Fascinating Misuse of Science: Fluoroscopes

It seems that every generation has its stories of technology and science misused for corporate interest in what probably seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time. My parents, for example, grew up in the late 1940s and 50s, and fondly remember going down to the local shoe store and being able to have the salesman stand them in front of a large wooden device that would use x-rays to visibly ensure a proper fit of their new shoes.

FluoroscopeAccording to orau.org, shoe-fitting fluoroscopes came onto the scene sometime around 1924 with the first unit built by by Milwaukee resident Clarence Karrer, who’s father sold medical equipment that included x-ray devices.

Safety wasn’t always the first concern with these devices. According to the Radiological Society of North America, their main concern during the very early years of use was that the use of the technology as a shoe-fitting device “lowered the dignity of the profession of radiology.”

As time progressed, however, safety concerns grew. Most machines were cheaply made, often out of alignment, and provided only a thin aluminum shield between the x-ray tube and your feet. By the 1950s, many medical organizations warned about the devices and demanded that only trained and licensed professionals be allowed to operate them and by the 1960s most states had moved to ban the devices altogether.

UPDATE: Fighting Blog Spam

Tom Raftery actually has a more recent entry up than the one I linked to previously.

In this updated comment he notes that he’s been able to drop the use of the Spam Karma plugin and rely strictly on a custom .htaccess file which he provides instructions for and a link to, a list of additional words for your WP blacklist and Dr. Dave’s Referrer Karma.

The advantage to this approach is that on top of the increase in site performance due to the elimination that the comment processing Spam Karma was responsible for, you’re blocking access to spammers much earlier in their access to your site.

Fighting Blog Spam at the Server Level

Tom Raftery has an interesting blog entry on how use your web server’s .htaccess configuration file to help reduce the amount of comment and referrer spam your WordPress journal receives.

While Tom uses the excellent WordPress plugin Spam Karma to protect his page and provide information to assist in his spam monitoring, his advice on how to use your server’s own filtering features will work with most web sites, regardless of content.

The developer of Spam Karma also has another tool called Ref Karma that works along similar lines and can be used to protect most websites with a spot of PHP scripting.

None of the advice above is overly complicated, but does involve some experience with scripting and server configuration, so be prepared to do a little background reading if this is new to you.