Thursday

I actually saw the Craig Wilson column and thought of Daddy. I think he was much more committed to the random visitation activity than was Mother. He had a bit of a Seinfeld approach to visitations: if he didn't know the deceased directly, he could easily rationalize that he could have known the party, or that he had perhaps once met the party, or a member of the family, and therefore was obligated to attend the service. Besides, one of his routines after a visitation was to stop in at a coffee shop for a late evening cup 'o joe, and some toast and jelly.

The whole business of what is real and what is imagined is becoming a mine field in today's Internet society. Not only do you have what has become somewhat old hat in phishing, but there is an increasingly complex world of identity theft. In a newer deception, a story in today's WSJ described a situation of a young female singer who had enjoyed explosive growth on her UTube site. Turns out that her deal was actually an underground marketing effort of a major (yet unnamed) recording label.

Newspapers and magazines are always subject to ambitious reporters or contributors who choose a path of deceit or misrepresentation. Sometimes even the most determined publications get caught. The Internet is just so expansive, that anyone can dress up in a wolf's suit and proclaim anything.

The spam filters on my Yahoo and business sites have been catching in droves contacts from "a classmate" or "a family member". I think the classmate stuff has resulted from my registration this Summer on a site for my high school reunion. I wondering if the family member stuff is coming from the use of an American Greetings card site. Hackers are tireless.

The scary thing is that techno-sleuths can follow your electronic trail of "cookies", in reverse, to infect your computer and pass your data to other gatherers of this type information. Your cell phone has a GPS chip. Many of the newer cars have the same thing. Heck, the White House doesn't need an act of Congress to follow anybody. They just need an underground marketing contract with Apple/AT&T.

The NFL opens tonight. Why Thursday?

BCOT