Friday, November 18, 2011

Keith Ward covered up a murder

Theologian Keith Ward has confessed to helping cover up a murder.


Theologian Keith Ward saw his father kill a man.

my father worked as a double-agent for MI6 and the KGB during the “Cold War”. He told me this on his death-bed, in view of the fact that I had once seen him kill a man. The Section of which he was a member was disbanded and all record of it expunged, and all those who knew that he was a member of it had long since died. This is certainly a factual claim. If true, he certainly knew that it was true. I reasonably believe that it is true. But there is absolutely no way of empirically verifying or falsifying it. QED.

He doesn't say how much time elapsed between witnessing the murder and the alleged death bed confession. How long did he conceal the murder before getting this "explanation?" Why in God's name should we trust a man who gleefully helps his father conceal a murder with no apparent explanation, keeping the secret until his father has passed away and offered an evidence free, hand waving excuse of "Oh, I was in the MI6, so it's OK."

Ward offers no evidence that his father actually worked for the MI6, The complete lack of evidence beyond his father's word is the POINT of the haphazard philosophical point he's trying to make in the linked content.

Under the law, helping a murderer cover up a murder makes you culpable.

Whose murder is Keith Ward keeping secret? Was an innocent man accused, imprisoned or executed for the crime? Keith Ward must put a very low value on human life if he considers his father committing murder to be nothing more than fodder for a philosophical debate.

Of course, we have only Ward's word that the murder and the deathbed confession happened in the first place. Is Ward basing his argument son a chain of lies, or did he really confess to helping his father literally get away with murder?

Penn State students are morons

From: http://imgur.com/5ajpQ


From: http://imgur.com/gallery/QYnG8


Even the old Penn State mascot knows something is wrong.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Penn State is messed up

Penn State is where the students riot to DEFEND pedophilia

It seems Penn State students think it's OK to rape kids as long as you win football games.

So much for the idealism of youth.

I wonder how many of the pedophiles behind bars went to Penn State. That would be an interesting study.


Monday, November 7, 2011

Is Yahoo spamming your facebook wall with links to the articles you've read?

Yahoo recently rolled out a bit of malware that spams your Facebook wall with every damn story you read on yahoo news. If it were a Russian hacker pulling this stunt law enforcement would get involved, but because it's Yahoo you just get to be annoyed. You can't even disable this spam for within the Facebook interface. Like all malware vendors, Yahoo has tried to obfuscate how to remove their garbage.

Here's how to turn it the hell off.

  1. Log into Facebook.
  2. Go to news.yahoo.com.
  3. Look at the right hand edge of the page. You'll see a section titled "You on Yahoo News". If you don't see it go back to Facebook and follow one of the spam links the bastard posted to your wall.
  4. Click the arrow next to "Social" and set your status to "Off."
  5. Click the arrow next to "Your Activity" and delete all of the articles that show up in the listing.
  6. Click on "Options" and select "Remove this Experience."
  7. The whiny little b**ch will ask you to confirm that you want to remove it. Click "Remove" again.
  8. Next, use a text editor to open C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\ETC\hosts
  9. Add the following line to the bottom of the file and save the changes:
  10. 127.0.0.1 news.yahoo.com
Repeat those last two steps on every Windows computer you encounter.
Finally, the next time you click a link to a news story on Facebook, and you get told that you need to allow the web site hosting the story some kind of access to your Facebook profile to continue, close the page and move on with life.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Observation

If the Christian Right put as much effort into helping the poor as they do into oppressing homosexuals and controlling women, the welfare state would dissolve as there would be no one left to help.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Mississippi about to pown the populace

The Mississippi "life begins at fertilization" amendment is a very clever ploy. If it passes, it will mean most forms of birth control, such as the pill and IUD will be illegal, as they prevent the implantation of fertilized eggs. It means any woman who is on the "wrong" side of a political or religious debate can be dragged into jail on suspicion of murder if anyone suspects she might have had a miscarriage. Teetotalers will be able to jail anyone who drinks or is suspected of drinking while pregnant, especially if they go on to have a miscarriage. Pregnancies resulting from incest or rape will have to be carried to term, as aborting them would, under the state constitution, be murder. This isn't just an effective tool for controlling and manipulating women. If a man is giving you grief, all you have to do is use the threat of jailing his wife, sister, daughter or other friend or relative as leverage to shut him up. Even proving her innocence will result in a humiliating set of medical exams and detailed examination of her medical history. It's pretty much an all-in-one political trump card for the people in power. This is one of the cleanest and most intelligent back door police state moves I've ever seen. If this passes and stands up in court for any length of time, The Good Old Boys in Mississippi will have bought the entire state as effectively as if they were slave owners buying up a fresh shipment from Africa.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Word World MIA on Netflix Streaming

My son loves "Word World." Not long after being introduced to it he started sounding out words, eventually learning how to spell "BAT" at the age of three and a half. Sadly, Word World is no longer available on Netflix streaming. There was supposed to be a notice for two weeks before the show was removed. There wasn't, even through Netflix is apparently insisting there was. My son was not pleased.

The kicker is that Word World is not available as an entire season on the DVD service. Only a handful of episodes are available.

To whomever was responsible for removing Word World from instant streaming: YOU are one of the reasons people end up pirating videos. I'll bet there are a few parents who will learn how to use bittorrent and rip DVDs as a result of no longer having access to Word World when their child wants it. I'm not interested in adding ANOTHER streaming service just to get content whose copyright holder can't be bothered to do business with Netflix. I'm not interested in adding more hardware so I can stream Hulu or whatever the hell else comes down the pipe to my TV. I don't have the time or the money for such nonsense.

Right now there's only one Word World episode being seeded on PirateBay. I wonder how long it will take for more to crop up. There's only four distinct "Thomas the Tank Engine" torrents out there. It looks like more because of some duplication. There used to be more, a lot more, but they all faded away not long after Netflix started streaming Thomas. Funny that, making it easy for people to get programs when and how they want, keeps them from pirating it.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

My son is Kryptonite to Bitches

My three and a half year old son and I went to the grocery store today. While in line at the cash register the woman in front of us was being a cast iron bitch to the cashier. I don't mean she was being rude. She was being systematically and manipulatively cruel. The cashier was a chubby teenage girl who was having an acne outbreak. The customer was a 20 to 30 something woman who kept raving about how SHE had such clear skin people all thought she HAD to be using SOME kind of product. Every time she raved about her own clear skin she glared at the cashier with open disdain.

"People with really BAD skin," *glare at cashier*, "need to wash their faces properly. Some people who take really bad care of their bodies," *Glare at cashier's belly*, "Were never taught how to take care of themselves."

The bitch finished buying her groceries and left. The cashier was on the verge of tears when my son and I came up.

"HI!" my son said to her.

"Hello," she replied.

"I got a cookie in the car!" he announced. "It has a skull on it for, er, Daddy what hol-i-day is the cookie for?" He sounded out "Holiday", something he's been doing with words he wants to try and spell.

"Halloween" I said. I turned to the cashier, handed her my store discount card and said "Hello."

He continued "And I get to eat the cookie when I get home!" He held his fingers up to his mouth and said "Nom, nom, nom."

The cashier laughed and handed me back my store discount card.

My son laughed back.

It was around this point the bagger, who was clearly a friend of the cashier's, found her voice and started talking about a boy who kept walking past trying to impress them with his swagger.

My son started dancing in the shopping cart. Both women laughed. My son pointed at the cashier and said, "You look like my friend Mary, she has a pretty laugh too."

It was at this point both women were far too interested in the boy's antics to properly ring up and bag up my groceries. The apple cider ended up being rung up and deleted three times. The rebate for bringing my own bags was handed to me in cash instead of being part of the receipt. The ground beef ended up bagged with all the unused cloth bags I'd brought.

I really didn't mind.

As we left my son waved and said "Bye! bye! Have a nice day! Go to the beach!"

The woman who was on the verge of tears when we walked up, was nearly doubled over with laughter by the time we left.

Well done my boy, well done.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Another scam site, cashadvances.co.uk

In a recent post, Payday Loan Scam Site cornerstonepayday.com, I discussed a web site claiming to offer payday loans, but full of enough red flags to make it clear that the site was either a con job, or designed by someone so incompetent at protecting customer data as to make doing business with them a incredibly bad idea. The same vandalized Wiki has introduced me to cashadvances.co.uk. While not QUITE a incompetently assembled as cornerstonepayday.com, it's still pathetic.

The first major red flag is the complete lack of encryption of any kind. Cornerstonepayday.com had a purloined SSL certificate, but the site was designed in such a way as to make it impossible to actually submit your data over SSL even if you tried. Cashadvances.co.uk handles this problem by having NO encryption on it's submission form at all. If you try manually changing the HTTP in the address bar to HTTPS and hit "Enter" you get the following browser error:
Secure Connection Failed
          An error occurred during a connection to www.cashadvances.co.uk.
SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length.
(Error code: ssl_error_rx_record_too_long)
  The page you are trying to view can not be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
  Please contact the web site owners to inform them of this problem. Alternatively, use the command found in the help menu to report this broken site.
Cashadvances.co.uk is asking for your employment history, birth date, contact information and other personal details but doesn't bother to encrypt it. I don't know if the law is different in the UK, but in the USA, an operation prompting for that kind of data over the Internet without using encryption would be violating of a number of laws and regulations.

In short, don't apply for a loan of any kind through Cashadvances.co.uk. They're probably a con operation, and if they aren't, they're too incompetent to be trusted with your data.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

iphone-unlock.com won't unlock your iPhone

Wiki vandalism recently brought my attention to the apparent scam site iphone-unlock.com

Beware of iPhone Unlock and Jailbreak Scams. It's a clear cut case of buyer beware. These sites advertise chiefly through spam posts and Wiki vandalism. A search for "iphone-unlock.com" scam reveals people complaining that they paid for the "unlock" software, only to learn that the unlock software didn't work with their specific phone. If the site had offered refunds as a result of failing to provide the service they advertised, this wouldn't be a problem in and of itself, but it appears people do not get a refund after the software sold by iphone-unlock.com fails to unlock their phone.


The article Another Company Purports to Unlock iPhone 3.1.2 IPSW, Charges Money has a nice summary of problems with iphone-unlock.com. These include but are not limited to:
  1. The service itself is probably illegal
  2. They claim 24/7 support but don't actually offer it.
  3. They're selling services that are available free of charge and most likely only providing the exact same tools that are available for free.

Here is a sample complaint:

the-iphone-unlock.com SCAM

People beware of the-iphone-unlock.com is a Scam. I paid close to 50 dollars for lifetime access membership, trying to find an easy way to unlock my Iphone. The thing is that they say that they could unlock the 3g iphone whith the 2.2.1 firmware, once I paid went in and bOOm, "Unlock will NOT work with the baseband version (02.30.03)". Tried getting a refund or getting support and after 3 weeks I am still waiting for an answer. I know it is my fault for trying to get things the easy way, but I just want to let people know that IT IS A SCAM! The worst part is that they advertise in MacRumors Forums!

iphone-unlock.com is just another in a long list of fly-by-night iPhone unlock scams. They claim to unlock phones they can't unlock and do not appear to offer refunds when they fail to unlock your phone.

Check out this article about the forms of iPhone unlock scams for more information.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Payday Loan Scam Site cornerstonepayday.com

I'm a sysop for the Freakipedia, a small Wiki dedicated to Distorted View, a hilarious, juvenile podcast that makes Howard Stern look like Pat Robertson. The bulk of my responsibilities amount to deleting spam. This once took about 5 to 10 minutes every few days. One day the podcast host, Tim Henson, announced that his father had terminal liver cancer and that the show would go on hiatus for a while. Within 48 hours of that announcement, the Wiki received more spam posts than it had gotten in the previous two to three months. The pattern was predictable. There would be an initial rash of posts linking to the spamvertised site and other vandalized Wikis, which would in turn link to the scam site being advertized at the moment. One URL kept cropping up more often than the others, cornerstonepayday.com. I decided to do a little research.
As the following text will show, cornerstonepayday.com is probably not a legitimate business. If the site itself will not try to steal your identity, it's designed to process your data with absolutely no security between you and their server. The site uses none of the security it claims when receiving your data and will not protect you in any way, shape or form. Even if by some miracle the site is legitimate, their fee structure results in interest rates that are no better than a cash advance through your credit card company.

If you need money badly enough to consider the services of cornerstonepayday.com, get a cash advance or loan from your credit card company.

The first thing I noticed was that when you try to leave cornerstonepayday.com you get a bevy of popups trying to get you to stay.
These come up after trying to leave home page. You haven't even entered any data and the site is trying to warn you not to leave. It does this repeatedly. Right off the bat we have a major red flag. Legitimate sites do not harass you about leaving.

Let's go on. Below the "Apply Now" button you see this text:
OK, that's nice, but the site hasn't loaded over SSL.

Even if the server itself is configured to support a secure connection, your data won't be encrypted unless you load the page using HTTPS and not plain, unencrypted HTTP. The "Apply Now" form asks for a first name, last name, email address and the amount of money you want to borrow. I filled it out with fake data and was immediately taken to a form asking me for my bank information, birthday, social security number and address, that still wasn't encrypted. It's not that hard to redirect web visitors to the secure version of your site if one exists. The popups trying to keep me from leaving the page take more technical skill than redirecting visitors to the secure version of a site. Even a lazy developer could at the very least have the form submit the data you enter over a secure connection, even if the form doesn't load over one. I took a look at the source code behind the form submission, and even the from asking for your social security number and birthday wasn't submitted to a secure page. The URL http://www.cornerstonepayday.com/apply.php was hard-coded into the page. This means even if you manually enter through a secure connection your data will be routed to an unsecured connection when you try to submit it.

I decided to try manually loading the page over a secure connection to see if one even exists.This is easy to do, you just change the HTTP to HTTPS in the browser's address bar.

The moment I hit enter I got the same list of popups I got when I tried to leave the site in the first place. Grand.

The next thing I saw was yet ANOTHER red flag.
What the Hell?

To understand why this is a problem, you need to know a tiny tablespoon of information about SSL. SSL, the encryption that protects data in your web browser when using your bank, amazon.com or other sites uses a secure certificate. This certificate is "signed" by a root certificate vendor, such as Verisign or Godaddy. These root certificate vendors have the job of making sure the people who buy certificates are in fact who they say they are. Without this system a random hacker anywhere in the world could buy a certificate claiming to be, for example, Microsoft. A self-signed certificate in this situation means the people behind cornerstonepayday.com couldn't cough up a hundred bucks or so and wait a day or two for the certificate vendor to verify their identity. This is not the behavior of a legitimate business, but of a scammer who knows that the process of validating his business would reveal him as a con artist. There are legitimate uses for "self-signed" certificates. Intranet sites within a business for example will often use them. They're also common in development environments. Putting one into production as cornerstonepayday.com has done is, at best. rank incompetence. You do do NOT want these people handing your personal data. Even if a legitimate business they appear to lack the computer skills to secure your identity information.

But wait, there's more! Check out the text "The certificate is only valid for Parallels Panel". What does this mean? Glad you asked. Parallels allows you to run other operating systems in a virtual environment. The use of a Parallels Panel certificate means whoever put it on the web server didn't even bother to generate their own Self Signed certificate but stole a random certificate from a different product.

Remember that hard-coded URL in the form asking for your social security number, bank routing information, home address and birthrate? Even if you used this invalid SSL connection to load that form, your data would STILL be submitted unencrypted. This is pretty much an identity thief's wet dream. If you wanted to design a site that would maximize the risk of someone stealing the data submitted, then cornerstonepayday.com would be the perfect example.

I'll use a home security analogy to explain what's going on here. Imagine your bank's web site is a house. It has a security system, auto-locking doors, censors on all the windows and doors, motion detectors and a guard on duty. There are signs on all the windows and doors warning that the home is protected by a security system.

Cornerstonepayday.com has windows with missing panes and a door made out of balsa wood. The locks that are present were stolen from a nearby shed and the people behind cornerstonepayday.com don't have the keys, but that's OK to them because the locks fall open again the moment you try to lock them. There's a piece of cardboard out front. Scrawled on it in crayon are the words "guud sekurity sistem. yur moneys saf with us."

Both the bank and the shack your name, birthday, home address and social society number

The final nail in the coffin comes in the form of their fees.
This translates into a 15% to 26% interest rate on the loan. That's on the initial rates they advertise to get you to apply!

Don't do business with cornerstonepayday.com. They advertise through online spam posts and vandalism, their web site has NO security to protect your data when you submit it, the site design has a number of major red flags for scam activity and their rates are no better than using your credit card anyway. Why risk becoming the victim of identity theft for no financial benefit over using your credit card?

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Hate is an ugly thing

There are people who have used the 10 year anniversary or 9/11 to hate all Muslims as if every single one of them were personally responsible for the actions of the 9/11 terrorists. Hating an entire religion or ethic group because of the actions of a radicalized few is the kind of thinking that lead the 9/11 terrorists to hate all Americans in the first place.

The people below have more in common with the 9/11 terrorists than I think they would ever admit.

Thanks again to Openbook for making it so easy to locate people talking about how they want to Nuke Mecca.


Aaron Nicol I WANT TO FOLLOW PROPHRT WHO MARRIES AND FUCKS 9 YEAR OLD GIRLS LIKE MUMMAHED FROM THE CHILD RAPIST RELIGION OF ISLAM! AND I WANT 10 BRIDES THAT I OWN AGAIN ISLAM AND AN ONE WHO IS NOT OF MY TYPE OF ISLAM I MUST KILL. ISLAM = SATAN MUMHAMED = EVIL FUCK THE KABBAHA FUCK MECCA LETS NUKE THE SAUDIS


Tony Aiello We should wait for all the Islamists to go to Mecca and then drop a nuke on all of them. I still wont feel like we're even.


Joe Nicoletti THIS IS HOW WE SOLVE THE TERRORIST ISSUE. WE GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST... YOU WILL NEVER CHANGE CAMEL JOCKIES. YOU CANNOT CIVILIZE UNCIVILIZED MORONS.. ONCE WE LEAVE, WE NUKE EVERY MAJOR CITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST INCLUDING MECCA. PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!!!!!! WE MAKE THEM SUBMIT.....................................


Aaron Nicol
TO DEAR OLD UNCLE SAM... IT HAS BEEN 10 YEARS SINCE THE SAUDI AL QUEDA TOOK THE TOWERS DOWN IN NYC IF WE GET HIT AGAIN LETS USE OUR NUKES ON MECCA AND MAKE THESE IGNORANT SAVAGE CAVE DWELLING SCUMFAGGOTS REALIZE YOU FUCK WITH THE USA YOU LOSE!!!!
Share · September 11 at 2:32am · Privacy:

Rollin Paramount likes this.
William H. Hensley And shoot their children in this country.;
September 11 at 2:33am

Remember, these are the posts they make publicly. One can only wonder what they say in private.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Dr. Oz is a jackass

The terms "organic arsenic" and "inorganic arsenic" are not trying to describe two different kinds of the element arsenic. They are describing the other elements to which the arsenic atoms are bound. Arsenic is a highly reactive element and as a result you don't find it in a pure form in nature.

Organic arsenic is arsenic bound to hydrogen and carbon. This is the kind that passes harmlessly through the human body. The stable carbon and hydrogen bonds keep the arsenic atoms securely locked into molecules that will not react with the rest of the body.

Inorganic arsenic is generally bound to atoms that are more volatile, such as chlorine, sulfur and oxygen. These molecules tend to break apart in the human body, allowing the arsenic to actually react.

The test Oz did failed to differentiate between these two kinds of arsenic containing molecule, making the results meaningless for evaluating the safety of the juice.

Monday, August 29, 2011

On Sports

Modern sports are a disappointment. You rarely see any real violence during a game. Let me know when they bring back Gladiatorial matches. Real ones, where the match ends with a death, none of these bad actors in homoerotic dances they call "professional wrestling". Hockey has too much body armor and rugby doesn't get anywhere near enough coverage to have a decent fan base. I'd wager if it DID start getting more coverage some hand wringing idiots would form an organization to ban it so they can prove that they "think of the children" more than the rest of us.

You want me to give a damn about sports? Then show some that are worth watching, not a bunch of millionaires running around and whining whenever someone breaks one of their manicured nails. I want a version of soccer where it's not considered a fowl unless you have a broken bone. Allow steroids, as long as they're laced with an anticoagulant, so if you do get cut you risk bleeding out. Get rid of the armor in Football. And Baseball? I'm not sure how to save baseball, but you can make a start by letting the batter keep the bat and use it to fend off anyone trying to tag him "out" with the ball. That MIGHT liven things up a bit.

The irony is that some men consider me less "manly" because I have no interest in the sissified dance numbers they call "sports." If I want a dance number I'll watch something with better music. At least "Glee" has the decency to be up front about the homoerotic plot themes. Sweeny Todd has it all. Death (at least in the fake Hollywood sense), violence, revenge and a soundtrack.

The real reason they don't bring back public executions is that everyone knows they would get better ratings than professional sporting events. Even death by lethal injection would draw higher numbers than the playoffs. If they bring back the electric chair the Superbowl would be permanently relegated to the #2 slot, unless of course another channel was airing a hanging. Against that double header the Superbowl would be #3.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Google and oppressive regimes

I've been thinking about the Google+ "Real Name" controversy and the selective enforcement, like allowing all the "Lady GaGa" profiles. I'm also reminded of Google's "Great Firewall of China" and their desire to do business with often oppressive regimes. It occurs to me that having political dissidents using pseudonyms on Google+ would be a problem in negotiations with these regimes. From a business standpoint it would be easier if political dissidents simply avoided Google+ completely. There's no need for embarrassing negotiations with China or Iran about dissidents using Google+ if there are none. Requiring people to use their real names will do a spectacular job of keeping away people whose lives would be endangered by using their real name.

What, did you honestly think the "No Pseudonyms" policy was about piracy or civil discourse?

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Dennis Markuze aka David Mabus in the news again

Everyone's favorite death threat dealing, stalking, psychotic nutjob has been in the news again.

It all started when long time target of Markuze aka David Mabus threats posted the blog entry Time to institutionalize Dennis Markuze. In it he noted:

Every morning when I get up and get on the computer, the first thing I do is delete the pile of spam from Dennis Markuze, each of which is usually cross-posted to 50 to 100 other people. Every time I fire up Twitter, the first thing I do is clear the garbage Dennis Markuze has left there; yesterday I blocked and reported spam from over 25 Markuze accounts, amounting to several hundred messages.

You know what? This is wrong. I shouldn't have to do this. Over the years — I've been getting these threats from Markuze since 1993 — it's gradually grown from an occasional deranged message on usenet to part of my daily routine, where I'm dealing with hundreds of ranty messages every day from one disturbed individual in Montreal, Canada. And I'm not even his sole target: he has a hate-on for Shermer, Randi, and Dawkins, and this is all he does with his life: he sits in his bedroom in his parent's house and sends out shrill, incoherent messages to the world, all day long.


In the body of the post, PZ linked to a petition demanding that the Montreal city police take the "Mabus" death threats seriously. What the survey didn't disclose was that every signature generated an e-mail to the Montreal police. After a few thousand signatures were added to the petition they plaintively tweeted:

@SPVM Police Montréal
@rebeccawatson Please stop sendind e-mails to our media adresse by signinig the petition.We are investigating the case. Thank you.


The next day the Montreal Gazette ran the article Montreal police start probe of Twitter threats. Predictably the Montreal Police come off looking like idiots. Some people are claiming to have never heard of Mabus, others are claiming there's an ongoing investigation. It all comes across as a lazy, incompetent force trying to circle the wagons and pretend to be doing something.

Then there's the conspiracy theory that Markuze / Mabus is a Deep Cover Liberal and the Montreal Police are in on it.

During all of this Twitter users have been asked to retweet screen captures of any threats that Mabus makes to @SPVM so the Montreal Police get a copy of the tweets before Twitter deletes the latest account used by this nutjob.

Markuze / Mabus is crazy, no bones about it. He's been stalking people and making death threats for a while, and it's only a matter of time before he hurts someone. Even psychics think Dennis Markuze aka David Mabus is a threat to the life of PZ.

I wonder if the Montreal police ever use psychics.

Monday, July 25, 2011

You have to admit it

Two grown men calling out God's name while covered in baby oil and glitter is pretty gay.





Liberace didn't glitter this much. Inexplicably, Joshua Mills looks even MORE flaming without the glitter.


It's like Rosie O'Donnell lost some weight and ran face first into an ugly stick.

Just like the "Prophet or madman" apologetic for the divinity of Christ, there's only two explanations for Joshua Mills. Either he's a con artist pretending to sweat glitter and baby oil, or God approves of gays, made one a prophet and is fairly fabulous himself.

I'm not terribly comfortable with the second option, only because it would mean God has a very strong resemblance to the annoying gay male sidekick from "Will & Grace." I have nothing against gays, but I think I'd prefer Joshua be a con artist.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Glittering Flaming Con Man for Christ!

Joshua Mills claims he sweats supernatural oil and gold dust:
https://web.archive.org/web/20111012050409/http://unreasonablefaith.com/2011/07/21/glittering-miracle/

His web site is a riot:

Joshua Mills "about" page
During his services signs and wonders are commonplace with manifestations of supernatural oil and gold dust, creative healings, supernatural weight-loss, financial miracles, Angelic visitation and heavenly encounters.

Check out Joshua's head shot on the link above. The only way he could be more flaming would be to have a "Friend of Dorothy" pin on an ascot and a cardboard cutout of Margaret Cho in the background.

And he loves male angels.
http://churchwarnings.blogspot.com/2008/07/joshua-mills-angels-dripping-oil-manna.html

Joshua Mills also sings!
http://www.myspace.com/joshuamillsmusic

Oh, and he talks about miraculous teeth whitening. That's right, Jesus will give you white teeth: Xpmedia: Teeth whitening Joshua Mills

http://slaughteringthesheep.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/joshua-mills-teeth-whitening-miracle/

Apparently Mr. Mills decided the feather from "Forest Gump" was a message from God:
http://www.therisinglight.com/tag/joshua-mills/

Do people actually take loons like this seriously? Please tell me the guy from Borat or a similar comedy performance artist is behind this. The idea that people are actually dumb enough to fall for such a shoddy, obvious act is too depressing to contemplate.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Is Stacey Campfield Gay?

All joking about Stacey Campfield's flaming appearance aside, there is some speculation about the sex life of the driving force behind Tennessee's "don't say 'Gay'" bill.

First, there's Stacey Campfield apparent terror of homosexuals. There's no rational basis for banning Tennessee teachers from mentioning homosexuality aside from blatant fear mongering. Most of the people I've met who oppose discussion of homosexuality seem to think merely talking about it will trigger a rush of man-on-man orgies in the classroom. This attitude is perplexing to me. If someone I do not want to have sex with propositions me with a sex act I find repugnant, I'm not going to dive in and engage in it no matter what sweet nothings the person mutters. The idea of "enticing" an allegedly straight person into a homosexual act is absurd. No one who is completely straight is going to have sex with someone of their own gender. The only way a man can seduce another man with sweet nothings or lewd suggestions is if the "straight" man is at least a little gay.

Being a gay man who is attacking the rights of homosexuals would be incredibly hypocritical, but Stacey Campfield is no stranger to hypocrisy or at least profound contradictions.

The article What the Heck is Wrong With Stacey Campfield? points out:
it is hard to escape the contradictions underlying his geniality. He is a family-values conservative who has never married, a fathers’ rights advocate with no children, a professed preservationist who has been cited by the city for property neglect and sued by his tenants (though he is quick to point out that he has also won a suit of his own against a tenant), an advocate for education who litters his blog with spelling and grammatical errors, and a legislator who rarely manages to get his own legislation out of committee. He proposes bills more likely to generate headlines than laws.


So if he's gay, how did he become a Republican? In his own words:

I was very much just more of a fiscal conservative and really the social issues weren’t as key to me as the fiscal side was. But after I got up there, the more I studied and the more I looked at stuff, the more I realized that social issues have huge impacts on the fiscal issues. You can go down through it, you can say, unwed parenthood or something like that, that’s somebody else’s problem. Well, it is until they need social services or they need something else.

That sounds a bit like how the average Log Cabin Republican gravitated towards the GOP. The problem is the Tea Party era GOP makes it hard to be a fiscal conservative and a social progressive / moderate. That puts you in something of an outsider position. Campfield appears to have that very kind of an outsider position in the GOP. He was cut from the Republican governor's news mailing list.

We have a man pursuing a homophobic agenda, in a political party known for the wide stance problem of closeted homosexuals, who isn't married and has no children. He appears to be on the track to marginalization within the GOP despite the success of his "Don't say Gay" bill".

Oh, and Campfield appears to assume most women are sluts.

Check out the tinycatpants article linked above. It sounds like Campfield appears to think women are trolling the Earth, seeking men to shag briefly in order to bind them into paying for a child that may or may not be his. It's a bit paranoid but professing such a fear would allow a closeted homosexual to offer a token explanation for why he doesn't have a girlfriend. Animosity towards women doesn't mean you're gay*, but the Republicans are the ones who often claim that Lesbians are "Man Haters." It's another red flag.

None of this of course constitutes proof that Stacey Campfield is gay. It's all speculative to circumstantial at best. There are a lot of red flags but as the jury in the Casey Anthony murder trial could attest, numerous red flags don't necessarily constitute solid evidence.

Is Stacey Campfield gay? No one knows, but I doubt anyone would be surprised if he were caught demonstrating a wide stance or exploring Santorum in a private bath house.

* OK, using Rush Limbaugh, the guy who was caught smuggling illegal Viagra on an "All Boy's Fishing Trip", may not have been the best example to use when claiming animosity towards women isn't necessarily an indicator of homosexuality.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Tennessee

Where they think banning the word "Gay" will make Stacey Campfield less flaming.


Where, exactly are his eyes directed while he's holding up that sticker?

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Normally a BarMitzvah has kosher food

A Jewish friend has commented on the fact that Max Ultimate Food has a very, er, flexible definition of what constitutes appropriate food for Bar & Bat Mitzvahs. Their highly inappropriate sample menu includes things like burgers with cheese, lobster and crab. The pigs in a blanket are iffy, as it's conceivable they're made with all beef franks and no cheese, but given the colossal lack of clue in the rest of the menu I'd be inclined to doubt it.

My commented screen capture is below. Please forgive any rough edges, as I had to stitch it together from multiple screen shots. I do not have a graphic designer's screen.


UPDATE:
A friend pointed out that I missed the prosciutto in the "First Course" when marking up the image.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Killed Someone? Let God Cover For You! | The American Jesus

Killed Someone? Let God Cover For You! | The American Jesus

This is GREAT NEWS for prosecutors who are finding their death row cases overturned by DNA evidence. If they can prove the inmate probably "Found Jesus" after committing the crime then they can argue that a DNA mismatch is to be EXPECTED and proves NOTHING about the innocence of the people on death row. A DNA match on the other hand, proves the prisoner never REALLY converted and thus deserves to be executed even sooner.



You heard it here, unbelievers. Converting can CHANGE YOUR DNA! We’ll all go out and knock over some convenience stores, leave lots of hair and skin samples behind, then have a “genuine born-again experience” and change our DNA. It’s the perfect crime!

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Imbibing quarts of bathtub gin

Make: Online | How to Make Your Own Gin Without a Still
I've been making my own gin by steeping juniper berries. I'm looking forward to trying this recipe. All I need is some 100 proof vodka.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Measles Outbreak In Europe, Especially France


"Oh, but they won't sell as many vaccines that way. Never mind, then... "

The profit on a singe vaccinatio­n is about 10 to 25 cents. The cost of a single measles case can be thousands of dollars. If "big pharma" really was determined to make people sick to profit from it, they'd be doing everything they could to NOT vaccinate.

But hey, you stick with the naive belief that a merciless profit motive is driving them to turn away billions from treating measles, whooping cough and polio in order to scrape together a relative pittance from vaccinatio­n. I'm going to invest in "big pharma" stock. The anti-vax movement is going to be making money for them hand over fist in the next few years.
About Personal Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

SA rapture man apologises

SA rapture man apologises: "The SA follower of the US evangelist who predicted the end of the world is being ridiculed, but still believes the end will come on October 21."

This man spent $140,000 of his life savings on billboards promoting Harold Camping's absurd May 21, 2011 Rapture date. Now he has bought into Camping's wild claims of an "invisible" or "spiritual" judgment, as if Camping had any credibility left. It's "Sunk cost" thinking at its finest.

How convenient for Camping that the May 21 event turned out to be something vague, undefined and supernatural with no detectable evidence in the real world.

Con Man Camping Still at it

Harold Camping has been manipulating his followers for decades with false promises of an imminent Rapture. His repeated date predictions have all failed and now the false prophet has defended the failure of his much trumpeted May 21 date with another blast of shoddy rationalization, claiming that the world will now end in five months. As one critic commented "Third time's the charm."




The general idea seems to be that some sort of vague spiritual event occurred on May 21, and the five months of tribulation Camping predicted will instead be skipped as an act of divine mercy. The October 21 date he picked for the actual destruction of the Earth still stands. He's claiming he was just wrong about the Rapture happening on May 21.

So what happened on the 21st?
"We've always said October 21 was the day," Camping said during his show. "The only thing we didn't understand was the spirituality of May 21. We're seeing this as a spiritual thing happening rather than a physical thing happening. The timing, the structure, the proofs, none of that has changed at all."
Ahh, vague spiritual BS. That's what happened. It's like talking to a psychic or ghost hunter. Let's do some more digging to see if Camping elaborates:

Saturday was "an invisible judgment day" in which a spiritual judgment took place, he said. But the timing and the structure is the same as it has always been, he said.
"We’ve always said May 21 was the day, but we didn’t understand altogether the spiritual meaning," he said. "May 21 is the day that Christ came and put the world under judgment."
What, pray tell, is "an invisible judgment day" supposed to be? Does this mean God has randomly decided to just skip the bulk of the nasty, horrible things predicted in the Bible? Fark commentators take a stab at explaining Camping's "Invisible Judgment Day"(tm) and end up doing a better job illuminating the issue than Camping himself.

In the mean time, Camping's ministry has whitewashed the Family Radio Web site, scrubbing it of all mention of the failed May 21 prediction. It's a very Orwellian memory hole.

Bob Hansen, one of the poor fools who were promoting the idiotic May 21 date, granted an interview to discuss his reaction to the failed prediction. It's a very depressing example of "Sunk Cost" thinking. People who have invested a good deal of their time and resources, often burning bridges with  friends and family, have trouble accepting evidence that all their effort and sacrifice was wasted. Instead of admitting they were wrong and trying to make amends, they instead rationalize their decisions and try to find ways to excuse the failure that should have forced them to realize they'd been misled. This is the same psychological phenomena that keeps people trapped in Multi-Level-Marketing scams and Pyramid schemes.


PZ Myers has his own take on the matter that includes a lot of interesting links and a general condemnation of religion as a whole.

Then there's a chilling quote from Camping:

I don't have any responsibility. I'm only teaching the Bible. I'm telling ... this is what the Bible says. I don't have spiritual rule over anybody ... except my wife as the head of the household.
Given such control over his wife, it's no surprise that instead of leaving the fraud, she's instead said she's "a little bewildered" at the complete and utter failure of is prediction. Apparently she's been wallowing in the false prophet's nonsense for too long to see clearly anymore. That, or she's afraid of him. He is pretty old school in many of his Bible interpretations.I wouldn't be surprise if he used a literal rod to beat his wife and children when they disobeyed.

The really chilling part of the quote is how Camping washes his hands of all responsibility for what's happened. It doesn't matter that it was his web of lies that ruined so many people financially and rent so many families asunder. Camping apparently believes it's THEIR fault for believing him. I wonder how many con artists use the same logic to absolve themselves of responsibility for cheating lonely old widows out of their savings.

In all of this only one group is really coming forward to try and help the people who were fooled by Camping. Atheist to Rapture Victims: You're Not Stupid. Funny how a group that's usually stigmatized by the religious is reaching out, while Camping is desperately trying to extend his exploitation of these people for another few months. Fark commentators disagree with the claim that Canning's followers aren't stupid.

I wonder what Jesus would think of this whole affair.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Most Annoying

Dear nature. The cold weather and rain is hampering my efforts to smoke my annual spring cigar.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Camping's Crazies

I think Camping's Crazies are planning a mass suicide or terrorist act for May 21. Watch the news. Some of these jokers are probably going to try to bring about the end times with some acts of their own. They'll consider it an act of mercy, sparing the "Left Behind" from months of misery by ending their lives just before the Rapture. I'll bet a few even plan to use a terrorist act to scare people into last second repentance. Remember, these jokers believe that there will be no additional salvation after the Rapture, so anyone "Left Behind" will be screwed. If however they can scare people into repenting at the last second, getting in just under the wire so to speak, BOOM! A saved soul!

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Beginner books for brewing beer

While most brewing books have an obligatory "How to brew" chapter, there are two primary beginner texts for homebrewers.

How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Third Edition. It's best read with the companion volume The Homebrewer's Companion

While they both cover a lot of the same information, they have two distinct approaches. Papazian takes a far more artistic, poetic tack. In one of his books, he waxes poetic about a Prickly Pear Mead and how he brews a batch every year. He buries a few bottles at the top of a nearby mountain to be aged by nature.

Palmer takes a more scientific approach and gets to the nuts and bolts.

You get pretty much the same information from both books, with the main difference being the writing style and organization.

I subscribe to two brewing magazines. Zymurgy, edited by Papazian, reflects his attitude towards brewing, while "Brew Your Own" reflects a more Palmer oriented approach, including a series of articles scientifically testing various homebrew traditions and urban legends.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

SEO, it's Not Black Magic

Spin, spin, spin, for many firms it's all about the spin. Overblown claims are common on the Internet, especially when dealing with the touchy issue of Search Engine ranking.  The perception is that the better a site fares in Search Engine rankings the more money the associated business / charity / whatever will make. Many firms exploit this perception by making wild promises about how they'll boost your ranking in various search engines.

More is not better

The House Rabbit Network (HRN) is a New England based animal rescue group. Their web site, rabbitnetwork.org gets a lot of traffic from people seeking information about keeping rabbits as pets. Starting in 2007, they started getting traffic from a new and unexpected source. "Adult" search terms started directing people to rabbitnetwork.org.  It didn't take long for the webmaster to figure out what was going on.

The HRN web site had recently added "How to Sex Your Rabbits", an article about determining the gender of a rabbit. It's one of the better online articles on the topic and a lot of other rabbit related sites were already linking to it. The large number of links to the article gave it a higher Google page rank. The text contained phrases like "bunny" and "sex" which caused people seeking, er, "mature" content to be directed to the site. To make matters worse, people began posting the URL to adult themed forums.

From the view of many SEO "experts" this was a grand success. The site was getting more traffic from a larger and more diverse audience. From the view of the rescue group, this was an annoyance.  The increased traffic didn't negatively impact server performance or increase bandwidth costs, but it didn't result in people donating to the 501(c)3 registered charity or increase rabbit adoptions from HRN's foster homes.

People who stumbled across the site while searching for mature content weren't interested in a pet rabbit.

Misdirection to kill a campaign

In February 2008, the UK chain Marks & Spencer was engaged in a battle with the British union "Unite." As part of the conflict, Unite chose to engage in what they called "cyber-warfare." While the article was light on details, the union was probably spending £500 on Google Adwords.  The trouble hit when someone posted the article to the news aggregation site digg.com with the headline "Union to hijack global search engine - Google!." The headline depicted the relatively straightforward purchase of some paid search results as a form of black hat hacking. As a result, a large number of digg.com members searched for "Marks & Spencer" on Google, clicked the link to the Union grievances and then went back to digg.com to ask "Who the heck is Marks & Spencer?"

In short order the £500 had been burned up and searches for "Marks & Spencer" no longer resulted in an ad directing people to Unite's grievances page. A lot of people saw the ad, but few of them knew who Marks & Spencer was. As a result, the campaign had little effect on Marks & Spencer's bottom line.

The relatively low cost of advertising in search results may level the playing field a bit, but if a competitor can burn up your paid clicks it won't benefit you very much. Did the digg.com link help Unite's campaign? Not really.  Many of the paid search results went to people who had no involvement in the battle between Unite and M&S. Unite would have fared better if they'd not spoken to the press about the campaign.

Better means people want to go there

In both these example, the traditional "More is Better" SEO criteria was met. Both HRN and Unite got more traffic and more attention. From a practical standpoint, neither of them benefited.  Unite's money was burned up serving ads to people who didn't even recognize the name "Marks & Spencer". HRN didn't place any more rabbits.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

The most useful image on the Internet

Upon reflection I think this image may be the most useful one to be found online at the moment. It has so many applications.


Tuesday, May 3, 2011

What we always suspected

One Soul Thrust still claiming to have been pirated

One Soul Thrust, the unknown band whose manager Cameron Tilbury used advertisements to claim they'd achieved "Pirate Platinum status" has scrubbed their twitter feed of mention of the debacle. They still have a blog up yammering about their fictional downloads.

We've recently found out that our debut cd "1ST" has gone beyond platinum status!! While this is cause for SERIOUS celebration,yes indeed, its extremely bittersweet since almost all of these "sales" weren't sales. It was illegal downloads

As anyone following the band or their manager knows, the above simply isn't true. No one downloaded One Soul Thrust. Their manager, through incompetence or deliberate deception, made the claim based upon dodgy advertisements and nothing more. He didn't even verify the files were available online. This can be said with confidence because if he HAD tried to download the files to verify the authenticity of the ads, he'd have learned the files did not exist.

Despite this, One Soul thrust feels compelled to opine on their fictional victimization by pirates who don't exist:

Downloading music illegally is wrong. It's theft; no different than stealing off the racks at HMV. It hurts ALOT of people.

You know what else hurts people One Soul Thrust? Accusing innocent people of theft, which is exactly what you and your manger have done. I would venture to guess that accusing an innocent person of stealing from you does more harm than downloading an MP3 off a pirate web site.

On a final note, cashboxcanada.ca still has a link to the debunked claims of piracy on their web site's front page. It says a lot about cashboxcanada.ca's lack of integrity that they're still promoting an article that's been ripped to shreds and shown to be based upon bad data. Are they lazy and incompetent, or do they simply not care if piracy claims are true or not?

Regardless, I'll use the exact same standard of evidence employed to support their article to do some research of my own. By their own standard of evidence the following MUST be a real, heavily traded video:

"Cashboxcanada.ca shareholder meeting child sacrafice to Pan"

Shocking! Human sacrifices to a pagan deity! I wonder if the artists associated with this degenerate outfit know about this? Remember folks, the claim that Cashboxcanada.ca engages in human sacrifice at shareholder meetings is supported by just as much evidence as the claim that One Soul Thrust was the victim of piracy in the first few months of 2011.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Brandon, MS P0wned by WBC, still think they won

According to blackfive.net's take on a quote from a Mississippi message board Brandon, Mississippi "defeated" the WBC. The problem with their rather naive take on the matter is that they played right into the hands of the WBC cult, giving them exactly what they want. Clearly some government affiliated idiots in Brandon thought spewing hate is the goal of the WBC. It's not. The WBC's goal is to sue, sue, sue. The police in Brandon Mississippi just made the WBC's job very, very easy.

The Phelps clan was running their usual act. Find the funeral of a dead soldier and do their best to piss off as many people as possible. It's claimed that most of the WBC income is the result of first amendment and civil rights lawsuits filed against the people, particularly the local governments, that try to silence them. Apparently knowing NOTHING about the WBC other than their tendency to protest the funerals of soldiers resulted in this response:

The Oxford Square
They did show up, a few showed up a couple of days early.

A couple of days before, one of them ran his mouth at a Brandon gas station and got his ass waxed. Police were called and the beaten man could not give much of a description of who beat him. When they canvassed the station and spoke to the large crowd that had gathered around, no one seemed to remember anything about what had happened.

Rankin County handled this thing perfectly. There were many things that were put into place that most will never know about and at great expense to the county. Most of the morons never made it out of their hotel parking lot. It seems that certain Rankin county pickup trucks were parked directly behind any car that had Kansas plates in the hotel parking lot and the drivers mysteriously disappeared until after the funeral was over.

Police were called but their wrecker service was running behind and it was going to be a few hours before they could tow the trucks so the Kansas plated cars could get out. A few made it to the funeral but were ushered away to be questioned about a crime they might have possibly been involved in. Turns out, after a few hours of questioning, that they were not involved and they were allowed to go on about their business.

Ranking deserves a hand in how they handled this situation.

Brandon, Mississippi can probably expect a number of lawsuits to be filed by the WBC family, most of whom are lawyers. The article linked by the OP might end up part of the filing as proof of a conspiracy to suppress the first amendment rights of the Phelps cult.

Using government resources to violate the rights of jackasses is a piss-poor way to honor a soldier who died ostensibly defending those rights. It's a shame Rankin County didn't dedicate more resources to civics classes. After the WBC clan is done with them they probably won't be able to afford to keep the schools open.

How did the poster on blackfive.net describe the events that placed an entire town at the mercy of Fred Phelps?

Sometimes, when all else has fails, you need the good old boys to get things done. Hats off to the patriots of Rankin, Mississippi!

I HATE it when the WBC wins. I HATE it when those WBC jackasses get exactly what they want handed to them on a silver platter. The town's only hope now is for the tale to either be a complete fabrication or for the WBC to decide there isn't enough money in the county to justify a lawsuit.

Monday, April 18, 2011

NZ to Throw People into an Internet Memoy Hole

New Zealand has passed a law that purports to allow copyright holders to more easily cut off the Internet connection of Intellectual Property pirates.

There's a dark side to the law however, aside from the fact that technical issues make the New Zealand law useless or at the very least guarantees a lot of innocent bystanders will be caught in the digital crossfire. The law effectively allows anyone with the time and money to file a few dodgy complaints to cut off the Internet connection for a household or business.

If the entirety of the law goes into effect due process is pretty much eliminated and anyone can be kicked off the Internet based upon a few complaints. One guy who knows how to use a proxy server could file a few complaints and get an entire household's Internet connection cut. Is there a NZ blogger who ticked you off? File some dubious file sharing complaints and you can get him and his entire family cut off in one fell swoop. Is a competitor cutting into your profits? File some complaints and they'll lose their Internet connection. Don't like the review someone wrote of your business? Cut off their Internet connection.

Once cut off, getting back on can be a dicey proposition. Employers wouldn't be happy with their Internet connection being jeopardized by a blogger employee, so continuing whatever political or business blogging that got your home connection severed during your lunch break may just get you fired. If you work from home your business and personal connection is dead. All it takes to cut off a family or business in New Zealand will be one person willing to lie about Internet Piracy. Folks like that aren't exactly difficult to find.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Cameron Tilbury and Salem Jones The Bareback Gift Giver

Whoa Nellie! What have we here:

Cameron Tilbury and Salem Jones The Bareback Gift Giver


THAT'S a weird title. According to LimeTorrent it's just as popular as One Soul Thrust's debut album. Can anyone translate that movie title for me?

Friday, April 8, 2011

Cameron Tilbury only needed a month to destroy One Soul Thrust

It turns out One Soul Thrust, the band that has been humiliated online by the incompetence and dishonesty of Cameron Tilbury only signed with him in February of 2011.

20 February 2011
One Soul Thrust Unveils New Management

Rock band One Soul Thrust has just signed a management deal with Cameron Tilbury Publicity in the United Kingdom.

...

"We were introduced to Cameron through Nashville vocal coach Judy Rodman," says One Soul Thrust's lead singer/songwriter Salem Jones. "He started getting our music out to international radio and doing our publicity. but he was also talking to booking agents, promoters and other people. We soon realized that he was doing a lot of what we wanted in a manager. Since our focus is international and our producer is based in Europe, we wanted an international manager. It just seemed like a good fit. We simply love C."

One Soul Thrust is fronted by lead vocalist/songwriter Salem Jones. Add drummer Todd Pretty, guitarist Jag Mollerup, bassist Trent Morley, and you have the core members of what one US journalist called "one of Canada's best-kept secrets."

...

Cameron Tilbury is a native of Ancaster, Ontario, Canada and a former Canadian radio announcer/writer (820 CHAM, KX96, Q107, CHFI). He has worked at advertising agencies in Nottingham, Peterborough, Maidstone and London in the UK. Cameron Tilbury Publicity was founded in 2010 in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire--about 85 miles north of London--and is currently handling international radio promo and publicity for some of North America's best up-and-coming talent.

For information: info@onesoulthrust.com, cameron@camerontilburypublicity.com


By the first week of April, 2011, you couldn't look up information on the band without getting results about One Soul Thrust's manager feeding them bad information. In a little over a month, he turned them into an Internet joke.

Around April 3 and 4, the band and the manager posted some statements in their defense, but by April 8, the relevant posts on Tilbury's site were gone. Apparently he thought better of continuing to claim 100,000 pirate downloads when there were really none. Instead of admitting his mistake, he's decided to delete his comments and hope everyone just forgets he screwed up and was an ass about it. Given the short attention span of the Internet that strategy might actually work. Unless of course people keep linking to articles about this incident using his name and the band's name. Unless he admits his mistake and eats some humble pie, the odds are good his incompetence will continue to be one of the top things people learn about when they look him up online.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

George Takei auditions for the role of Spiderman

There's the old D&D joke that Sean Connery reached "Epic" level in the 1990's and "stopped leveling." This is usually supported by photos showing how little he has aged in the last few decades.


Clearly, George Takei got the "Epic Level" rule book so he could keep leveling, even after achieving Epic Status.

In programming terms:
GeorgeTakei = Epic +1;

Every few months:
GeorgeTakei ++;




All joking aside, letting him retool the show into a comedic vehicle could work nicely. It might even, dare I say, save a failing production!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Salem Jones probably flunked all his math classes

It takes a special kind of stupid to not be able to tell the difference between 0 and 100,000.
'While I question the exact precision of these numbers--pirates are dishonest by nature--it appears they reflect a strong enough version of reality to bring a serious issue to light.' - One Soul Thrust's lead vocalist Salem Jones, on the fact that his band is claiming their album has been pirated 1000,00 times when it's not even available on any piracy sites.

Switched.com has the best headline for this fiasco: Obscure Canadian Band Mistakes Spam for 100K Illegal Downloads

Imageshack has an example of the spam that fooled Salem Jones.

Cameron Tilbury, a lying SOB?

Until a few weeks ago, Cameron Tilbury'S main claim to fame was being a lackluster music manager and a somewhat psychotic looking Gordon Ramsay look-a-like. Now he's becoming known as a "special needs" individual who can't tell an advertisement from actual search results.

In my recent post Cameron Tilbury vs One Soul Thrust, I outlined how Cameron Tilbury used advertisements that auto-populated with your search results to claim that the debut album of the band One Soul Thrust had been downloaded about 100,000 times. If you actually try to download any of those files you learn something interesting. They don't exist. There are no copies of One Soul Thrust's album available on any illicit file sharing sites.

Cameron Tilbury's piracy claims are not true.

I wondered if he was deliberately lying or just an incompetent moron, incapable of telling the difference between and advertisement and actual search results. Was he also desperately trying to collect on his million pound Yahoo Lottery prize while feverishly corresponding with Nigerian prices desperate to get their money out of the country, giving him an eight figure cut in the process?

Tilbury's recent response to this mess has convinced me he is deliberately lying. I won't do the scumbag Cameron Tilbury the service of linking to his site. Instead I'll link to The Mad Hatter's response to Cameron Tilbury's dishonesty. I highly recommend reading it. The Mad Hatter's article, like my earlier one, uses absurd search criteria to demonstrate the idiocy and nonsensical nature of Cameron Tilbury's claims.

This is Cameron's money quote:

Sure enough, it would appear that not only are the downloads on pirate sites illegal, but their numbers are pretty shady too.


At no point does he admit that his piracy claims are fraudulent. He just weasels out and says the numbers my be off a bit. His excuse isn't completely off base. There's a substantial difference between ZERO downloads, which is what One Soul Thrust has experienced and the 1000,000 downloads Cameron Tilbury claims. That would fall under the criteria of "their numbers are pretty shady too." By refusing to admit that there are no actual incidents of One Soul Thrust being pirated he is engaging in what can be termed "deception by omission." Specifically he's leaving out the critical point that his claims are complete balderdash.

I would advise anyone thinking of doing business with Cameron Tilbury to seriously reconsider associating with him. If his handling of this debacle is any indication, then stretching the truth or even flat out lying are part of his business toolkit. It may seem like a good thing to have a dishonest bastard on your side, but lying bastards have a tendency to turn on you. Do you REALLY want to be in a contract dispute with someone as apparently dishonest as Cameron Tilbury?

If you have an existing relationship with Cameron Tilbury, get out as fast as you can, unless you like knowing that you can never trust a word that comes out of his mouth.

Where will Tilbury go from here? I suspect he'll try to cast this debate as a general piracy issue, distancing himself from his debunked claims. Instead of addressing the falsified nature of his 100,000 downloads number, he'll steer the conversation away from his specific incompetence and dishonesty towards a general attack on piracy. Anyone who calls him out on continuing to lie about the One Soul Touch piracy numbers will be lumped in with anyone who advocates piracy.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Cameron Tilbury vs One Soul Thrust

Cameron Tilbury is the manager for a band named "One Soul Thrust", and I feel sorry for the band.

In April of 2011, Tilbury broke the news that One Soul Thrust's debut album had been downloaded illegally over 100,000 times. A small band was being decimated by piracy. They'd gone Pirate-Platinum despite being an obscure band whose one youtube video had less than 80 views. I have videos of my toddler online that have more views than that.

The claim that a band with no real Internet presence could have racked up 100,000 illegal downloads was a red flag to a number of people. After some due diligence it turned out that the claims of One Soul Thrust having 100,000 illegal downloads were complete and bull. Cameron Tilbury, the man claiming there have been 100,000 illegal downloads has released his "evidence", which consists of a screen shot of an advertisement. TorrentFreak details the story in their article CRIA Watches Massive Music Piracy Crisis Devastate Unknown Band. Specifically, the ad is for LimeTorrents, a site that uses your search terms to make up fictional torrents with massive download rates in order to get you to click on the link.

The article One Soul Thrust – Who Is Lying To Them reveals that the album isn't even on Gnutella.

Tilbury however hasn't admitted his mistake,. Far from it. He's defending his position on the Balanced Copyright For Canada Facebook wall.

He's even being a jackass about it. For example, Trent Morley pointed out that Tilbury was responding to requests for supporting evidence with name calling Tilbury wrote:
Cameron Tilbury: So are you Trent. I've substantiated our claims to real journalists, not silly little bloggers who hide behind cute names. Nice loyalty on your part, I have to say. Class.

All anyone has had to do is contact me directly. The only ones who ha...ve done that are legit journalists and CRIS. I will not condutct this the way you kids want to play. Grow up."

If that's the case then it should be fairly simple for Tilbury to provide the same evidence to bloggers. Based on the Google results for the band's name bloggers are the primary people writing about this anyway. Deliberately excluding the people who are providing the most information on the issue only guarantees their version will dominate the conversation.

The fact-checking articles I've linked above make it pretty clear that no such torrent actually exists. The question becomes not one of if the piracy is occurring, it's not, but one of motive. Is Cameron Tilbury malevolent and trying to use this to get press attention or is he merely incompetent? He's clearly failed the band in his efforts to promote them. Is this an attempt to excuse his failure to get the band more paying gigs? Is he actually foolish enough to think no one would research his claims? Is he deliberately trying to make a fool of himself online to promote the band?

Tilbury's response on his web site is vacuous to say the least. He never admits that the download figures were based on bad information. He seems downright offended that anyone is even asking him for evidence. In the end his post devolves into an anti-piracy rant, never mentioning the white elephant in the room: The Piracy he's claiming happened to One Soul Thrust did not happen.

It's pretty clear One Soul Thrust needs a new manager. He's technologically incompetent and his management of this debacle is proving a complete inability to understand the relevance of the Internet in marketing the band. There are a lot of graceful ways he could have handled this and benefited his client but they all entail admitting he was wrong. A bigger man could do that. Cameron Tilbury however, does not appear to be a big enough man to admit a mistake.

Now, just for fun, here are some other torrent search results that claim far more downloads than are feasible. Keep in mind, none of these files actually exist, but the images below constitute the same level of evidence that Tilbury provided to TorrentFreak to support his claims of piracy. His screen shots showed download counts similar to the ones in the screen shots below. He appears to have gotten his 100,000 number by totaling the results. This means if the information Cameron Tilbury has released about One Soul Thrust is proof of massive piracy, then Cameron Tilbury is a piracy-platinum blue movie star.

Cameron Tilbury Dealing with constipation audio book

Cameron Tilbury Gay Sex Tape

Cameron Tilbury on the Nixon Tapes

Cameron Tilbury Murder Conviction read in court

To the best of my knowledge, Cameron Tilbury has never starred in a gay sex movie, written a book about constipation or been convicted of murder, but his own standard of evidence, screen shots from dodgy torrent search sites, would suggest otherwise.

I doubt he ever shagged Chris Crocker either: Cameron Tilbury caught in bed with Chris Crocker