California may be the next Alabama

I've been reading about the voters in California voting in favor of Proposition 8, banning gay marriage in the state.

The feelings this news evokes in me are paradoxical. On the one hand, I'm outraged that voters in California want to take rights away from gay people. I live way across the country in Alabama, one of the reddest states in the country, the state in which the fewest number of white people voted for Barack Obama. I was one of those 10% and am proud of it but I am used to being in the minority (a liberal in Alabama).

But I am also the mother of a 21 year old gay man. My best hope for him is that he will find someone to love who will love him back, so that they can cherish each other and share their lives as my husband and I have done, by getting married. And in my day dreams about this parents' dream, I always saw my son moving to California so he could do just that.

Alas, now that California has voted to abandon some of its best citizens, by voting for proposition 8, my dream has faded into outrage. Who are these people who think they deserve more rights than other people?

And now for the paradox. The only good thing about California's faux pas on this issue is the fact that for once some other state besides Alabama or Mississippi is in the media's attention for being bigoted and provincial. Thanks for that, California, but I liked you better when you were the liberal hippie state of my dreams.

Yes, we did!

I was glued to the television Tuesday night. My husband was too nervous to watch and went to his computer and played Scramble on Facebook. My 21 year old son sat with me in the den. While I constantly changed the channels between BBC America, MSNBC and CNN, Ryan had his macbook open and was cruising the New York Times, CNN, Facebook and other sites. We were elated but extremely nervous. When I saw Kentucky had voted for McCain I was upset. Silly, I know but I was afraid that we were about to watch a repeat of 2000 and or 2004. As the night went on however, I realized Kentucky wasn't going to decide the election.

We also started flipping back and forth to Comedy Central so we could watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert covering the election live.

It was an electrifying night. My two cats knew something was amiss and they were on the alert just as we were. They sauntered between the kitchen and the den, presumably thinking with all the excitement that we would surely soon give them treats. After all, the kind of excitement their humans were feeling is usually reserved for Thanksgiving or Christmas and they always get to eat turkey on those days.

The relief in the room was palpable when Pennsylvania was declared for Obama. We discovered that Ohio had gone for Obama while on the BBC network. They were a few minutes ahead of MSNBC which we then changed to.

First we got to hear Jon Stewart say the magic words.

Ryan sat up very tall on the sofa and I saw his face turn red. He turned his beautiful little macbook towards me where Safari revealed the BBC website showing California and the rest of the west coming in and we watched as the number of electoral votes started rising exponentially. Then I heard Keith Olbermann say, "Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States."

I wept. I screamed. Ryan wept too and Jim finally quit pacing and joined us. We were laughing and crying at the same time. When MSNBC switched to the crowd at Grant Park in Chicago, we knew, along with the crowd, that we had changed the world for the better.

Yes, we did!

Vice Presidential Debate

I've been looking forward to the vice-presidential debate for weeks now. I confess that I was more interested in this debate than the presidential debates.

I was very disappointed. First, I was disappointed with Governor Palin. She didn't answer a single question posed to her. Secondly, I was disappointed with Gwen Ifill as moderator because she didn't seem to notice that Palin didn't answer any questions.

Tonight's debate wasn't really a debate. What I saw was Joe Biden answering the questions Ifill asked of him and Sarah Palin nattering on and on in a sadly obvious attempt to seem like someone who would be married to Joe Six-Pack and how she and McCain are mavericks. What is Joe Six-Pack? Is she talking about the guy who drinks a six pack of beer every night? Why is she reaching out to Joe Six-Pack? Is Joe Six-Pack supposed to represent the average American? She says she's a maverick, shouldn't she be reaching out to mavericks? I'm confused. Maybe Katie Couric should ask Palin who Joe Six-Pack is and if he's a maverick too.

Governor Palin's way of talking grates on my nerves. She seems to add random words to overly long rambling sentences in what seems like an attempt to sound homey, or Joe Six-Packy. The way she speaks reminds me of the way the Pillsbury doughboy or Aunt Jemimah speaks. Maybe she should be doing commercials. She could probably sell insurance if this job doesn't work out.

For me the best thing that came out of the vice-presidential debate is that I no longer feel sorry for Sarah Palin. Let me explain. After watching Katie Couric's interviews with Sarah Palin I had found myself feeling sorry for Palin as she was so clearly out of her depth. I had been feeling genuinely angry with John McCain for putting a simple woman through an ordeal she clearly has no business being involved in. Palin showed tonight, however, that she can memorize a script as well as any soap opera actress. And more importantly she showed that she can dodge a question as well as any of the Washington insiders she seems to hold in such contempt. So I no longer feel sorry for her. I realize she will survive all this and she can always do commercials instead.

Amazon Buys ABE: Antiquarian Books Sellers Beware

We just had official word today that Amazon has bought ABE or American Book Exchange. ABE's CEO sent us an email today telling us that Amazon has acquired ABE. President and CEO Hannes Blum assures ABE sellers that Amazon is dedicated to maintaining ABE as a "stand-alone business" and that all things will remain the same for ABE sellers and buyers.

Don't believe it for a minute. The last time Amazon bought out one of the major venues for selling out of print, rare, antiquarian, and used books, they gave the same speech. They said they would maintain Bibliofind.com as a separate stand-alone business and that nothing would change. We believed it then. Maybe it was because it was the 90s and we were giddy with the potential of the internet.

The first thing Amazon did was incorporate Bibliofind.com into the Amazon website. It then came up with Amazon Z shops and put all the Bibliofind listings in there. We sold a lot of books through Z shops the first year it was open. But then Amazon decided to open "Marketplace". Anyone with an Amazon account could now list any book with an ISBN there simply by putting in the ISBN for the book in a drop down box from a link on the Amazon home page. This way everybody who read a John Grisham novel and wanted to sell it could then sell it on Amazon as a used book. Soon there were so many individuals selling a few of their previously read books on Amazon that Amazon buried Z shops where all the fine and rare books were listed.

Remember Z shops? That is where the professional used books sellers who had listed their books on Bibliofind had listed their fine and rare books. Z shops disappeared. First Amazon took Z Shops off of its home page. It became more difficult to find rare and antique books. Then Z shops disappeared altogether. Most of the books in Z shops (originally Bibliofind) were rare books, first editions, antique books that were published before an international book numbering system was incorporated in the last quarter of the 20th century and so had no ISBN.

Z shops disappeared and so did the rare and antiquarian books including rare editions of books because Amazon's marketplace didn't (and still doesn't) differentiate between a first edition of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and a ratty torn up underlined paperback edition that is three years old. If you are really determined, you can put in some work to find one of these rare or first edition books but then there is no description. Book collectors want to know details. Amazon is not about the details. It's about the numbers.

Amazon's decision to have a Marketplace where anyone can sell any books has been great for the millions of people who decided to resell their Nicholas Sparks books. And it has worked out great for the thousands who wanted to buy them for a dollar or two on Amazon and didn't care what condition the book was in or what edition it was.

Amazon decided they were making more money or could make more money from the people who were reselling their Jan Karon books than actual professional booksellers so they started encouraging anyone who sold a book on Amazon to price it lower than anyone else. As a result, you can now buy books for a penny on Amazon (minus shipping of course).

Strangely enough, Amazon's marketplace venue spawned a whole new breed of book sellers. These are the people who come to used book sales armed with ISBN scanners who scan a number from a book directly in to Amazon's website to see whether or not it worth buying to resell on Amazon. These aggressive and irritating scavengers don't know anything about books. They don't love books and they don't care about books. They are Amazon people and like Amazon, all they care about are the numbers.

Amazon is all about the numbers; it cares about the masses of people who buy and sell a few books a year, books that have been assigned numbers (ISBNs). If you are a professional used, out of print and antiquarian books seller, the chances of someone buying your rare first edition "Carrie" on Amazon is very slim. Any collector wanting the rare first edition will want full details about the book and Amazon doesn't allow that. The book has an ISBN but it's the same number assigned to all editions of the book published since the original first limited run. As the bottom-feeders with scanners can tell you, Amazon promotes the lowest prices on its website.

For those of us who consider ourselves professional antiquarian books sellers, it is time to mourn ABE. If we are to learn from history then we should know that ABE is going to go the way that Bibliofind did. Amazon would be quick to point out that if you go to Bibliofind's website, you will see that it is indeed maintained by Amazon. But just try finding a rare book there. Put in a search for "To Kill a Mockingbird" published before 1970. There aren't any. And as any bookseller worth his salt knows, there are thousands of book club editions of the title to be found any day of the week. So technically, Amazon can still say they maintain the Bibliofind website but it's a farce.

Now we must look to Alibris, and Biblio.com (not to be confused with Amazon's closet skeleton, Bibliofind. ABE is surely going to drown in Amazon's ocean of marketplace items as Amazon slowly creeps closer to becoming the global flea market. And like flea markets, the old and rare and unusual stuff is fast being replaced by rows of socks, cheap knock-offs, poorly constructed imported furniture and horrible smelling incense. I salute you ABE and may you rest in peace.

GOP vs. DNC

Today I was asked by the AARP to send a note to both parties about health care insurance plans. Yes, I'm now old enough to be on the AARP's list.

I decided to go to both the GOP and DNC websites to see how easy it would be to contact the parties there in order to send each a personal note about my thoughts about health insurance instead of some mass campaign that's easier for them to ignore.

I went to the GOP website first, looking for a "contact" link. But that's not what I'm writing about. And here is why.

On the GOP site homepage, all I found were links to articles written about Obama and various smear campaigns about Obama and anyone he is connected with. I couldn't find a single bit of information on the Republican home page about their candidate for president.

Who is running for President on the Republican ticket? Honestly, if you didn't know and went there to find out, you still wouldn't know. You would know all about Obama though.

Like the years when Bush smeared John McCain, the Republicans are still very good at deflecting any attention to their lackluster below par candidate by their usual smear tactics against the opponent.

Remember how America used to abhor propaganda? Well the Cold War is over and apparently the Republicans have figured that propaganda wins them votes. I was very disappointed.

Even though information on McCain wasn't what I initially went to the website for, I was interested in what his thoughts were on several issues and wanted to check for myself instead of relying on word of mouth. But I couldn't find any information about John McCain on the GOP home page.

I did find a link to write to the GOP at the bottom of the page and wrote to them voicing my concerns. I got an impersonal canned reply instantly.

Then I went to the DNC website thinking that maybe they would have their whole website devoted to McCain the way the GOP has theirs devoted to Barack Obama. I was wrong. The DNC website is all about guess what? Barack Obama. Hmm. I was able to find out what he believes in and stands for on the issues that concern me.

I wrote to the DNC outlining my health care concerns. I haven't gotten a reply yet. I fully expect it, like the one from the GOP will be a canned message but I understand that both parties are busy.

After visiting both websites I spent some time thinking about the differences between the two. It really surprised me that the whole GOP (Republican) presidential campaign is based on smearing the opponent rather than talking about their candidate. I am basically an independent voter. The first year I was old enough to vote for president was 1980. I voted for John Anderson. Now if that made you laugh then you are at least as old as me and remember he was the independent running that year.

I voted Republican a couple of times over the years when I thought they had the best candidate for governor, president or whatever. I am not narrow minded. But today's Republican party is certainly not the one I grew up with. I find myself feeling that no matter who ran on their ticket today, I would have to vote for the opposition even if they were able to resurrect Abraham Lincoln. But of course if Lincoln were alive today, he wouldn't be a Republican, would he? If he had run against GW Bush, I'm quite sure Bush would have won.

My impressions from looking at both of the major party websites is that the Republicans are like the overgrown 6th graders on the playground who by sheer size and meanness do whatever they want to do and get away with it because everybody else is afraid of them. On the other hand, the Democrats appear reasonable and thoughtful about the issues and though they don't meet all of my concerns, they will at least talk about them and perhaps more importantly, they won't beat me up if I don't agree with them.

Germany, Bush, Neanderthal and Marx

I read an article on ZDnet today. The article reported that the Germans had been depicting Bush in editorial cartoons as a chimpanzee but just today, German officials had referred to Bush as a Neanderthal because of his lack of ehrm, well, judgement on environmental issues that face the entire globe.

The author remarked that he thought Neanderthal was further advanced than Chimpanzees.

I thought I would put my degree in anthropology to use for once and answer his question for him. So I went to the "Talk Back" portion of his article to reply and before replying started reading some of the things people had posted there.

I confess that I got completely caught up in answering the ignorantsia who had posted there. By the way, I just made up the word, 'ignorantsia' to combat the anti-intelligence, anti-science, anti-environment, etc., masses who call anyone that is smarter than them the intelligentsia. Please feel free to use it and pass it on.

I should know better than to get into online arguments with the ignorantsia but I couldn't help myself. One guy was equating Marxism and socialism with the issue of global warming. How could I not respond to that? He thinks that the environmentalist movement is all some evil plot hatched by anti-capitalists, anti-American Marxist types. Huh?

Another guy in California was posting six year old like arguments, basically if someone didn't agree with him, his answer was, "if you hate America so much why don't you leave?"

I wasted at least an entire hour posting replies. At first I attempted to use reason to make these crazy paranoid people realize that not everybody is out to get them. It didn't help that one of the people I agreed with was a British citizen with an inelegant fondness for the term, "fat-sucking Americans".

One reasonable and compassionate person was getting bombarded with hate replies because he used Al Gore in one of his posts. It makes me sick that the neo-conservative machine has somehow managed to make a Nobel prize winning American into a goon.

But back to the original content of the article. Apparently the Germans have regularly been depicting Bush in their cartoons as a chimpanzee like character. But after the frustrations of his unbending unrelenting policies or lack of policies on the enviroment, one German official was said to have referred to our little Texas president as a Neanderthal.

Now I take issue with that. Homo sapien neanderthalis was not the brute that science museums of the 60's created. HSN (or Neanderthal) was thoughtful, intelligent and this has been proven. HSN buried his dead. HSN took care of the elderly and the sick. Unfortunately by referring to Bush as a neanderthal, the Germans have once again relegated the hard working, caring HSN to uncaring brute and I for one, am mad about THAT.

Windows Vista made me switch to Mac

Actually that title is not wholly true because it was more than just Windows Vista that prompted the switch. There was also the troublesome fact that I spent about two months trying to remove a mutated virus that had invaded my Windows XP operating system despite my daily updated virus removal program. I was using Tred Microcillin's Internet Security program. When I got the virus, I had to go to a volunteer driven website that you post your problem to and when someone has time to answer (and they ARE volunteers after all), they would ask you to do something and post back your results. I went through this for two months and finally was able to remove the virus but my computer was never the same.

There were actually three factors involved in my decision to get the iMac. Number one reason: VIRUSES, number two reason: Windows VISTA, number three reason: my old hard drive was getting full and it was time to buy a new computer.

I don't regret the switch at all. I bought the iMac in February while I was out in Seattle visiting my sister who is a Mac Genius at a local Apple store. I was able to get the family discount which helped.

It has taken me a short while to get used to things but so far I love my Mac and can't imagine going back. My husband is using my old computer because his Windows XP machine's hard drive failed. Another sign that it's time to move on from Windows.

I've been using IBM compatibles since the early 1980s.

The only thing I miss about my Windows machine is a little program called Irfanview. But I've learned to live without it and have found a lot of great features about the Mac that I had no idea existed.

There is this cool workflow automator program that allows you to record frequently used actions so you can automate them. Okay, I admit, I haven't gotten this down to an exact science yet but I'm working on it. It's a lot of fun.

I am still of the same opinion I was earlier, that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have nothing to do with me and I could care less about who they are, their history, who did what, etc. In fact, I find the legendary Steve Jobs followers who hang on his every word with something akin to cult followers, well, just plain creepy. It's the only thing I don't like about having become a Mac owner. And I just try to distance myself from it. I bought this iMac because I felt it would better serve my needs as a computer owner and that is the only reason.