permission. For instance, if someone has a grudge against Amazon.com, they could potentially spam thousand’s of people with a promotional, unsolicited e-mail that violates parts of this bill and forge the source of the e-mail as a amazon.com address. In that case, Amazon.com will have to prove they didn’t send the spam. Further, this bill doesn’t address other forms of spam, such as the recent rash of blog comment or Instant Message spammers.

There is a lot of debate on whether homosexuals should be allowed to “marry”, instead giving them the right to have a civil union. Is there really a difference between the two? What rights are afforded a married couple that wouldn’t be afforded a couple engage in a civil union? It seems to me that if there are no differences, then they are the same thing (a rose by any other name…) and that people are trying to give homosexuals the same rights to commit their life (and assets and rights) to another person that is currently given a married couple, but without calling it a marriage. My basic belief is that a marriage is a religious act, one performed by a church (or equivalent entity). The state should only recognize the civil union as a legal way of granting the rights afforded a couple in an efficient manner. Therefore, people can give the “marriage” rights to another person, regardless of sex or race (it wasn’t too long ago that inter-racial marriages were not allowed) or belief system.

I hate these people. More importantly, I wish my life was more like theirs .

Is it that hard to trim e-mails before forwarding them? I receive a small barrage of e-mail from family and friends that are forwards of e-mails they received, which in turn are forwards. I get e-mails that are in the forth or fifth forward, and I know this because people leave the headers on. Take the time to trim the messages down. Better yet, take the time to compose a message with just the important part.

I like to watch TV. I like it even more since I got a Tivo. Without it, I would watch hour upon hour of mindless TV. When I got the Tivo, my TV watching habits changed. Now TV watching has a purpose. It’s no longer about mindlessly thumbing through the channels to watch some or planning on being home to watch some “must see” tv show. Now it’s about me realizing that I have something to do in the hour that I have till I’m doing something else. Of course, like any other thing in this world, it can have it’s bad side. Apparently there are people so addicted to their Tivo that it’s become a problem. For some reason, I’ve avoided the trap that if I recorded it, I must watch it. Instead, I just delete shows that I haven’t found time to watch in the last two weeks since they were recorded. Other people apparently have an urge to watch everything they record, wasting more time because Dawson’s Creek is on 3 times a day and they set the Tivo to record each one of them. I’m bad, but not that bad.

Spam is inevitable. While I won’t go so far as to say it is “evil”, I do find it annoying. As a result, I have taken actions to prevent myself from receiving spam. One of the things is to assign each company that requests a e-mail account a unique e-mail address. For the most part, companies have been very respectful of my privacy. To date, I have only received a small number of spam from one of these tagged companies, or more specifically to the e-mail addresses assigned to these companies. This company was EBGames.

A couple of months ago, I purchased a USB adapter cord from them (my first and, now, only purchase). I opted out of receiving anything non-order related and submitted the e-mail address. Subsequently, I received the obligatory welcome message and ultimately order shipping information. As I do with these accounts, I left it open. In the last month I have started to receive spam (some pornographic) on this account, the latest being a offer for “Penis Enlargement”. Albeit intrigued, I can’t help wonder why a company like EBGames, who’s main clientele are juveniles, would sell their e-mail address collection to adult-products oriented services.

As a result, I have sent them a e-mail expressing my dismay and have decided to exercise my right as a consumer and not purchase anything from their website or their retail stores. I have to wonder if they have not broken any state or local laws by selling my information without my permission (though I don’t believe so). At the least, they could be guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor by selling information to companies that sell pornographic material.

What is the Meatrix?

One of the things I believe in is that every disease has a person that is immune to it. Whether it is diabetes or HIV, there is a person someplace on the earth that is immune to it. Even more so, there are entire family braches that are immune to it. Case in point: an Italian family exhibited a low level of plaque build up in their arteries, despite the fact that that they had a large amount of fat in their diet. Research into this family showed a mutant ApoAi gene that kept their arteries clean of plaque. From this they were able to create a treatment that showed amazing results.

So what does this show? To me it shows that every disease out there has a person or family that is immune to it. This is the foundation of evolution. Barring some massively deadly force or an environment that deprives us of a necessary component to living (a vacuum), there are people out there with the capability to survive just about anything disease can throw at them. Of course, it won’t protect them from a different disease to which they are not immune. The hard part will be identifying who is immune to what.

Wow, talk about the judicial system crossing the line. To acutally tell a parent what they can and can’t teach their child seems so wrong, espcially with the amount of available information outside of the home.