Humor 7/3/00: Pluperfect Virus & Right Place & Time

Hi everyone,

Happy July 4th weekend! I hope you had fun. I watched "The Patriot"
and "Titan A.E.". I enjoyed both. Since you've all probably heard
about the Patriot and plan to watch it, I'll tell you more about Titan
A.E. It's an animated science fiction film. It combines elements of
Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galatica, the Matrix, and Enter the
Dragon. The animation of the galaxy and other objects in space is very
cool. The only thing I didn't like was some of the alien characters.

On the 4th, our young adult group will be having a beach party at Pt.
Dume. However, I will miss the annual Oasis BBQ at MIT, followed by
fireworks seen from the Mass Ave bridge, while listening to Boston Pop's
play the 1812 Overture on the Esplanade. That has to be one of the
Bostonian traditions that I miss most. Are you guys doing that this
year?

This week's thought provoking question is: "If you could have your
portrait painted by any painter in history, to whom would you give the
commission?"

This week's humor was forwarded by Jennifer Chin, followed by an
inspirational piece forwarded by Kelly Chu.

Enjoy!

-Josh.
_________________________________________

The Pluperfect Virus
By Bob Hirschfeld - Sunday, May 2, 1999

A new computer virus is spreading throughout the Internet, and it is far
more insidious than last week's Chernobyl menace. Named Strunkenwhite
after the authors of a classic guide to good writing, it returns e-mail
messages that have grammatical or spelling errors. It is deadly accurate
in its detection abilities, unlike the dubious spell checkers that come
with word processing programs.

The virus is causing something akin to panic throughout corporate
America, which has become used to the typos, misspellings, missing words
and mangled syntax so acceptable in cyberspace. The CEO of
LoseItAll.com, an Internet startup, said the virus has rendered him
helpless. "Each time I tried to send one particular e-mail this morning,
I got back this error message: 'Your dependent clause preceding your
independent clause must be set off by commas, but one must not precede
the conjunction.' I threw my laptop across the room."

A top executive at a telecommunications and long-distance company,
10-10-10-10-10-10-123, said: "This morning, the same damned e-mail kept
coming back to me with a pesky notation claiming I needed to use a
pronoun's possessive case before a gerund. With the number of e-mails I
crank out each day, who has time for proper grammar? Whoever created
this virus should have their programming fingers broken."

A broker at Begg, Barow and Steel said he couldn't return to the "bad,
old" days when he had to send paper memos in proper English. He
speculated that the hacker who created Strunkenwhite was a "disgruntled
English major who couldn't make it on a trading floor. When you're
buying and selling on margin, I don't think it's anybody's business if I
write that 'I meetinged through the morning, then cinched the deal on
the
cel phone while bareling down the xway.' "

If Strunkenwhite makes e-mailing impossible, it could mean the end to a
communication revolution once hailed as a significant timesaver. A study
of 1,254 office workers in Leonia, N.J., found that e-mail increased
employees' productivity by 1.8 hours a day because they took less time
to formulate their thoughts. (The same study also found that they lost
2.2 hours of productivity because they were e-mailing so many jokes to
their spouses, parents and stockbrokers.)

Strunkenwhite is particularly difficult to detect because it doesn't
come as an e-mail attachment (which requires the recipient to open it
before it becomes active). Instead, it is disguised within the text of
an e-mail entitled "Congratulations on your pay raise." The message asks
the recipient to "click here to find out about how your raise effects
your pension." The use of "effects" rather than the grammatically
correct
"affects" appears to be an inside joke from Strunkenwhite's mischievous
creator.

The virus also has left government e-mail systems in disarray.
Officials at the Office of Management and Budget can no longer transmit
electronic versions of federal regulations because their highly
technical language seems to run afoul of Strunkenwhite's dictum that
"vigorous writing is concise." The White House speechwriting office
reported that it had received the same message, along with a caution to
avoid phrases such as "the truth is. . ." and "in fact. . . ."

Home computer users also are reporting snafus, although an e-mailer who
used the word "snafu" said she had come to regret it.

The virus can have an even more devastating impact if it infects an
entire network. A cable news operation was forced to shut down its
computer system for several hours when it discovered that Strunkenwhite
had somehow infiltrated its TelePrompTer software, delaying newscasts
and leaving news anchors nearly tongue-tied as they wrestled with proper
sentence structure.

There is concern among law enforcement officials that Strunkenwhite is a
harbinger of the increasingly sophisticated methods hackers are using to
exploit the vulnerability of business's reliance on computers. "This is
one of the most complex and invasive examples of computer code we have
ever encountered. We just can't imagine what kind of devious mind would
want to tamper with e-mails to create this burden on communications,"
said an FBI agent who insisted on speaking via the telephone out of
concern that trying to e-mail his comments could leave him tied up for
hours.

Meanwhile, bookstores and online booksellers reported a surge in orders
for Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style."

Bob Hirschfeld, who enjoys receiving e-mails in plain English, lampoons
the news at his Web site, bobsfridge.com.

Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
__________________________________________

God has a way of allowing us to be in the right place at the right
time. I was walking down a dimly lit street late one evening when I
heard muffled screams coming from behind a clump of bushes. Alarmed, I
slowed down to listen and panicked when I realized that what I was
hearing were the unmistakable sounds of a struggle: heavy grunting,
frantic scuffling and tearing of fabric.

Only yards from where I stood, a woman was being attacked. Should I get
involved? I was frightened for my own safety and cursed myself for
having suddenly decided to take a new route home that night. What if I
became another statistic? Shouldn't I just run to the nearest phone and
call the police? Although it seemed an eternity, the deliberations in
my head had taken only seconds, but already the cries were growing
weaker. I knew I had to act fast. How could I walk away from this?

No, I finally resolved, I could not turn my back on the fate of this
unknown woman, even if it meant risking my own life. I am not a brave
man, nor am I athletic. I don't know where I found the moral courage and
physical strength-but once I had finally resolved to help the girl, I
became strangely transformed. I ran behind the bushes and pulled the
assailant off the woman. Grappling, we fell to the ground, where we
wrestled for a few minutes until the attacker jumped up and escaped.

Panting hard, I scrambled upright and approached the girl, who was
crouched behind a tree, sobbing. In the darkness, I could barely see her
outline, but I could certainly sense her trembling shock.

Not wanting to frighten her further, I at first spoke to her from a
distance.

"It's OK," I said soothingly. "The man ran away. You're safe now."

There was a long pause and then I heard the words, uttered in wonder, in
amazement. "Dad, is that you?" And then, from behind the tree, stepped
my youngest daughter, Katherine.

Do all the good you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can

Pass it on........