In addition to the hundreds of spams with foreign character sets and/or random texts designed to overwhelm spam filters, in addition to the phishing and the pills and the various ads, I also get a lot of mail from PR and advertising lists I never subscribed to. Much of it is political, created by people trying to push info to bloggers. Some of it, the more welcome part, is academic — calls for papers or conference announcements. But some of it is inexplicable. Take this example from today's inbox:
Attached, please find CAPWIP's Invitation and Information Sheet for the forthcoming 8th Training on “Making Governance Gender Responsive (MGGR)”, which will be held on November 12-19, 2007 in Manila, Philippines.
How, I wonder, did I get on that list? It's a good cause, I'm sure, but I'm not going to Manila for a week of it.
