Origin of Spam

There are several stories concerning how spam originated but the most accepted version traces use of the term back to the mulit-user dungeons (MUDs) of the 1980’s.  Spamming referred to multiple behaviors which included the frequent and automated posting of messages and the flooding of a computer with enough data to cause it to crash.  Culturally speaking, the term is only indirectly associated with the canned luncheon meat; the original usage is said to reference the famous Monty-Python “Spam Loving Vikings” sketch, noted for its repetition of the word “spam” which hampers the ability for some of the characters to have a proper conversation.

The term spam gained popularity in 1994 after two Arizona lawyers enlisted a grey area tactics to mass-post advertisements on USENET.  Intended to advertise legal services for an upcoming Green Card lottery, the message was posted in rapid succession to every single newsgroup available.  Disgruntled users referred to the unsolicited commercial mailing as spam and the term was use in wide circulation thereafter.

Types of Spam

Common spam targets:

• Email
• Blogs
• Social Networks
• Newsgroups
• Mobile Phones

Popular spam content:

• Sex (Viagra, Semenax, links to pornographic web sites)
• Health products (pharmaceutical products, natural health products)
• Financial products (mortgage refinancing, loan consolidation, credit cards, auto loans)
• Electronics (discounted software, second-hand hardware)
• Education (online degrees, certification training, fake diplomas)

How Spam is Spread

Spamming has evolved from a one-man operation to a multi-billion dollar industry involving manufacturers, advertisers, computer hackers and web designers.

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So, to increase the numbers of students graduating from high school, they have implemented a student “success” strategy — also referred to as the “no-fail” policy — whereby students are able to pass their grades and courses even when they have done little or sub-standard work.

However, the problem with that approach is that when students do not learn the skills and content needed to do well in course work, they also do not do well on provincial standardized tests. Lest there be any doubt about the effect this no-fail policy is having on the system, see this link at MendEd  regarding an Owen Sound Sun Times editorial titled: “It’s time to slam the door on the no-fail policy in education.”

And, therein lies the McGuinty government dilemma and why they are at war with themselves. One policy (no-fail) is making the second (to increase a school’s rankings) impossible. So, what will this government do?

Well, according to Moira MacDonald’s column today in the Toronto Sun (H/T Catherine), they will use a “heavy hand” and  ”take over” individual boards. And, unbelievably, as MacDonald writes regarding the “consultation paper” the government just sent to all Ontario school boards, they are actually asking board stakeholders themselves to identify what indicators should be present for such a government take over.

So, what are the McGuinty government’s long term goals? Do they want to eliminate elected trustees? Do they want to micro-manage school boards from Queen’s Park — as they are already doing right now? And, do they want to completely eliminate the concepts of excellence and failure from our schools?  

In the meantime, while all this intimidation is going on,  just how are school administrators and classroom teachers supposed to pass all students while simultaneously making sure they have the requisite skills to do well on the provincial standards tests? Will they have to, as MacDonald mentioned in her column, resort to fudging test results?   

I certainly hope not. But, whatever the case, Ontario’s opposition leaders, Andrea Horwath and Tim Hudak have to do something NOW. They shouldn’t wait for the Legislature to return in the fall.

End Notes: Some background for those who have not read about this issue before. See here, here and here (on the Iowa study which proves the no-fail policy does not work in the long run). I have also written about Bill 177 (which is scheduled to become law in the fall) and whether or not it is intended to thwart school board trustees.

C/P at Crux-of-the-Matter.

Eastward Russian expansion at the expense of China began hundreds of years of suspicion and animosity between the two nations. In August of 1689, Imperial Russia and the Chinese Qing Dynasty signed their first treaty over land disputes in the modern Russian Far East, which was formerly part of China. Almost three-hundred years later, under the new political incarnations of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, conflict along the 4,300km (2,700 mile) border renewed due to ideological clashes between the two communist states. At the height of tensions, the Soviet Union had as many as 700,000 troops on the border, adjacent to a million Chinese soldiers (Blagov 2005). A few years before, during the reign of Joseph Stalin, the Soviets repatriated many Chinese still living in the border area or deported them to Central Asia Republics. Chinese leaders, including Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, openly bemoaned the amount of territory China had lost to Russia historically; land the Chinese believe was unfairly stolen. Nonetheless, in 1989 the Soviet Union and China normalized relations and reduced the militarization on the border by 1991.

In July of 2008, Beijing and Moscow resolved their last long-standing territorial dispute near the Amur and Ussuri rivers in the Russian Far East. The two nations finalized the transfer of 337 square kilometers (~130 square miles), 2% of land on the border area of the Russian Far East, from Russian to Chinese control. The Far East is about 37% of Russia’s territory, stretching from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean, bordering China, North Korea, and Japan. This concession was highly unpopular in Russia. Ekho Moskvy Radio conducted an opinion poll that found 82% of the listeners opposed the border agreement (Blagov 2005). This is in spite of Russian official’s attempts to assure the public that the land deal would not hurt Russian interests in the region.

>>Continued at Brooks Foreign Policy Review

Though I did not become an example of it, my experience with Carlos got me interested in the subject of marriage fraud. Marriage fraud is defined as the act of marrying an individual with the sole purpose of immigrating to or obtaining permanent status in his or her country of residence and lying about the true purpose of the marriage (i.e. pretending to be in love with him or her). Marriage fraud should be distinguished from marriage of convenience, where both parties agree to get married in order to help one of them immigrate but where there is no intent to deceive the other (a la Andie MacDowell and Gerard Depardieu in the film Green Card).

The most famous case of (probable) marriage fraud is perhaps that of African-American writer Terry McMillan and Jonathan Plummer. At the age of 42, McMillan took a trip to Jamaica and there met Plummer, then twenty. After marrying him and bringing him to the United States, she wrote a semi-autobiographical novel about her experience entitled How Stella Got Her Groove Back, which was later made into a movie with Angela Bassett in the lead role. The marriage ended a decade later when Plummer revealed he was gay. He claimed to have discovered his homosexuality only on coming to the States, but McMillan asserted he knew of it all along and merely used her to get a green card. Personally, I strongly believe McMillan’s explanation to be the more likely one – though as a gay man his desire to leave Jamaica was somewhat understandable given the extensive homophobia in that nation and though maybe McMillan should have wondered why, gay or not, a man half her age in a developing country would be so eager to walk down the aisle with her.

Away from the limelight, marriage fraud has recently become an issue in Canada as well. The Toronto Sun ran an article in 2006 about a Canadian woman who married a Cuban man, only to have him abandon her three months after he received his permanent residency and social insurance number in this country. She would moreover be legally obliged to reimburse the government for any welfare costs he might incur. A local Toronto Chinese daily featured a story on a woman whom many in the community suspected of marrying her now-deceased husband solely to enter Canada. Many marriage fraud incidents involve the South Asian community. The situation among them is further complicated by the fact that a considerable proportion of their marriages are arranged by family members, so it may be even more difficult for them to gauge their would-be spouse’s true intentions if he or she lives outside Canada.

Now some people have said “enough.” A number of organizations with names like Stopmarriagefraud.ca, the Canadian Marriage Fraud Victim Society, and Canadians Against Immigration Fraud have formed to combat fraudulent marriages. They have received support from British Columbia Member of Legislative Assembly Raj Chouhan. Their premise: that Canada’s immigration system makes it too easy for people abroad to wed Canadians just to get a foothold in this country. For instance, the husband or wife of a Canadian citizen is provided with permanent residency papers immediately upon arriving here. Anti-marriage fraud groups suggest that Canada instead adopt a similar framework to that in the United States and Australia, whereby foreign spouses of nationals must wait three years before they can become permanent residents. If the marriage dissolved before the end of that period, barring hard cases such as domestic violence the spouse would be deported to his or her homeland, and obviously the Canadian partner would not be on the hook financially for him or her.

Continued at Cynicsunlimited.com

There is no doubt that marriage is one of the most significant events of human life. There is a Russian proverb: if you have no brains when you are twenty, you are never going to have any; if you have no wife when you are thirty, you are never going to have a wife. What does it mean to have a wife in Russia?

Once an American friend of mine who was living in Moscow for a while asked my advice. He was going to make more close acquaintance of a girl, and he wanted to know what to do if she invited him to her dacha (cottage) for a weekend and told him that only the two of them would be there. A girl from the office where he worked had made such a proposition. He wished to ensure that a Russian girl meant the same thing as one in any other country would in a similar situation. I asked him if he liked the girl. He said yes, she was quite attractive. My advice was to accept the invitation – if he liked her, of course.

Several days later I asked him whether he had visited the girl in question. He replied that he had been busy that weekend and was unable to go to her dacha. When he retuned to the office, she informed him that she had gotten married and, alas, they couldn’t meet each other anymore. So my American friend asked me to explain why the girl had wanted him to keep her company at a remote dacha if she was going to marry another man. It was unlikely that she had found a fiancé within a week after his refusal to drive there with her.

I actually didn’t see anything strange in the scenario: a girl plans to be faithful to her husband but wants to have something else to remember, as she knows that sex with her spouse will be her one and only entertainment (again, if she plans to be faithful) for many years. Of course it cannot be said that this is an official tradition in Russia or that every Russian girl necessarily behaves this way. No doubt, though, that many Russian men are curious as to whether their future wives will be faithful to them after the wedding or not. What can be said on the matter?

I think the answer to the question is that times definitely change and that the ways of women change most of all. As elsewhere in the world, little by little women are gaining equality with men. Russia, like any other country, has always possessed double standards for the sexual behavior of men and women. Nobody cared if a man had sex before marriage or not, and people always turned a blind eye to his infidelity afterwards. (This depended mainly on the wife’s attitude. If she thought that she had to force her husband to be faithful, she might make an attempt to do so.) It is unlikely that Russian traditions in this respect were much different from those in other nations, especially European ones. A boy should “sow his wild oats” and a girl should save herself for her wedding night. This mentality was very well described in one of Russian writer Mikhail Sholokhov’s novels in which knowing that his wife turned out not to be a virgin made a Cossack really suffer. As a result the Cossack took to humiliating and tormenting her.

And as in other parts of the world, Russian women began to be more and more equal with men in their right to be faithful or unfaithful in marriage and to have intercourse before marriage or not. Whereas in the olden days a girl in Russia who was found not to be a virgin at marriage could see the gates of her house painted with soot as a sign of the gravity of her “sin,” now very few men show much concern as to whether their future brides have had prior sexual experience (a woman should just be clever enough not to bring up her past adventures to her husband). There was a short-lived fashion for virgins among the so-called “new Russians” (those who made their fortune during Boris Yeltsin’s reforms). They looked at everything as something that could be bought, so they viewed “buying” marriage as a move in the order of buying a video recorder or television set. When a man buys such a thing he wants a new device, not a second-hand one as a rule. There were many talk shows on the topic, and some men specifically invited for the programs (as a rule on Russian TV unemployed actors) tried to explain why they wanted to marry a virgin. There was not much logic in their speculations, and it soon got boring. (However, a woman in Russia can have a special operation if she wants to marry such a man and “become a virgin” again.)

The next step women took in their quest for equality had to do with unfaithfulness. In this case the logic was very simple. Women figured, “If men are not faithful to us, why should we be faithful to them?” According to the results of a survey that I was acquainted with, 90% of girls claimed that they planned to be unfaithful to their husbands sometimes. That is, many of them explained that it would be better to avoid infidelity but in reality it is often not possible. Of course it could be argued that the women were being frank when they responded to the survey (though it may have been the case that 100% of them intended to be unfaithful and 10% just lied or, on the other hand, they underestimated their own merits in the sense of morality). Nonetheless, we can take it as a fact that female infidelity has become quite widespread in Russia.

The only problem is that while experience before marriage, for women as well as men, is accepted by most people these days, it is much more difficult to find consensus on male and female unfaithfulness. Men have tried to argue in their usual way that it is much harder for a male to be betrayed by a spouse, but it seems such an argument is no longer convincing even to them.

Anyway, after marriage a Russian women’s life changes greatly. I have corresponded with many girls, and as a rule after marriage they can no longer write to other men. It is impossible for them to explain to their husbands that they have a friend. I have a friend in Sweden and I once asked her who is more important for a Swedish woman – a husband or a friend. The question was posed half in jest, but the woman responded that she would consult her friends and relatives on the matter. Recently she informed me that everybody replied that a friend is more important. And indeed, some time later her boyfriend (who was not an ethnic Swede) became a bit jealous of our correspondence. She wrote me about it, and I began to worry that it could spoil our friendship. However, she told me not to worry: she could have one hundred husbands or none, but I would remain her friend. If her boyfriend did not agree to that, he would no longer be her boyfriend.

For a Russian woman a husband is definitely much more important than a friend. Actually, what I would call a “classic” woman is a woman in an Eastern country who thinks a man is more valuable than she is. Some time ago I corresponded with a girl from Iran. She was amazingly beautiful. In Russia men often fear such girls because they are used to having a lot of men at their feet and become a bit arrogant as a result. The Iranian girl had a very nice character, and I never sensed any arrogance on her part while talking to her. I moreover always got the feeling from her letters that I was esteemed just for the fact of being male. Say for example I wrote to her that I was a feminist. She might consider feminism the stupidest thing in the world, but as a man I had a right to do anything I wanted and it should be OK with any decent woman.

Things are quite different in Russia. A Russian woman has an opinion of her own on every subject. Russians like to argue as it is, but for a woman it is really a point of honor to prove to a man that he is wrong and she is right. It would be fine if she wanted to be equal to a man. But feminism (I know that feminism has become a four-letter word for many even in the West, but I use the word just to designate a movement of equal rights for women) is extremely unpopular in Russia and our women want to be women, not persons equal to men.

It is very difficult to depend on somebody and argue with him all the time, all the more so because Russian women are extremely dissatisfied with their men. A modern Russian man is considered by women as too feminine, lazy, liable to lie on the sofa reading the paper or drink beer with friends instead of doing something in the house in the sense of hammering nails in the wall, which was always a man’s duty in our tradition. Not that you order a man around when you need something hung up on the wall. A man is the one who must do it. And this hammering of a nail is the first thing you will hear from a Russian woman if you talk to her about Russian men. Probably this is the main reason Russia holds the world record when it comes to divorce. Of course, there are women who stand on their own two feet – I have heard that up to 90% of owners and managers of small firms are women. But it is not easy for them to find husbands either, since often men feel humiliated if their wives earn more than they do.

All in all, I would say that in every aspect of our culture Russians are much less pragmatic than people in the West. I would give as an example another observation on Russian life by my American friend. In the USA, he explained to me, when you talk to a woman she always says something like “Alabama? Oh, I was there with my husband last summer” or “You like omelets? My husband does too.” It is not that you get the exact details of her vacation in Alabama or her omelet, but you learn right away that the woman is married. So if you plan to invite her to a restaurant and then to your place this information may be useful. What unpleasantly surprised my friend was that the only way to discover whether a Russian woman was married was to ask her about it. And since he didn’t know what is socially acceptable to inquire about in Russia, there was no way for him to know the girl’s marital status.

So a little question could have spared my friend a lot of angst!

Yet, the only thing we ever see or hear from school and Toronto District School Board (TDSB) officials is don’t worry, we have everything under control. Well, they clearly don’t and denial that there is a gang problem is only endangering more students and teachers.

Why doesn’t the TDSB and the parents involved, admit there is a gang problem? Because such an admission would mean that some in our society would have to take responsibility for the behaviour of their children — a politically incorrect topic if there ever was one. Yet, it doesn’t need to be. If it is a social problem, we need to deal with it. If it is a cultural problem, then those communities need to deal with it.

Because clearly, poverty and disadvantage have nothing to do with violence and violent behaviour. Many people have experienced poverty and disadvantage. Yet, their kids are clean and they respect their elders. And, most of those parents didn’t make excuses for their children’s behaviour. In the past, for example, if we got in trouble at school, we got in trouble at home. That was just the way it was.

In fact, in the past, most first generation Canadians were poor. Yet, their poverty did not affect the self-esteem of their children. They knew they were loved and their parents told them they could be anything they wanted to be with hard work and a good education — which is what has happened with most second and third generation children — no matter what their cultural or racial background.

So, surely, we can correct a social problem such as gangs and gang violence without it being considered racist and politically incorrect to name it and talk about it. Surely, parents will not blame the “school system” for being the problem for everything that is wrong in their and their children’s lives. Because if they do and we can’t talk about it without being labelled a racist, then politically correctness is just as responsible for the death and injury of students than the person or persons carrying out the violent acts.

I have written about this topic before (see also this link on the TDSB school safety report). Ever since young Jordan Manners was shot in the corridors of C.W. Jeffreys, TDSB trustees and staff have played down the violence.

And, what is particularly puzzling is the fact that the TDSB had appointed a very effective principal at Jeffreys by the name of Jim Spyropoulos (read about him here and here), who was apparently turning the school around. Yet, now we find out there is another principal (Audley Salmon).

Why can’t the TDSB not provide consistency and stability? Why do they keep changing principals, particularly when one is getting results? What is going on? Is the decision to appoint yet another principle, reverse racism, because Spryopoulos was not black. I certainly hope not.

The crux of the matter is that the TDSB has some explaining to do. For starters, they have to stop blaming political correctness for all the violence problems. If only we had more ways of increasing self-esteen ….. can only go so far. They have a gang problem and it’s long past time that we started to talk about it out in the open.

Here is a google link with all the articles you would ever need to prove the point that Toronto and the GTA has a school violence problem and here is an excellent source for examples of school violence throughout the GTA in 2008.

Update: It looks like former C.W. Jeffreys Collegiate principal, Jim Spyropoulos, has been promoted to Area Superintendent. I’m glad for him but it doesn’t change the fact that adminstrative continuity would be helpful for the school. Also of note, is the fact that Spyropoulos is responsible for the SW1 Region — which covers the west end of Toronto, Lakeshore and Etobicoke — not the area where Jeffreys is located.

C/P at Crux-of-the-Matter.

Yesterday, Moira MacDonald wrote an interesting column in the Toronto Sun. It was about how the current trend towards “total handgun bans” was actually going to make our schools and our society less safe — because the only people that will have access to guns will be those who have illegal guns that they are not afraid to use, no matter what their age.

But, as I read the column, something else more subtle jumped off the page — the hint that the Ontario Principals Council (OPC) somehow wanted less time for supervision and that the teachers’ unions weren’t happy with the idea that teachers would have to pick up the slack.

So, I went to the council’s website and this PDF file is what I found. Check out items 3 and 4 in particular. For non-educators it is going to sound like a lot of edu-babble but read the points carefully because what this is all about is NOT less supervision for principals but a way for them to do their jobs effectively and efficiently.

Why would collective agreements and OCT policies be a problem? Well, if I am reading this principal’s council leadership strategy correctly, it is because all too often they are stymied by aspects of decisions coming from both. In short, it seems the principals are having problems doing their jobs.

For example, can a principal freely question or reprimand a teacher’s behaviour? Are they able to ask a teacher’s to do something to improve safety? Or, would such a request mean a teacher would have to make a grievance or get the school’s union steward involved?

However, if they can’t, which is what I suspect is happening given the OPC leadership strategy, how on earth are principals supposed to do their job?

Remember, principals and teachers are supposed to be in the place of the parents — “in loco parentis.” And, principals are supposed to be the school’s CEO, director, leader and boss, right?

Yet, if that is no longer the case, because principals are trying to be all things to all people, while simulteously being stymied by the professions official body and collective agreements, who is protecting the welfare of our children?

C/P at Crux-of-the-Matter.

• Increasing the annual percentage interest rate (APR) on the outstanding balance without the customer acting delinquently on the account in question.
  Example: John’s FICO credit score drops by 70 points over several months. Although he has never missed a payment on his credit card, the lender sees him as a default risk and raises his APR from 19% to 34%
• Using APR increases as penalties without a 45-day written notice
  Example: Suzy has missed several payments over the past year. On September 3, the bank decides to raise the APR on her card. The increase effects all purchases starting September 10. Suzy does not become aware of these changes until she receives her bill later in the month
• Double Cycle Billing – using the previous month’s balance to calculate interest due on an outstanding balance
  Example: Jim owes $1000, payable by September 30. He pays $550, ensuring he is not delinquent but leaving $450 due. Most lenders calculate interest due based on the average daily balance and interest for the billing cycle (e.g. $1000* 19.5% * 25 / 365 = $13.36 interest) , but lenders who use double cycle billing take the average of the current month’s balance and the previous month’s balance. Thus, if Jim spent $2000 the previous month, the interest would be calculated on $1500 rather than $1000 (interest = $20.03).

This consumer-friendly legislation subscribes to the widely-held belief that those who use credit should be absolutely protected against unscrupulous lenders and their willingness to prey on so-called high risk customers. These customers are often considered by lenders to be profitable due to their tendency to revolve (retain a partial balance after the payment due date and pay interest fees as a result). This practice of targeting economically vulnerable customers has been examined at length by several industry observers and authors …

>Continued at Cynics Unlimited

For example, in September of 1972 when I started teaching elementary school, I had a homeroom Grade 6 and taught visual art to Grades 6 to 8. My morning consisted of two main blocks of time. From 9am until 10:30 it was language arts (reading, writing and spelling) and from 10:45 until noon it was math. That was it. Then, in the afternoon, there was phys. ed/health, music or art (on alternating days) from 1 until 2:00 and social studies or science from 2:15 until 3:30pm.

In many ways it was like “the balanced school day” now with the large blocks of time — but with fewer subjects. Clearly the emphasis was on what many call “the basics” — reading, writing and arithmetic, social studies and science.

Then, along came (in no particular order) daily classes of “sustained silent reading (SSR),” phys ed, health and French. Then, we were asked to include dental education and sex education in health. Now, I understand there are also curriculum units on diversity and equity (including gender equality), family education and drug education.

Now, a key question could be: How did all that change come about? Well, in my opinion, most of these additions were not as a result of research and academic elites telling the education system what to include in the curriculum.

While it is true educational researchers (following on the heels of the Hall Dennis Report in the late 1960′s) were responsible for the start of social promotion, open concept schools and so-called “whole language,” it was parental pressures that made the biggest difference when it came to adding to the curriculum — making it very crowded indeed.

So, here we are now, some 36 years later, and when we look back we realize just how much the publicly funded ”system” has responded to public pressures. The problem is, however, that in responding to those demands, nothing was thrown out.  The day was not lengthened. The year was not lengthened and, in fact, has actually been shortened because of all the professional development days.

In other words, time on the “basics” have had to be continually reduced to make way for all these other demands.  Now what? There are only so many hours in a day and something has to give.

While many love to blame teachers and the teachers’ unions for all that is wrong with the education system — and they are responsible for the professional development days and I admit that not all teachers are created equal – there also needs to be some soul searching here as well by parents, past and present.

How many times have I heard comments like: “Why are they not learning that at school? I mean, how much time can it take in a week to teach _____?” Fine, but you can’t have it both ways. And, while it may not be politically correct to ask: What is left for children and youth to learn at home?

Moira MacDonald has an excellent column in today’s Toronto Sun on the complexity of the school system and how busy it is. Well, if parents want more of the “basics,” they are either going to have to take something away, lengthen the school day or lengthen the school year. Or, all of the above.

This issue is not just about teachers and teachers’ unions. It is also about parents and society’s expectations. 

Just a thought. But, maybe that is why independent schools do so well (or even the publicly funded Catholic system who also manage to include religious classes). They do not need to be all things to all people. So, when parents are able to choose where to send their children, they decide which school provides what they feel their children need — and usually the curriculum in private schools focuses on “the basics.”

Something to think about. 

C/P at Crux-of-the-Matter.