Verizon labels all EU mail 'spam'.

Verizon Communications customers expecting e-mail from across the pond may be in for a long wait. The internet service provider has been blocking e-mail originating from Great Britain and other parts of Europe for weeks. Says one anti-spam fighter: "We would never block a whole country and say, 'England is bad.'"

Bad England! Bad!

Because robot news is always cool: Fly-eating robot powers itself "The EcoBot II uses human sewage as bait to catch the insects. It then digests the flies, before their exoskeletons are turned into electricity, which enables the robot to function." I, for one, welcome our flesh-eating robot masters.

So my hosting company DeKluge - generally a "I never hear from them, which is what appeals to me" kind of place - recently upgraded servers. As a part of this process, they also 'upgraded' certain features available to me, the paying customer. These new helpful features immediately broke the website. (As a note, I have to say that I know the founders of DeKluge personally, having been colleagues with them at a one of those companies I engaged in something I'll loosely refer to as 'work.' They're good people.) I am working on recovering from the pain now, and should shortly be back to normal. but in the meantime, please enjoy this preview of what it will be like to be cripple and Japanese in the future.