Last night my site received another visit from a blacklisted IP address out of Israel:

89-138-129-66.bb.netvision.net.il

* /wp-content/themes/bark/style.css
Http Code: 200 Date: Nov 17 09:48:03 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 6018
Referer: http://www.kellyramsey.net/index.php/2007/11/16/salesmanship-awareness-alliance/
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9 Creative ZENcast v1.04.06

* /favicon.ico
Http Code: 200 Date: Nov 17 09:48:08 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 894
Referer: -
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9 Creative ZENcast v1.04.06

* /2007/11/16/salesmanship-awareness-alliance/?s=marina+kushner
Http Code: 404 Date: Nov 17 10:13:57 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: -
Referer: http://www.kellyramsey.net/index.php/2007/11/16/salesmanship-awareness-alliance/
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9 Creative ZENcast v1.04.06

* /2007/11/16/salesmanship-awareness-alliance/?s=++kushner
Http Code: 404 Date: Nov 17 10:14:04 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: -
Referer: http://www.kellyramsey.net/index.php/2007/11/16/salesmanship-awareness-alliance/
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9 Creative ZENcast v1.04.06

* /wp-comments-post.php
Http Code: 302 Date: Nov 17 10:32:54 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 5
Referer: http://www.kellyramsey.net/index.php/2007/11/16/salesmanship-awareness-alliance/
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9 Creative ZENcast v1.04.06

* /index.php/2007/11/16/salesmanship-awareness-alliance/
Http Code: 200 Date: Nov 17 10:32:56 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 22585
Referer: http://www.kellyramsey.net/index.php/2007/11/16/salesmanship-awareness-alliance/
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9 Creative ZENcast v1.04.06

They tried to leave a comment, but none were in my moderation queue, so I checked the spam comments that my blogging software automatically deletes. Sure enough, this comment was left for my “Salesmanship awareness alliance” post about Marina Kushner’s industry advocacy group, the Caffeine Awareness Alliance – and it came from that same blacklisted Israeli IP.

Janice Templeton RD | as3412@aol.com | IP: 89.138.129.66

Kelly Ramsey

“…..I do what I can to get by.”

Source: http://www.virb.com/kellyramsey

Does that include slander & defamation of character?

Hope you didn’t forget to pay your E&O insurance premium cause I looks like your going to be needing it after she sues you.

Your personal vendetta against Ms.Kushner & her wonderful organization is pathetic at best. Get a life!

Awww, isn’t that special.

Strangely, the titles of a couple of my recent posts have been duplicated in posts from a spam blog that keeps linking back to me. The second time, the spam mirror post appears to have been created at exactly the same time as my post.

The spam blog mentions “Kelly Ramsey” in a couple of posts, and mentions “Kelly” a whole lot.

It’s hosted by ThePlanet.com, a company that seems prone to hosting splogs, spam, and other disreputable endeavors.

Soon after the second post, someone with a blacklisted IP address out of Israel visited my site, first by way of a Google blog search for “kelly ramsey”, then by way of the spam site. I wonder how they knew where to look.

89-138-190-248.bb.netvision.net.il

* /favicon.ico
Http Code: 500 Date: Nov 17 01:37:13 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: -
Referer: -
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9 Creative ZENcast v1.04.06

* /
Http Code: 500 Date: Nov 17 01:37:54 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: -
Referer: http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=kelly+ramsey&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=o
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9 Creative ZENcast v1.04.06

* /index.php/2007/11/16/salesmanship-awareness-alliance/
Http Code: 500 Date: Nov 17 01:38:35 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: -
Referer: http://www.sideleft.com/?p=1123
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9 Creative ZENcast v1.04.06

As a followup to my post yesterday about some strangely absent posts in Google blog search results, I ran searches for menstrual stem cell again.

Wow. Yesterday one could cover all of last week in 100 results. Today, Google displays over 500 blog posts – yes, 5 times as many – from the same period. The vast majority of them are obvious spam blogs and fake blogs, and most of the new additions appear to be from… November 6.

Backdated blog spam bomb? An inconceivably long processing delay (6 days?) in Google’s blog search system? You tell me.

Try running a Google blog search for menstrual stem cell or C’elle. Do you see any of these posts?

• 6 Nov – Collect and FedEx menstrual stem cells with the C’elle kit: the next flow (Attila Chordash @ Pimm)
• 6 Nov – Pie in the sky between your thighs (PZ Myers @ Pharyngula)
• 6 Nov – Every month is a miracle (me)
• 8 Nov – Must be a low flow day (me)

A new comment on the Pimm post makes the list, but the original post doesn’t. All sorts of press releases, splogs, and flogs are still padding the search results, though.

Does Google Blog Search really suck that badly? Really?

If I were prone to crazy conspiracy theories, I might draw unwarranted conclusions from the observation that C’elle is a Google AdSense client, as Ms. M & P and Frenchy relate, or that C’elle is represented by PR giant Edelman, a company that is no stranger to either ties with tech companies or attempts at manipulating the blogosphere.

Here’s the non-crazy question. What if a search engine hegemon like Google – or Technorati, for that matter, which has engaged in joint business ventures with PR companies – were to, at some future date, start offering special services to advertising clients? Deleting critical blog posts from the search results would be easy. So would tweaking the spam filters to let splogs and flogs bury blog discussion. How would you ever know?

Do you really expect that there’s anything preventing a search engine corporation – any search engine corporation – from filtering what you read?

Oddly, my post about C’elle’s menstrual blood collection kit – bank your own stem cells, from your menstrual blood, in case your doctor can ever use them for a miracle treatment, which probably won’t happen but hey what’s a few thousand bucks? – has dropped out of both Google’s blog search results and Technorati’s search results.

What, Google, Technorati, simultaneous hiccups? Too much marketing copy quoted too soon? C’mon, people, you’re killing me. All those blatant splogs get through but nothing for my little blog? Boo.

This one takes the cake for pseudoscientific claptrap. Ready? Here we go. Conservapedia’s “African Americans” article (because “Calling them Negroes is just uncouth.” – emphasis mine) ends thusly:

Intelligence
A gap in IQ scores of 12 to 18 points (compared with whites and Asians) has been variously attributed to innate ability (see Eugenics) or to the cultural and educational legacy of slavery. For a scientific treatment, see The Bell Curve.

Yes, they’re referring to Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve.

(by way of The State Of… and OK You Turkeynecks)

“Negroes”, though, pops up in the creationist silliness:

• Apobaramin: An apobaramin is a group of holobaramins. Humans and Dogs are an apobaramin since both members are holobaramins. A group containing Negroes and wolves is not an apobaramin since both members are monobaramins.

Yes, they really are equating race with subspecies. Contrast this to the Wikipedia “Race” article:

Many physical anthropologists have concluded that H. sapiens was polytypic in the past (H. sapiens neandertalensis, now extinct, having been a subspecies of H. sapiens). All human beings now alive, however, are regarded as belonging to the same subspecies: Homo sapiens sapiens – in effect, H. sapiens is now monotypic.

and to the Wikipedia “Subspecies” article:

In zoology, the scientific name of a subspecies is the binomen followed immediately by a subspecific name, e.g. Homo sapiens sapiens. The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (4th edition, 2000) does not attempt to codify any “infrasubspecific entities” (e.g. human races or pet breeds).

(by way of Jack and Jill Politics and Too Sense, who have more on Conservapedia’s race follies)

Conservapedia’s “Slavery” article also takes excruciating pains to establish the Biblical permissibility of owning other humans.

“Slavery” is also referenced, permitted and regulated in the Bible. The Hebrew word ebed is translated as “slave” or “servant”, but the concept is not the same as the modern understanding of “slave”. It included “persons in subordinate positions” Therefore “all the subjects of Israel and Judah are called slaves of their kings“. [emphases in the original]

Additionally, the Bible teaches that all property belongs to God, with mankind responsible for looking after it for God.

Some biblical passages mentioning slavery are:

[lists ten passages]

The Old Testament alone, prior to New Testament considerations, broadly prohibits the permanent enslavement of the native inhabitants of Israel but permits the enslavement of immigrants and the occupants of other countries. Depending on the precise circumstances, ethnicity, nationality and any enslaved relatives of a slave, some must be freed after a specified time, while others remain slaves for life. Though physical violence to slaves is permitted, murder is not.

What this says about ideologically-driven education and the prospects for American conservatism, you tell me.

This is downright bizarre. Compare the current stub version of the “Smallpox” article on Conservapedia:

Smallpox is an acute, highly infectious, often fatal disease caused by a poxvirus and characterized by high fever and aches with subsequent widespread eruption of pimples that blister, produce pus, and form pockmarks. It is also called variola.

… to the longer, non-stub version that administrator Andrew Schlafly and others continue to revert away, threatening account blocks, because “Andy asked for this page not to be changed”.

Notice that the article’s talk page gives no explanation for the reverts. The admonition to one user not to copy pages from other wikis seems flimsy.

My guess is that there’s an anti-vaccination bias here that has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with Schlafly family / Eagle Forum objectives. Phyllis Schlafly is deadset against mandatory vaccinations. Her son Andrew, founder of Conservapedia, represents a conservative advocacy group that opposes vaccination. Her son Roger opposes mandatory vaccinations as well.

The success of smallpox vaccination is a counterargument that vaccination opponents must go out of their way to address. Note the mentions in the pieces from Phyllis, and Roger, and note the attempted debunking of the smallpox vaccine’s effectiveness in this interview with a vaccination opponent.

Keeping the “Smallpox” article a stub looks like a deliberate attempt to keep conservative readers in the dark, at least until a Schlafly-approved version can be written with the appropriate revisionist history of vaccination.

I wonder why the Scientology article has been permanently deleted on Conservapedia. The redirects to a “deleted page” template seem designed to obscure older versions of the article and the deleted article’s talk page. Hmm.