Quote of the day 24th October 2015


Link to the Amazon page for The Elements of Style by William Strunk and EB White.

Do you remember a few years ago when we used to get several chain email hoax warnings a week forwarded by naïve but well meaning friends, telling us to beware of frightening but non-existent computer viruses and asking us to forward the warning to everyone we know? One of the two funniest was the Strunkenwhite virus hoax warning of a fictional virus named after this book which supposedly would not let you send out any emails containing grammatical errors.

The strunkenwhite virus had supposedly made thousands of people who had lost the ability to wrote good grammatical English unable to communicate by email.

Much funnier than "this will destroy your hard drive" and I almost could not help wishing it actually did exist.

The other one that had me rolling about laughing, though I managed to resist the temptation to forward it, was the spoof Trojan Horse warning, complete with spoof put down answer, which I repeat here ...

"From: Laocoon
To: Laocoon
BCC: Everyone in my address book

Re: Greeks Bearing Gifts

IF YOU RECEIVE A GIFT IN THE SHAPE OF A LARGE WOODEN HORSE DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT!!!! It is EXTREMELY DESTRUCTIVE and will overwrite your ENTIRE CITY!

The "gift" is disguised as a large wooden horse about two stories tall. It tends to show up outside the city gates and appears to be abandoned. DO NOT let it through the gates! It contains hardware that is incompatible with Trojan programming, including a crowd of heavily armed Greek warriors that will destroy your army, sack your town, and kill your women and children. If you have already received such a gift, DO NOT OPEN IT! Take it back out of the city unopened and set fire to it by the beach. FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

Poseidon

******************************
RE: Greeks bearing gifts

Laocoon,

I hate to break it to you, but this is one of the oldest hoaxes there is. I've seen lots of variants on this warning, one involving some kind of fruit that was supposed to kill the people who ate it and one having to do with something called the "Midas Touch." Here are a few tip-offs that this is a hoax:

1) This "Forward this message to everyone you know" business. If it were really meant as a warning about the Greek army, why tell anyone to send it to the Phoenicians, Babylonians, and Egyptians?
2) Use of exclamation points. Always a giveaway.
3) It's signed "from Poseidon." Granted he's had his problems with Odysseus but he's one of their guys, isn't he? Besides, the lack of a real header with a detailed address makes me suspicious.
4) Technically speaking, there is no way for a horse to overwrite your entire city. A horse is just an animal, after all.

Next time you get a message like this, just delete it. I appreciate your concern, but once you've been around the block a couple times you'll realize how annoying this kind of stuff is. Bye now,

Hector"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more