Like a greatest hits album of songs that were too short, here are a few truncated columns on seemingly random topics of interest this week.

"Lo."

If you've ever forwarded a chain e-mail, bought shoes online, stalked someone on Facebook, downloaded an illegal copy of a song or Googled anything, it was because of "lo."

That's because 40 years ago last week those two letters heralded what would eventually usher in the modern age: the Internet.

The letters were sent on Oct. 29, 1969 and, according to National Geographic, was the first time a message was sent from one computer to another on the ARPANET, the network that would eventually become the Internet. (I'm not exactly sure where Al Gore fits in.)

The intended message was "login," but the system crashed after the first two letters. (And you thought your computer was unreliable.)

Now, you likely guessed that ARPANET must've been run by Microsoft (with the crashing and all), but it was actually a few terminals at a couple of research universities. The network, the first operational packet-switching network, was essentially the technical foundation for what would beget the Internet we know of today - i.e.,Wikipedia, Lolcats, dirty pictures, YouTube, blogs and Twitter.

(Quick tangent on blogs. The term is short for "Web log" which when combined and truncated, gives us "blog." That means we had just as much chance to be referring to our "Webls" as our "blogs." Imagine the possibilities.)

So if you didn't do so yet, wish the Internet a happy birthday (possibly with a lo-shaped cake) and then get back to finally writing a few more entries on your long-neglected Webl.

It's only a matter of time

I'm not a hypochondriac. I'm not.

I don't get sick and even if I did, it's my natural method of dealing with problems to pretend they don't exist. (Don't believe me, ask my wife.)

So it's particularly noteworthy that when it comes to Swine Flu - er, H1N1; sorry, Mrs. Sebelius - I have given up hope of not getting it.

That's because when I'm not bringing you parenthetical puns on a weekly basis, I teach at Waynesburg University. And like any other institution of higher learning (or high school or grade school), Waynesburg is full of students. And students are full of germs - veritable walking time bombs of the virus, cooped up in dorms and classrooms.

We were lucky to not be a school hit by the flu. But each weekend, the students go home and mix with their germ-ridden friends from other schools and it was only a matter of time before one of them brought H1N1 back to campus.

And so it was a certain sense of the inevitable that I was greeted with an e-mail Monday morning about the first suspected cases of the Oink Flu (technical term, look it up...OK, don't look it up. I was bluffing.) were reported in the student body.

Now, going to class is a scary thing and not because of Halloween (or because of the students' grades - zing!) I wince every time a member of my class hacks and weezes. I want to dip each assignment my students submit in Purell before I grade it.

(Purell, if you're reading, I'm not above free samples in exchange for the name drop.)

I feel like there should be a sign hung above my classroom door: "Abandon all health ye who enter here."

On a plus note, if I get Swine Flu, at least it'll be something topical to write a column about...

(If you're still getting over Bird Flu, Brandon Szuminsky can be reached by e-mail at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.)