Back of the Envelope

I've gotten tired of all the trackback spam I've been getting, so I've decided to implement countermeasures. Most of the spam seems to be going to a small group of posts. So what I'm going to do is delete those posts. That may seem a little extreme, but it's not. Since I don't want to just lose my old posts, I'll be posting copies of them throughout the day. Eventually, I'll change the date on them so they end up where they're supposed to be in the archives. I'm hoping this will avoid the spam since the new post will have a different trackback ping than the spammed posts.

If you've browsed through my categories, you've probably noticed that some are quite full while others are basically empty. The reason for this is that Categories are a fairly recent feature here at Powerblogs, and when I decided on the Categories to create, I looked at the posts that I had and created categories to fit those. However, I had a lot of posts before I created the categories, and I couldn't go back and categorize them all. Well, maybe I could have, but it would have taken forever. So unless I post on a topic frequently, it can stay empty until I start categorizing my old posts. Well, I'm not going to get them all categorized right away, no more than I'm going to get all the links in them fixed, but I have gone back and put a few in the categories that were pretty sparse. For example, all the Quantum Computation posts are now in the right category. I'll be working on some of the others over time.

The latest Christian Carnival is up at The Wittenberg Gate. I didn't have an article this time since I haven't done any blogging about religion recently. I'm still pondering writing something about the nature of the soul and dualism, but I'm reluctant to tackle this subject unless I'm willing to put the work into it that it deserves. The general thesis is that the idea that the body and the soul are two separate entities, and especially that the soul can have a separate existence without the body, owes more to Greek philosophy than Christian theology, which promises a bodily resurrection. There are indeed creatures of pure spirit, such as angels (and not necessarily all of them, although I'll have to check), but we're not them. Anyway, I'll talk about this in more detail when I have a chance.

From Mickey Kaus (via Instapundit):

Aren't the dates on these MSM Sunday sections beginning to look like a form of fraud, or at least deceptive non-disclosure? The printed Times Calendar section I'm holding in my hand claims it's the Sunday, April 24, 2005 edition. But it's really the Wednesday, April 20, 2005 edition. Uncredentialed blogs accurately report the date they were written, down to the minute, no? Advantage: Self-aggrandizing journalistic wannabes! ...

Well, um, no. Not in my case. This post will be going up at noon tomorrow, even though it was written around 9:30 pm the night before. I'm quite honest about that. Pretty much all the posts you see going up during the day were written the night before, mainly because I can't blog at work, but most blog readers are out and about during the day. Heh, I guess that's an advantage I can't claim.

I didn't get much blogging done last night, since I went to bed pretty early, once more trying to find my lost sleep. The Storyblogging Carnival is done, though, and it will be up at noon.

Meanwhile, I have some thoughts on things I'd like to touch on this week when I get a chance, including the nature of the body and the soul, the collapse of the Twin Towers, and a couple of other things which I can't seem to recall at the moment, but hopefully they'll come back to me.

I may have lost track of the exact score, but the Bible study is definitely winning. I did miss it last week when the lack of sleep caught up with me and I tried, unsuccessfully, to nap after work. So you got more blogging last week, but this week I was feeling better so my time was better spent. Not that I don't enjoy blogging, but some things are more important.

If you hadn't noticed (and I barely noticed and I run the site), some of my old posts had accumulated an extraordinary number of Trackbacks. Unfortunately, those Trackbacks were spam, sometimes over 20 to a post, linking mostly to online poker sites. I deleted over 150 of them yesterday, and banned the sites, but I'm sure it's something I'll have to do on a periodic basis. Meanwhile, my eyes were getting kind of blurry there, and it's possible I banned some legitimate bloggers (you guys) by mistake. So if you find that you can't Trackback anymore, let me know and I'll see if I can fix it.

Tired of listening to me moan about my life? Then go read this week's Christian Carnival at AnotherThink. It's a whole lot better reading than the whining around here!

The Sixty-fourth Christian Carnival is online at Proverbs Daily. With sixty-two entries there's plenty to read.

Nick Queen has the most recent New Christian Blog Showcase up. This week he's highlighting Stand Up and Walk and Thoughts of a Stranger.

Maritza Campos has noticed my Weekly Webcomic Updates. I'm not sure whether she noticed my link to her Livejournal last week. "Returning the favor" probably isn't the best way to put it, since I'm sure she's sent more traffic my way than I've sent to her.

Tom Harrison of Monday Afternoon has moved to a new blog, Monday Evening. As Doc Rampage has already pointed out, that's kind of confusing. In any case, I've updated the blogroll.