The benefits of Spam

No, I'm not talking about the ham wannabe, I'm talking about the e-mail spam, and chain letters, etc that circulate around the world several times a day in periodic cycles. The most recent one that made it to my inbox was titled "Two moons on 27th August 2007." I'm a pretty big skeptic, but because it came from someone I trust (or appeared to), I decided to read on (I have a really good multi-layered anti-virus/malware solution so if it makes it through Google's spam filters from someone I know, I feel pretty safe).

This particular email purports that Mars will look as large and as bright as the moon in a few weeks. I'm a huge science fan, so I saw holes in this right away, but validated my thoughts on a respected debunking site. Then I got to thinking... As I was reading the article, I realized that I was learning something new. And gaining interest in something that I really hadn't thought about for a while -- in this case Mars and the other planets. My interest was piqued a while ago with all the Pluto ruckus (he was robbed!), but after that, nary another thought... Until now.

My wife likes to keep the kids interested in school-eque subjects as well as pass the summer a little faster by picking a topic/theme for the week. Each week they try to work in something special for that theme. This week I think is transportation. Another week was animals. It's been friendship one week already too. Maybe we'll need to make sure that the planets (and dwarf planets) are covered one time as well.

As to the debunking task - when you receive an email like this, especially one that tells you to "forward it to everyone in your address book" or the like, copy a small, but relevant portion (the subject line, or a distinct portion of the email) and head on over to Snopes and paste into the search engine and prepare yourself for a schooling.