Dead In Christ

Maureen, of "Fucktard" fame, was apparently exposed by Justin, at fifteen minutes, as a college student at WVU, and not the poor uneducated woman she claimed to be. By all appearances, she has deleted the Dying in Christ blog and her own Blogger profile.

Justin just posted this (off-topic) comment about it over at Die Eigenheit:

I mainly posted those ones you found at the other site, asking her what they were about and why she swore so much. She deleted them, saying I had blasphemed the holy spirit, so I reposted them... asking if WVU had a policy about using their computers to spread hate speech and the like.She told me she didn't go to WVU, I was clearly wrong and that she "was too old" to go to "university" and blamed the profanity-laced comments on the other blog on "Zach" whom had already apologized for doing such naughty things. I told her they weren't possibly from Zach (or he's the smartest 12 year old in the world), and then within a half-hour... the whole thing was gone.

I don't know about anyone else, but as I sit here and laugh hysterically, contemplating Maureen's accusation that Justin blasphemed the Holy Spirit, I have to admit that I'm going to miss the old broad.

UPDATE: It appears that we are witness to a resurrection, as Dying In Christ has been reincarnated as a blog "intended to start reflecting a more Unitarian/Universalist or a Secular Humanist point of view. More to follow :)".

Sounds like it won't be quite so funny, though.

The Disneyfication of Devo: DEV2.O

This is just too horrifying for words--four teenage kids doing Devo covers, with the blessing of the band.

"I'm honored to be the new Mark Mothersbaugh!" declared Nicole!

says a press release. But I guess it is just the next step in devolution...

They don't do "Mongoloid."

Pushing spyware through search

Ben Edelman points out how Google is a major player in the distribution of spyware by accepting paid advertising from companies that distribute it. The data is now easily available, thanks to SiteAdvisor.com, about which sites are distributing this crap, and if Google really wants to not be evil, they should start refusing the money of these sleazy companies.

This is a parallel situation to Internet providers who provide connectivity to known spammers. I am pleased to work for a company that has a strict acceptable use policy (which I helped write, and which my organization is responsible for enforcing), which allows us to take appropriate steps to keep spammers off our network and quickly terminate contracts and access of those who manage to make it on. But too many are unwilling to say no to the money, and look the other way when their contracts are violated, which unfortunately includes the big guys (SBC, which is now part of AT&T, and MCI, which is now part of Verizon, are two of the very worst offenders out there).

Goldwater Institute: Confused priorities

In today's release from the Goldwater Institute, "The Nanny State Comes to My Mailbox," Andrea Woodmansee complains about the fact that a birthday card from Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano contained the statement "One of your most important roles as a parent is to make sure your baby is immunized."

I find it more objectionable that the state spends money to send out cards for all births instead of on more useful things (or did Ms. Woodmansee get special treatment as a result of her proximity to power?) than I am that the card contains an accurate statement about the importance of immunization.

This state contains numerous anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists who put the rest of us as well as their own children at risk by not having them vaccinated.

Failing to have children vaccinated is arguably a form of child abuse--failing to take reasonable steps to give the child proper medical treatment.

I can't bring myself to be exercised about Janet Napolitano promoting vaccination when we have a President who doesn't respect Constitutional limits on his power.

Does anyone doubt that Barry Goldwater would have prioritized George Bush's abuses of power over Janet Napolitano's birthday card promotion of vaccination as a subject of critical attention?

Kudos to James Frey for coming clean

Now that Frey has confessed that The Smoking Gun's expose is quite accurate and his book was filled with fabrications, Oprah has also admitted that she was mistaken to continue supporting him and give "the impression that the truth does not matter."

It's more satisfying to everyone when liars confess than when they continue lying, and when those who make mistakes admit them rather than cover them up.

How you can tell the Discovery Institute isn't doing science

Mike Dunford compares their PR output to their scientific output at The Questionable Authority. They put out a press release at a rate of 0.44 per day, but scientific papers at a rate of 0.0046/day. Another way of looking at it is that it took them over 20 years to generate the 34 papers on their list, but their last 34 press releases have come in the last 77 days (since November 10, 2005).

Stop Badware!

In addition to SiteAdvisor.com, Google, Lenovo, and Sun have backed a project by the Berkman Center at the Harvard Law School, the Oxford Internet Institute, and Consumer Reports WebWatch to create a "hall of shame" for purveyors of spyware and adware, at www.stopbadware.org.

StopBadWare and SiteAdvisor.com should team up, if they haven't already (Ben Edelman was formerly a student fellow at the Berkman Center and an advisor to SiteAdvisor.com and has already created his own hall of shame list for affiliate programs)--the latter's data should be quite useful to the former, and is available under Creative Commons license.

Turning mental institutions into condos

CNNMoney.com's grand-prize winner for dumbest moment of 2005 goes to a plan to convert the creepy Danvers State Hospital into high-end apartments and condos. This mental institution was an example of the architecture known as the "Kirkbride Plan," similar to other Gothic Revival masterpieces like the H.H. Richardson-designed Buffalo State Hospital.

Danvers was the setting of the 2001 film "Session 9."

New Internet consumer protection tool--SiteAdvisor.com

I've been using the Firefox plugin from SiteAdvisor.com for a few days, and I think it's a great idea. They've searched the web, downloaded content, and submitted unique email addresses on signup forms everywhere they find them, to see what happens. They then rate each site for malicious content and the extent to which it generates spam in response to a signup. This database is then used by their browser plugin to display icons next to Google and Yahoo search results indicating whether that site is green, yellow, or red regarding the type of content downloaded, the amount of email you can expect to receive from signing up at the site, and whether it links to other sites that are problematic.

Their privacy policy is good--they don't keep a record of who goes to what site. One feature I'd like to see them add is the ability to not make queries for certain domains (such as Intranet web pages--their current design allows them to map out internal corporate web structures which they should not be able to get).

Their advisory board includes Avi Rubin, a well-known security researcher at Johns Hopkins University (and formerly at AT&T) who has done significant work on e-voting security, and Ben Edelman, formerly of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, who is well-known for his research on Internet subjects such as domain name usage and China's web filtering, as well as his lawsuit against web filtering company N2H2 to defend his right to research its blocking list.

SiteAdvisor has a blog, too (though as of this moment it doesn't have a valid RSS feed, according to Thunderbird).

Cory Doctorow talk at Nature on copyright, SF, online publication, etc.

Cory Doctorow visited the offices of Nature and gave an interesting talk. (Link via Pharyngula.)