The Foreign Service Journal, May 2012

12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 1 2 C Y B E R N O T E S with the goal of recognizing individuals or institutions conducting “scientific research in the life sciences leading to improving the quality of human life.” Opponents took little consolation from a concurrent decision to change the program’s name to the “International UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea Prize.” The Committee to Protect Journal- ists ( www.cpj.org ), a c onsistent critic of the donation, quickly denounced the decision. “The purpose of this prize is to whitewash the image of one of Africa’s most repressive leaders, and no one is fooled by the name change,” CPJ Africa Advocacy Director Mo- hamed Keita said. He added, “The 33 states who voted in favor have chosen to promote the image of President Obiang rather than uphold basic stan- dards of human rights. They should be ashamed.” Lisa Misol of Human Rights Watch ( www.hrw.org ) wa s equally scathing. “This vote is an insult to the people of Equatorial Guinea and damages the reputation of UNESCO,” she told AFP. There is still some cause for hope, for a legal opinion requested by the UNESCO board suggests that a change in the source of financing may have in- validated the program. On that basis, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, who is opposed to the prize, plans to request reconsideration of the decision. — Steven Alan Honley, Editor Some Unexpectedly Tasty Spam Writing in the March 12 Wall Street Journal ( www.wsj.com ), La ura Meck- ler reports on a serendipitous global e- mail chain. She begins her story, headlined “Changing the Subject: Spam Makes Friends Across Conti- nents,” as follows: “It had the makings of an e-mail dis- aster. An otherwise deletable piece of spam arrived, and one person after an- other hit ‘Reply All.’ Like a mutant virus, the message multiplied. Recipi- ents from around the globe — Sydney, Dubai, Rio, London, Toronto—began replying with variations of ‘Take me off this list.’ “Then a strange thing happened. Camaraderie broke out amid the spam. There was a drink at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London. A woman in Idaho became interested in a char- ity backed by a stranger in Toronto. Dozens of people traded contact infor- mation. And just like that, what started as a petty annoyance, a blight common to our interconnected lives, became something quite different.” Meckler reports that the chain began on Feb. 29 with a message writ- ten mostly in Malayalam, a language spoken in parts of India, sent from a web portal, Gulfmalayaly.com. Due to a glitch, every recipient of that message then received an autoreply from Busi- ness Wire Inc., a company that distrib- utes news releases, signing them up to its listserv. Because the full address list was not visible, recipients who sent replies demanding to be unsubscribed were unaware that those follow-up messages also went to every recipient, compounding the problem. Within a day of the original e-mail, hundreds of increasingly angry mes- sages were flying through the ether. But then Pádraig Belton, a London writer, made a suggestion: “Personally, I feel that after this many e-mails from you lot, we should all knock off together to the pub.” Robert Peacock, a business execu- tive in London, followed up with a pro- posal of his own: “Rather than getting steamed up about all this, maybe it is worth considering setting up a LinkedIn group in which we can ex- change crazy banter—or possibly even business opportunities if we can estab- lish our common link.” The next day, Andrew Wong, a travel manager at TripAdvisor in Lon- don, set up such a group and called it, “Unified by Spam— the Social Exper- iment.” ByMarch 7, more than 75 peo- ple from all over the world had joined, and the group continues to expand. There is even talk of a social-network- ing site centered on the spam group, where people could find connections when they travel to other cities. As Belton says, “Whoever sent that spam may have done us an actual sort of favor.” — Steven Alan Honley, Editor 50 Years Ago... Been wondering how much of the Agency for Interna- tional Development has finally been settled into New State? Our reporter made a check and discovered that AID is currently housed in six locations – in addition to New State. There are no more rooms available for it at State, but AID’s widespread technical assis- tance goes on without interruption. — From “Washington Letter,” by Gwen Barrows, FSJ , May 1962.