There’s a Mastodon account linked familially to this blog, Mastodon, @EdDarrell@mastodon.social.
Drop by and say hello.
Communing with Mastodons
May 3, 2023
Leave a Comment » | 
Administrivia, History | Tagged: Administrivia, Mastodon Social | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
A little Christmas blizzard?
December 23, 2019The snowfall on Dec. 24, 2017, was almost a whiteout on Chicago’s North Side at the lakefront. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)
End of the Month sales become even more important at the end of December, when they become End of the Year sales, and generally just critical times to hit sales quotas.
I don’t have posting quotas (obviously). But there is a wealth of material to get out before the end of the week.
Ready?
More:
- Scrooge’s three-word description of the Trump administration
- Alternative Christmas music, Sufjan Stevens, “Christmas in the Room”
- Christmas music, Macy Gray’s call for justice
- Christmas music: Joni Mitchell’s “River”
- Best editorial ever, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”
- Thisbe Vos’s Christmas jazz music, “Let It Snow”
Leave a Comment » | Administrivia, Humor | Tagged: Administrivia, Humor | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Welcome, students and teachers!
February 7, 2018University of Kansas Jayhawk mascot at one of the school’s sports fields. KU photo
Welcome students and teachers, today from the Port Washington-Saukville Scholl District on Long Island, New York (Mrs. Reetz’s class), from the University of Kansas on Blackboard, and from the group (home schoolers?) looking up the Casablanca Conference and Franklin Roosevelt.
“Welcome to Port Washington” sign, Long Island, New York.
This blog started out as an experiment in bringing new materials into a classroom in a new way. It’s encouraging that students and teachers use the blog for learning.
If you don’t mind, would you drop a note in comments about where you’re from, and what you’re looking for — and whether the material here is any help? You can use the comments on the post. It would be useful information to help tailor content, you know?
Same welcome applies to anyone else just passing through — tell us where you’re coming from and why, in comments, please.
Thanks.
2 Comments | Administrivia | Tagged: Administrivia | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Catching up on January historical events
January 25, 2018
Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea); tortoises move slowly, but get the job done. This tortoise is native to the islands of the Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles. Wikipedia image.
January flies by, especially when there is so much other stuff going on — new year to start, tests to prepare for, choirs start up from the holiday break, etc., etc.
There are a few key historical events I like to touch, some that have already passed. I’ll work to catch up. This week is the anniversary of the founding of the first Boy Scout Troop, in England; coming are the birthdays of William Henry Harrison McKinley, our shortest-termed president (31 days, one month) on January 28, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our longest-termed president (12 years and 1 month) on January 29. And more stuff.
Is it even worth posting a flag-flying calendar for January 2018?
Remember the archives here (see “search” features on the right), and especially don’t forget to note in comments when links don’t work. Thank you, Dear Reader.
Leave a Comment » | Administrivia | Tagged: Administrivia | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Thank you, readers! 5 million views
March 5, 2017Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub passed the 5 million viewers milestone between 9:45 and 10:00 p.m. Central time, March 5.
Thank you.
5 million views? Equal to the number of immigrants protected from deportation by President Obama’s 2014 executive action, providing an enormous boost to the U.S. economy and reputation. Mother Jones image.
1 Comment | Administrivia, Blogs | Tagged: 5 million, Administrivia, blogging, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub blog, Thank You | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
5 million, counting slowly
March 2, 2017
5 million, American. Image from Instagain, whatever that is.
Is the heyday of the blog over? Or did I just foul it up?
At one time Millard Fillmore’s bathtub got about 2,000 hits per day. In the last 16 months, that’s dwindled to just under 1,000 per day.
Still, at that rate, the Bathtub should overflow with the 5 millionth hit, sometime in the next 5 days. It’s funny, but if I counted spam we’d be over 8 million already. 100 spam comments for every real comment, approximately.
No wonder elections turn out so oddly.
For 5 million sincere hits, I thank you, readers, and thank you especially you faithful readers.
Would you tell your friends to come check it out?
For comparison:
- Phil Plait says the Sun converts 5 million tons of matter into energy every second
- 5 million kids in public schools are English language learners, NPR estimates (Hey, kids! come on over to MFB and check things out!)
- If I had a dollar for every hit, I could buy a 30-second ad on the 2017 Super Bowl, New York Times says
- 5 million is way more than the crowd at Trump’s inauguration, and probably quite a bit more than the actual crowd at the Cubs’ World Series victory parade
5 Comments | Administrivia, Blogs | Tagged: 5 million, Administrivia, blogging, Thank You | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
WordPress glitches
November 25, 2015Apologies, Dear Reader: WordPress is glitching. The usual list of important articles, just below the masthead, has disappeared. I’ve got no notice on it, and it appears the WordPress “help” button may also be missing from some editing screens.
Something’s missing. See the blank line below the masthead? It’s supposed to list important articles for first-time visitors, and for me.
Stick with us while we try to track down some solution.
WordPress is an admirable host, and easy to use for blogging. I have no reason to complain often — but I wish I could figure out how to fix this.
2 Comments | Administrivia | Tagged: Administrivia, WordPress | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Trump says China? Let’s go see
October 26, 2015Kenny sent an e-mail, with a link to Donald Trump, saying “China.”
So, we went to see.
Among other things, Kenny’s brother James, our younger son, was getting married in Beijing. Good excuse to travel. Keeping with the rule that one should spend at least a day in a destination for every hour of travel it takes to get there, we planned 13 days.
I don’t think Donald Trump knows China.
After 13 days and a few thousand miles, and perhaps a few hundred supreme dumplings and two Beijing ducks, fugu, and noodles of nearly endless variety, with gallons of stout vinegars you won’t find in a U.S. supermarket, I know I don’t know China.
(I don’t think Trump knows much of anything, a very little in any depth; this is funnier now than it was when Kenny sent the link before the trip.)
Following, not always consecutively, some reports on some of the things we saw. Please stay tuned.
We saw the ancient city of Pingyao, Shanxi Province, where wheelers and dealers have been mincing people like Donald Trump for millennia. I’ll bet Trump didn’t go there. (This is a Wikipedia photo, by the way: “Pingyao-oldtown” by Benzh – Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pingyao-oldtown.jpg#/media/File:Pingyao-oldtown.jpg)
More:
8 Comments | China, History, Travel | Tagged: Administrivia, China, Donald Trump, Humor, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Your missing comments?
December 24, 2014Spam comments on this blog abated for a couple of weeks, but they’re back with a vengeance. Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub is collecting from 1,500 to 5,000 spam comments daily over the past week.
How I feel when policing spam comments at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.
Doesn’t affect you, EXCEPT if your comments somehow run afoul of the spam filters. If you make a comment that does not appear almost immediately, please track down my e-mail, and let me know (I’m assuming you know how to add “@” and “.” where appropriate in an e-mail address). There is so much spam that I may not otherwise find a short, non-spam comment in the mire.
Why would your comments run afoul of the spam filters? Biggest reason is too many links. I’ve set what I consider to be a reasonable limit on the number of hot links in a post before the spam filters ask me to look at a post. Sometimes, in the heat of discussion, even I run afoul of that limit.
The second biggest reason is profanity. This is a family-friendly, high-school-student-and-therefore-district-profanity-rules-friendly blog. Mild profanity probably won’t catch your comments — but they might. If you’re a sailor who wishes to wow us with your ability to write blue, your comments will be flagged. Stick to making the argument, and avoid inflammatory, profane rants.
Third, if you’re writing from a nation where many of your ip addresses are involved in spam comments, or negative SEO attacks, the filtering software may think your comments are similarly ill-intended.
So if you leave a comment, and it doesn’t show, try to let me know.
Leave a Comment » | Administrivia, Spam | Tagged: Administrivia, Spam | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Does a name seal one’s geographic fate?
September 28, 2014A site out of Utah that compiles a list of blogs based in Utah County, around Provo, lists Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub as one of the local products.
It’s tough to complain. The site doesn’t drive much traffic my way, but there is an occasional foray. The Bathtub can use all the traffic drivers anyone wants to provide for free, in honest linking.
There’s some good company on the list. Jared Stein writes about education issues from Utah Valley University, and his blog is listed there. (One must appreciate a blog that correctly uses a clip of the Black Knight sequence from Monty Python in discussing on-line education resources.)
Mount Timpanogos is based in Utah County. It’s a beautiful, underappreciated block of ancient stone.
Mount Timpanogos at sunset. Timpanogos is the second highest mountian in the Wasatch Front (11,752 ft/3,582 m), and forms the eastern border of Utah County. Wikipedia image, photo by Eric Ward from Provo, UT, USA – Mount Timpanogos – 01/19/08. The founder/editor of this blog has been inspired by this mountain for years, particularly in those years that it greeted him each morning from his bedroom window.
But the Bathtub is not based in Utah County, despite the reference to the mountain in the URL.
It’s great to have something of beneficial serendipity to note, in contrast with our usual observations that the “idiots” are carrying us all to hell in an uncomfortable and inadequately air-conditioned hand basket.
(Writing this reminds me that I’ve never been to the summit; anybody organizing a hike soon, and need a now-flatlander blogger along?)
Another important clue: Amazon.com is not a company located in the Brazilian rainforest.
Leave a Comment » | Administrivia, Geography - Physical, Timpanogos, Utah, Weblogs | Tagged: Administrivia, blogging, geography, Mt. Timpanogos, Utah County | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Busy, unproductive summer; some photos and rambles a-coming
August 3, 2014
Dallas Moon, June 7, 2014; sure it’s copyrighted, but please use it with abandon.
I got a pretty good shot at the Moon back in June, considering it’s just a 200 mm telephoto, and I was shooting handheld, without the tripod. You can’t tell from the picture, but the sky was blue. One of the issues of getting a good Moon shot concerns exposure — and this time, I got the Moon right. Sky is black, but there you go. We were walking the dog.
I’ve made a lot of photographic experiments over the summer, none of which I’ve posted. I’m also fighting computer issues with both the laptop and desktop, and downloads have been uncertain. The shot above, for example, shows up in some indices, but not in others. Can’t post it if I can’t tell WordPress what to upload, you know? Who really understands computer logic?
I’ve made two trips to Colorado to visit James and Michelle. None of the photos are up yet — and there are, actually, thousands. None of the thought rambles are up, either. I got ambushed by a fellow with “the easiest political quiz in the world” while drinking beer and listening to the Bodeans in Louisville, Colorado; there’s a photo somewhere of my pointing out the errors of the guy’s quiz, and his confessions that he’s a libertarian in GOP clothing; and then there were our visits to those temples to the failures of libertarianism, including the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and Mesa Verde N.P. Colorado libertarians live among the disasters and ruins of libertarian thought, but think and claim they are held back by the ropes their rescuers throw to them.
I hope I’ve got the streams of posts flowing again, Dear Reader. Your past patience is greatly appreciated.
Leave a Comment » | Administrivia, Liberty, photography, Weblogs | Tagged: Administrivia, blogging, Colorado, Libertarianism, photography | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Spam fight continues, with new spammers
July 13, 2014It’s called “negative SEO,” the ad agent for a California law firm tells me.
When someone gets a decent presence in blog mentions and other placements of ads on-line, competitors take a legitimate phrase, or a few phrases, from those ads, and they start spamming sites with them. Google then notices a blip in traffic, and tells the original advertiser to stop it or Google will ban them from search engines. Of course, the advertiser doesn’t know who is doing the spamming . . .
The law firm and fancy car dealer seem to have gotten it under control, and I had hoped that would be the end of it.
But the Kia dealer near St. Louis is showing up again — and for some odd reason, an air conditioner service group in Tucson, Arizona. In the past day I’ve got about thousand spam messages on the blog, more than 600 offering air conditioner service.
One might wish these spam hits would boost the traffic numbers on the blog — but they don’t count. Blog spam filters are smart enough not to count these as hits, but not wily enough to figure out how to stop them. 604 messages like this. Rats.
My apologies, Dear Reader. If you posted a comment and it didn’t show up, send me an e-mail, or post another comment without links, and I’ll try to rescue it.
2 Comments | Administrivia | Tagged: Administrivia, Spam | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Spam comment flood update
June 20, 2014The Aston-Martin and Kia comment ads are diminished, and probably thanks to their ad agency, the law firm comment ads are gone.
Now I’m getting up to 2,000 spam comments a day for Spence Diamonds and Spencer Diamonds, in Canada.
More than 4,000 spams comments relating to Spence Diamonds and Spencer Diamonds, in the past couple of days. Oy.
If you, Dear Reader, posted a comment that did not appear, it probably got caught up in the flood and my desperate attempts to stop the comments from hitting the actual blog. Please find my e-mail (see “About this blog,” above), and drop me a line giving me a key word in the comment, so I can find it among the thousands of spams.
Of course, I’d be pleased to let the comments come through (and count on my reader totals!) if either company (is the the same company) would simply send me a couple of bags of diamonds. That way I could afford to pay WordPress and then take ads . . .
If you blog, you may be seeing the same deluge. It used to come mainly from pornography sites, and I could find it all with a few vulgar word searches. That ended a couple of years ago with the arrest of some of the spammers. This stuff is more pernicious, because generally the words in the comments sent are all non-pornographic, and words that would snare other comments unfairly.
This is a practice known as “negative SEO,” I understand — when competitors take a legitimate ad and send out spam, hoping people will complain to Google that the targeted company is spamming and suspend all tracking for the company’s ads and mentions. Dastardly. So, I suppose we shouldn’t blame Spencer Diamonds nor Spence Diamonds. My previous complaints seem to have gotten some action, though — so I”ll keep complaining.
I apologize for the inconvenience, Dear Reader.
Please, no spam.
2 Comments | Administrivia | Tagged: Administrivia, Spam, Spence Diamonds, Spencer Diamonds | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Top spammers? Really odd mix (please send the Aston-Martin, keep the Kia)
May 21, 2014A few days ago I noted that this blog is under a severe spam attack series. Still true, and the spam has increased.
Please, no spam. Apologies to Hormel’s Spam.
Looking at the spam, the top spammers look really odd. For years internet pornography and sex talk sites dominated spam, but after the arrest of some top spammers in those fields, it dropped off dramatically.
Today? Here is a list of six top spammers I’ve got, hitting me with more than 100 spam posts per hour, combined:
- Quirk Volkswagen, in Manchester, New Hampsire; one of the ip addresses used is 186.95.33.219
- San Diego Aston-Martin (maybe I should be flattered?), including this ip address: 186.91.230.150
- OnlyExotic.com, including 186.93.101.107 — a seller of exotic automobiles
- Paul Cerame Kia in Florissant, Missouri, from 186.95.218.21
- getforeverrecovery.com, apparently a privately-run detoxification and rehabilitation facility, 223.30.29.210
- Keller Grover, LLP, a California law firm, including 103.12.160.21
Were I less familiar with spam, I’d think each of these organizations is near bankruptcy, and each is desperately trying to get enough traffic to keep the doors open. But after years, I’ve discovered that the most desperate generally cannot afford to waste time spamming.
I’d almost wager that these organizations and companies hired some public relations group to “place” their ads across the internet and get hits on the ads. And I’d almost wager they are unaware of what their hirelings are doing. A lot of the spam links directly to promotional videos on YouTube. Yes, it’s against YouTube policies to use spam video links.
What do you think customers of these companies would think, if they knew? Do you think they get significant business from a thousand comments on Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub?
Hey, Aston-Martin of San Diego — send me one of these including tax and title (I’ll license it here in Texas), you can spam my blog all you want for a year. Heck, I’ll even fly to San Diego at my expense to pick it up from you. But otherwise, please knock off the spam.
Keller Grover, can you tell me — pro bono, of course — whether California legal canons endorse a law firm’s spamming across the internet? Can I sue them for unauthorized product placement, or unauthorized advertising, and collect? I need to know for a friend.
Yes, I’ve protested to these people at their comments sections and by e-mail.
Update: Heh. Not 12 hours later, someone sent me this link, where Quirk VW said:
Our dealership maintains a strict “no-spam” policy. Subscribers to our e-mail services (or any other feature/service found on our Web site) will not receive unsolicited e-mail messages from us.
That’s my problem: I didn’t send them any e-mail!
Meanwhile, at Whipped Cream Difficulties, the same complaint, about some of the same spammers.
10 Comments | Administrivia, Technology | Tagged: Administrivia, Keller Grover LLP, Obnoxious advertisers, OnlyExotic.com, Paul Cerame Kia, Quirk Volkswagen, San Diego Aston-Martin, Spam, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Spam attack; comments moderated
May 14, 2014My apologies.
Please, no spam. No offense to Spam, I hope.
Today the site has been hit with major spam attacks from a couple of different directions. WordPress’s wonderful Akismet software captures a lot of the stuff, but someone has figured a way around it (temporarily, I trust), and I’ve been swatting spam down for most of the day.
To keep the comments clean, I’ve put a control that disallows comments except from known and relatively trusted accounts. If you’re new here, be patient. It may take two or three hours tonight before I can approve a first comment.
Please don’t let that stop you from commenting. Legitimate comments should all appear, shortly.
Thanks for visiting.
Leave a Comment » | Administrivia | Tagged: Administrivia, Spam Attacks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
