Rants
Contents
Americanism and sacrifice
If giving $10 of one's own money to charity is good, thus reducing one's assets so that others might do better, what is the matter with sacrificing un-needed energy use (turning out lights, getting a higher efficiency car, etc.)? -In response to the Republican response to the State of the Union address, 2010, in which I picked up both the message that Americans shouldn't make sacrifices, but that it was good to donate to Haiti rescue efforts. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/27/politics/stateofunion/main6148483.shtml P.S. I see that McDonnel means to say that regulating sacrifice is wrong, it should always be voluntary.
Matching greed
EnergyTeachers.org received an e-mail from ElevationWeb today, a web design company. They were offering what they call a "matching grant" which was actually just a 50% off sale on web services. I replied with an ornery message about what a matching grant really is, giving money to charity, not taking it from them, even if at a discount. They have a whole page devoted to this illusion: http://www.elevationweb.org/one_for_one.php
e-mail lists
Some people are quite bad at remembering not to reply to the whole list when writing a personal reply.
Signatures
I'm tired of seeing "Sent from my Blackberry" or "Sent from my iPad" at the bottom of some people's messages. It's partly the manufacturers' fault, but customers can turn off the default, annoying signature in a "settings" menu.
BCC
I hold people who use CC instead of BCC primarily responsible for all the spam I get. Certainly most of the spam that tries to impersonate a friend. And sometimes it's an inappropriate breach of privacy to show every recipient all the other recipients of your message.
