Slashdot Mirror
A Proposal For Unionizing Bloggers
mikesd81 writes "Coloumbia Journal Review writes about the possibility of unionizing bloggers. Chris Mooney writes 'Yes, dear reader: the Bloggers Guild of America may be on its way. The dispute between screen and television writers and media conglomerates has its roots, after all, in the Web.' He says, then, they get zero compensation for their products being distributed over the Internet. 'Bloggers often earn that same salary. There are exceptions, of course, those fortunate few who have become quasi-celebrities in their own right and found themselves, and their sites, snatched up by major media companies,' he goes on to say. He also adds that a bloggers guild could protect a blogger's intellectual property and help ensure they're compensated for it."
The mole is worth talking about, mainly to allow moderators to hit us with an off topic fine.
According to Wikipedia, the mole is due to become extinct. The definition is depends on the gram, which in turn is based on a lump of metal the French have hidden in Paris. This is plain unscientific and I think the current plan is to define the mole as a particular number (preferably incorporating Paris Hilton's birth date to keep the French connection), and from that define a sphere of silicon that weighs a kilogram.
The difficult bit in all this is to get Paris (Hilton) to understand what a sphere is. Before long, someone says 'balls' and well, she has a brand image to uphold, doesn't she.
In the meantime, us chemists can happily use the mole as a unit of conversation. A nanomole is the smallest amount of fur that will glint in strong sunlight. And so on. The object is to drive away the boozy slobs and leave at least one interesting person to talk to. A difficult problem, but if you bungle it, you can always join the diminishing circle round the physicist explaining why 'vacuum cleaner' is an oxymoron. As a chemist, you can point out that an oxymoron is someone who destroys the ozone layer.
All these prefixes get messy. 'Atto-' at one billionth of a billionth is difficult to comprehend. But an 'attobuoy' is about the smallest thing that can float, and and is consequently the unit of measure for scum, when mentioning one to several scum. And the attomole is the musty smell in a molehole.
But my preference is for the guacamole. It uses a Mexican meaning of mole, and is made form avocado. Which is Spanish for lawyer, but derived form an Aztec (or thereabouts) word that means testicle. Amazingly, the word testify also refers to testicles. At which stage, you should have narrowed to conversation down to a monologue, or be talking to Paris Hilton (or similar).
There, off topic enough for you?