After being hit with comment spam over the last couple of days, I’ve gone looking for solutions. I’ve made some changes that hopefully will help.

Automatic’s free email Enkoder: This little goody translates an email address into numeric equivalent gobbledy-gook and wraps it in javascript. The result is a displayable email address that can’t be parsed by most spam bots. And that means I can once again have an actual, clickable email link in the side blog.

Installation is straightforward, although you have to know enough HTML to recognize where to put it: Simply type your email address and a few other fields into the online form, then paste the results into your HTML page where you want the address to appear. Voila!

I’ve also tightened up the rules that determine if a comment is spam or not, I’ve increased the time required between comment posts, and I’ve installed a plugin that uses semi-fuzzy logic to decide if a comment is spam and deletes it if it is. That will keep me from needing to delete every single spam comments. Which sucked.

I thought about installing a captcha system, but there doesn’t appear to be an easily-installed plugin for WordPress yet, and I’m not sure how much hacking I want to do. Besides, captchas can limit accessibility and aren’t 100% guaranteed. If the other measure I’ve taken don’t do the trick, then I’ll look at doing that. But not yet.

I also installed 2 new skins: Fabric Of Our Lives and Seafood Basket. Check ’em out!.

Listening to soundbites from Dubya’s speech in Medford, where he sticks to his script…

“Government run healthcare” means… what? Poor-quality health care, restrictions, rationing, less choice, more controls.

This doesn’t say much for Medicare, Medicaid and VA, does it? I wonder what this says about Bush’s prescription drug program for seniors? If I were in one of these programs, should I feel comforted?

I was struck by the pattern in Bush’s speech:

Bush — soundbite
audience — wild applause
Bush — smirk

Lather, rinse, repeat…

Does Dubya realize that there’s nobody there but those who have been willing to sign a pledge of faithfulness?

The British paper The Guardian Weekly has launched Operation Clark County. No, they do not mean our friends across the Columbia river. They mean Clark County, Ohio.

According to The Guardian:

You may not have heard of it, but it’s one of the most marginal areas in one of the most marginal states: at the last election, just 324 votes separated Democrats from Republicans. It’s a place where a change of mind among just a few voters could make a real difference.

I’m assuming that by “marginal,” what The Guardian means is “close.” “This is a place,” says The Guardian where a few votes could make a difference.

Operation Clark County pairs a Guardian reader with a Clark County voter. Entering an e-mail address in the provided registration box returns the name and address of someone in Ohio. The Guardian explains:

Writing to a Clark County voter is a chance to explain how US policies effect you personally, and the rest of the world more generally, and who you hope they will send to the White House. It may even persuade someone to use their vote at all. […] Of course, who you urge your voter to support is entirely up to you.

Helpful hints are provided, such as be courteous and charming, don’t make assumptions, explain why you are writing, etc. The Guardian promises to publish a selection of the most persuasive letters on October 20th.

And, although the reader is not advised which candidate to suggest, sample letters from British luminaries leave little doubt:

As the bumper stickers put it, “Re-defeat Bush”. But, this time, do it so overwhelmingly that neither his brother’s friends in Florida nor his father’s friends on the Supreme Court will be able to rig the count. Decent Americans – there are absolutely more intelligent, educated, civilised, cultivated, compassionate people in America than in any other country in the western world – please show your electoral muscle this time around. We in the rest of the world, who sadly cannot vote in the one election that really affects our future, are depending on you. Please don’t let us down.

It’s always interesting how others see us.

The last debate between Kerry and Bush — not a decisive win for either. But what color is Bush’s sky?

I got really tired of Bush repeating that the cure for everything — the economy, jobs, taxes, anything — was education and the No Child Left Behind Act. I wanted him to have to answer these questions:

* When all of these well-educated kids graduate from high school / college, where in the hell are they going to find jobs? Do you expect them to move to India?

* If I lose my job to outsourcing, while I appreciate the thought that I may get a pittance to help me retrain, how the hell, as a single mom, am I supposed to feed my family in the meantime?

* What exactly are the “jobs of the 21st century?” I have what I was told 10 years ago was a “job of the 21st century.” I’m watching all of my friends and colleagues losing their jobs to outsourcing.

* Do you have the remotest clue that an $60k+ professional position and a minimum-wage burger-flipping job are not synonymous? Do you know how many workers at Walmart qualify for government aid?

At least Kerry seems to live somewhere on the same planet that I do.

The Transportation Safety Administration, the government agency in charge of airport security, spent nearly a half-million dollars on an awards ceremony at a lavish hotel to pat themselves on the back. Among the expenditures:

The event planning company, MarCom Group Inc. of Fairfax, Va., was paid $85,552 for its work and given an additional $81,767 for plaques, $5,196 for official photographs, $1,486 for three balloon arches and $1,509 for signs.

The reception included finger food, coffee and cake that averaged $33 per person. Seven cakes cost a total of $1,850; three cheese displays, $1,500.

[…] Awards were presented to 543 Transportation Security Administration employees and 30 organizations, including a “lifetime achievement award” for one worker with the 2-year-old agency. Almost $200,000 was spent on travel and lodging for attendees.

Sounds like a nice little party. But that wasn’t enough for the poobahs in the TSA! They apparently thought that more was owed to them that just a lavish bash:

The investigation by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin, also found the TSA gave its senior executives bonuses averaging $16,000, higher than at any other federal government agency, and failed to provide adequate justification in more than a third of the 88 cases examined.

[…] Federal agencies on average gave cash awards to 49 percent of their executives in 2002, while 76 percent of TSA executives received them in 2003.

The inspector general reviewed 88 employees’ files and found that 38 percent “had no individual recommendation and justification for the performance award.”

“The legitimacy of such large awards is called into question by the lack of an appropriate selection process and the reliance on boilerplate justifications that could be applicable to anyone,” the report said.

The report also noted that fewer than 3 percent of nonexecutive employees received bonuses in 2003.

I guess the moral of that story is that it doesn’t pay to be a worker-bee in the TSA.

But what this taxpayer is really pondering is… how does this make us safer?

Breast implants are becoming more and more popular with a rather surprising selection of Shanghai citizens — men. The implants are similar to the ones used by women, except they are shaped differently and are stiffer. The apparently desired result is to make those pecs look buff without the bother of exercising.

“To be frank, surgery is unnecessary,” Liu Chunlong, from the Shanghai Ren’ai Hospital, was quoted as saying.

“Physical exercise can create the same effect and it is safer.”

He said the hospital had received 40 patients this year and operated on 10, compared with just two or three such operations last year.

He said many of the patients had psychological problems.

“They ascribe the unhappiness in their lives to their weak muscles,” he was quoted as saying.

“The surgery, in some instances, serves as psychological therapy.”

Uh… wouldn’t it be cheaper and safer to just hire a personal trainer and see a shrink?