Xrlq Geoffrey Allen has definitely earned that title. Heh.

Suzi, a frequent commenter on this blog, has forgotten more than I’ll ever know about spyware/scumware/etc. She’s alerted me to a few sites everyone interested in the topic should know about – and if you aren’t interested in this issue, you should be. I’ll probably have more to say about them later, but for now, I’m just going to throw the links out there for your perusal.

• www.spywareinfo.com
• www.netrn.net/no_spyware.htm
• http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/MySearch.html

Mrs. Xrlq’s computer has recently been bombarded by unwanted crap that has installed itself on her computer without her consent. I noticed a program called “Fun Web Products Easy Installer,” which I suspect may be the culprit. Does anyone know who is putting out this crap? Is it legal? And if so, would it also be legal for the rest of us to return the favor?

Say hello to the newest Bear Flag League members, E-Talking Head and Jockularocracy.

The Clam will be Angry happy to know that so far, comments in this thread are favoring “an historic” over “a historic” by a margin of 2-0.

These guys stole a page from “Spy Wiper” playbook and sent Mrs. Xrlq a spam message to promote their (supposedly) anti-spam software, for which they charge a whopping $49.99. Cute, huh?

I’m happy to say that 0Spam, a free, non-spamming anti-spam service that I highly recommend, caught Rx357’s anti-spam spam. I only plucked the message from the anti-spam folder because I like irony.

Time to announce the winners of this week’s Watcher’s Council competition. Congratulations to Free Will for the winning Council entry, “The Weaseliest of Weasels,” and to The Politburo Diktat for the winning non-Council entry, “Revolution – Beyond Instalanche.”

Via Drudge comes news that President Bush made a surprise Thanksgiving visit to American troops in Baghdad. No word as to whether he made the linguistic faux pas of pronouncing the city name “bag Dad,” rather than however the hell they say the name of that city in Iraqian.

The language police has just made another false arrest, of the kind you might expect to see on Reno 911. Via Boifromtroy comes this Ass. Press story which appeared in the Las Vegas Sun, and which takes President Bush to task for pronouncing Nevada the Spanish way. Apparently, that’s a no-no in that state, right up there with pronouncing Oregon “aura gone” rather than the preferred “organ.” [Note, however, that both pronunciations of Nevada are listed in the dictionary.] Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one’s perspective, the Sun article does a fine job of reminding us of what they say about people living in glass houses, and why. For starters, get a load of the headline:

Bush mispronunces Nevada in first presidential visit

First of all, the President didn’t “mispronunce” Nevada; he merely (mis-?)pronounced its name. Thus, the word Nevada should either be in italics or surrounded by quotation marks. This is, I believe, one of the rare occasions where even Patterico will concede that the use of quotation marks is acceptable. Second, having established that the Sun thinks “pronunce” is a verb, I suppose we can at least take some comfort knowing that unlike many people, they’ll at least get the nominalization, pronunciation, right. Right? Wrong. Here’s the very first sentence of the article itself:

Nevada memo to George Bush: When making a first presidential visit to a state, use the right pronounciation of its name.
[Emphasis added.]

OK, time to move on. No more carping over how to pronounce a pronunciation, pronunce a pronounciation, or any of that stuff. We got your point: don’t say “ne vah-dah.” So what should we say instead?

To properly pronounce Nevada, the middle syllable should rhyme with gamble.

Really? Maybe it’s just me, but for all the times I’ve been to Reno, Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas, I have yet to meet a single Nevadan who pronounce the name of his state “Nevambleda.”

UPDATE: Now they’re running a second version of the article, which fixes the headline but leaves all the other moron-mistakes intact.

UPDATE x2: Yup, they fixed the headline in the original version, as well. All of the Ass. Press’s errors are still there, however. Below is a screen shot of the original version.

UPDATE: Boifromtroy notes in a comment that Daily Monopolist Patt Morrison has repeated the Nevambleda meme in today’s paper.

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