Don't Back Down

Bob Parsons (of GoDaddy) talks in his blog about the arrival of dirty words in the English language. Dirty words are present in the piece, though they are offered in an educational manner. You have been warned.

I have no idea about Bob's qualifications for such an argument, but it sounds logical to me. I think what it makes me think about, however, is that it seems to me words such as these, considered dirty by many, are often considered sins by those in the church. I've always had trouble with this argument, because nowhere in the bible does it say Thou shall not use vulgarities.

In fact, the only approximation of such a thing is the command that tells us that we Shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. That's an entirely differnt story. Taking a name in vain means to use it in an irreverent or disrespectful manner.

So saying the words Jesus Christ during a prayer is okay, but saying Jesus Christ! when some moron cuts you off on the freeway is probably toeing the line a bit.

USA Today offers a piece that gives us a potential glimpse of our world in a few years - one where light bulbs are replaced by high-output LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes). You can already see this in many places, from car lights to street lights - but the jump has not yet been made to provide home lighting in this way. I think it sounds viable - and especially cool when you see that one day we can provide different colored light from the same panel, merely by changing the ratio of colors making up the light. That would be neat.

On the flip side of the coin, we see where our forays into space are simply cluttering up the skies. For whatever reason, I think of this often. Mostly, I suspect, because it's another example of where we just wander into the wilderness and junk up the place because we're too preoccupied with our "achievements" to think that we might be leaving a mess in our wake. I mean come on, people - there is a journal devoted to this mess we've made - isn't it time to consider perhaps picking up our trash, instead of just leaving it all behind? While the American Indian with the tear on his cheek 20-odd years ago failed to move us to pick up our highway trash, what will work here? I can't imagine that a little green alien will touch us any more deeply.

In the course of about 15 minutes today, I received two comments that were in general agreement, yet each comment was left with a different name and email address. The incriminating evidence? The comments came from the same IP address.

Now it's likely that these commenters are simply of like minds and having some sort of party, and out looking for places to support their single-minded vision.

It's also remotely possible that each of these were users of the same ISP, who happened across my blog just minutes apart and commented on the same entry. Extremely unlikely, but possible.

The final option is that these commenters share the same view, and are in fact spammers of a new sort - ones that espouse their views in generally legitimate-sounding comments. This serves not to promote a link, but to enhance web results for a particular search.

As mentioned, this might not be the case - but it's a bit odd nonetheless. I'll leave the comments for now. But if it seems to increase, then it is a whole new frontier of comment spam - one that's going to be nigh impossible to fight.