PSoTD

One of my Resolutions for 2006: To come up with something valuable to add to this Wikipedia entry.

For everyone from Yahoo! to McAfee...

Do they have any known involvement in the Bush Administration's NSA domestic spying?

For some reason PSoTD is the Featured Blog at the Daou Report. I'm not sure how that happened, but it feels good. Thanks!

A few days ago, India had to evacuate their Parliament due to a bomb scare that came through email:

From The Telegraph:

New Delhi, Dec 16: The bomb scare in Parliament was tracked to an email from Sify’s network in Chennai. But Sify claimed that the person who sent the email was using its web-based mail service — sify.com — and Bharti’s network.

Bharti said it was “extending full cooperation to the authorities in the investigation”.

According to a VSNL software expert, “web-based mails (like hotmail or rediffmail) in theory are more easily used as a communication tool for nefarious purposes rather than conventional email”.

And it made me wonder - what if this threat had been about a real bomb - and the email sent from a web-based free email outfit was caught by a spamfilter? How possible is that? With the way that some organizations set up their spam software these days, it seems to me a great possibility...

I think this would be fun to read other bloggers' "Best of The Blog 2005" over the next three weeks or so. Even better, give the URLs and use free survey software to get feedback from readers as to what THEY really liked as well. It's easy to do. I use Sparklit to create online polls from time to time, it's free and relatively simple.

I think next week I'll go through my archives and pit my favorite five posts of 2005 against each other in a contest and see what readers enjoyed. But what I really hope is that this idea is attractive to other bloggers and they do the same. I think I'd enjoy seeing what the favorite posts of other bloggers were this year.

I was considering who I was going to nominate for Koufax awards last night. I was tempted, so tempted, to put PSoTD down for the Blogs Deserving Wider Recognition category... so tempted that I did submit PSoTD. But the comments on Wampum stalled, so I figured my entry didn't take.

Then I decided that this blog truly isn't worthy of that kind of award at this time. That's not really a bad thing to say about this blog, because there is some recognition of this blog, for one thing, and probably the appropriate amount for the kind of blogging that I'm doing. Once in a while I get a link from DAOU Report, or skippy, or from what is probably my favorite blog, The Sideshow, and more folks than normal see this blog.

Those links generally come from opinion I've posted. I don't break news here very often, I don't discover an unseen orientation to a major news story very often, and I'm not the greatest wordsmith in blogtopia. That's the kind of thing that should get a blog wider recognition, and I'm not sure I even aspire to any of those things, which would seem to me to be a requirement for any blogger that deserves wider recognition.

So, at this time I'm not a blogger that should be rewarded for an annual accomplishment. I guess I'm comfortable with that determination. But I'm not comfortable in my blog. I am a blogger in quest of greater meaning. I haven't defined it yet. There are many, many things I support, and many, many things I oppose, that this blog provides the venue to write about. But eventually, a blogger has to look beyond words. A blogger has to consider whether he or she can be an agent of change... and whether a blogger should be a greater agent of change. The first is a measure of ability, and I think almost all of us have that ability. The second is a question of focus and dedication, and it is a question I've been avoiding.

For 2006, I hope to measure accomplishment by answering the second question with focus and dedication. Hope is not a plan, and I may remain the scattershot blogger I am today. If so, then 2006 may be my last year of blogging, since scattershot blogging is in wide supply on the internet. It is time to find out how much focus and dedication I have for this pursuit. Note: Of course, sometime early this morning the comments section at Wampum accepted both my "with PSoTD" and my "without PSoTD" submissions. Oh well.

Spam is a problem we all know about.

For anyone who administers a legitimate email list, the lazy use of spam filters and spamlists by ISPs is getting to be about as bad. Are you getting all your legitimate email? If you use an ISP, it is unlikely you know the truth.

For the most part, quite depressing. Wanna know why government is so screwed up? Because most people don't spend any time trying to figure out what is going on. They're too busy searching for Paris Hilton. Where is Iraq? Where is Plamegate? Where is Bush?

The Lycos Top 100 Searches for 2005

1. Paris Hilton (2) 2. Pamela Anderson (8) 3. Britney Spears (4) 4. Poker (10) 5. Dragonball (13) 6. Jennifer Lopez (28) 7. WWE (17) 8. Pokemon (33) 9. Playstation (24) 10. Hurricane Katrina (-) 11. Brooke Burke (12) 12. KaZaA (6) 13. Tara Reid (37) 14. Angelina Jolie (61) 15. Tsunami (-) 16. iPod (-) 17. Lindsay Lohan (42) 18. Carmen Electra (32) 19. Neopets (20) 20. Hilary Duff (21) 21. Jessica Simpson (50) 22. RuneScape (-) 23. NFL (15) 24. XBox (40) 25. Anna Nicole Smith (31) 26. Christmas (19) 27. Harry Potter (26) 28. Baseball (29) 29. Christina Aguilera (34) 30. Mariah Carey (-) 31. Anna Kournikova (51) 32. NBA (57) 33. Star Wars (63) 34. Inuyasha (55) 35. Eminem (66) 36. Jennifer Aniston (-) 37. Alyssa Milano (89) 38. Final Fantasy (25) 39. Olsen Twins (49) 40. Halloween (22) 41. Sailor Moon (56) 42. Naruto (-) 43. Green Day (-) 44. Grand Theft Auto (86) 45. Madonna (90) 46. Beyonce Knowles (64) 47. Torrie Wilson (69) 48. Avril Lavigne (77) 49. Halle Berry (-) 50. Jessica Alba (-) 51. 50 Cent (-) 52. The IRS (27) 53. Tupac Shakur (82) 54. Jennifer Love Hewitt (-) 55. Janet Jackson (1) 56. Tennis (-) 57. Denise Richards (-) 58. Blackack (-) 59. Trish+Stratus (-) 60. Valentine's Day (65) 61. Chyna/Joanie Laurer (-) 62. Usher (39) 63. Salma Hayek (-) 64. Clay Aiken (3) 65. Jennifer Garner (-) 66. Natalie Portman (-) 67. Eva Longoria (-) 68. Yu-Gi-Oh! (45) 69. NASCAR (38) 70. Shakira (-) 71. The Simpsons (-) 72. Katie Price (73) 73. Teri Hatcher (-) 74. Jenny McCarthy (-) 75. Shania Twain (-) 76. Andy Milonakis (-) 77. Stacy Keibler (-) 78. Catherine Bell (-) 79. Teri Polo (-) 80. Howard Stern (60) 81. Slipknot (-) 82. Nicole Kidman (-) 83. Metallica (-) 84. Teen Titans (-) 85. Linkin Park (-) 86. Gwen Stefani (-) 87. Mardi Gras (85) 88. Michael Jackson (-) 89. Limewire (-) 90. The Sims 2 (36) 91. Kelly Monaco (-) 92. Kelly Clarkson (-) 93. Barbie (78) 94. Taxes (47) 95. Warcraft III (-) 96. Demi Moore (-) 97. Bow Wow (-) 98. Golf (46) 99. Sarah Michelle Gellar (-) 100. Serena Williams (-)

Why people give a shit about Paris Hilton is beyond me. I understand searching for vacant housing, but vacant celebrities? Nah...

Gotta wonder if at the end of December we will see a lot of bloggers "retire". Seems like a popular time for folks to stop, if that is what their inclination may be.

I gotta wonder, why is Opinion, Inc., still online?

This "Site for Conservative Opinion on the Web" most recent opinion is about... The Starr Report.

Detritus. Webtritus.

Still climbing the mountain. But I can't even see the high peaks of the Eschatons or the closer Madrak Mountains yet. There's still deciduous trees where I'm at. But it's been a good year.