Auren Hoffman's Summation Push for the week of August 17, 1998

You can visit my thoughts and reflections at http://www.summation.net or you can be lazy and wait for these tidbits to be sent right to your in box (subscribe and unsubscribe information is at the end of this e-mail).

This issue:
* Rumor: Hoffman is Correct about WhoWhere

* Terrorists and Assassinations: Don't Stoop to Their Level
* Fresh Breath at Big 5 Firms
* Translate This!
* Hoffman Spam Index
* Summation Push Picks Links

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Rumor: Hoffman is Correct about WhoWhere

I don't mean to gloat, but in the Summation Push on March 2 of this year, I predicted WhoWhere being acquired by Lycos (http://www.summation.net/Push980302.html).

I think it was a huge win for Lycos -- WhoWhere is a great site and it adds the missing components to Lycos's suite. Lycos is fast catching up to Excite and Yahoo and in some ways I think they might have a better strategy.

(all rumors and insights sent to auren@summation.net will be kept confidential)

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Terrorists and Assassinations
Don't Stoop to Their Level

By Auren Hoffman

In the wake of the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa, everyone from George Stephanopoulos to Orrin Hatch are insinuating that the U.S. should rethink its no-assassination policy. Many other respected foreign policy experts are seriously talking about reviving assassination as a weapon for U.S. foreign policy.

This would be wrong.

Since the 1970's assassination has been outlawed by Presidential Executive Order because assassination is wrong. It may be hard to have a moral and righteous foreign policy but as the leaders of the free world, we have to try.

If we incorporate assassination into our foreign affairs, the difference between terrorists and the U.S. will become much slimmer. Though I'm in favor of the death penalty if found guilty, you can't just go kill people without a fair trial. Death squads are not the American way.

We should do everything to capture these terrorists (and their backers) and bring them to trial. But we should act with the moral underpinning that defines the difference between terrorists and Americans.

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Fresh Breath at Big 5 Firms

For those of you who work at or with a Big Five accounting/consulting firm, you might notice that their employees always have impeccable breath. It's uncanny. I've done some investigative research and I found out more than I bargained for: Big Five firms have a fresh breath addiction.

Big Five accounting firms are obsessed with fresh breath. You can't start a meeting there without someone pulling out a box of Altoids and offering you one. When you get offered a mint you think "is my breath that bad?" Sometimes you get offered mints even when you are sitting on the other side of the conference table -- which my deductive reasoning leads me to conclude that Big Five accountants also have really good smell senses.

But the most powerful physical evidence of a Big Five fresh breath addiction is in the bathroom. They've got mouthwash in their bathrooms! True story, check it out for yourself. Investigative reports continues :) ...

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Translate This!

Check out Alta Vista's news translation service. It is free and there is a link located off of Alta Vista's front page. You can translate from English to French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish -- and visa versa.

Translate "There is a party tomorrow and you are invited." To Spanish and you get "Hay un partido mañana y le invitan."

Unfortunately, the service does not translate pronouns very well. I translated "Summation Push is excellent. Everyone should subscribe." To French and got "La poussée d'addition est excellente. Chacun devrait souscrire." Even worse is when I translate the translated statement back to English I get "The push of addition is excellent. Each one should subscribe."

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THIS WEEK'S SUMMATION PUSH PICK LINKS:

* Alta Vista Translation (http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate?) - cool translation service on the web.
* WhoWhere - (http://www.whowhere.com) -- acquired by Lycos as predicted by this column on March 2.
* Lycos - (http://www.lycos.com/) -- impressive search engine.
* Hoffman Reading List (http://www.summation.net/reading.html)
* The Hoffman Spam Index (http://www.summation.net/spam.html)

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