RSSRss Fixed – All is good in the world
Found the RSS fix here.
I am very pleased with WordPress 1.5 . What a great program!
My Name in Lights (with minor imperfections)
I set up this blog on Friday. Saturday, I receive a link from Jeff Jarvis. To be honest, the blog is no where near ready for prime time. I posted a few times to see that all was working, and those posts were done quickly and late at night. As I IM’ed with a good buddy, I was throwing postings up without any regard to spelling or grammar.
I mean, who in the world will see it. THE SITE WAS ONLY 8 HOURS OLD!!! (It had been up a year ago, but dead for a long, long time.)
A good liberal linked to me, pointing out my spelling errors and labeled me work “borderline illiteracy” . I deserved that. The work was not my best. The concepts I am fully behind, however the craftsmanship was lacking.
This is a warning to future bloggers. When you put up a project on the internet, be ready for anything. It was great to see my name up in lights at Jeff’s sight, it was a wee bit embarrassing to see spelling errors. And in the future, everything will be spell checked.
But it was nice to see my weblog in the bright lights of Buzzmachine.
I will now look over the rest of the posts, you never know when a Scoble or Instapundit will link next.
Also, I need to get RSS working with this theme in WordPress 1.5. Otherwise Robert Scoble will be very angry with me. I like the geeks and the political junkies.
[UPDATE] The liberal who blasted me had a very good excuse. He is a Marxist, Ex professor who received Ph.D. in English Lit from Yale University. Obviously, my writing style was not up to the task. That is a profile guaranteed to passionately dislike anything I write.
New and interesting site
This is an interesting site that categorizes all of the interactions on the left. It has a visual map tool that is intriguing. I found this through Neal Boortz site, and according to him, the left is outraged by it.
I think that it is a situation where the truth hurts. And shows the power of transparency that the internet brings.
Political Correctness at the Academy Exposed
Harvey Mansfield is a professor of government at Harvard University and a very brave man. He is standing up in the academy and undressing the tools the feminists use to mandate political correctness. His exceptionally powerful article is in the Spectator. One that if you are interested in the political correctness battles at Universities that you should read.
Thus the issue of Summers’s supposedly intimidating style of governance is really the issue of the political correctness by which Summers has been intimidated. Political correctness is the leading form of intimidation in all of American education today, and this incident at Harvard is a pure case of it. The phrase has been around since the 1980s, and the media have become bored with it. But the fact of political correctness is before us in the refusal of feminist women professors even to consider the possibility that women might be at any natural disadvantage in mathematics
as compared with men. No, more than that: They refuse to allow that possibility to be entertained even in a private meeting. And still more: They are not ashamed to be seen as suppressing any inquiry into such a possibility. For the demand that Summers be more “responsible” in what he says applies to any inquiry that he or anyone else might cite.Of course, if you make a study of differences between the sexes with a view to the possibility that some of them might be innate, no violence will come to you. You will not be lynched. But you will be disliked, and you will have a hard time getting appointed at a major (or a minor) university. Feminists do not like to argue, and they consider you a case if you do not immediately agree with them. “Raising consciousness” is their way of getting you to fall in with their plans, and “tsk, tsk” is the only signal you should need and will get. Anyone who requires evidence and argument is already an enemy because he is considering a possibility hurtful to women.
When I was in College in the Mid 80′s , the PC police were just getting their sea legs. I got kicked out of a lecture by a philosophy professor who was complaining about how the students drove better cars than the teaching staff. I had the temerity to say that maybe that was a result of the choices and risks that the professor made, as opposed to the parents of the students. I was kicked out of class and told politely that it was not worth the effort to return…
The Walmart Paradox
Seth Godin talks about the WalMart effect for retailers. I worked for a company that sold to Walmart, heck they were about 35% of the business. The only problem for the manufacturer is that WM is tough as heck on them. If they come out with something new and innovative, WalMart will insist it be included in the planogram, or else.
With Walmart it is always, or else.
Getting what we deserve?
The New York Times > Business > More Gloom on the Island of Lost Toy Makers points out that the toy business is crumbling. The reason: all the stores that love to sell toys are disappearing, defeated by WalMart.
Walmart wants to sell classics and heavily advertised hits. And they want to do it at close to cost. This appears to be good for consumers–get a Barbie for $12 or whatever.
The problem is that NEW toys aren’t classics and it’s hard to make the bet that new toys should be heavily advertised.
The second problem is that once you reach the level of success of a classic, selling at cost is no fun at all.
The end result is that the toy guys don’t have the guts to launch the new and the remarkable. They are boxed in, encouraged by Wall Street and management to play the Walmart game, which leads to short-term revenue and long term destitution.
These toy companies have always needed the profit from their hits to fund their next generation.
So what’s the answer?
The answer is to tell Walmart to go away. Toy companies are beginning to discover that they can’t win this game. The answer is to find a new and better and more consistently profitable way to launch the remarkable stuff.
And that’s happening. It’s happening when they sell online, or through local stores, or directly to people who care. No, this isn’t mass. This isn’t a fraction of what an endcap at Toys R Us was worth. It’s still the best deal in town. Over time, consumers will be trained that the toys they need are only available in places that aren’t Walmart.
Obviously, I think this same mantra applies to plenty of products in a similar situation. And I expect that the realists among you will tell me to get a clue, that Walmart is the market and you need to play or be irrelevant. I’m saying that playing is making you irrelevant.
