Gas prices are too high.

You sit next to a stranger on a bus. You’re in for a long ride. You’ll never see her again. You can say anything you like. Anything. Tell her you love her.

E-mail t.w.earp.«secret word»@blogger.com to have your say here. Click on the gizmo in the footer to get the «secret word». Once you have it, what you post will be anonymous. Only the subject and body display. Vent your spew. Say anything you like. Anything. Tell me you love me.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Posting to an internet "community bulletin board" is the sort of thing that might be useful to you for subscribers who have internet access.

The changes will be fine. I must have needed a nap or I would have thought of them myself.

I don't recall how I managed to send the "spammotel" address to you. E-mail address pjlbqttjnfhz@spammotel.com does get mail to me, but the {remove} in what you used has to be taken out of the middle of it. I did that as a belt and suspenders deal. I use the address for generic e-mail for situations where people don't know my real name and I don't want them to have my real e-mail address either.

Using spammotel is analagous to being checked into a motel room and sending and receiving snail mail from it. All spammotel e-mail exchanges are initiated by someone sending mail to your motel room -- via your spammotel e-mail address in the cyberspace case. That initiating e-mail sets up a unique communications channel between you (the receiver) and the sender. If you start getting spam or for some other reason want to disable the communications channel, you can check out and leave no forwarding address. You know the sender's e-mail address, but she doesn't know yours -- only the address for the motel room you checked into.

Your real e-mail address and your real name never get revealed, not unless you show them in the subject or body of an e-mail. A FAQ for the free service can be found at http://www.spammotel.com/spammotel/faq.html. I've never had any problems with it -- well, only when I got way too cute using it. They guy who runs the site has got me out the weeds on several occasions over the five years I've been using it. Nota bene: I do not use spammotel for anything involving money. If the guy's intercepting e-mails and getting information that will let him break into bank accounts, he's not having any luck with me.

Perhaps I copied you on the e-mail near the bottm below? I used a bcc list for it so as not to give out e-mail addresses recipients didn't already have. What I was doing was letting some friends on a blog tree know how easy it is to post something to a web page, to a sort of internet "bulletin board": All you have to do is send an e-mail to an address provided. Only the subject and body get posted -- if you keep your name out of both, no one can tell who posted what -- except by content and style. Those can be real giveaways for anything I write. The "internet bulletin board" works pretty much like a bulletin board at your local grocery store.

I didn't know if you're aware of how to set up an internet bulletin board. I considered emailing you the note telling about one I set up yesterday, but can't remember if I did. . . . Oh, by the way, I tried to call you last Friday when you were in Fayetteville to alert you to the possibility that you would receive an e-mail from either "HD Fowler" or "Erle W Machiavellean," the two internet aliases I use to keep my own name off the internet.

Anyone who wants to can send you an e-mail from the pseudodictionary using the "send to friend" facility. When it's used, the sender can claim to be anyone she wants to -- and also use any e-mail address she wants to as the "sender address." When I was changing the way "send to friend" works the other day, I tired of typing in my name. I started sending e-mails to myself saying they were from "God." I managed to send one of those to my partner. He really liked it that he was getting directives straight from "God" -- addressed personally to him. That's when I modified the e-mail boilerplate to point out that the facility might be used by someone claiming to be someone else. The site's creator thinks it may be possible to send e-mails without leaving any tracks, but I'm betting IP addresses are logged with time stamps somewhere on the site and can't be wiped out by me. . . . Confirmed with the site host that access logs are maintained and, presumably, backed up.

Posting to an internet "bulletin board" is the sort of thing that might be useful to you for subscribers who have internet access. Thinking about how you might use a bb is what got me to thinking about this last week. Your readers would have no need to know about or even be aware of "secret code" stuff. All they would need would be the website address where you put up your newsletter. If you're interested and I can be of assistance helping you set up a bb for your use, let me know. It can be done in about a half-hour. You could then send an e-mail and your latest newsletter would go up immediately.

Some grocery stores screen what gets put up; others don't. If you would want the newsletter screened for glitches before it went up, the bb could be set up to do that. That shouldn't be needed as long as you used only stuff that can be sent in an e-mail. Straight text would never be a problem, but certain kinds of formatting could possibly be an issue.

I've found that most people in our age range don't bother to become knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the internet -- after all, they have no need to if all they do is use it. (I drive a car, but I've never done my own repair work.) As long as they can send and receive e-mail and get to news and game sites and the Library of Congress, why bother going further? Once you start running your own website like I do, though, you may be inclined to learn more. That's what happened with me. It's the sort of thing I was eventually going to get caught up in, given that I started working with computers in 1961 and programming them in 1962.

I'm too comfortably ensconced at home to bother going to the bank to get a cashier's check to send to you. I've mailed a personal check instead. Not the rubber kind. Good thing you jogged my memory with your e-mail. I haven't opened your August issue yet -- because I don't recognize the .doc extension. Microsoft Word? I don't have it installed on my computer right now, but I'm sure I can readily locate reader software for .doc files.

Regards,

Herb

PS. Just checked my original email to you. You clicked on obtain permission from the copyright owner. I can tell because the e-mail you sent that was bounced has the subject "«My high school biology, geometry, and physics teacher» «remembrance via John Stone»." I obviously got too clever by half.

PPS. As an exercise to show you how anonymous posting to a bulletin board works, I'm going to post an edited version of this with names and other identifying information removed. You can see it online at gas-prices-are-too-high-blogspot-com.

. . . Brainflatus: I'll temporarily add your e-mail address to the list of those notified when that bulletin board gets updated. That's the sort of thing you could do for up to 10 subscribers to your newsletter.

You told me to do something having to do with e-mails, but I forgot.
Nonetheless, I hope you can understand from the attached that I tried to
reply. Do you approve of my proposed editing?

M³

Yes, I would like to use the above. I would change the 1959 to "in the
1950s" and the 49 years ago to "about 50 years ago". This preserves my
efforts to be correct (at least not false) and gives you protection, I
think. Do you think that will cover it?

M³

The e-mail I sent to people on my blog tree. (This will not be posted to the "blog" a second time.)

And, a second e-mail I sent directly to the website, not copied to my blog tree. (This will not be posted to the "blog" a second time.)

posted by anonymous # 11/06/2008 08:52:00 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Since I was awake, I found something else to do.

Send an e-mail to t.w.earp.«secret-word»@blogger.com to post a note to gas-prices-are-too-high.blogspot.com. The «secret-word» for posting to the site is «secret-word». As long as you don't identify yourself in the subject or body of the e-mail, you'll be anonymous. You can post to all-stuffed-up-again.blogspot.com by e-mailing t.w.earp.«secret-code»@blogger.com.

This effectively creates two community bulletin boards, open for notes to be tacked up by anyone who has the Captain Midnight secret decoder ring.

I've just used it to post an essay I don't have time to read right now. I confirmed that all that was posted was the subject and body of the e-mail.

I like it. It's a good way to share things without the overhead of lengthy e-mails.

posted by anonymous # 11/05/2008 09:52:00 AM 0 comments

The Wall Street Journal Online | JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO | What must our enemies be thinking?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584386627599251.html

OPINION NOVEMBER 5, 2008

The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace

What must our enemies be thinking?

By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO

Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.

According to recent Gallup polls, the president's average approval rating is below 30% -- down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust."

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.

The president's original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.

It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.

Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country's current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.

Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, "We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."

To be sure, Mr. Bush is not completely alone. His low approval ratings put him in the good company of former Democratic President Harry S. Truman, whose own approval rating sank to 22% shortly before he left office. Despite Mr. Truman's low numbers, a 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that he was ranked the seventh most popular president in history.

Just as Americans have gained perspective on how challenging Truman's presidency was in the wake of World War II, our country will recognize the hardship President Bush faced these past eight years -- and how extraordinary it was that he accomplished what he did in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Mr. Shapiro is an investigative reporter and lawyer who previously interned with John F. Kerry's legal team during the presidential election in 2004.

posted by anonymous # 11/05/2008 09:36:00 AM 0 comments

Prompted by seeing a Drudge headline that gasoline is under $2 in Omaha.

I could drive to all of these in less than five minutes -- except that my car battery is dead. Mine isn't and I'm not. Shell is really proud of its gasoline. It's priced 10% higher than others, and you'll get lower gas mileage because it contains 10% ethanol.