(Scroll down to read the rest of my post…) 

“Statistics compass shown that instances of teen drug addiction escape in continued chains from parents to children. This is why like now is the day to either cleft the chain of teen drug addiction or mark it from forming. No proportions of dense work, money, renunciation is payment another than breaking a chain of substance abuse or preventing one from forming.

“For some, the vicious cycle of teen drug abuse begins at familiar when they are influenced by the addictive behaviors their parents exhibit. For example, children of alcoholics (COAs) are a party of individuals who suffer the plight of their parents’ alcoholism.

“As a teenager, the likelihood of exposing to drugs and alcohol is genuine high, and there is a congenial chance that you testament effort drugs and alcohol.

“Much though you impart yourself that you will lone [url=http://non-narcotic-painkiller-with-a-narcotic-sounding-name-rj.t35.com]buy tramadol[/url] slap drugs once, you engage in it one aggrandized time, and then one deeper future after that, and before you discriminate it you are developing a drug problem. One of the consequences of drug and alcohol abuse is addiction. Most teens don’t envisage that they will mature addicted, and simply benefit drug and alcohol to own a bad time.

“However, the deed of addiction to drugs and alcohol can conclusion in some appealing undesirable consequences, such as loss of friendships, health problems, behavioral problems, alienation of family, and a loss of care in sports, academics, hobbies, etc. Substance abuse and addiction can emphatically modify behavior, and a latest preoccupation with drugs can assemblage absent activities that were formerly important, adore sports or academics.

“End this is a discreet and non-invasive way. Always enshrine that teenagers can be fully protective of their privacy. Instead of asking your babe about his or her friends, launch a barbeque organization and interrogate your baby to invite some of his or her friends.

“Inviting your kid”s friends over to the apartment is the ace conduct to shop for to apprehend them better. You may further embolden the kids to hang environing the co-op every instantly and then so that you can inspect them without truly appearing as well nosy or something. Duration busy in some worthwhile activities can cure grip your girl elsewhere from drug addiction.

“more on http://www.typical-online-pharmaceutical-site.com/“

Okay, that’s it.  NOW — you might be asking why did I reproduce this crap in my own blog entry in the first place.  Well, I did change the two links that would have taken you to the spammer’s site — I replaced the drug name with a description of the drug in the link in the fourth paragraph, and I replaced the text in the URL above with another descriptive, but bogus address.  I certainly wasn’t going to send any business their way.  But the rest of the comment is unretouched.

Many of these spam comments, and the text of the email spam we all know and love, are written by someone overseas that does not speak English.  They use translator programs, which would account for the unusual vocabulary and convoluted syntax.  For example, the last two paragraphs are about how to spy on your kids to protect them from drug abuse.  I love this one:  “launch a barbeque organization and interrogate your baby to invite some of his or her friends.”  Interrogate means to ask and your baby means your child, of course.  But how did they come up with launch a barbeque organization?  Too funny!

What’s clever about this message is the way the link is buried in the text, and also how the text seems to be aimed at concerned parents (who might have been Googling teenage drug addiction for help and resources), which gives it a sort of legitimacy, but it is really for the drug addicts themselves who are looking to buy!  Everybody else would probably just ignore it because it sounds so stupid.  At least I’m hoping they would ignore it.

At work, every day I get at least one of those you’ve-inherited-six-million-bucks-from-a-stranger-in-Liberia scams in my email box.  They are so persistent, it makes me wonder if there are enough stupid people who actually fall for the ploy to keep them in business.  I hope not.  They also use the same stupid grammar as the blog spammers.

Before you delete this stuff or mark it as spam, there is something you can do to help stop it.  Forward it to spam@uce.gov — this is an email address set up by the Federal Trade Commission (there is no website at uce.gov, it’s just for email) to collect evidence to use in prosecuting the money-launderers and Internet criminals that annoy us to death.  At the very least, the FTC can notify the email and IP server the spammers are using so they can be shut down for violating the server’s terms-of-service.  It’s a small drop in a very big bucket, but it’s a start.  Maybe some day, by cooperating, we’ll be able to outwit those stupid, but oh-so-clever online crooks.

My Maytag dishwasher stinks.  At first I thought it was just smelly because the dishes were dirty, but then it would smell right after they were washed too.  The dishes were clean — it wasn’t the same odor as dirty dishes, I can’t even describe it, but it permeated the inside of the appliance, tranforming it into a big smelly cavern that you wouldn’t enjoy sticking your head into.  My strategy for dealing with this has evolved into leaving the dishwasher door open slightly after it’s finished its cycle, and then leaving the room.  Later, when the dishes have cooled and the smell has gone, I put them away.  They’re mostly glass, ceramic, stainless steel, or hard plastic, and they don’t absorb the odor.  I do hate unloading the dishwasher anyway, so this is a good excuse for procrastinating.

So it seems I have a stinky Maytag too.  The funny thing is though, whenever I check my blog stats, there are always searches on smelly Maytag appliances that lead viewers to my blog — apparently people are struggling with this problem more than you would expect.  They are turning to the search engines with phrases such as ”towels smell in Maytag Neptune washer” – and it is almost every day someone is searching on this.  Maybe it’s all the same guy who commented on my first entry.  Of course, that was a while ago — he wouldn’t still be looking for information on this, would he?  He’s probably already taken a sledge hammer to that washer by now!

I wonder if there are websites out there totally devoted to the topic of Maytag appliances that stink.  Probably…but I am not going to bother searching for them.  It should be common knowledge by now:  Maytag stinks!

Here is another article about the Michael Vick merchandise, in particular, the 22 dog-earred, chewed up Vick trading cards that went for $7,400 on eBay.  A comment in the article reminded me of Gladwell’s concept of “stickiness” and how it shapes the formation of a social epidemic in The Tipping Point.  In the Vick case, it is our fascination for the following ”sticky” ideas or events, in combination:  celebrities, especially star athletes; terrible acts, particularly torture; animal psychology, which leads to the contention that animals feel pain and suffer like we do; blogs, which allow anyone to publish and share news; and finally, the unending war in Iraq, its unpopularity being so popular in the media, that it has made many of us want to focus on other news.  Now that EVERYBODY knows about Michael Vick and his dogfighting business, the next trend will be in efforts to erradicate this horrendous practice from our culture.  Yes, this is only one of many practices that should be erradicated, but it is a positive step.

As many have commented in the blogosphere, the only benefit from this event is that it has brought the attention of an entire nation to a dirty little secret revealed.  I watched Michael Vick’s apology and I almost felt sorry for him — he was pathetic — but he really isn’t any more guilty than anyone else who would do that to animals.  It is just that he is famous.  We should all be thankful for that!

But “viral” is a word that is also a little vague.  On a website that features the top 10 viral videos and photos, I found a video with 7 views and one with over 2,500 views.  It seems they’re all humorous too.  Obviously, the selections are made by the author of that site.  But truly viral videos are the ones with over 6 million views on YouTube.com (Chocolate Rain, for instance), and are not the ones you see on “America’s Funniest Videos.”  These videos get major broadcast and newspaper references, which only makes them more viral, but not necessarily any good.  Some are downright stupid.

Remember The Numa Numa video posted last year?  I think this one was the tipping point for the whole concept of the viral video.  This one was so viral, there were over 3,000 parodies and re-mixes posted and about 25,000 comments.  It was stupid, but the tune was catchy and the star of the movie, Gary Brolsma, was funny looking and animated.  It made me laugh and laugh, just like you might if you caught me playing air guitar and lip-synching to an Abba song.

“Chocolate Rain” might be more appropriately presented as a poem because the lyrics are meaningful, if not perplexing.  But what exactly is it about the video that has caught the attention of so many people?  It’s just a teenager with a deep voice and an unremarkable face repeating “chocolate rain” over and over.  More interesting than the video itself and the feature that I think has made the video so popular are the viewer comments, over 75,000 of them.  Probably what’s making this song viral is the diversity of public feedback.  Some people said it’s a great song, some thought it was funny, and some were nasty and belligerent, attacking the poor kid with racist epithets and other insults.  This makes it controversial, and controversy is viral.  Oh, yeah, and then there’s the bandwagon principle:  I just wanted to see it because it was on the news and obviously, everyone else was viewing it.  Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t get the song out of my head (the concept of the annoying ad jingle comes into play here) and I’m actually writing about it.  So there you go — I am spreading the virus to you now, if you haven’t caught it already.

Take vast majority for instance. What percent constitutes a vast majority?  I tried to find out by Googling the exact phrase, “vast majority” and examining some of the 18.6 million results.

One article I found in the first ten hits reports that it is 84%.
Another, from The Department of Homeland Security, uses the term to represent the fraction 24/27, which translates into 88.9%.
And this poll, from four years ago, puts it at 77%.

Nowhere did I find a vast majority translating into more than 90%.  Of course, if you have results such as 98% or 99%, you headline your article with the exact figures because those are impressive numbers.  Numbers like 77% or 84% are not so impressive to me, because when I was in high school, anything under 93% correct on a test was not an ”A”.  A vast majority should be impressive (at least as impressive as an “A” on a test) which probably explains why the term is so over-used.  The vast majority of people want to impress the vast majority of the rest of us.

Perhaps you have received one of those “Bush-isms” emails or seen a “Bush Quotes” website, or even listened to the guy making speeches (an activity that I find repulsive, yet oddly fascinating).  Then you will probably recall him using that phrase at least more than once.  My favorite is, “The vast majority of our imports come from out of the country.”  Well yes, since all of our imports come from out of the country, that would make it 100%, which to me is truly a vast majority.

I guess I’m just sick of hearing it.  I know I’m not alone in my feelings about this phrase.  The vast majority of people probably hate it too.

I’ve read some books though.  Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ  is an excellent introduction to the topic.  Goleman explains how our emotions and our intellect, operating both simultaneously, but independently of each other, can get us into trouble.  Mastering the aptitudes that comprise emotional intelligence (e.g., self-awareness, impulse control, empathy, etc.) can help us to live successfully — who wouldn’t want that?  Goleman describes how these aptitudes impact our lives, especially in terms of our relationships, our careers, and our health.  Just as your IQ can be increased through specific activities, your EQ can be raised by focused study and practice.

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• On emotional intelligence.
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