Thursday Links: Spam Edition
7th December 2006
by gordo
Both of my readers have mentioned that they’ve been seeing more spam on this site lately, and that some Internet sites seem to take longer to load than usual. Both observations are correct, and the phenomena are related. There is now a “torrent” in spam, according to Information Week, thanks to an increasing use of botnets (botnets are created when a virus takes control of home computers and uses them to send out spam).
As a result, some servers are becoming overwhelmed, which slows traffic considerably. My solution, as always, is to put more people in jail for sending out viruses, and for knowingly sending out hundreds of unsolicited e-mails.
As a result of some of the problems I experienced while looking for today’s links, some of the material I wanted to include won’t be here. My apologies to the folks at This Old Brit, Mike the Mad Biologist, Gorilla’s Guides, Jon Swift, and Red State Feminist, all of whom had some great material up in the past couple of days. Their sites are still accessible, but with some wait time. Find them on my blogroll and check them out.
***
One of these days, I’m going to start selling ad space on this site. Cassandra, who acts as both my sister and business manager, found this audio ad for an anti-shyness drug. I’m not sure if it’s quite right for this website, though. Let me know what you think in the comments.
***
Stram of 15 Seats wonders why liberals want Barak Obama to run for president, despite the fact that he hasn’t served long, and has written no major legislation. I know why I want him to run: because no better Democrat has announced his or her candidacy.
Gore won’t run, and neither will Feingold. I don’t even want Kucinich or Nader to be president. So who does that leave? Hillary? Kerry? Biden? Vilsack? Bayh? Frankly, the only reason I’d vote for any of those five is that they’d be better than any Republican who might win the nomination. But Obama is a candidate that I can be enthusiastic about.
I can say that about only one other possible candidate: John Edwards. And Edwards hasn’t said whether or not he’ll run.
I’d also like to point out a couple of things about Obama’s inexperience and alleged lack of gravitas:
1) Everything Stram says about Obama, you could have said about John Kennedy in 1960.
2) Obama is not a businessman who bought himself a Senate seat. He worked his way up through the state legislature, building a reputation for intelligence, leadership, and consensus-building. In other words, he’s not a rookie politician.
3) To say that a Democrat needs to have crafted major legislation in order to be considered is to say that a Democrat needs to either have served since before the Republicans took control of congress in 1994. Remember, the Republicans did everything they could to obstruct the Democrats, and would re-write legislation that they wanted to pass (sometimes changing only one or two words) in order to take credit for it.
Long story short, I can definitely see why people want Obama to run.
***
Over at 3 Quarks Daily, Alon reminds us that Islam is very much a Western religion, so the Yahoos who say that there is a coming clash between Islam and Western Civilization are full of crap. Back at his own website, Alon takes one such Yahoo to task for using his Jewish heritage as a shield against charges that he is an anti-Muslim bigot.
3 Quarks also has a piece about innumeracy that’s worth reading (innumeracy is like illiteracy, but for numbers).
***
When I think of innumerate Yahoos who encourage anti-Muslim bigotry, I naturally think of the Bush administration. The New York Times has an article about a Bobby Maxwell, who angered the Bush administration by auditing trying to prevent oil companies from cheating American taxpayers.
It will shock no-one to learn that Maxwell was fired from his job with the Interior Department.
Also, Matt of State of the Union is betting that the Bush administration will respond to the discovery of water on Mars by invading the Moon. I have to say, it does make as much sense as invading Iraq to get rid of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, in response to the 9/11 attacks.
***
When I think of the Bush administration, I naturally think of greenhouse gasses and torture.
Helmet of Phrerlajsljrqrul has a cool map that shows the amount of GHG produced by other countries, relative to the production of the US. He also links to this article by Alfred McCoy on the history of American use of torture.
It’s important to remember that the Bush administration is not the first to employ torture, or the first to attempt to legitimize its use. The only thing that really sets this administration apart has been the fact that they’ve been relatively successful in their efforts to convince Americans that we ought to be using torture.
***
When I think of greenhouse gas and torture…
OK, we’re back to the Bush administration. Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post worries that when Bush talks about Iraq, he displays the symptoms of psychological entrapment.
In other words, Bush has already invested so much in the war, he can’t bring himself to leave. Like a gambler who loses his initial stake, he’s going to keep borrowing moeny until he either wins back his initial stake, or people stop lending him money. And in the game Bush is playing, there really is no way for him to win back his initial stake.
And Bush isn’t the only one displaying symptoms of psychological entrapment. John Holbo of Crooked Timber spots an article by Bob Novak that offers a good example of the sort of thinking that’s perpetrating our involvement in that war:
Today, the purpose of war is sharply political, not military; psychological, not physical. The main purpose of war is to dominate the way the enemy imagines and thinks about the war.
As long as war is thought of as a test of wills, we’ll be seeing more Iraqs, and more Vietnams. But wars aren’t won by staring across a table at your adversary and refusing to blink. They are won either by making your enemies understand that they have more to lose by fighting than by surrendering. And we’ve now made life in Iraq so unbearable that most Iraqis have little to lose either way. In other words, we simply cannot win.
***
When I think of pundits who get everything wrong, I think of Glenn Reynolds. Instaputz has a chronology of Reynolds’ misstatements and misunderstandings concerning the war in Iraq.
***
One more Iraq war link: soldiers have found that silly string is an indispensible tool when you’re searching Iraqi houses.
***
One in seven Mexican workers live in the United States. That means that one in twenty American workers comes from Mexico.
***
When I think of unemployed Mexicans, I think of XicanoPwr of Para Justicia y Libertad. He’s celebrating one full year of being unemployed. OK, that was a pretty rough transition, but you should read his unemployment article anyway, because it’s filled with insight as to the causes and effects of unemployment.
***
Speaking of people enhancing their websites with highly personal material, Katie of Liberal Debutante has teamed up with her brother Andy to write a moving piece on their late father.
I have to say, Katie looks more like her father than just about anyone I know.
Katie also links to virtual tours of New York City’s surface and subsurface. The photos are cool, even if New York City isn’t.
***
Finally, I’d like to mark the return of Hottie McNaturepants to the blogosphere. He’s got a disappointing piece on how to survive if you’re lost in the woods, but give the guy a break. He’s out of practice.
December 7th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Now everyone will know why your finances are in the toilet!
December 8th, 2006 at 4:32 am
I believe there are serious arguments for John Edwards and Wes Clark.
Also, I know a lot of people make connections between Obama and JFK. At this point, all they have in common is charisma and inexperience.
Even then, JFK served in the Second World War and in the House for six years, before becoming senator. Kennedy won his seat in the U.S. Senate in 1952, defeating Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. He ran for president in 1960.
Is it possible that Democrats (et al) akin Obama to Kennedy, not because he fits the bill, but because to Democrats, the bill needs to be fitted?
December 8th, 2006 at 4:58 am
I did notice that you had a can of Spam® Lite in the picture!
I’ve been using the Akismet spam catcher, and it works pretty well, well enough that I disabled my Captcha feature. As for putting spammers in jail (and, personally, I’d like to see them transported back to the seventeenth century, and let tha Стрельцы have some fun with them), a lot of the spam I see comes from UK addresses; I don’t know how American law is going to touch them.
December 8th, 2006 at 5:23 am
Dana–
I hadn’t noticed the Spam Lite. I assume that it’s like regular Spam, but not quite as tasty.
As for UK spammers, the fact is that we’ve gone to great effort to get foreign countries to respect our copyright laws. If we can fight to enforce patents that benefit only a few corporations, then surely we can fight to defend a tool that helps businesses of all sorts, all across the country.
When you think about all of the extra expenses that delays and breakdowns of Internet traffic can cause to businesses, it’s certainly worth the effort to get other countries to crack down on spammers.
Matt–
My point was not that Kennedy was inexperienced, but that Obama is not inexperienced. Part of the spin that Nixon tried to use against Kennedy was Kennedy’s alleged inexperience, and lack of legislative accomplishment.
I would probably favor Edwards over Obama, but Edwards has not yet announced. I guess you could say I favor them both until one of them steps up to the plate.
And by the way, it was your post on John Kennedy that made me think of him when I read Stram’s piece on Obama.
December 8th, 2006 at 7:15 am
While I’m sure that y’all won’t think too much of advice for the Democrats from me, I’d say that you need a governor to be your 2008 candidate, not a senator. Governors, even relatively unknown ones from states like Georgia and Arkansas, win presidential elections, while senators very rarely do.
It’s simple, really: governors build up executive records, balance budgets and actually run things; legislators don’t. Maybe someone like Sen Evan Bayh, who had two reasonably successful terms as governor, might be OK, but it’s hard to see what Senator Obama or Senatrix Clinton can run on in terms of a record. Governors also get to claim to be outsiders, while senators do not.
Americans like to switch party control of the White House after a two-term presidency, but if y’all run a senator and we run a governor, y’all just might get your feelings hurt.
December 8th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Gordo –
I’m waiting on the next JFK to show himself.
December 8th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Matt–
Dana–
There have only been 43 Senators. That number is so small, you can’t reliably say anything about what position acts as the best springboard to the presidency.
And you can talk all you want about Senator vs Governor, but the fact is that the most prominent Republican in 2008 is going to be George W Bush. That’s going to be a very heavy weight around the neck of any GOP candidate.
December 8th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Gordo –
MY EYES!
Curse you for posting that picture. Curse you!
December 8th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
I am glad somebody caught the stats. When I wrote my post, I didn’t want to make it really boring with stats about unemployment, so I wanted to put face to it. I think when we get too analytical about this kind of issues, it gets lost because people moved on. But if people knows somebody about is in that situation, it stays with them. You may think it was a rough transition, to me it was just right.
This is off topic, what plug-in are you using for your comment live preview? I like yours better because it is smooth and really is live, the one I choose is a bit too jerky and delayed.
December 8th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
XP–
I agree that it’s too easy to forget that there are people just like us behind those unemployment figures (in fact, EXACTLY like us!).
But I liked the fact that you included the stats, because you can prove just about any bogus point using anecdotes. It’s only by using stats that we can get a good idea as to which approaches to a problem have been effective.
The comment preview I use is here. If you really want to get comments going, though, try the smart unread comment plugin.
December 10th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Sorry, Gordo. But I’m working the stiff, unused writing muscles out, and I’m happy to report that my subsequent posts are even more disappointinger.
December 11th, 2006 at 12:04 am
Chris–
I’m surprised you didn’t throw your back out when you typed that.
Seriously, you know I like your blog. I just write stuff like this because, well, because I’m a dick:
By the way, I wish I’d have thought to post a video of Victor Jara’s last concert on the occasion of Pinochet’s death.
December 11th, 2006 at 4:07 am
Thanks, Gordo.
When I was designing my blog, I must have seen so many blogs for design ideas, WP templates, plug-ins, etc, at one point it all looked the same to me…lol.