Government ordered to save emails

Remember that email you sent to the random senator about spending money to build igloos in the desert? The bad news is that I don't think the interest groups can raise the $200 million you need for research funds. The good news is that the email could be read again 60 years from now and will never be deleted.

I should say that it's not supposed to be deleted, as a federal judge has ordered the White House to keep every email it receives, including, obviously, real estate e-newsletters and many other spam messages. Maybe they should just save the important emails. But hey, who is in charge of deciding which emails are important?

The government could potentially create a new division called the Electronic Communication Consortium, where a handful of individuals use the Email Importance Ranking Quotient to determine is all emails in a specific mail box could be thrown out. Since many officials surely receive hundreds, maybe thousands of emails a day, each state representative should be assigned a person dedicated solely to weeding out spam messages, as well as archiving communications that should be saved for further use.

Not only should they create electronic backups on a regular basis, but each constituent will need to print out hard copies of any email determined to be "Meaningful," as defined by the ECC. These particular messages should be filed away in binders by person, each year, and kept in a safe storage location, just in case the backups fail.

In the event of disk failure for the backups, we will also need to create backups of the hard copies. While using a Xerox machine may do the trick, second-generation copies could easily become unreadable. the government could also hire a set of e-scribes to copy, by hand, all of the communications that are captured within the e-binders. The newest duplicates need to be kept in a humidity-controlled room so that the integrity of the original document will remain intact.

Of course, besides typed emails, it's feasible that government officials will receive numerous attachments, images, videos, etc. These items will be captured by a select group of artists who will also be hired to maintain the library.

Luckily, there's a decent chance that the scribes and artists will not need to be hired, assuming that the backups do not fail. To counteract a possible failure, a hire of computer technicians and security officers will be in full control of the email storage location. The only people they are allowed to let near the computers where the backups are being created are those individuals who are in charge of the backup drives and DVDs to be used.

The storage facility of the email hard copies will probably be located away from D.C., perhaps in the Southwest. Experts say that by storing in a remote location, there's a greater chance of keeping the e-vault concealed by anyone who would want to obtain such important documents as real estate e-newsletters. The proposed structure for the warehouse of electronic communications will have thick, segmented walls, which may resemble an igloo.

Book review: "Return from a Comatose Mind" by Jason Deierlein

In general, I'm not a huge fan of inspirational books. I think that people have become enamored with novels like these because they need motivation to make something out of their lives. But, more times than not, once they've put the book away, they revert back to their usual lives and don't make any changes. Not only that, but many inspirational books are too shallow and bland to reach the surface of giving people hope.

Enter Jason Deierlein and his new book "Return from a Comatose Mind." Deierllein doesn't need to convolute his story by embellishing the novel topic. He was in a horrific automobile accident, after which he was stuck in a coma for a few months before finally waking up. His book chronicles the journey before, during and after the coma, complete with as many honest descriptions as possible.

There's nothing overly complex about the novel. The proverbial moral of the story is to enjoy the life you have, instead of being happy about the things you do not have. While it's easy to just say something like this, it's not always practical to live this way for some people. It's a shame that tragedies oftentimes are the only things that help people realize how to live life to the fullest. Jason Deierlein wants people to learn from his experiences, without going through a similar ordeal that he had to endure.

Check out Ben's book, The Developers (The easiest thing to find on the Internet: crazy people.), which is now in stores across the country. Send comments and suggestions to info@benwoods.com.

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