Bush's pardon of Aslam Adam, a Pakistani heroin trafficker serving a 55-year sentence, would seem more startling than Clinton's pardon of an L.A. Latino from a sentence one-fifth as long.
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Armand Hammer:
Not only had he pleaded guilty to the charge of making illegal campaign contributions but also, when pardoned from that offense by Bush, he forked over two gifts of $100,000 to the GOP as well as to Bush's inaugural committee.

How to spend your way to a new world. Maybe we should help out the poor Internet by clicking on every banner ad we find, as well.

Mar. 7, 2001

Dear Netizen:

Your help is needed. Fueled by a lack of confidence, our economy is slipping into recession. If this trend continues, you might soon lose access to your favorite online store, greeting card site, music site or financial chat group. Imagine the Internet without Yahoo! or Amazon.com. But you can help the Net regain its respect. We must band together and send the world a loud, clear message that the Net will not only survive, but thrive. That's why we're asking you to demonstrate your dedication to the Internet. On April 3, join us in "Take Back the Net" day: Buy Something Online. On April 3, avoid offline retail stores. Instead, visit your favorite online store(s) and make at least one purchase. If you prefer, donate to your favorite charity, which you can find at sites such as iGive.com.

Support Our Economy. The Internet is very young. Some mistakes have been made. But this budding industry still needs your support. Remember your positive Internet experiences then, on April 3, buy 10 shares in a company you admire. Your participation will send a signal to Wall Street that Netizens will not abandon their favorite medium. Please forward this letter to 10 other, or as many as you can, and help us in our crusade to take back the Net!

Sincerely,

Michael H. Tchong Editor & CEO ICONOCAST Inc.

Apparently people have started appending the Perl script (under 600 characters) to the end of their e-mail signatures as a protest against the various MPAA lawsuits.

"On Sunday night, Napster started filtering out copyrighted song names from its system. People have been proposing alternate ways of naming their music files so as to defeat such filtering, but no workable solution has emerged... until now! AIMster is offering a Pig Latin encoder that will encrypt your mp3 titles. They state that, under the DMCA, it would be illegal for the RIAA to reverse engineer their encoding scheme and try and filter the encrypted filenames from Napster. Beating the RIAA over the head with the DMCA is fun!"

1. In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. That's where the phrase, "goodnight, sleep tight" came from.

2. The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." uses every letter in the alphabet. (It was developed by Western Union to test telex communications.

3. The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

4. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

5. Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.

6. On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.

7. Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

8. In Cleveland, Ohio, it's illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.

9. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

10. The world's termites outweigh the world's humans 10 to 1.

11. The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order

12. In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.

13. It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month" or what we know today as the "honeymoon."

14. In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So, in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's."

15. Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle," is the phrase inspired by this practice.

16. In ancient England, you could not have sex unless you had consent of the King (unless you were in the Royal Family). When anyone wanted to have a baby, they got consent of the King & the King gave them a placard that they hung on their door while they were having sex. The placard had F.U.C.K. (Fornication Under Consent of the King) on it. Now you know where that came from.