I like shoes, but shoes are boring.
— March of Perfume Posse explains why perfume is better than shoes, in Scents and Sensitivity in this week's Time magazine.
Sometimes birds would fly straight to food, but almost half the time an albatross would either turn upwind or zigzag into the wind toward a meal. Both patterns suggest that the birds were following a plume of scent, rather than visual cues. Birds could turn upwind toward a food source several miles away -- well over the visual horizon.
— From Wandering Albatrosses Follow Their Nose, about a study that "looked at the odor-tracking behavior of individual birds in the wild using remote techniques".
Police went to the home in the 1400 block of Byron Street SE and, because of the smell, suspected a meth lab was set up in the basement...They found a man in his late 20s passed out after huffing an unknown substance.
The suspected meth lab was actually the man's own personal perfume making equipment.
— From Meth lab? No, homemade perfume equipment at Wood TV 8 in Grand Rapids.
Robin, you're much too modest. The first paragraph of the piece reads: “At least half a million people like [Eva Pasco] subscribe to blogs like Sniffapalooza and Now Smell This, virtual clubhouses for those who love perfumes, particularly hard-to-find niche brands.”
Lovely to see March quoted too.
The meth story cracked me up. I wish we knew more about what potion he was concocting and why he passed out.
Not meaning to be modest — this is a blog & it has no “subscribers” unless you count people who subscribe to the RSS feed. Our RSS subscribers number around 1500. Sniffapalooza is not a blog at all — and I'm always amazed when mainstream publications just call any website a blog. Do they not know what a blog is?
I spoke to the author of the article and provided her with figures for our daily readership (but did not give her the number of subscribers to our feed), and have no idea where she got “half a million people”, but there is no way she could possibly extrapolate that number from anything I gave her, and I'd drop over dead if our daily readership combined with Sniffa's readership comes up to half a million people. Perhaps she is meaning some time period longer than 1 day, in which case she should have specified what that time period was. Or perhaps by the “like” in “subscribe to blogs like” she means she is including subscribers to many other sites besides NST & Sniffa.
Anyway, March's comment is hysterical both on its own merits, and also because it is so random — it is always odd to see what writers pluck out of a long interview
LOL — me too! Don't try this at home!
Robin, I think an awful lot of people have no idea what a blog is, nor how you interact with it, LOL. 'Subscribe' sounds like the kind of word a writer would use when they're really not sure what the activity is, and asked someone who 'knows about computers'. The Sniffa site isn't a blog, but I'm not clear myself exactly what it is? The number also sounds like a rough calculation, of the thankfully-unproveable kind. I'm thinking she took the 50K figure from PerfumePosse and multiplied it by 12? March cracks me up with just about everything she writes, so I think she was a good source to quote!
Look, not faulting the writer, because I don't much care except that I'm embarrassed to have anyone think I reported some outrageous number of readers. I did explain that “subscribers” was not an accurate way to figure out the readership of a blog (or any website). And, I did provide her with our daily readership, and if you extrapolated a yearly figure from that it would exceed half a million by a very considerable margin, so I don't think that is what she did. But you can't extrapolate from daily figures anyway; almost every software system that counts “unique readers” counts them by the day — a person who comes back to your website the following day is counted a second time as a “unique reader”. So if you multiply your daily number, you lose the “unique” aspect and overstate your readership.
You're absolutely right that most people have no idea what a blog is. I've now seen numerous articles on “perfume blogs” that included sites that were not blogs. But I wouldn't have expected that from Time magazine.
'Extrapolate' – dictionary.
Sigh..
'Meth' – ok 'crystalmeth', not methadon.
I'm sorry — extrapolate is to “infer from known information”. And meth is so widely used in the US, apologies for that one too!
R, you're one of the most conscientiously accurate posters I've ever encountered on the web! You're about the last person who would inflate facts. Looking at it from the writing side, I'm aware of slight guilt here. I try hard,when I'm writing up interviews, to make sure I'm as accurate as possible in reporting what people said. Sometimes, though, looking for a hard statistic about a situation, I google the words and look for a site with numbers. If nothing looks trustworthy, I leave the stat out, but sometimes there's a later 'addition' by sub-editing staff who haven't been so scrupulous. I'd have expected better of Time, though – they must have loads of people to check copy for accuracy. Perhaps web figures are so hazy, you can just pluck a figure out of the air and be sure no-one will protest? Tsk.
Hard to say what the writer of the Times article meant, but it looks like she was saying that half a million people read a variety of perfume blogs including yours and sniffa's. But, sniffa's is not a blog. Oh well! Never trust the accuracy of anything in the media!
Anyway, virtual “high five” to you, babe, for the mention in a major publication!!
I agree that March's quote looks completely random. I love shoes, but the really great ones tend to be way more expensive than a bottle of liquid art. :):)
Hugs and love!
Robin, Vanillagirl, no problem, that way I keep learning words in English.
Well, you know, this is a perfume article and I'm sure it doesn't get the same level of scrupulous attention that “hard news” would get, but still, I think throwing out a number like that makes me look silly in the end. I'll just be glad she didn't quote any of the *really* stupid things I said, LOL…
R, I still love March's quote, it is random but funny 🙂
And so agree with never trust the accuracy of anything in the media, here included!
I once used some info from Time in a political letter to the editor. I should have double checked it; it was wrong. I got clobbered but good by people who caught the mistake. Can't count on their fact-checking!
You know, I'm not trying to throw stones. You can't count on my fact-checking either. I'm just sorry it was printed the way it was.
i liked “virtual clubhouse”. This is my virtual clubhouse, and I'm grateful for it in a world that seems increasingly alienating. Congrats on being recognized in the national media!
I liked “virtual clubhouse” too, and thanks!