New Wordpress Version Invites Too Much Spam

I started this blog about a year after I started my original blog, so I am using Wordpress version 2.6.3 for this, and I still have a very old version for my other blog.

This new version didn’t add much functionality, but what it did add was way too much spam. I don’t know why that is, but what I do know is that I have over 9,000 spam comments awaiting approval. If any of those comments are real comments, they’re never getting approved.

I still get automated comments that say, “Hi, mister, I like you blog,” or “xxlfslsdoi” every now and then.

On my other blog, there is almost never any spam that slips through.

I have had to make a lot of restrictions on words to keep spam out on this one, and I’ve had to disallow trackbacks all together.

On my first few posts, when trackbacks were allowed, I got hundreds of trackbacks from blogger websites with gibberish for their name that were deleted before I could even see what kind the blog was.

Aside from being really annoying, those comments serve no purpose. Whoever pays for automatic commenting her (and on most other blogs) is paying for nofollow links. Furthermore, why would you link to a blog that doesn’t exist like dldskdsf.blogspot.com. Those types of blogs are used for the links for most of the spam comments.

UPDATE: I have approved two spam comments on this post just to illustrate my point.

Tags: Wordpress

The Lifestyle You’ve Always Dreamed Of! Just a Click Away.

What’s the only thing more fun than being a famous Hollywood party girl? Being an avatar of a famous Hollywood party girl.

This website, IMVU, will let you live your dreams.

That is, if your dream is to stare at a computer screen and pretend you are hot.

Oh, you can also meet other “people” here.

I think it’s a shame some people hang out in coffee shops and socialize with each other. We should be meeting more avatars online.

Joe Biden’s Biggest Gaffe: “I Don’t Make Any Big Gaffes.”

Joe Biden made his biggest gaffe yet, stating today that he doesn’t make gaffes.

“And for all the stuff about gaffes, I don’t think there have been any real gaffes.”

Oh, really?

Saying Obama is going to cause an international crisis isn’t a gaffe? Saying Obama is against clean coal when he claims to be in favor of it isn’t a gaffe? Telling a disabled man to stand up isn’t a gaffe? Claiming FDR was president in 1929 isn’t a gaffe?

Here is my earlier summary of Biden’s top gaffes, and he has made many more since that was published in September.

His claim that he doesn’t make major gaffes is a gaffe in and of itself.

BlogRush Shutting Down!

John Reese just sent out an email a minute ago announcing that he was shutting down BlogRush.

After losing many bloggers and having low click-thru rates, Reese acknowledges that it didn’t work out as he had hoped.

BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected. We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go. All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.

Our team worked very hard to try and build a service that would truly help bloggers of all sizes get free traffic to their blogs. This was our primary focus. Not once did we ever try to monetize the service with ads or anything else. BlogRush never made a single penny in revenue. We wanted to be able to help our users FIRST and then worry about monetizing the service later. Unfortunately, the service didn’t work out like we had hoped. (It happens.)

Reese said that he received some offers for BlogRush but decided not to sell it.

While many might think this is crazy, we truly feel it’s the ‘right’ thing to do for our users. Believe it or not, it’s not always about the money. In fact, BlogRush will have lost a small fortune when it’s all said and done, and it was by choice.

The full announcement is up on BlogRush.com.

Tags: BlogRush

N.Y. Times Uses Misleading Headlines

Here is a headline from the front page of today’s New York Times:

2 Rivals’ Plans on Fiscal Issue Add to Deficits

Bigger Shortfall is Seen in McCain Proposal

The headline says McCain’s plan is projected to cause a bigger shortfall.

The article says otherwise.

Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a centrist budget watchdog group, estimated Mr. McCain could fall about $600 billion short in 2013, roughly the annual cost of Medicare.

The Tax Policy Center estimated that the overall revenue loss would be nearly $1 trillion for Mr. Obama’s term, and $2.9 million measured over a decade.

To simplify it:
McCain Budget Shortfall - $600 billion
Obama Budget Shortfall - $1,000 billion

While the Times did quote different sources for each candidate’s estimate, the sources they used said Obama’s plan would cause a bigger shortfall. Why did the headline suggest the opposite is true?

Tags: John McCain, New York Times

Lunch with Len Downie

I just got back from having lunch with Len Downie, former executive editor of the Washington Post.

A group of journalism students and prospective students at Indiana at lunch with him, and he answered questions.

The most interesting things he discussed were the Washington Post’s 2005 story on secret CIA prisons overseas and the fact that he doesn’t vote. He also mentioned a novel he was working on that has curious similarities to this year’s presidential election.

He and Charlie Gibson are the only major journalists he knows who don’t vote. Downie has been neglecting his civic duty ever since he became the Post’s national editor in 1982. He took a buyout this year, so he has since registered to vote but will not vote until the next election cycle, because he still had some influence on the Post’s coverage this year.

Why The Post Published the Secret Prisons Story

One of the questions asked to Downie was what concerns he had with the secret prison story that some in the US government didn’t want to be published.

He said that after meetings with government officials, they came to the conclusion that the story did not pose significant national security risks. The only risk was in the paper mentioned which countries the prisons were located in, information which the Post didn’t disclose.

Some of the citizens and officials in those countries might not be able to differentiate between the Post writing an independent article and the government making an announcement, so they might think the article was coming from the government.

That would pose a diplomatic risk, because the countries involved wouldn’t want the US to announce their involvement.

The Rules of the Game: a Novel on McCain’s Campaign?

Downie’s upcoming novel, The Rules of the Game, seems to have predicted much about John McCain’s presidential campaign so far.

Downie began writing in in 2004, and it involves an investigative reporter with the backstory of a presidential candidate who picks a young inexperienced female “media star” as his vice president then dies in office.

Tags: Len Downie, Washington Post

Barbara West Goes Over the Top; Biden Overreacts

Barbara West, anchor for WFTV in central Florida, asked some tough questions that Joe Biden hasn’t faced yet, and the Obama campaign responded by canceling any other WFTV interviews.

The question that really went over the top was, “You may recognize this famous quote. ‘From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.’ That’s from Karl Marx. How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?”

Asking about Obama spreading the wealth around is fair game, but it is pretty ridiculous to compare him to Karl Marx. It certainly was entertaining, though:

West interviewed McCain yesterday, and she was equally tough. She asked, “Your campaign still seems to be trying to get itself organized. The presidency is the top executive job in the land. How can you convince the American people that you are ready to lead, when the thing you are in charge of, your campaign, appears to be lacking the same, fine-tuned coordination as Obama’s campaign?”

But, CBS 3 in Philadelphia also asked Biden tough questions that Biden didn’t answer. (Video)

At one point, Biden was asked, “Obama talks about spreading the wealth around and everyone does better that way…is that not kind of being a socialist… That’s what your accusers are saying here. … And wouldn’t they just pass that on to the consumer?”

He responded, “Absolutely not…absolutely not,” but when pressed to explain it, he again said, “Absolutely not,” instead of explaining.

Joe Biden then made West’s interview a big part of his next speech. He compared it to attacks on Thomas Jefferson and others. (Article)

My friends, that was not an attack, it was an interview.

Tags: Barbara West, Joe Biden

Socialist Products for Sale

As I was reading my email today, I saw these ads alongside my email.

View the bottom ad. Targeted to Obama supporters?

Ben Olsen is Lost in His Grandiose Sense of Superiority and a Lot of Drugs, Too, I Might Add

You are looking at the best part of Wanderlost. The cover sure does look cool, right?

Well, it’s true what they say: You can’t judge a book by it’s cover.

I mean, yeah, you can judge that this book is going to be about some drug addled hippie driving around America trying to find a higher calling. Some drug addled hippies like Jack Kerouac wrote interesting books that way. But, pretending to be Jack Kerouac and mentioning his name–and Allen Ginsberg’s and William S. Burroughs’s and every other hippie writer’s throughout the prose–isn’t going to make you write like them.

Forget the writing, his selfish, thoughtless ideology is even worse.

I spent $5 buying this book used on Amazon with a gift-certificate, so if I’ve got to get my money’s worth somehow. I’m going to brutally tear it apart over the next few weeks and hope Olsen notices since his book got almost now press when it was released in 2006.



Ben Olsen’s View of the American Dream:

I Don’t Want to Work and I Hate Sell Outs Who Work For Luxury and Riches, But I Want to Move to The Caribbean and Sip Mojitos All Day

I happen to be on page 59 right now where he is in Denver complaining about how everyone is a sellout even while he works in Los Angeles producing television commercials.

It’s the American Dream. The reason people make money and buy houses and get married–not because we want to, but because it’s been ingrained in us since the beginning.

I thought we made money so that we could survive? You know, buy food, shelter, clothing, and, yes, houses, because we want a warm place to live?

Here Olsen is traveling across the country with a train ticket that money bought staying at his friends houses that money bought leaching off of their money with the help of his money, and he is decrying the very system that makes his selfish trip possible.

He does acknowledge this two paragraphs down:

“Absolutely [we need to survive],” I nodded. “But do we need to eat hamburgers from McDonald’s and sleep in fancy apartments with $500 bedspreads?”

And this is the first time I’ve heard someone insist that a McDonald’s dollar menu burger is fine dining…

But, to go to his larger point on whether we need luxury, well, maybe you don’t Olsen, so you don’t have to burden yourself with the pursuit of money. It’s all the better for you. Other people’s pursuit of luxury doesn’t affect you.

Then again, Olsen admits later on that he himself would want to sleep in a fancy apartment with a $500 bedspread:

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. … If I did, I’d be sitting in the sun in some Caribbean island undoing the strap of some floozy girl’s bikini and drinking mojitos.”

Yes, yes, it all makes sense now. We don’t need to waste our lives slaving over money just so we can get ahead in this rat race and further the Machine. We just need to move to the Caribbean, don’t work, and sip mojitos all day.

Tags: Ben Olsen

“We Need to Create an Incentive to Save.”

John Edwards said in front of ACORN on July 2, 2007 (video), “We need to create an incentive to save, which means we, America, the government, needs to match what they save.”

I’ve got an incentive to save, John Edwards. It’s called having more money. Especially in this latest economic downturn, that’s a pretty good incentive.

Tags: John Edwards