This slightly old article from Wired News discusses the successes of spammers, explaining why it probably won't go away anytime soon. I particularly loved the list of the types of people who ordered penis-enlargement pills off the internet:

Among the people who responded in July to Amazing's spam, which bore the subject line, "Make your penis HUGE," was the manager of a $6 billion mutual fund, who ordered two bottles of Pinacle to be shipped to his Park Avenue office in New York City. A restaurateur in Boulder, Colorado, requested four bottles. The president of a California firm that sells airplane parts and is active in the local Rotary Club gave out his American Express card number to pay for six bottles, or $300 worth, of Pinacle. The coach of an elementary school lacrosse club in Pennsylvania ordered four bottles of the pills.

I'm late on the bandwagon, but everybody else has been telling their blackout stories, and it's cliche by now, but it really does reflect the type of town you are in. And in my case, it pointed out how much of a small, hippy town I'm really in. It's a small town, so there wasn't panic, because even at rush hour we've got no subways or skyscrapers, so there weren't masses of trapped people. The university even had a heads-up that it was coming, as we got e-mail warning us to shut down our computers so as to avoid power-loss damage. It's a small yet not destitute town, so even though the traffic lights were out, there was the police manpower to put road flares and temporary stop signs at every intersection. It didn't hurt that, with students still out of town, we were still at half-population for the summer. And we're a hippy town, so once dark rolled in I was able to sit on the front porch with a friend listening to the imprompu banj-and-fiddle concert taking place on the opposite corner. Many of the people walking through the neighborhood stopped to listen and dance in the flickering light of the road flares. It was very Little House in the Big Woods, with more citronella.
[8.25.03]

I've meant to go to the New York State Fair for the past several years, and yet it always falls the last week of August and I'm either out of town or just busy, but Friday I decided that I didn't have anything that couldn't wait to be done Saturday and I took the day off to drive up to Syracuse and check it out. It had been a long time since I'd even been to a county fair, and I had a great time. The New York fair in particular has really beautiful grounds with nice old buildings for the exhibits. I loved the Arts & Home Center building in particular. It made me start pondering crochet projects of my own that I might enter, though I really don't need any new projects on my plate right now. Some of the quilts totally blew me away though - I don't have anywhere near the technical skill that most of them demonstrated. Even the farming exhibits were pretty interesting to look at. Who doesn't love 4H vegetable sculpture competitions?
[8.25.03]

There's little as disheartening for one's faith in government than spending a day working from home with C-SPAN 2 on the the background. After watching over four hours of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on Dietary Supplement Ephedra, I saw a vice president of a company be lambasted for not knowing what part of the cow their herbal supplement's "bovine extract" came from, including a self-righteous speech from a congressperson about how disgraceful that people are producing and selling these things without even knowing what goes in them. And I heard another corporate representative say: "Scientists do not like to express things in percentages.... or in any other terms", as justification for why an expert witness did not feel comfortable with one of the company's claims. That doesn't even count the side discussion of the difference between "buff" and "ripped" in the context of examine product advertisements. I'm just sitting here cracking up at this point. I guess it's just the typical problem of getting things done with too many people in the room.
[8.21.03]

I was heartily amused by TeeVee's commentary on the media coverage of "Blackout 2003". Not that I got to actually see any of that coverage, what with being in the blackout zone and all. So I can't comment on how accurate their statement is that coverage focused on New York City more than on the several other states (and provinces) which were effected. A huge city without power is bad, sure, but it sounds like their television and radio stations both had generators and knew how to turn them on. Round these upstate parts, we were in media blackout, making the test of the emergency broadcast system which I heard the next day particularly amusing. Though, with the phones working, I guess the national coverage was useful, as we were all able to call out west and find out when we might expect our power back.

The story actually points out a more serious complaint I have about media coverage of events in New York City. See, there's a reason there is a "City" at the end of the name -- there is also a New York state. And while there are times when "New York" is unambigous: "mayor of New York", "senator from New York", etc., there are many more contexts in which it should be specified, such as "New York is without power" - a comment which leaves family unsure whether I'm sitting in the dark or not. In fact, they should be able to conclude from that statement that there is a state-wide blackout, because one rarely follows a state name with the modifier "state"; much more common is the modifier "city", as in "Kansas City" or "Oklahoma City", which I've never seen abbreviated to their ambigous state name. But one can't make that conclusion, because the media uses "New York" as an abbreviation for "New York City", and they're left with misinformed viewers when they actually mean the state (I've had multiple people be surprised that the New York smoking ban was being instituted "over here" as well).

I get that New York City is big and even referenced more frequently than the state as a whole, but the media, and particuarly the news, are supposed to be informing the public, and they've gotten into a sloppy habit.
[8.20.03]

I've always suspected that the quantity of spam I receive was in part my fault - that if I had stayed off the internet, not ordered things off the web, and generally kept a lower profile, I wouldn't be such a slave to the accuracy of my spam filter. After waking up this morning to 150 and growing spam messages, all of which were forwarded from my Cornell account -- which I have never sent e-mail from or cited as my e-mail on any but official Cornell forms -- I finally believe that there's nothing you can do to avoid getting spam-bombed. On the positive side, my filter caught all by about 25 of those messages, and once I corrected it on those few (I'm running a version of the Bayesian based SpamOracle for Solaris which generally does a nice job) it's caught all of the 50 additional messages which have come in so far today. Now if I could only figure out how to fix wildcard matching in my .procmailrc :(
[8.20.03]

Puttering through my Amazon.com Gold Box today, I got an offer for a product that made my jaw drop: the Barbie Real Vacuum. It's a fully-functional handheld, cordless vacuum in a Barbie motif - pink with flowers and the Barbie logo. It's advertised, both in the text and in the accompanying video, as for little girls, to encourage them to clean their own rooms. There is also a blue version, but without the child-specific description (it's mentioned as one of a wider range of uses). So we're clearly not talking about a line of child-themed vacuums. And the age range they give is 6 years and older, which falls pretty well with the Barbie age bracket - don't Barbies lose their appeal around the early teen years? So, basically, we've got a product to encourage young girls that cleaning is fun, targeted at an age range in which heavy cleaning like vacuuming (as compared to just picking up after themselves) might reasonably fall to the job of their parents.

And it's particularly a shame, because of all of the cleaning jobs, vacuuming would be the easiest to turn into a boy-appealing activity, if we're going to go around following stereotypes. It's noisy. You push a machine around. It's like lawnmowing - a stereotypically guy job - but inside. And don't we think of boys as the ones who will make all kinds of messes that might require more extensive cleanup? But the child-themed vacuum, out of all of the possible themes, is Barbie. Color me shocked.

Oh fine, the damn thing is cute. All the more reason to have a wider selection....
[7.18.03]

A full teaching schedule for the past couple of weeks has kept me running, but I've been having a great time. It's all content that I personally find interesting, which makes a huge difference. And despite the crazy work schedule I've gotten a few fun outings in. My latest adventure yielded the photo at the top of the page, from here at Cornell's very own Lynah Rink. Very cool!
[7.12.03]

Speaking of hometown sports, the Pirates got an image upgrade last week when first baseman hit a woman in a large foam italian sausage costume over the head with his baseball bat at a game against Milwaukee. There is a link to video of the interrupted "Sausage Race" at that link, and it looks a lot worse than it sounds like it really was. Of course, this caused a huge amount of ongoing commentary, particularly in the Pittsburgh press. The large foam representative of the Allegheny County Health Department, Browny the Burger is fired up by mascot abuse, with one woman saying she is glad that she is no longer spreading Browny's anti-E.coli message from inside a large foam target. On the other hand, a retired Pittsburgh Pierogi (foam participant in the traditional "Pierogi Race" at each Pirates game), has come out with a statement in the Sacramento Bee saying that he thinks the sausage took a dive.
[7.12.03]

I've never been a fan of big summer movies, except for on those horrible 90+ degree days when the air conditioning is worth the cost of admission. Oh, I'm hearing how great Pirates of the Caribbean is supposed to be. I don't get the pirate love, and the explanations of the appeal mostly come out as: "But Amanda.... 'Arrrrr'!"

Ah well, the local independent theaters have actually been running some really good stuff lately. Spellbound, the documentary about eight contestants in the national spelling bee, was really good. They were very respectful of the children, which I appreciated. And tonight I saw Owning Mahowny, which was also very good. It's about a banker whose gambling addiction is spiraling out of control at the same time as he is being given greater responsibilities for (and access to) funds at his job. But where a Hollywood blockbuster would fill the movie with lush scenes of glitzy casinos and violent threats from goons, this was a very psychological movie. The casinos were seen mostly through the eyes of the gambler, whose focus stayed on the game at hand, or as seen from above through security cameras. And the central character is acted wonderfully by Philip Seymour Hoffman, really selling the tragic compulsion that Mahowny is acting under.

I know... "But, still, Amanda.... 'Arrrr'!"
[7.12.03]

"Angles" for Photo Friday [full size]

Sadly, my camera has died and there will be no more Photo Fridays for the forseeable future...