Obviously spam is annoying and costly, but today I received a clever spam message that had somehow morphed itself into a simple poem:
awake need teach
from swim have
He reply change
on live want
As tell know
Or fit explain
That turnoff allow
night need think
school sit understand
Which fall finish
The give know
Deep, no? I’m almost glad it made it to my inbox. Should the spammers decide that they need to resort to including poetry in their email in order to get through the filters, the sting of their messages and hostility towards them might all but subside and people could welcome spam as literary marketing. Or that might be like saying used car salesmen would be more popular if they could sing when they lied.
General Ripper in the movie “Dr. Strangelove” said he was afraid “precious bodily fluids” could be contaminated by the Communists, so he drank only distilled water or rainwater. He might have sounded a bit nutty at the time, but the latest report on US tap water might make the movie seem less comical. The Environmental Working Group released a report last month that had some disturbing data:
In an analysis of more than 22 million tap water quality tests, most of which were required under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, EWG found that water suppliers across the U.S. detected 260 contaminants in water served to the public. One hundred forty-one (141) of these detected chemicals — more than half — are unregulated; public health officials have not set safety standards for these chemicals, even though millions drink them every day.
[…]
Our investigation reveals major gaps in our system of public health protections when it comes to tap water safety. Federal programs that allocate grants and low-cost loans to prevent water pollution and protect the rivers, streams, and groundwater that we drink are sorely underfunded.
When you consider how important clean water is to the national infrastructure, the data suggests serious shortcomings that threaten to undermine US security.
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, as quoted by Salon, called clean drinking water “a key ingredient to keeping people healthy and our economy strong.”
Just read an amusing article in the Guardian about using your lawn to heat your home, based on the concept of heat pumps.
With fossil fuels becoming alarmingly expensive, this environmentally friendly and low-cost alternative to gas central heating is finally coming into its own in the UK. It is incrediblyeffective, capable of achieving 400% efficiency – giving out more energy (typically 3 to 4 kilowatts) than the householder puts in to run it (typically 1KW). By comparison, an average gas boiler works at 90% efficiency at best.
According to Professor David Reay, of Heriot-Watt University, an expert on heat pumps, little can be said against them. Variants that extract heat from outside air perform less well in cold weather, just when the heat is needed most.
I thought the close of the article was insightful:
So if heat pumps are such a great idea, why haven’t they caught on before? “Gas has been cheap, and the British are capital-averse,” sighs Tony Bowen [president of the Heat Pumps Association, the UK trade body]. “As a nation, we are bad at investing in low long-term running costs.”
It goes far beyond the nation…but it is good to see the UK seeking less dependence on oil as well as more distributed/resiliant sources of energy.