Got a spam today which ends thus:

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Of course, the systematic use of complex symbols suffices to account for the preliminary qualification limit. For any transformation which is sufficiently diversified in application to be of any interest, any associated supporting element is unspecified with respect to an abstract underlying order. It seems to me to be the case that a case of semigrammaticalness of a different sort presents a valuable challenge showing the necessity for the naive disprovability hypothesis. So far, the incorporation of additional mission constraints must utilize and be functionally interwoven with the philosophy of commonality and standardization. Notice, incidentally, that a constant flow of field-collected input ordinates may remedy and, at the same time, eliminate any deep configuration mode. Similarly, the notion of level of grammaticalness mandates staff-meeting-level attention to the management-by-contention principle. To provide a constituent structure for T(Z,K), a constant flow of field- collected input ordinates is holistically compounded, in the context of the preliminary qualification limit. For one thing, the independent functional principle is rather different from possible bidirectional logical relationship approaches.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

How have you lived this long without knowing that?

Value of the expression “The ‘Harper’s Index’ format gimmick became stale on or about the day it was conceived”: 1

bon mot from Juan Gato:

Federal authorities said Sunday they have arrested a forest technician with the U.S. Forest Service for starting the Hayman fire, the largest wildfire in Colorado’s history.

You know, this kind of stuff wouldn’t happen if we federalized the U.S. Forest Service.

Larry Niven wrote, somewhere or other, that if you live long enough you’re bound to get rich at least once. It occurs to me just now that, if you live long enough under an immortal dictatorship, sooner or later you’re bound to be dragged away by the secret police; whereas if life is short anyway you’re likely to die in bed if you keep your head down. Perhaps that is part of what Kim Stanley Robinson meant when he wrote in Icehenge that longevity raises the political stakes.

Saw a union picket today with a sign saying Catbert Corporation is Enron II. If you thought your employer was a house of cards, would you spend your time agitating to increase its labor costs, or look for a new job?

Tuesday 7/30: I’m tempted to join in with a sign saying “Honk if you love noise pollution”. (And my best earplugs.)

I think it was about a year ago that I got a spam that attempted to evade the filters by inserting an anodyne comment within each keyword, thus: bre<!–brother–>asts. Someone has now improved the wheeze, by making the comment unique to the recipient: bre<!–youraddress–>asts.

2004 Oct 21: How appropriate that a post about dishonest mail should be numbered 419.

A month or two ago an old chum and I, time on our respective hands, discussed seeing a movie together. In brief, I suggested she meet me for Y Tu Mamá También, wires crossed, and she saw it alone.

Yesterday I got around to seeing Y Tu Mamá También.

I’d like to thank the academy for this honorable mention in the Travis Bickle Awards for Date Planning . . . .

(Tuesday, first show, six dollars. What is the world coming to?)