0534 - Journals

As we have reported to you, the Anguilla Post Office has established a U.S. mailing address. This enables us to get all U.S. magazines for very cheap U.S. prices, plus a couple of bucks EC for the Post Office’s trouble (1 EC $ = .372 U.S. cents, about]. Naturally, the entire Staff has demanded specialized magazines. So, now, we get Time, Newsweek, The Economist, Fortune, PC Magazine, PC World, Computer Shopper, Scientific American, Bridge World, The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, and several journals that insist on sending themselves even though we neither subscribe nor pay. Even with this list, there are other mags that might appeal, such as Gut (the Journal of Gastroenterology, not our field but we like the name). Then, there’s The Journal of Psychopharmacology – do we need it?

In addition to this flood of print, we get waves of spam messages. The broadband provider here offers a spam filter, but you have to check daily to see that some vital message didn’t get filtered away. We’ve noted a few of the imaginative names the spammers use. Would you buy a debt consolidation from a character named Tinder Blowtube, if he (or she) existed? Or a mortgage from Becana Kannonedge or Jalouserais Erwachsener? It just don’t inspire confidence, do it? The most suspicious of all is, we kid you not, Forger F. Penicillin. Sorry, Forger, we just don’t like your looks. Finally, there is the musical lilt of Microbel Carambouillage, but we don’t know what she was peddling – perhaps French recipes. Or worse.

In addition, we have the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all available on the Net, plus over 50 cable channels and the weekly The Anguillian. Despite the remoteness of Smiling Anguilla, we submit, m’luds, that we here are deluged with information. This can lead to some charming and confusing juxtapositions of ideas and factoids, but nothing of a major delusional nature, like the imaginary presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction. And then, as we have often shown you, happenings in Anguilla often reflect the larger world in a most illuminating way.

We had many responses from Readers about last week’s column on single-minded advocates who can’t face the facts, but instead talk or write to one side or, worse, try to insult or demean the bringer-forth of the fact they don’t like. Our position on the Iraq mess has caused some to applaud, and others to insult us as “Pointy-headed Liberals”. Now, the OO grew up on the campus of a great University, home of many great thinkers, some Liberal, some certainly not. But, close observation then and now has never revealed a Liberal who actually has a pointy head.

Just to prove our flat-headedness, we had a talk last week with a wildly partisan visiting Republican. The subject was oil, and we reached a strange consensus. First, we agreed that carefully managed oil exploration in Alaska should proceed, and not just because the moose don’t vote. We also agreed that great wasteful monster vehicles like the Hummer (HUM-V) should be neutered and spayed or otherwise discouraged. We were overjoyed, but when we tentatively suggested that it was wrong of the U.S. [so-called] Environmental Protection Agency to allow poisonous mercury emissions to continue from power plants, the rule of reason was over.

By the way, a computer accident removed the latest OO mailing lists from our computer, so if you do not get this column, please e-mail us. Will that work?

Next time: Trillions [OO #535]

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