chain e-mail is murder

Not many things provoke a violent reaction from me. I must confess, to my shame, that chain mails are one of the exceptions. apologies to all my well intending friends. Perhaps its time I explain the rationale for my rage.

So you received an email saying that Charles Taylor would like to repent for his sins, and pay a dollar to UNICEF for every mail sent with this message. You spend 30 seconds on it, and decide ‘not bloody likely, but hey – what’s the harm?’ and forward it to 5 friends. Within 13 minutes you have wasted 2.5 lifetimes. That’s the harm. Just do the maths.

rounds	seconds	hours	days	years
1	30	0	0	0
2	150	0	0	0
3	750	0	0	0
4	3750	1	0	0
5	18750	5	0	0
6	93750	26	1	0
7	468750	130	5	0
8	2343750	651	27	0
9	11718750	3255	135	0
10	58593750	16276	678	1
11	292968750	81380	3390	9
12	1464843750	406901	16954	46
13	7324218750	2034505	84771	232
14	36621093750	10172526	423855	1161
15	1.83105E+11	50862630	2119276	5806
16	9.15527E+11	254313151	10596381	29031