To follow-up on a food-related, earlier topic:
The story about the bakery in Colebrook, NH makes The New York Times. Remember, Jim beat the Times! Congrats to the bakery co-owner who finally got her visa straightened out (and to Jim and his friends who won't lose an interesting local business).
CharlesP - But isn't one difference with Amazon now vs. 10 years ago is that Amazon site visitors have more ways to influence rankings and the like? In the past, you had to buy books or write reviews. Now, can't a mob of users decide that something is objectionable, if enough people mark it that way?
The problem with Amazon's responses to this could be a left-hand/right-hand problem. It's a pretty big company after all.
While my first thought is to "blame Amazon," my second thought (now that I've had some time to sleep on it) is to wonder if either customers could be exploiting a weakness in Amazon's book rank/book search to screw with the "adult" content or if there are some rogue programmers at Amazon, who, like the pharmacists who "morally refuse" to sell you Plan B whacked the software themselves.
As a person who's spent lots of money at Amazon during the years, I sent Amazon a letter threatening to boycott, and have been getting semi-apologetic E-mail from an Amazonbot.
And if the first blood pressure medicine doesn't work, keep trying different ones until you find one that does. There are many kinds to try.
Great article, Jim!
It's quite amazing that some people survive much worse than what seems to have happened to Natasha Richardson. A few years back, the QB of the Pittsburgh Steelers was riding his motorcycle without a helmet and went headfirst into the car he crashed into. He's still playing football and led his team to a Superbowl victory this year.
Happy Anniversary!
We got married a mere three days before an important fannish event - the premiere of Star Wars. And we spent part of our honeymoon watching the movie, then watching Gardner Dozois do wookiee imitations at Disclave (when we weren't busy...on, never mind).
Congrats on completing your civic duty.
Sorry so much else has been tough for you lately. Being in your 50s isn't always all that bad!
Feel better!
We've had our traditionally British Christmas dinner (roast beef, roasted potatoes, and Yorkshire pudding - but on the Eve) and are now watching Hogswatch. Someday, we'll have to be in England over Christmas to see if we do anything differently.
It's great to hear that there we'll have science decisions based on facts again...
One thing that looks toxic but isn't - Vaseline. While my daughter was a master at putting anything in her mouth until she was about three, we managed to keep her away from poisons. Somehow. Then, there was the time she climbed up a bureau and threw herself onto a high window-ledge where we'd put babywipes and Vaseline. She wandered out into the living room a few minutes later, her mouth covered with Vaseline. I called poison control (expecting we'd have to take her somewhere).
"Is she breathing?"
"Yes."
"Just wipe out her mouth. Vaseline can suffocate, but it isn't poisonous."
Good to know!
I'm glad syrup of Ipecac is no longer recommended. I remember my mother had some on hand and it smelled dreadful.
I think Google is much less full of stupid than its predecessor search engines.
I worked for Lycos for nearly five months in early 1996 when they were still based in Pittsburgh. A computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon came up with Lycos, and it was practically the first Web search engine in the mid-90s. It was then sold to a company that was basically marketing company.
This company had no clue about the Internet. Nada. It was really pretty appalling.
At times, they did not update the Lycos search catalog for two solid months. I remember that in particular because I was the person answering the "letters to the Webmaster" E-mail. As you might exepect, many people asked us why their sites were not listed. That was why. Not that I could say that. I could only give them generalities along the lines of "We will be updating the catalog soon." Gaak.
I made a bunch of proposals about things they should be doing. One of the Lycos guys (a Pittsburgh-based programmer) and I often made the exact same proposals. Two things we both pushed them on were archiving and offering a USENET groups interface and archiving things like CNN, AP et.c. (as ClariNET was doing on the Internet in those days). Lycos ignored every suggestion we made. I quit in utter disgust a few months later.
Google pretty much implemented every suggestion we ever made to Lycos (and a whole lot more).
Google's USENET archive in no way complete. The further back you go, the lower percentage of USENET postings they have. That's not their "fault" - USENET archives from 20+ years ago were erratic to put it mildly. And Google's only been existence a little over ten years.
I generally like Google's USENET interface, but as USENET was pretty much overwhelmed by trolls years ago, I don't follow many newsgroups these days.
I don't have a problem with Google's cookies as I use Google quite a bit. The only feature I pretty much avoid is gmail. I have a gmail account but it's only there to collect USENET spam.
Nicole, in fairness, there weren't that many booers at McCain's concession speech. He had a few thousand people in the crowd and probably only a couple of hundred booers. But, they were loud.
Ken Brown, I agree.
199 - Edward, I didn't interpret it that way.
Bruce, oh yeah. It really looks like the voters decided this one.
I apologize for my stuttering here. Sorry.
I think McCain is giving a good concession speech.
CNN Projects Obama president!!!!!!
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 9 |
| 2008 | 40 |
| 2007 | 12 |
Total: 61 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Laurie D. T. Mann:
Show all comments by Laurie D. T. Mann.