Have a wonderrrrful birthday violet, you here? Your present is on its way. xxooxx
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From the category archives:
violetblue
. . At least, this was all the setting when Lara saw that one of her old self-portraits had been retouched to remove her watermark and placed on the online sales cover of 1982′s porn non-epic “Body Magic.” Unfortunately, this wasn’t Lara Jade’s first experience with her images being used by someone else. It’s also no news that buying porn online is a “buyer beware” environment where consumers must constantly be on guard for privacy and personal information issues (just like with online pharmacy and “cheap” travel sites). (more. . . )
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Mike Weiss, Chronicle Staff Writer
There is no good scientific evidence that teaching abstinence to teenagers will by itself prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, say the authors of a recent study. Yet they found that comprehensive sex education is declining and that more youngsters are being taught nothing more than abstinence.
As with similar debates over stem cell research and abortion, California and the Bush administration are at loggerheads over an ethical issue with far-reaching public consequences — in this case, the best approach to sex ed for middle and high school students.
More than $1 billion in federal aid has been poured into state-run abstinence-only programs in the past decade after the Bush administration decided there was an imbalance that favored comprehensive sex education and slighted abstinence. State school systems accepting the federal money are required to teach that sexual activity outside marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects, and that a married, monogamous relationship is the expected standard. (more…)
[via violet blue]
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FDA is issuing this advisory to alert you to the potential hazards of using skin numbing products, also known as topical anesthetics, for cosmetic procedures. These topical anesthetics contain anesthetic drugs such as lidocaine, tetracaine, benzocaine, and prilocaine in a cream, ointment, or gel. Topical anesthetics are widely used to numb the skin for medical and cosmetic procedures, and to relieve pain and burning and itching due to a variety of medical conditions. FDA has approved many products for these uses. Some must be prescribed by a doctor; others may be purchased without a prescription. Applying topical anesthetics for a medical procedure is usually done in a doctor’s office by a trained medical professional. However, FDA is aware that use of these products before a cosmetic procedure may not be supervised by trained health professionals. Without this supervision, a patient may apply large amounts of topical anesthetics to their skin. This application can result in high levels of these products in the blood causing life-threatening side effects, such as an irregular heartbeat, seizures, and death. (more…)
[via violet blue]
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Chelsea Girl, Tony Comstock and violet blue aren’t the only ones pissed that they don’t get linked to.
So is blogger and technical evangelist Robert Scoble, who says big gadget sites don’t link to blogs and to give proper credit:
- Pissing off the blogosphere…
- Big gadget sites don’t link to blogs
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Forbes’ first annual listing of the biggest stars on the internet. It includes my favorites Xeni, Cory, Merlin, Markos and Violet.
“Sex educator Violet Blue is the best-selling, award-winning author of over a dozen books on sex and sexuality, as well as the sex columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. She’s also nearly omnipresent on the Web, whether she’s writing for Metroblogging San Francisco, reporting for Geek Entertainment Television, contributing to Fleshbot.com or hosting Open Source Sex, one of the most Internet’s most popular podcast”
Yeeeeee haaaa! OMG! Congratulations m’dear! (Slowly extricates nose from violet’s posterior).
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I got some bad news today. ‘RIP, Lusty Lady column’ was the subject line of the email Rachel Kramer Bussel sent out today.
This week’s Village Voice column, will be her last. RKB She was informed by the editor in chief David Blum that they have hired a new sex columnist. Gawker speculates it’s the Columbia Spectator’s Miriam Datskovsky. I don’t know how many years Rachel has written the column, but she was always one of the first things I read in the Voice, way before I ever got into anything like blogging. Later when I met her, she said to me, ‘my blog isn’t as slutty as yours’, which wasn’t really the point. She’s one of my blog heroes (and now part of the gang that calls itself the Perverts’ Saloon) and writes about sex in a clear and thoughtful voice.
violet blue puts it this way:
Here’s the thing: there are not all that many sex columns around the nation, and certainly few with, ahem, balls. To have a writer like Rachel on staff writing about sex is to have something enviable: who she is and what she brings as a writer and culture critic makes her a *valuable property* — especially on the internet, a tool she seriously know how to mix, bake and frost into delicious viral marketing cupcakes that everyone always seems to want. And unlike many other sex column writers (print or web) she knows a fuck of a lot about sex and sex culture (up to the minute), and importantly, she knows how to *talk about it*…
…Evidently the Voice doesn’t get a lot of what’s going on here, which is so sadly typical of le MSM.
Amen, sister.
Let’s see which new media dating or sex company is smart enough to hire her next.
You can submit comments about this to the Voice on their website.
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…”PHE/A&E is currently cutting out all sex toys that contain phthalates. This process takes time because a large majority of the products we sell come from China. However, the merchandisers are requiring that all toys be phthalate-free. By mid 2007, PHE companies (Adam & Eve, Better Sex, AdamMale, VideoMail, Video Gold, Temptations Parties, etc) should also be phthalate-free. I am keeping my eye on this as much as I can.”
(more…)
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In my last post I mentioned the Publisher’s Group West bankruptcy issue and linked to the New York Times article about it, the Mediabistro post that provided a little explanation, and the snarky parody site, Radio Free PGW. Then I had a long talk with my publisher on the phone, and realized how serious this all is. For anyone who writes, publishes and reads books. Bottom line: get ready to say goodbye to many indy/small book publishers.
The New York Times article quoted an “anonymous” (um, yeah) publishing executive, stating that “authors and readers were unlikely to be affected by the bankruptcy filing”. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Let me explain, with what I’ve learned tonight. Publishers Group West is the largest book sales and distribution company in the US — it is the distributor that my publisher, Cleis Press, uses and PGW doesn’t just do indies but also their parent company AMS distributes biggies like Random House. Here’s their active list of publishers. PGW was founded as company on their own, and then in 2002 became part of a behemoth book distribution company called Advanced Marketing Services. AMS filed for bankruptcy, and as of December 29, 2006, all assets were frozen and are now held. So even though book sales were terrific last year and PGW (and all the publishers they distribute) had a great year, the book publishers’ money now belongs to the court. (more…)
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Nominations for the 7th annual Weblog Awards (the ‘Bloggies’) are now open, until January 10th. Go nominate your favorite weblogs (geographic region, application, category, etc.). Awards will be given out at South by Southwest Interactive. This is one of the bigger annual blog awards. Lets get more blogs about sex and sexuality in there (Pssst – let’s make sure Violet Blue is nominated again)! Why not review your daily reading list and RSS feeds and nominate something new or different than what’s usually been nominated?
bloggers, blogging, Bloggies
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- World’s Most Beautiful Women Bloggers (Amit Argwal)
- Top 10 Blogger Babes of 2006 (Gizmodo)
But, but, where are Audacia Ray, violet blue and Melissa Gira?!
bloggers, blogging, top10
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A couple of weeks ago I noticed something distressing in our daily site statistics; our google search referrals, which over time had risen to about 300-500 visitors/day on 100-150 search strings/day started to vascilate wildly. One day that would be typical, the next the would fall to 50-100 visitors on a few dozen search strings.
Then on Christmas Eve they crashed completely, a couple dozen visitors on a handful of search strings. A month ago we were getting 40-60 visitors/day on ‘couples sex film’ alone. Yesterday we got one. Other search terms relevent to our art and business have been similarly effected. In fact, since the Christmas Eve crash, we haven’t had the number of visitors on a single Google search string climb out of single digits on our daily search referrals.
…Now as it turns out, this is not a Google vendetta against Comstock Films. Google’s re-sorted the way they rank the entire sex/adult world, and everyone from pussy.com to Babeland.com has been effected. (For more read Google Delivers a Lump of Coal to Babeland.) It takes the sting out of it to know this isn’t something we did or didn’t do.
…As I said, Comstock Films isn’t alone. If you google our friend Violet Blue, you’ll get a link to her podcast feed on the the first page, but tinynibbles.com is no where to be found. But what’s worse, you won’t see tinynibbles.com on the first page of a google search for for tinynibbles either! (This morning the first link to tinynibbles.com on the fifth page.) Chances are your favorite sexually related site is similarly effected.
What can we do? Well for starters, you can tell Google you’re not happy with the search results their providing. Google comstock films or tinynibbles or whatever your favorite might be, and if it’s not listed where you think it should be, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Dissatisfied? Help us impove link. Will that actually help? Who knows. It probably won’t hurt. (I happen to think that if someone googles comstock films, they should see comstock films on the first page, if not at the very top!)
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See also Welcome to Googlestan! Google Purges Adult Content from Search Results (Sugarbank); google is broken (violet blue); some thing less pretty and more dumb (chelsea Girl)
google, indexing, search, seo, violet blue
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- Knitting for Adults only (violet blue)
- Kinky Knitknacks (Rachel Kramer Bussel)
- Anatomically Correct (Citizen Skein)
- Knitting Erotica
- Knit-your-own fake breasts (Knitty)
- Vagina Pattern (Mosh Knit)
- Princess Leia Wig (to go with her gold bikini)
- Edible panties
knitting, sexy
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The Weblog Awards are the world’s largest blog competition, with over 1 million votes cast in the last three years for nearly 1,000 blogs. Blog comrade violet’s podcast Open Source Sex, has been nominated:
This is pretty amazing — my podcast Open Source Sex has been nominated for The 2006 Weblog Awards under the category “Best Podcast”. Not just best sex podcast, or best female podcast — it’s being taken seriously as a podcast, period! OSS is competing against a variety of others, including the Slate Magazine Daily Podcast, This American Life and (ahem) Search the Scriptures Daily.
So if you think my podcast — indy, not-for-profit, sex-positive, grrrl powered — deserves to win, please vote for Open Source Sex! Yay!
erotica, podcasts, podcasting, violet blue,
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violet blue has a detailed and highly relevant on the ethics of blogger ethics, link courtesy and credit, link theft, and updating your post.
Here’s the section on linking and link theft:
Linking and link theft: Always cite your sources. (example: theurl.com, via placeIfoundit *link to the place you found it*) Here is an example. Purpousely avoid linking to, or thanking sites that snag links without credit from you and other blogs, and don’t source their links on a regular basis. People new to blogging or ambivalent about the way information is shared among bloggers think no one will notice if they just steal links from everyone — they are wrong. Lots of people find links by simply stumbling across strange websites on Google or get sent things from friends, but often you’ll find something on a blog or site and you’ll want to display the courtesy of acknowledging them with a link. If someone blogs a link and you re-post it, you have to tell people where you found it. Here is an example of this courtesy. When someone posts a link that just appeared on another blog, it looks suspicious — and people see these things when they happen, especially other bloggers. If you post a link and it was already somewhere else and someone brings it to your attention, update your post with an ‘also seen at’. Here is an example. Follow up on your links after you post them: Geocities and smaller image hosts will go down, so keep an eye on your links after you post them as a service to your readers. You have created a resource, even if it’s a simple post.
Read the entire post here.
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