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CYNSATIONAL
“April
is here. That means one thing. It is tax season. Uncle Sam is back
asking for his cut of your wealth. Instead of waiting in line at
the local IRS office, or milling about the short stack of forms
at the post office, the Internal Revenue Service's web
site contains most of all of the forms needed for the average
individual or small business owner to file their returns. Even though
the growth of e-filing is impressive, paper copies of returns are
still the way to archive your important papers, especially in times
of audits and hard disc crashes.”
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cyberbarf
EXAMINE THE NET WAY OF
LIFE
GOOD
BAD & UGLY COMMENTARY
THE GOOD.
Politicians campaign about having transparency in government. That any citizen
can see what the government is doing, how the government is spending their
tax dollars, and who is receiving those tax dollars. It is a utopian concept
that has very little application in the bureaucratic clout driven machinery
of American politics. In fact, most elected officials create more smoke
screens from public scrutiny as a method of retaining the power of their
offices.
THE BAD.
There is growing and frustrating trend in the information pages on the web.
Articles have hyperlinked text embedded in the copy so the reader could
jump to another page to gather more information on that topic. It is a way
of layering information in one place so that a reader can get a complete
understanding of the writer's story. But some web operators are using this
hyperlink utility not to jump the reader to additional topical information,
but to annoying pop-up ads! It is a stealth way of trying to fool readers
into adding to the site's ad-click rates. But it is a real lame abuse of
the internet publishing standards in regard to copy formats.
THE UGLY.
In the 1990s, the Internet boom was in full multimillionaire in a nanosecond
race to change. It was marked as a huge wave that would wipe out the old
ways of doing everything from work to play. In the forefront of this phenomena
was an upstart business magazine, Business 2.0, which touted the era as
NEW ECONOMY NEW
RULES NEW LEADERS. We did a CYBERSAFARI
on this magazine in February, 2005.
RAPTER
AGENT
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THE
COMBINATION OF FOOD AND POLITICS - - - Ski's IMMORTAL COMBAT IRON
CANDIDATE RETURNS JUST IN TIME FOR THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
NEW ISSUES CAN BE SEEN AT THE NEWS STAND AT pindermedia.com.
DON'T
MISS THE SIZZLING SATIRE, THE FRIED EGOS, AND THE SHARP WIT OF AMERICAN
POLITICS.
From
the Creator of Rapter Agent and Dr. Philistine: IRON
CANDIDATE!
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HARD
TO BELIEVE MISBEHAVIOR
My current
philosophies of Mankind:
Intelligence
is finite.
Common
sense is an acquired skill.
An Oregon
man is driving home to his house. He sees pick up trucks filled with lawn
equipment and chairs, and cars loaded with personal possessions from a yard
sale. As he turns into his driveway, he sees his entire homestead over run
by people picking through his possessions. He yells at them that they are
stealing his property. The universe response he received was that he was
wrong.
The people
in the man's yard claimed that they had seen a classified ad on Craiglist
that said that the owner of this home had to leave town quickly and anything
left behind was “free” for the taking. So the people packing their
vehicles with the homeowner's possessions believed that since that ad was
on the Internet, it had to be true. It gave them a license to take whatever
they wanted from this residence. And they did.
The bewildered
homeowner got down as many license plate numbers as he could as the horde
of treasure seekers left with their spoils. He contacted the local police
to file a massive theft report. The local sheriff made it known to the general
public that anyone who did not return the man's property immediately would
be charged with a crime. Very little was returned. The thieves would rather
believe a fake ad than the local police department.
The truth
in the story is that someone had put a false ad on the Internet to make
the homeowner's life miserable. The truth in the story is that the homeowner's
community took advantage of a situation which should have raised a red flag
alert as to the veracity of the ad that gave away everything in a home that
looked currently occupied. The truth in the story is that people who believe
everything they hear or read without thinking it through are fools. Ignorance
is no defense in the law, especially when a person's house is being ransacked
because of an Internet post.
It is like
the squirrel story in
last month's issue. Recently, two large Canadian geese have come to roost
in the neighbor's yard, feasting on the bird seed that has fallen on the
ground. However, several times, one of the geese lands in our office back
yard. There is a hedge and a chain link fence that separates the yards.
So the goose waddles into the barren hedge to get to the bird seed in the
other yard. But the bird gets caught by the fence links. He is too big to
get through the fence. So what does he do? He tries again, again and again.
He gets his neck caught in the fence once, then backs out. He bleats to
the other one in the other yard to no avail. So he wanders back into the
fence a few more times. Then he gives up. He wanders around the yard in
a circle because he can't get through the fence. All the time, there was
a simple solution: just fly over the hedge! Simple common sense.
Something
those folks in Florida were also lacking after viewing that internet ad.
UPDATE: Jacksonville,
Oregon police arrested two individuals in this case. The police arrested
the couple for allegedly trying to cover up a theft of personal property
on the premises with the internet ad which led many more people to take
property to disguise their own crime.
