This was one of the first book reviews to appear at this web site. It didn't get much attention when the site was getting ten to fifteen page views a week. It has been revised and updated.
Book Title: Magic: an Introduction
Author: Betty Kobs
Date: 1976
Publisher: Raintree Publishers
ISBN: 0-8172-0057-6
Length: 48 pages
Illustrations: photos by Robert L. Miller, drawings by Barbara Ericksen
Quote: "Someone who does magic tricks is called a magician. A magician tries to surprise people."
Betty Kobs' introduction to magic tricks is intended to be easy enough for first and second grade readers. It might sound stilted and patronizing to third grade students.
The sleight-of-hand and distraction stunts explained in this book don't require expensive equipment or extensive practice. How does one soft foam ball become two? It was two balls all along, squished together in the magician's hand. Paper clips jump off a folded strip of paper when the paper is spread flat. Water in a glass will magnetically "hold" a piece of cardboard across the top of the glass, holding the water inside while the glass is upside down...for a few minutes.
Then there's always the reliable "magic" properties of the Afghan Band or Moebius Strip, a long strip of anything twisted just halfway round and joined into a circle. Cutting, twisting, marking, and otherwise playing with this circle produces many surprising and amusing results. Kids can work up a fifteen- to thirty-minute act using the special properties of the Moebius Strip, with just one sheet of construction paper, a little sticky tape, and a pair of kindergarten scissors.
Magic, an Introduction will allow eight-year-olds to entertain six-year-olds. Older audiences are unlikely to be impressed, although a ten-year-old sibling might claim to be surprised that the eight-year-old is able to perform for half an hour. But one must begin somewhere, and all these tricks are cheap and safe.
Friday, October 16, 2026
Island Snapshots: Assateague and Chincoteague, 1986
I sent three poems about places to a contest for poems about places. Two were Bad Poetry (TM); one was Free Verse. The poems didn't win so the Bad Poetry (TM) has been scheduled for publication on my Substack, while the Free Verse is here.
Assateague and Chincoteague islands are off the Maryland/Virginia coast. Assateague is the wildlife preserve where visitors camp in tents and observe wildlife; Chincoteague is the town where visitors stay in hotels or B&B's and shop. My ideal three-day weekend would include the Friday or Monday afternoon on Chincoteague, weekend alternating between woods and beach. The islands are best known for the "ponies" (horse people say they're small feral horses), who run wild on Assateague for most of the year, then are herded over to Chincoteague (they have to swim) where people buy enough of them to manage the population in July. The ponies are accustomed to humans, though not tame; in 1986 people weren't afraid enough of lawsuits to keep them from walking right up to tourists, but signs did warn that they might just accidentally nip or step on you. But that didn't happen. For wild horses they're incredibly calm, patient, and friendly. (Intelligent enough to live in an apartment with a human? That's known to have happened once. Misty of Chincoteague was a once-in-a-lifetime pet.)
(Photo from Google. The ponies can be any color including palomino, but brown and white spots ("skewbald") are more common than in most breeds.)
The sign said
campsites six dollars for a weekend in July
mosquitoes and sand fleas, free
and they weren't joking.
(Photo from Google. Sand fleas are small, young mole crabs. They jump when startled and can bite when handled; some bites are harmless and some raise an itchy rash, probably depending on what disgusting thing the animal has been eating. People rake them up and use them as fish bait.)
The eight-person tents
were pitched only when
a voice interrupted the slapping and scratching
to remind everyone that tents
gave some protection from the mosquitoes at
night.
We thought of mosquitoes as small, black,
smooth;
saltmarsh mosquitoes, a different genus,
are yellow and hairy, and eat tourists
even and perhaps especially
the ones inland mosquitoes leave alone.
(Aedes sollicitans in the attitude in which she is most often seen. (Males bite plants.) People who don't know the story about the deformed, outcast human boy have nicknamed these things "Jersey Devils." If you ever feel like killing something, this is a good species to pick--nothing seems to make a dent in the population and people wish something would. Just don't try poison sprays, which are what have raised the mosquito population to the appalling heights it reaches on these islands. Photo from Keithpetrosky for INaturalist.)
Peace was found only waist-deep in
the shallow inlets and tidepools
where we wound up, dancing the sun down
to our own unaccompanied voices.
(Photo from Google, which seems to have been warned not to show pictures of people enjoying the island beaches in the only way they can be enjoyed in July. It was this octette or the Beatles. Searches for things like "people waist deep in water" or "humans wading in water" yielded pictures of people walking on wet sand, standing in indoor pools, or--oddly, given that boats drift out further and are more dangerous than simply wading at the beach--paddling in boats and on rafts, always below warnings about sharks here and jellyfish there. Surprise--if you take a boat or raft into the water off Assateague in July, you will have mosquitoes on board. Determined campers will get their clothes wet. We do not live in a safe world.)
We stayed in the tents as long as possible
growling and snarling when anyone went out
and let mosquitoes in.
The smoke from the grill
discouraged humans; mosquitoes,
not noticeably.
(Assateague also has the only North American population of Japanese Sika deer. They are less human-friendly than the horses. They know they can be, and in season will be, hunted. Photo from Google.)
Everyone saw several little island deer,
clams, mussels, and horseshoe crabs
while wading waist-deep around the island's
edge.
There were said to be birds and butterflies.
No one saw any of those.
(Horseshoe crab from Ocean City. Horseshoe crabs are not true crabs and, despite having a shape that reminds people of sting rays, they're harmless; at worst the shells might be sharp and rough. Desperate people have eaten certain parts of them and survived but they're not generally considered edible.)
The second night, the moon rose full and clear.
We swam in the sea under the moon.
The mosquitoes waited till the moon went down
and we straggled back to the eight-person
tents.
The second day, we went into town.
No one had brought money or wanted to shop
but mosquitoes didn't go inside the stores.
We thought that's how the island economy works.
Back then the island's peculiar ponies,
feral horses actually, walked the streets
and helped themselves to tourists' food, if
they saw any.
Shaggy, gentle, mostly spotted beasts,
some three-colored.
Would I go back? I have; many times
but never again in July.
The island landscapes are less colorful
but easier to enjoy in winter.
(Assateague attracts thousands of birds. Some people have wanted to maintain it as a bird sanctuary and get rid of the horses and deer! Visitors can expect to see big showy waterfowl like herons, egrets, and sometimes pelicans, and lots of different kinds of gulls, terns, and sandpipers, and some songbirds. I've always liked these buffleheads--little wild ducks that bob in and out of the water. Some call them popcorn ducks because a family will pop in and out of view, raising that "buffalo mane" of white feathers, like popping corn. Buffleheads are most often seen in Maryland, and on Assateague, in winter, sometimes staying only for the midwinter thaw. Photo from Google.)
October, even November, are the optimal time for camping on Assateague. Very "easy" camping--you can drive right up to the camp site, sleep in the car if something's wrong with the tent, get drinking water and probably showers by now, drive into town for meals if you don't feel like "camp cooking," shop and watch movies if it rains. The heat is milder; the urge to wade out neck-deep into the ocean, or actually swim, is more resistible. Many trails were already wheelchair-friendly, though not yet advertised as such, in 1986 because small islands tend to be flat and smooth. Chincoteague's little tourist shops have that post-tourist-season quiet atmosphere that makes shopping more tempting for introverts, too. The February and March thaws are also lovely, but often rainier.
There are now actually places to trade regular wheelchairs for beach wheelchairs, temporarily--free of charge. There are dog-friendly beaches, too. The whole island is child-friendly, after the mosquitoes subside. Photo from Google.
Thursday, October 15, 2026
Web Log for 10.14.26
Well, laptop, is this the day you turn into a pumpkin? Apparently not. So far it's running Microsoft "security" garbageware, which is about as annoying as Microsoft "Edge Updates," but it is running. Let it run while it will, I suppose.
Books
Bogus book covers remind me of Love's Reckless Rash, a hilarious romance by "Rosemary Cartwheel." I read it and thought of a series, starting with a teen romance called Love's Acne Angst and ending with a blue-collar one called Love's Zippy Z. (Datsun, of course...say what you like about the Camaro Z28, those cars were overpriced.) If you'd like to read these stories, let me know. Meanwhile, for these parodies, the covers are probably enough...
Music
Tom Petty. (There've been days when nobody at the Meow posted a link to a TP song, but so few and far between that I'd forgotten that they'd existed...)
Avishai Cohen.
The Cure.
Ella Mai.
Red Clay Strays. (Rockabilly sound, Christian lyrics.)
Beatles.
Ray Charles.
Fairport Convention.
Glimbus.
B.J. Thomas.
Etienne de Lavaulx.
Steve Miller Band.
Elton John.
Dire Straits.
G.E. Schneeman.
Abba.
Shirley Temple.
Cyndi Lauper.
Ludovico Einaudi.
Donna Sumner.
Boogie Belgique.
Billy Joel.
Chequerboard.
Elvis Costello.
Neil Young.
Kid Rock. Christian lyrics. Seriously. He and Eminem are doing a Christian album.
Alexandre Desplat.
Pisk.
Technology
Why we do not want household objects with chips in them. Not ever.
Book Review: Hired Luck
Title: Hired Luck
Author: Melisa Todd
Date: 2020
Publisher: Bad Ash
Quote: "Why don't I see your stomach contents anywhere?"
In the first volume of her adventures, when she became an emergency medical technician, Cori saw a lot of gore. In the first scene of volume two, what she sees is worse. The policemen to whom she reports the scene think it's suspicious that even an EMT as young and nice as Cori seems to be can bear the sight of what she's reported. The body has been killed in a ritualistic way. In a world where some people have magical powers, some use them in unacceptable ways. Death is the only way to stop them. The murderer of this body will kill again. Cori will have to help hunt him down.
The reversal-of-fortune for which we've been set up takes place in this volume. Cori never noticed when she developed magic powers, we're told, because it happened just after her brother died and she instinctively "cloaked" her powers. Her dandruff and brittle hair were evidence of her unconscious use of her magic. When she's taken in for testing she's pronounced one of the strongest magicians on Earth.
Which is what it takes to stop the murderer. Even untalented people, Cori learns, can do ritual magic if they know the right procedures. Ritual magic can take a lot of energy. This rogue mage's plan is to kill first one person, then 27, then 81, then 243...
In this parallel world, the most powerful magicians acquire "familiars" from other dimensions. Nobody has ever survived a trip to one of these dimensions. "Familiars" choose their human friends, and in this volume Cori finds a creature like a kitten, only with long fingers, opposable thumbs, and a fully prehensile tail, sitting on her chest projecting the thought "Mine." His name is Carelian and his power seems benign. The murderer's spells are intended to draw magical creatures through what appear as rips in the planes of interdimensional reality. They're less benign.
This fantasy is more adventure and comedy than horror, but the gross-out level is still fairly high. Sex and profanity levels are low. We know Cori's roommate and "best friend forever" is a lesbian without a steady girlfriend; we still don't know whether, when Cori finishes "gaining weight" as a college student, she'll ever feel attracted to anybody.
Public School Math Class Burlesque
Some years ago a high school math teacher in Hawkins County, Tennessee, who moonlighted as a strip dancer was dismissed from her teaching job, but not prosecuted for a crime, after admitting to a consensual sexual relationship with an 18-year-old student. The teacher was only four years ahead of the boy in school, and reportedly hardly even three years older. This was before the newspapers went online; Google shows no reports of the incident.
The year after this item made the news, two of The Nephews were pulled out of (a different) public school in Hawkins County, an elementary school, and enrolled in schools out of state.
The story gets stranger over the years. In 2015 a 44-year-old Hawkins County teacher was prosecuted for running the strip club in a way that promoted prostitution. In 2019, even after that teacher was banned from school premises and the club was shut down, another Hawkins County public school teacher, who would have been 25 years old at the time, was prosecuted on several criminal charges after admitting to a consensual sexual relationship with a student who was not yet 18 at the time.
The author of this document thinks the penalties for the teachers were fair. The author also thinks that more might be said about any personal relationship between any teacher and any student...even in university, where students pursuing "continuing education" or "second careers" are often older than the teachers. It is unfair to the entire class for a teacher to do anything with or for one student that s/he can’t do with or for the others. True Love would wait until the student had finished the course.
So this stripper/teacher deserves a little vignette...a burlesque...I’m not familiar with strip dance acts; strip dance fans will have to forgive me for imagining this woman’s act as a less artistic version of one from toward the end of Gypsy.
(Bell rings. Teacher slinks up the middle row, sliding a lacy shawl across her shoulders. Her rhyming lines form some sort of a tune. At this period the idea of a "twelve-tone row" that used all the keys on the piano, rather than forming a traditional harmonic arrangement around a single key note, was in style so notes that are technically right, but sound wrong, are appropriate. She is wearing what appears at first glance to be a long skirt with a lot of ruffles but is, in fact, a bundle of skirts in different lengths, shortest outside. She is not pretty enough to have been offered a receptionist job but she certainly is firm and fit, from the job she currently does.)
Teacher: Take your math books out, pay attention and learn.
I’m hot! I’m on fire! Oh, how I burn!
Turn to page two hundred and eighty-three.
How many items of clothing can you see?
Girl: Nineteen.
Teacher: How’d you guess?
Girl: You wore the same outfit last week.
Teacher (very very sweetly): Take this (throws shawl at student), and a zero!
I need a good man, a true lover, a hero!
Down to eighteen things, number eighteen is goin’! (Drops glove on boy’s desk.)
How much will I take off? No knowin’! (Drops other glove on another boy’s desk.)
Which of you boys solved the first equation?
Boy: X equals 5.
Teacher: Aren’t you glad you’re getting a good education!
Girls: (snores)
Teacher (shimmying out of the outermost skirt):
Edu-mony—matri-cation—is my de-si-re!
I’m hot! I’m burning up! I’m on fire!
Boys: Teacher Teacher I declare
I can see your underwear!
Teacher: Not yet, you don’t!
(Picks up a ruler and beats time on a desk.)
The second equation, who solved it for Y?
Boy: Y equals 72.
Teacher: You can learn anything if you try!
Ooh! There goes a garter! Well, I’ve got another.
You can take this one home and show it to your brother. (Tosses garter across the room.)
Third equation?
Boy: X equals fourteen.
Teacher: A college degree sure improved my cavortin’!
Go to college! Get some knowledge! Then you can see,
In the fourth equation, X is five and Y is three!
(Slaps boy on wrist with ruler, picks up garter, and hands it to him.)
Boy (very young for his age): Uh, Teacher, if X is five and Y is three, how can 2 X + Y be 26?
Teacher: Oh! Stop asking inappropriate questions!
Can’t you ever think of any kinky suggestions?
Girls: Teacher Teacher I declare
I can see your underwear!
I’ll tell Ma! Ma’ll tell Pa!
You’ll lose your teaching job! Ha, ha, ha!
Teacher (starting to dance her way out of another skirt): That’s too kinky!
CURTAIN
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Web Log for 10.13.26
Last day of laptop functionality? Where is my Linux? Meanwhile I sorted through 5000 e-mails and learned that (big surprise here!) Microsoft recommends I buy a new computer, the "cloud-based" kind without a hard drive, and sign the contract to let Windows 11 plagiarize my unpublished content!
Gentle Readers, please be sure all computers you use have hard drives and none of them has Windows 11. Don't feed the monster. Those "end times" Seventh-Day Adventists are always worrying about may indeed be near...but don't you be the ones to bring them closer.
(For those who came in late, Seventh-Day Adventists believe that, shortly after everyone alive on Earth has had the opportunity to hear the Gospel, the warring tribes of Europe will unite for once, and then the United States will cease to be the Promised Land of religious freedom and will instead become the most oppressive tyranny the world has ever seen. Jesus will then return to Earth in the flesh to stop the new American Inquisition. And everyone agrees, the sooner the better--but nobody really wants to live through the total destruction of what these United States have been, and meant to humankind. Seventh-Day Adventists do not claim to have a precise time line for how long that will take, either. All they claim to know is that it will be a long, hard time.)
Books
It's early to call the Best of October, but the best non-Christian book of October just might have been reviewed right before this post went live. Scroll.
Coloring Pages
I could wish these butterfly pictures to color were more scientific. There is actually a system that allows scientists to describe butterflies' color patterns in words and visualize what those dry old descriptions in Novitiates Zoologicae mean. These are just fantasy picture printables, but they can keep a primary school class occupied for a few hours.
Ecology
West Virginia claims to have a grove of 50-year-old American Chestnut trees--the only such grove known to exist on Earth. Fifty years ago American Chestnut trees were still sprouting from the roots of dead trees but everyone "knew" they didn't live even fifteen years. But in the Illegitimate State, reportedly, they did. Now the ingrates are proposing to try to uproot 50-year-old trees, which everyone knows you don't do, so they can put in a "data center."
This site is set up as a petition to the Governor of WV, who doesn't want to hear from people outside his State, but the rest of the world can use it. I recommend posting links to it on blogs and social media with comments like "THIS is why friends don't let friends use flatphones" and "THIS is why my next car is going to be chip-free, I don't care how old it is."
Music
Bob Ferguson.
Sons of the Pioneers.
Toto.
Earth Wind & Fire.
Deep Purple.
Indigo Girls.
Technology
Why "conservatives," including the real private citizens in Trump's voter base, oppose the unsustainable "data centers" that are going to kill the Internet if we let them come to exist. (Not to mention the alleged American Chestnut trees. Not that I've ever trusted the Illegitimate State's claim to have American Chestnut trees, but whatever they do have that's close enough to look like American Chestnut trees will be worth more to them than the "data center.") No, we're not receiving money from China. We're willing to let China learn the hard way about using robots to create a gossip-and-spy "social credit" system, just as China apparently had to learn the hard way about Mao...and, just as in Mao's time, we are still the United States. We can still do better.
New Book Review: Carrion Reach
Fair disclosure: I received an Advance Readers' Copy of this book in exchange for a review on the day of official publication. ARCs are final-stage drafts; changes will usually be merely typographical (check spelling and punctuation, tweak lines to improve the way the text fits on the page). ARCs are usually e-books (as this one was) or paperback mock-ups with generic covers, so what readers buy will usually be the same book reviewers have read, only in a nicer cover.
Title: Carrion Reach
Author: London Clarke
Date: October 14, 2026
Quote: "[T]his guy was good-looking...too good-looking..."
When River left her boyfriend Carlton, she took some of his ill-gotten money and took a casino cruise. There she met an even more attractive man and, despite all the signs that she was picking up another man she'd soon throw away with revulsion, she went back to his family manor to work as his accountant.
He is Charles Cannon. The manor is Cannon Reach, which some locals are beginning to call Carrion Reach because so many animals die there. Charles, or Chaz, lives there with his creepy mother, even creepier aunt, and a home nurse, and the house is big enough that River has her own suite, so she's "safe" from the sort of "danger" she was thinking about. Indeed, River's emotions are undone by Chaz's ability to wait.
Readers will, however, notie something strange about Chaz. For those who remember "Sesame Street," Chaz's obsessive "arithmomania" strikes a chotd. "They call me 'The Count' because I count things," said the little vampire Muppet. Chaz is a vampire. But such a polite one...not only does he wait for River to throw herself at him; he even asks permission to bite before they start kissing.
She's tempted to marry him. She even considers becoming a vampire, before she finds out what's become of the orher women who've been tempted to marry Chaz. And what's happened to the men who made themselves inconvenient to Chaz or his mother or his aunt.
After that events move quickly and logically--at least if we allow the logical possibility that any vampire could be human enough to repent of having been a vampire. In most vampire stories this does not happen, but Chaz is a Southern vampire, so he might. For those who like unrepentant vampires, arrogant and ruthless to the end, no worries, there are some of those too.
This full-length novel can be read on its own, though an afterword connects it to an earlier series. I enjoyed it; people who like vampire stories should love it.
Prologues and Epilogues: Love or Hate Them?
This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks reviewers whether we love or hate prologues and epilogues, and why.
When they're part of a book, I've never had any emotional reaction either way. If a book is well written, an opening scene that takes place before the main story is probably well written too, and so is a follow-up scene that takes place after the main story, if there is one. If a book is not well written, those steps outside the main time line are probably not well written either.
Sometimes part of a story does take place outside the main time line. Say the story is about how someone's ancestor buried treasure and left a map, but nobody's ever found the treasure at the spot marked with the X on the map because, in some intervening year, a flood swept the treasure chest out from among the roots of the old tree in the soft sandy soil near the river. The prologue might show how someone else found the treasure chest and made use of the gold and silver. The main story might be about what the characters do, see, learn, while searching for the treasure. Maybe they give up and write the summer off as a learning experience. Maybe they don't find the treasure but they find something else, like a souvenir of the other person who found the treasure, that's become valuable. Whatever. There might even be an epilogue, as well--maybe a character met the woman he was going to marry while he was looking for the treasure. That kind of thing is not usually considered bad writing.
Sometimes self-published writers just throw in prologues and epilogues to meet a length requirement. That kind of thing is bad writing, and it shows; usually the main story in that kind of e-book wasn't very good either. Maybe the story is a biography and the prologue tells how the writer decided to write a biography of that person. Maybe the story is a romance and the prologue tells how one half of the couple broke off a previous relationship...in romance novels the main characters used to be required to be young, with no previous relationships, and now that that rule's relaxed the main characters are still supposed to have made clean breaks from any previous relationships. Or the story has been a wholesome romance with kissing and stepping back, and the epilogue shows us the main couple demonstrating How Babies Are Made. Nobody who already had that information needed that scene.
The prologues and epilogues that bring out strong feeling in reviewers, though, have to be the ones that are marketed on Amazon as books, meant to be trailers or "teases" for another e-book. Those I usually don't like.
They can be done well. A series of full-length novels, volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and maybe more, may have shorter stories as volumes 0.5, 2.5, 5.5 and so on, where the shorter stories are complete stories in their own right. Don't send me what ought to be the first quarter of the book, where the character gets into trouble, and expect that I'll care enough about the character to buy volume 1 where the character finds a solution to the problem set up in volume 0.5. Do feel free to send me the preliminary story where the detective character, as a child, found a missing pet or lost library book, or the romance character, as a teenager, vowed at someone else's wedding "I will never marry someone like him for reasons like hers," or the vampire character became a vampire (or learned that he'd been born one).
I think writers should try to avoid publishing either a prologue or a "sample" section of a novel as blatant bait to get people to buy the whole novel. If the story you send to people doesn't resolve its own problems, how will those readers ever trust that the full-length novel will do that? I don't know anyone who thinks "Oh, I must find out what happens to the character Tracy." Bad writers usually gravitate to genre fiction and the genre tells us what will happen to Tracy. The "buy the full-length novel to find out" treatment leaves us thinking thoughts more like, "I don't need to spend 99 cents to find out how this bozo will prove that the butler, or the token 'conservative' character, or the Jealous Beauty committed the crime. It's only second-rate fiction, so who cares. In fact, even if it's a Western That Breaks The Rules and Tracy is hanged for the crime Stacy committed, that ought to serve Tracy right for being a character in an annoyingly bad book written by an obnoxious person."
"Buy something now" is a very efficient way to remind us that the characters are merely figments of someone's imagination.
The short epilogue that serves as a bridge into a different series, on the other hand, can be done well. We've seen how detective character A solved a series of homicides; maybe we want to see how detective character B does with a series of frauds, and maybe you, the author, feel moved to write a short story in which A nd B work together. That one might be a good story.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Can Blogspot Stand Against Censorship?
After all these years of Blogspot being a wholesome and user-friendly platform...I find it disturbing that Blogspot even needed to publish the "Content Policy" statement below.
We all signed similar contracts. Similar, not identical. Possibly because the one I signed was displayed on a public access computer located in a library frequented by small children, it DID specifically ban "adult content," and I've actually enjoyed interpreting that ban in a very strict way. This web site did review a book with the title Wheat B*y and refer to a traditional song inviting campers to stretch and touch their "head, shoulders, k*s and t*s," but generally, if we say "hand" we need to say "writing" or "crafts" or some such thing!
Which made it just slightly embarrassing when a relative peeked over my shoulder and found "me, of all people" looking at one of Joe Jackson's tweaked cartoons...a particularly bad one in which Sabrina the Teenaged Witch appeared as a grown-up prostitute. (This web site does not generally specify the level of sex work in which a person is engaged, but this cartoon was pretty specific.) I was surprised he'd posted that, surprised Blogspot had hosted it, and mortified that, of all the good content that's come out of Lady Lake on Blogspot, that had to be the relative's introduction to that site.
But generally Blogspot blogs have tended to be wholesome. If anything this platform tends to appeal to people whose blogs are SO wholesome they have nothing to say. They set out to chronicle a more or less normal, only more wholesome, life and there's nothing to chronicle. It takes a special talent to make "We did housework; we did yardwork; we did schoolwork; we went to a prayer meeting" into a blog worth reading! No wonder so many blogs devolve into commentaries on the TV news...or just fade out as even the blogger gets bored with them.
So who is actually the target of these warnings? There's some very subjective language in this "policy statement." We as a nation might benefit from an overall law, maybe a constitutional amendment, to the effect that if a rule contains subjective language it can't be enforced.
"Content that depicts or encourages illegal activities" is a good clear rule. A person might reasonably believe that licensing younger drivers, for example, should not have been made illegal and that it's possible to teach twelve-year-olds who are tall enough to reach the controls to handle a motor vehicle responsibly, and might say that, but Blogspot could reasonably require the person to stick to arguments in favor of lowering the age requirement and NOT post content that encourages twelve-year-olds to take Daddy's car out on the road today.
"Demonstrably false information about voting procedures" is a kind of content that might reasonably be considered harmful. (They haven't even thought of "demonstrably false information about shopping procedures"--an old comedy cliche used to be having a character advertise a huge sale at the competitor's store so that shoppers would be indignant to find that all prices had not been slashed by 90%.) This web site thinks that kind of content can be funny, but Blogspot can reasonably ask bloggers to make sure readers can tell when any examples of it we post are meant to be funny. Someone really did spend the money to spam voters in my neighborhood with cards indicating that we were going to have to vote in different precincts. A comment on that incident, here, suggested that all votes for the candidate this web site opposed should be cast into a local body of water, but I think it was obvious that that was a joke. This is Virginia. We're not as easily confused about these things as voters in big blue cities appear to be.
"Misleading content related to harmful conspiracy theories" might (beneficially) be applied to all those "Trump is Hitler, Trump is a child molester, Trump is anything and everything that needs killing" memes spewing out of the Loony Left, especially as this category of contract violation has been (very beneficially) defined as content that has promoted violent attacks. (If you're determined to shoot President Lincoln, you should at least have to base that decision on verifiable facts about what he's doing, e.g., the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War, rather than on misleading content insinuating that President Lincoln was going to require all buggies, covered wagons, and stagecoaches to be redesigned to fit people who are 6'4".) So in theory we're in favor of that ban. But it would be good to have some clarification of how the burden of proof would be on anyone calling for censorship to show how a conspiracy theory led to a violent attack. We don't want web sites trying to get proactive with this kind of thing, whining that every accusation of fraud and corruption, which may or may not be verifiable if it gets the investigation the accuser is calling for, amounts to a "harmful conspiracy theory." Any suggestion that blog posts be censored needs to be required to demonstrate exactly what innocent person has been, not "could be," harmed.
Blogspot site management can see exactly what I'm talking about: A reader of this web site has barraged me with evidence in support of a claim person wants me to investigate. I am in no way qualified to investigate the claim. I don't know who the person is, why the person has sent these messages to me, or to how many other people the person has sent the same messages. I've asked other bloggers and podcasters if they wanted to investigate the story; they've not wanted to. I'm convinced that the claims merit investigation by the government of California. Person may sincerely believe that person's opponent's lawyer is implicated in human trafficking and whatever else. The lawyer may be implicated in all that the person suspects, and more. Being a blogger, not a hosting site, I believe I have a right and even a duty not to publicize the person's claims; I don't have the time or money to find out enough about the claims to take a side. But I believe Blogspot has a duty, if the person has per own Blogspot, to host the person's attempt to publicize per own claims. The only justification for censoring a blog in which this person made these claims would be that the claims had been investigated and proven false. As long as they're part of the person's ongoing lawsuit, a publishing site that paid for content might reject them, but a hosting site that merely displays whatever people choose to post has no right to reject them.
And "misleading content related to harmful health practices"? Mercy. Doctors can't agree, nor have they agreed from year to year, on what is a harmful health practice. At least, there might be some agreement on a few practices that are immediately fatal, like going over Niagara Falls without even a barrel or chugging a jug of Clorox, but there's no history of agreement on practices that anyone finds interesting to discuss, like medications, vaccinations, food, drink, or exercise. Name a health practice; somewhere the uncensored historical data will turn up somebody who's claimed that it's harmful.
Right. We need a law that any ban on "misleading content related to harmful health practices" is unenforceable. Such a non-starter as to discredit any publisher or web site that even leaves blather about it in any statement of policy. For people now alive, this phrase suggests that Google might have compromised itself by promoting what are now known to have been the very harmful mRNA vaccines that were mostly available against the strain of COVID people had already had, anyway, so there was high risk and no benefit associated with them all along, and for that reason the corporations bellowed and brayed that any skepticism about these vaccines was what was "harmful." Let's just say that we as a nation need to make a strong commitment to respecting people's right to their opinions, such that those who promoted experimental vaccines when anyone who had read any medical science whatsoever knew that those vaccines would be useless can be considered as merely having overreacted to COVID panic and are not subject to fines, prison terms, or shooting, now.
"Harmful health practices." There are those who don't like it that so many older Americans are active, fit, and healthy. There are those who think our good health harms them. Google would be well advised just to withdraw this whole paragraph from their policy, before somebody sues Blogspot for being a site where so many active senior citizens have encouraged and helped one another to stay healthy.
And it would be helpful, since European regulations are mentioned, if Blogspot's content policy affirmed that this is an AMERICAN site and upholds AMERICAN standards of freedom of speech. If content here upsets people in foreign countries, they probably needed and deserved to be upset--in every way--and their sole recourse should be to stay off the AMERICAN-originated Internet.
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Blogger Content Policy
Blogger is a service for self-expression and communication. We believe Blogger increases the availability of information, encourages healthy debate, and makes possible new connections between people. It is our belief that censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression.
However, in order to uphold these values, we need to curb abuses that threaten our ability to provide this service and the freedom of expression it encourages. As a result, there are some boundaries on the type of content that can be hosted with Blogger. The boundaries we've defined are those that both comply with legal requirements and that serve to enhance the service as a whole.
We rely on blog readers to report content that they find inconsistent with Blogger's Community Guidelines. If you encounter a post that you believe violates Community Guidelines, please report it using the 'Report' link located in the navigation of most blogs. If you are unable to find the link on the blog, you can still report suspected violations here.
Community Guidelines
Our community guidelines play an important role in keeping the open web a welcoming place to create. Please respect these guidelines. We may update our policies from time to time, so please check back here. Note that when applying the policies below, we may make exceptions based on artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific considerations or where there are other substantial benefits to the public from not taking action on the content.
Adult Content
We do allow adult content on Blogger, including images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity. If your blog contains adult content, please mark it as 'adult' in your Blogger settings. We may also mark blogs with adult content where the owners have not. All blogs marked as 'adult' will be placed behind an 'adult content' warning interstitial. If your blog has a warning interstitial, please do not attempt to circumvent or disable the interstitial - it is for everyone’s protection.
There are some exceptions to our adult content policy:
- Do not use Blogger as a way to make money on adult content. For example, don't create blogs that contain ads for or links to commercial porn sites.
- We do not allow illegal sexual content, including image, video or textual content that depicts or encourages rape, incest, bestiality, or necrophilia.
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Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation
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We will remove such content and take appropriate action, which may include reporting to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, limiting access to product features, and disabling accounts. If you believe a child is in danger of or has been subject to abuse, exploitation, or trafficking, contact the police immediately.
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Deceptive Practices, Fraud and Scams
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Do not impersonate a person or organization or misrepresent yourself. This includes impersonating any person or organizations you don’t represent or providing misleading information about a user/site’s identity, qualifications, ownership, purpose, products, services, or business.
This also includes content or accounts misrepresenting or concealing their ownership or primary purpose such as misrepresenting or intentionally concealing your country of origin or other material details about yourself when directing content about politics, social issues, or matters of public concern to users in a country other than your own. We do allow parody, satire, and the use of pseudonyms or pen names -- just avoid content that is likely to mislead your audience about your true identity.
Malware and Similar Malicious Content
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Misleading Content
Do not distribute content that deceives, misleads, or confuses users. This includes:
Misleading content related to civic and democratic processes: content that is demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in civic or democratic processes. This includes information about public voting procedures, political candidate eligibility based on age / birthplace, election results, or census participation that contradicts official government records. It also includes incorrect claims that a political figure or government official has died, been involved in an accident, or is suffering from a sudden serious illness.
Misleading content related to harmful conspiracy theories: content that promotes or lends credibility to beliefs that individuals or groups are systematically committing acts that cause widespread harm. This content is contradicted by substantial evidence and has resulted in or incites violence.
Misleading content related to harmful health practices: misleading health or medical content that promotes or encourages others to engage in practices that may lead to serious physical or emotional harm to individuals, or serious public health harm.
Manipulated media: media that has been technically manipulated or doctored in a way that misleads users and may pose a serious risk of egregious harm.
Misleading content may be allowed in an educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context, but please be mindful to provide enough information to help people understand this context. In some cases, no amount of context will allow this content to remain on our platforms.
Non-Consensual Explicit Imagery (NCEI)
Do not store or distribute private nude, sexually explicit, or non-explicit intimate and sexual images or videos without the subject's consent. If someone has sent a private nude, sexually explicit, or non-explicit intimate and sexual image or video of you, please report it to us here.
Personal and Confidential Information
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Phishing
Do not use this product for phishing. This includes soliciting or collecting sensitive data such as passwords, financial details, and social security numbers.
Regulated Goods and Services
Do not sell, advertise, or facilitate the sale of regulated goods and services. Regulated goods and services include alcohol, gambling, pharmaceuticals, unapproved supplements, tobacco, fireworks, weapons, or health/medical devices.
Spam
Do not spam. This may include unwanted promotional or commercial content, unwanted content that is created by an automated program, unwanted repetitive content, nonsensical content, or anything that appears to be a mass solicitation.
Violent Organizations and Movements
Known violent non-state organizations and movements are not permitted to use this product for any purpose. Do not distribute content that facilitates or promotes the activities of these groups, such as recruiting, coordinating online or offline activities, sharing manuals or other materials that could facilitate harm, promoting ideologies of violent non-state organizations, promoting terrorist acts, inciting violence, or celebrating attacks by violent non-state organizations. Depending upon the content, we may also take action against the user. Content related to violent non-state organizations may be allowed in an educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context, but please be mindful to provide enough information to help people understand the context.
Unauthorized Images of Minors
Do not store or distribute images of minors without explicit consent from the child's parent, guardian, or legal representative. If someone has stored or distributed an image of a minor without necessary consent, please report it to us.
Violence and Gore
Do not store or distribute violent or gory content involving real- life people or animals that’s primarily intended to be shocking, sensational, or gratuitous. This includes ultra-graphic material, such as dismemberment or close-up footage of mutilated corpses, and graphic material, such as content containing significant amounts of blood. Content may be allowed in an educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context, but please be mindful to provide enough information to help people understand the context. In some cases, content may be so violent or shocking that no amount of context will allow that content to remain on our platforms. Lastly, don't encourage others to commit specific acts of violence.
Copyright
It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. More information about our copyright procedures can be found here. Also, please don't provide links to sites where your readers can obtain unauthorized downloads of other people's content.
Enforcement of Blogger's Content Policy
Please report suspected violations of Community Guidelines to us using the 'Report' link located in the navigation of most blogs or by clicking here.
When something is reported, it's not automatically removed. Reported content is reviewed by our team to verify it violates those Community Guidelines. If the blog does not violate our guidelines, we will not take any action against the blog or blog owner. If we find that a blog does violate our community guidelines, or we detect other signals of abuse, we take one or more of the following actions based on the severity of the violation or the level of risk detected:
- Put the blog or post behind a sensitive content warning interstitial
- Unpublish the post, making it only available to the blog author
- Delete the offending content, post or blog
- Disable the author's access to their Blogger account
- Disable the author's access to their Google account
- Report the user to law enforcement
- Limit access to certain features, including reducing usage limits or removing access to a feature completely
We may also take any of the above actions if we find that a user has created multiple blogs engaging in repeated abusive behavior. If you have had a blog disabled, do not create a replacement blog that engages in similar activity. Unless noted otherwise, all restrictive actions are global and permanent.
Appealing policy enforcement decisions
If your content or account was actioned against, you will receive a notification about the type of enforcement and the reasoning for the enforcement action. The notification will also contain information about steps you can take to appeal our decision if you believe it was a mistake. You can submit an appeal by clicking "appeal" or "request review." Appeals are typically decided within 10 business days, though complex cases may take longer. If your appeal is approved, we'll notify you and take appropriate action to reverse our prior decision. If your appeal is not approved, your content or account will remain restricted after the 10-day appeal review period.
Appeals may not be available in all circumstances (e.g., certain court ordered removals). You should receive more information about your appeals options in the notification we send to you about your content or account.
If you're covered by the European Union's Digital Services Act ("DSA"), the option to refer your complaint to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body may also be available to you. Learn more about the European Union's DSA. If you have legal questions or wish to examine other remedies that may be available to you, including the option of referring this matter to a court, you may wish to speak to your own lawyer.
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