GM cress changes color in the presence of the by-products of explosives’ decomposition (NO₂), giving a handy map to the minefield beneath. If I weren’t such a cynical bastard, I wouldn’t interpret the land-mine-clearing charity’s objections as "Hey, we’ve got a good thing going here; don’t rock the boat."
All my minefields are already sown in lilacs and iris.

Nigeria is cracking down on 419 fraud. And who am I to doubt their sincerity in wanting to eliminate one of the top five industries in their country?

It took nearly a year since the last time my entity-reference-encoded email address got spam, but it’s happened again, so I guess it’s time to change it. fpcraig is dead; long live blogboy.
As an experiment, and because I knew I’d be deactivating fpcraig soon anyway, I tried the “remove me” link provided in the first piece of spam fpcraig received. Within three and a half hours, the second piece arrived, and within 15 hours, the address received the latest worm. By comparison, my primary email address receives an average of one piece of spam a week, and has never been sent a worm (other than from a dear, but somewhat careless, friend). And yes, I can read the headers: the spam and the worm all came through standard spammer channels (originating on (or at least relayed through) machines in dialup IP space, and sent to my secondary MXer); so far, my dear friend seems to be clean.
On the downside, now I’m getting dictionary-spammed. Crap.

I can’t imagine this comes as much of a surprise to anyone, but a Sundance Documentary Award Winner called The Corporation documents the diagnosis of a corporation as a psychopath, using DSM-IV (one-third cooler than DSM-III, with the same number of lines!) criteria.

As previously reported, the AFA was doing a poll about attitudes toward gay marriage, with a view to reporting the results to Congress. But now that the poll’s results aren’t reflecting the AFA’s religious-political-extremist agenda, they’re declining to follow through.

From 1916, a book that tells you all about the kind of thrift where you pay less money instead of more, Adventures in Thrift. Yes, the tips are told as the thrifty adventures of Mrs. Larry!

“Mrs. Larry was not her real name. She was Mrs. Lawrence Hall, born Gregory, christened Elizabeth Ellen, but from the day of her marriage she had been nick-named “Mrs. Larry” by all those fortunate enough to count themselves as friends or acquaintances. And she loved the name. She said it made her feel so completely married to Larry.”

As all educated folk know, love is addictive as hell, and simply a trick your body and brain chemistry play on you to get you to spawn. Still, it’s more fun than the alternative.

If you’re of a technical bent, and looking for a place to apply your skills in the community, check out NPower (or, if you’re near the center of the universe, try their Seattle affiliate). They’re dedicated to "Putting technology know-how in the hands of nonprofits." In the Rose City, farther from the sway of the Evil Empire, they have FreeGeek.

From Israel21c:

Jan. 21 – The chief rabbi of the city of Safed, Shlomo Eliyahu, has composed a special prayer for those who have accidentally entered pornographic sites or have had those sites pop up unannounced on their screens. Yediot Aharonot reported that concerned religious surfers contacted Rabbi Eliyahu,telling him that they had accidentally entered pornographic sites while surfing. On hearing this, Eliyahu composed a special prayer for protection from entering pornographic sites by accident: “Please, God, help me to cleanse my computer of all sorts of viruses and evil images that spoil and interfere with my lawful work, and allow me to cleanse myself so that I may be pure of mind and may pray with a perfect heart, and that I may raise a family in true, stable love.” Eliyahu said that the prayer should be said every time one goes onto the Internet.

Me, I’m sticking with AVG.

From the jacket of the book Letters to Henrietta, another potential miracle cure:
“Until the middle-aged, unmarried Isabella Bird (1831-1904) left her native Scotland for an independent life of travel, she was debilitated by illness, suffering from “neuralgia, pain in my bones, pricking like pins and needles in my limbs, excruciating nervousness, exhaustion, inflamed eyes, sore throat, swelling of the glands behind each ear, stupidity.” Bird was so weak that she required a steel support to hold her head up and spent most of her time confined to bed. Desperate to find a cure, her doctors finally packed her off to the Pacific and Switzerland. Once abroad, the forty-year-old invalid miraculously recovered, and became determined to seek any adventure that allowed her to see the singular beauty of nature. In Hawaii, she was the first woman to climb the world’s highest volcano; in Perak, she rode elephants through the jungles; in Colorado, she scaled 14,000-foot mountains, spent six months traveling mostly alone on horseback, and fell in love with a one-eyed
desperado named Rocky Mountain Jim. But whenever she went home to Scotland, her symptoms returned, making another trip essential. Bird’s remarkable journeys took her to the remotest parts of the world and brought her considerable fame. In this fascinating collection of Bird’s previously unpublished letters to her homebound younger sister Henrietta, one experiences her journeys firsthand and gains insight into the ambiguous private life of a woman who often invented her public face.
Containing correspondence from her first two grand tours to Australia, Hawaii, and Colorado in 1872-1873, and to Japan, China, Malaya, and the Holy Land in 1878-1879, Letters to Henrietta provides a fresh view of the legendary Victorian traveler.”