Re: NPS and NEA

[Ron Force <rforce@moscow.com>]

Joan Klingler wrote:

> On NPR's Morning Edition last week, Nina Tottenberg said that if
> the
> Supreme Court supports Congress, it is in effect the end of the
> National
> Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

This is a pointless petition that has been passed around the Internet for
over four years, despite attempts to cancel it.  Do not pass it on.  Here's
the info from the Urban legends page:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/culture/beliefs/urbanlegends/library/weekly/aa052798.htm




The Case of the Pointless Petition

Dateline: 05/27/98

I have a cautionary tale to share with you today.

Once upon a time – back in 1995, to be exact – two well-meaning but naive
young students at the University of Northern Colorado decided to express
their concern over cuts in federal funding for the arts by starting an
email petition.

In their earnest Internet opus, they cited facts and figures concerning the
costs of keeping the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio
in business, raised the specter of Republican threats to cut funding for
these programs, and asked recipients to "sign" the document by appending
their names before forwarding it off to everyone they know.

Unfortunately, several things were wrong with the whole idea:

First, no one in any position of authority takes email petitions seriously.
Electronic signatures are meaningless, no matter how many hundreds of
thousands are collected.

Second, the University of Northern Colorado was not pleased to find its
email system deluged with responses to the students' unauthorized mailing.

And finally, there was one little technical problem the students hadn't
foreseen: they had no way to recall the petition once its purpose had been
served.

All this was painfully clear within two weeks of its launch, but it was too
late. The beast had taken on a life of its own.

Fast-forward to 1998, three years later. The petition has seen the inside
of hundreds of thousands of modems, probably more. It has been repackaged
by recipients in numerous inventive ways, most notoriously with the slogan:
"Save Sesame Street!" Though perhaps successful at the outset in alerting a
vast number of people to the right-wing threat against federal funding for
the arts, it has long since stopped serving any useful purpose. Despite
repeated pleas by the authors and the University for re-mailings to halt,
the petition remains in wide, constant circulation to this day, all across
the Internet and around the world.


--
Ron  Force
rforce@moscow.com
Moscow, Idaho U.S.A.