I just got an email purporting to be from PayPal, titled “Confirm Your Information!”. Seeing as I am not a PayPal customer, I became immediately suspicious. Sure enough, the link on Step 1 (“Follow this link”) was to a dotted web address (in this case, http://218.62.43.30/verify.html).

Following the link takes you to a webpage with the PayPal logo and layout but the webpage is NOT secure (no little lock in the bottom left of the browser window, nor does the link begin with “https:”) and the page wants both personal and Bank Acocunt information.

I’ve reported the fraud to the people at Paypal but I just hope that no one who is less security conscious gets taken in. And I hope the Paypal people get the skunk.

On the other hand, sooner or later these fraudsters are going to get sufficiently sophisticated that I won’t be able to tell the difference (except, of course, I don’t *have* a Paypal account). Sigh.

I just wanted to warn you all.

These are views from near the dawn of time. What an amazing achievement.

Water on Mars, views from the earliest time, planets circling other suns — it seems like the challenge is being clearly presented to us: do we go or do we stay?

Do we clean up our act and keep our planet and fulfill the challenge that we get every time we look up at night to a clear sky full of stars — to go out there and see what we can, learn all we can.

Just when I think we’re going to throw it all away, something like these pictures come along or signs of water on Mars come along to provide me with new hope.