I recently received this comment in my for moderation bin:

Dr. Riekeyword – Child Abuse Avoidance Suggestion Tool

We like your blog!…

[…]Mabuhay, my colleagues and I heard of your blog over at McBrides, so we thought we would take a look. We’ve read several of your posts and we all agree that you have a fine writing style[…]

I checked out the website. It’s a legit site dedicated to researching how to prevent child abuse, based out of the Philippines. I checked out the IP address, and it is indeed an IP from the Philippines. I was still a little suspicious (for those who don’t know, IP addresses are easy to fake), so I Googled it. It turns out this same comment is showing up in blogs all over the Internet. Why? Because it’s likely to get approved. But once a comment has been approved, subsequent comments by that registered user are automatically approved. So what we’re probably looking at is a spam bot that’s working its way into thousands of blogs. One day, a switch will get flipped and those thousands of blogs will be absolutely flooded with spam.

I thought that it might be possible that the creator of this website is trying to get backlinks to her site (for SEO rankings and to cash in on other blogs’ popularity). But if so, a little more effort would probably be put into the comments. It wouldn’t be the same comment, word for word, pasted into hundreds of blogs. And anyway, blogging software by default puts a nofollow on outgoing links in comments, so they don’t get any SEO rankings for backlinks from blogs.

If you’ve allowed this comment into your blog, you might want to delete it and delete the user as well. Let me know if you have any evidence to the contrary.

The Swindler and the Widow’s Mite

Take the story about the woman who placed the two pennies in the temple-treasury, but let us poeticize a little variation. The two pennies were for her a great sum, which she had not quickly accumulated. She had saved for a long time in order to get them saved up, and then she had hidden them wrapped in a little cloth in order to bring them when she herself went up to the temple. But a swindler had detected that she possessed this money, had tricked her out of it, and had exchanged the cloth for an identical piece which was utterly empty—something which the widow did not know. Thereupon she went up to the temple, placed, as she intended, the two pennies, that is, nothing, in the temple-treasury: I wonder if Christ would not still have said what he said of her, that “she gave more than all the rich?”

Works of Love, p. 294 (SV XII 304)

Honestly, I struggle with this one. When it comes right down to it, in God’s eyes, I believe this to be true; but the critic in me cares more about results—and in the business of helping people, results matter.

It all boils down to the question of what we value more: the practical, or the personal; or, in abstract terms, the tangible or the spiritual. And I have to say, I feel like I have a preference for the tangible. It’s kind of hard being torn between both.

In the end, I’m glad that effort counts for something; I’m glad that God is more concerned with the condition of our hearts than I am.

Thoughts?

Franny: 9.6 pounds

Zoey: 10 pounds

And Franny has at least a pound of fur!

For those who don’t know, Petfinder.com is a great place to find a pet. You can search an area for keywords (either characteristics or breeds), and limit a search by size, age, and a number of other factors. But the best part is that all of these pets come from shelters. So you’re actually adopting homeless pets (something I feel strongly about). We found both of our cats on PetFinder, and they’re great cats.

Anyway, Janelle and I are watching television right now to kill some time before the big basketball game. (Not that I’ll watch it or really care that it’s on. I’ll be playing Final Fantasy X, thank you very much.) We were actually watching a special on Animal Planet about obese pets when something caught my attention. The next show was actually called PetFinder. Intrigued, I watched on.

Sure enough, the show was actually produced by the same people who made the website. That’s right—there’s actually a reality television show about using a website to find a pet. Well, they don’t really actually use the website—professional pet finders use the website, and then come in and show the family the animals that they find. There’s a short bio on the family looking for a pet, showing their personalities and preferences, just like on those house shows on HGTV. They even have minor emergencies, such as an animal falling into the pool—an animal that can’t swim! Oh my goodness, that dog just sunk like a rock.

So I feel like kind of a loser for watching this show (even if I can justify it by saying that it’s just blogging fodder). And then guess what comes on the television? One of the commercials my company put out, advertising continuing education. This means that someone in our Media department determined that people watching this show are likely to either be unemployed or stuck in a dead-end jobs. It’s kind of ironic that they determined that I was the target audience for getting more education so I can get a better job, but I actually work for them.

Animal Planet also has a show coming up called Creature Comforts, which is basically just a comedy show that talks about things like angry drivers with the catch that the people delivering the jokes are actually claymation animals. Hey, claymation animals—we can put that on Animal Planet. Very clever way to add some variety to your programming, guys.

The Semicolon died this week at the age of 417 from complications of irrelevancy and misuse.

And Now He’s Dead: Semicolon; Punctuation Mark

So in light of all of the presidential commercials lately, I found some philosopher slander campaigns. I recommend you watch them in this order:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M-cmNdiFuI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i72vGaB3ABw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uYO0vsI6UM

(Special thanks to one Gordon Deane for bringing these to my attention.)