It is certainly true that I can and should exercise more patience, to say nothing of tact, when responding to controversial issues. I also have to beware of seeming to ascribe ulterior motives where there may have been none. <BR> <BR>However, if we can get beyond my personal failings for a minute, let us separate me, the person, from the problem at hand. Let us consider if subjecting something to critical and skeptical review is necessarily an evil thing. For example, people do this here all the time, when they submit an itinerary for review. Would it really be doing a kindness to these third graders to unreservedly endorse a program, without examining the details first? If one understands that being skeptical about a project is more a matter of wise procedure and less a matter of challenging the personal integrity of anyone concerned, then one is less at risk of being personally offended. One is also less at risk of causing harm. <BR> <BR>For is it just possible an illegitimate party is using, or trying to use, someone else’s credit card? We do know that this happens. <BR> <BR>Is it just possible an illegitimate party has submitted a legitimate email address on a message board? This can also happen. <BR> <BR>Carol, I stand corrected: you are quite right that the original project was legitimate in its conception (although perhaps not very wise.) However, this is the third such project I encountered, and one of them did indeed result in Yahoo closing down the class email account, as I warned could happen. http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/99...idg/index.html <BR> <BR>Furthermore, there is also a temporal aspect to legitimacy; what is legitimate at one time may not be legitimate today. It seems that schools sometimes find it very difficult to cancel these things once they find out how very problematic they can be. <BR> <BR>My computer does not support the NPR radio site; so I turned instead to the following site for a reference: http://www.snopes2.com. It made reference to an apparently different email project, the Taylorsville Elementary School Email Project; if you click on “Now Circulating” you can find the latest update on this project, which concluded early. <BR> <BR>The analogy to a message in a bottle isn’t strictly accurate; these sorts of projects amount to soliciting people to send breeding pairs of rabbits to Australia. J As Rex pointed out, such projects proceed geometrically, with email addresses saturating in very short order. <BR> <BR>One final observation: if 300,000 cars come into your neighborhood looking for a parking space, this can cause problems for you and your neighbors even if the drivers are friendly, and have no intention of parking in your driveway or garage. <BR> <BR>In any event, perhaps we all learned something from this discussion. <BR>

What I learned: Perhaps intelligence is not such a great virtue. We all think too much. We might benefit if we got a little more exercise, sunshine, and fresh air, put our computers in a boarding kennel for a month, and abstained from writing of any kind for a week or so. <BR> <BR>In any event the class project, while not a "dead horse", is about to be put to pasture, as the clock approaches midnight and the March 1 deadline is near. It seems to have had a good life, with or without your blessing. <BR> <BR>And yes, the teacher did use Yahoo e-mail, but no, her account was not shut down. A New York Times article last week reported on a similar project started by a 6th grade class in a different school in North Carolina (maybe the project was suggested in a N.C. teacher assn. magazine or convention?) <BR> <BR>I'm tired of this topic now. Bye bye.... <BR> <BR>

I knew, almost as soon as I posted it, that I hadn't managed to convey the tone that I'd liked. The curse of this medium is that you can't hear my tone of voice, you can't hear me struggling to avoid being misunderstood. When I said "..maybe we all learned something, " I was thinking principally of myself. <BR> <BR>It's a new day, onward and upward.

up again!

Thanks for trying to "top" this again, but we don't need to any more. The internet project ended March 1. It's over (except for the learning part!). <BR> <BR>So NO MORE TOPPING, but thanks again.