Tag Junk

Saving SPAM

Michael 3 Comments

Some time ago in the not too terribly distant past but distant enough that a gentle reminder wouldn’t be out of the question, I posted an entry that began with a one-sided discussion about spam e-mail although that wasn’t the focus of the post. Likewise, this one will start with spam – emails and others.

At least once a day I check the spam email folder and more days than not I find an email in there that is definitely not spam. I often wonder how they determine what can and can’t be let through when I also, and usually on the same days, wonder how they determined an email that got to my inbox was let through. What was it about my mechanic’s email reminding me to bring my car in for service that made it suspicious enough to be shuttled into the Junk folder yet the one to me from me declaring I could “lose 61 pounds in 4 weeks” seemed perfectly normal and allowed admittance to the safety of the Inbox? (And why 61 pounds? Did 60 sound too unbelievable?) But I didn’t start this to discuss what got into the Junk folder. But while I’m here . . .

2021-06-23Is it just the email clients I use, and there are 4 of them (the laptop, desktop, tablet, and phone all use different applications to access my email), or does everybody have multiple junk and spam folders to hold undesirable dispatches? Mine has Junk, Junk, Spam, sometimes Spambox, and sometimes Junk Mail, and always at least three of them. How do they decide? And who are they anyway?

Speaking of They, who are they who decides what gets to be called a virus. My anti-virus program pops up at least once a day to remind me of additional services it can provide – for an additional fee. If it was a phone call it would be routed to the “Silenced” folder as a possible spam call by the phone’s version of a Junk folder. (And speaking of viruses, even though we weren’t really, why is virus bad when you’re talking about computers but viral is good? Who makes this stuff up?) Naturally the same thing happens with the phone’s spam filter as the email. Perfectly innocent calls like the automated reminder from the doctor’s office gets tagged as possible spam and silenced while three different people expressing their concern that my car warranty has expired are let through. At least the phone and email “blockers” don’t cost me an annual fee to be wrong.

SpamBut do you want to know what really annoys me about all this? Spam. It’s rendered SPAM as an undesirable. SPAM as in Special Processed American Meat by the Hormel Corporation. Since 1937, SPAM has had its haters too but more lovers for sure. By the way, SPAM does not stand for Special Processed American Meat. That was a sobriquet given it during WWII by non-American troops treated to the canned delicacy. SPAM is actually a portmanteau of Spiced Ham although it is available in a variety of flavors, even (ugh) pumpkin spice.

There have been a billion recipes written for SPAM and a million cookbooks to hold them. (Too hyperbolic? Well, there are a lot!) There is even an annual SPAM cooking competition. At least there was until the pandemic forced its cancellation last year. The point is SPAM is an unexpectedly wonderful American treasure. Naturally we should confuse it with spam, a expectedly awful pile of junk.

Canned ChickenIt’s a good thing there aren’t any filters in the canned meat section of the supermarket. If there were, we’d be reduced to eating . . .

. . . canned whole chicken?

Now that’s some spam!

I Didn’t Know That (Ooops, corrected copy)

Michael 1 Comment

I recall a time when a graduate student would say something and by gosh, that was the way it was. It was sort of like the 1970s (ugh) equivalent of the Internet. You know darn well that 99.9% of what is on it would be disallowed in a court of law as hearsay, unfounded, or speculative, yet there is that part of you that is sure if you read it there, just as we used to be sure if we heard it from them, then it must be true.

There is no end to the things that I am sure are true. Well, that’s probably a bit overstated. I’m sure there is some end but I figure my end is closer than that end so to me it’s all endless. However, there are still some things that I don’t know that I want to add to the things that are true before one of those ends shows up around the bend.

For example, I know exactly where dust comes from. (If you don’t, don’t look it up, it’s disgusting! Ok, I’ll tell you. It’s mostly sloughed off skin. Yuck.) But I have no idea how I get dust inside a closed cabinet. Is that where the kitchen fairies who clean up the messes and put the dishes away hang out and let their skin hang out with them. If so, why are they just hanging out in my drawers and cabinets and not wiping the kitchen experiments gone awry off the counters and walls.

Another thing I can’t figure out is radio. I’m an educated person, a science educated person, who actually understands (and can spell) gluconeogenesis. I understand the theory of radio waves and how transmitters excite the air and receivers replicate the original wave patterns. But I have no idea how they know which is which. They say (“They” being the grad students of the 70s from whom I first heard this and “They” also being the Internet of the new millennium where I confirmed this just yesterday) that radio waves never stop. Whatever has been still is. So if everything ever transmitted – radio, television, cell phones, CB radios, walkie talkies, blue tooth, satellite radio, GPS, and the thousands of other things that I’ve forgotten or never knew about – is still floating around out there, how does my car always know what station to pluck out of the air for me? Personally, I think it’s magic.

They (there go them again) claim that it takes more calories to eat celery than celery contains making it a true negative calorie food. Assuming that you consider celery food. I’ll buy that because I can read how many calories celery contains (6 calories per stalk according to some sources) and how many calories it takes to chew, swallow, digest, and -ummm- eliminate celery (8 calories based on a University of Warwick study when extrapolated per stalk). I even know what a calorie is. That is, the energy needed to raise one gram of water one degree centigrade. And I know that the US FDA wants to require that calorie content of food be included in labeling, menus, even on vending machines. What I have no idea of is how you figure out how many calories a food has. Does burning that one stalk of celery raise one gram of water by six degrees? Or to make it more easily measured would you burn 1,440 stalks of celery to attempt to raise the temperature of one cup of water 240 degrees? And how would you even do that with a Quarter Pounder with Cheese or an Extra Crispy Chicken Little Sandwich, or a pack of Grandma’s Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies (the vending pack)?

So, in an Internet filled with people proclaiming all the things that they know, there you have a few things I am willing to admit that I don’t know. If you do, please feel free to add your comment and add to the things that I know and help me get the end a little further away from that other end. One thing though, even if you do know, I really don’t want to know how to measure how many calories are burned by digesting a bowl of chocolate moose tracks ice cream. Some things are best left a mystery.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?