"Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend" [Kindle Edition] by Timothy M. Gay. (Amazon Associates earnings to the blog: $0.93). Thank you, all who shop through the Althouse Amazon portal and, by doing so, tacitly speaking to the blogger: Hey, keep up the rough-and-tumble good work!
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Monday, 28 January 2013
Monday, 14 January 2013
Somehow the Google mind has arrived at a more appropriate portrait for me...
... when you search for my name.
For the longest time they had a photo I'd done with an exaggerated expression pretending to have time traveled into the future. It was for a post making fun of the idea that the time stamp on a digital photograph proves when the photo was taken. (I reset the camera's date far into the future.) I'd link to that old post, but I'm afraid of boosting it somehow in the mysterious mind of Google which operates who knows how. I like the new photograph (which is actually kind of old, maybe from 2004 or 2005).
I also like the info about who else people who search for me are also searching for. Is it odd for me to be in that set? I guess not!
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For the longest time they had a photo I'd done with an exaggerated expression pretending to have time traveled into the future. It was for a post making fun of the idea that the time stamp on a digital photograph proves when the photo was taken. (I reset the camera's date far into the future.) I'd link to that old post, but I'm afraid of boosting it somehow in the mysterious mind of Google which operates who knows how. I like the new photograph (which is actually kind of old, maybe from 2004 or 2005).
I also like the info about who else people who search for me are also searching for. Is it odd for me to be in that set? I guess not!
Happy 9th...
... my super brilliant and trusting wife, and thanks for authorizing me to co-blog if only to push the Amazon Associates program. It's fun to see what anonymous readers shop for — from the mundane of toilet paper to the extravagance of high-end cameras, computers, and power tools. And it's very satisfying to track the earnings as a percentage of sales and view it as people's indirect and abiding appreciation of the blog.
When I started reading your blog in 2004, comments were not part of the experience. That was okay — I would occasionally send you a comment in a short email — from just… a guy… in Ohio… who reads and enjoys your blog and wants to encourage you to keep it up. I had dropped many of my subscriptions to newspapers and magazines because I'd begun to get everything I wanted off the internet.
So instead, I'd occasionally send you $10 through PayPal. As encouragement. And appreciation. I appreciated the quirky, ribald, and sometimes complex humor, the freewheeling way you would select topics and themes, your artist's eye, and your frequently unique perspectives on issues and insights into events.
Your bloggy writing style continually invites readers into your fascinating mind to join you in the process which you dive into with such self-confidence, grace, honesty, care, and verve — every day —constant as the loyalty of a good Labrador Retriever. It's infectious.
No Amazon link/push/shill/pimp tonight.
Congratulations to you and your readers on 9 great years. Here's to the next 9!
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When I started reading your blog in 2004, comments were not part of the experience. That was okay — I would occasionally send you a comment in a short email — from just… a guy… in Ohio… who reads and enjoys your blog and wants to encourage you to keep it up. I had dropped many of my subscriptions to newspapers and magazines because I'd begun to get everything I wanted off the internet.
So instead, I'd occasionally send you $10 through PayPal. As encouragement. And appreciation. I appreciated the quirky, ribald, and sometimes complex humor, the freewheeling way you would select topics and themes, your artist's eye, and your frequently unique perspectives on issues and insights into events.
Your bloggy writing style continually invites readers into your fascinating mind to join you in the process which you dive into with such self-confidence, grace, honesty, care, and verve — every day —constant as the loyalty of a good Labrador Retriever. It's infectious.
No Amazon link/push/shill/pimp tonight.
Congratulations to you and your readers on 9 great years. Here's to the next 9!
9th bloggiversary!
It was 9 years ago today that I started this blog.
And it's been 9 years of blogging every single day — weekends, holidays, never a single day without a post written by me, with never any substitute bloggers taking my place, and an average, in the last year, of 13+ posts a day. I hope you like it. But even if you hate it: Thanks for reading.
I can't say any longer that I'm the only one who's ever posted on the front page of this blog, because a few weeks ago, I authorized my brilliant and trustworthy husband Meade to co-blog. So far, he's done posts pushing the Amazon Associates program, which is the primary way this blog produces income. I hope you enjoy even the Amazon intrusions, especially now that they are laced with Meade-charm.
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And it's been 9 years of blogging every single day — weekends, holidays, never a single day without a post written by me, with never any substitute bloggers taking my place, and an average, in the last year, of 13+ posts a day. I hope you like it. But even if you hate it: Thanks for reading.
I can't say any longer that I'm the only one who's ever posted on the front page of this blog, because a few weeks ago, I authorized my brilliant and trustworthy husband Meade to co-blog. So far, he's done posts pushing the Amazon Associates program, which is the primary way this blog produces income. I hope you enjoy even the Amazon intrusions, especially now that they are laced with Meade-charm.
Sunday, 13 January 2013
"I was reckless writing about recklessness."
I say, noting that I got quoted over at Instapundit with a missing "it's" apostrophe: "he’s entirely reckless about what these laws would really mean to ordinary people, and its a recklessness that thrives in the mind of someone who...."
"Oh! It's blogging," says Meade. "It's the internet. Think how many times you've gotten it right."
"And it's more embarrassing to get the apostrophe wrong the other way," I soothe myself, referring to putting the apostrophe in "its" when it's supposed to be out.
"It's embarrassing to be embarrassed," Meade asserts aphoristically.
"But I was criticizing recklessness at the very point when I was reckless," I brood nonetheless. "It's like the way whenever you mock a misspelling, you end up misspelling something."
I decide to write this post, which — speaking of blogging — is the antidote to embarrassment.
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"Oh! It's blogging," says Meade. "It's the internet. Think how many times you've gotten it right."
"And it's more embarrassing to get the apostrophe wrong the other way," I soothe myself, referring to putting the apostrophe in "its" when it's supposed to be out.
"It's embarrassing to be embarrassed," Meade asserts aphoristically.
"But I was criticizing recklessness at the very point when I was reckless," I brood nonetheless. "It's like the way whenever you mock a misspelling, you end up misspelling something."
I decide to write this post, which — speaking of blogging — is the antidote to embarrassment.
***
On the rooftops they dance
Valentino-type tangos
While the makeup man’s hands
Shut the eyes of the dead
Not to embarrass anyone
The sky is embarrassed
And I must be gone
Thursday, 3 January 2013
Andrew Sullivan reaffirms the value of independent blogging.
After years of selling his traffic-pulling work to corporate enterprises — first The Atlantic and then The Daily Beast — announcing that he's going independent again, he acknowledges what really matters about blogging:
And I wonder if Althouse should set up a TinyPass business model like that too. What if I cleared out all the advertising and switched to a system like that?
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When I first stumbled into blogging over 12 years ago, it was for two reasons: curiosity and freedom. I was curious about the potential for writing in this new medium; and for the first time, I felt total freedom as a writer. On my little blog, I was beholden to no one but my readers. I had no editor to please, no advertiser to woo, no publisher to work for, no colleagues to manage....Is he going independent again to reconnect with these essentials? It's really more about the endless, frustrating search for a workable business model. I guess he wasn't getting enough from big media, in relation to what he gave. And yet, what is the alternative? Making even less? The new experiment is to make his blog into a subscription site. No ads. Sullivan reminds readers of the old adage: "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product being sold." He wants us to pay $19.99 a year. I don't know what his traffic is, but if my readers did that, I'd make $700,000 a year. He has many more readers, but also 7 employees to pay. He's not going to get all his existing readers to fork over $20, and putting up a wall will affect his traffic. But what does traffic matter if you're not selling the "product" of readers' eyes to advertisers? It matters in the way stated above, reaffirming the essentials of blogging.
For the first time in human history, a writer - or group of writers and editors - can instantly reach readers - even hundreds of thousands of readers across the planet - with no intermediary at all.
And they can reach back....
Hence the purest, simplest model for online journalism: you, us, and a meter. Period. No corporate ownership, no advertising demands, no pressure for pageviews ... just a concept designed to make your reading experience as good as possible, and to lead us not into temptation.But of course, the new temptation is whatever is needed to keep that subscription money flowing in. And no one has ever figured out what that is. And there's an escape for tight-fisted readers: You don't actually have to pay $20. You can pay whatever you want. Sullivan argues that you should want the writers you read to make money. They deserve to be paid for their work, and they work hard. I agree. And I must say that I like the mechanism he's using: TinyPass.
The point of doing this as simply and as purely as possible is precisely to forge a path other smaller blogs and sites can follow. We believe in a bottom-up Internet, which allows a thousand flowers to bloom, rather than a corporate-dominated web where the promise of a free space becomes co-opted by large and powerful institutions and intrusive advertising algorithms. We want to help build a new media environment that is not solely about advertising or profit above everything, but that is dedicated first to content and quality.Even though I think Sullivan wants to grow his project into big media, I would love to see this model work. I especially like the way it's set up:
Our particular version will be a meter that will be counted every time you hit a "Read on" button to expand or contract a lengthy post. You'll have a limited number of free read-ons a month, before we hit you up for $19.99. Everything else on the Dish will remain free. No link from another blog to us will ever be counted for the meter - so no blogger or writer need ever worry that a link to us will push their readers into a paywall. It won't. Ever. There is no paywall. Just a freemium-based meter. We've tried to maximize what's freely available, while monetizing those parts of the Dish where true Dishheads reside.That's really well thought out. I have no idea if he'll make enough to sustain a 7-person staff, but I wish him luck.
And I wonder if Althouse should set up a TinyPass business model like that too. What if I cleared out all the advertising and switched to a system like that?
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
The Clinton clot plot thickens... or thins... with anti-coagulants.
So we were just talking about the oddities of the Clinton clot story. We noted that no sooner was it said that Hillary Clinton would testify, as Secretary of State, on the Benghazi attack, than there came an announcement that Hillary Clinton had entered the hospital with a blood clot. The coincidence raised suspicions of an effort to engineer an evasion of this testimony.
And we weren't told where the clot was, which is a crucial bit of information when assessing how serious this health scare is. Clinton had recently suffered a head injury, which makes one think the new problem would also be located in the head, but she'd also had a blood clot in her leg years ago, which makes that alternative seem plausible. If the clot were in the leg, withholding that information suggests a strategic choice to incline the public to view the problem as more serious than it really was.
Later, Clinton's doctors released a statement saying that the clot was in a vein inside her skull, and that she's "making excellent progress" and likely to "make a full recovery." The Washington Post repeats the information that she's being treated with anticoagulants. You may remember that the analysis I discussed at that first link contained the assertion that "anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain." But that WaPo story says: "The conventional treatment is an anticoagulant drug for at least six months."
I know some of my readers are doctors. Can you help us out with that inconsistency about the anticoagulants? [ADDED: Here's what Dr. Pogo says. And here's some useful detail. I think the crucial distinction is whether the clot is in the brain or in the space between the brain and the skull.]
And, by the way, I've gotten some pushback in email and on the web, saying that it was "shameful" and "appalling" for me to tie Clinton's health problems to a possible intent to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Let me tell you that a core motivation to my blogging — and I've been going at this for 9 years now — is to stand tough against people who try to cut off debate with this kind of shaming. So I'm glad that this performance of outrage was directed at me. I know it when I see it, and it fires me up. You want silence? You want backing down? You want me not to dare say a thing like that? That's how you want to control political debate in the United States? Thanks for reminding me once again how deeply I hate that and for giving me an (easy) opportunity to model courage for the more timid people out there who are cowed by the fear of shaming.
ADDED: Here's something I would dearly love to do with this blog: I want to make it so that emotive, intimidating outrage like that backfires. I want people to learn that they can't get away with empty assertions like "I am aghast" or "You are despicable." You have to give reasons for what you think. Even if you really feel those feelings. And, of course, many of these hack writers don't actually feel the feelings they scribble about. They just don't want to have to talk about the actual issue. They want to make it something that everyone feels they'd better not talk about. But that should be a loud signal: We need to talk about it!
And let's get back to basics: What we need to talk about is Benghazi.
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And we weren't told where the clot was, which is a crucial bit of information when assessing how serious this health scare is. Clinton had recently suffered a head injury, which makes one think the new problem would also be located in the head, but she'd also had a blood clot in her leg years ago, which makes that alternative seem plausible. If the clot were in the leg, withholding that information suggests a strategic choice to incline the public to view the problem as more serious than it really was.
Later, Clinton's doctors released a statement saying that the clot was in a vein inside her skull, and that she's "making excellent progress" and likely to "make a full recovery." The Washington Post repeats the information that she's being treated with anticoagulants. You may remember that the analysis I discussed at that first link contained the assertion that "anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain." But that WaPo story says: "The conventional treatment is an anticoagulant drug for at least six months."
I know some of my readers are doctors. Can you help us out with that inconsistency about the anticoagulants? [ADDED: Here's what Dr. Pogo says. And here's some useful detail. I think the crucial distinction is whether the clot is in the brain or in the space between the brain and the skull.]
And, by the way, I've gotten some pushback in email and on the web, saying that it was "shameful" and "appalling" for me to tie Clinton's health problems to a possible intent to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Let me tell you that a core motivation to my blogging — and I've been going at this for 9 years now — is to stand tough against people who try to cut off debate with this kind of shaming. So I'm glad that this performance of outrage was directed at me. I know it when I see it, and it fires me up. You want silence? You want backing down? You want me not to dare say a thing like that? That's how you want to control political debate in the United States? Thanks for reminding me once again how deeply I hate that and for giving me an (easy) opportunity to model courage for the more timid people out there who are cowed by the fear of shaming.
ADDED: Here's something I would dearly love to do with this blog: I want to make it so that emotive, intimidating outrage like that backfires. I want people to learn that they can't get away with empty assertions like "I am aghast" or "You are despicable." You have to give reasons for what you think. Even if you really feel those feelings. And, of course, many of these hack writers don't actually feel the feelings they scribble about. They just don't want to have to talk about the actual issue. They want to make it something that everyone feels they'd better not talk about. But that should be a loud signal: We need to talk about it!
And let's get back to basics: What we need to talk about is Benghazi.
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