Oh, goodness, you’re worried about me. That’s so sweet. But I’m fine, really. I’ve just been in an awfully summertime kind of mood and wanting to be irresponsible and not do anything grown-up or difficult at all. And you know, the thing with having as many jobs as I do is that it’s hard to take time off from all of them at once.

Anyway.

I was at a party last weekend and someone pulled out an awfully cool party trick on his iPhone — it’s an app from the Smithsonian, with which you can take your picture, and then see it transformed into an earlier species of human. Then you can have it e-mailed to yourself. This is what the e-mail told me about me-as-homo-floriensis:

Thanks for using MEanderthal from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Your image is attached.

It’s the new, very very old you, Homo floresiensis! You’ve been extinct for 17,000 years.

Your modern relatives didn’t know you existed until 2003, when they found your small skull and skeleton on the island of Flores in Indonesia.

You stood up and walked. You made tools and hunted. You were small, so scientists call you a Hobbit.

Get to know me and all the other early humans on the Smithsonian website

Download the Smithsonian MEanderthal app for iPhone and morph yourself, your friends, or even Fluffy and Rover into early humans.

Here’s what I look like as an early human:

Pretty hot for back in the day, I must say. I would have been quite the rockin’ cavechick. At any rate, if you party with geeks — and I know you do — this is a fun little app to have.

This is too funny: blogger FemaleScienceProfessor reports of a phishing scam at her university, in which “an unknown and nefarious person who sent an email to faculty in my department ‘from’ one of our departmental colleagues who had an emergency whilst traveling and needed a quick infusion of cash.”

Turns out, though: said colleague actually is disorganized to get him- or herself into such a situation. The giveaway was that the e-mail was too politely worded and well written to have come from said colleague.

David Brooks of the Nashua Telegraph — a fan of the Igs and an all-around good guy — has a good question on his blog: have you read a book if you’ve listened to the audio version?

When somebody asks you if you’ve read a certain book, and you’ve only listened to it in audio version, what do you say? “Yes?” “Yes with an asterisk”? “No, but I’ve heard it”? “No”?

What about you?

This reminded me of a similar question: if you have been e-mailing back and forth with someone, or having a dialogue on Facebook, or chatting online, do you say you’ve been “talking” to them? I usually will, unless there’s something specific about the technology that I wanted to make a point of, e.g., “So, I was Facebooking with Mimi, and I noticed she still hasn’t changed her relationship status!” But if I’m just reporting the substance of the conversation, I’ll say “talking.” I suppose it seems weirdly over-specific to fixate on the technology itself, as though the technology were the important thing and not the conversation.

What about you?

The Globe reports on the increased use of cochlear implants in children under three. Medical stories don’t tend to grab me, but identity, communication, and politics do, and there are serious ramifications to “fixing” deaf children at such an early age:

Before implants, deaf children learned American Sign Language or lip reading. Most fared well, although many could not speak. Like the De Laras, however, many families whose children receive implants today are dissuaded from learning sign language, a trend that will bear repercussions for the entire deaf community and that some specialists fear is a mistake.

Tyler’s generation, hearing specialists say, will redefine what it means to be deaf.

“I describe it as a revolution,’’ Schorr says. “It’s close to a miracle, what this technology has made possible.’’

I’m not so sure the Deaf community would define it as a “miracle,” although “revolution” they would certainly agree with. “Deaf” with a capital D is used not to define a physical condition, but a culture, a culture based to great extent around American Sign Language and the constraints and opportunities it affords. The “Deaf culture” view of deafness is contrasted with the “pathological” view of deafness, i.e., the view that being deaf is a disability and nothing more. (One can find both hearing and deaf individuals in both camps. For a good overview of Deaf culture, including some basic etiquette tips for hearing folks, go here. For a thoughtful argument for the pathological view, go here.) If cochlear implants are used at such an early age, the hearing parents of deaf children may, understandably, have little motivation to learn ASL or have it taught to their children. Without the next generation of signers, what will happen to Deaf culture?

I haven’t read the book yet, but I’ve met the writer, and if you are interested in cochlear implants–or science fiction!–check out Michael Chorost’s Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human. Michael was hard of hearing from early childhood, received cochlear implants in his 30s when he went completely deaf, and is enough of a scientific and literary geek (in the best sense!) to have truly made the most of becoming a cyborg. (He is also an attractive man who bears some resemblance to Brent Spiner, the actor who played Data on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and we both agreed that it was a shame that Mr. Spiner would be too old to play him, should a film ever be made of Michael’s life. Who better to play a cyborg than the actor best known for playing an android?) His speech at Gallaudet University is a must-read.

Let’s talk commenting.

This is about the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one. One thing I love about blogging is the fact that it’s a continuous work-in-progress. Blogs are never all set. A blog is always still working on it.

I’m trying to decide what kind of commenting policy I want to have on my blogs. When done well, the comments section can be as powerful, entertaining, and educational as the blog itself. When not … oy. We all know what that’s like.

The price of a good commenting community is, unfortunately, eternal and unpaid vigilance on the part of the blogger. You have to moderate, and you have to moderate aggressively and consistently. This article in Slate describes, admiringly, the draconian moderation at Television Without Pity, which did not change after the site was bought out. TWOP moderators don’t just enforce civility and keep the spam out, they make sure you are bringing your A-game. No “Hah hah ITA Zak Quinto is soooooo hawt” on the TWOP boards, no sir. Ta-Nehesi Coates described his commenting policy as, “Don’t be boring, and don’t be an ass,” which I think sums it up pretty well. That’s what everyone wants for the comments on their site: interesting, insightful, on-topic.

So how to achieve that? Philosophically, I’d rather err on the side of deleting an “innocent” comment than publishing a “guilty” one. In practice, however, I do tend to let stuff through. The software on the Miss Conduct blog isn’t really the best for moderation. And certain posts, like the Monday question (check it out and weigh in on today’s, eh?), get linked to on the boston.com home page, which means that a bunch of newbies show up who aren’t necessarily followers of the Miss Conduct Way.

I guess what particularly bothers me is that when things have gotten a bit heated over at the other ranch, invariably someone pulls the “I can’t believe that on an etiquette blog …” card. This bugs me. It’s like the Susan Boyle phenomenon: we should treat all frumpy middle-aged women with respect and dignity, not just the ones who can sing. I don’t want you to not be an asshole on my blog because it’s an etiquette blog, I want you not to be an asshole on my blog because it’s not cool to be an asshole. Just because you’re commenting on RSVPs or wedding presents doesn’t mean you have to type with your pinkies in the air.

Okay. Enough of my maundering. Let’s air your dirty maundry. What do you think? If you’re a frequenter of the Miss Conduct blog, what have you liked and not liked about commenting there? Have there been comments that you think I should have deleted? (A note: I grade pass/fail. I’m not going to edit a comment, that’s too time-consuming. If there’s any inappropriate content, it gets dumped, even if the rest of it is good.) What blogs do you think handle moderation well, or have good comment policies?

More questions … Should comments be deleted if their only offense is lack of content (e.g., a comment consisting solely of “LOL!”)? Do you like it when the blogger participates in the comment thread, dislike it, or are indifferent? Is it annoying that I don’t open all posts up for comments? How much does threadjacking and topic drift bother you?

Comment away!