Re: A Great True Story--No Harp Content

[Bobbie Giordano <bobg@xxxxxxxxx>]

The list recently received a story under the above subject heading.

Unfortunately, this is what is commonly called on the Internet an "urban
legend", which has no verifiable basis in fact.  What it does do, for us
here, is cause 25K messages to be individually sent out to about 1300
mailing list addresses... that is, it amounts to costing Harp-L 32.5 Meg of
downstream traffic, which SPAH essentially pays for.

To give some more background on this particular hoax, I quote from this
URL:  http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa062501a.htm

========
On the email forwarding circuit the tale about the "musically challenged"
student is variously known as "The Piano Teacher," "The Protege," "The
Piano Lesson" and "The Student."  No one knows who wrote it, although it
clearly owes its plot to the earlier story you mentioned. "The Piano
Teacher" mysteriously appeared in early June 2001, just before the
execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, and for obvious reasons
has become very popular on Christian mailing lists.
========

Please be careful about what information, and from where you get it, that
you choose to post on Harp-L.  Lovely as the story seems, it's a fictitious
sham.

Be wise and careful out there...
and Happy Harpin'!!

Bobbie
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