I received an email this morning from a distinguished British professor, asking for the second time whether I might be interested in doing something at a conference next May. She’d written to ask last month, and wanted to confirm that I wasn’t interested.

Last month, I’d replied the same day that I would be happy to help out. Email has become so unreliable that its value is rapidly diminishing.

At the same time, someone called me yesterday and began reading a telemarketing script taken verbatim from a common SEO spam email. No changes at all, and the poor fellow didn’t even have a comeback when I began to recite his own script for him.

Then we have the diploma mill spam — “educational” directories for career advice and online degrees. I can’t for the life of me figure out how anyone makes money from this stuff; if you know, Email me.