hatam_soferet | Network

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/03/margolies-mezvinsky-goes-to.html

NOTE: I will be out at a benefit in New Jersey tonight, but will be following the health care proceedings (and the basketball tournament) from my phone. And you can follow me on Twitter.
____

Any analysis of the political ramifications of the passage of health care reform probably needs to separate out the macro-level effects (the impact on the overall political environment for the Democrats) from the micro ones (the effect on individual races -- particularly in the context to each individual member's vote). One potential effect, for instance, is that the political environment for the Democrats will be somewhat improved nationwide versus the world in which the healthcare negotiations had collapsed, but that some individual members who voted for their bill are imperiled.

Here, in any event, is a rudimentary estimate of the Democrats that might be taking the biggest risk with their yes votes. I've built a risk index starting by taking the district's PVI -- for example, I'd score an R+3 district at 3 points, or a D+2 district at -2 points. Then, I add or subtract points based on the race ratings from Cook Political, CQ, Rothenberg, and Larry Sabato: +5 points for a toss-up (or lean Republican) race, -5 points for a likely Democratic hold, -10 points for a safe Democratic seat, and 0 points for leans Democratic, which is assumed to be the default condition. (In cases where the ratings sometimes differ from forecaster to forecaster, they are averaged together). Finally, I add 5 points if the vote is a flip from no to yes. Democrats who are retiring from electoral politics are not considered.

The gutsiest/riskiest yes vote appears to be from Betsy Markey, who is in an R+6 district that is rated as a pure toss-up by all the forecasters, and who originally voted no before announcing her intention to switch a couple of days ago. If she loses her seat, she will probably be the most deserving of comparisons to Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who cast the deciding vote in the Clinton budget in 1994 and lost her seat soon thereafter (and says she'd gladly do the same thing again.)

Obviously, the votes have not been cast yet, so these reflect my best guesses as to who will vote yes.

So, a while ago I rewatched some East West 101 and randomly capped scenes that looked pretty. I made some icons from the caps but never got around to posting them. But, meantime, let's have a picspam.

To begin with, folks, let's play a little game.

( pictures )

As for detailed reviews of episodes/opinions about the show, see reaction posts masterlist. You can download the episodes right here.

Tags:

The following's a list of word frequencies from the latest page, which displays a truncated/cut version of the latest public posts to Dreamwidth. A word only counts once per post; this data wasn't cleaned for unicode entities, although I should do that, so it's not as perfect as it should be, but I thought some people might have a passing curiosity like I did. The following table only shows words that show up 500 times or more in posts between the beginning of the year and yesterday. All the words have been lowercased.

( Table of word frequency doom! )

My life is finally back to normal. I have no Haiti events at all this weekend. Naturally, I've been watching DVDs almost non-stop. I've seen a largish number of mediocre movies. ("No, Jacob, don't make me choose between the two of you! Because I'll choose Edward!") Mediocre movies of the world: I absolve you; I absolve you.

I can't believe how good it feels to have nothing to do this weekend.

I just noticed that $LJ::USE_INNODB isn't listed in etc/config*, doc/config*, or cgi-bin/ljdefaults.pl. Before I file a bug, a question: is there any reason why the default/initial/suggested value should remain to the current "don't use it"?

Tags:

install issues

Things you do not want to see in your inbox: "So, I hear you scored my boyfriend..." **

We were able to determine that I had had no idea that she existed ***, that he was a shit, and we were both women scorned; the whole thing was very emotionally draining. I wasn't particularly upset, but I was sort of pissed off. She, on the other hand, was absolutely distraught, leading me to be far more pissed off at him for that than for any emotional wrong done against me.

Half a week later, finding myself still to be in a humph about it, I decided to self-medicate in the only way I know: alcohol-infused chocolate cake.

(It should be pointed out at this moment that the alcohol forms merely a passing point of interest on the road to cocoa-induced toxication. The Green & Black's cookbook call it 'Sunday Chocolate Cake'; I call it the 'Fuckload Chocolate Cake' because, well, it's descriptive.)

I also attempted to create dairy-free and gluten-free versions, with varying degrees of success.

( The Fuckload Chocolate Cake )

* Again, with the qualifier that this isn't actually true, I just run to hyperbole in times of emotional stress.

** Which in this context means to snog or make out with. No, I'm not that sort of girl. (Mostly.)

*** I'm really not that sort of girl.

Tags:

cooking,
rl

Yes, I know, the equinox isn't exactly late for this area, but we had several years of early springs, to the point where, say, the forsythia not being in bloom a few days ago seemed odd as well as disappointing.

After lunch today,

cattitude and I went for a walk through Inwood Hill Park. It's a gorgeous sunny day, low 70s (21 or 22 for those of you using the modern measuring system), almost no wind. Yesterday was almost as nice, but I spent most of it indoors, working.

We went up into the hills, looking for the first bits of greenery, and enjoying some of the evergreen shrubs as well. We saw, finally, a bit of forsythia (Cattitude had seen some in bloom downtown, but I wasn't with him), and more daffodils (another local park has had them in bloom for a few days) and periwinkle, but much less of all three than we had expected/hoped. Lots of buds, though.

We also saw a garter snake, I think the first I've seen in the wild. (Cattitude remembers seeing one other in the park, but I don't think I was with him.) Just for a moment, because I found it by startling it as I walked along the path, but quite clear. We waited for a minute or two, but it didn't come out again, so we went on uphill

The less fun part was many dead trees, fallen over in last weekend's storm: the parks department crew was in the park today, taking away trunks and branches from the low-lying areas. In the hilly area, they cut through trunks that had fallen over paved paths, and cut some other bits for safety, so they wouldn't fall and hit someone in the next high wind. We lose a few trees every winter, of course, but this was worse than usual. Yes, there are plenty of saplings that have been waiting for the sunlight and room to grow, but that takes time.

Current Mood: happy

Tags:

Also, hello to everyone who's arrived recently, whether by the Non-Fandom Friending Meme or otherwise. Some of you I pounced on without a word of greeting, so I'm going to make and post some kind of 'intro to me' some time this week. My thread in the meme is here, for the quick lowdown, and I'm always okay with questions.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/03/its-complicated.html

UPDATE (3:21 PM): Per Jonathan Cohn, Steny Hoyer says "clearly we believe we have the votes" and per Josh Kraushaar, Chris Carney (PA-10) will now vote for the bill. Everything looks to be back on track. The Intrade contract -- now at 85 percent -- might in fact be a little cheap.

UPDATE (2:57 PM): Things look to be stabilizing a hair for the Democrats as the caucus made a smart decision not to use the "deem-and-pass" strategy to cast their health care votes, as pro-choice Democrats appear to be comfortable with the idea that Obama will issue an Executive Order on the abortion language (although it's unclear how many Stupak votes this will persuade) and as debates over Medicare spending levels appear to be resolved. I'd say odds for passage are up over 80 percent again -- but obviously this changes on an hour-to-hour and even minute-to-minute basis.

____
ORIGINAL POST (1:49 PM): As of about 5 PM yesterday afternoon, it appeared that the Democrats were well on their way to securing enough votes to pass health care reform. They had gotten commitments to vote yes from seven legislators -- Betsy Markey, John Boccieri, Alan Boyd, Bart Gordon, Susan Kosmas, Dennis Kucinich, and Scott Murphy -- who had voted no originally and most of whom (with the exception of Kucinich and the retiring Gordon) are in tough districts in which their switching their vote represents a significant political risk. It seemed highly unlikely that those Democrats would be willing to switch unless they were quite confident that the bill would pass -- since switching making a public commitment to switch from no to yes becomes an even larger risk for them in the world in which the reform effort nevertheless fails.

However, with 7 no-to-yes switches, the Democrats can afford at most 8 yes-to-no switches in order to retain the votes to pass their bill. And right now, Chris Bowers puts the number at 10 instead: the 8 most solid members of the Stupak block (Cao, Carney, Costello, Donnelly, Driehaus, Lipinski, Rahall, Stupak) and two (Arcuri and Lynch) who are prepared to vote against the bill for non-Stupak reasons (although Lynch is pro-life). Some people also put Marion Berry (Arkansas) in the Stupak group; I'm not sold on that that since Berry voted for the reconciliation bill in committee ("undecided" seems like a more appropriate tag).

Still, Pelosi has several ways to get to 216.

1) Convince the other two retiring Dems (Baird, Tanner) to flip and hold everyone else. It's surprising, given how many Democrats in tough districts have agreed to switch, that the retiring Brian Baird and John Tanner haven't, especially since Baird is fairly liberal. But neither has ruled out voting for the bill. The trick, of course, is that if someone is retiring, you don't really have that much leverage over them -- although things like Ambassadorships can sometimes be promised. In any event, these are the two "easy" renaming no-to-yes flips; there are maybe one or two other members that Pelosi could call on in a pinch, but most of the universe of potential no-to-yesses have either committed to voting for the bill or voting against it.

2) Pick off Lynch and Arcuri and hold everyone else. These are the two yes-to-no defectees who aren't members of the Stupak block. Both have resisted repeated calls to reconsider -- but the Democrats have the opportunity to play hardball with each, as Lynch could lose his committee and leadership positions and as Arcuri could be quite vulnerable to a primary challenge.

3) Pick off individual members of the Stupak block (and hold everyone else). The fact is that the Stupak block has never been totally solid, fluctuating between as few as 5 or 6 members and as many as 12 or 13. The statements that various members of the group have made about the bill involve varying degrees of equivocation. Someone like Carney, for instance, or perhaps a Driehaus, could still possibly be picked off. This may be one thing that Pelosi is trying to do by declaring that a Stupak deal is off the table -- a Carney has no incentive to compromise if he thinks that Pelosi will just cut a deal with Stupak anyway.

4) Cut a deal with Stupak after all. Risk-reward: you could get the yes votes as high as 220-223 (possibly including a Republican, Joseph Cao) -- or you could see massive defections among pro-choice Democrats and the whole thing collapse. Although Pelosi might claim that a deal with Stupak is off the table, it seems unlikely that it wouldn't revisit it if it's her only renaming option. (EDIT: There also appears to be an option #4b -- which is some sort of clarifying language on abortion via Executive Order.)

Obviously, none of these paths (except #4 to a large extent) are mutually exclusive -- nor are they necessarily sufficient if other undecideds and lean-yes votes (who have a number of unrelated objections) decide to complicate things for Pelosi. Still, the fact that there are several potential paths to 216 mean that the odds remain in the Democrats favor. On the other hand, the number of options also complicates things in another sense, since Democrats who might want to see the bill pass but don't want to vote for it might not be convinced that their no votes would in fact doom the bill.

You can also read Pelosi's statement that a Stupak deal is off the table in various ways: it could indicate strength (that she thinks she can get to 216 without him), or that such a compromise would be untenable to too many pro-choice Democrats, meaning that one of Pelosi's options is off the table.

The downgrade in the chances of passage at Intrade (to about an 80 percent chance of passage at this writing versus the high 80s yesterday evening) clearly seems warranted (I might go closer to 75 percent myself). Fundamentally, however, it seems likely to me that Pelosi has at least 216 members potentially willing to vote for the bill if their vote makes the difference between passage and failure -- even without brokering a deal with Stupak. That she has 216 potential yes votes, however, doesn't mean she'll actually get them. This is a very complicated bargaining process. The greatest risk, perhaps, is that the negotiations start to break down on multiple levels -- i.e. she's having headaches with some members over Stupak, with others over deem-and-pass, with still others (like Pete DeFazio) over Medicaid equity, etc. If that happens, there could be a sort of "run on the bank" as wavering Democrats seek to distance themselves from the legislation. In particular, if some seemingly solid (but electorally vulnerable) yes votes start to equivocate -- particularly no-to-yes flips that Pelosi previously seemed to have in the bag -- that would be a sign of trouble.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2198

Said the story in the Ottawa Citizen:

The woman was trapped in her car unconscious for about 20 minutes while firefighters performed an extraction, he said.

And alert Language Log reader Diane commented: "I had no idea our firefighters were also trained at dentistry!" She also asked me whether the misleading phrase an extraction was a dangler (an analog of the dangling modifier that prescriptivists warn against).

It isn't, despite the fact that we are not directly given a logical subject for the implicit reference to extracting. An extraction is a noun phrase (NP) functioning as direct object of the verb performed, and a direct object never needs a predicand (or "logical subject", i.e., an NP it can act as a predicate of). It's only predicative adjuncts that can be danglers.

It is possible, though, for a predicative adjunct to consist of nothing but an NP. That occurs in A skilled fireman, Dan didn't take long to get the woman out of the vehicle, where Dan is the predicand so we understand that Dan is being described as a skilled fireman. But such an NP can also be a dangler, as in ^??A skilled fireman, things didn't take long, which sounds deeply weird because you aren't told who is a skilled fireman.

Diane is of course quite right that the sentence in the Citizen sounds extremely silly. I actually think it's a case of nerdview: perform an extraction must be how fire station record books and regulation manuals would refer to getting trapped women out of crushed vehicles. A reporter with sense would have translated the nerviewese and said "The woman was trapped in her car unconscious for about 20 minutes while firefighters got her out."

Finding a parking space nearby in the city is a lot like finding a job: Sure, you can keep going and circling that block...or you can go and grab the first one that comes up and is relatively close to your door, if definitely not right in front of it.

Pretty sure it says a lot about me that I took that one first parking space.

Tags:

oops,
rl

Ah, I want to do something explosive and urgent and perhaps destructive. I had confirmation earlier today that a crush I had is definitely not requited and I want badly to do something other than sitting around being aware of that. Loud music and singing along - working pretty well. Singing loudly enough that my body is involved as well as my mouth and lungs, absolutely great.

Can't stop talking today, but perhaps I can divert that into some chatter directly at you all here on Dreamwidth rather than inflicting it on IRC - larger audience but less captive: you don't have to click on the tab each time I speak only to find out that I'm still rambling away about a singer you've never heard and never heard of (today it's Cathy Davey. It's often been Cathy Davey, and she's experiencing a resurgence of my interest). Let's correct the 'never heard' issue with a download or two.

Cathy Davey - Holy Moly
This is a very visual song for me -- the guitars and percussion conjure up a dusty orange light and stage in a club like BTVS's The Bronze, and Cathy's voice rises unearthly out of it, sound and shape. Realised I could see Drusilla moving through a crowd during it - no other sound but the music and the voice, the camera tracking Drusilla. It's got an old-new feel.

Cathy Davey - Cold Man's Nightmare
Now this song is just /good/. It's upbeat, a little wistful, very Cathy-ish to me (that old/young feel, a touch of the 60s, though not the usual variety of instruments).

Want more? Let me know. Songs will be deleted after a short period of time, so grab them now if you're interested.

( You're about to view content which the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Tags:

So, I finally read A Local Habitation, which I'd been saving as a treat for myself. Have a reaction post! This is not so much a review as a braindump. (For those who aren't aware,

seanan_mcguire is a part of my extended social circle and I like her and I like her writing, so I'm not the most objective reviewer out there, but it's good stuff anyway.)

(Spoilers abound.)
( Read more... )

I enjoyed it. I will read it again.

Tags:

reading

On livejournal today, I noticed that hitting 'back' wasn't actually bringing me back, and noticed all these links that I had apparently visited.

I've never had anything to do with 'sharethis.com'. Anybody know what this is about?

Tags:

Well, internet, I was going to make you a mixtape today. And it was going to be made entirely of songs from Castle and Bones, because the songs they use are very similar, and three of my (current) Most Favorite Songs In The World are from them. So I just went and found every song on Castle ever on YouTube and a shitload from Bones and, well.

Yes! They are very similar shows, musically! It's just... not a sound that I love to pieces. I managed to fall in love with the three similar songs from the two shows that sound nothing like the rest of the music. :(

So, internet, I made you a mixsingle.

Patterns
A Side
Band of Skulls - Patterns

B Side
Sage Francis - Sea Lion
Placebo - Running Up That Hill

In other news, I'm thinking of getting a tumblr to post shippy shit to. I hate myself.

ETA: Tell me about a story I never wrote, (eg, "The one where Cristina Yang sucks at OT3s" or "The one told from the POV of Neal Caffrey's hat" or "The one where Alan Scott earns positive parenting points") and I'll write you a snippet from it.

Current Location: Outside in the sun
Current Mood: moody
Current Music: Placebo - Running Up That Hill

Tags:

music

Experience: I was a bully. While he positions his moment of enlightenment as down to the Civilising Influence of Womanhood, I do think that other boys saying 'So not cool' would also have worked. But perhaps there are Male Dynamics there that I wot not of. And someone else who is all about the 'harmless fun' defence of bad behaviour: Fashion photographer Terry Richardson accused of sexually exploiting models: • Terry Richardson told his work degrades women • Everyone has 'fun' on photo shoots, he says.

But I do not want people to look at my shoes and think sex (particularly if they are foot-fetishists turned on by scruffy Eccos, actually). Kudos to Hadley F for wearing scruffy trainers to this encounter. What I want shoes to say to me, is 'comfort! walkability!'.

OMG, WTF, fetch me a codfish - Lionel Shriver. It's one thing to have the chip of ice in the heart that lets you see your friend's death from aggressive cancer as material for your next book, it's wholly another thing to write what is essentially a 'promote my new book' piece about this, even if it is mea-culpaing about not being There For Her enough.

Lucy Mangan, bless - one can totally imagine an encounter with a fishmonger who had no idea how to cook fish in the style of several other columnists, some of whom would be doing End of Civilisation as we know it, but Lucy is about the teachable moment.

Review of Shapiro on the Authorship Controversy which turns out to be, indeed, an exploration of Wild Conspiracy Theoriez and the People Who Believe Them.

Piece about polygamy by a Nigerian woman with familial experience.

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Title:
Don't announce upcoming birthdays for deleted journals

Area:
notifications, birthdays

Summary:
Don't send out notificants for birthdays of deleted journals. Also don't show these journals in the birthday lists.

Description:
In the same vein as http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/277740.html , I would like the same for deleted journals. I know I could just delete them from my circle, but I like the reminder on my profile page. I don't see the point in seeing their birthdays on my logged-in homepage.

Others might, of course.

Poll #2503 Don't announce upcoming birthdays for deleted journals
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 37

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
32 (86.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
5 (13.5%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Tags:

untagged

Title:
Don't announce upcoming birthdays for memorial journals

Area:
notifications, birthdays,

Summary:
We should not send out birthday notifications for users who have passed away. We should not also show these in the list of upcoming birthdays in the logged-in homepage, or on the full birthdays list (http://www.dreamwidth.org/birthdays).

Description:
A memorial journal is a special status applied by site administrators to a journal, if informed that the owner has passed away. It preserves the journal in its current state (no new entries or comments), leaving it up for friends who might wish to revisit it at any time.

As far as I can tell (I've checked the code and I haven't seen anything that says we guard against this case) we send out birthday notifications even for memorial journals. This may come as an unpleasant and unavoidable annual surprise for friends of that person.

We should not announce the upcoming birthday, so we need to hide it in these places:
* email/inbox notifications
* birthdays list on the logged-in homepage
* full birthdays list (http://www.dreamwidth.org/birthdays)
* ...(any that I've missed?)

The birthday would still be displayed on the profile page, respecting any current privacy settings, so that the information would still be available for those who seek it out.

Poll #2502 Don't announce upcoming birthdays for memorial journals
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 57

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
25 (43.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
24 (42.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
2 (3.5%)

(I have no opinion)
6 (10.5%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Tags:

untagged

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2197

Picture this: that you receive two unexpected emails from me in quick succession. The first is a boilerplate pre-packaged message informing you that I have entered your address on my website as my temporary address for two or three days later this month, and I have let my employers know that people can call me or fax me at your house. I'm a complete stranger to you, except that you know my name from Language Log; I have obtained your email address from public sources, and pre-emptively set up arrangements to that assume I'll be staying with you.

The second of the two emails is personally addressed, and says that I'll be in your area later this month to give a lecture, and since I'm on a tight budget, would it be all right if I came to stay for two nights?

I take it you'd be somewhere between insulted and shocked, despite the fact that it is sort of flattering that a famous Language Log writer has singled you out as a person he would like to stay with. Well the equivalent not only happened to me today; it happens to me every couple of months.

Out of the blue comes an email telling me that my name has been added to a database of manuscript referees — academics who can be called upon to supply donated time reviewing papers submitted for publication. Then shortly after that comes a personal message from an editor (often a total stranger to me), asking me if I'd be so kind as to do a favor by reviewing a manuscript that has been submitted on some topic that I know about.

Every time my involuntary reaction is the same: repulsion, even anger, at the sheer rudeness of it. Despite the fact that a famous journal has singled me out as an expert they would like an opinion from.

Here's the latest example, with journal, location, and editor's name disguised to protect the not-particularly innocent. First, message number 1:

From onbehalfof+xxxxxx.wwwww.yyyy.zz@manuscriptcentral.com Sat Mar 20 07:26:27 2010 Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:26:20 -0400 (EDT) From: xxxxxx@wwwww.yyyy.zz Subject: Journal of Wwwww - Account Created in Manuscript Central
20-Mar-2010 Dear Professor Geoffrey Pullum: Welcome to Journal of Wwwww - Manuscript Central site for online manuscript submission and review. Your name has been added to our reviewer database in the hopes that you will be willing and able to review manuscripts for the Journal which fall within your area of expertise. The site URL and your USER ID for your account is as follows…
When you log in for the first time, you will be asked to complete your full postal address, telephone, and fax number. You will also be asked to select a number of keywords describing your particular area(s) of expertise…

And now for message number 2:

From onbehalfof+xxxxxx.wwwww.yyyy.zz@manuscriptcentral.com Sat Mar 20 07:27:26 2010 Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:27:19 -0400 (EDT) From: xxxxxx@wwwww.yyyy.zz Subject: Journal of Wwwww - Invitation to Review Manuscript ID JWWW-2010-0041
20-Mar-2010 Dear Geoff (if I may): The above manuscript, entitled "On the snrdpql vbrh of frueqbd sjhdpbc" has been submitted to Journal of Wwwww.
We would be grateful if you would kindly agree to act as a reviewer for this paper. The abstract appears at the end of this letter… </font>

Notice that the first message was sent off 59 seconds before the second.

The culprit is not necessary the well-meaning editor Professor Xxxxxx, who I have heard of but not met, or any of the staff of the Journal of Wwwww, which I have seen but am not antecedently involved with. Quite probably it is a suite of standard editorial software, owned by the huge Thomson Reuters global publishing empire, once called Manuscript Central and apparently now renamed ScholarOne Manuscripts. It is "the proven industry leader" in editorial discourtesy, designed as

an innovative, web-based, submission and peer review workflow solution for scholarly publishers. Easy-to-configure, it allows for streamlined administrative, editing and reviewing capabilities.

ScholarOne serves more than 365 societies and publishers, over 3,400 books and journals, and 13 million registered users.

ScholarOne Manuscripts reduces time to decision, eliminates paper distribution costs, decreases administrative overhead and increases submissions.

So there are 13 million of us exploited reviewers! And in almost all cases, it seems, we were first informed that we had been press-ganged and entered into naval personnel records and issued with a sailor's uniform, and only then, a minute later, politely asked by the captain of the ship if we would be prepared to serve the navy as an ordinary seaman for zero pay. If hardly anyone else in academia has ever been offended by this, then I guess there must be way over 12.99 million people out there who are much more tolerant than I am.

All the software would have to do is to ensure that the default behavior is to send the polite request first, and send out the login name and password only later, after receiving a reply. That wouldn't seem presumptuous and annoying at all. I'm prepared to believe that it just might have been Professor Xxxxxx's fault: he could have had two tasks to execute and pressed the buttons in the wrong order. The reason I suspect the software design is that this has been done to me so often: the defaults must be such that this is the behavior resulting from the most natural way of using the program.

How could anyone design software with defaults so stupid? How could anyone (let alone a linguist) not notice this gross violation of polite discourse? You don't tell someone first that you have already been put in the database and given an account name and assigned some password that they didn't choose, and append a whole lot of terse instructions about what their duties will be in their new non-paying job, and then ask them to agree to do this favor!

So my policy now (since I really have too much to do, and some things have to go) is that I refuse refereeing requests when they arrive in this way. And from now on I will do it by sending the editor a link to this post. I'm sorry if this makes me seem unpleasantly grouchy, but I find these you-have-been-added messages unpleasantly rude. There may be 13 million people out there who tolerate this kind of discourtesy, but they aren't going to include me.

[If you would like to comment below, please do so. Notice that if you have never commented before, you have not already been entered into our database of commenters, and you will choose your own identifying name and supply your email address. (Don't forget that email address, because I may need to get in touch about coming to stay with you for a few days.)]

The Margolies-Mezvinsky Goes To...

A rec is a rec is a rec

Word frequencies in posts

In defense of nothing...

Is there any reason not to use InnoDB by default?

All men are bastards, part II *; death by chocolate

Spring, at last: a walk in the park

Welcome

It's Complicated!

Firemen, dental practice, and danglers

It occurs to me

Stop calling, stop calling, I don't want to talk any more

shabbat morning simcha*

Azz Reads A Local Habitation

Some help from techie folk, please?

Music Post For Your Saturday Morning

Spamming my linx

Don't announce upcoming birthdays for deleted journals

Don't announce upcoming birthdays for memorial journals

Stupid message sequencing discourtesy

Profile

March 2010

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