Thomas Hunt

In order to avoid paying sales taxes under Connecticut's new law, Amazon has severed its business relationships with all CT-based web associates. That means Amazon will no longer pay us the small referral fees we used to receive when our websites drove customers to the bookseller. For me, referral fees never amounted to a huge amount of money. (Though Amazon made tens of thousands of dollars from my web visitors each year.) But they did help make my various websites viable. I will likely be joining Barnes and Noble as an associate in the near future in an effort to make up the lost revenue. Very discouraging.

Had a few minutes of spare time recently and used them to go back over some of Stephen Hawking's works. I was re-reading the very basic descriptions of the relativity principles. While a lot of the subject is still challenging, I feel like I am least able to identify some of my own mental block. The notion of Time as variable just doesn't fit with human experience. I mean, it may make sense in the mathematical equations, but it is as unimaginable for me as additional dimensions of space. I suppose it could be easier to accept Time as a variable and Velocity (of light) as a constant if velocity was not always expressed in terms based upon time units. Maybe we should refer to all velocities in relation to the light speed constant and leave off the "per hour" part of the description.

The American Mafia discussion group I moderate hit a new record for message posts last month. During the month of May, 347 new posts appeared on the group. The previous record was 237 posts, set back in April 2009. The group now has more than 100 members. Recent discussion topics have included Joseph Bonanno's kidnapping, the 1928 murder of boss of bosses Salvatore D'Aquila, the Castellammarese War, and Allessandro Vollero's warning to Joe Valachi. The discussion group is hosted by Yahoo! and can be accessed at this web address:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/americanmafia/

I've been spending some time lately designing a website to supplement the book Mike Tona and I are completing. The site and the book ( DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime ) will contain information on the Mafia in western New York. Some of the site skeleton is in place and can be viewed at these web addresses: dicarlobook.com , buffalomob.com . Initially, the most eye-catching aspect of the site probably will be the horizontal "crawler" of mugshots across the top of the main entrance page. The crawler, based on a design by John Davenport Scheuer, will allow visitors to link to biographies of mob figures by clicking on mugshots. If anyone decides to take a look at the fledgling website and would like to provide feedback, comments can be added to this post or emailed to info@dicarlobook.com.

Some recent Facebook posts prompted me to read through Mark Twain's assessment of Christian Science. Twain was at his sarcastic best in the opening of the book. He relates a tale, in which he was horribly hurt during a fall from a mountain ledge and required medical care for broken bones. Unfortunately, the only healthcare workers in the area were a horse-doctor and a Christian Science healer. He opts for the latter and begins receiving treatment for his fractures remotely. When the healer visits her patient the next day, the two enter into a wonderful conversation about reality and illusion. You can download the book to your Amazon Kindle for free.

While I publish other blogs relating to specific projects, it seems a good idea to have a more general online site that deals with all that work and with other projects that may be of some interest. At this point, I honestly have no idea how busy the "generic" Tom Hunt blog will be. We'll see.