Category Archives: Uncategorized

Joel on Blog Comments

I get the feeling that Joel Spolsky doesn't like blog comments:

    I don't know how many times I've read a brilliant article someone wrote on a blog. By the end of the article, I'm excited, I'm impressed, it was a great article. And then you get the dribble of morbid, meaningless, thoughtless comments. If the article, for example, mentions anything in anyway related to Microsoft, you get some kind of open source nuclear war. If the article mentions web browsing in any way, there's always some person without an outbound filter who feels compelled to tell you about how he uses Opera, so he doesn't have this problem, although, frankly, I could care less what Anonymous uses. He's not even human to me, he's anonymous. What web browser he uses doesn't amount to a hill of beans. It's not a single bean. It's not even the memory of last week's huevos rancheros. It's just noise. Useless noise. Thoughtless drivel written by some anonymous non-entity who really didn't read the article very carefully and didn't come close to understanding it and who has no ability whatsoever to control his typing diarrhea if the site's software doesn't physically prevent him from posting.

Harrumph. There are plenty of blogs with open comments that can get 100s of messages per topic, without having them turn into a mess of noise, where the participants know enough to avoid certain topics, where drive-bys are simply ignored. It's all about the regulars, the tone they set, and how they moderate discussions.

Yum, Branding!

Study: Food in McDonald's wrapper tastes better to kids:

    Anything made by McDonald's tastes better, preschoolers said in a study that powerfully demonstrates how advertising can trick the taste buds of young children.

    In comparing identical McDonald's foods in name-brand and plain wrappers, the unmarked foods always lost.

    Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches.

    The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald's foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test.

I have this thing about potato chips... if they're fresh out of the bag, I love 'em. But if they've been taken out of the bag, and put into a ZipLok baggie (like what my mom used to do for bagged lunches), they suck. I hate them. I don't know if there really is difference in taste, but I've convinced myself there is, and I refuse to eat chips out of baggies.

The study also noted that intrusive Big Brother government goes down easy when wrapped in the packaging of Small Government Conservatism ™; While the same product wrapped in paper with Korean or Russian writing causes severe vomiting and abdominal cramping.

Twang Bar King Meets Doctor Stringz

Good live music month coming up: Adrian Belew on the 21st, Andrew Bird on Sept 12th (I have 2 tix to his 9/11 show in Asheville, NC, if you want to buy them!), Sea And Cake on Sept 26th.

And I'm considering Interpol, Pinback, Boris and Reverend Horton Heat, in Oct/Nov.

Good times for me.

And the baby cauliflowers are happy about it, too:

Elections Should Have Consequences

And when they don't, when the elected refuse to do what they were elected to do, this happens:

Just 24% give the president favorable ratings of his performance in handling the war in Iraq, but confidence in Congress is significantly worse – only 3% give Congress positive marks for how it has handled the war. This lack of confidence in Congress cuts across all ideologies. Democrats – some of whom had hoped the now Democrat-led Congress would bring an end to the war in Iraq – expressed overwhelming displeasure with how Congress has handled the war, with 94% giving Congress a negative rating in its handling specifically of that issue.

Come on, ya buncha idiots, do your job!