Recommendations.

Every so often, when I am bored and the software I work with is doing something that does not require my intervention, I wander over to Amazon and start torturing the software. I'll call up a book title that I own and rate it as if I'd bought it from Amazon, so that it goes in their list of 'things to consider when making recommendations'. Amazon's got something like 450 items listed as factors to consider when recommending books to me, scattered across a bunch of merchandise categories. Today I went over to the Books section and told them a few things I owned, then clicked into Recommendations. Nothing especially new on the front page, so I went and had a quick peek at the subcategories they had listed for me - Sports (9/10 archery, the rest martial arts stuff), Food and Wine (baking stuff, Chinese food), and so on. Just for the heck of it I decided to see what they thought would be a good read in the Religion and Spirituality category.

Something like thirteen books on Taoism, Zen Buddhism, other varieties of Buddhism, and the Chinese philosopher Mencius. . . plus Jim Henson's Muppet Book of Friendship and A Very Muppet Christmas.

Damn, they're good.

Today's pulp survival tip is #102: Before you suck out the poison, make sure you've decided what's going to happen to the poison once it's out. 'Swallow' is not an option.

New pic.

Just another sketch at the Pencil Gallery. I have a really huge book of art that I bought 'cos it gets expensive to go to museums every time the urge to draw something from example hits. I consider it my Christmas gift from my cousin, who gave me a gift certificate for nearly the total price of the book (there was sales tax) this past year.