WordPress users: Anyone else encountering a different type of spam recently? What they’re doing is putting garbage on line 1, a legit link on line 2, and a spam link on line 3, and it’s slipping by Akismet. They look something like this:
toppingness girtline geocarpic lamiaceae homophylic vermix catholicate pseudatoll
FEC Wants ClintonGore Campaign To Repay Matching Funds [CNN link]
http://www.obviousspamlink.com
It should be noted that LEP is a relative lightweight when it comes to getting spammed, because I’m not using a WordPress server–almost a year and “only” 790 spam comments. So maybe this has been going on for a while and I’m just out of the loop.
April 19th, 2008
2 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Science/Technology
At 28 years old, I’m still a relatively young person, but old enough to have seen significant changes. This past weekend, returning from Houston, I started noticing all the “cool stuff” that might have been out of sci-fi novels of old. Kiosks allow you to check-in and get your boarding pass without having to interact with a human. And they have moving walkways that are pretty nifty.
Besides that, there’s plenty of other everyday stuff: Instead of businessmen carrying briefcases full of paper, we carry computers. (I remember the days when my dad had a briefcase as a symbol of work. As the next generation, I have a laptop.) We have big-screen, flat TV’s at home. There’s Wikipedia, which is something like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You, as a civilian, can now make reservations for sub-orbital flight. With GPS, a machine in your car can tell you exactly how to get to where you want to go. Animals have now been cloned. The list goes on.
If you put yourself in the right mindset, you could start thinking, “Dude, I’m living in a sci-fi novel!” Maybe we are.
February 13th, 2008
7 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Science/Technology
Meet Ashley Qualls. Three years ago, at 14 years old, she started a website (with $8 borrowed from her mother) that posted downloadable MySpace themes for free. Now? The site grosses $1 million/year, and which allowed her to do stuff like buying a house for her family. (Full story here.)
Inspiring: Wow, I could do that, too! I just need to borrow $8 from my mom.
Depressing: You know she got lucky. There are very good reasons why this happens so rarely. There are people who are better than her at what she does, but without the same success.
January 10th, 2008
8 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Science/Technology
There was a piece in the Scotman last year about Stalin’s experiments with creating an ape-man hybrid for use as an ultimate warrior. A History Channel piece last night cast doubt on that assertion, and apparently Stalin had no use or desire for such experiments.
The show claimed Dr. Ilya Ivanov really did attempt creating the hybrid, but without specific direction from the government. Stalin did give Ivanov a scientific grant, but he gave out a lot of cash to anyone who was trying to advance science, so the money didn’t imply Stalin’s personal interest in that particular project. Ivanov’s main motivation was to curb the influence of the strong Russian church, from which he was afraid of persecution.
A small amusing portion towards the end involved a scientist questioning whether humans were indeed the most intelligent species on the planet. He said something to the effect of “I may be able to do calculus and play the piano, things that we’d associate with intelligence, but how useful would they be in the jungle?”, and so forth.
Look, in the last 10,000 years, humans have developed stuff like writing, agriculture, the crossbow, the Theory of Relativity and have walked on the moon. The extent of our closest competitors’ technology is using pointy sticks as weapons. Chimps and gibbons may be smart, but they’re not THAT smart.
January 3rd, 2008
5 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under History, Science/Technology
If you’ve been wondering why you haven’t seen me at your local night club picking up ladies, it’s because I’ve been doing some research for the website (see picture, above).
After painstaking labor, I was able to ascertain that Liquid Egg Product is the 2,182,289th best website in the world. It would have cracked 2 millionth place if I were featured more frequently, more like 90% of the time.
And it would help if I got a raise, too.
Today is the last day to cast your vote for the 2007 Liquid Egg Product on the Face Award. Although everyone who was going to vote has done so already, I think. And the winner is an almost-certainty. Even so.
December 18th, 2007
12 comments
Posted by Liquid E. P. Mascot
Filed under Blog News, Science/Technology
People have created new shortcuts and acronyms to communicate in the world of e-mails and IM’s.
BTW = by the way
AFAIK = as far as I know
BRB = be right back
AFK = away from keyboard
is a happy face
I just learned a new one today:
FYN
I’ll let you figure out what that means.
December 13th, 2007
6 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Science/Technology
My weight runs within a rather narrow 5 lb. weight band, depending on my eating/exercise habits for that particular month. Depending on the source, my weight’s normal (according to BMI), or a tad underweight (according to my doctor).
Now there’s this study that says being overweight (but not obese) may actually be associated with lowest levels of death. And being underweight is actually bad, too.
Bring on the bacon and sausage! [The Mascot says: But not eggs!] Then again, it may be more difficult to move to New Zealand if I gain too much weight. New Zealand bans immigrants who have too high of a BMI. Plus exercise would be more of a pain in the butt.
December 3rd, 2007
22 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Science/Technology
“Scientists will always look for answers.”
“Maybe they shouldn’t ask so many questions!”
Maybe Brooklyn from Sakura Killers had it right. (Apologies for the allusion only 3 or 4 of my readers understand.)
A couple of cosmologists are blaming human observation of dark matter for possibly shortening the lifespan of the universe:
“The intriguing question is this,” Prof Krauss told the Telegraph. “If we attempt to apply quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole, and if our present state is unstable, then what sets the clock that governs decay? Once we determine our current state by observations, have we reset the clock? If so, as incredible as it may seem, our detection of dark energy may have reduced the life expectancy of our universe.”
So the problem here is that we’re pretty much guaranteed that instead of maybe having great-great-great-great-great-great-great-(x5 million)-grandkids, we’ll only get great-great-great-great-great-great-great-(x4.5 million)-grandkids?
It’s the kind of thing that keeps people awake at night.
November 24th, 2007
9 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Science/Technology, Burning Agony
There’s some debate as to the future of the Internet. Since the technology was developed by Al Gore and the infrastructure was created in the United States, the core servers sit on US soil. Other countries have started to say “we don’t like this arrangement”. The commenters responding to this Digg have been rather entertaining, many of them blinded to any other logic besides USA = bad.
November 20th, 2007
8 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Science/Technology
So a couple economists and psychologists did a two-year experiment where they observed the results of “speed-dating”. It’s essentially where a bunch of people have a few minute “dates” with many people in one night, and decide if they’d be interested in continuing seeing each other. The results that stuck in my craw:
1. Beauty was a much more significant factor for men’s decisions.
2. Men don’t care so much for women more intelligent or successful than they are.
3. Women have a strong preference for their own race; men don’t care so much.
The article in question: An Economist Goes to a Bar
November 13th, 2007
3 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Science/Technology
