One More Epicycle

Captain Picard, because your actions are those of a thoughtful man, I’ll tell you this.

Matters more urgent caused our absence.

Now, witness the result. Outposts destroyed, expansion of the Federation everywhere.

Yes, we have indeed been negligent, Captain. But no more.

[...]

We.. are back.

ST: TNG, “The Neutral Zone”

correctpong.

(v) to make an unusual error while writing, one not easily dismissed as merely a typographical mistake but instead taken as a sign of a deeper failure in language processing. Often characterized by multiple transposition and substitution events.

Neologism first attested September 2007 in email — “I correctponged my own name!” — with reference to earlier “correctpong” for “corresponding” error occurring April 2007.

(n) the error itself

Today I got an obvious phishing email at my old account at Queen’s. They’re not uncommon — that account gets mostly spam these days — but I was a little bored so I decided to dig for a while. The email looked something like this (I haven’t bothered to keep the formatting).

Dear Customer,
Royal Bank Of Canada�has been receiving complaints from our customers for unauthorised use of their Online accounts.
As a result we are making an extra security check on all of our Customers account
in order to protect their information from theft and fraud.

Due to this, you are
requested to follow the provided steps and confirm your Online Banking
details for the safety of your Accounts.
Please Click Here To Start

However, Failure to do so may result in temporary account
suspension. Please understand that this is a security measure
intended to help protect you and your account. We apologize for any
inconvenience.

Thanks for your
co-operation.

Fraud Prevention Unit Legal Advisor Royal Bank Of Canada

---

Accounts Management As outlined in our User Agreement,�Royal Bank Of Canada(r) will periodically send you information about site
changes and enhancements. Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.

I trust I don’t need to count the many ways in which the above is clearly bogus. The only one you might not be able to guess is that I’m not an RBC customer. Also, the email came not from an RBC address, but from “nobody@besthost.your-best-host.com”.

They didn’t even bother to put in the effort to fake a plausible destination name: http://emoe.be/modules/Top/language/www.rbc.com/cgi-bin/rbaccess/rbunxcgi.htm. At least if it were royalbankcanada.be/* or something I might wonder if RBC were offsourcing their website management to, umm, Belgium.. okay, scratch that. It’s still not an impressive effort.

The site itself is a simple mirror of the genuine RBC page, although a slightly outdated one. Most of the links appear to go to the genuine pages.

The domain, emoe.be — which I would definitely NOT recommend visiting for Windows users; who knows what malware could be lurking, assuming they weren’t always this lazy — looks like what you’d get after spending ten minutes with PHP-Nuke.

Checking the DNS registration tables at dns.be reveals that the domain is registered to a man who may actually exist: a graduate student studying plants. He has a google trace, anyway, and topics that he seems to post on (like plants) are interests shared by the fellow whose website corresponds to the email address that was used to register the domain.

Of course he may have nothing to do with the scam at all — why would you use your real name to register a site you were going to use for phishing purposes? (Not that these guys are all geniuses.) And although it may seem strange to rent a domain that you’re not doing anything with, I know a guy who did that for a while, always figuring he was going to do something with it later. So maybe the tech guys are the bad guys here, and the plant guy’s merely paying for a completely pointless domain for some reason. Or it could be an external cracker, who broke into the site (maybe through a Nuke vulnerability) and installed the RBC harvester, unbeknownst to the hapless domain owner and the negligent techies.

Who can say? Although some of the above ideas are less believable than others.. still, never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, as they say.

I did my net.civic duty and reported the phishing attempt to the relevant authorities. Usually I just delete them. We’ll see how long it takes to reappear somewhere else.

UPDATE: That was pretty quick.  Site is down, and the DNS entry has been removed.  I don’t know if it was due to external intervention or if the phishers decided they had run the scam long enough.  I have to admit, I’m kind of interested in knowing whether or not a master’s student who studies plants is secretly involved in net-based fraud on the side..

Given my enjoyment of roasted animal meat, I should be able to laugh — in dark Darwin-Award fashion, anyway — at the fact that vegetarians and vegans tend to cause themselves health problems.

Unfortunately, given that small children can and do die on vegan diets, it’s not always funny. Cold-hearted I may be, but parents who inadvertently kill their children by starving them should be targets of anger and black pity and criminal charges, not amusement.

It seems to me the underlying temptation is one that we all succumb to: the assumption that reality is obligated to respect our good intentions and return good results. This belief is entirely unjustified on materialist grounds, and the world’s most popular nonmaterialistic belief system teaches instead that in the world good intentions will probably be rewarded by persecution and torture and death but that we’re called to them anyway.

The persistence of the idea tells us something important about human beings. I think it’s that we’re prerationally wired to unify the True and the Good and the Beautiful. After we overcome our disbelief, we feel betrayed when we learn that recycling hurts the environment, that a high minimum wage hurts the poor and undereducated, and that wanting nothing more than to love and respect all animal life can result in the death of your own children because Nature doesn’t share your sympathies.

We feel betrayed because deep inside we know it’s not supposed to be like this. But it is, at least for the moment. We owe it to ourselves, and our heirs, to admit it.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Hat-tip to the Blogfather. (Talk about coals to Newcastle.)

Growing up in Red Deer provided lots of opportunities for childhood adventures.. I have a lot of great memories. That time also left me with some mysteries which last to this day.

One of them was where the small metal sticks came from in the spring and summer. They’re about twenty centimetres long, half a centimetre wide, and a millimetre thick. They’re a silvery metal but usually look brownish because of the rust. They’re light and quite flexible.

Come the end of winter I’d start seeing them, usually on sidewalks (although since I typically walked on sidewalks, this might be selection effect: maybe they’re everywhere!) and on the pavement near the sidewalk. Sometimes I’d go a week without seeing any, and other times I’d see several in the same day.

I have no idea what they’re for, or why they start appearing. I guess they could always be there and it’s just that you can’t see them in the winter on account of the snow (link for Londoners)..

Whatever their true purpose, apparently it’s cross-continental, because I’ve just found my first one here in London.  Discovering it was oddly comforting; it looks exactly like the ones back home.

I have a vague impression that someone once told me what they were for, and I think I believed them, but now I can’t remember. The best I can come up with is that they’re a part which typically falls off lawnmowers or those sweeping machines, and yes, I see the problems with that theory..

Huh.

Then we will fight in the shade.

That is all.

From today’s Bleat:

Since we last met, Gnat gave her Peace Prize presentation. All the kids are giving presentations on the Peace Prize winners. Gnat got the Quakers. Great, I said. We’ll do a presentation on America’s most famous Quaker – Richard Milhous Nixon! But we ended up doing something about the historical roots of the Quakers, and Daddy kept all his cranky churlish commentary out of the subject. Not that I don’t respect the Quakers; I do, but I have problems with their philosophy. Non-violence is a wonderful ideal if the other side plays along – and yes, I know, you bring them around with your example, and eventually everyone is non-violent. Fine. But if there’s a school shooting, no one wants the authorities to send in the Quakers to set a good example.

This might have been a teachable moment, as they say – a chance to discuss the necessity of respecting people whose beliefs you regard as decent and humane, yet inconistent with your own understanding of the world. But we’ll save that for third grade.

As Lileks puts it, working through “the necessity of respecting people whose beliefs you regard as decent and humane, yet inconistent with your own understanding of the world” is a difficult but unavoidable challenge. Just like him to be so profound in a throwaway line.

Pacifism strikes me as an eschatological call, a counsel of perfection, and doesn’t work if generally followed: but just like monastic life, which would destroy the human race in a generation if everyone were called to it, I admire the purity of the sacrifice even as I worry about the dangers of immanentizing the eschaton. (Conservative in-joke there.) Pacifism has a problem that monastic life doesn’t, though: if a man doesn’t marry I don’t think he’s done anything wrong. However, I can’t help but believe that if a man saw terrible crimes before him which he could have prevented but chose not to because it would have required violence, the proper response afterwards is not to praise him for his peaceableness but to hang him for his moral disorder. A man can be too violent, but he can also be not violent enough.

As for the student presentations, I wonder if the teachers assigned anyone Arafat (murder; murder; promise to murder less, win the Nobel Peace Prize; repeat) or Jimmy Carter (as the Simpsons joke went, he’s History’s Greatest Monster: a joke which is increasingly less funny given his anti-Israel fanaticism.)

Probably not. One hopes they’re at least seventh-grade material.

I’m one of the many people who has what’s called the “photic sneeze reflex“, or “Autosomal dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst syndrome” (check the acronym). That is, I sometimes sneeze when going from a dark space into a bright one. With me it’s typically two, sometimes one, and very, very rarely three.

They claim it’s probably a defect in which “overstimulation of the optic nerve triggers the trigeminal [sneeze-controlling] nerve”.

Myself I think an Outer-Limits-style explanation is probably more likely, and definitely more fun.

For example, it could be a long-dormant mutation encoded into our DNA by ancient alien visitors who live in worldships made of light. Those of us who “suffer” this “condition” are really just farther along in having our brains prepared to commune with their mindpools in which light and thought become one.

Just goes to show that if astronomy doesn’t pan out, there are always other options. Ascended ambassador to energy beings, for example.

(Hat-tip KenJen.)

For some reason lots of things are interesting me today.

Lawprof Eugene Volokh wonders about the ambiguities of pseudo-HTML on T-shirts; LGF reports that Fatah and Hamas declare a temporary truce.. now with added gunfire; the Baseball Crank thinks of the Prequels we could have had, hat-tip Yousefzadeh, which reminds me that I’ve had a post in the works for four months now on how to salvage a failed film I’ve always wanted to like; and Yousefzadeh also links to an article on Rex Grossman with a surprising lead (originally I mentioned who Grossman was but if you don’t already know you probably don’t care).

Hitch reviews Nick Cohen’s new book on how the Left wound up rejecting liberal democracy in favour of allegiances with theocratic fascism, and is his usual self. Yes, I know Hitch is a reprobate in many ways, and a barely-reformed Trotskyist, and so unreasonably opposed to the Faith that if there were a way to settle this bet I’d take four-to-one odds that he’ll want to call for a priest on his deathbed but will be too stubborn and will call for a scotch instead.

All that said.. to borrow from That Hideous Strength, Hitch is a great guy to have on your side in a losing battle — what he shall do if we win I have no idea. Probably best to provide him with limitless drink and cigarettes if it comes to that.

Incidentally, I’m still working on my Clash of Civilisations post from the other Saturday, but it’s long, and research is getting in the way..

From an article discussing the public release of copies of the manuscript which pronounced Dante’s exile from Florence:

The Florentine poet and politician was sentenced by his political enemies.

The charges were corruption – which Italian scholars widely believe to have been trumped up – and seditious opposition to the Pope, a charge which could have had more substance:

Dante was a very prominent political personality in 1299-1301 and, in one particular council session he reportedly spoke so violently against the Pope that the notary refused to register Dante’s intervention,” the editor of the document, Francesca Klein, told BBC News Online.

The sentence was passed in early 1302 – at first it was a two-year exile, but only six weeks later it was commuted to death at the stake.

Florence: the city so wonderful that death is more merciful than departure.

Today’s most interesting story is undoubtedly the report than spy coins with small radio transmitters in the form of Canadian currency have been used to track American defence work. (H-t LGF.)

Words fail me.

UPDATE: Hooray!  I might be able to stop squinting suspiciously at the handful of coins I didn’t change before I came over:

A report that some Canadian coins have been compromised by spies secretly embedding transmitters in them is wrong, a U.S. official said yesterday.

Fraud on a national scale; petty con games; and breathtakingly forward academic misconduct right under the noses of a thesis committee which clearly didn’t bother to verify anything.

Obviously I’m talking about quilting.

I vaguely remember hearing several years ago about claims that American slaves were encoding secret messages into their quilts, and that there was some controversy over the subject. Never looked into it, as to be perfectly up-front about the whole thing, to lay all my cards on the table, whatever the personal cost may be: I’m simply not that interested in quilts.

I know this will come as a great surprise, but it’s true.

Well, it turns out I should have looked more deeply. Although the story’s pretty much what you’d dream up if you were writing fiction, the story behind the story, detailed by Leigh Fellner who’s done yeoman’s work in trying to sort this mess out, is fascinating. Hat-tip Clayton Cramer, who played a vital role himself in correcting the academic fraud of Michael Bellesiles, he of Arming America infamy.

Oh. My. Word.

Kate. Kate of Small Dead Animals Kate.

She runs Linux. And she sometimes uses the text browser elinks, just like me, which takes it to an entirely different level.

I’d write a long Hayekian note about why I think conservatives should celebrate the open source movement (right-wingers of the world, unite! you have nothing to lose but your unnecessary barriers to competition!) but I’m too lost in geeky joy at her l33tness.. I’m glad I voted for her in the Best Canadian Blog category, which she won handily.

She is way too cool.

Rather scrambled set today, I’m afraid. I’m somewhat out of sorts, and I can sympathize with Lileks in his Diner series about not being in the Christmas spirit. It doesn’t feel anything like winter in London. Barely feels like October, not even jacket weather.

Walking in this morning, I crossed the common and noticed that someone had cut the grass in a strange pattern: one large spiral. The uncut grass is quite tall, so once you spot the spiral you can’t understand how you missed it. It reminded me of the Nazca lines. In extreme miniature, I admit, but maybe compacts are in this year in spaceships. And maybe I was looking in the wrong direction for the source of the other day’s spookiness.. if you want to land a craft in one of the world’s largest cities, blocking everyone’s view of the sky isn’t a bad way to start.

Many interesting bits across the ‘Net today:

The Captain links to an NYT article on student protests in Iran. My favourite part is that some of the students are using the pre-Revolution name for their university: Tehran Polytechnic, not Amir Kabir. I approve heartily. Symbols matter.

TSN has taken full CFL broadcast rights, including sole rights to the Grey Cup. Their announcement doesn’t even mention the CBC (this Sun story goes into more of the background) except as “conventional television”.. I don’t know what I think about this.

I have to admit I prefer the NFL rules: the extra down leads to more interesting plays, IMHO, even if it doesn’t generate as many possession changes as the CFL. I still enjoy CFL games, though, and agree at least in spirit with Cosh when he writes that the 2005 Edmonton/Montreal Grey Cup raises the question “not whether this was the greatest Grey Cup game ever–the question is whether it was the greatest football game ever, period.” He writes a great postgame review; he’s probably the best pure writer addressing Canadian sports. Do check it out. For example:

How about the play late in the fourth when the Als were in the hurry-up, marching toward the tying field goal, and 15 or so Eskimo defenders were on the field clumbering into one another? Big A.J. Gass, in a moment of career-making middle-linebacker inspiration, realizes that the Alouettes are going to get either a ten-yard penalty or a crucial free play against a confused defence corps. And so without waiting for the snap he just explodes into the Montreal backfield. No free play, and the offside costs just five yards. Great heads-up play (though it looked like high-octane insanity at first). And that was only like the 15th most interesting thing that happened during the game.

My then-officemate didn’t see it, and I enjoyed telling him he’d missed one of the best ever the next day. Heh.

Back to the TSN move: while it’s true that most sports fans in Canada will already get TSN, I do know a number of people who don’t really follow the CFL weekly but enjoy watching the Grey Cup as a Canadian tradition. I hope the decrease in coverage doesn’t affect that..

Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy has an interesting article on tyranny and federalism. In what I believe is the first Hitler quote ever here on One More Epicycle: “As the Churches do not feel themselves bound or limited by political confines, so the National Socialist Idea cannot feel itself limited to the territories of the individual federal states that belong to our Fatherland.” Somin’s interested in the general question of the extent to which federalism and the decentralization of political power can serve as a barrier against totalitarianism — I agree with his comments, and think it helps with even the lesser tyrannies of bureacracy — but I’m more taken by the way in which Socialism is considered a rival to the Church, with an equal claim to universal jurisdiction. Along those lines, the Christ-free “Christmas” works produced by the Nazis are icy and fascinating. As Cosh put it (he’s getting a lot of hat-tips today):

Those scholars who continue to insist that Nazism was essentially a Christian phenomenon will search in vain for non-pagan symbolism here, and whatever else might be said of the Christian faith, it cannot be accused of celebrating the “eternal victory of the strong over the weak.”

Stephen Green — the erstwhile Vodkapundit — has been quiet at his blog for some time. I’d assumed he was merely busy with the new addition to his family, but it turns out he’s been having serious health issues. Green was one of the first libertarian bloggers I started reading, and though my politics are much closer to his more conservative coblogger Will Collier’s, I’ve always enjoyed Green’s sharp wit.

Holocaust denier David Irving has been released from prison (hat-tip Daimnation.) On the whole, I think it’s a bad idea to criminalize speech like his, although I recognize Europe’s awkward history. But I don’t want Irving and his kind skulking in dark corners, where who knows what kind of mischief they’ll get up to: I want them exposed to the light, to wither like salted slugs.

And finally, courtesy of Scott Ott (h-t LGF), we have a very special Christmas message from al Qaeda #2 (possibly number one these days), Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri.

It was oddly moving, in its way, and reminds me that no story is ever finished until the End, when all things begin anew.