BCBlog

When did Walter Sobchak become mayor of Newcomerstown, Ohio?

Given that I wrote it. But I gave a shout-out to a fellow Blogcritizen whose line on the NCAA tournament made me giggle.

Blogcritics and Desicritics are constantly attacked by spammers - in fact, it’s probably a mark of maturity to see Desicritics get spam comment attacks - we’ve evidently been indexed by the spam artists.

We recently had some Jesus spam, it occured twice, and was cleaned up, finally blocking the IP. The spammer left one last comment, interestingly on one of my posts,

OK, before you ban me for posting the gospel messages I want you to think to yourself “If you died tonight are you 100% sure you’d go to heaven?” I dont post those threads to stir trouble, I POST THEM BECAUSE GOD WANTS ME TO DO SO! We all have sinned and fallen short of Gods standards! He says Jesus is the way truth and the life, no one comes to God but through him! Repent and believe in him because you may not have tomorrow!(death comes when we least expect it) Your eternity is at stake otherwise!

Amrita, a Desicritic, has responded to the spammer with a post, Dear Jesus Spammer, that makes for entertaining reading:

Thank you for responding to my article. It is heartening to know that my simple review of a spoiler website struck such a deep chord within you that you felt the need to redeem my soul. I have never had such a response ever before.

Of course, I later found out that it takes very little to connect
with you and I have to say that I felt a bit cheated. After all, with
all that talk about my soul it seemed to me that we had a connection -
until I clicked on another article, and yet another, and yet another….

I was a little cheered, however, to realize that you were not universally magnanimous. I find that you are most visible on Desicritics, where a lot of us heathens can be found, easily penned in a cyber box, awaiting your pleasure. While some on Blogcritics
have also been blessed with your presence, I find it comforting to know
that you are not “the village bicycle” of the Blogcritics network, as
the cruder boys back in India might have put it.

Hilarity!

The US has topped the latest Networked Readiness Index from the World Economic Forum, who meet in Davos every year. Last year’s number one, Singapore, has slipped to number two.

The top ten countries are:

1. USA
2. Singapore
3. Denmark
4. Iceland
5. Finland
6. Canada
7. Taiwan
8. Sweden
9. Switzerland
10. United Kingdom

India is at 40th place.

Complete Report

Do science fiction writers and mystics get a different afterlife? They spend their creative urges imagining a world different from their own, it only seems fair they should be allowed a universe different from anyone else’s when they pass over.

Stanislav Lem, author of fine books like Solaris, the Star Diaries, etc. died on March 27 at 84.

It was in this extraordinary tradition that Lem wrote, for all that he
chose the science-fiction form — and he was a prime examplar of it. He
was a true polymath and at the same time a virtuoso storyteller. He was
truly described as “one of the deep spirits of the age”.