Stockholm, Sweden – The Nobel Prize committee announced that Frederick L. Sternman has been awarded the Nobel Prize for his contribution to mankind.
Sternman is widely recognized as the inventor of SPAM email. Like many great accomplishments his began small. He tells his story, “In 1994 I was on several bulletin board discussion groups and had carefully collected the various email addresses of participants. I believe it was in October that I sent out a group email using these collected addresses advertising my Aunt Hildah’s mop solution for cleaning hardwood floors. It was at that point I realized the great potential for this. Although no one bought any of Aunt Hildah’s solution it’s as if a light came on. Thousands, even millions, could be reached inexpensively. Now in 2007 I marvel at how many have been impacted by my invention.”
Nobel Prize committee chairman Hanz Gunsberger smiled as he handed Sternman the prize.
He noted the following benefits to SPAM email and the great good it has done for mankind.
- Many lonely people appreciate these messages. “They just don’t get much email and the human touch is so needed in our hectic, fractured world. This just brings people together in our global community” Gunsberger noted.
- The dissemination of information just not available elsewhere, including products describing medical conditions people are not even aware they have and are very uncomfortable speaking to their doctors about.
- Making prescription medicines affordable to all.
- Providing top notch financial and investment advice.
- Expanding educational opportunities making college degrees available to all.
- Posting info about good, well-paying careers that people can do at home from their computer in only minutes a day.
- Helping rich African widows distribute their fortunes to worthy causes.
- Helping people to learn foreign languages. (many SPAM emails are in another language so the recipient must study to understand the message and thus learn a new language!)
- Providing downloadable software at a fraction of market price.
There are many, many others noted Gunsberger and more all the time. “SPAM is the gift that keeps on giving.”
In accepting the Prize Sternamn stated, “This is just so incredibly meaningful to me. To think I am now in the same league with Yasser Arafat.” (Sternman converted to the Islam religion while in prison in the late nineties while serving time for internet fraud.)
Fellow Nobel prize winner Al Gore stated, “I am very happy for Fred. As the inventor of the Internet I am especially pleased to see my technology used for such worthy causes. The way I see it every email of this type is one less tree cut down for paper. He’s a brilliant man.”
A smiling Jimmy Carter, also a Nobel Prize recipient in the past stated, “I believe Fred has done much to advance world peace. Furthermore I have ordered products from these emails and they really do work.”
But not everyone is happy. Jim Samuel who runs a firm devoted to stopping SPAM says. “I can’t believe this! These unsolicited messages are a tremendous nuisance, expense and time waster.”
Nobel prize chairman Gunsberger bristled at Samuel’s remarks, “There will always be hateful, intolerant, narrow-minded, bigoted people bent on stopping human progress” he stated. “We must ignore them and do the right thing. Furthermore hasn’t Jim Samuel heard of the delete button!”
Gunsberger gave some hints at future prize nominees but emphasized they had not been voted on yet. Those under consideration include:
- Osama Bin Laden (Peace)
- Dr. Jack Kervakin, who developed the partial birth abortion procedure. (Medicine)
- Ruth Beder Frinkman, professor at Columbia who first identified homophobia. (Sociology)
- John Starswell, who invented PacMan
- Richard Simmons, for promoting fitness worldwide
- Karen Laftery for inventing the hula hoop, (Physics)
- Larry Flint (Literature)
- Elias P. Spamnen for inventing canned SPAM (posthumously)
"A Little Foolishness" 
As a software engineer, it does my heart no end of good to see someone so important to our industry get the credit and reward he deserves. Without spam, a lot of fine I.T. professionals would be out of a job, on the street, and programming for food. Spam is one of the greatest employment aids, along with viruses, worms, and Trojan horses; just ask Peter Norton where he’d be today if the malware and spyware developers hadn’t taken a cue from the spammers. Yes, its people like Sternman who have done much to enhance the bottom lines of companies like McAfee and Symantec, and helped make possible the employment of thousands of bitheads who would otherwise be leading unproductive lives as doctors or scientist searching for the cure to malaria, or some other disease.