The Rant

This is nothing new to anyone who has had even the remotest contact with the internet, but I'm moved this morning to proclaim just how much I loathe email forwards that supposedly contain outrageous or fascinating "facts". Almost invariably they're a mishmash of exaggerations, skewed statistics, or outright fabrications that have been circulating the internet for the past ten or fifteen years. The gall of these inflammatory lies is irritating... There is always a vague yet recognizable "source" named (CNBC, Oprah, or my personal favorite, "scientists") followed by some hokum editorial statement such as "You won't believe this but it's completely true!" Morons receive these emails and, lacking any natural defenses, quickly become infected, swelling with uninformed emotions until they burst and release duplicate copies of the virus to everyone in their address book, at which point the disease finds a few suckers more and circulates again. If you're unfortunate enough to be in the address books of more than one of the infected, you can have your inbox bombarded with the same ridiculousness two, three, four times a day. Perhaps even worse than the pseudoscience are the email forwards stuffed to capacity with hyper-religious content or patriotic sentiments so grossly intolerant and perverse they'd make Dubya blush (I've been involuntarily subjected to a number of email "stories" that end with a message which can be approximated as "learn how to speak English and love Jesus or else stay out of my country!").

Okay, that's my rant.