Inmates, Asylum, etc...

One of the benefits of getting along in years is the manifest realization that while our understanding of "truth and justice" has nothing to do with "the American way," we, the aging ones, will not be around to see civilization's final swirl about the porcelin bowl.

To wit, check out this particular inanity:

Yahoo! is banning the use of allah in email names - even if the letters are included within another name.

This was uncovered by Reg reader Ed Callahan whose mother Linda Callahan was trying to sign up for a Verizon email address. She could not get it to accept her surname.

Yahoo!, of course, is repeatedly going the cheap, cowardly corporate (alliteration purely coincidental) route in conducting its cost benefit analyses; the best most recent examples being its caving to Bush administration demands for its search-engine records, and to demands by China to censor websites deemed contrary to government sensibilities. Of course Microsoft and Google are equally complicit, save for Google's resistance, at least, to White House demands for its search engine data (if for reasons addressing its profit margin and not some heroic principle, but, hey, any ol' libertarian port in a storm), and one can only conclude that continued email usage is a sure ticket to identity theft if not government surveillance hell. But then, why not have it all??

Note to family & friends: will soon be changing my email address away from my Yayhoo!! And a month later, somewhere else again.