Greetings:

If there is a sucker born every minute, then they are logging on to Al Gore's Internet at a rate that is much higher than that. What makes me believe this is that when I opened my e-mail this morning, there were no less than four different messages imploring me to get compensated for someone else's mistake or misfortune. That number would have been five, if I had bothered to count Mister Richard De Bongo's invitation that he sent to me twice. Even if I only took Dick De Bongo up on his offer one time along with the other four opportunities, I would be sitting pretty. For just being a kind and trustworthy soul, I could lay claim to several million dollars. Along with my name, address, and phone number.
Everyone knows by now that these offers of Irish lottery winnings or transfer of offshore funds are the byproduct of a wish to get rich quick and machine-generated mass mailing. My wife has chided me, in the past, for taking the time to peek into my spam file. Why would I need to look at anything that a machine has already determined that another machine has sent to me? I suppose it stems from that same horrible urge I have to peek into the Kleenex after I blow my nose, but also because every so often there are communications that slip through the cracks, Mister De Bongo notwithstanding.
It is the danger of dealing with others across a medium that is so expressly devoid of character. Why else would we feel the need to include random punctuation to insert our state of mind or feelings :)? Why would anyone hang their personal information out into cyberspace for anyone with a million dollar scam to latch onto? The recent concerns about Facebook's privacy settings makes me wonder if our need to connect with each other isn't deeper than our need to connect with funds from an unfortunate industrial accident in Hong Kong.