So much spam

Today I spent about an hour systematically clearing the chemistry website of spam. Long story short, there was a lot of it.

Later I wrote a blog post for the Daily Universe about how annoying unsolicited mass messages are and how to avoid them. (Surprise surprise; the chem website breaks Rule Number One: keep your security updated. Drupal has been trying to tell us to update our security for a few weeks. Maybe now we'll actually do it. I'll have to bring it up.)

While researching for my DU blog post, I learned an interesting new fact: electronic spam was named after the processed lunch meat that is way too squishy no matter how you cook it. More specifically, it's named after a Monty Python skit called "Spam," in which the actors go to order breakfast at a restaurant and almost all the dishes contain spam (the meat, not the messages).

Personally, I would have used a more general analogy: unsolicited messages are like earwigs in the summertime- unwelcome and everywhere.