Mark's Views, Perhaps — from behind my eyeballs
Not just anywhere in Central Oregon, mind you. Rather, a very special place near Madras. The place where Luke and LaVay live. Which is where we are right now, having arrived yesterday afternoon.
The first two photos, though, I took last month. The other three, yesterday.
OK, now we’ll see how many hits that title snags! 
Just so you don’t get your hopes up, though, this is all I’m going to show you:
You may click on it to read it in full size, if you wish.
So what’s the point of this post?
Why, I want to zero in on some things for you, that’s what! For instance, these three folders:
So much in the Trash — and most of it is spam! 😐
And most of what’s in Hold For Later is also spam. I’m saving it so I can use that info to fine tune the filters at a later date.
And of these five here in the In box, three are spam:
Imagine if all those were true (and not just two of them).
Me? Earning $50 an hour will doing the “pen blog posts” thing?
Me? Being in some Super Duper Important Who’s Who?
Me? Doing talk radio as a host and contacting people with “Talk Radio Invitations”?
🙄 Right.
How gullible do these email marketers spammers take me to be?
Rhetoric aside, even though the above images all appear to be reductions or clippings of the same image, they actually are the same image. Ahhh, the wonders of CSS (cascading style sheets). Maybe sometime I’ll tell you how it’s done.
(I’m anxious to get this finished, posted, and out of the way so I can post five more photos I took here at Luke and LaVay’s place near Madras, Oregon.)
We were out there on August 27 to mark the end of summer vacation…and to celebrate my brother-in-law’s 53rd birthday the previous day.
So I took some Oregon Coast photos. But first some I took some at our picnic at the park on Hwy 18 in the Van Duzer Corridor.
Lorrelle is urgently warning:
Otto42 of OttoDestruct, a key WordPress developer and supporter, reports that there is an “attack” on older versions of WordPress right now. The number of sites hit by this is growing every hour. Protect your WordPress blog now: UPDATE NOW!!!
Update your WordPress blog before you continue reading this post. That’s how critical this issue is.
If you blog with a private installation of WordPress, heed the warning. Update now.
Then read the rest of what Lorrelle on WordPress has to say: Old WordPress Versions Under Attack.
Mark Ghosh of weblogtoolscollection weighs in as well:
Older version of WordPress are being attacked and characters are being added to the permalinks. Sure signs of the attack include strange characters in your permalinks (single posts do not work) and an extra administrator account in the users control panel which you cannot see. Look for the administrator count in brackets at the top. Is the number there what you would expect on your blog?
Please upgrade your WordPress blog to the latest version ASAP. Our own PluginBlog was vulnerable and was compromised (shame on me for not having upgraded from a really old version). Our blog had registration turned off.
After upgrading your blog and changing your password to a strong one, you can visit Lorelle’s post to find more ways to secure your install and remove the extra admin account that might have been created as part of the attack.
If your WordPress blog is not hosted at wordpress.com — I urge you to update your installation. Now!
Every so often I rare back…and give this drum a light tap.
As the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s nuclear program makes clear, at its present rate of uranium enrichment, Iran will have sufficient quantities of enriched uranium to build two atomic bombs by February.
[…]
What is most notable about this IAEA finding is that it comes in a report that does everything possible to cover up Iran’s progress and intentions.
Reminder: If Iran does acquire nuclear weapons, those will not be the world’s first Islamic nukes. Pakistan beat them to that punch.
More good news (I guess) on the freedom of speech front:
The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on Wednesday ruled that Section 13, Canada’s much maligned human rights hate speech law, violates the Charter right to free expression because it carries the threat of punitive fines.
The shocking decision by Tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis leaves several hate speech cases in limbo, and appears to strip the Canadian Human Rights Commission of its controversial legal mandate to pursue hate on the Internet, which it has strenuously defended against complaints of censorship.
It also marks the first major failure of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, an anti-hate law that was conceived in the 1960s to target racist telephone hotlines, then expanded in 2001 to the include the entire Internet, and for the last decade used almost exclusively by one complainant, activist Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman.
[…]
All sides seem to agree, however, that the stage is set for pitched battle in federal court, where CHRT rulings can be appealed. Another less likely outcome is for Parliament itself to repeal or amend Section 13, a law that even supporters say needs updating in the age of the Internet.
Source: National Post — Hate speech law unconstitutional
Ed Vitagliano reports at OneNewsNow.com:
But there is another group of people whose circumstances, while increasingly precarious, are almost invisible to the world: Palestinian Christians.
A combination of threats and intimidation from Muslim extremists and the fallout from the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict are driving many of these believers from their ancestral homes.
David Parsons, media director for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and contributing editor of the Jerusalem Post Christian Edition, said that the “Palestinian Christian community is dwindling fast, from about 10 percent of the population in 1948 to barely 1.5 percent today.”
[…]
Muslim journalist Khaled Abu Toameh dismisses any attempts to blame Israel above all factors. “True, Israel’s security measures in the West Bank have made living conditions more difficult for all Palestinians, Christians and Muslims alike,” he said. “But to say that these measures are the main and sole reason for the Christian exodus from the Holy Land is misleading.”
The exodus is not simply the fault of the entire Muslim community, either, Toameh said. The Arab-Israeli conflict has ruined the economy in many places throughout the Palestinian region and has heightened the dangers facing Christian families.
[…]
“Over the past few years, a number of Christian businessmen told me that they were forced to shut down their businesses because they could no longer afford to pay ‘protection’ money to local Muslim gangs,” Toameh said.
[…]
The persecution is taking its toll in some locales. “Today, Christians in Bethlehem constitute less than 15 percent of the population,” said Toameh. “Five or six decades ago, the Christians living in the birthplace of Jesus made up more than 70 percent of the population.”
Squeezed between Israel and Palestinian Muslims — especially Muslims on the more radical fringe — the difficulties endured by many of these Palestinian Christians are often completely off the radar screen of believers elsewhere.
