an eddy in the bitstream

Month: February 2005 (Page 1 of 2)

Weather != Climate

I was at the dentist this morning, and amid the smalltalk, the dentist made this off-hand comment that I hear so often from my fellow Minnesotans: I wouldn’t mind more 40-degree days.

Around here, that’s a very warm winter day.

Comments like that really bother me. They’re symptomatic of our culture’s myopia. I enjoy the occasional 40-degree day in February — the annual February thaw is a holy thing — but that’s not the problem. The problem is when we have lots of 40-degree days in a winter. Winter after winter. Then it’s not weather anymore; it’s climate. And climate change, while perhaps unavoidable in the long run, is going to alter human life on this planet — and not for the better.

Spam

You’ve gotten it too, I know. But I must say, they just get more and more interesting.

Just this morning I got one with the subject line ==Best Online Pharmacy=== — pure spam for sure. When I clicked on it to delete it, I got a glance at the body before it disappeared and I had to retrieve it from the trash. Incredible. It was like 100 of the most cliched hallmark-like one-liners you have ever heard, all run together in a long paragraph. Sure, there was a URL at the beginning to some jibberish site (which I subsequently traced back to China Telecom (is that a real company?) via whois) — but the concept was really smart. Lots of random English phrases, real phrases, that should bypass all but the cruelest spam blockers (as it did mine).

A little excerpt for fun:

They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it. All love shifts and changes. I don’t know if you can be wholeheartedly in love all the time. The Babylon project was our last, best hope for peace. .. It failed. .. But in the year of the Shadow war it became something greater: our last, best hope .. for victory. The year is 2260, the place: Babylon 5.Love is always bestowed as a gift – freely, willingly and without expectation. We don’t love to be loved; we love to love. When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So, let’s all get drunk and go to heaven!

I kid you not. That’s some great stuff. It’s like spam magnetic refrigerator poetry.

Update: got another one, same content, but a better subject line: Phermacy you wish.

You’d think…

That nothing happens around here since there’s no recent entry, right?

But of course, just the opposite is true. A late night tonight, upgrading some sw for work. Found a great new site today: workzoo. They use Swish-e to spider job sites from all over the US and make them searchable from one place. Very nice. And check out the cool map with geographic distribution of your search results. Tres cool.

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