April 29, 2007

Did Google Change Its Formula?

My search traffic has been up for weeks, but now it's increasing even more. Along with a handful of other bloggers, I'm noticing an overall increase, and an increase in traffic from Google images as well.

Anyone know what gives?

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Re-Reading David Linden's Book.

You should, too.

Fortunately, he's gotten rid of the dreadful British/scientific style punctuation the manuscript sported. Or, rather, his copyeditor has.

I hadn't remembered quite so much science in the first chapter, but a bit of that is to be expected, and I know there's a lot of juicy stuff about sex later on. The volume could, however, use more dialogue. Or perhaps a dismembered corpse: you can never go wrong with dead bodies.

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April 25, 2007

I'm Writing Tonight.

I'm polishing chapter 2 of book 2 to present at writer's group tomorrow night. And I have to put some time in for a client tomorrow, so the work has to be done now—which is really my least favorite word.

Go read Hackbarth's meditation on the difference between mental illness and evil as it relates to Seung Hui Cho.

Or check out Goldstein's thoughts on why Rosie O'Donnell makes Democrats nervous, at the same time they just can't take their eyes off of her.

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April 24, 2007

Just in the Nick of Time!

***Your Email Address Have Won*** Inbox
Lotteria Lotto Management

Sir/Madam,

You have been selected as victorious via your email address. Click here to
see how much you have won:http://claiming.rules.i8.com/index.html or paste
it in your browser.This must be claimed not later than the 9th of May 2007 .
You must read the rules and understand them before responding.
We are required to disburse the award to the correct recipient, but we must
verify that you are the owner of the selected email address before we can
send this money to you.

Contact us with reference number: OBM/AERAL/2007.

Contact person: Enrico Mancini
claimmancini@libero.it

Lotteria Italia
Venezia.

It looks like my ship has finally come in.

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April 23, 2007

I Don't Know About This Quiz.

It kept asking me either/or questions. Some of them were obvious: after all, of course geometry is better than algebra, and of course it's better to navigate via intuition than to actually get out a map (cheater, cheater!).

But "do I have my best ideas sitting up, or lying down?" Well, which kinds of ideas, for crying out loud? I do editing and expository writing sitting up; I do better fiction writing when I'm lying down (preferably with my eyes closed, so I can't read what I write as I go along).

It was ultimately a rather stupid test: its designers wanted to conflate my intellect with my personality. They are, of course, different things.




You Are 40% Left Brained, 60% Right Brained



The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning.

Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others.

If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic.

Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet.



The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility.

Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way.

If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art.

Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Via Virginia Postrel, who is apparently way more logical than I.

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April 17, 2007

Who Are You Calling Weird?

At least I don't sit around making up quizzes that compare people to one of the five digits on a human hand, Mr. Composer-of-Blogthings!

I just, um. I just print the results:




You Are a Pinky



You are fiercely independent, and possibly downright weird.

A great communicator, you can get along with almost anyone.

You are kind and sympathetic. You support all your friends - and love them for who they are.



You get along well with: The Ring Finger



Stay away from: The Thumb

Via Caltechgirl.

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Ace on the Duke Prosecutorial Misconduct Case

He's especially amused by the allegation that Magnum was in mid-air when she was assaulted; it's apparently among the many very different accounts she gave of the "rape":

Absent the discovery of a complex canteliever-and-pulley-sexual-flying-harness in the bathroom—a discovery I'm quite sure Mike Nifong would have revealed—we're to believe that Crystal Gail Mangum was raped while floating around like Baron Harkonnen hopped up on Bene Gesserit meth?

Maybe she just got confused. Maybe it wasn't the Duke lacrosse team at all, but the notoriously badly-behaved Duke Acrobatic Sexual Assault & Levitating Synchronized Sodomy squad.

I've had run-ins with those guys. And let me tell you, once they've psychokinetically raised you in the air, they go at you with their meat-bats as if you were a friggin' pinata.

Honestly, I don't know how the hell those guys still manage to collect $5000 a year in student fees. I don't care how many Meals On Wheels fundraisers they hold, I'm just tired of being gang-raped by sodomaniacal Sith masters of white skin privilege.

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April 13, 2007

Hm. Job-Hunting Via One's Blog.

I don't know if I've really exploited this angle—at least, not directly. Every once in a while I do remind the world that I am G-d's gift to All Matters Editorial, and no slouch in print/electronic production, either. And, yes: I spent years designing print ads, so I have a pretty good eye.

But I'm not sure my market as a freelance copyeditor is the same segment as those who follow my blog.

Although the "getting work via one's blog" tactic worked for Laurence and any number of others, I prefer to skip the middleman and demand money outright from my readers. This seems to work the best.

Of course, maybe there's someone out there looking for a new-media-savvy, whip-smart editor who happens to be a potty mouth on her personal blog. That'll work.

Via Sean.

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April 11, 2007

Another Completely Fictional Piece of Dialogue

"I got a new phone."

"So I read; you didn't really get the one you linked, though—did you?"

"What's wrong with the one I linked?"

"Well, it has flowers on it."

"Those aren't flowers; they are cherry blossom tattoos. Different thing entirely. The fact that they're tattoos makes them tuff."

"Joy, it's pink."

"More like a magenta color, really. It matches my iPod."

"Why didn't you just get a Hello Kitty phone?"

"Because I'm holding out for a Hello Kitty car, you woman-hater."

Misogyny in the blogosphere rears its ugly head once more.

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April 10, 2007

Yep. Chicks Do Rule.

Iowahawk has some cool car porn up: very hard-core stuff.

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And Yet More on the Proposed Code of Conduct:

Frank J rolls his own.

Via Cal Tech Girl

(That was a Google-bomb, BTW: I don't like "CalTech Girl." I want it to be "Cal Tech Girl." Who cares how she actually wants it to appear?—she's a scientist, and she should leave these delicate issues to a competent editor. Like, um . . . me.

From now on, please link her as Cal Tech Girl. Cal Tech should be two words.)

UPDATE: I've been vetoed! Apparently, Pasadena houses the California Institute of technology. Who knew?

But someone ought to tell the CS Department, nicht?

I have been given special dispensation to use "Dudette from the Land of the Nerds," but it's small consolation, really.

Apparently, things are almost as bad at the website for the Massachusetts Institute of technology, since in display type they use "mit," and in plain text it's MIT. Of course, at no point is it styled "MIt," which would be the equivalent of "Caltech."

Not that I'm an embittered English major who never gets her way, and has never truly accepted that it's The New York Times, but Los Angeles Times (no article required). Or why I once worked (I kid you not) at Hunting Magazine. (Why the capital "M," if the word Magazine isn't part of the name?)

Goodnight; I'm off to consume huge quantities of gin.

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Nope.

The proposed "Blogger's Code of Conduct" seems too restrictive to me.

I like some of my anonymous commenters.

I reserve the right to engage trolls if I feel like it.

I will, at my whim, delete any comments that don't seem to further discussion in some way.

In four years of blogging I've never really had a nice blog war, but I hear they are really good for traffic, and I reserve the right to engage in one should the spirit strike. I won't agree to contact people privately, or submit to mediation, though I've certainly done the former, and I may well accept the latter—should the situation warrant it.

In short, my policies boil down to this: I consider WWJD? (That is, What Would Joy Do?) Then I do it.

H/t: Wendy.

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April 09, 2007

News Flash: People Get Nasty on the Blogosphere!

And sometimes women are equated with their genitalia! (Men are, too, but somehow female genitalia is just . . . nastier than male genitalia. Because no one is supposed to talk about ours, for some reason. Because it is nasty: lather, rinse, repeat.)

Okay, sorry. But I'm starting to weary of the Cyber-Stalking/Online Sexism/Kathy Sierra "issue."

Let's lay it on the line, here:

1) Mary Katherine Ham is perfectly correct in the CNN segment: conservative women endure more verbal abuse than liberal women. And MK's performance here was a tour de force.

It's easy to see why center-right women get singled out for abuse: After all, a) sometimes conservatives are inhibited by religious convictions, so they do pull their punches sometimes; and b) there is a species of self-evidently unsexist person on the left [all women, plus men who go to pro-choice rallies] who because of her/his credentials has license to throw otherwise sexist language around as much as he/she wants.

2) As everyone with opposable thumbs/forefingers has noticed, anonymity tends to loosen people's inhibitions, and thereby fosters assholism of every variety.

However:

3) Complaining about verbal abuse of female bloggers is the online equivalent of bemoaning the fact that women are the victims of so many serial killings. Guess what? Some men really, really hate women. That's unlikely to change—at least, not in the next few weeks. Even if I hold my breath.

I feel sorry for the haters: they had mean mommies.

4) At the end of the day, I don't care.

If it's threatening, report it. If it isn't, ignore it or delete it. As RightGirl remarked, "as much as I sympathize with her, it seems to me that all Kathy Sierra has succeeded in doing is making us all out to be a bunch of weak wallflowers."

There is something to be said for that point of view. Sticks, stone, and .45 Government Models will break my bones, but calling me a whore is just uncreative. Frankly, it makes you look bad, Bro.


UPDATE: Hackbarth has a mini-roundup on the proposed "Blogospheric Code of Conduct."

I just can't see that we need such a thing, but if someone want to try to herd cats, it should be interesting to watch. Try opening a can of tuna.

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April 05, 2007

Right-Wing Bloggers Are Well-Funded?

Um. Are they talking about that time The Washington Times gave me a beer voucher?

Or does it have to do with the fact that my readers send me socks and martini shakers?

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April 04, 2007

On Internet Stalkers

Oh, nice. I missed TC Leather Penguin's remark on this RightGirl post:

Feh. When I get death threats (and I've gotten a bunch of them), I reply with my home address at the top of the answer and tell the various mooks "Come on over. If you get past the dog then we'll see if you can handle me."

Because I'm too old and beat up to give a rat's ass about that brand of vermin.

Almost to a one, Internet "thugs" are fairies who wouldn't know what to do if you told them how to pull a trigger.

Not a bad point: I have a 30-round clip for my Glock (perfectly legal; I bought it pre-ban). And I spook easily, which acquaintances of mine will be quite happy to explain to the jury. You know how high-strung short girls can be.

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Fine As Far As It Goes . . .

but there truly are people who use obesity to commit slow suicide.

Yet I'm happy for Joy; she seems like a hell of a girl.


H/t: the Cotillion girls.

UPDATE: CTG on the "fat" issue.

Again, it's complicated for me. I theorize that my mother has made a point of being heavy in order to keep men away from her in her later years. (She is intrinsically a very attractive woman.) Mostly, her strong body is able to handle the consequences, and the liver problems, diabetes and high blood pressure are treatable with the right medications. She's 70 now, and will be around for a good long time.

My aunt, however, is significantly heavier, and more addicted to carbs. Not to mention the fact that she is extraordinarily inactive—and, until recently, she smoked. Her greater obesity has led to a greater level of diabetes. Despite her being four years my mother's junior, I know I will lose her before I lose my mother.

I had the following exchange with my mom a few years ago:

Me: "My friend Dean Esmay says that many obese people don't actually overeat."

My mom: "Oh. How interesting. But I do."

At which point she proceeded to take another bite of the huge salad she was eating. (Because my mother eats compulsively, she tries to only keep healthful foods in the house. This is the main reason she won't stay at my aunt's place any more: the aunt keeps too many sugary and carby treats around, and these trigger binging on icky food.)

Food and obesity are linked, and in many cases there is a behavioral component. The problem is that you don't know from looking at a person whether that's the case. And you don't know what someone's genetic predisposition is from that single, judgemental glance.

It can, indeed, be a moral problem: there are certainly fat gluttons. But the biochemistry is complex, and there are several conditions that make people look "fat." And even in the case of the true pedal-to-the-metal food addict, there are worse things they could be binging on. (Drinking and driving, anyone?)

So this is an individual problem, with many solutions. One of which is societal acceptance of the fact that some people are naturally heavy.

UPDATE 2: Dean Esmay posts the Joy Nash video, and comments:

It's a metabolic issue, not a character issue.

By the way, the majority of Americans are overweight, and a third are medically obese. I guess we're just all slobs with character flaws, eh?

We're taking over. Give us your pizza or we'll destroy you.

I remember a discussion at my writer's workshop one day, when a skinny woman wrote about the temptation to judge when she saw an overweight woman ordering a salad at a restaurant.

Several of us were curious about why she would be tempted to condemn the ordering of a salad, of all things. "Um, even if you accept the premise that it's someone else's business what someone else is eating . . . what's to judge about the salad?" I enquired.

"Well, the thought would be 'oh, who does she think she's fooling?'" she responded.

I sort of blinked, and realized that anti-fat bigotry is at astonishing levels in some circles. If we intend to judge the overweight for ordering a steak and a baked potato, and we intend to judge them for ordering a salad, is there any choice they could make that would not incur presumption from those at surrounding tables? Answer: hell, no.

Yeah. Plenty of Americans eat too much. But improve your own damn health regimen: not someone else's.

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April 01, 2007

New Evidence Surfaces

That it isn't a good idea to drink and P-Shop.

SeanModified.jpg

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