I just have one question: How many cats would it accomodate?

A blast from the past! I have a small collection of the '73 stickers. I should dig them out and frame them.

Dang- that hooded guy looks like the Emperor from Star Wars.

The later AMORC ads were more benign- 'Do Thoughts Have Wings?' and suchlike.

Like poster #4, I went through the 'literal' (read: zealot) stage of practice, but fortunately outgrew it.

I like your moderation style- even handed, but also in service to the overall community. It's not easy to find that particular even keel, but you've come close.

I've built and run some pretty large and sometimes contentious communities myself, and your rules are very similar to mine. I like the 'disemvoweling' tactic- is there software that you can use to do that with? It won't work on all communities- but it's still a cool tool.

I sometimes think that web-jerks do not believe that the pixels on their screens were put there by actual people. That is why they tend to drop trou and show their collective asses. And others seem to be expressing some form or another of mental illness- I've had posters who had regular 'cycles' of totally assinine craziness.

But the bottom line is the health of the community. You are correct in saying that a few trolls can utterly decimate a stable community. I've seen it happen. All you can do is electronically carpet-bomb the worst ones out of your community. If you're lucky and have some high-quality regulars, they often give the bum's rush to any habitual troll, or let you know if your board has erupted into a flame-war.

I like BoingBoing- I remember reading the paper magazine, and have my own "Happy Mutant" guide. I might not post or reply often (and the interesting sites I've pointed out have been ignored, so I no longer post them), but I read this blogset regularly. Thanks for the brain -food and the behind-the-scenes work.

@Dragonfrog (#12)

Now I'm going to have to find some Sarotti Marzipan. Maybe Fresh Market will have them next Christmas- they had all sorts of European candies and holiday goodies- it was like being in a Kristkindlmarkt. I used to get little bags of marzipan potatoes in a local bakery in Otterberg.

My absolute favorite little delight was the Ferraro "Mon Cheri" candies with the brandy centers. A couple of those would give me a buzz- and they sold them in the BX in Germany. Not to mention the Asbach Uralt brandy filled chocolates.

I suppose I should be comforted to know that Europeans (or at least, Germans) have as much processed crap-food as Americans do.

Even so, I wouldn't mind trying some of it, and I know from experience that the Ritter-Sport chocolates are wonderful- especially the Marzipan.

I noticed that the chart skipped the Holy Trinity of Geekdom: fandom, computers, and Paganism. They got the Renfaire/SCA part right, but they left out the Pagans! (Yeah, some of us wanted to know more about the spells in the dungeonmasters books, and wound up getting more learnin' than we bargained for...)

And they forgot Star Trek! And USENET. (the original Geek Clubhouse!)

And BoingBoing!

This mutant is not happy.

I've noticed a big difference in the way the more recent CDs sound compared to how they sounded when they first came out in the early 80s. Heck, I still have the first CD I bought back in '84.

I rarely listen to things through earbuds or cans. Instead, I play stuff through my 21-year old analog class A/B amp, into a pair of equally old Klipsch kg-4 speakers.

Bliss.

I wish the producers and engineers would quit over-compressing their music, and leave the tweaking to the ones who want to tweak on it. I can hardly stand to listen to music produced today, because it's just noise to my ears.

Do I miss vinyl or tape? Heck, no. The creation of the CD was literally music to my (still) sensitive ears. I stopped using the equalizer to 'fix' what I heard when CDs came out. But no equalizer can fix the over-compressed music that is foisted on us today.

I noted that the stereo on my new car has a compression mode to compensate for road noise. It helps- a bit. But vehicles are a very hostile audio environment. My old cassette deck even had a 'car mode' in its recording selections to compensate. It's too bad that with all the advances in recording today, producers couldn't offer us that sort of selection, so those of us who like to listen to music in ideal environments can really enjoy it.

I worked for CC between '95 and '99- back when the sales people were commissioned. The computer department where I worked did about half the business in the store, and we did have a good reputation as knowledgable sales people. Sometimes that would backfire, as people would come in, pick our brains, then buy their systems somewhere else. But I did pretty good for the first 3 or so years.

Then they started reducing the commissions. I ended up having to work twice as much to make half as much. I saw the handwriting on the wall, and landed a state job in computer support. It wasn't long after that CC fired our top remaining salespeople. Had I been there, I would have been on the street, too.

They did it again with their management staff last winter. My best friend's husband was caught up in that mess. They gave him some decent severance pay, then had the gall to ask him to come back at half what he made. He declined.

I had some CC stocks, and sold them before they tanked. I'm not sure if they're going to make it this time- last time I was in there, nobody was able to answer my fairly simple questions about the computers they had. The store was a mess, and the sales people were nowhere to be found.

The irony is that with the digital tv changeover coming in a little over a year, salespeople who know what they're talking about are precious commodities. CC is going to lose big on that.

I recall having a rather strange interview with a fellow in civilian clothes in the early eighties while I was serving in the USAF. Apparently word had gotten out about my deep interest in metaphysics, and I think he was trying to recruit me for that Stargate program- but he was very vague about it.

It didn't feel 'right' for me at that time- mostly because I didn't want to move to the East Coast. I think he was disappointed, because I had the 'right' clearance. This was in the middle of the Cold War, too.

Here's the text of the "First Earth Batallion" handbook.

http://ejmas.com/jnc/jncart_channon_0200.htm

You have to remember- the late 70s and early 80s were a hotbed of the "New Age" movement. So, it was very possible that the military would become interested in these ideas. And I am not a bit surprised that they would still be trying these tactics.

I see that he's ready for his "Cops" appearance: No shirt, dumb tats, and an even dumber expression on his face!

Yikes! Rat cotoure?!? What's next- tick body art?

Sheesh.

Nice redesign. And I am glad that the minor bugs are being worked out, and there's a good moderator at the helm- her rules for running communities are a lot like my own. I agree that the rating system is like a game to some, and if they can game a system to destruction, they will.

But this Happy Mutant is happy to see BoingBoing evolving, and I'm looking forward to the little tweaks that will make it even more magnetic than it already is.