Microsoft Word is obviously bringing hidden anti Jewish hate-messages onto our desktops

Heidi and Dan Chay chay at alaska.com
Tue Sep 18 11:35:42 PDT 2001


Hi Hape,

These kind of coincidences evoke a kind of eerie feeling because we tend to
think that the probability of such a coincidence is so low that it must mean
something.  We fail to realize "that though it is unlikely that any
_particular_ sequence of events specified beforehand will occur, there is
high probability that _some_ remarkable sequence of events will be observed
subsequently.  This is especially so when one is inundated with so much
decontextualized information."

I quote John Allen Paulos from his book "A Mathematician Reads the
Newspaper" (1995).  Paulos also is the author of "Innumeracy."

These eerie experiences such as happened to you happen to all of us.  A
conspiracy theorist, however, becomes particularly vulnerable. Here are some
more excerpts from Paulos.

>>
If we actively set out to look for coincidences in the daily paper, we could
cross-check key words, phrases, names, and numbers by computer and come up
with hundreds of them.  If we don't specify the particular nature of
connections beforehand, we can rely on the vast number of possible relations
to lead to innumerable suggestive associations.  In the throes of obsession,
the conspiracy theorist searches not for arbitrary coincidences but only for
those that support his beliefs -- and because of the myriad connections
among items in the paper [or wherever, I would add], he is almost always
successful.  The absence of certain items ... is also conducive to such
theorizing....

A friend of mine who is a rabbi notes that the Gulf War ended on the Jewish
holiday of Purim, which celebrates the defeat of the evil Haman by Mordecai.
Moreover, behold that on this day millennia later and in the same part of
the world, the dictator Hussein, whose name also begins with "H," is
vanquished by a man whose name also begins with an "M" -- Major General
Schwarzkopf! ....

This process brings to mind the list of well-known connections between
Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy.  Lincoln was elected president in 1860,
Kennedy in 1960.  Their names both consist of seven letters.  Lincoln had a
secretary named Kennedy and Kennedy had one named Lincoln.  Lincoln and
Kennedy were assassinated by John Wilkes Booth and (allegedly) Lee Harvey
Oswold, respectively, men who went by three names and who advocated
unpopular political positions.  Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and fled to
a warehouse; Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theater.

John Leavy, a computer programmer at the University of Texas, wondered
whether similar lists might be construed for _any_ pair of U.S. presidents.
To test his conjecture, he fed data on the presidents into a computer and
came up with correspondences between pairs of presidents that were just as
remarkable -- and hence just as unremarkable -- as those between Lincoln and
Kennedy.  one of the examples he published...concerns to other assassinated
presidents, William McKinley and James Garfield.

It turns out that both of these presidents were Republicans who were born
and bred in Ohio.  They were both Civil War veterans, and both served in the
House of Representatives.  Both were ardent supporters of protective tariffs
and the gold standard, and both their last names contained eight letters.
After their assassinations they were replaced by their vice presidents,
Theodore Roosevelt and Chester Alan Arthur, who were both from New York City
[interesting coincidence!], who both sported mustaches, and who both had
names containing seventeen letters.  Both presidents were slain during the
first September of their respective terms by assassins, Charles Guiteau and
Leon Czolgosz, who had foreign-sounding names.  Not being superstars of
American history, McKinley and Garfield do not attract the same intense
fascination as do Lincoln and Kennedy, however.
<<

Best wishes,

Dan Chay


----- Original Message -----
From: Hape Etzold <Hp.Etzold at t-online.de>
To: <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 2:45 AM
Subject: Microsoft Word is obviously bringing hidden anti Jewish
hate-messages onto our desktops


Dear all,
as all of you I am deeply shocked about this murderous outbreak of hatred on
11th sept. Today somebody seemed to prove to me, that this kind of hatred is
so deeply rooted, that even Microsoft Software is containing hidden
hate-messages.

Write in large letters NYC on Microsoft-Word, choose wingdings as the format
of the font, Word then tranlates NYC into brutal and disgusting sign
language: Thumbs up for the killing of the Jewish Community.
Does this appear on your versions of MS-WORD as well? Is it coincidence? Or
does it say something about some people at Microsoft and the society we are
living in?

When writing this, I wonder whether it is ok to spread this fact. But Open
Space is about talking openly. Only when bringing this hatred into the open,
we can do something about it and deal with it effectively.

Love to you all - Hape concerned and happy to share this concern with you

Viele Grüsse

Hape Etzold
Combrains
www.combrains.de

T 030_7712150
 .·´¯`·.¸ ><((((º> .·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸ <º))))>< ,.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·.¸ ><((((º>
¸.·´¯`·..·´¯`·.¸ ><((((º> .·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·.¸.·´¯`·.¸ ><((((º>
.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸ <º))))>< .·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·.¸ ><((((º> ¸.·´¯`·..·´¯`·.¸

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html



More information about the OSList mailing list