Spam

New Year's Eve is typically rung in with a Champagne toast and hors d'oeuvres trays, but during Monday morning's #Weekendeats chat on Twitter, our participants proved they really know how to have a good time. From burgers with Spam to spiny lobsters and rootbeer floats, here's a taste of what everyone's eating to welcome the new year. On the sweet side, Shulie Madnick of the blog FoodWanderings.com shared her recipe for polenta citrus sable cookie snaps; Olga Berman from Mango & Tomato shared her Russian sour cream cake recipe ; Jean from the blog Delightful Repast shared a recipe for gluten-free pancakes and syrup; and Geeky Foodie, aka @CharlieLima79 on Twitter shared a photo of a deep-fried pear filled with red bean paste.

Papa John's Pizza is facing a $250-million lawsuit from customers who claim that the fast-food chain illegally sent them 500,000 promotional text messages in 2010. The lawsuit was granted class-action status by a U.S. District Court judge in Seattle late last week, according to a statement from the Heyrich Kalish McGuigan law firm. Participants are seeking $500 for each unwanted text, which they say Papa John's sent without their permission. The complaint alleges that some of the chain's franchisees used the marketing company OnTime4U to send a flood of messages about pizza deals to a database of customers who had previously ordered from Papa John's.

Voters in Virginia are the latest to get a taste of an increasingly popular type of political attack: the anonymous text message. "Tim Kaine calls for radical new tax on all Americans," reads a text message attacking the Democratic candidate in the hotly contested Virginia Senate race. Aside from being false -- Politifact recently debunked a similar claim by Kaine's Republican opponent, George Allen -- the message came from an email address that used portions of Kaine's name, giving the appearance that the message might have come from Kaine himself.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senatehas paid tribute to National Chess Day. Now it's Sen. Jim DeMint's move.   The South Carolina Republican and several of his Senate colleagues have introduced legislation that would require senators to pay for such commemorative resolutions out of their office budgets rather than from the U.S. Treasury. The money comes from the taxpayers in either case, but DeMint says the printing of symbolic resolutions has "gotten out of hand. " His fellow senators are likely to be more judicious about introducing such resolutions if they have to dip into their office budgets to pay the printing costs, he says.

WASHINGTON -- Who better to pay tribute to ham, or rather a form of it, than a member of Congress? Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) was on the House floor Wednesday, declaring "Happy 75th birthday, Spam!" He proudly held up the familiar blue-and-yellow tin of the long-ridiculed, but iconic, blend of spiced pork shoulder and ham, manufactured by Hormel Foods Corp. in his district. "Spam is an important part of our American history," Walz said. "It  played an essential role in feeding Allied troops during World War II, has worked to create local jobs and, with over 7 billion cans sold worldwide, has truly become an iconic American product.

NEW DELHI - A few years ago, Ankur Suri saw a friend beaten up by fellow classmates after he emailed pornography to female friends - or rather, his computer had. In desperation, the friend went to authorities, who declined to investigate because they didn't really understand the problem of how his computer had been infected by malicious spam. "I'd rather go to Google or Facebook than deal with the Indian law," said Suri, 25. India recently notched a dubious distinction, beating the U.S. to become the leading spewer of spam email, according to the British Internet security firm Sophos Ltd. Nearly 10% of such emails is now sent from Indian computers, up from 7% in 2010, and many of the spammers don't even realize they're doing it. "This is one record India doesn't want so much," said Sanjay Katkar, chief technology officer with Quick Heal, a security firm.

Re "Accentuating the negative," Opinion, July 8 The onslaught of political ads that offer these "swing voters" misinformation relies on an electorate that invites all of this political claptrap. In lieu of regularly following politics and world affairs, too many of our fellow citizens believe that they can suddenly tune in a few months before the November election and get caught up. This kind of political spam would disappear quickly if voters would consistently stay informed.

Ding. Ding. It's 3 a.m., and your cellphone starts making its instantly recognizable, impossible-to-ignore you-just-got-a-text sound. Your heart starts pounding. Is a loved one hurt? Is there some crisis at work? You reach for the nightstand, pick up the phone and read: "Your number was selected as our iPad winner of the day! Enter 'IPAD' here to redeem!" As you probably know, you are not really a winner of the day, you are the victim of mobile phone spam, a modern, insidious annoyance growing at an unacceptable rate.

Ding. Ding. It's 3 a.m. and your phone starts making its instantly recognizable, impossible to ignore, you-just-got-a-text sound. Your heart starts pounding. Is a loved one hurt? Is there some crisis at work? You reach for the night stand, pick up the phone and read: "Your number was selected as our iPad winner of the day! Enter 'IPAD' here to redeem!" Refrain from hurling your phone across the room. Also, refrain from trying to acquire that iPad. As you probably know, you are not really a winner of the day, you are the victim of mobile phone spam, a modern, insidious annoyance that is growing at an unacceptable rate.

In this era of "less is more" and "cheap runs deep," it's no surprise that Spam, the canned meat staple that haunted dinner tables of the 1940s and 1950s, is reporting a continued and otherwise inexplicable uptick in sales. Edible forms of Spam continue to enter the culture, with the latest coming courtesy of an aircraft mechanic from Auburn, Wash. He's won the grand prize in the Great American Spam Championship with his recipe for Spam doughnuts. Full disclosure: This writer is not completely unbiased, having once helped her best friend create the winning entry at a private Spam party in Orange County: Spam Zimbabwe, consisting of chunks of Spam, pineapple and hearts of palm impaled on tiny spears.