There’s plenty of entertainment to be had from naïve automated advertising algorithms such as that used by HyperDictionary.

The technique is simple: search for something that people really ought not to be selling—preferably something illegal—and browse the sponsored advertisements offering that thing for sale.

For example: child slaves:

At eBay you can find practically anything, even child slaves.

Somehow, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised, considering some of the weird stuff that’s come up there in the past. I suspect, however, that it falls foul of their terms and conditions, and I’m sure that eBay would be none too pleased to see it.

Arrr, mateys! Tomorrow, September 19th, be International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

For observant Pastafarians (followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster), for whom full pirate regalia holds religious significance, it’s a particularly holy day.

In recognition of the special occasion, I’ve made a festive site logo. How are the rest of you scurvy curs celebrating the day?

I was inspired by the Mailinator Spam Map to do something similar with attempts to break into my server.

I’ve been using a tool called DenyHosts to monitor the logs and block any IP addresses from which someone attempts to mount a brute-force SSH attack—something that happens disturbingly often. Being a person who hates to see data pile up without being analysed, I thought that it would be interesting to see how these attackers are distributed geographically.

Using the block list (the hosts.deny file), the API at hostip.info, and the Google Maps API, plus a little Ruby to tie it all together, I have done just that. Here is the map.

It’s worth noting that the pins on the map don’t indicate malicious intent per se: these attacks tend to be mounted from already-compromised hosts. Thus, it’s more an indication of poor server administration than anything else. The results also support the widely-held view that China and South Korea have a particular problem with poorly-secured servers.

If there’s one thing that really annoys me, it’s quackery. Conspiracy theories can be entertaining; sometimes, they can be disturbing; occasionally, they are even true. But quackery can seriously damage your health—or your appearance.

One piece of dangerous pseudoscience that seems to be currently popular, especially in the more credulous corners of the internet, is colloidal silver.

Look at what the proponents claim for it:

Colloidal Silver is the only antibiotic known reportedly to kill all types of viruses, funguses and bacteria.

Well, no need to worry about vancomycin resistance then.

Colloidal Silver kills all viruses, precluding future mutations as it also kills the virus invaded cell within six minutes, and because of its catalytic nature Colloidal Silver is not affected in the reaction, continuing to kill other single celled pathogens nearby.

Good news! We can stop wasting money on HIV/AIDS research!

Colloidal Silver will react chemically with many of the 92 natural elements and compounds. While many of these compounds are toxic, pure silver is non-toxic. It acts only catalytically with the enzyme, or chemical lung of single celled organisms.

I’m pretty confident that any trained biochemist is going to have some issues with this statement.

Sounds too good to be true, right? That’s because it is.

None of this is to say that silver doesn’t have disinfectant properties. It does, and that’s why it’s being used in clothing to reduce odours. (Personally, I find hygiene to be equally effective. But I digress.) However, that does not mean that it is either safe or effective when taken internally.

In fact, this is what colloidal silver really does, if you take enough for it to have any effect. It turns your skin grey. Permanently.

Unfortunately, the charlatans who hawk this snake oil won’t tell you that. To them, batteries, silver and tapwater is a cheap way to profit, and they don’t care whom they discolour in the process.

I’ve seen some pretty incredible conspiracy theories, but I think that this tops them all:

A meteorologist in Pocatello, Idaho, claims Japanese gangsters known as the Yakuza caused Hurricane Katrina.

Scott Stevens says after looking at NASA satellite photos of the hurricane, he’s is convinced it was caused by electromagnetic generators from ground-based microwave transmitters.

I can’t even begin to understand what kind of disconnect from rational thought could lead someone seriously to suggest that a criminal syndicate has the power to control the weather, and specifically to cause destructive weather patterns at will.

A hurricane occurred, in a hurricane-prone part of the world, in hurricane season, and someone decides that it must have been the Yakuza.

Really.

Me, I think that Occam’s Razor applies.

Many sources are reporting the story that Yahoo has helped the Chinese authorities to convict a journalist:

Internet giant Yahoo has been accused of supplying information to China which led to the jailing of a journalist for “divulging state secrets”. (Source)

This has led to a predictable outpouring of Yahoo-bashing across the internet.

However, is it fair to demonise Yahoo?

Reporters Without Borders, a French media watchdog, said court papers showed Yahoo’s Hong Kong arm gave investigators information that helped trace an email sent by Mr Tao. (Source)

If a British company were approached by a British police force requesting assistance in solving a crime, it would be difficult for the company to refuse to help. The Special Administrative Region notwithstanding, Hong Kong is part of China, and a company based there can hardly avoid co-operating with the authorities.

If you operate in a country, you have to obey local laws and regulations. In China, that includes strict controls on dissemination of information. Personally, I think that’s unfortunate, although I think I understand the reasons behind the policy.

Based on what I have read, I think that most complaints about companies “collaborating” with the Chinese authorities follow the logic that:

1. Censorship is bad.
2. Companies in China have to follow local regulations on censorship.
3. Therefore, setting up a company in China is bad.

However, everyone is doing business with China, and for good reason. It’s a large, growing economy, with a highly skilled but cheap workforce. That’s why a large proportion of goods available in the west are Made in China.

If you really think that the censorship trade-off involved in doing business in China is unacceptable and refuse to trade with China, fine. That’s an intellectually coherent position. But give up your cheap socks and electronics first. There’s more than a hint of hypocrisy about people sitting at their Made-in-China notebook computers writing about how evil Yahoo is for doing business there.

Recent events have made me realise how thin the veneer of civilisation is.

New Orleans, a major city (albeit a poor and geographically disadvantaged one) in the United States, the richest and one of the most developed countries of the world, has been devastated by nature. It is quite possible that much of the damage could have been avoided if the levees had been stronger; if they had been built up in preparation for a foreseeable disaster, which a hurricane definitely is in that part of the world.

However, even though one can mitigate against natural disasters, they are fundamentally impossible to prevent. What’s really shocking is how quickly the city has lost law and order, and how easily people have regressed into criminality and open urban warfare.

More shocking still is the US government’s devastatingly incompetent handling of the matter. They have been slow to react and still appear to have no coherent plan to cope with a growing disaster. I watched ITV news this evening. All four of their correspondents (three in the Gulf, one in Washington) were scathingly critical of the ineffective official efforts, and visibly moved by the suffering they had witnessed: hunger, dehydration, panic, and despair. I hope that at least some of the American stations are disseminating the same information.

President Bush incautiously allowed himself to be photographed playing a guitar when he should have been paying attention to more important business. Yes, I know it’s a matter of perception, but the comparison with Nero fiddling while Rome burned is hard to avoid.

Something that is also a matter of perception is the scarcity of fuel. “A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on.” Mark Twain hadn’t seen the internet, though, with its amazing capability to disseminate rumour at the speed of light, or electrons in a cable, which isn’t much slower. At times like this, the psychological carrion crows of the world seem to enjoy spreading disinformation. Supply chains are such that even the suggestion of a shortage can cause panic buying; this actually does deplete reserves, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is indeed a scarcity in some places, and refinery output in the US has dropped, but it shouldn’t be critical. But when the POTUS goes on television and says, “Don’t buy gas if you don’t need it”, he might very well not be helping matters. Something tells me that a genuine, widespread oil shortage in the US would not be a pretty sight.

The rapid deterioration of order in New Orleans gives an insight into how and why Iraq has done the same. Granted, the stimulus in Iraq was different, but a relatively well-developed and civilised country turned anarchic very quickly. The comparison with New Orleans shows why the strategy of removing the entire government and law enforcement system of Iraq led to the collapse of social order in so many places.

The equilibrium between civilisation and anarchy is always ready to tip toward chaos. If the much-portended human-to-human-transmissible bird flu epidemic actually materialises, it could have widespread consequences above the obvious medical aspects.

Galileo must be rolling in his grave. Apparently, only four fifths of Americans support the heliocentric view.

Dr. Miller’s data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

I think that this quote, from no less a publication than the New York Times, speaks for itself.

I received a letter from Lufthansa this morning.

Lufthansa, as you probably know, does not only serves it’s own hub airports such as Frankfurt or Munich.

No! No! No! Who taught you English?

I don’t care that it’s a German company. If they are going to send me marketing communications in English, they had better get it right. Seeing two glaring errors in the first sentence of the letter doesn’t put me in any mood to appreciate its content.

I could even excuse the “does not … serves”—it’s an easy error to make in revising a sentence. Apostrophitis, however, is even more a mark of ignorance in German than it is in English.

The BBC reports that Kyoto-based Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest Yakuza syndicate, has named a new boss:

Sixty-three-year-old Kenichi Shinoda was named as the new leader during a ceremony in the western town of Kobe, the Kyodo news agency said.

The previous boss, Yoshinori Watanabe, unusually left his post earlier this year by retiring; death is a more usual end to such a career.

Mr Shinoda has a bit of a history, having apparently served thirteen years in prison for beheading a rival boss with a sword. To me, it sounds like rather a light sentence in a country not known for them.

Possibly the strangest thing about the yakuza, though, is that everything is reported so openly. In fact, the Wikipedia article on the subject has some pertinent insights:

Much of the current activities of the yakuza can be understood in their feudal origin. First, they are not a secret society like their counterparts of the Italian mafia and Chinese triads. The word “mafia” means those organisations which can not have open offices. Yakuza always have an open office with a (wooden) board on the front door displaying their group name or their emblem. Members often wear sunglasses and colourful suits so that their profession can be immediately recognised by civilians (katagi). Alternatively, they can be more conservatively dressed but when the need arises, they can flash their tattoos to indicate their affiliation. On occasion they also sport insignia pins on their suits.

At this point, you might be wondering why they are able to walk around with impunity.

Due to their history as a legitimate feudal organisation as well as their connection to Japanese political system through the uyoku, yakuza are somewhat a part of the Japanese establishment. Assassination of government officals by mafia as in Italy would be unthinkable in Japan, as such acts would make the semi-open nature of yakuza activities impossible. If a yakuza organisation does commit an open crime such as murder, a member from the yakuza organisation will often volunteer to turn themselves in to protect senior member of organisation. That also saves the police the trouble of investigation.

That’s the answer, really. They are part of the establishment. And, from what I hear, the connections go very high.