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Anthrax To Kill Snail Mail
omnirealm writes "Steven Levy over at NBC expressed his opinion that the new anthrax thread in our snail-mail is going to be a major catalyst to a general switch to e-mail as the primary means of written communication."
I thought the 34-cent stamp took care of that pretty well.
I'm not exactly afraid of getting Anthrax in the mail.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It's interesting that Levy thinks the end of snail mail is in sight when digital means of authentication are rarely used -- when available. Now that Sen. Gregg and his like-minded compatriots have launched another offensive on crypto software, expect the issue to get even more snarled. It takes more than "Sincerely, Jim" at the bottom of an email to make me trust its source.
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Really, the average person doesn't need to be worried about getting anthrax in the mail. I don't think its much of an issue - at least its not for me.
... its still there and doesn't show any sign of disappearing.
People forget that snail mail is still very important to having an effective communications, as in many cases it can't be beat. The quickest way to get something physical from one place to another (barring courier services) is by mail. To say that the USPS is dead because no one will want to mail stuff is not only premature and unrealistic, but also quite sensationalistic. In most cases, this one especially you can tell when someone is making stuff up to make the headlines rather than writing stuff that actually makes good sense. Having read this article, it makes very little sense at all. As much as I use computers/email, I for one would be majorly pissed if one day I found mail service was no longer there.
People say time and time again the mail is dead. But just look
While many people may have to switch to e-mail if this anthrax scare continues, I doubt it'll completely kill snail mail.. People are sentimental, or at least I am. I love receiving handwritten letters from my friends and family.. not to mention photos I can hold in my hand and hang on my wall.. e-mail won't replace this for me..
Like on the good 'ole USA? (There's no proof thus far that these cases are the result of any external terrorist group. It could well be a good 'ole boy here in the US pissed of at "the libral media's showing Osama bin Laden's videotaped propaganda" or the like).
Perhaps I have a Luddite streak in me somewhere, but I also have an irrational fondness for "old" media: LPs, newspapers, printed books. I suppose someday I can spend a Sunday morning at the local coffee shop reading over the electronic version of the Los Angeles Times on my Palm XVIII, but it won't be the same, and I will miss getting newsprint on my fingers. But I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way, and it will be used as justification to avoid change. E-mail has many advantages, but it belongs to a new generation, it seems. My mother might learn, but my grandmother never will.
"she says i'm lousy conversation. as if that's supposed to help."
Someone targets airplanes, and people stop flying. Someone targets mail, and people stop using mail. Is this kind of a response reasonable? There's a lot of knee-jerk reactions which are not necessarily effective, and the economic effects of wholesale eschewment of mail and air travel are pretty widespread.
This suggestion reminds me of the panic surrounding the unibomber. People were afraid to send and receive packages, although millions of packages were sent through the FedEx, UPS and the mail every day.
It is upsetting that mail is something we can't implicitly trust after the events of the last week, but it is an extremely useful and, I think, necessary tool. Air travel is still quite safe and I expect to continue to fly when I need to without much thought of what if...
I refuse to live my life worried every minute about what might happen.
uh, no.
Simply put the reps are all spammed out. Every single interest group in the country country can send thousands of email to a rep, complete with slightly varied names and subject lines, and content. It is a trivial programing problem to generate sentences and paragraphs out of a database with calibration for education level and other demographics. Any programmer competent in databases could set something like this up.
So the only way reps can verify that the input is legit is if it is postmarked from their district, hand written, etc.
You think you get Junk Mail? multiply what you get by a factor of a thousand or two for snail mail, especially if you live in an important district.
So the odds of them actually reading email are slim and none. Think of them being under a continous DDOS attack for the past 5+ years, if not more. They probably pick out one out of every 100 or 200 or so at random, and use that as a sample of what they get
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Personally, I still use real letters for the personal touch, and I love to recieve a really nice letter from someone I don't see very often. There's jst something special about a letter, its something people take time over and put a bit of effort into. Emails are just too easy, people reel them off all the time!
If I want to make a serious inquiry or express an opinion to a company, government agency, or politician, I send a letter.
For even more impact, a Handwritten letter.
Email, being so cheap and easy to send, carries no impact anymore. I hope that people don't stop reading their mail; a first-class letter remains the most effective way of making yourself heard.
The vaccine is currently reserved for US Military personnel. The company that produces it isn't even capable of meeting the military's needs. Plus, there are a lot of fears about the side effects; some people think it's at least partially responsible for Gulf War Syndrome.
Pulmonary Anthrax can be treated with antibiotics up to a point. After serious symptoms develop, antibiotics aren't particularly effective. Treating the disease requires knowing that you've been exposed (or may have been exposed), then getting medicated ASAP. In a serious attack, there's no guarantee that these things could happen quickly enough to avoid a good number of deaths.
My theory is that the anthrax infections we've been reading about are not the responsibility of terrorists, but just some nutcase somewhere in the country who is trying to scare the hell out of everyone
It's a good theory. But it's still scary to think that there's somebody in the country who's a) got Anthrax, and b) is willing to use it on innocent people. It's not a huge step from there to releasing it in a public place. At this point, our best hope is that they don't have a good mix of the stuff.
I think the columnist may have an argument when it comes to *unsolicited* snail mail. This may have an impact on public figures who regularly receive unsolicited mail from lots of people, but that could be a positive impact. Right now a written letter to one's Congress-critter is considered more effective than email, but maybe this unfortunate situation will make public officials consider email more legitimate now since they might be reluctant to receive "real" mail.
Of course, that is exactly the danger from cutanious (sp?) anthrax-- the infected paper-cut.
I have argued that disasterous bioterrorism is truly prohibitive. This current attack is not very effective at causing large numbers of deaths BUT it is bisible and makes people very nervous. If they wanted to kill people, explosives would be much better weapons, but that is not their goal. Instead it is to intimidate many people and make them FEAR death. And to this end, this little stunt may be very infected indeed. This is why lovebug, et. al. have not caused people to switch from Outlook, but this scare might impact the USPS-- the fear is not purportionate to the risk (I still consider using Outlook to be a bigger risk than snail mail).
But although email is already my primary means of written communication, there are some times when it is not as good as an old-fassioned letter. So I am not terribly concerned except to consider snailmail to be as dangerious as email...
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Besides, milions more are infected, and tens of people killed, from common diseases passed around the classroom!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yes. This is the stupidest premise I've heard in a while. First off, only the people who send mail can switch to email, and why would someone sending antrax want to switch? Secondly, how would switching help unless companies say they will only accept email, and no more snail mail. That sounds like a business ending decision. There is a large amount of stuff sent between businesses that is much more conveniently done through snail mail. Every business is going to buy scanners, have everyone get their electronic signature, purchase and instruct everyone in encryption, etc? All this because four, count em, four companies have received antrax email? How many companies have received mail bombs before this? And they still use mail? Wow!
My last question is why was this article posted to begin with?
- I like pudding.
I just told a good friend who told me she had flu symptoms to phone the ER and see if she should go in, so I apologize if a dip in snail mail seems a bit on the trivial side at this moment.
Phone the ER because of flu symptoms? Sorry, but here in Ontario people going into their local ER because they had trivial things like a common cold or a regular flue is directly responsible for thousands or tens of thousands of deaths per year (because the guy who actually does have a problem gets deferred while the person with the headache gets treated). If you are saying "Stop the mail! Someone might die!" then that is absolutely, positively, grossly ridiculous and knee-jerkish: Did you know that every consumer good you buy has a "human cost" to it? Why not ban car travel, air travel, hell human interactions in general because people might die undertaking any of those? 96 people died building the Hoover dam? Do you think about that when you turn on your computer? The Empire State Building took 5 lives directly in its construction, and countless more in the mining, smelting and rolling of the metal to build it, in the transport to get items to and from the construction site, etc.
"On a long enough timeline the survival rate for all of us is 0." Fight Club - Narrator (Jack) The human condition is one where death is part and parcel with the terroritory.
What stops a person from putting a fake return address now versus having no return address?
Chas, you might find one hundred megaton bombs impressive, but people with the blessing of Allah do not fear that at all. They are more willing to die, more than you are willing to live..weapons and death do not scare these people, which is why they are a VERY VERY dangerous enemy.
the psychological research consistently shows, people are more sensitive to (perceived) control of risk level, rather than absolute risk level.
:) ) or be afraid of flying but ok with driving (since they are the ones at the wheel).
hence people will vigorously protest the opening of the local nuclear waste dump while smoking cigarettes (they can stop smoking anytime
Anyhow, I'd hate to see the Postal Service disbanded by any act of this or a future congress by Constitutional amendment. I'm not sure it could happen anyway. How in the world would the IRS get my tax payments? Keep in mind, amendments are intended to be additions to the Constitution. However, when ignorant or illegal changes are made, only by subsequent amendment may they be removed. I don't trust most of our congressmen to have the scruples to properly change the Constitution and that is the only way the USPS could be disbanded. I hope that congress sticks to US Code where they are intellectually capable of making changes. To be honest though folks, we shouldn't even be thinking this way. Everyone is having reactionary feelings and concerns about the attacks. It really is to be expected, however our representatives in Washington have a responsibility to us (civilians, citizens) and to the future of these Great United States. Devaluing the power of the _Constitution_ with ridiculous changes will only do harm to our freedoms. Changing the Constitution during this time of great distress would be a crime against all Americans, past, present and future.
No changes to the Constitution will change the fact that Al-Qaida and Bin Laden want to kill every American, and more correctly, every non-Muslim. This war _he_ has started against us is because we are the most free peoples on the planet. He has called for Jihad and yet we are called the Crusaders... I have great difficulty dealing with this kind of logic. He is unhappy that Muslims, Christians, Jews and atheists can and do live relatively peacefully in this country. In no other country in the world can this be claimed; certainly not in the Middle East. It is because of this that we must respect and uphold our freedoms, even in this time of terror as proof to the world that we can remain free. -Bob
I thought email was the primary means of written communication nowadays. Snail mail is of course still used for business letters, especially form letters, contracts, junk mail, etc. Email is the preferred medium for just about everything else though. Why would anyone want to send a paper letter to someone when they didn't have to? If you ask me, email ranks up there with the invention of the radio, television, telephone, and written language itself.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
The fact is who ever is sending it one letter at a time obviously doesn't have enough brain cells to figure out how to use the existing distribution mechanisms of society to do the job.
Actually, the goal of terrorism is to get draw attention to the cause that the terrorists support, not kill large numbers of people. What better way to get massive media coverage than sending bio weapons to high profile media centers? They could send them to government officials, or even you or I, but the gov't. would most likely sweep that right under the rug to avoid mass hysteria. Hit the media themselves, and you're guaranteed to get a huge media response. It's the same chillingly efficient and minimalist logic behind the WTC attacks. Low tech, low investment, high concept - virtually impossible to detect before it's too late.
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