CAN THE SPAM

CAN THE SPAM
Philadelphia Inquirer: If someone tried to judge the content of your character by the contents of your e-mail inbox, how would you fare? Well, it's wouldn't be a pretty picture -- if you are subjected to the torrent of unbidden advertising messages that plagues many e-mail users.
For that reason alone, it's worth applauding three national consumer groups' effort to persuade the feds to crack down on deceptive junk mail. After all, commercial e-mailers --purveyors of what's commonly known as spam -- must think you're a deadbeat, in hock up to the neck. How else to explain all those "Quick Cash!" messages?
They also figure you haven't dated in years ("Lonely?"), that you're into kinky stuff no family newspaper would mention, and that you're looking to enhance ... er, "performance" with some snake-oil product. Also: You're a sucker for every get-rich-quick scheme.
The truth, of course, is that you, if typical, are an unwilling recipient of all this junk e-mail. Didn't ask for it; wish it would go away. (OK, maybe not the "absolutely, positively free" week in Cancun offer.)
The consumer coalition -- Consumer Action, the Telecommunications Research and Action Center and National Consumers League -- feels your pain. They warn correctly that spam threatens to overwhelm inboxes, making e-mail useless as a means to communicate. The groups have asked the Federal Trade Commission to sue spammers whose e-mail pitches are smarmy.
Free-speech rights
How to do that, while at the same time respecting the free-speech rights of advertisers? The groups reasonably suggest the FTC could set standards for advertising e-mail.
The agency wouldn't -- nor should it -- ban any specific e-mail pitch. Rather, it would apply truth-in-advertising standards. For instance, e-mailers might have to give authentic return addresses, plus offer the option of being removed from a mailing list. And no e-mail could be sent to someone who had opted out of mailings.
The standards wouldn't stop spammers. But full disclosure might make some advertisers less interested in spam-style campaigns. That could trim the avalanche of messages. (E-mail filtering software is another option. But advertisers tend to find ways to get around such software.)
The FTC's current focus on prosecuting fraudulent spam makes sense.
ONCE UPON A SEA ...
Los Angeles Times: James Glennie, a British auction house cataloger, was combing through a Norfolk mansion this summer when he spotted a small, framed document hanging in a dark corner of the library. It was an original expense account from a 1776 voyage of Capt. James Cook. An interesting discovery about the discoverer. Then Glennie's hand grazed something. He turned the frame over. He pried a bit. What he uncovered tells an old story, fascinating even in an age of e-mail.
Secretly hanging for unknown decades in that country house was a handwritten, 231-year-old letter from Cook to the British Admiralty with first news of the safe return of his HMS Endeavour from a perilous three-year exploration of the South Pacific, including Australia's discovery. Written in his distinctive florid script upon sighting British shores, Cook's missive was rushed to shore by passing fishermen.
The letter, to be auctioned Dec. 17 by London's Bonhams Auctioneers, reported the status of the Endeavour and its crew (30 percent died of malaria and dysentery contracted in Indonesia) and presaged recognition of the thorough navigation, seamanship and science of an explorer whose lonely voyages from Newfoundland to Antarctica, from Alaska to Botany Bay, completely redrew the known world.
Wooden boats
A farmer's son, the astute Cook apprenticed on North Sea merchantmen. His charting and navigational acumen helped ensure Britain's victory over France in Quebec, which changed North American history. Cook's voyages in wooden boats little longer than a tractor-trailer chronicled Australia, Antarctica, Asia, northwest America, numerous Pacific islands and cultures and debunked the myth of a Northwest Passage over North America.
His pioneering collections and reports on exotic plant life shaped biology; his suspicions and experiments about nutrition conquered scurvy. After wandering terra incognita as no man before then, Cook died in a 1779 skirmish with Hawaiian natives caught stealing a royal rowboat. His mutilated body was buried in the sea he lived his life upon.
Of course, if Capt. Cook had e-mail, the world then could have learned of those journeys instantly on, say, www.captcook.com and discussed his discoveries in online chat rooms ("Cook rules!" "You go, Jim!") with pop-up cell phone and mortgage ads. Who wants to read an actual non-laser-quilled letter from the 18th century and conjure images of its adventures?
With today's technology, we could have simply deleted those useless old letters and reports and been done with them, as we do so routinely and ruthlessly in our everyday life now. What can old stories teach the residents of future times about the human spirit anyway?