Over the next few weeks, I will be doing some maintenance on A Humourless Lot. As a result, you might see some small changes in lay-out, and there might be the occasional very short period of down-time. I hope that, in the end, it will lead to a better blog that is easier to read and use.

Secondly, the number of attempted spam comments has grown to more than 10,000/month. Up to now, I tried to screen manually everything that Akismet flagged as spam before permanently deleting; with these numbers of spam comments and a filter accuracy of more than 99.98% (i.e. only one or two legit comments per month that are trashed), this is no longer possible, and consequently I will send everything that looks like spam to Akismet to the great bit fields. If your comment does not appear, just send me a message and I will retrieve it from the sin bin – but please do so within a couple of days, because that is how long it will remain in limbo before being terminated with extreme prejudice.

Thirdly, I have had some questions about possible conflicts of interest because I write about global health and aid while having been (and hopefully being again) employed in that sector. I really don’t want to have to think about every possible conflict of interest every time I write an article. So, here is my generic disclaimer: assume that everything I write is conflicted to the utmost; that all my opinions are paid for by the highest bidder (and in case I have forgotten to arrange this, that this will be corrected forthwith); that my writing is as partisan and biased as is humanly possible; and that everything you read on this blog needs to be verified and checked – and double-checked. And then judge what I write on its arguments, not on who it’s coming from.

We apologise for this short intermission and will now resume our normal program.

[Image: DrinkSJB by SJB @ Picasa. Some rights reserved.]

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2. Comment spam