Barry Deutsch, a.k.a. Ampersand, has a “Male Privilege Checklist” (h/t: Hugo Schwyzer) designed to prove men have it so much better than women nowadays. The issues raised would be persuasive enough, if true. The trouble is, most of them are not.

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While others were more charitable, I have never trusted Kevin Shelley. From the beginning of his term, he played one dirty trick after another on the recall effort, each time with no legal basis, just crass partisan tactics. On the rare occasion where Shelley was on the right side of an issue, such as nominally opposing the ACLU’s attempt to cancel the October 2003 election, he took a position that made you wonder if he really wanted to win. Then, when the recall became a fait accompli despite Shelley’s best efforts to sabotage it, he prolonged Gray Davis’s tenure for a full month afterward, the maximum allowable by law.

Now, Shelley is embroiled in unrelated corruption charges and likely on his way out (to be replaced by Bill Jones? Don’t laugh.). However, he hasn’t resigned yet, and appears to be plotting one last Stupid SOS Trick. According to Save Our License, Shelley is listing March 4th as the circulation deadline for the SOL petition rather than February 22, the deadline his official schedule provided. Unfortunately, SOL does not provide a link to the offending page, nor have I been able to find it while poking around the election area of the SOS web site. So maybe this Stupid SOS Trick is also an Ineffective SOS Trick. We’ll see.

UPDATE: Aphrael found the link. Apparently, the “error” has been fixed. Reached for comment, a spokesman for Mr. Shelley said “Oopsie!”

UPDATE x2: Meanwhile, Lonewacko found another location on the SOS web site that was not corrected. Hoo boy.

UPDATE x3: Welcome, Michelle Malkin readers! Hope you like it here and bookmark my site. To everyone who got here any other way, be sure to check out Michelle’s entry as well. She’s got a good round-up of l’Affaire Shelley.

Baby X flipped me the bird moths ago. More recently, he mastered the Bronx cheer. Now he’s tried his hand at the old “stick your shirt in my face and pretend to blow my nose” gag. Well, almost. He could still use a little practice with the “pretend” part, but the rest, he’s got down pat.

The following is based on idle speculation, so it probably doesn’t technically qualify as a spoiler. Nevertheless, I’m giving you a spoiler warning anyway since it may have the same effect if you read it and conclude I am not full of crap.

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If convicted of capital murder, avoid death penalty by claiming to want it.

If you haven’t already, be sure to congratulate the Esmays on their latest addition. Looks like a Democratic baby for now, but that should change in a month or so.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, while on the topic of overdue acknowledgements, be sure to check out BTD’s new digs if you haven’t already. God, I really suck at blogging lately.

Today’s idiot is Peter Pilz, whose surname is German for “fungus.” The fungus among us – in spirit, if not in the body – is a Green weenie in Austria who advocates that Arnold Schwarzenegger be stripped of his Austrian citizenship over his refusal to spare the life of three-time murderer Donald Beardslee. Apparently, 70+ years wasn’t a long enough period to remove the soft spot that some still have in their hearts for serial killers. In a manner that is all too typical of many of today’s Euroweenies, Mr. Fungus calls for a sort of reverse hegemony, in which an American state is expected to follow the lead of a bunch of pissant European countries most Californians have never heard of. The rationale is that America’s death penalty was A-O-K back in the days when most European countries had a death penalty also; it’s just not OK anymore since it’s fallen out of vogue there. Quoth Herr Fungus:

“The death penalty is unacceptable in Austria and Europe. Killing Jews is one thing, but killing murderers is another.”

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Ben Hammersley (h/t: VK) and Ubernostrum (h/t: LW) offer two mutually inconsistent arguments against using the “new” nofollow tags, both of which lead to the conclusion that widespread use of the nofollow tag will lead to more comment spam rather than less. Both theories can’t be right, of course, but both can be wrong, and in fact, both are. Here’s why.

First, let’s dispose of the sillier of the two theories, Ben Hammersley’s. Hammersley argues that as the use of nofollow increases, comment spam aimed at boosting page rankings will increase to compensate. The underlying fallacy, and one shared by Ubernostrum, is that he assume comment spammers are currently pulling punches to avoid spamming too many sites or to avoid boosting their Google rankings too much – and can “turn up the volume” beyond their current spammings anytime they like, at no net cost to them. I say, bollocks. Comment spammers are already spreading their spam as far and wide as they can. They’re not waiting around for someone to make comment spamming less useful, only to spam more to reach some sort of equilibrium. Hammersley utterly flunks Economics 101 with this paragraph, that pretty well sums up his theory:

So as comment spam costs absolutely nothing to spread, there’s no loss to me if I spam sites with rel=”nofollow”. It might be, at a pinch, less efficient a method of getting readership, but it will still work: and efficiency is not a factor at all. Spamming costs nothing, so spamming sites with rel=”nofollow” doesn’t bother me. I’m not losing. Perhaps I’m not winning as big, but I’m not loosing anything either. There’s no incentive for me to spam those sites for the sake of getting Pagerank, that is true, but there’s even less incentive for me *not*to*. Why would I bother even testing the site for rel=”nofollow”? I might as well just hit it and leave. It’s less work for me, for exactly the same gain (some) and exactly the same loss (none).

Got that? Comment spam isn’t just cheap; it “costs absolutely nothing” to spread. Not only that, it costs absolutely nothinger to spread it even further than they’re doing now. So why aren’t they doing it now? Also note Hammersley’s new-new math: not only does nothing equal nothing, but “some” always equals “some,” too, even when one “some” represents a small fraction of the other. O-kay.

Ubernostrum’s theory is somewhat more sophisticated than Hammersley’s, but it’s still off base. Ubernostrum concedes that of course the widespread use of nofollow will reduce the type of comment spam aimed at boosting page rankings, but argues that comment spammers will go on spamming anyway for a different purpose: to actually be read by readers. Indeed, there may be some substitution effect, but not much. Anyone who’s dealt with comment spam for an extended period of time knows that most of it is not meant to be read, or even meant to be left up long enough to be read, only to remain long enough to be “read” by a Google or Yahoo! spider. Comment spam intended to actually be read will have to be written much differently, with fewer links and a writing style that makes it look to a human as though it were part of the original discussion. This kind of comment spam is much harder to devise, more costly, and most importantly, is not a viable substitute for the kind of comment spam that has been hitting us in waves.

I have no doubt that eventually, comment spammers will find some way to render nofollow ineffective. Until they do, nofollow is a nobrainer. Unless you specifically intend to allow your commenters to boost their Google rankings or those of other linked sites merely by commenting (as Kate and Lonewacko do), there is no earthly reason not to install the nofollow option.

UPDATE: Ubernostrum responds.

When even Michelle Malkin attacks you from the left, maybe it’s time to Focus on something else.

UPDATE: Apparently, the NY Times may have lost its Focus, too. I’ve recategorized this post to “media bias” and generic “morons.” It’s still pretty clear that there’s a moron in here somewhere, but it’s not as clear who the moron is.

UPDATE x2: Jeff Jarvis isn’t exactly helping matters. For shame.

You can still spam this site if you want, but it won’t do you an ounce of good. Neener.

Thanks: Clint Ecker. Hat tips to Venomous Kate and James Joyner, neither of whom have seen fit to install it themselves.