Monthly Archives: August 2003

Comment Spam

This entry was posted in Spam on by

Jaquandor is annoyed by what may be a new type of spam:

It works like this: a person leaves a one-word entry in a blog’s Comments section, something like “Cool!” or “Neat!”, but the URL they enter for their homepage is not their own blog but instead where you’d go if you click any of the links in the e-mail Spam messages that clog your inbox. It’s a pretty sneaky way to guarantee I’ll look, since I wager most bloggers — except the really big ones — tend to check out those URLs when a unknown person leaves a comment.

This looks too labor intensive for the folks who like to send out millions of messages at a time but, then, I here there is some pretty cheap offshore labor.
Note: possible bloggered permalinks. Link is to the 3rd entry from the bottom on August 10 at Byzantium Shores.

RIP Jerry Garcia 8.1.42-8.9.95

This entry was posted in Culture on by

It all rolls into one
and nothing comes for free
There’s nothing you can hold
for very long
And when you hear that song
come crying like the wind
it seems like all this life
was just a dream
Stella Blue
Stella Blue, Lyrics by Robert Hunter

Improving Productivity and no Jobs

This entry was posted in Economics on by

This is the good news:

On Thursday August 7th, the Bureau of Labour Statistics offered the latest evidence of America�s productivity revival: output per worker soared by 5.7% in the second quarter, at an annualised rate.

And this may be very bad news for Bush reelection prospects if not for the rest of us:

Arthur Okun, an American economist, showed that employment would fall, even if the economy were growing, if an �output gap� opens up between actual output and the economy’s long-term �potential� output. Okun�s razor appears to be at work in the American economy today, shaving payrolls in the non-farm sector by 44,000 in July.

After promising to cure all ills with his tax cuts bush’s failure to deliver may lead the armies of unemployed to vote for anyone but bush.