Spam, Blam, No Thank You Ma’am

This past weekend, I received spam email from a local entrepreneur who has recently completed a small business program.  This entrepreneur didn’t take the time to know who she was emailing and copied a number of businesses to the same email.

Yes, this was definitely spam by its very definition because it was both unsolicited and it was bulk email — in other words, there were multiple recipients of the same email.

An electronic message is deemed to be “spam” when:

(1)  the recipient’s personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients;

AND
 
(2)  the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent.

As we all know spam is about consent, not about content.  The content of the email is irrelevant; all that matters, by law, is that the message was sent unsolicited and in bulk.  This is what makes it spam. 

Industry Canada states that any unsolicited email sent to the email address of an individual who did not consent to receive that email could be in violation of the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and, possibly, other substantially similar provincial legislation.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has determined that a business email address is personal information and, therefore, protected by PIPEDA. Such information can be collected and used without consent, but only for its intended purposes.

There was a recent situation involving Suzanne Morin and her business email address.  Her email address was collected from an online professional association membership directory. She filed a complaint with the Privacy Commissioner because of unsolicited email solicitations she received from a third party.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner found that one’s business email address is, for the purposes of PIPEDA, personal information. The Office found that the collection and subsequent use of Ms. Morin’s email address for commercial email solicitation was done without her consent and in contravention of the Act.

Other countries have anti-spam regulations.

The United States has their CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing).  Australia enacted their Spam Act 2003.  The United Kingdom has their Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.  France enacted the Loi pour la confiance dans l’économie numérique 2004. And the European Union has their EC Directive 2003/58/EC.

In the spirit of Dave Carroll and his public commentary on Ms. Irlweg and United Airlines, I would like to state that the Ms. Chesebrough’s and financial and business solution start ups of this world should brush up on why spam is not welcome by business people either at their personal email address or their business address.

Lord knows that when the Electronic Commerce Protection Act Bill — also known as the ECPA — is passed into law in Canada, senders suspected of spamming will experience harsher penalties than the harsh penalties already in place with CAN-SPAM in the U.S. 

In fact, once the ECPA bill becomes law, it won’t just be Internet Service Providers who can sue spammers.  Yes, in Canada, individuals will be allowed to sue senders suspected of spamming and while the fine is currently set at $200 per item, class action suits could spell the end of businesses that do not take the time to take current and future legislation seriously.

Besides, who would want to do business with someone who so easily disregards the current laws of the land?

Elyse Bruce
Creator
MIDNIGHT IN CHICAGO

This Is What New Normal Looks Like

It’s not every child who can say that they know more about the pediatrics ward than he ever wants to know in one lifetime.  Unfortunately, there are children in this world who know far more than they should about it. 

Lewis is one of those kids; he has spent more than his fair share in hospital from the time he was born up until the present and he will spend more than his fair share in hospital in years to come.

When babies are born, they are rated on the APGAR scale that addresses five different areas, rating each area either 0, 1 or 2 depending on how the newborn presents.  The APGAR is administered at birth, 5 minutes and 15 minutes. 

Now, the best news is that the infant rates 10 across the board as this means the baby is healthy and well.  Lewis rated a 2 at birth, a 2 at 5 minutes and a 4 at 15 minutes.  Needless to say, this was a very bad start for a baby who was a month overdue in the first place and had to be induced in the second place and was finally delivered by Cesarean section in the third place.

Thus began the first of many hospital stays, most of them in isolation, on Pediatric Floors.

You would think that a child with so many health issues would be afraid to venture too far away from an Emergency Room but not Lewis.  In fact, Lewis has demonstrated a zest for life that you would expect to find in someone who has never had a sick day in his life.  It’s his approach to life that makes him the engaging child he is.

Recently, Lewis underwent major surgery in an effort to force his Myasthenia Gravis into remission.  Seeing him in Critical Care afterwards was one of the hardest and yet, happiest, days of my life. 

Like any parent, I am devastated to see my child in pain and like any parent, I am overjoyed to see that my child is alive.  And so, seeing him in Critical Care after his thymectomy was a bittersweet moment that both lifted my spirits and dashed them against the rocks.

As he healed from the surgery and was moved to Intensive Care and then Observation Care, I kept reminding myself that he has always been a fighter.  His eyes would flutter open and in a morphine haze, he would say, “Mom, I love you.”  I would smile back and say, “Thank you.” 

It was a private joke he and I share that goes back to his early hospitalizations where I would whisper in his ear whenever I had a chance, “Lewis, I love you.”  As a toddler, he would smile each time I whispered this in his ear and he would answer, “Thank you.”  Now the tables were turned and the exchange was just as precious.

On the third day after the operation, out of the blue, he turned his head towards me and said matter-of-factedly, “Remember mom … this is my new normal.  I’m still the same kid I was before the operation.  This is just my new normal.  Don’t ever forget that.  I’m still normal.”

And he was right.  Nothing had changed about his true nature.  He was still Lewis and he would continue to be Lewis.  He was just a modified physical version of the constant immutable kid I love.

Elyse Bruce
Founder and Creator
MIDNIGHT IN CHICAGO

Taking Issue with Stephen King’s Artists

In one of the prefaces to his novel “The Stand”, Stephen King says that in answer to the question put to him: “How do you write?” he responds: “I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’”

In many of his writings he states in many different ways that writing requires work, not only talent or the application of talent.  So it is with painting. 
 
I’ve just completed a painting of mosaic tiles, having deliberately painted these tiles “one tile at a time”  and photographed the painting each time a tile was completed.  I have painted nearly 2,000 individual tiles in this 16” X 20” painting. It is necessary for me to paint the tiles this way because Elyse anticipates making a music video chronicling this  painting’s journey.   It would be interesting for Elyse’s fans as well as fans of my work to see the tiles appear in rapid progression to Elyse’s song, “How Do I Begin To Believe (Lying In The Arms Of My Judas).”
 
I personally believe that even if I elected to paint this piece in a much more straight- forward and less tedious fashion, it would still require just as much work.   Art is an expression of what the artist feels, and painting something that comes near to what an artist feels is not the same as painting exactly what an artist feels.
 
Though I have not read all of King’s works, two pieces he has written include artists in them. One of these is “The Stand” in which a survivor of the flu epidemic, Glen Bateman, paints “indifferent” (to use King’s word) canvasses. I can excuse Bateman’s “indifferent” paintings seeing as he is not an artist by trade, but a sociologist.  In the novel, it’s indicated that Bateman “had accepted the superflu epidemic with equanimity because at last he would be able to retire and paint full-time, as he had always wanted to do.”
 
But then in the novella called “The Mist” we have David Drayton who is an artist by trade and who, during the nightmare he encounters in the story, comes to the conclusion that the best piece of art he ever created was: “A perfectly good piece of slick commercial art. No more, and thank God, no less.”
 
King says of this passage in the “Notes” in the back of the anthology where the story can be found (Skeleton Crew): “I must tell you that I also liked the metaphor implied in David Drayton’s discovery of his own limitations … ”
 
I think both Drayton’s assessment and King’s metaphor are a cop out and a rather cheap literary device respectively.  An artist who aspires to be an artist never draws a line and says: “This is my limit. I can go no further than this in terms of my development as an artist.”
 
If Drayton was any kind of artist, he would know that even though his best work to date has been, “A perfectly good piece of slick commercial art. No more, and thank God, no less”, this does not mean that he cannot produce something better in time through hard work one brush stroke at a time.
 
Stephen King himself ought to give up writing if he believes about art what his character David Drayton believes about art. Writing is an art form after all.
 
There are critics who say that King hasn’t published anything worth reading since the earliest days of his writing career, and if King listened to those critics, he would by rights cease to call himself an author and instead call himself a for-hire-penny-a-word-pulp-fiction-writer.
 
Yet King believes himself to be an author who writes “one word at a time” despite the fact that some of his critics believe the majority of his work to come out of a hack’s printing press.
 
So I just wanted to let Mr. Stephen King know that true artists paint one brush stroke at a time just as true authors write one word at a time.

Thomas D. Taylor
Co-Creator
MIDNIGHT IN CHICAGO

A New Formulation

My kitchen has always been well stocked with the basics needed in every kitchen … flour, sugar, spices, salt.  I have used resealable bags with the plastic zippers for as long as I can remember, washing them out and reusing them as long as possible. 

At 4, Lewis was a very independent child.  He always had something on the go whether it was playing the Sonic the Hedgehog game on his Dreamcast gaming system or running his favourite educational software on my computer or coming up with his own incredible adventures.

One fine summer afternoon, I was hot on the trail of the salt box bandit when I happened upon my son as well as the missing box of salt, plastic bags and my good measuring spoons and measuring cups for baking.  Alongside him on the floor was the infamous clipboard, paper with a grid that his grandfather had printed off for him, and a pencil.  The plastic bags all had the same amount of water and were zippered shut, lying along the bottom of the bathtub.  In one hand was the missing box of salt; in the other hand was my set of metal measuring spoons.  A big grin swept across his face as I edged closer to the bathtub.

“What are you doing, Lewis?” I asked with equal amounts of authority and love.  This was the voice I used with Lewis – and still do to this very day – when I’m uncertain as to whether my reaction should be disapproving or one that supports his latest experiment.

“I’m measuring out different amounts of salt into the baggies,” he answered.  “The amount of water is always the same.”  Interesting.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out what he was up to with this latest endeavour, so I asked him what was going on.

“I’m creating a new skin cream formulation to help prevent wrinkles, mommy,” he said, proud of the morning’s effort.  He looked to me for approval.  Instead, a frown crossed my brow.  He continued to pour salt into the measuring spoons, marking down on his clipboard how much salt went into which baggie.

“You’re using salt,” I said, pointing out the obvious.

“Yes, mommy, I am!”

“You do know,” I mentioned casually, “that salt is a drying agent, right?’  He looked at me surprised to hear this news. “If you put it in a skin cream, I would think that it would aggravate the skin instead of prevent wrinkles.”  He shook his head at me as if disappointed that I could misjudge his beloved salt so badly.

“Mommy,” he began slowly and deliberately, “the ocean has salt in it, right?”  I had no option but to agree with this fact and so I agreed that the ocean, indeed, had salt in it.  His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he was about to impart a vital piece of information that I and the makers of wrinkle creams over the centuries had overlooked.

“Think about it, mommy,” he said self-assuredly.  “Have you ever seen any fish in the ocean with wrinkles?”

And so with that, I knew that once again, Lewis was thinking thoughts that most adults never experience.  And some day, there may very well be a wildly popular and effective skin formulation to prevent wrinkles that has salt as a main ingredient.

Elyse Bruce
Founder and Creator
MIDNIGHT IN CHICAGO