My family and I escaped the sodden Northeast for a week in — where else? — the Pacific Northwest. I apologize, especially to several readers who wrote in alarm and withdrawal, for not posting my customary notice that I would be gone for awhile. It won’t happen again (the radio silence, I mean…). A belated happy new year to Jewish readers, an auspicious Ramadan to any Muslims who read this, and happy Thanksgiving to Canadian ones. [If you want to be prepared, I will be travelling again for several weeks in February…]

If you visit a Blogspot (Blogger’s web hosting vehicle) weblog which uses the Blogger navbar at the top, you now have the ability to flag its content as objectionable. Google (recall: the Blogger parent company now) reserves the right, if they agree that the content is potentially offensive (by whatever standards they wish to apply), to place a Content Warning Page in front of the weblog and to unlist it, although its content will still be available.

Some would argue that this is censorship, while others insist that because the content is not restricted this is reasonable. On FmH, in the weblogging world and in the web in general, it has seemed to me that pointing to content assumes an inherently more and more important role in proffering information and opinion. So it is arguable that removing pointers to something becomes perilously increasingly akin to restricting speech, which seems indefensible no matter how vile the speech is.

A great reason not to host with Blogspot, it would seem. On the other hand, the demands of any other weblogging platform will probably weed out many of the mindless dolts who promulgate hate speech and vulgarity, because it is so braindead-easy to do on Blogspot.

…as it is braindead-easy for the great unwashed masses who read weblogs to react with a click on the “flag” button to anything with which they disagree. Google is going to have its hands full investigating all the spiteful would-be stool pigeons (see story below). Perversely, it actually makes me wish I had a “flag” button here on FmH. After all, from its beginnings six years ago I have said you should let me know as soon as I offend you. After Steve Baum, “I like to keep track of those times when I get something right.”

Maybe I am preaching to the choir, but no matter how economical it is, you simply have no business doing business with a firm that does this. [via boing boing]

“…it’s how I live my life…” (glenrhodes.com)

Of course, fungi are everywhere, so I am not sure how concerned one ought to be. Researchers say you should buy feather pillows instead of synthetic, if this worries you.