ROBUST discussion

Patricia wrote: "For those who like character studies:

http://www.toledoblade.com/Food/2011/..."

Pretty good writing too. Notice how the story spirals round and round the backbone. There's suspense and thrills in everything, including in a story about a greengrocer that took 85 years to play out.

As I read it, I kept seeing movie material.

I like that!

I finally talked my Mom into writing her life story.

Should be interesting.

That was indeed a great character study, Patricia, and yes, a story that would lend itself well to a movie.

Yeah for your mom, Kat!

From Twitter today: http://kimaleksander.com/blog/

Interesting perspective...

From my cycling newsgroup, rec.bicycles.tech, full of engineers and athletes, not the most sensitive types:

DirtRoadie to Frank Krygowski:

"Frank, there is a concept often invoked in informed discussion call an 'analog'. It requires some dexterity of thought and comparison of experiences that are not literally the same. It is a shame that you are unable to embrace it, but it does require understanding beyond your typical fifth grade level black-and-white perspective."

Andre Jute wrote: "From my cycling newsgroup, rec.bicycles.tech, full of engineers and athletes, not the most sensitive types:

DirtRoadie to Frank Krygowski:

"Frank, there is a concept often invoked in informed dis..."


Ouch...that's a good zinger...

Ouch! Now that is how you tell someone off.

Found on Twitter and re-tweeted:

Check out Four years into the ebook revolution: things we know and things we don’t know @ http://bit.ly/vnLKtD

That was interesting.

Did you see this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/bus...

They are bundling news articles into e-books and selling them for $3.99.

Some publishers are trying a different approach — one that requires even fewer reporting and writing resources. Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, for example, have created their own e-books by bundling together previously published works surrounding a major news event.

Cool, eh?

K.A., the whole thing is interesting ~ and cool!

The thing I found most intriguing from the link I posted was this:

'We know... We don’t know what the loss of brick store merchandising will mean to the ability of publishers and authors to introduce new talent to readers, or even just to introduce a new work by established talent.'

Think of a non-book, get rich. It isn't even a novel idea, just a novel application of new technology.

What I find most interesting in that lawyer's account is the link he draws between acceptable ebook prices and established paperback prices. If you look back over the archive on ROBUST and the Kindleboards, you'll see I've been making that argument for a long time.

What disturbs me and should disturb you is what he says next, about a problem arising when there is no longer massive numbers of paperbacks to establish the price and give it respectability. What happens then to "acceptable" e-book pricing?

Amazon, and the indie movement, has, I fear, shot everyone in the foot.

Been saying the same thing myself for over a year, Andre...

Considering that I was at the point of giving everything away for free, my expectations are reasonably low. lol.

[About someone who left the newsgroup rec.bicycles.tech, to the inevitable chorus of "Good riddance."]

Iowa already has more pigs than people.
Tom is a critical denominator component!

Andrew Muzi
(owner of the Yellow Jersey bicycle store in Jeremy and Bethany's hometown of Madison, WI)

I will take that under advisement in regards to any future bicycle purchases. :)

Amos wrote: "Considering that I was at the point of giving everything away for free, my expectations are reasonably low. lol."

YIKES! Everytime some one talks about dropping prices it gives me the heebie-geebies.

I raised prices today. Didn't get any more sales so screw it.

Saw this today and thought of y'all, bein' as how we love our snakes and deer:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/giant-rogue-...

Used to keep a luislang, an African boa constrictor. It would eat a goat or a servant, and then sleep for months. Not a pet with whom you could have a deeply meaningful relationship, unless you woke up when it was awake and it was licking you as preparation for swallowing you. You can see why I came to prefer bonobo and other chimpanzee.

I'd rather eat the snake thanks! Reminds me of what happened to us one Christmas. My inlaws had gone to their holiday home along the coast, it was just my husband and I at our house. They asked us to collect something from theirs that they had forgotten before driving through to join them. I waited in the car while my husband went into their home. When he came out, he happened to glance up at the massive tree at their front door. There, amongst the green green leaves, hung a lovely green green snake. A boomslang (tree snake) highly poisonous, the venom contains an anti clotting agent so if you are bitten and do not receive help in time, you could bleed out. He walked back inside and contacted the local police department who called the fire department who sent out their snake expert. It was the day before Christmas. We were late getting to my inlaws.

A boomslang is just about the most elegant snake you can imagine, and quite as lethal as it is goodlooking.

Sigh, nothing so exotic ever happens to me...

Come live in Africa Sharon. There's always something going on...

"Go to Africa, young man. You will not regret it. If you live."
-- (with apologies to) Mark Twain

One day I shall visit. And bring along a guide to keep me away from all things lethal...

My friend Lee Sinclair started a new thread on Amazon, listing free Kindle books on writing. Check it out:

http://amzn.to/rPxU3U

ps. Lee herself writes humour, and very well, too. I loved her Book of Blognots, Not Blogs, very original.

Most times I make a reasoned decision but sometimes it could be said that I tergiversate, sigh...

http://bit.ly/v9O6wI

Duh. I knowed that. But I feared I would sound like an insufferable prig if I used it...

A little something to take our minds off whatever we are working at:

http://youtu.be/_XQIxr4gRQM

Smart, concise, entertaining and without the usual end-of-the-world hyperbole...

Sharon wrote: "A little something to take our minds off whatever we are working at:

http://youtu.be/_XQIxr4gRQM

Smart, concise, entertaining and without the usual end-of-the-world hyperbole..."

Tres kewl, Sharon.

Sharon wrote: "A little something to take our minds off whatever we are working at:

http://youtu.be/_XQIxr4gRQM

Smart, concise, entertaining and without the usual end-of-the-world hyperbole..."

Smartarsed, takes shortcuts past uncomfortable counter-facts, and is in fact graphically hyperbolic (the windmill as a ticking clock). I can pull apart the misrepresentations presented as facts and the unproven assumption one by one, but why bother.

That poor fellow and his entire institute is as misguided as Robert Mathus was, and not half as intelligent as Malthus. "Kewl" presentation does not hide glaring lacunae in fact, links and logic.

Show me these species that have been driven extinct specifically by man's actions.

You folk want to wallow in guilt, be my guests. Me, I haven't had a car since 1992. I go everywhere by bicycle. No food or fuel is wasted in my house and everything that can be is recycled, not because I believe that apocalyptic crap, however it is dressed up, but simply because I'm Calvinist, brought up not to waste. I am hugely greener than any of you but, I repeat, not because I believe all those lies and snake oil.

Thank you for helping to save the planet, Andre, in spite of yourself.

Everyone will read into it what they want. Do I believe everything he says? No. I have already established on ROBUST that I've never bought into Global Warming. But I am not going to throw out the baby with the bath water, either. What he says about living within the 'nature budget' might get 'common folk' (as you might call them) into at least thinking about the concept of waste - and how it might impact the 7 billion other people on the planet, of which many are totally unaware.

ps. I don't have a car, either, and you have no idea whether you are greener than I am, nor I you.

Sharon wrote: "ps. I don't have a car, either, and you have no idea whether you are greener than I am, nor I you. "

No, but I got you thinking about it, which, according to you, must be a good thing.

"Nature budget" is just another way of expressing the hubris that us humans are a greater force than natural disasters. The truth is that nature has recovered from much bigger disasters, by whole rows of magnitudes, than anything the environmental alarmists can even conceive of.

As for "concept of waste", usually expressed as "drowning in waste", it is exactly what you claim that film isn't: hyperbolic. All the waste produced by humans in the last century would only fit a square of eighteen miles by one mile high. We could stuff it down a mine if we wanted to pay for so unnecessary an act. We don't need "a concept of waste"; it's the time-wasting crap of rich people with too much time on their hands, which would be a lot better spent feeding the starving kids in Africa.

I cannot recommend the ecologist Bjorn Lomborg's statistical overview of the literature highly enough to people who want to take the environment seriously.

{bookcover:The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World|384310]

The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World

Patricia wrote: "Thank you for helping to save the planet, Andre, in spite of yourself."

Yah, your lot of enthusiastic snake oil consumers weren't doing anything right, so I thought I'd better step into the breach and show you how it's done.

The planet may need saving, from the overreactions of your lot of mindless trendies, but for the time being, in the wake of the global warming fiasco being exposed as a lie from beginning to ignominious end, you're in too much disrepute to be dangerous to the planet.

Instead of snarking, show me the species driven to extinction. You can't, because fifty years after that prophecy was first made, everyone knows it is a lie, as they knew it was a lie when they made it.

Professor Julian Simon was right: "Every day, in every way, things get better."

You just enjoy your vicarious guilt too much to notice.

Sharon wrote: "ps. I don't have a car, either, and you have no idea whether you are greener than I am, nor I you. "

No, but I got you thinking about it, which, according to you, must be a good thing.

"Nature budget" is just another way of expressing the hubris that us humans are a greater force than natural disasters. The truth is that nature has recovered from much bigger disasters, by whole rows of magnitudes, than anything the environmental alarmists can even conceive of.

As for "concept of waste", usually expressed as "drowning in waste", it is exactly what you claim that film isn't: hyperbolic. All the waste produced by humans in the last century would only fit a square of eighteen miles by one mile high. We could stuff it down a mine if we wanted to pay for so unnecessary an act. We don't need "a concept of waste"; it's the time-wasting crap of rich people with too much time on their hands, which would be a lot better spent feeding the starving kids in Africa.

I cannot recommend the ecologist Bjorn Lomborg's statistical overview of the scientific literature highly enough to people who want to take the environment seriously.



The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World

Andre, one of the first signs that pollution is having an adverse effect on you is repeating yourself.

At this moment I am putting out personal fires of the utmost importance - trying to find exactly the proper pair of running shoes my granddaughter insists is the only thing she really wants for Christmas.

Yep, somehow my Ozz family, whose matriarch is my youngest daughter, always in the past to be admired for her forebearance of all things consumerism despite pleas from her children, has succumbed to said consumerism. The shame of it all...

And being the doting Gran that I am, I shall go to the ends of the earth to please the little darling. Because normally she really could care less about such things.

So I shall not be reading your suggested material any time soon, I'm sure it states the obvious that we have become a world of what I call disaster-cizers. No disagreement there.

Besides I mostly agree with you. You may disdain the 'concept of waste' phrase but the last part of the sentence says a similar thing to your suggestion about feeding the starving kids in Africa (which just happens to be my favourite cause).

Less snark, Siera, more evidence.

Show me those extinct species!

Prove that there's more waste than I say.

Explain what the trees will live on once we've eliminated CO2 as your lot demands.

Why would I trot out evidence to you, Andre? You're the one who wants to fight, not I. I'm a lover, not a fighter.

Just as it was with the gun issue, nobody involved in debates over political and/or hot-button issues will change another's mind. Spinning wheels pointlessly simply exhausts a person and takes time away from more enjoyable endeavors (like buying shoes for granddaughters). I have so much serious stuff on my plate every day, I don't intend to play that game. When I don't engage with you or respond to your demand that I present this or that, it doesn't mean I don't have evidence. It means I know your opinion. and you're welcome to it.

And don't you know the difference between a joke and personal abuse? See your repeated posts above.

Now go fight with someone who doesn't adore you.

Looks like Bezos is at it again, perhaps to our benefit, at least in the short run. He's always been a master salesman, convincing hordes to buy stock in a company which had never shown a profit and did not for four more years after going public. His sales pitch? Build the customer base, get to be the biggest brand, then profit on volume, not unlike McDonalds. And like that fast-food giant, it worked. Share price around a staggering $180. Revenue, net income, assets, equity, all in the billions.

This article from Forbes suggests he is going deeper again, willing to take small margins now for the big picture future.

You can hate him too, but ya gotta love his chutzpah.

Did you know from his aquisition of Shelfari, he inherited a 40% stake in Library Thing? Would not be surprised if one day he didn't up and take an interest in making that into an effective marketing arm of Amazon (all the while letting the public think it was an altruistic entitity).

I want to have Jeff's babies.

Huh. Makes me want to start hanging out on Library Thing.

Found on Facebook - good enough to repost here.

Checking out at the grocery store recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. I apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right about one thing -- our generation didn't have the green thing in “Our” day. So what did we have back then…? After some reflection and soul-searching on "Our" day here's what I remembered we did have....

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Please post this on your Facebook profile so another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smarty-pants young person can add to this...

And back then our grocery bags were paper.

Thanks, Kat, I've received that into my email box a couple of times and still find it funny - and poignant...

The environmentalist have an awful lot to answer for.

But rather than start that old scandal about Sierra bumbuddies again, let's look on the positively side: they got royally screwed for their hubris by the law of unintended effect!

And there are more and more people like me to point it out, every day more and more.

REASON WILL RETURN!

Which scandal and bumbuddies are were talking about this time, Andre? I can't keep up.

The cock's crowing once....

Jesus has left the building.

Clearly I have been online far too long and need to get back to reading but I just had to check my Twitter account one last time before shutting down and saw this. I particularly like #91.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemo...