Friday, August 1, 2003 Sickness in the world Okay, this is just plain sick. I can only wonder what kind of bastard would do this sort of thing: Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Memorial Vandalized. HIROSHIMA - Hundreds of thousands of paper cranes commemorating the victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima were set on fire Friday, just days before the city marks the 58th anniversary of the bombing. Firefighters quickly put out the blaze, but about half of the paper cranes offered as homage were destroyed, Hiroshima prefectural police spokesman Kikuo Yokoyama said. Vandals were apparently to blame, and have torched cranes before, Yokoyama said.  -Miami Herald, August 1, 2003 I've been there, and I've seen them, these meticulously folded symbols of hope, sent by people from all around the world (when I was there, I noticed cranes folded by Brownies from Long Island, NY and schoolkids from Ann Arbor, Michigan). All that work, all that thought, all those symbols of people's longing for a peaceful future, gone in moments because of some warped personality with access to matches. There's some further symbolism there, but i don't think I want to touch it. 10:16:39 PM    Comment on this post! [] Spam spam spam I hate spam, I really do. During those times when I'm wading through my inbox deleting spam after spam, in my mind, I picture spammers as low and vile con artists with shriveled raisins for souls. I envision them as sleazy unwashed excuses for humans, just like child molesters or Nazis. This is, of course, rank prejudice, and surely has no connection to reality. But sometimes, it's nice to have your prejudices confirmed, though with an extra dollop of the surreal, as done by this story from Salon.com>: In recent weeks, [David] Bridger has published his cellphone number in thousands of junk e-mails sent all over the world. The spams invite other "real bulkers" to join him in peddling a penis-enlargement pill called Pinacle. "Everybody wants a bigger penis, so this product pulls a massive amount of sales ... All you do is MAIL, MAIL, MAIL. And collect your commission check," claim Bridger's invitations. For more than three years, Bridger has deftly balanced the most difficult task of a spammer (or "bulk mailer," to use the term he prefers): giving out enough contact information to make a sale without putting the whole operation at risk. For Bridger, keeping a grip on his own identity may be another challenge. When he's tired or distracted and the cellphone chirps to life, Bridger might even have to pause and ask himself: What is my name today? Legally, the man who goes by the name Bridger appears to be Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a former white-power activist who renounced his birth name, Andrew Britt Greenbaum, in 1996 at the age of 18. But in the late '90s Hawke also went by the moniker Bo Decker. At the time, he was head of the Knights of Freedom Nationalist Party, one of the fastest growing neo-Nazi groups in the United States, which he later renamed the American Nationalist Party while a student at Wofford College in South Carolina. But he hasn't really used the names Decker or Hawke online for years. Those identities imploded in 1999, shortly after word got out that his father was a Jew from the Boston suburbs, and people started calling him a "kosher Nazi." The ANP and its leader crawled quietly under a rock. The whole story is here, at: Meet the spam Nazi. What does a former white-power activist do after being drummed out of the movement? He turns to peddling penis-enlargement pills. [Salon Headlines] 9:52:04 PM    Comment on this post! []