No subject

I have never seen the "Packet filtered" message before.  I did a
'whois' for this host and tracked down some phone numbers.  I called the
network operations people of the organization which seems to administer
'jerry.exodus.net'.  I was told to send an email to them, which I did.
Oddly enough, though, after my phone call, the behavior of 'ping' changed.
Now this is the output I get:

boyle:/x03033% ping english.aljazeera.net
PING english.aljazeera.net (216.34.94.186) from 152.1.38.206 : 56(84) bytes of data.

--- english.aljazeera.net ping statistics ---
309 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% loss, time 308019ms

boyle:/x03033% !ping
ping english.aljazeera.net
PING english.aljazeera.net (216.34.94.186) from 152.1.38.206 : 56(84) bytes of data.

--- english.aljazeera.net ping statistics ---
381 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% loss, time 380015ms