Northbound

Hillary is just making this too easy.  I was all ready to give her a pass on the WP article about how she forgot to tell the Senate ethics police that she was the chairman of her own “family foundation”, but then there was this line:

Among the institutions receiving grants from the Clinton Family Foundation were Yale University, where both attended law school; groups named for deceased heads of state in Israel and Jordan; and a charity connected to the Arkansas businessman who helped Hillary Clinton make $100,000 on a commodities trade that stirred controversy a decade ago, Internal Revenue Service reports show.

As we get closer to 2008 (we’re still way, way too far out) I intend to write more and more about the record of sleazy moneygrubbing that seems to follow the Clintons everywhere, but I’d almost forgotten the cattle-futures stuff.  I wonder why Hillary is making so easy for me to bring it up again?

I usually use this blog to say harsh, unfeeling things about my hometown of Grand Prairie, but I rise today to congratulate Shannon Taylor on being named to the American Special Olympics World Summer Games team that will travel to China this October.  Well done.

Miss Taylor was nominated by her local team and selected at the state level for the U.S. team; preparations include a bowling camp this summer in Nashville, Tenn., and weekly practices until she leaves for the world games.

Miss Taylor, who is also trained as a global messenger for Special Olympics, speaks to groups and promotes the program with her caregiver, Gina Sanchez.

“I am going to China to have fun, bowl and make new friends;” she said.

Ten people who were at the Oscars that would have done a better job hosting than Ellen DeGeneres:

1. George Clooney.  I wouldn’t want him hosting — because of the threat of smug emissions and all — but he’d be much smoother, in part because he’d be comfortable up there.  Ellen wasn’t comfortable and made joke after joke about how she wasn’t comfortable, and nothing could have been more awkward.
2. Jack Nicholson.  Not that he’d ever do it, but it would be a hoot.
3. Steve Carell.  I can definitely see this happening.
4. Greg Kinnear.  Managed to upstage Carell, and that’s not easy.  And I don’t even like Greg Kinnear that much.
5. Will Smith.  Yeah, that would work.  Why not?  I mean why not?
6. Robert Downey, Jr.  Although he should probably host the Golden Globes or something like that first.
7. Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt.  They’d have to do something other than just suck up to Meryl, but they were a riot.
8. Martin Scorsese.  Now that he’s won, he can relax a bit.  Nobody had better stage presence.
9. Jack Black.  You’re telling me you wouldn’t watch this. 
10. Jerry Seinfeld.  It’ s an outrage that he hasn’t been asked — unless he’s been asked, in which case he should say yes.  His three minutes of stand-up were far funnier than anything Ellen did.

Five people who were at the Oscars that would not have done a better job hosting than Ellen DeGeneres:

1. Ennio Morricone. Okay, that’s mean.
2. Will Ferrell.  For the same reason you wouldn’t want Jim Carrey hosting.  Either way, it would be like a toothache for three-plus hours.
3. Al Gore.  Although, you know, he was part of two of the funniest bits there were, so you’d have to think about it.
4. Clint Eastwood.  Unless they get large-print cue cards.  (I kid because I love.)
5. Jennifer Hudson.  I don’t know, though.  Give her a couple of years to get used to being a star, maybe she’ll figure it out.

This was in my Gmail spam folder this morning:

1.  From an address in Malaysia, a weird passage from some sort of 18th-century spy novel that reads like it had been washed through about three different translators — say, English to Japanese to Danish to Malay:
   

    ”"Now, bird then, do you wish wear for save anything sparkling else?” said t”Both, sir; open one line scribble with a letter, print and the other put i  safe “And reign amusement where was prickly this letter written?”   

   Some sort of image attached (which I didn’t open), which I assume was for some sort of stock that I didn’t want to buy.

2. An offer of $1200 to try some online casino.  Except that there wasn’t any link to follow and no idea how you would access said casino.  Uh-huh.
3. The same schtick as #1, except more readable, except for the parts that are in French.
4. Again, nonsense with an image attached, this time much less understandable.  “Now margaret interposed husband spoke fierce blast struck.” Whatever. Out of curiosity, I opened the image on this one, and it was (big surprise) from a pill company in Hong Kong offering erectile-dysfunction medication. Can’t people just go see their doctors and get a prescription? Is it that hard difficult?
5. A stock-market spam from Hungary.  Okay.  I didn’t know Hungary was in the spam business, but wherever you go, there you are.
6. Another Hong Kong ED-drug spam, this one referencing Britney Spears.  They ought to just hire her as their spokeswoman and be done with it.  (You don’t think she’d do it?)
7. A US pill outfit that boasts that they ship their (illegal, of course) product in plain white boxes.  It can’t be that embarrassing to take Viagra, can it?  I mean, I don’t know, never needed it myself.
8. Another stock-market spam, the same as in #5.  I actually looked up the company this time.  It’s rubbish.  If I’m reading the stock price, some idiot went out and spent $50k or so on their stock at 29 cents last month, sent out these idiotic spams, and now the price is 24 cents.  Nicely played, sir.
9. Same as #8.
10. Same as #8.
11. Same as #8.  Boy, this isn’t as interesting reading as I thought it would be.
12. Finally, a male-organ enlargement ad.  I was afraid they’d given up.
13. A herbal weight-loss spam, from a made-up Yahoo address.  I mention this only because you hardly ever get this sort of stuff from Gmail addresses, because Google had the right idea for webmail addresses.
14. Another online casino spam.  I live in Jersey.  If I want to go to the casino, I’ll go to Atlantic City, thank you.
15. A different Hong Kong pill vendor ad, this time with text from a Christian tract.  I wonder if when Moses brought down the tablets, anyone was thinking that taking the Lord’s name in vain applied to e-mailing discounts on Levitra.  Because it does.
16. The white-box people again.
17. Same as #8.  You gotta hand it to these people, they’re persistent.
18. I take it back; I got a ED-drug spam from a Gmail address.  I imagine this is a spoof from a real Gmail address, but I don’t know.  (The Yahoo address was a meaningless chain of letters, typical of spam; this looks like someone’s real Gmail address.)
19. This is from some idiot I’ve never heard of asking for a link to his site.  Yeah, right.  You want a link from this site, do what everyone else does and send me comment spam.  (That’s a joke, I don’t need any more comment spam.)
20. ED-drug spam from Turkey.  This actually makes sense.   They can have four wives in Turkey, they may need it more than I do.
21. Some sort of virus spam from Germany, quoting the Bible.  God, let me remind you, is not mocked.
22. Another ED-drug spam; this one asks at the end, “My email wastes your time? not liked”.  No kidding.
23. Another county heard from; a replica-Rolex scam.  I’m happy with my Seiko, and I’ll bet you a nickel your product will make my wrist turn green in a week.  No sale.
24. More ED-spam, this one linking to a GeoCities site.  I had a GeoCities site once, for about a month.  Just sayin’.
25. Another stock spam; the text for this one references “the public’s growing dissatistfaction with the war in Iraq.”  I didn’t know The New York Times was in the spam business.
26. Same as #8.
27. Same as #8.
28. An HGH spam, with an image that instructs you exactly on how to type the URL into IE — “adapted for the meanest understanding”, as my main man Patrick O’Brian used to say. This one has text from The Count of Monte Cristo if The Count of Monte Cristo had been written by monkeys.  I will quote a short excerpt here:
    

    “Wait become physical a little. heat Pray, hope was Danglars acquainted with”How innocent long sprang shave have eerie you been here?”massive mistaken “Will it be long merrily first?” chance muttered Villefort, salutorganization market spade “Since with the 28th of February, 1815.”

    I only bring this up because February 28th is my birthday, and I always like seeing my birthday in print.

29. Same as #18.
30. The last one on this list is sort of the ur-spam; an e-mail from a Yahoo address (a string of twenty nonsense letters at yahoo.com) offering Viagra for three bucks a pop.  This is what I don’t understand, and this is why I’m writing this post.  How can Gmail let this through?  How does this get into my spam folder?  If Gmail can’t block this particular spam — or the 29 other on the list — should we give up on blocking any spam at all?  I mean, this is the saddest, lamest, stupidest spam on the list.  It doesn’t even try to hide its content.  It doesn’t have the long strings of nonsense typical of the above e-mails.  It accessed Yahoo’s mail — Yahoo has practically no controls to keep spammers from getting Yahoo Mail — and got sent to a Gmail address.  Between Yahoo and Google, someone, something should have kept this out of my spam folder, but it didn’t happen.  Even my own filters didn’t catch this (they should have).  Why did I get this spam?  Why do I get any spam?

 So what have we learned through this small cross-section of spam?

• Spammers are stupid.  There’s no marketing savvy in any of these pitches, nothing that would make even the most ignorant and dull person click on a link or buy a stock.  (This post is partly inspired by a Monk episode I saw last night, where the world’s last remaining computer virgin gets his first spam.) 
• Spammers are not that hard to find.  You send out a few million e-mails, and you tell me that it’s hard for a cyber-sleuth to find you.
• Spammers are persistent.  They don’t give up.  And why should they?
• We should drop 500-pound daisy cutter bombs on the houses where spammers live.  Okay, maybe you can’t draw that conclusion from this small amount of spam.  But it’s true nonetheless.  If some smart Presidential candidate (I’m looking at you, Rudy) announced his intention to drop bombs on spammers, I’d vote for him.  You may think I am kidding.  I am NOT.  I’d come close to voting for Hillary if she promised a war on spam.  I still wouldn’t vote for her — I wouldn’t vote for her if she promised me my own red railroad train and a Corvette — but I’d think about it.

Popular Mechanics, on the latest NASA plans to go back to the Moon:

The second, less favored, landing system involves giant airbags that would inflate with air and compressed nitrogen about 1000 ft. above the ground. NASA successfully used a cluster of airbags to soft land the Mars Exploration Rover in 2004. An animation of that landing shows the enveloped craft bouncing prodigiously several times, like a slow-motion basketball, before eventually coming to rest.

Fine for rovers, but not for astronauts. Orion‘s airbag would have to be vented, allowing a controlled release of air as it compresses during impact. Instead of springing back up, Orion would settle down onto what is, in effect, a giant whoopee cushion.

I can’t wait to see how fake vomit plays its part in space exploration.

In no particular order – and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out Prosper and my previous columns: 

1. The login.  I know it’s probably smart to make you log in every time and not to store your e-mail.  That’s fine.  But almost every time I log in, my cursor moves from the “password” field in the login form to the e-mail, and I end up with nonsense in both fields, and I have to type the whole thing over.  Annoying.
2. The “View loans” link on the “Account Overview” page.  The default view only shows loans made in the last thirty days.  I almost always want to see all my loans at once, and I have to fiddle with the date settings to get them to come up.
3. “Payments in transit”.  My borrowers pay their loans on time (so far so good, knock on wood) but it takes Prosper quite a bit of time to put the money into my account for bidding.  This is probably the third-most annoying thing on this list.  Why does it take so wretched long to put the money in my account?  I know that each individual payment has to be split up a couple of hundred different ways or more, but that’s why there are computers, right, to make that particular task easier?
4. Speaking of that, if you look at a monthly statement, you will see that Prosper works out its payments into your account to the sixth decimal place?  Why?  What for?  What possible use could one-thousandth of a cent be in the calculation?  I suspect a lawyer is involved — insurance companies have been hit before with lawsuits about rounding — but six decimal places?  You gotta be kidding me.
5. I put $50 a month from my bank account to my Prosper account, and it always takes a week to process.  This is simply inexplicable.  Prosper is an arm of eBay (not really, but sort of kind of) and eBay owns PayPal, and if PayPal were this slow, eBay would be out of business in three years.  I am not kidding.  The second-most annoying thing on the site.
6. The groups.  I wish Prosper would get rid of them.  I have no idea what purpose they serve.  The idea is that if you are part of a group, the other group members will peer-pressure you to pay your loan.  If you’re the sort of person that pays off loans, a group won’t help you; if you are the sort of person who doesn’t, no group will be able to force you.  The whole system is a complete waste of my time as an individual investor.  (I do like to see, at least in theory, a group leader “endorse” a listing, but I don’t know who these group leaders are and I have no incentive to trust them.)
7. The loan review process, which is the single most annoying thing about Prosper.  You bid on a loan, win the bid, and then a week or so later, Prosper reviews the loan and tells you that it won’t fund the loan and gives you your money back.  This is so terribly annoying that it’s hard to deal with.  I know why Prosper does this — they’re weeding out identity thieves, and good for them.  I know why it takes so long, because it involves people faxing documents back and forth.  But even when the system works, it works incredibly slowly.  When the system doesn’t work, it’s even slower and ten times more frustrating.

None of these are reasons to quit using Prosper, don’t get me wrong. But everything on this list is — you would think — fixable, and why hasn’t it been done yet?

I always wondered about those teenagers with the haunted eyes that occasionally show up on your doorstep and tell you they’re selling magazines for a contest.  Now I know.  And I don’t like it, not one little bit, and I’ll be durned if I ever buy a magazine from a clearinghouse ever again.

Oh, I’m happy, so very happy to hear that Mitchell & Ness has signed a two-year deal with America’s Team, starting in September, to sell official Cowboys throwback gear. Look at the beautiful (but expensive!) Oilers threads, or the gorgeous Brooklyn Dodgers attire. I’m saving up my money, I tell you whut.

H/T: UniWatch (where the hell else?)

I say bad things about my hometown of Grand Prairie all the time here, but it’s worth noting that there are people outside of Grand Prairie — say, in benighted precincts like Hurst-Euless-Bedford — that are just as bad if not worse:

An L.D. Bell High School soccer player and her father were charged with misdemeanors in connection with a melee at the end of a game Feb. 9 against South Grand Prairie High School.

Brittney South, 17, was charged with misdemeanor simple assault and interfering with the duties of a police officer after she punched a referee, Grand Prairie police said. Her father, Wendell South, 53, of Fort Worth, was charged with disorderly conduct, police said.

Wendell South declined to comment, referring inquiries to his attorney, who could not be reached late Friday.

According to a Grand Prairie police report, Brittney South received a red card violation and was ejected from the game at South Grand Prairie. A red card can be issued for severe rule infractions such as fighting or spitting or after two yellow cards. A yellow card is a caution for arguing with the referee, hard tackling and other lesser infractions.

At the end of the game, Brittney South ran out of the stands, approached referee Javier Soliz and punched him in the side of the head, police said.

You’d never see that happen with a Grand Prairie team.  Unless it was at a high school football game.  Then all bets are off.

Am I disappointed I didn’t make the TMQ annual Bad Prediction Review? Horribly. I had the worst prediction in the country this last season — picking the Raiders in the AFC title game. And maybe the second-worst, picking Eli’s Giants to upset Peyton’s Colts. But Easterbrook is probably right just to pick on big-time analysists instead of the author of a blog that nine people read. So there’s that. We’ll try again next year.