in which foucault = smut, and other points about amazon

(as seen on fb)

when the internet savvy get pissed, the internet savvy google bomb

so, according to smart bitches/trashy books it seems that amazon's folks at amazon rank have decided to stop including books that are a threat to puritanical society in their amazon rank.
scandalous and smutty books, you know, like foucault's history of sexuality*.
not that i approve of them removing the amazon rank listing from playboy's century of sex** or the amazon rank for basic women's erotica .


*and to illustrate the arbitraryness of it all volume 2 retains its amazon rank.

**don't worry, the amazon rank for playboy:the complete centerfolds is still safe.

amazon explains why sales' ranks matter here.

does a business have the *right* to run itself however it sees fit? for the most part, sure.
marshall, a so-called employee at amazon, says that amazon can't be homophobic because they employ a lot of gay people. which... i'm not going to touch their hiring practices right now .... but that sounds a lot like the "some of my best friends are gay" corporate equivalent. his comment at smart bitches/trashy books only makes amazon sound incompetent.

but, more to the point, if customers and potential customers are disgruntled by said company's policies, they also have the right to show their feelings and share their frustration.
sending a live-action threat to amazon is very much illegal.
google-bombing amazon and their amazon rank ~ not at all.

on pirates and national self-determination

someone i put on my flist posted this independent article about somali pirates. and how not all pirate are bad. the article doesn't dispute that some, in fact, in the article's words :"gangters", it simply adds to the picture that other 'pirates' are in it to protect their country.

In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

....

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

i'm inclined to believe the contents of the pirate article/post because, well, the whole bits about those from "civilized" nations being the ones plundering is more than believable.

but i must admit my own ignorance here.

p.s. i had this post writ and queued for review when this article from the unapologetic mexican came along on the f-list via feed and seems to confirm.