evolution

Call it the month of the spammers and searchers that pissed me off. My traffic went through the roof this month, but I’m certain that was not the result of readership; rather, it was the frequent comment- and referral-spam attacks.

As of 20:10 I had 1,886 visitors for the month of January, easily a record. They made nearly 5,000 visits. At this rate, I should record my 10,000th visitor sometime in early March. As I’ve said, I’m continually astonished by the fact that 10,000 people might care what I have to say, and I thank those of you who stop in.

My visitors are an eclectic bunch; they hail from 75 different countries, and all of Earth’s major regions are represented.

Top five referrers (non-spam):

1. My brother Neil.
2. Legal XXX.
3. Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Brief.
4. Wizbang.
5. Powerline.

Strange search terms: Note that I have left out the truly disturbing ones. There are a few people who insist upon looking for forensic photos or nude pictures of a certain murder victim in a high-profile case in Kansas. I will not name this victim here (to prevent Google from picking up this site again), but the victim’s name will be obvious to any Kansan who thinks about it for a microsecond. To the people who conducted these searches — I have your IP address.

Anyway, here are the strange terms (the funny ones).

• how to take it to the next step sex — We all have a little trouble sometimes, pal.
• how the church choir should behave — Light and happy, with a fresh spirit of ecumenical brotherhood.
• son like to wear his mother’s under wear — I don’t think I need to explain why this is strange.
• i’m excited out of my pants for having a good time in topeka — I believe this person was from Eastern Europe somewhere. Don’t forget to visit one of Topeka’s many fine “gentleman’s steakhouses.” If you dig my meaning.
• what to wear in iceland? — How about a coat?
• best buying penis stocks — You’re probably too late for the Eli Lilly and Pfizer IPOs.

Thanks for taking the next step with me.

This doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

It may be the only way I can listen to Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi’s responses. Hopefully I have enough beer.

Is Kim Jong-Il in trouble? This UK Times article seems to say so.

Let’s hope.

[inherited from: Instapundit.]

From the search terms people used to get to this site: can I have body aches with my period.

Perhaps I’m the wrong kind of person to ask.

UPDATE [01.31 19:15]: Because, you know — I’m a man, baby.

It seems as though turnout was quite high for the Iraqi elections. Much has been written on the topic by others more talented than I am; I direct you to them.

• Dean Esmay has a very simple message for those (and there are many) who do not want this to succeed.
• INDC Journal has a wide-ranging piece.
• Powerline has a photo collection from polling sites.
• Protein Wisdom delves into the morass of far-left hatred. More in a bit on that.
• Roger L. Simon followed the television coverage from the beginning.

In addition, I have wondered about something. Why do many bloggers (see the Protein Wisdom piece above) feel the need to dig up the opinions of leftist hatred, which are nearly worthless? After all, you know what you are going to get: nonsensical ranting, puerile name-calling, and “Screw them.” (See here.)

No, screw you.

The right has its fair share of hate-filled ranters as well. Maybe the reasonable and civilized among us — whether Republicans, Democrats, or neither (like me) — have more in common with each other than with the fringes in our respective parties. Maybe it’s time for something different.

UPDATE [19:31]: Iowahawk: History is a river, the left is a ‘67 Oldsmobile Delta 88, and Ted Kennedy’s driving.

UPDATE [19:35]: Driving after 13 gin-and-tonics, that is.

Bill Gates says that Chinese “capitalism” is not all that bad.

DAVOS, Switzerland, (AFP) - US software giant Bill Gates has high praise for China, which he says has created a brand-new form of capitalism that benefits consumers more than anything has in the past.

“It is a brand-new form of capitalism, and as a consumer its the best thing that ever happened,” Gates told an informal meeting late Friday at the World Economic Forum in this ski resort.

He characterised the Chinese model in terms of “willingness to work hard and not having quite the same medical overhead or legal overhead”.

Manufacturers have created “scale economies that are just phenomenal”, in part owing to companies there and elsewhere on the planet designing good products, Gates said.

Looking ahead, he added: “You know they haven’t run out of labor yet, the portion that can come out of the agriculture sector” was still considerable.

“It’s not like Korea, Korea got to a point where, boom, the wages went up a lot,” he said, adding “that’s good, you know, they got rich and now they have to add value at a different level.

“They’re closer to the United States in that sense than they are to where China is right now.”

Gates continued by heaping praise on the current generation of Chinese leaders.

“They’re smart,” he said with emphasis.

“They have this mericratic [sic] way of picking people for these government posts where you rotate into the university and really think about state allocation of resources and the welfare of the country and then you rotate back into some bureaucratic position.”

That rotation continued, Gates explained, and leaders were constantly subjected to various kinds of ratings.

“This generation of leaders is so smart, so capable, from the top down, particularly from the top down,” he concluded.

Gates added, “Just think about the opportunities, you know, like if you could avoid being run over by a tank!”

UPDATE [1/30 09:03]: In addition to “capitalism”, you can learn about “dissent” in China.

BEIJING - China kept a close eye on dissidents Sunday, a sign of the government’s unease over potentially widespread mourning over the death of ousted Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang, who fell from power for sympathizing with pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989.

Zhao, who died Jan. 17, was cremated Saturday at the main burial site for revolutionary heroes after a tightly controlled memorial service — below a state funeral in status — where only guests approved by the government were allowed.

Activists were banned from attending the service and were watched over by security agents guarding their homes and tapping their telephones.

The police “are still here today,” Ding Zilin, who co-founded a group representing families of those killed when China’s military crushed the democracy protests, said Sunday. “I saw them outside my home.”

Static filled the telephone call, which was then disconnected — a common sign that authorities were monitoring conversations.

Ren Wanding, another veteran dissident who spent 11 years in prison for advocating Western-style democracy, said he thinks police will be outside his home for at least another week.

“The logic behind the move is that even though Zhao Ziyang is cremated, we can still gather to discuss what happened,” Ren said. “They are trying to prevent us from expressing our opinion.”

Zhao, a former premier and head of the ruling Communist Party, was under house arrest from 1989 until his death and was rarely acknowledged by the government.

And the money quote, for our friend Mr. Gates:

Chinese leaders frequently cite the country’s economic success when asked about the military crackdown, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed — implying that it was justified because of the political stability it brought.

You be the judge: were these photos staged by Arab stringers for Western news wires? Read the analysis both below the photos and here.

[inherited from: Instapundit, Obsidian Order.]

A company has been selected to provide toxic cleanup and land development for the now-dormant Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant near DeSoto, Kansas; about 15 miles east of Lawrence.

You might ask me why I care about this. There’s a bit of family history tied up in that old ground. My grandfather worked there until his retirement in the 1970s (he died in 1985). My father started working there in 1976 when I was born and remains there to this day. The plant has long since shut down — a small staff (of which my dad is the manager) remains to maintain security and arrange subleases of usable ground and demolition of unusable buildings.

The plant, formerly operated by government contractor Hercules Inc., employed quite a number of people over the years. My father and stepmother met there. Michael’s father worked there before the plant shut down. One of my uncles worked there, and so did many family friends. Most of them lost their jobs when the plant shut down.

That is saddening, but it is good now that the ground will be put to another use — hopefully bringing jobs back to the area.

Further proof that, as a profession, journalism has lost its collective mind: Watchdog blasts al-Jazeera bans.

The Reporters Without Borders group has criticised the US, Canada and five other countries for their “harassment” of Arabic station al-Jazeera.

“We regret some governments have no hesitation in censoring al-Jazeera… to protect their political and diplomatic interests,” the group said.

The media watchdog also accused some of the governments of threatening the channel and blocking broadcasts.

The other countries named were Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Tunisia.

Broadcasts on the channel “aggravate some leaders since it gives airtime to their opponents and to viewers, and because it broaches political and social issues seen as taboo”, the Paris-based group said in a news release.

‘Intolerance of critics’

It cited the US accusation that the Qatari channel was stoking up anti-American feeling in its coverage in Iraq.

Canadian authorities were criticised for ordering the channel to be monitored 24 hours a day, and making distributors responsible for making sure “abusive comments” were edited out before broadcast.

The group highlighted the indefinite closure of the al-Jazeera bureau in Baghdad and its denunciation as a “terrorist channel” by one Iraqi minister.

The other countries were taken to task for blocking or censoring al-Jazeera broadcasts, or refusing access to its correspondents.

“These methods demonstrate intolerance of critics,” said the RWB statement.

It also urged the US authorities to explain the reasons for its detention of al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, or to release him immediately.

Al-Jazeera claims at least 35 million viewers and has been dubbed the CNN of the Middle East.

It has rejected attacks from senior US officials, such as Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, that its Iraq coverage is biased and incites hatred.

“We are simple observers, and not actors,” said al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout.

The channel added that it was committed to providing balanced coverage.

And never you mind that al-Jazeera is not at all banned or restricted to my knowledge in America. In fact, its newscast in Arabic was available in primetime to cable subscribers in West Lafayette, IN when I lived there.

Some in Wichita are speculating that the serial killer known to America as “BTK” (for “bind,” “torture,” and “kill”) may have had more victims than the eight we’ve known about for some time.

This twisted individual has been leaving presents out for Wichita citizens to find:

The supervisor leading the BTK serial killer investigation today will give a brief statement about what the Police Department has called a “suspicious package” left at a remote spot north of Wichita.

The statement from Lt. Ken Landwehr, scheduled for about 10 a.m. at City Hall, will come two days after police picked up a cereal box inscribed “BTK.”

Its location — on a dirt stretch of Seneca between 69th and 77th streets north — was noted on a postcard that appears to be from BTK. The card from “S Killett” bore the return address of the Otero family — BTK’s first four victims, killed in 1974.

On Tuesday and again Wednesday, police declined to comment on whether the card, the box and the box’s contents are connected to the killer.

Assuming the package is not a hoax, what does it mean that it was placed in an out-of-the-way area outside Wichita? Until now, all of the killer’s known homicides — eight victims from 1974 to 1986 — have occurred in Wichita.

All of his known packages or letters have been left at or mailed to Wichita locations.

If the cereal box is from the serial killer, he could have chosen a new location “to keep people off balance, just to do something a little different,” said Gregg McCrary, a former FBI profiler based in Virginia.

A subtext of the killer’s message, McCrary said, could be that “he’s not limited by the city boundaries. Part of it is instilling fear in the community… keeping the community on edge, because it’s all about power.”

The location of the package also could be a matter of convenience, said Robert Beattie, the Wichitan who is writing a book about the case. He noted that the killer appears to have developed a habit of leaving packages not far from I-135. It’s easy access, Beattie said.

“Get off (the interstate), drop your package, get back on the interstate, and you’re gone.”

It’s not clear how long the cereal-box package was left leaning against the road-curves sign on North Seneca.

But Jennifer Gonzales, a 31-year-old who drives that route twice a day for her nursing job, said she noticed the box — which was festooned with crepe paper streamers and weighted down with a brick — last Thursday afternoon.

“I thought it was kind of strange that there was the box with a brick on it,” she said. “I thought it was kids or something.”

Then on Saturday, Gonzales said, she saw another Post Toasties box in a conspicuous spot along North Seneca. She recalled it being faded and wrapped with yellow ribbon-like material. Like the box found Tuesday, it also was sitting at the base of a sign — a “No Dumping” sign just south of 101st Street North, she said.

The location of these boxes are giving some Wichita residents the heebie-jeebies, and some are recalling a couple of unsolved murders in the neighborhood.

The cases both involved women who were abducted from their homes and strangled, but their bodies were dumped in rural areas far from their homes. In all the known BTK crimes, the victims were tied up, murdered and left in their own homes.

The first Park City homicide occurred on April 27, 1985, when Marine Hedge, 53, was abducted from her home at 6254 Independence in Park City. Her body was found eight days later along a dirt road near 143rd Street East and 37th Street North. Although her hands weren’t tied, a knotted pair of pantyhose was found nearby.

An autopsy showed that Hedge was strangled. As was the case in many known BTK cases, the phone line at Hedge’s home was cut. Her 1967 Chevrolet Monte Carlo was later found in the Brittany Center parking lot at 21st and Woodlawn. In at least two of BTK’s known cases, he drove a victim’s car away from the crime scene.

The second Park City homicide occurred on Jan. 19, 1991, when Delores “Dee” Davis, 62, was abducted from her home a half-mile east of town. She was found 13 days later under a bridge in northern Sedgwick County on an unpaved stretch of 117th Street North near Meridian.

An autopsy report said that Davis was strangled, and that her feet, hands and knees were bound with pantyhose. The killer cut her outside phone line, then threw a brick through a glass door at the rear of her home to get inside.

David Thompson, now the executive officer for the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Department, worked as a detective on the Hedge case in 1985. Although he doesn’t recall specifics of the crime, he said he’s sure that the possibility of a BTK connection was discussed.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that in early stages of the investigation that there would have been some comparisons,” he said. “It’s just something you would do. It’s just good police work.”

But Thompson said the differences in the Hedge case — especially the fact that her body was found far from her home — led detectives down paths that were not related to BTK.

No arrests were made in either of the Park City homicides.

Wichita police are no doubt running themselves in circles trying to find this animal. I hope they are successful, and soon; I fear that the increased activity of BTK and the heat generated by his apparent contacts recently are both preludes to another strike by the killer.