Seymour and I manage or are technical contacts for about eight URLs. The contact email adresses for these sites get spammed like nothin' you've ever seen. Usually I scan the headers to see just what today's version of GET THAT B1G H A R D PENI5 is going to be, or to marvel at the free-form spellings. But today was the first time I've received a flat-out extortion attempt:

We have just charged your credit card for money laundry service in amount of $234.65 (because you are either child pornography web master or deal with dirty money, which required us to laundry them and then send to your checking account).
If you feel this transaction was made by our mistake, please press "No".
If you confirm this transaction, please press "Yes"

They then ask us to fill in our credit card info. Well, I guess I'll go ahead and do that. Then I'll open up the attachment that came with the email. What should I do after that?

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In other news, my brother is back from a year in Afghanistan. His wife and 18-month-old son are elated, as are we all. You would think this Arabic-speaking night-paratrooping Army Ranger would have been in Iraq long ago, possibly even just because he wrote his 1990 masters thesis on the the threat posed by Sadaam Hussein, but no. The Army doesn't allocate its resources that way. Now, I do not want my brother to go to Iraq--I don't think the U.S. should be there in the first place--but the Army is desperate for Arabic speakers. And if they can't properly manage their own people, how are they supposed to manage the occupation of Iraq?