What is it with spammers? (repost from other blog)

Am I missing something here?

I get lots of spam. Most of it is efficiently filtered out by Gmail, but nonetheless I do check it regularly, just in case some false positives get caught.

But I'm at a loss to understand what the spammers are hoping to achieve. They appear to go to great lengths to defeat my spam filters. Why? Do they think I'll reward their ingenuity by buying stuff I don't need? Don't they realise why I have spam filters? Because I don't want their stuff!

Here's my advice. I offer it free, gratis, and for nothing.

Make your subject header actually relevant to the content of your email. Don't use obfuscation in the body of the email (such as peculiar graphics, or unconventional spelling). Use an honest email address.

This way I can easily trash your email if it's not relevant to me, my wants or needs. But it also makes it easy for me to identify if I may actually desire to do business with you - because your email will not have been consigned to my junk folder.

You never know - you might actually get more business this way.

Denial in action: "Acupuncture works"

A recent report (see Bad Science for full details) shows that acupuncture is no more effective than a placebo. This, however, didn't prevent a representative of 'complementary' medicine claiming that the report showed that acupuncture 'works'.

Nothing much unusual here, you might suppose. But David Tredinnick made his claims in the face of the placebo evidence, on BBC radio. Ben Goldacre related the facts of the case to Eddie Mair, on the BBC's PM programme, and David Tredinnick completely ignored the central point of the report - that acupuncture is a load of hooey.

Audio of the PM programme here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/pm_tue
Clip starts at about 37 minutes. (This link will probably expire by next Tuesday.)

Download RealPlayer here

Edit: Ben Goldacre's Bad Science podcast now has the clip available for download (also includes some of the mail responses to the broadcast):
http://badscience.net/files/whydoctorsdonttalktothemedia.mp3

Light relief - a YouTube selection

Just thought I'd gather together a couple of favourites, plus a new find:

Pat Condell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPAC_cGVnUg


George Carlin (warning: strong language)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o


Marcus Brigstocke
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY-ZrwFwLQg

My latest appearance... (repost from other blog)

'Appearance' in the title of this post is metaphorical - you can't see me, but you can hear me reading Stephen Gaskell's story "Everyone Carries a Shadow" in the 50th episode of Pseudopod, the weekly horror podcast.

I enjoy reading for other people, especially short stories, but I appreciate that my voice is only appropriate for some. This is my third reading for Pseudopod, and I'll be interested in the reaction this story garners. My previous two readings were Michael Stone's "Sacred Skin" and Eugie Foster's "Oranges, Lemons and Thou Beside Me" - both of which were extremely creepy (the Foster was also highly disturbing).

I've also read in the past for Pseudopod's elder sibling Escape Pod, my first being Scott Janssens' flash story "Paradox", and subsequently a two-hander with Tee Morris, "Are You Ready For the End of the World?" by Danny Adams. But the story I had most fun with was Steve Eley's "The Malcontent" which he asked me to read for Escape Pod's 50th episode.

(I like stories that operate on more than one level, and "The Malcontent" was one of those - lots of fun, but with deeper meaning evident as the story progressed.)

I've also read for The Time Traveller Show, and for its offshoot Wonder Audio, whose stories are now available for purchase from Audible and iTunes.

And in a fit of enthusiasm I read three chapters of Jules Verne's A Journey to the Interior of the Earth and one chapter of Bram Stoker's Dracula, both for LibriVox.

We'll try this...

Not sure about this, but I'm willing to give it a go. Click on the 'A' above to find out about the OUT Campaign.

Fizzle? It didn't! (repost from other blog)

Last Saturday evening BBC1 aired the finale of Jekyll, and what was briefly hinted at in the penultimate of six instalments came to its complex conclusion. This clever, sophisticated and funny series must be a landmark for British speculative TV drama. Not since Channel Four's Ultraviolet, written by Joe Ahearne and broadcast in 1998 has the traditional horror genre been given serious science-fictional treatment on British TV.

Quite what happens next I've no idea. We have the Jackman twins - that could be another story, but it looks like this one is over.

Or is it?

(Previous witterings here and here.)

The Wikipedia Story (repost from other blog)

Clive Anderson investigated Wikipedia earlier this week on BBC Radio 4: The Wikipedia Story

He dealt with the usual criticisms ("it can't be relied on; how do we know the expertise of those who edit pages; it's easily vandalised, etc") with the typically incisive mind of a lawyer, and at the same time engendered enthusiasm for what is undoubtedly a laudable project. He visited the UK branch of Britannica to get a view from the establishment side of the encyclopaedia business, and he even elicited a sound-bite or two from renowned internet doomsayer Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur and whose broadcast comments reeked of sour grapes.

The radio programme is available as an audio stream here (I don't know for how long - but it will shortly be released as a podcast*):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/ram/wikipediastory.ram

Download RealPlayer here

Anderson and his interviewees emphasised the essential point about Wikipedia and Web 2.0 - that there is no way this is going to be like a traditional encyclopaedia, nor should it be. We now live in a different information age. By all means trot down to your local library and heft a massive tome from the shelf in order to find out what you want to know. Meanwhile those of us with more pressing knowledge-needs can log on, check out, cross reference and be on to the next item before the traditional researchers have located their bicycle clips.

*UPDATE: The stream and podcast are no longer available, but you can download the mp3 from RapidShare here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/296133897/WikipediaStory_The_BBCR4-20070724.mp3