I recently received an email from a family member that you may be familiar with.  I found out, through a simple web search, that the content of the email is completely FALSE. Here is one of the many sites that discuss the lack of truth in this email.  In addition to being untruthful, the wording in this email is offensive to any self-respecting person who believes in things like “all men are created equal”.

Here is a copy of this email with my commentary in red (I changed some font sizes and some trivial line breaks):

Fw: Handling Arabs I get the feeling that the word “Arabs” here is used condescendingly – maybe that’s not the word, but with negative connotations Fwd: Fw: Budweiser, Pepsi and other vendors

In God We Trust What does any of this have to do with god?

You have probably read this before, but it’s well worth reading again. The second part is new so please read the whole thing and then pass it on.

The Budweiser Story
(not a joke)

This is TRUE!  And I’m supposed to believe you because you claim to tell the truth?  Wait, hold on, I just looked outside and discovered that grass is really purple!  It’s TRUE!  So now you have to believe me!  Logical?

How Budweiser handled those who laughed at those who died on the 11th of September, 2001…

Thought you might like to know what happened in a little town north of Bakersfield, California

After you finish reading this, please forward this story on to others so that our nation and people around the world will know about those who laughed when they found out about the tragic events in New York , Pennsylvania , and the Pentagon.  First of all, there are BIG grammatical errors here that any third grader could fix.  There should be no space before the commas – only after them.  One of the first and most obvious signs of spam/phishing emails is bad spelling and grammar.  Perhaps the same standards should apply here?

On September 11th, A Budweiser employee was making a delivery to a convenience store in a California town
named McFarland.. He knew of the tragedy that had occurred in New York when he entered the business to find the two Arabs (Once again, with the Arab comment.  What, exactly, does this writer mean by “Arab” anyway?  Are they just trying to describe a skin color?  Would it be ok if we went back to using off-color remarks to describe Irish-Americans, African-Americans, etc? Why can’t we all be just plain American anyway?) , who owned the business, whooping and hollering to show their approval and support of this treacherous attack. The Budweiser employee went to his truck, called his boss and told him of the very upsetting event! He didn’t feel he could be in that store with those horrible people. His boss asked him, ‘Do you think you could go in there long enough to pull every Budweiser product and item our beverage company sells there? We’ll never deliver to them again.’ Please see the Snopes article linked to above for proof that none of this story is true.

The employee walked in, proceeded to pull every single product his beverage company provided and left with an incredible grin on his face. He told them never to bother to call for a delivery again. Budweiser happens to be the beer of choice for that community. (According to who?  What’s your evidence?  And just because people share a skin color or type of dress that means they should all also like the same beer?  This is awful, if you ask me.)

Just letting you know how Kern County handled this situation. (No you’re not.  You’re irresponsibly spreading lies with offensive racial comments strewn throughout.  Take your prejudicial racist lies and get the hell out of my FREE country, please!)

And Now The Rest Of The Story: What’s up with the unnecessary capitalization, anyway?

It seems that the Bud driver and the Pepsi man are neighbors. Bud called Pepsi and told him. Pepsi called his boss who told him to pull all Pepsi products as well!!! That would include Frito Lay, etc. Furthermore, word spread and all vendors followed suit! At last report, on June 26, 2009, Fareed Katib closed the store and filed bankruptcy! BS!

Good old American Passive-Aggressive A$$ Whoopin!  Last thing I knew, it was an insult to be called passive-aggressive, because being that way implies you’re too chicken to actually face your opponent (or perceived opponent).  And this isn’t even a sentence.  Didn’t you learn what fragments are?  And why are you afraid to swear, but you aren’t afraid to make racially charged accusations?

Pass this along, America needs to know that we’re all working together!  Apparently we’re not.  You’re a racist asshole.

If you can read this. Thank a teacher…  I had great teachers.  Too bad people with your political leaning keep taking away their pay and benefits while increasing their class sizes and making them less effective.  Again “If you can read this.” is not a sentence.  It’s a good beginning to a sentence, but I think you need to go back to your teachers and complain that they didn’t teach you English very well.

If you are reading it in English…. THANK A SOLDIER!!!  Whose soldier?  I think we need to thank British soldiers for fighting to keep their independence from France, otherwise they would have been speaking French long before anyone settled in America.  Perhaps we should just thank our forefathers for their ability to settle, survive, and become independent of Great Britain.  And maybe we should apologize for them in the same breath for what they did for hundreds of years to people who were different – Native Americans, African Americans that were stolen from their homes and relocated against their will to be slaves to rich, powerful (and by powerful, I mean they had better weapons) white men.  Why do you scream “THANK A SOLDIER!!!”?  Seriously?

If you do not send this you have no soul !!!!  First, there should be no space between “soul” and the exclamation points.  Secondly, who is to say that any of us have souls?  Why force your religious beliefs into this racist fairy tale?

This email only shows me that people are very easy to mislead and that they nearly never check the truthfulness of things people say to them.  Like the New York Times article linked to above states, if this isn’t corrected – if people don’t start actually caring about the truthfulness of claims, we are in for a bad, bad, future.

Please learn to be critical of things – even skeptical.  The truth should always be more important than anything.

Anyone out there who was a bit older than I am might remember an oil spill in 1979. Here Rachel Maddow compares that spill with our current situation. I can’t help but wonder why we haven’t learned or developed more effective ways of dealing with these problems.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now this is just creepy. A man has demonstrated human infection by a computer virus. While this may sound sci-fi to many of us, there are plenty of scientists devoted to studying the future and future technology. A quick skim of a book by one of the field’s most visible authors, Ray Kurzweil, will familiarize anyone with some more ideas that send chills up spines similarly.

Crackpots? You be the judge. I can understand predicting more economic troubles for America this year – it’s not like people are spending less and saving more on a wide scale. But these claims, including the collapse of the FDIC and martial law, sound incredibly far-fetched. I, personally, will believe it when I see it.

With Memorial Day behind us now, we might be ready to read about something other than our veterans and their contributions to our present state of being. I urge you, however, to read this article, written by a veteran, about what it means to be American and what our veterans fought to secure. It’s more the acknowledgment that we’re all human and we all deserve the same rights, but we seem to keep trying to deny rights to others. I’m guessing it’s all about power. When a group of people has more rights (or freedom) than another, it has a greater amount of power than the smaller group – maybe even power over that group. These things are not what America was meant to be.

We all know there are plenty of problems with our education system overall. But when it comes to figuring out how to fix things, most of us just throw our hands up in the air. Truthfully, most of us would probably be hard pressed to identify specific problems other than the most obvious ones. Here’s a look at some of the problems and some interesting ideas to begin reform.

Earlier this year, Michael Vick returned to his career in football after a stint in prison for running a dog fighting ring. We see how negatively dog fighting affects the dogs, many of which die from involvement in fights. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article for the New Yorker about how the damage to football players can resemble the damage to dogs that have been used in fights. He seems to draw the conclusion that football is as inhumane as dog fighting. I feel that there is a key difference between the two. Dogs don’t have the ability to consent to being beaten senseless in the name of “sport”. Football players, however, do. They have the ability to understand the dangers inherent in the game and to either consent to exposing themselves to those dangers or to quit before they do too much damage. I’m pretty sure dogs wouldn’t consent to these fights if they could somehow understand the dangers and make a choice, because a dog’s first and strongest instinct is to survive. That men consent to being battered by their beloved “sport” indicates to me that they either don’t have a strong survival instinct or they lack the intellect of a dog. But that’s another issue altogether.

On the flipside, I think Mr. Franklin would love the citizen involvement with science that new software for Android phones (and soon iPhones) creates.  It seems anyone can access a database of information about a project and upload their own information about that project, complete with GPS coordinates and everything.

Nature is fascinating, and I like to look at the fantastic pictures offered by photographers.  One newly-photographed animal is the golden cat.  Apparently it’s quite elusive and we have little opportunity to study it.  Too bad – it’s such a beautiful specimen!  A less beautiful, but equally fascinating, find is this snake with a foot.  Yup – a snake.  With a single foot.  Kinda creepy?  Sure.  Fascinating and awe-inspiring?  You bet!  And here, just for fun, are some very cool pictures of all kinds of animals.

With the Planck telescope, we are beginning to be able to look back in time, thanks to the nature of light.  Since my understanding of physics is limited at best, I suggest you read the article for further information.  My lame attempts to summarize would probably be completely wrong.  But I understand planets… at least on a basic level!  And a newly discovered planet, Corot-7b,  seems to have a solid, rocky surface.  This isn’t to say it could support life or anything – just that it’s a rare find when most planets outside our solar system are gaseous.

And back to health care.  It’s a big topic, and worthy of much discussion.  This article takes us on a trip through government spending and asks questions about priorities.  I’ve always wondered why we spend inordinate amounts of money on military prowess, space exploration, etc. when we can’t even get our homeless off the streets and our sick taken care of.  Perhaps we should, as a society, reevaluate our values and priorities.  Because without healthy people and proper roofs over our heads, all the military and space spending won’t do a bit of good.

Sick of reading boring news feeds?  Try Google’s new Fast Flip.  With an interface closer to that of an ebook reader, it makes looking at articles on the computer screen seem more natural.

It seems as though by cleaning yourself every morning under a stream of warm water, you might just be exposing yourself to bacteria that can make you sick.  Good to know, but I think I’ll chalk that one up to improving my immune system!

This graphic novel about a traumatic childhood seems like a touching tale with expressive visuals as accompaniment.  It might be worth taking a look at.

‘Tis all I have for today… make it a lovely one!