Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

This was too funny to avoid posting. I ran into this in the Cancun, Mexico, at the airport.

When I visited Mexico, I wondered if my phone would work. The answer is: sort of. I was able to connect to a Telcel GSM network, but I couldn’t place any calls. Whenever I tried to call, I got a “Call Failed: Call Barred” message, a double slap in the face:

The funny thing–it would tell me when I got a new voicemail, but not let me dial my voicemail number. And yes, I tried local numbers, international prefixes, the works.

Not to try to sell a product, but I tried the Schick Quattro Men’s Razor this morning, and it worked beautifully. I had about a week of fuzzy beard from a trip to mexico and a sunburn that I was saving to shave off, and it cut through the hair without nicking, cutting, or irritating my skin. In less than five minutes, I was able to accomplish one of the fastest and closest shaves I’ve ever had. I’m quite impressed with this four-bladed razor, and eagerly await 7, 11, and 15 bladed models. Here are a few shaving pics:

After Shaving

Before Shaving

So, as you can see, this razor made my day. My skin is clean, young, and supple now.

The NYTimes has a fabulously long article about the near-billionaire Michael “Jacko” Jackson’s financial affairs. I’ve always wondered how a man so talented in music could squander his riches. With his almost prescient purchase of a 50% share of the Beatles record catalog and his multi-platinum records, you would think that Michael would rake in more than he spent. The article identifies his spending habits:

• Extravagent music video production costs
• Maintainence of a large entourage
• Neverland
• Poor asset management and business advice
• High interest rates on existing loans
• Apathy in his affairs after the 90s

Specific details are revealed:

Mr. Malnik, who began advising Mr. Jackson a few years ago, said in an interview that the entertainer had spent about $8 million annually on plane charters, antiques, paintings, hotel rooms, travel and other personal expenses, and that the annual upkeep for Neverland and its staff was about $4 million. A forensic accountant who testified in Mr. Jackson’s criminal trial last year said that the singer’s annual budget in 1999 included about $7.5 million for personal expenses and $5 million to maintain Neverland. None of this explains the scale of Mr. Jackson’s borrowing, however, or the rapidity with which he burned through those funds.

All in all, very interesting. He’s probably the most difficult celebrity to understand, both because he is psychologically a mystery, and because he is very, very talented and famous.

The last two days I’ve seen a lot of comment spam, and a lot getting through Akismet. Clearly bayesian techniques are not going to work on this kind of spam, an example of which is:

<strong>free credit report com…</strong>

sorely.banjo!wantonness woo braking Spokane?potatoes Nigerian involved:credit http://www available-credit-report com/ …

See, it includes a variety of random words, some of which are spelled incorrectly, as well as punctuation symbols before delivering the payload, and for some reason Akismet is missing the telltale “free credit report,” which should be an instant flag for spam.