Here are some of the more amusing/interesting bits of text I've come across.

Serious

• A letter to the makers of viagra from a drug user.
• An early 20th century opinion on dancing.
• A mid 18th century piece on locks which is relevant to the hacker debate today.
• Poker during the Nuclear Winter (by Mike Caro) - Caro's famous Card Player article in which he talks about a simple game which contains most of the important elements of poker.
• Anti-tobacco / government conspiracy rant.
• The Only Sentient Being For Miles Around - a story about growing up as a rational being who thinks about his world and surroundings, in a culture where homogeneity, ignorance, and apathy are the norm. It certainly struck a chord with me. By Stefan Gagne.

Humour

• Spam Confidence Scheme I - This is Spam w/ style. I don't know exactly what kind of scam it is trying to suck the receiver into, since I can think of a variety of cons that begin this way, but it should clearly not be taken at face value. Much better than the typical "HOT WOMEN!!! PYRAMID SCHEMES THAT WORK!!!" garbage.
• Spam Confidence Scheme II- Not as good as the first one, but still kinda funny. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who gives the details of their bank account to a random stranger that e-mailed them deserves to have the account sucked dry.

To: Pfizer, Inc.
235 East 42nd St.
New York, NY
10015-5755
From: Merrick Brown
mbrown120@hotmail.com
Date: Saturday, December 11, 1999
Re: Viagra

To whom it may concern-
I would like to congratulate you on your creation of the drug sildenafil citrate (Viagra). Though I have only been using it for a week it has already changed my life tremendously. You see, I am an 18 year-old male who has been abusing Viagra recreationally with my girlfriend. About a month ago I bought 10 100mg tablets from an establishment in Las Vegas that sells "on line prescriptions". It was pathetically easy. On their webpage I filled out a few simple questions stating that I was a 59 year-old man suffering from impotence. I paid $140 for the pills in addition to a $65 "consulting fee". A few days later my Viagra arrived in the mail.

I originally bought it for use in conjunction with Ecstasy (MDMA), as I have found impotence to be a crippling side affect of this drug. However I wanted to first assay its effects on my otherwise sober body. I would have taken it the second it arrived in my mailbox where it not for my worthless girlfriend who had other plans. It was not until a few days later that I finally got to try it out. I had done a large amount of research on an appropriate dose. I visited various newsgroups (alt.drugs, alt.drugs.chemistry) and talked to some other people who had tried it. I concluded that a 50mg dose would not cause any sort of permanent damage. Initial trials proved this was correct. The onset of the drug was not unlike Ecstasy itself. I could actually feel the blood pouring into my groin. The sex that followed was tremendous. I noticed that it greatly increased my sensitivity, particularly in terms of 2-point discrimination on the head of my penis.

My female counterpart was also interested in trying your drug. However, previous experiments with a cocktail of experimental piperazines produced an adverse reaction in her body. I couldn't help but notice that your chemical has a piperazine ring lurking in it, so we decided not to press our luck.

Nonetheless I was excited by the success of this trial and I determined that it would be appropriate to use Viagra with MDMA. Research determined that MDMA is a CYP3A4 inhibitor and thus raises the concentration of sildenafil in the bloodstream by itself. Sources stated that cutting the dose of Viagra in half would be safe. I took 25mg 1 hour before the peak of 125mg of pure powder Ecstasy and 26mg of 2C-B (4-bromo-2,5- dimethoxyphenethylamine). I am sad to report this was not enough Viagra. In a fit of desperation I snorted the remaining 25mg of Viagra. My effort to achieve erection did not work. Though I had fun anyway, my suggestion to future abusers of this combination would be to simply take 50mg of Viagra initially.

The next day we decided to try your drug in conjunction with 5-Me0-DIPT (5- methoxy-diisopropyltryptamine), 17mg. It was a raving success. At the peak of orgasm I was overcome by the impression that I was shooting a 50-foot wide white-hot laser beam from my penis. There were strong overtones of Japanese Anime. The hallucination was quite entertaining.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for making all this reckless drug abuse possible. My girlfriend also wishes to extend her thanks for the hours of amusement your chemical has provided her. She says that the expression on my face was priceless. Your company has done a good deed. Viagra has reunited man with the one thing most valuable to him. Congratulations all around.

Sincerely,
Merrick Brown
mbrown120@hotmail.com

Young men and young women may work systematically six days in the week and rise fresh in the morning, but let them attend modern dances for only a few hours each evening and see what happens. The Waltz, Polka, Gallop and other dances of the same kind will be disastrous in their effects to both sexes. Health and vigor will vanish like the dew before the sun.

It is not the extraordinary exercise which harms the dancer, but rather the coming into close contact with the opposite sex. It is the fury of lust craving incessantly for more pleasure that undermines the soul, the body, the sinews and nerves. Experience and statistics show beyond doubt that passionate excessive dancing girls can hardly reach twenty-five years of age and men thirty-one. Even if they reached that age they will in most instances be broken in health physically and morally. This is the claim of prominent physicians in this country.

-- Quote from a 1910 periodical

Many people in the computer world are familiar with the argument over hackers "exposing security flaws", and whether or not this is a good thing. Here is an excerpt that shows that this debate is not just a transitory result of technology, but an aspect of the human condition. Note the date at the end.

"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discussion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fallacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among themselves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in whatever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too earnestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better for all parties."

-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks, published around 1850

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