[Table of Contents]

Convince Him/Her to Always Investigate Need (CHAIN) 

by Brian Metcalfe - Technology Education

Following the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the media bombarded us with information about Osama Bin Laden and Afghanistan.  In mid-October I, along with about 25 other recipient's, received the following e-mail message from a very concerned individual. To protect this person's identity, I have changed the sender's name to the fictitious name of "Patti Pasiton" and have also modified the e-mail addresses of all the e-mail recipients in this article. 

You are encouraged to read through this e-mail message entitled "Women in Fear - Afghanistan" and try to imagine what actions you would take if such a message, or one like it, entered your e-mail input queue one day. 

Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 09:33:40 -0500 
From: Patti Pasiton <xxx@merlin.mb.ca> 
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) 
X-Accept-Language: en 
To:Brian Metcalfe <bmetcalfe@wsdl.org>, 
   "xxx1@merlin.mb.ca" <xxx1@merlin.mb.ca>, 
   "xxx2@merlin.mb.ca" <xxx2@merlin.mb.ca>, 
   xxx3 <xxx3@mb.sympatico.ca>, 
   ... deleted recipients #4-#23 to save space ...
   "xxx24@merlin.mb.ca" <xxx24@merlin.mb.ca>,    
   "xxx25@aol.com" <xxx25@aol.com>

Subject: Women in Fear - Afghanistan 
X-RCPT-TO: <xxx22@wsd1.org> 

Hope you will add your name to this important human rights effort. 
xxxy & xxxz
-------- Original Message --------

Re: Afghanistan

If you decide not to forward this, please send it back to me. This is
an actual petition, and "signatures" will be lost if you drop the line.
Please take 3 minutes out of your life to do your part. And be sure to
include other members of your household who are willing to sign. Oprah
recently had a show about this atrocity and it was heartbreaking.

Petition to the United Nations Background Information:
Madhu, the government of Afghanistan, is waging a war upon women. Since
the Taliban took power in 1996, women have had to wear burqua and have
been beaten and stoned in public for not having the proper attire, even
if this means simply not having the mesh covering in front of their eyes.
One woman was beaten to death by an angry mob of fundamentalists for
accidentally exposing her arm(!) while she was driving. Another was
stoned to death for trying to leave the country with a man that was not
a relative.

Women are not allowed to work or even go out in public without a male
relative; professional women such as professors, translators, doctors,
lawyers, artists and writers have been forced from their jobs and
restricted to their homes. Homes where a woman is present must have
their windows painted so that she can never be seen by outsiders. They
must wear silent shoes so that they are never heard. Women live in fear of
their lives for the slightest misbehavior. Because they cannot work, those
without male relatives or husbands are either starving to death or
begging in the street, even if they hold Ph.D.'s. Depression is becoming
so widespread that it has reached emergency levels.

There is no way in such an extreme Islamic society to know the suicide
rate with certainty, but relief workers are estimating that the suicide
rate among women must be extraordinarily high: those who cannot find proper
medication and treatment for severe depression and would rather take their
lives than live in such conditions. At one of the rare hospitals for women,
a reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on top of
beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything, 
but slowly wasting away. Others have gone mad and were seen crouched in
corners, perpetually rocking or crying, most of them in fear.

It is at the point where the term "human rights violations" has become
an understatement. Husbands have the power of life and death over their
women relatives, especially their wives, but an angry mob has just as
much right to stone or beat a woman, often to death, for exposing an
inch of flesh or offending them in the slightest way.

Women enjoyed relative freedom to work, to dress generally as they
wanted, and to drive and appear in public alone until only 1996. The
rapidity of this transition is the main reason for the depression and
suicide; Women who were once educators or doctors or simply used to basic
human freedoms are now severely restricted and treated as subhuman in the
name of right-wing fundamentalist Islam. It is not their tradition or 
'culture', but it is alien to them, and it is extreme even for those 
cultures where fundamentalism is the rule. Everyone has a right to a 
tolerable human existence, even if they are women in a Muslim country.

If we can threaten military force in Kosovo the name of human rights
for the sake of ethnic Albanians, citizens of the world can certainly
express peaceful outrage at the oppression, murder and injustice
committed against women by the Taliban.

STATEMENT: In signing this, we agree that the current treatment of women
in Afghanistan is completely UNACCEPTABLE and deserves action by the
United Nations and that the current situation overseas will not be tolerated.

Women's Rights is not a small issue anywhere, and it is UNACCEPTABLE for
women in 2001 to be treated as subhuman and as property. Equality and
human decency is a fundamental RIGHT, not a freedom to be granted,
whether one lives in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

1) Giuliana D. Black, Daly City, CA, USA
2) Mariam Nayiny, Palo Alto, CA, USA
3) Sunaina Gulati-Ruh, Palo Alto, CA USA
4) Megan McCaslin, Palo Alto, CA USA
5) Blake Hallanan, San Francisco, Ca. USA 

... Entries 6 - 290 are deleted to save space ...

291) Christopher Armstrong, Vancouver, BC, Canada
292) D. Solloay, Vancouver, BC, Canada
293) G. Vance, Vancouver, BC, Canada
294) Wayne Xxx, Winnipeg, Man., Canada
295) Terri Yyy, Winnipeg, Man., Canada
296) Jacquie C. Zzz, Winnipeg, Man., Canada
297) Cecile Zzz, Winnipeg, Man., Canada
298) Marcel Zzz, Winnipeg, Man., Canada
299) Patti Pasiton, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

DIRECTIONS: PLEASE COPY this email on to a new message, sign the bottom
and forward it to everyone on your distribution lists. If you receive
this list with more than 300 names on it, please e-mail a copy of it
to:

sarabande@brandeis.edu mailto:sarabande@brandeis.edu

So what would you do if you were to receive such a message? Probably if you were as concerned and caring as "Patti", you would forward it to all your contacts in your e-mail address book. After all, you believe that you are indeed helping, in a small way, to mobilize forces to sign this petition to improve the conditions of Afghanistan women. Is there anyone who would not take "3 minutes out of your life" to support this worthwhile initiative?

However when this e-mail was sent to me, I became somewhat cynical. When I noticed that I was the 300th recipient of this e-mail message and, as such, was instructed to e-mail the copy to sarabande@brandeis.edu, I became somewhat skeptical. Certainly I could forwarding this e-mail message on to many more contacts in my address book or I could follow the recommended procedure and mail this message with its 300 signatures on to the e-mail address at Brandeis University (brandeis.edu). Rather I thought that such a sensitive issue warranted taking the time to investigate, validate and check on the legitimacy of the request. 

Fact or Fiction  -- Forward or Ferret

Since the Internet allows one to share information such as the "Women in Fear - Afghanistan" e-mail so widely, it seems fitting that one should use Internet tools to verify that this is indeed a legitimate request. 

I choose the Google search engine (www.google.com) and entered the two unique search strings of "sarabande" and "brandeis".  The very top of my "hit" list contained the message link "Do NOT Respond To Sarabande Chain Letter" which states "Please do not respond in any way; the owner of that address no longer wants the mail. Due to unmanageable volume, the sarabande address has not been receiving email since January 3rd 1999, and will never be a valid email address again." 

This chain letter, like many others, draws upon our sympathy for those less fortunate than ourselves. So all I needed to do was simply delete the message and get on with my life. Right? Well .. no. As a teacher, I believe that our jobs are to help educate and this opportunity seemed like a "teachable moment". However I was faced with the challenge of attempting to notify all of the other recipients of "Patti's" message to warn them not to continue propagating this chain e-mail message. I was concerned as well that since I did not know many of "Patti's" recipients they might accuse me of being very insensitive to a tragic situation. Furthermore because e-mail does not allow body language to be sent as an attachment, I was concerned that I might be labeled as a sexist redneck by those who didn't know me.

However I felt that it was most important to warn "Patti" in advance that I was about to inform all the recipients of her message so that they would better understand the complexities of chain mail. To this end, I sent the following message off to "Patti" to alert her in advance of the more detailed message which I would send out to all her e-mail recipients. 

Hi "Patti" ... THANKS for the basis of another article for "Bits and Bytes". I 
thought I best send this off to you before I send off my "soap-box" 
informational e-mail to all your supportive friends. Please note that I'm not
being critical of you or the cause ... rather I think we need to educate people
on how best to utilize e-mail. So if the next message seems rather egotistical,
it's not intended to be. In fact, I'm smiling (:-) as I type. I'm concerned
from an educator's perspective. 

Please remember in the next message that you read from me .. EDUCATION is my
goal not "finger pointing".

Take care & keep smiling (:-)
Brian

Once "Patti" was informed, I sent the following message off to all 25 of the original recipients to capitalize on the "teachable moment".

Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 20:39:02 -0500
To: Patti Pasiton <xxx@merlin.mb.ca>,
recipient #1 <recipient1@hotmail.com>,
recipient #2 <recipient2@minet.gov.mb.ca>, 
... recipients #3 - #24 deleted ...
recipient #25 <recipient25@barbados.cc>
From: Brian Metcalfe <bmetcalfe@wsdl.org>
Subject: Re: Women in Fear - Afghanistan - CHAIN LETTER 

Hi there .... I've bounced this back at the list of e-mail addresses that
were grouped with mine. Please note that I support the cause to which you
avidly subscribe -- the improvement of the quality of life for Afghan women.
However, I noted with some curiosity that the party who sent this to be was 
#299 in the list and I, as recipient #300, was to supposed to:

***************************************

"DIRECTIONS: PLEASE COPY this email on to a new message, sign the bottom
and forward it to everyone on your distribution lists. If you receive
this list with more than 300 names on it, please e -mail a copy of it 
to:
sarabande@brandeis.edu mailto:sarabande@brandeis.edu"

***************************************

I thought it might be wise to do a search on the intended recipient of
this rather large list of 300 or more names. I used Google and entered
"sarabande" & "brandeis" and got several "hits" asking people to stop
flooding this e-mail server with this (and other CHAIN LETTERS). See the 
"hit" reference below:

http://www.brandeis.edu/unet/newschainletter.html

I suggest that if you wish to support this cause that you go directly to
the Feminist Majority web site identified in the above reference at:
http://www.feminist.org/ and follow their link to "Help Afghan Women".

So in summary ... I am not critical of your action - in fact I support it! 
Rather, I'm concerned with how we use and misuse the power of e-mail.

If you have already forwarded the original message on to others then you
might want to share this message with them so they understand the
technological implications of such chain letters.  

I also direct you to an article I wrote in the March 2000 "Bits and Bytes"
entitled "H.E.L.P - Hoax Education for Lay People" which utilizes the chain
letter e-mail process to alert colleagues and friends to potential computer
viruses. Theses individuals, like you, were acting out of compassion to help
their fellow man (woman in this case).

I share this article with you to help you understand how quickly e-mail
chains can fan out and the responsibility we have to verify and validate
such e-mail claims before we continue to propagate the chain. The "H.E.L.P."
article can be found at:

http://www.wsd1.org/bitsbytes/9900/bbmar00/default.htm#STORY1

Take care & keep smiling (:-)
Brian
PS ... Thanks to the individual who forwarded this concern to me as that
party has provided me with the basis of another "Bits and Bytes" article. (:-)

Then again, just last week, Patti's brother "Peter" sent me e-mail which claimed not to be a chain letter. I'll let you read it so that you can decide.

Even though this message indicates that it is not a chain letter, it too needs investigation before it is automatically forwarded. Once again, I started Google's search engine and entered strings of characters that I thought might be unique to this message. However, this time I acted on my skepticism by entering the following two search criteria in brackets (+chain   +"Near the door"). The plus signs instruct the search engine to return only references where both sets of strings were present. If this passage was on the net and indexed together with a "chain" reference, any found web sites would advise me. This Google search immediately presented the following two web sites:

• Drunk Driving Chain Letter
• NerdHerd Virus Hoaxes and Chain Mail

Not only must we be aware of the potential exponential growth of e-mail chain letters, we must also recognize their potential for e-mail address "harvesting". I'm sure that many Internet readers are receiving more and more electronic junk mail. People that send out junk e-mail through this "spamming" process simply flood the system. Internet users are warned never to acknowledge spam e-mail by replying to the sender asking to be removed from the distribution list since this just verifies that the e-mail address is valid. Such "spammers" are always looking for creative ways to acquire valid e-mail addresses. Imagine if you received an e-mail chain message like the "Women in Fear" and, as a trusting 300th recipient, you e-mailed the message off to an individual. In this example, this individual now has 25 valid e-mail addresses that s/he can use for spamming. If this process is repeated by other well-intention individuals, this person can quickly acquire a sizable list of valid e-mail addresses which may be passed on or sold to electronic marketing firms.

In summary, before you pass on chain e-mail or hoaxes, always search to verify or validate the contents. Failing this you might recommend to colleagues and friends that send you chain e-mail that they take the "E-mailer's Pledge" or better yet they follow the maxim "When in doubt ... Don't send it out!" 

Relevant Links worth investigating:

• Drunk Driving Chain Letter at: http://hoaxinfo.com/drinkanddrive.htm
• NerdHerd Virus Hoaxes and Chain Mail at: http//www.nerdherd.com/hoaxes/emailtracking/fs-drinkanddrive.html 
• Hoaxbusters at: http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBHoaxInfo.html
• Symantec Security Hoax Page at: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
• McAfee Virus Hoaxes at: http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp
• Internet-101.com Hoaxes at: http://www.internet-101.com/hoax/
• Virus Hoax and Myth Information at: http://antivirus.about.com/cs/hoaxes/
• Truth About Computer Virus, Myths & Hoaxes at: http://vmyths.com

[Table of Contents]

Christmas Carol Quiz

from the Wilkinson Family Home Site at: http://www.wilk4.com/default.htm

Turn these sentences into Christmas carols. How many can you figure out? 

Christmas Carol Quiz 1

•      Approach everyone who is steadfast. 
•      Ecstasy toward the orb. 
•      Listen! The Foretelling spirits harmonize. 
•      Hey, Minuscule urban area southeast of Jerusalem. 
•      Quiescent Nocturnal period. 
•      The Autocrat troika originating near the ascent of Apollo. 
•      The primary carol. 
•      Embellish the corridors. 
•      I'm fantasizing concerning a blanched yuletide. 
•      I apprehended my maternal parent osculating with a corpulent unshaven male
       in crimson disguise. 
•      During the time ovine caretakers supervised their charges past midnight. 
•      The thing manifests itself at the onset of a transparent day. 
•      The coniferous nativity. 
•      What offspring abides thus? 
•      Removed in a bovine feeding trough. 
•      Creator, cool it, you kooky cats! 
•      Valentino, the roseate proboscises wapiti. 
•      The slight percussionist lad. 
•      Father Christmas approaches the metropolis. 
•      Seraphim we aurally detected in the stratosphere. 
•      The tatterdemalion ebony atmosphere. 

Christmas Carol Quiz #2

Try to identify the carol from the clues. Some are pretty tricky! The answers
are at the bottom... don't peek if you want to try it for yourself. 

   1. The apartment of 2 psychiatrists. 
   2. The lad is a diminutive percussionist. 
   3. Festoon the entryways with colorful decorations. 
   4. Sir Lancelot with laryngitis. 
   5. A B C D E F G H I J K M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y X Z 
   6. Present me naughty but dual incisors for this festive Yuletide. 
   7. The event transpired when a smog-less bewitching hour arrived. 
   8. Exuberation to this orb. 
   9. 288 Yuletide hours. 
  10. Do you perceive the same longitudinal pressure which stimulates my auditory sense organs? 
  11. The red-suited pa is due in this burg. 
  12. Stepping on the pad cover. 
  13. Uncouth dolt has his beezer in the booze and thinks he is Dark Cloud's boyfriend. 
  14. Far back in a hay bin. 
  15. Leave and do an elevated broadcast. 
  16. That exiguous hamlet south of the holy city. 
  17. Behold! I envisioned a trio of nautical vessels. 
  18. Listen, the winged heavenly messengers are proclaiming tunefully. 
  19. A joyful song relative to hollow metallic vessels which vibrate and 
        bring forth a ringing sound when struck. 
  20. As the guardians of little woolly animals protected their charges
        in  the shadows of the earth.

The answers to Christmas Carol Quiz #2 can be viewed by clicking on this link.

[Table of Contents]

by Brian Metcalfe - Technology Education

MaryLouise Lisi, Technology Education Support Teacher, and Keith Benson, North District Technology Support Teacher, have invested an inordinate amount of time and energy in researching an extensive list of educational freeware. With the help of Kenn Olson, of AV & Computer Repair, they are in the process of compiling these resources onto a limited number of CDs for installation within our schools. Although all of the programs are freeware, not all freeware licenses give the "taker" free installation rights. MaryLouise and Keith read over the licensing agreements and where necessary contacted the authors for permission to put the software on a CD for installation within schools in our Division. Everyone who was contacted gave limited permission. In other words, we were given "Division" rights only. Consequently this CD, once it is compiled, cannot be shared outside our schools and arrangements must be made to have this freeware installed.

However knowing that there are many educators who might like to evaluate the products at home or explore them with their own children or relatives over the holiday break, MaryLouise and Keith have provided me with several Microsoft Word files which identify the company, program name, grade level, curriculum area, description and, most important, the embedded Internet address, so that readers can use it to acquire any of the products that they would like to investigate. Users who do not have Microsoft Word, or the free Word viewer installed on their computer, will need to download the viewer first (by clicking on the previous link) before downloading and perusing these very extensive educational freeware lists:

It's Free(ware) That Is! - MaryLouise Lisi & Keith Benson                                               [#313] Freeware Listing (in Microsoft Word format) for:
	Early Years (53KB) Early Years List.doc Middle Years (63KB) Middle Years List.doc Puzzles (39KB) Puzzles.doc Free Worksheets (225KB) FreeWorksheets List 1.doc Extras (57KB) Extras.doc