10:51 p.m. - 2004-03-24
Earth Day
I learned something new today. Well, ok I usually learn something new everyday - that's why I troll the papers and the internet. That feeds my mind and makes it exercise a bit. But today's new thing was really unique. Hands up - who knows what a quoll is? Tell you later.
This story scared me. Phishers. It was about the increasingly sophisticated ways that criminals can steal things like your credit card and personal information from legitimate sites. They seem to do it by tracking the websites one visits, then they send you an e-mail purporting to be a special or important notice from that site. When you click on the link provided, it takes you to a replica of the real site. It is very hard for even experts to tell which are which. Companies like E-bay are now offering something for one's taskbar that will let you know if the webpage you are on is bona fide or not. What concerned me was when my youngest bought something through E-bay, we got an e-mail demanding payment again two days later. I already had the confirmation e-mail, as to our transaction, and asked why we were being asked to carry out the transaction again. Then we got an e-mail from someone who was a vendor asking us to alert E-bay if we got any e-mail that damaged the character of the sending vendor. Apparently, the e-mailer was angry with the vendor over a transaction and was e-mailing every name that appeared on the bidding list for the vendor's offerings. How did they get our e-mail addresses, if those are supposed to be kept private? And who do you believe? Vendor or buyer? Who are you supposed to check with, to verify whether claims or e-mails are bogus or not? That was all just for one transaction.
The next story was very upsetting because it points up a real gap in the way the global community deals with the security of the citizens of different countries. Massacre. 70,000 civilians in the Sudan have been massacred by their own government because of their colour, but there isn't even a sniff of this story in any newscasts. Why is that? Let's see. Very poor country, with no currently hot natural resources that would make it worth a "rescuer's" while I guess.
This story was fascinating because it was an examination of the environmental health of four major river systems in mainland Europe. Rivers. One of the many things I've always wanted to do has been to see Europe from it's rivers. Cities and countryside look very different when seen from water. I think they are more themselves somehow. A second story on the environment, this time about the right of citizens in any country to be free from being assaulted by pollutants released by others. Freedom Finally a discussion on the deer cull in Scotland Stag Click on Landward. Yes, I could have taken you directly to the actual bulletin board dear diary, but I couldn't resist the "Elvis was (created) here" story complete with photo. Now I have an earworm - I can hear the King singing "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" Which serendipitously leads me to point you to Music. Rupert Sheldrake, a Nobel prize winning botanist, is asking people to e-mail his assistant Telepathy if they find they can anticipate when a song is about to be played on a radio station, before it actually starts playing or if they often think of a song that it turns out that someone they care about is listening to. An example he gave was of a little girl starting to sing a song out loud that her mother had been thinking about while the two were driving home one day.
Anyway, the reason for the focus on the environment lately in my posts dear diary? Well "Earth Day" is coming up soon - April 22 - Gaia and I've been looking for food for thought. Spread through your pages it offers a range of issues that all fit together - maybe. Oh and quolls, Quolls? They are marsupials found in Tasmania and on the Eastern coast of Australia. They look like a cross between oppossums and cats. They have their young just like kangaroos and 'possums do. I'd never heard of them before, despite having studied Australian natural history in school and reading as much as I could over the years about that country. Hmmmmm.
I sent in my assignment about two weeks ago now. Odd thing is that I still am doing quite a bit of work each day on the preparation. More talk with political parties today - and yes the phone number I thought might be a bookie's is correct. Great. I left a voicemail but no response yet. Maybe it will stay that way. More discussion about the office rental thing. A lot of calls back and forth from Ottawa - less panicky sounding now - that's good. More calls to suppliers of things office worthy, like photocopiers. Then my assistant dropped by with all of the paperwork he's been sent so far. He said it was because he and his wife were moving into their new apartment next week and they don't have extra space for anything. I hope that's all it is. I wouldn't be the first Returning Officer to have to find a new assistant on very short notice, but it doesn't really make a lot of sense to back out now. All that reading and work without getting the pay that one would for actually working the event. Maybe I'm just reading the signs wrong.
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