If you take away the fact that most spam (of the “we will send you money if you send us some first” variety) is sent by crooks and people you wouldn’t want to associate with, it never ceases to amuse me (hey, you aren’t going to be able to stop it completely so you might as well laugh), because of the poor English, the complete ridiculousness of the scam and the fact they often claim that much praying led them to your e-mail address (all canonical gospels miss out the bit in the Lord’s prayer that talks about starting up one’s computer and turning on the e-mail harvesting software).

And besides, no-one else sends me e-mails calling me “Dearest One”.

But today’s e-mail (which in a mysterious turn of events ended up in my hotmail account and not the usual Uni one) had possibly the best introduction I’ll ever get. It went a bit like this (I’m leaving some of the less amusing bits out, and this is honestly not just because I stupidly deleted it):

Dearest One [see?],

I greet you in the name of our one and only Gracious Lord Jesus Crist. You may be suprise that I contact you, pleased not to be alarmed [waffles about not being a crook and people thinking he wants to sell "viagara"]. I am honest individual and do not wish to sell viagara. Viagara is from the devil, and the Lord will surely cause all viagara sellars to committ suicide.

How are you?

the rest is a bit uninteresting, it’s just a bog standard offer of $30 million to become “business partners”.  They don’t state what the  nature of the business will be, and are “egerly awating [my] reply”

They will be forever disappointed. It’s a shame because I wanted to thank them for giving me a good laugh. I wasn’t aware there were inter-spam wars, or that vi@gra was particularly evil.

Ok, I will admit that when I get email spam (mostly from Korean mathematicians) I sometimes read it for a cheap laugh.

But this was quite creepy, as I appeared to be sending spam to myself while I was in the shower:

has the Prince of Nigeria finally started using mind control?

Unfortunately, I was not able to take up my own offer, but it remains to be seen if I can persuade myself to get into any kind of business deal with myself. Confused? Join the club.

It’s been a while since I received entertaining spam, possibly because someone at head office seems to have bothered turning on the uni spam filter (I kind of miss the Who’s Who spam though..) .

Regardless, some still gets through, and being in the Maths department means I get very specific spam. Like this, I got to today, which I enjoyed.

Dear Mathematician.

Fermat’s Last Theorem asserts that there do not exist none-zero integers, X, Y and Z such that Xⁿ+Yⁿ=Zⁿ, where n>2. The Theorem was first stated by Fermat in the early 1600s. He claimed that he had found a short proof, but left no evidence of what it was. Finding a proof became the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics until Andrew Wiles, in the late 1990s, found one. The original version of his proof was about 200 pages long, and so the question remains if a much shorter proof exists. Let A=Z-Y and B=Z-X in Xⁿ+Yⁿ=Zⁿ. Then we can get X-A=Y-B=Z-A-B=X+Y-Z. Here, our FLT proof is very short and plain.

Please, accept our appendix pdf file.

Thank you.

Sincerely yours. Jae Yul Lee and You Jin Lee.

appendix : A Short and Plain Proof of FLT. pdf file.

Um, no thanks. My mother always told me not to accept non-peer reviewed papers from polite yet unsolicited Korean Mathematicians.

Wow, it’s what I always wanted! Tense? Nervous headache? The best bits are the “recommendations” at the end. What garbage.

<<Hi,

The Fear Course is coming to [my home town]

Do you feel nervous before doing certain things?
Do you get anxious easily?
Do some things fill you with fear?
Do you shrink inside at the thought of public speaking, meetings or talking
to a large group?
Do you live in trepidation of being asked the question you cannot answer?

Do you get:
Increased heart beart beat
Sweaty palms
Dry mouth / throat
Sick feelings
Blank mind
The shakes
Loss of control / inability to say what you wanted to?

Want to be calm and in control?

Learn to do things with ease, speak with confidence in any situation. You can
be calm and think straight in the very situations that used to bring panic, fear
and anxiety with the fear course.

This 1 day course has been travelling the country with great success and the course dates for Scotland are:

[Town A]          -         22nd September
[Town B]            -         5th November
[Town B]          -           21st January
[Town A]          -         4th February
[Town B]            -         22nd April
[Town B]          -           7th July

All the courses are run in city centre locations for easy access and cost £155 inclusive of VAT, materials and online post-course support.

For more information about how to be calm just paste this url into your address
bar of your browser:

[www.youmustbereallygullible.com]

What others are saying about the Fear course:

“It works!” GHJ Reading University

“Why don’t they teach this to you earlier in life. It would have saved me
so much pain. Thank you.” NN Oxford Brookes University

“Thank you. You have given me my life back” DS Oxford University

“Fully recommended – everyone should do this course” GF York University

“I am stunned that it was so easy. Amazing! Thank you” GD Essex University

“Dear Dave, Just a quick note to say thank you for the workshop last week.
I didn’t fill in the feedback form on the day as I wanted to see if it would
work in reality. It does! As you know I had to give a research paper to the
conference on Monday which I was dreading. I was so calm. You would have
been proud of me. I have now been asked to go to five universities to talk
about my research. One in America all expenses paid! Can you imagine it -
me being an international speaker, I can’t thank you enough. ” Jane Mahon

“This has changed my life” PJG Cardiff University

Just paste this URL into the address bar of your browser:

[www.giveusallyourmoney.com] for more information and to book.

If you think that you have received this email in error and don’t want any
more academic offers from us just send an email to:

[spam@spamalot.com] with the subject Remove.

www.[stuff].com

XXXXXXXXX Ltd.=20

>>

If you’re expecting a delivery, you might be tempted to open an email from “United Parcel Service” with subject title

“UPS Tracking Number 6640274484″

it will then tell you

” Unfortunately we were not able to deliver postal package you sent on July the 1st in time
because the recipient’s address is not correct.
Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office

Your UPS”

Whatever you do, do NOT open the attachment, it’s a nasty trojan horse.

On a similar note, spam seems to be evolving. I got an interesting spam from a ” Babu Ranganathan ” (strangely delivered to “Doctoral Student Strothers”) with the title ” Conservative theologian no longer believes eternal torment (Article for faculty and academia)” which was actually an interesting essay on the difference between eternal punishment and eternal suffering. He didn’t mention eternal suffering at the hands of people sending unwanted emails to folk though. But fool me more for reading it (I don’t read every spam, I’d like to point out…).

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to work.. ooo the Prince of Nigeria has died and is leaving me his fortune? Count me in!

This time it’s from the “Internal Revenue Service” giving me a “tax refound” [sic] of $620.54.

Rather than trying to flog you viagra or Nigerian get-rich-quick schemes, spammers have now tried to use the lure of fame to get what they want. Check out this email I got today:

Dear <my email address>,

You were recently appointed as a biographical candidate to
represent your industry in the Who’s Who Among Executives and
Professionals, and for inclusion into the upcoming 2008-2009
“Honors Edition” of the registry.

We are pleased to inform you that on May 1st, your
candidacy was approved. Your confirmation for inclusion will be
effective within five business days, pending our receipt of the
enclosed application.

The Office of the Managing Director appoints individuals based
on a candidate’s current position, and usually with information
obtained from researched executive and professional listings.
The director thinks you may make an interesting biographical
subject, as individual achievement is what Who’s Who is all
about. Upon final confirmation you will be listed among
thousands of accomplished individuals in the Who’s Who Registry.
There is no cost to be included.

We do require additional information to complete the selection
process and kindly ask that you access this form on our website
at:

<website to download a virus, probably>

Sincerely,

Matthew Johnson
Managing Director

Madison Who’s Who is not associated or affiliated with Marquis Who’s Who or any other Who’s Who.
30-01 Northern Blvd. Long Island City, NY 11101

Clearly they have not done their research as I am neither an executive nor a professional. Am I the only one who actually finds spam more amusing than annoying?