bloggedy blog: the personal weblog of a music lover and aging punk wannabe

:: Friday, October 18, 2002 ::

Look at what you're missing! If you don't subscribe to my eMinistryNews newsletter, you're missing out on some good stuff. Here's a sampling from today's offering:

The "Mindset List." Every fall, Beloit College in Wisconsin issues its "Mindset List" to help professors make sense of the new crop of freshmen. As the college notes in a news release, the list "is a reminder that the world view of today's new college students is significantly different from the intellectual framework of those students who entered only a few years earlier." A few of those mindset points are listed below. Editor's warning: reading this list can leave one feeling old, irrelevant, or both.

Most students entering college this fall were born in 1984. During their lifetime:
A Southerner has always been President of the United States.
Cars have always had eye-level rear stop lights, CD players, and air bags.
We have always been able to choose our long distance carriers.
Weather reports have always been available 24-hours a day on television.
"Big Brother" is merely a television show.
Cyberspace has always existed.
Bruce Springsteen's hit, "Born in the USA," could have been played to celebrate their birth.
A "Hair Band" is some sort of fashion accessory.

Spam, spam, spam, spam... Internet spam has been big in the news lately. According to a recent report, unsolicited e-mail accounts for one-sixth of all e-mail messages. Moreover, according to the report, spam "made up more than a quarter of all e-mail messages sent to companies in the manufacturing and engineering sector." In other spam-related news:

Spammers can now send pop-up messages directly to your desktop -- even if you're not on the web or using your e-mail. According to this Geek.com report, "These pop-up messages appear even if the user is not in e-mail or an Internet browser. The software utilizes Microsoft's Messenger Windows service, which is turned on by default (on WinNT, 2000, and XP systems) and used by administrators to send messages to users on the network." Such "messenger spam" can be eliminated by disabling the Messenger Windows service, but as the author of this article notes, "it's bad enough to open your e-mail and have to delete a ton of spam -- I could not imagine being attacked with continuous pop-up ads on my computer desktop."
Even the sellers of anti-spam software are sending out spam to hawk their wares!

Angst on (or in) the brain. The root of teen angst may be in their developing brains, say neuroscientists at San Diego State University. According to this New Scientist article, "Nerve activity in the teenaged brain is so intense that they find it hard to process basic information, ... rendering the teenagers emotionally and socially inept."

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:: Andrew 15:25 + ::
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