"I unstintingly bestow the verdant acute."

Every now and then The Infinite Revolution will experience a spike in activity, and I'm always curious as to the cause - although it's not always easy to figure out.

Sometimes it appears to be just a case of a timely, topical posting.  Sometimes it's apparently because of a certain combination of key words in a post.  And sometimes it's because during the weekly departmental meeting "what-did-you-do-on-the-weekend-everyone" segment, I mention doing a blog posting about a co-worker, and people want to see if I said anything funny (or legally actionable) about them online.

However, every once in a while it's because someone has posted a link to my blog on another blog (welcome to Blogception, everyone).  Because of this, every now and then I search for references to The Infinite Revolution, just on the outside chance that I'm on my way to cross-linked fame. 

I did one of these searches recently, and was intrigued to get a hit for an apparent duplicate posting on another blog.  Now, linking to someone's work is fine, but cutting and pasting is just not on, so I immediately clicked on the link to see what was up.

The site appeared to be hosted on something called Le Blogue du Québec, (just as this blog is hosted on Blogger™) and the posting title was a direct copy from a 2009 post about the Perry Rhodan stories: The Infinite Revolution: « Perry Rhodan: Peacelord of the Universe! ».

And then it got weird - here's the first paragraph:

I be current to chance that anecdote of the things that I in reality like here doing this blog is the mode that it leads me in miscellaneous directions. in comprehensive Right at in olden days I’m in the midriff of researching supplies in proffer three posts dealing with the Dune series, and I’m working on a photocomp facsimile in proffer anecdote of those blog-posts-about-blogging that lemonade up at in olden days and then. in comprehensive Nonetheless, I’m trite to cease the totality and talk here Perry Rhodan. Now, I unstintingly bestow the verdant acute to be a helper to this is my own defect in proffer locale this up in the quondam leg with the dig here Rhodan versus Rodan, but I’m surprised that the mortal physically who broached the debatable wasn’t anecdote of my (six) absolute readers. in comprehensive The series, which started in Germany in 1961, drew heavily on antiquated procedure fiction in proffer gusto, and is written suffocating a rotating reasonable of authors.

"Nonetheless, I’m trite to cease the totality" - what?

There's a couple of links buried in the text, so it's got to be some kind of keyword spam thing, but why in the world would the perpetrators copy an obscure posting on an obscure topic from an obscure blog and run it through a garbage filter before posting it again?  I realize that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but couldn't they have at least made it a good imitation?

By the way, you'll notice there are no links to the page being discussed, because if they're using a warped, mutated version of my content to drive a spam site, well, you know, screw them.

Hey - mutant versions of my content - that sounds like science fiction, doesn't it.

- Sid

P.S.  Dorothy, Donovan, you probably don't need to read this next part:

 

Hi, Laurie.  In case you were puzzled, the fellow making the rude gesture in the picture is a character from a TV series called Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  His name is Spike.  The photo is therefore a pun on spikes, albeit not a brilliant one. 

 

Elysium fracasó.

After seeing Elysium, I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed by Neill Blomkamp's sophomore outing. The film's greatest failing is quite simple: the casting of Matt Damon.

I don't mean to suggest that Mr. Damon doesn't do a good job - well, actually, it may not be his best work - but that's not the problem.  It would have been a far more pointed statement to have made the protagonist another one of the legion of disadvantaged Hispanic inhabitants of the future Los Angeles.  As it is, Damon stands out like a sore thumb.  (There's also some kind of unfortunate synergy in having a white guy act as the saviour of the world.) 

There's absolutely no reason that Damon's part couldn't have been played by Javier Bardem, Eduardo Noriega, or even a complete unknown from the Hispanic acting community, and a lot of good reasons why it should have been.  Come on, Neill, did you really not realize what your film was actually about?

- Sid

Booyah, baby!

I was very pleased (and a little relieved) to find out that there is an international group of fourteen space agencies, including the Canadian Space Agency, that has spent the last six years working on a long term cooperative strategy for space exploration which they have recently made public. The International Space Exploration Coordination Group, or ISECG (not a brilliant acronym, but life goes on) has developed a practical 25-year plan for putting astronauts - including Canadians - on Mars and the Moon.

(Well, mostly practical - I'm still not sure about the part where NASA wants to redirect an asteroid into a near-Earth orbit.)

Part of the plan includes the construction of a space station in orbit around the Moon, intended as a staging point for lunar exploration. Ha - I refer you to my post of November 4, 2007 on the crucial role that space stations could play in interplanetary exploration.  Gosh, guys, all you had to do was ask...

- Sid