Skip to main content

Comments

One of the things I have enjoyed most about this blog has been the comments left by readers. Sometimes these comments have led onto some very stimulating -well to me, but maybe I am too easily excited - conversations. Over the past few months though, the blog comments have been increasingly swamped by spam , which are machine generated rubbish in English, Korean and Chinese advertising electronic tat, penis enlargement, pornography and get rich quick schemes. These get screened out by the moderation process, but it's tedious to have to do it, and means that comments have to wait a while before appearing, so now I am trying out word verification: you know, typing in some nonsense word to get your comment published. Let me know what you think of it.

In the meantime, would you like to buy this handy electronic gizmo for increasing the size of your dangly bits, thus allowing you to make gazillions of dollars from starring in videos for raincoat wearing audiences?

Comments

Peter Carrell said…
Those 'raincoat wearing audiences' would be, er, your fellow citizens of Dunedin (making aspersions only about the weather, of course) ... but haven't they spent their gazillions on a roofed in stadium so they won't have to wear raincoats ... now I have confused even myself :) ... yes, re comments and funny words, I am afraid the key word is TINA !!
4 February 2010 at 21:06
Kate said…
No thanks! But no problem with the word verification. Which coincidentally might be something to do with your last question: It is 'hasdingle'
4 February 2010 at 21:47
JoanK said…
Dear Kelvin - I enjoy your blog and go for the word verification - spam is annoying!

When is your consecration date? I would like to add you to our parish prayers. Please give our love to Victoria Matthews.

Joan, Winnipeg Canada
5 February 2010 at 00:28
Peter Llewellyn said…
Your word verification thingy is much user-friendlier than the usual incomprehensibles (not three incomprehensibles but one incomprehensible). But how long will it be before the baddies figure out how to crack them? - I have software that can read my handwriting, which is quite an achievement by any standard. I have taken to marking my students' essays online, because I thought they deserved to be able to read my otherwise impenetrable wisdom.

As for my funny word, you are obviously aware I'm an Aussie, 'cos you've given me "regidna", the queen of the echidnas. It is clearly a sign. I have wriitten (or typed) two articles arguing that the echidnas are taking over the world. It's happening.
6 February 2010 at 18:30
Anonymous said…
Dear Frend,
I am widow of beloved husband Dr Ole Akintoye. After lifetime of faithful serving the Lord in financial services in Umuahia and Port Harcourt, my beloved husband placed our savings of US$2 million in Ghanaian bank account, to be use for spreading the Gospel in world. I want to release these funds for your Esteemed Ministry! Please send bank account details and PIN number so I can arrange transfer to bless your Ministry!

Your frend in the Lord,
Gloria O. Akintoye

akintoyego@africanet.ni
9 February 2010 at 07:17
Merv said…
The thing is .... if you make it too hard to comment, how would you ever find out about Dr. Akintoye's $US2,000,000 available for your Esteemed Ministry?
11 February 2010 at 09:28
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ko Tangata Tiriti Ahau

    The Christmas before last our kids gave us Ancestry.com kits. You know the deal: you spit into a test tube, send it over to Ireland, and in a month or so you get a wadge of paper in the mail telling you who you are. I've never, previously, been interested in all that stuff. I knew my forbears came to Aotearoa in the 1850's from Britain but I didn't know from where, exactly. Clemency's results, as it turns out, were pretty interesting. She was born in England, but has ancestors from various European places, and some who are Ngāti Raukawa, so she can whakapapa back to a little marae called Kikopiri, near Ōtaki. And me? It turns out I'm more British than most British people. Apart from a smattering of Norse  - probably the result of some Viking raid in the dim distant past - all my tūpuna seem to have come from a little group of villages in Nottinghamshire.  Now I've been to the UK a few times, and I quite like it, but it's not home: my heart and soul belon...
Post a Comment
Read more

En Hakkore

In the hills up behind Ranfurly there used to be a town, Hamilton, which at one stage was home to 5,000 people. All that remains of it now is a graveyard, fenced off and baking in the lonely brown hills. Near it, in the 1930s a large Sanitorium was built for the treatment of tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments. It was a substantial complex of buildings with wards, a nurses hostel, impressive houses for the manager and superintendent and all the utility buildings needed for such a large operation. The treatment offered consisted of isolation, views and weather. Patients were exposed to the air, the tons of it which whistled past, often at great speed, the warmth of the sun and the cold. They were housed in small cubicles opening onto huge glassed verandas where they cooked in the summer and froze in the winter and often, what with the wholesome food and the exercise, got better. When advances in antibiotics rendered the Sanitorium obsolete it was turned into a Borstal and...
3 comments
Read more

Why I Hold the Views I Do

St. Hilda's Collegiate School, taken with my phone after a recent meeting. This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with what follows, but I like the interplay of shapes and particularly the shadow on the wall. My mother is a Methodist, liberal in her theological and social opinions. My father was a socialist, just slightly to the left, in his politics, of Karl Marx. My siblings -there are 5 of us- are all bright, eloquent and omnivorous in their consumption of books and other intellectual fodder.  One of my most cherished childhood memories is of mealtimes in our little state house. The food was ingested with copious amounts of spirited, opinionated, clever and sometimes informed debate on whatever subject happened to catch the attention of one of the family that day. Or whatever one of us thought might get a rise out of someone else. So, sex, politics and religion it was then - oh and motorbikes, economics, international relations, demographics, cricket, company ownersh...
47 comments
Read more

Living the lies

In 1969, when I was 16 I left school and got a job as a labourer. My wages weren't high but to me they were a fortune and within a few months  I bought my first car, a 1938 Morris 8 sports, this one here. It had a minuscule 4 cylinder engine and a wood framed body which meant it was slow and it flexed so much when going around corners that the doors would sometimes fly open. Nevertheless I thought it was pretty damned cool, especially with the modifications I made to the muffler for performance and advertising purposes, ie, removing it.  Back then, the most popular TV program was The Avengers, in which the suave and resourceful hero, John Steed drove a 1928 3 Litre Bentley. Which looked kinda like my car, right? Yeah, right. Anyway, John Steed usually entered his car by leaping nimbly over the door, so I emulated him whenever possible. Now all this is preamble. I want to tell you about something that happened to me one day in Papanui Road, Christchurch. My car ...
1 comment
Read more

2 More Years

An autumn leaf, the evidence of the death whereby the grapevine lives and bears fruit There are 31,102 verses in the Bible, or at least in the Protestant version of it which the conservative section of our church recognises. Of these, there are 6 verses which explicitly condemn homosexual practice. The best scholars in the Christian world have pointed out the ambiguity of even these scraps of scripture, but this does not prevent their becoming the basis of an antipathy to contemporary same gender sexuality which I was repeatedly told, during General Synod, was "First Order". I'm not sure what "First Order" means exactly, but I was told that this is a "Salvation Matter". So, presumably, holding a proper view on homosexuality is right up there in importance with belief in the doctrines I would consider foundational for the Christian faith: namely the Holy Trinity, Incarnation and Resurrection. In any event, antipathy to homosexuality has already ...
25 comments
Read more