After five years, progress in the war against the crap flood.

• Spam law passed in Australia.

To some extent, it's the season for such things - now that over half the mail in the world is spam or viruses written by spammers, enough of a crap flood for even legislators to notice. But Troy Rollo has been working and pushing and kicking arse on this project for five years now. I've been on the committee since the start, and I wish I could share some of the committee mail with the world. You would not believe the work that goes into effective lobbying. (You think you would, but you wouldn't.)

The bill is hardly perfect. But one should expect it will be amended as things progress. It's most of what we wanted and a sufficiently workable starting point.

Laws against spam in one country won't stop the flood. But they will be useful as a model for others.

The war is hardly over yet. But this is an eminently champagne-worthy day.

Confuse-A-Clam, 2003 - this Saturday, Tottenham Court Road.

As per last year:

This Saturday (December 6th) at 1pm or so, I will be attending a demonstration against the 68 Tottenham Court Road (right next to Goodge St tube) office of the Church of Scientology. Official announcement here. It usually involves hanging around handing out leaflets until about 3-3:30pm.

I still haven't updated my page on the subject since late 2000. But that's no reason not to show up. redcountess and arkady will also be endeavouring to attend.

• Why bother at all?
• What's with the clams?
• And what about Xenu?
• No, it wasn't all a bar bet with Heinlein.
• Dianetics™ Self-Clearing explained.