I feel like this column might be a little bit cruel because of the timing but rest assured, I am talking to myself as much as I am anyone who reads this.
I feel disgusting. I am still full from Thanksgiving. It’s actually kind of funny because when my spin instructor said to “enjoy eating good food” (as I shared in last week’s column), I don’t think he meant “enough food for four people by yourself.” Funny? Yes. True? Absolutely. I seriously think I ate enough food for a small family, and I am not proud of it.
But I have learned something that I think it is worth sharing. Since returning from my Thanksgiving gustatory orgy, I have been on a bit of cleansing campaign and it is pretty amazing how different I am starting to feel. The old adage “You are what you eat!” is ringing truer than ever for me right now.
First, I went to the vitamin store and bought “The Complete Body Cleanse.” Three bottles of herbal pills intended to cleanse one’s liver and digestive system. So, I am now popping herbal pills every morning and night for the next two weeks.
Second, I started exercising. Of course, I am back in my spin class, but I am also running and even throwing in a moderate weight workout.
Third, I went to the grocery store (a small miracle in and of itself) and bought healthy food to have in my refrigerator. I bought chicken, turkey, a ton of vegetables, raw almonds and cashews, soy milk, eggs, low-fat string cheese, and a couple other “clean” foods.
Lastly, I decided to only eat for one person, instead of four.
Now, I am not a doctor or a nutritionist, and I am certainly not making any claims; but I can tell you that in just one week, I feel like a new person. I have more energy; I feel better about myself; my clothes fit again; I feel more alert and clear-headed; and I know that I must be internally healthier than I was a week ago.
I guess in some ways, Thanksgiving allowed me to hit my wall. And, for some reason, I don’t think I am alone on this. I actually think that most of us start to feel this way around the holidays. The scary part is that most of the holiday parties haven’t even started yet.
So, I have decided that I will enjoy my holidays. I will go to the parties and family gatherings and enjoy the great food without a single ounce of guilt. But on the days in between, I am going to continue taking my herbal pills, exercising, eating healthy foods, and watching my portions. Is this medically sound? Not sure. But I fairly confident that if I stick to this program, I won’t end up 10 pounds heavier than I was at the end of last year (which is often times the case). Maybe you can try it with me.
Your health matters.
FACTS
Annual costs for chronic diseases in the U.S. is big money:
n $117 billion for obesity
n $73.4 billion for high blood pressure
n $448 billion for heart disease and strokes
n $50 billion for weight-loss aids, diet foods, supplements, and weight-loss medications — and obesity is still increasing
79 percent likelihood exists that an overweight child will become an overweight adult.
TAKE ACTION TODAY
n If you suffer from or have a family history of any of the aforementioned chronic conditions or diseases, consult your family physician for dietary counseling.
n Although every individual is unique in his or her dietary needs, here are some ideas to help all of us:
n Eat more dark green vegetables, legumes, fruits, whole grains, low-fat milk products, and lean meats.
n Eat fewer foods with refined grains and sugars; reduce your intake of fatty foods with empty calories; and eat smaller portions.
n Eat slowly so that you will feel full before you’ve overeaten.
n Don’t reward yourself or children with food.
n Limit snacking.
n Develop a routine and eat at similar times each day.
n Drink plenty of water.
n Eat to live; don’t live to eat.
n You deserve to be in good health. For most, diabetes, hypertension, and other obesity-related chronic diseases are preventable by simply eating healthily and exercising. You will feel better than ever both mentally and physically — the only way to really live.
Herbal Pills Online is a pure natural herbal supplements store on online for male and Female.impotence medications, erectile function of the penis, herbal pills for premature ejaculation, herbal supplements for weight loss side effects, best male enhancement pills, best herbal supplements for weight loss, natural remedies for depression, herbal supplements for weight loss, natural supplements for weight loss, best supplements for weight loss, herbal supplements for weight gain
Monday, December 14, 2009
Billy Joel's daughter 'feeling better'
The daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley is reportedly "feeling much better" following her hospitalisation over the weekend.Alexa Ray Joel, 23, was taken to a medical facility in New York by paramedics on Saturday after allegedly overdosing on herbal pills.
In a statement to Extra, her representative said: "She is feeling much better. She is with her family and looking forward to getting back on track.".Alexa added: "I want to thank everyone for their outpouring of love and support."
She is thought to be recuperating at her father's Long Island, NY, home.
In a statement to Extra, her representative said: "She is feeling much better. She is with her family and looking forward to getting back on track.".Alexa added: "I want to thank everyone for their outpouring of love and support."
She is thought to be recuperating at her father's Long Island, NY, home.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Rise and Fall of the Penis By Mels van Driel - 2
What seems to have happened here is that a clever Dutch publisher persuaded Dr Van Driel that a basic guide to genital problems could be turned into a best-seller if it were padded out with an assortment of historical did-you-knows and biological fancy-thats. And of course the publisher was on to something. Who, for example, would stop reading halfway through the following: 'The iguana’s sex organ is so shaped that it appears to have two penises. A similar abnormal shape was once diagnosed in a 22-year-old Portuguese gipsy. According to the doctors both penises functioned properly and once he had climaxed with one he immediately continued with the other’?
Where the medical details are concerned, we can assume that Dr Van Driel knows what he is talking about. Various anatomical details are deftly explained, with the aid of helpful diagrams. (There are also illustrations of a kind that you would normally expect to see only in a medical textbook – black-and-white photos of penile malformations, which caused me, while reading this book on a crowded train, to perform some rather sudden page-turns.)
But one has to wonder how reliable he is on anything else. It’s not that I suspect him of making things up when he cites an eminent Dutch sexologist called Professor Slob. The problem, rather, is his tendency to cite other people who have made things up, or got things wrong. No serious medieval historian believes that the Albigensians 'sprinkled the bread used for Holy Communion with human sperm’ – a claim for which Van Driel cites, as his authority, the Victorian sexologist Havelock Ellis.
As for his statement that a female Pope was elected in 855, and that thereafter the papal election procedure involved putting the candidate on a chair with a hole in it and feeling his testicles, whereupon the assembled cardinals sang 'Habet ova noster papa’ ('our Pope has balls’); well, perhaps it goes down well in Groningen, where the local Calvinists might believe such things. But the legend of Pope Joan was actually demolished by a Calvinist scholar, David Blondel, more than 350 years ago.
On some of his topics there are major works of thought-provoking modern scholarship, which any serious researcher should have read: Leo Steinberg on The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art, for example, or Walter Stephens’s marvellous analysis of the Renaissance claims about having sex with the devil. But Van Driel has passed them by.
Sometimes the information Van Driel gives us would be of doubtful value, even if it were true: 'It is said that Rasputin’s sizeable testicles and penis are preserved in a specially made velvet box’, for instance.
Sometimes he seems to miss the point, as when he speculates that Asian men think of powdered-rhinoceros horn as an aphrodisiac because 'the act of mating in rhinoceroses takes almost an hour and involves multiple ejaculations’. (Chinese peasants have surely not seen David Attenborough films about rhinoceroses, but they can perform a simple association of ideas when they think of a large horn.)
Sometimes, on the other hand, the tidbits of information he has assembled are really rather wonderful. I enjoyed learning, for example, that 'the genitalia of the kamikaze drone of the honey bee are decorated with yellowish protuberances and all kinds of fringes and hairs; at orgasm they explode within the queen like a spring and form a natural chastity belt, which bars access to other suitors, even though the mating drone itself drops dead’. But what relevance that may have to Dr Van Driel’s advice on when or whether I should have a vasectomy is, mercifully, hard to imagine.
Where the medical details are concerned, we can assume that Dr Van Driel knows what he is talking about. Various anatomical details are deftly explained, with the aid of helpful diagrams. (There are also illustrations of a kind that you would normally expect to see only in a medical textbook – black-and-white photos of penile malformations, which caused me, while reading this book on a crowded train, to perform some rather sudden page-turns.)
But one has to wonder how reliable he is on anything else. It’s not that I suspect him of making things up when he cites an eminent Dutch sexologist called Professor Slob. The problem, rather, is his tendency to cite other people who have made things up, or got things wrong. No serious medieval historian believes that the Albigensians 'sprinkled the bread used for Holy Communion with human sperm’ – a claim for which Van Driel cites, as his authority, the Victorian sexologist Havelock Ellis.
As for his statement that a female Pope was elected in 855, and that thereafter the papal election procedure involved putting the candidate on a chair with a hole in it and feeling his testicles, whereupon the assembled cardinals sang 'Habet ova noster papa’ ('our Pope has balls’); well, perhaps it goes down well in Groningen, where the local Calvinists might believe such things. But the legend of Pope Joan was actually demolished by a Calvinist scholar, David Blondel, more than 350 years ago.
On some of his topics there are major works of thought-provoking modern scholarship, which any serious researcher should have read: Leo Steinberg on The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art, for example, or Walter Stephens’s marvellous analysis of the Renaissance claims about having sex with the devil. But Van Driel has passed them by.
Sometimes the information Van Driel gives us would be of doubtful value, even if it were true: 'It is said that Rasputin’s sizeable testicles and penis are preserved in a specially made velvet box’, for instance.
Sometimes he seems to miss the point, as when he speculates that Asian men think of powdered-rhinoceros horn as an aphrodisiac because 'the act of mating in rhinoceroses takes almost an hour and involves multiple ejaculations’. (Chinese peasants have surely not seen David Attenborough films about rhinoceroses, but they can perform a simple association of ideas when they think of a large horn.)
Sometimes, on the other hand, the tidbits of information he has assembled are really rather wonderful. I enjoyed learning, for example, that 'the genitalia of the kamikaze drone of the honey bee are decorated with yellowish protuberances and all kinds of fringes and hairs; at orgasm they explode within the queen like a spring and form a natural chastity belt, which bars access to other suitors, even though the mating drone itself drops dead’. But what relevance that may have to Dr Van Driel’s advice on when or whether I should have a vasectomy is, mercifully, hard to imagine.
The Rise and Fall of the Penis By Mels van Driel - 1
'In the last few decades,’ writes the Dutch urologist Mels van Driel on the first page of this book, 'tens of thousands of penises and testicles have been through my hands. Eventually one feels the urge to dig deeper.’ The wording is a little alarming, but what he means by digging more deeply, it turns out, is exploring the non-medical dimensions of the subject. How have our ideas about the male genitalia been influenced by culture, history, literature and religion?
Why is it, for example, that in China and south-east Asia there is a form of impotence so common that it has its own name, 'koro’, referring to the withdrawal of the head of a tortoise? This is a psychiatric syndrome in which the patient becomes convinced that his penis is shrinking and will gradually disappear into his abdomen, thereby causing his death; something in the culture must be causing this notion, which is an extreme rarity in Western societies.
Why is it that seeing men’s genitals in public was acceptable in ancient Greece (at least, at the gymnasium and the athletics field) and unacceptable in Christian societies, although in late medieval Europe the implausibly large codpiece became a popular fashion item? Why did so many people in Renaissance Europe believe that witches had sexual intercourse with the devil, whose penis – according to testimony accepted in court – was scaly or barbed, stone-hard, ice-cold and sometime double-pronged?
One would indeed have to dig into the deepest strata of cultural history and anthropology to frame answers to these questions. Van Driel, however, has done no such thing. Instead, he just mentions these topics in passing, picking out a memorable detail or two before moving on to another oddity of history, culture or biology.
Eventually, one begins to see that these details are merely decorative. The main body of this book is what you would expect a urologist to write: a straightforward account, for the general reader, of how the male genital organs function and how they can go wrong. There are chapters on testosterone and on the ailments of the scrotum; there are discussions of circumcision, castration and vasectomy. This may be the only book I shall ever read that can solemnly state, in the Introduction: 'Men and women contemplating sterilisation will find this book particularly useful.’
Why is it, for example, that in China and south-east Asia there is a form of impotence so common that it has its own name, 'koro’, referring to the withdrawal of the head of a tortoise? This is a psychiatric syndrome in which the patient becomes convinced that his penis is shrinking and will gradually disappear into his abdomen, thereby causing his death; something in the culture must be causing this notion, which is an extreme rarity in Western societies.
Why is it that seeing men’s genitals in public was acceptable in ancient Greece (at least, at the gymnasium and the athletics field) and unacceptable in Christian societies, although in late medieval Europe the implausibly large codpiece became a popular fashion item? Why did so many people in Renaissance Europe believe that witches had sexual intercourse with the devil, whose penis – according to testimony accepted in court – was scaly or barbed, stone-hard, ice-cold and sometime double-pronged?
One would indeed have to dig into the deepest strata of cultural history and anthropology to frame answers to these questions. Van Driel, however, has done no such thing. Instead, he just mentions these topics in passing, picking out a memorable detail or two before moving on to another oddity of history, culture or biology.
Eventually, one begins to see that these details are merely decorative. The main body of this book is what you would expect a urologist to write: a straightforward account, for the general reader, of how the male genital organs function and how they can go wrong. There are chapters on testosterone and on the ailments of the scrotum; there are discussions of circumcision, castration and vasectomy. This may be the only book I shall ever read that can solemnly state, in the Introduction: 'Men and women contemplating sterilisation will find this book particularly useful.’
Pills, capsules, herbal pieces right mixture for e-commerce trade - 2
Finally, when we get valid information, we need to transform awareness into action, and strive to achieve our expected goal.
Our energy is limited. The situation of all enterprises are not the same, if there are a lot of personnel in one company, they can deal with plenty of business. However, if the amount of staff is small in a company, the success rate and the high quality of customers’ accumulation will become their requirement. The success rate is not a source of quantity, but your grasp of the customer, as well as your own positioning. Our first order is neither derived from the first customer, nor attracted the customer solely by price. We studied the background and the needs of customer, simplified and focused the qualification of our company and product. The result is that we not only sold the goods, but our price is 7% higher than the market price and become the customer's exclusive supplier. At present, the mode of operation has formed, and the customer started his monthly procurement plans. The attitude depends on the consciousness. Your good intention will get more recognition, and will bring you more additional significance. We appreciate those who have reason from dissatisfaction to satisfaction. We walk in such a way designed for ourselves and do not seek everything that other people would really understand, but one day, when they understand, we will stand higher and see farther.
After we joined Alibaba, we increased a lot of confidence, just like standing on the shoulders of giants. We have self-confidence and a unique character that other people do not have. I believe we will make more great achievements in the future.
Our energy is limited. The situation of all enterprises are not the same, if there are a lot of personnel in one company, they can deal with plenty of business. However, if the amount of staff is small in a company, the success rate and the high quality of customers’ accumulation will become their requirement. The success rate is not a source of quantity, but your grasp of the customer, as well as your own positioning. Our first order is neither derived from the first customer, nor attracted the customer solely by price. We studied the background and the needs of customer, simplified and focused the qualification of our company and product. The result is that we not only sold the goods, but our price is 7% higher than the market price and become the customer's exclusive supplier. At present, the mode of operation has formed, and the customer started his monthly procurement plans. The attitude depends on the consciousness. Your good intention will get more recognition, and will bring you more additional significance. We appreciate those who have reason from dissatisfaction to satisfaction. We walk in such a way designed for ourselves and do not seek everything that other people would really understand, but one day, when they understand, we will stand higher and see farther.
After we joined Alibaba, we increased a lot of confidence, just like standing on the shoulders of giants. We have self-confidence and a unique character that other people do not have. I believe we will make more great achievements in the future.
Pills, capsules, herbal pieces right mixture for e-commerce trade - 1
As the saying goes “the falling of one leaf heralds the autumn”. A small sign can indicate a great trend. Today, the information is so diverse, transparent. What should we choose, how to convey the consciousness, how to create the value belonging to our own and play their greatest effect has been bothering us. Put simply, if we spent the money, how can we find and get maximum output? Hereby, I want to share my feeling with you. I got the feeling by using the Alibaba website in the first year of the financial crisis.
First of all, we need to build confidence, identify goals, discover what we want and find out reasons to meet our needs. If we want to get something, first of all, we need to perceive the targets precisely and find out the channels to reach the goal. Perceptual goal is what we usually refer to target customers and the expected outputs. The formulation of goals needs us to analyze the external environment, evaluate and affirm ourselves objectively and to understand our position in the external environment. Only we understand our own position, we will know what we need, so that we will not catch cold when the weather is changeable.
Secondly, discover what we want and find out reasons to meet our needs.
Two heads are better than one. It’s necessary for us to find a suitable and helpful tool, at the same time, we have the ability to control it and achieve our goals. The ability to find tool and control it will determine whether our potential can be tapped out and our consciousness can be expressed fully in the ever-changing market. Martial arts movie always say “the sword and the person are one in all”, it means that you have to have the ability to control and well know the tools which convey your sense.
We did not in-depth get in touch with e-commerce until we joined Alibaba. It provides us with a channel to establish the information and deliver the value. Alibaba has tremendous information resources and fascination. As we set up our hopes, we need to choose the valuable resources from the abundant information. We have also been deepening the product functionality and professional human description. When a thing is added into the human element and emotion, the customers no longer face a single product and boring data. Positive and negative is a kind of attitude, as well as spiritual level’s contacts. It is more important to instil your consciousness into your product marketing than list your single and boring data. Our job is to convey this concept and the uniqueness of services value to the customers. Maybe your products are not exclusively produced, but your unique methods will also bring you unexpected results. To maintain a high frequency of exposure, add new products, launch new sales information, adjust the products, etc. have brought us a lot of opportunities. Many people will care about the click rate and the transaction value, but we should not overlook the quality of the accumulation of customers. If we only attract customers by price, there will be crisis of the accumulation. This is the same as we are looking for mate to marry and live. Only handsome or beautiful is not enough, it also need reach a tacit agreement. Many of my friends have a lot of customers. Everyday, a lot of people will go there and then leave. We should change our own shop into a private club where you set forth the value to your customer. We should give products more human nature, make cultural atmosphere become a sword to attract customers and friends. Humanities desertification is eroding our precious creativity, which should arouse our attention.
First of all, we need to build confidence, identify goals, discover what we want and find out reasons to meet our needs. If we want to get something, first of all, we need to perceive the targets precisely and find out the channels to reach the goal. Perceptual goal is what we usually refer to target customers and the expected outputs. The formulation of goals needs us to analyze the external environment, evaluate and affirm ourselves objectively and to understand our position in the external environment. Only we understand our own position, we will know what we need, so that we will not catch cold when the weather is changeable.
Secondly, discover what we want and find out reasons to meet our needs.
Two heads are better than one. It’s necessary for us to find a suitable and helpful tool, at the same time, we have the ability to control it and achieve our goals. The ability to find tool and control it will determine whether our potential can be tapped out and our consciousness can be expressed fully in the ever-changing market. Martial arts movie always say “the sword and the person are one in all”, it means that you have to have the ability to control and well know the tools which convey your sense.
We did not in-depth get in touch with e-commerce until we joined Alibaba. It provides us with a channel to establish the information and deliver the value. Alibaba has tremendous information resources and fascination. As we set up our hopes, we need to choose the valuable resources from the abundant information. We have also been deepening the product functionality and professional human description. When a thing is added into the human element and emotion, the customers no longer face a single product and boring data. Positive and negative is a kind of attitude, as well as spiritual level’s contacts. It is more important to instil your consciousness into your product marketing than list your single and boring data. Our job is to convey this concept and the uniqueness of services value to the customers. Maybe your products are not exclusively produced, but your unique methods will also bring you unexpected results. To maintain a high frequency of exposure, add new products, launch new sales information, adjust the products, etc. have brought us a lot of opportunities. Many people will care about the click rate and the transaction value, but we should not overlook the quality of the accumulation of customers. If we only attract customers by price, there will be crisis of the accumulation. This is the same as we are looking for mate to marry and live. Only handsome or beautiful is not enough, it also need reach a tacit agreement. Many of my friends have a lot of customers. Everyday, a lot of people will go there and then leave. We should change our own shop into a private club where you set forth the value to your customer. We should give products more human nature, make cultural atmosphere become a sword to attract customers and friends. Humanities desertification is eroding our precious creativity, which should arouse our attention.
How I helped nail the 'manhood' spammer - 3
In June, my police contact told me to put a date aside in my diary for late 2009 to fly to New Zealand as Shane was still intending to go to court. Luckily I didn't have to make the trip. Shane fell on his sword and agreed to pay a fine to settle his case. It cost him NZ$100,000 (approx £60,000). It was the same amount his brother Lance agreed to earlier in the year.
Not much when you consider one law enforcement official told me it was estimated the gang was making about £150,000 a month. The Federal Trade Commission in America was also on the case. They were targeting Lance and the man running the US end of the operation, Jody Smith. Earlier this week the FTC announced Smith would turn over nearly all his assets.
They also imposed a $15m fine on Lance Atkinson. It sounded impressive but Lance had already been given a $2.2m fine by the FTC in 2005. As he was living in Australia the US authorities couldn't force him to pay. Unless he is planning a trip to Disneyland the fine will remain a largely symbolic gesture.
The Elite Herbal website is no more. It has been replaced by another. Are Shane and Lance Atkinson still running spam e-mail operations? The authorities don't think so, as they are keeping an eye on them. Filters are getting better at blocking out spam but with 120 billion sent each day you only need a tiny percentage of buyers to make some serious money. And what of the Manster pills. I was tempted to try one, for research purposes obviously. My producer, Richard, wanted me to but he was over-ruled by a far greater power - my wife.
Not much when you consider one law enforcement official told me it was estimated the gang was making about £150,000 a month. The Federal Trade Commission in America was also on the case. They were targeting Lance and the man running the US end of the operation, Jody Smith. Earlier this week the FTC announced Smith would turn over nearly all his assets.
They also imposed a $15m fine on Lance Atkinson. It sounded impressive but Lance had already been given a $2.2m fine by the FTC in 2005. As he was living in Australia the US authorities couldn't force him to pay. Unless he is planning a trip to Disneyland the fine will remain a largely symbolic gesture.
The Elite Herbal website is no more. It has been replaced by another. Are Shane and Lance Atkinson still running spam e-mail operations? The authorities don't think so, as they are keeping an eye on them. Filters are getting better at blocking out spam but with 120 billion sent each day you only need a tiny percentage of buyers to make some serious money. And what of the Manster pills. I was tempted to try one, for research purposes obviously. My producer, Richard, wanted me to but he was over-ruled by a far greater power - my wife.
How I helped nail the 'manhood' spammer - 2
When I called him he denied sending any spam e-mails: "It wasn't me mate, we closed all that down years ago. I'm not controlling any computers, mate." Shane and his brother Lance were well known spammers who ran a global operation with another man, Jody Smith, in the US. For years they had exploited the lack of anti-spamming legislation in New Zealand but the country had recently brought in new laws and the authorities were determined to shut down Elite Herbal.
Planned raid
E-mails subsequently shown to me by law enforcement sources showed that shortly after my phone call Shane Atkinson had contacted his suppliers in India asking what was going on.
I had already been in touch with them and they also wanted to know why a BBC journalist was asking awkward questions.
New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs had been planning to raid Atkinson's house in early 2008 but following my phone call they were forced to act. They raided Shane's house in December and took away his computers. It meant officers working over the holiday. As one later told me I wasn't their favourite journalist.
To make matters worse, the case led to headlines in New Zealand asking why a British reporter had got to Atkinson before the police.
One memorable interview with a radio station in Auckland began with the question "Why are the police here so crap?"
You don't get that kind of question from John Humphrys, so I fudged a reply and wrapped it up as quickly as I could. It wasn't long before New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs got in touch. In early 2008 I received an e-mail asking if I could provide any material for the investigation into Shane Atkinson and the Elite Herbal spamming operation?
An affidavit followed asking for as much information as possible. Not surprisingly BBC producer Richard Vadon and I declined to hand over anything that would reveal any sources but after lengthy conversations with lawyers and the BBC's policy advisers, we did give them some material which had already been in the programme.
£150,000 a month
For several months everything went quiet. I assumed my spam adventure was over. Apart that is from the scores of spam e-mails I was still getting every day. Then in the autumn of 2008 two officers from New Zealand's anti-spam unit flew over to visit me. Atkinson was refusing to plead guilty and they wanted to know if I would testify should the case come to court. I agreed, in principle uneasy at the prospect of appearing in the witness box. All of this for a civil case, which at the most would mean Atkinson getting a fine.
Planned raid
E-mails subsequently shown to me by law enforcement sources showed that shortly after my phone call Shane Atkinson had contacted his suppliers in India asking what was going on.
I had already been in touch with them and they also wanted to know why a BBC journalist was asking awkward questions.
New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs had been planning to raid Atkinson's house in early 2008 but following my phone call they were forced to act. They raided Shane's house in December and took away his computers. It meant officers working over the holiday. As one later told me I wasn't their favourite journalist.
To make matters worse, the case led to headlines in New Zealand asking why a British reporter had got to Atkinson before the police.
One memorable interview with a radio station in Auckland began with the question "Why are the police here so crap?"
You don't get that kind of question from John Humphrys, so I fudged a reply and wrapped it up as quickly as I could. It wasn't long before New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs got in touch. In early 2008 I received an e-mail asking if I could provide any material for the investigation into Shane Atkinson and the Elite Herbal spamming operation?
An affidavit followed asking for as much information as possible. Not surprisingly BBC producer Richard Vadon and I declined to hand over anything that would reveal any sources but after lengthy conversations with lawyers and the BBC's policy advisers, we did give them some material which had already been in the programme.
£150,000 a month
For several months everything went quiet. I assumed my spam adventure was over. Apart that is from the scores of spam e-mails I was still getting every day. Then in the autumn of 2008 two officers from New Zealand's anti-spam unit flew over to visit me. Atkinson was refusing to plead guilty and they wanted to know if I would testify should the case come to court. I agreed, in principle uneasy at the prospect of appearing in the witness box. All of this for a civil case, which at the most would mean Atkinson getting a fine.
How I helped nail the 'manhood' spammer - 1
Two years ago Radio 4 reporter Simon Cox wrote in the Magazine about how he had traced the mastermind of an e-mail spamming scam. It signalled the start of a legal case which has just seen the spammer ordered to pay a huge fine. It all started with a bottle of pills. They were the colour of bluebottles and as big as beetles. In December 2007 I ordered the "Manster" pills from the Elite Herbal Website - advertised in an e-mail for their penis enlargement qualities.
I paid $70 for the promise of "new exciting horizons of sensual pleasure". I wanted to find the spammers who plague our inboxes with unwanted e-mails and Elite Herbal was the ideal place to start. As well as Manster the site sold everything from diet pills to herbal Viagra and was part of the world's biggest spamming operation. Finding the men who ran it wasn't going to be easy. I decided to follow the money trail. After various dead ends I managed to track a computer monitoring Elite Herbal orders to an IP address [a unique code ascribed to each computer on the internet] in Christchurch in New Zealand.
I paid $70 for the promise of "new exciting horizons of sensual pleasure". I wanted to find the spammers who plague our inboxes with unwanted e-mails and Elite Herbal was the ideal place to start. As well as Manster the site sold everything from diet pills to herbal Viagra and was part of the world's biggest spamming operation. Finding the men who ran it wasn't going to be easy. I decided to follow the money trail. After various dead ends I managed to track a computer monitoring Elite Herbal orders to an IP address [a unique code ascribed to each computer on the internet] in Christchurch in New Zealand.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)