"When I do not want to say things in real life I often say them here." — Mimi Smartypants
On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog
This showed up on the io9 website today: I’m suffering from cognitive dissonance, because io9’s choice of a graphic to accompany its story about women dominating the Nebulas is the cover of a Nebula-winning book written by a man, Jeff Vandermeer. Granted, the strongest and most well-drawn characters in Annihilation, as in Authority and Acceptance, the other books […]
Yesterday and today the comment spam folders at my three blogs were less than a quarter full — not that they’re of a fixed size, but in comparison to the daily volume of spam the blogs have been getting. Is it too soon to hope the bots have decided to write pwoodford.net off? It’s a sad fact that […]
Two things that distinguish online from print news are links and reader comments. Online news articles include embedded links, making it easy for readers to call up sources and related stories. This is the best thing about online news IMO. The worst thing about online news is reader comments. Print newspapers and magazines filter comments, generally […]
Donna and I leave tomorrow on a road trip to a for-now classified destination. If we don’t have internet access where we’re going, you’ll hear from us later next week, when we get back. Meanwhile, those of you who suffer my rants on Facebook will enjoy a few days of peace. I try not to […]
I think of myself as progressive, at least when it comes to politics and public policy. Socially, I’m an embarrassment to the cause. Social progressives reject certain thoughts as seditious. One such thought is that some people “choose” to be gay. Based on all I know and have observed, sexual orientation is not a choice. We are what we are, gay or straight; most […]
Romney has binders full of women; I have folders full of spam!
A couple of casual observations to start the weekend. ——————– Lately, Rachel Maddow has been asking why Congress isn’t debating President Obama’s military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. It’s surely odd that Congress, which interferes with or tries to block everything else the President does, is allowing him free rein to conduct the […]
I wasn’t thinking about comment spam when I started blogging, but comment spam was thinking about me. After the second time I was up past midnight deleting comment spam, I clamped down by requiring users to register and log in before posting comments. That eliminated comment spam, but it also came close to eliminating real comments, because who wants the hassle […]