This is pretty cool. It’s a movabletype plugin that makes sure actual keys were pressed in the text field. So real comments get through, but spambots are rejected. It’s a Turing test that the user doesn’t even know they’re taking! The only real problem I see is that it might stop some blind readers from commenting if they’re using a non-javascript braille browser. But most of the anti-spam tests (of the “type this word into the box” type) defeat the blind; at least this one has a chance of letting them comment.

I wish there was a 2.661 version. I should probably upgrade to MT 3.0 anyway.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Well, it’s a start. Seems to me she’s resigning mostly over the new allegations about athletics department slush funds paid for with sports camp fees, but her comments about “a new McCarthyism” out to get Ward Churchill couldn’t have helped.

Now if they’ll fire Churchill our new McCarthyite attempt to stamp out free speech will be complete! Let the chill wind blow, and may dissent be crushed forever! Gannon be praised.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Yup, those “we’re waiting” ads are for Dick’s Sporting Goods. They finally put the reveal ad on the air, and it closes with a shot of the former Flatirons Galyans storefront with a huge Dick’s sign. So my speculation about them closing that store was incorrect.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Oliver Willis wigs out over the humorous remarks of a Republican congressman. Rep. Gibbons said that it was “too damn bad we didn’t buy [the hippies and liberals] a ticket” to be human shields in Iraq. The Big O says this “endorses the murder of liberals.”

The congressman’s remarks are certainly edgy, and perhaps he crosses a line when he wishes that we’d helped the human shield hopefuls die. But buying someone a ticket so they can be a voluntary human shield is murder? Try again, Oliver.

Oh, and what does Willis think of the honorable Sen. Byrd comparing Republicans to Nazis? We don’t know. As usual, he only criticizes the opposition’s controversial remarks and doesn’t even attempt to defend a top Donk’s truly reprehensible language.

Popularity: 1% [?]

But I hate it when someone gets Godwin’s Law wrong. Especially when it’s Glenn Reynolds, possibly the smartest blogger of them all. Byrd didn’t violate the law, he proved it.

Everyone seems to assume that Godwin’s Law states that an argument is over when someone compares someone else to the Nazis, and that the violater has therefore lost the argument. That’s, at best, a corally. The law simply states that the longer an argument continues the more inevitable it becomes that one party will compare the other party to the Krauts (sorry, been watching Band of Brothers), and that the argument is no longer of any interest afterwards. It says nothing about the winner or the loser, or even that the argument is over. It’s inferred that the argument is over, since it’s no longer an interesting one, and it’s an even more tangential inference that the invoker lost the argument.

It would be just as correct to say that the invoker won the argument. After all, they ended it. But the accusation has to be true. If Robert Byrd compared the Republicans to Nazis and they were, say, killing thousands of Jews, he’d be on the side of God. As it is, he’s just an idiot.

Popularity: 1% [?]