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The Pequod
Dr Alistair Brown | Associate lecturer in English Literature; researching video games and literature

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Through exploring the psychopathology of Capgras syndrome, in which a patient mistakes a loved one for an imposter, The Echo Maker offers a sustained meditation on the ways in which we project our own problems onto other people. As a reflection on the mysteries of consciousness, the novel offers some interesting if not especially new insights into the fuzzy boundaries between scientific and literary interpretations of the mind. Read more


Pequod: The Porno

Sunday, August 12, 2007

I spend quite a lot of time working on this site, writing poems and essays, blogging, and taking what I hope to be good photographs. So it was slightly disapointing to discover through Statcounter that the sudden burst of visitors to my Photoblog was due not to its aesthetic quality but a sexual one; they were arriving there having Googled for "Britney Spears Skirt Flash." Now celebrity voyeurism is not a form of photography I have ever tried (enviously, I don't have a long enough lens), so I had no idea why hopeful voyeurs might be visiting my site. Those who were, though, were going to be disappointed. The landing page for that search query: a picture of a Land Rover.

I have since discovered that the new version of Pixelpost (1.6) is slightly more susceptible to spamming, and comment spam with certain sexual keywords was being sent to the photoblog, and picked up by Google's cache before the moderation filter kicked in. I was in two minds about whether to sort out the problem, though. After all, and evidencing the effectiveness both of spam and the use of sex to sell online, I received more visits through this than any one other method of search engine optimisation. Besides, I would be interested to know whether those sexual browsers showed any interest in the other content of the site. A skirt flash, with an essay on deconstruction on the side, sir? Of course, you will appreciate that it is purely in the interests of academic research (in which I become reciprocally a voyeur of my visitors) that I have decided to label this blog post "Britney Spears skirt flash hot xxx," as well as its more conventional categories.

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Posted by Alistair at 10:48 am

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