Cuppacafe

Random Thoughts April 21st

by Walt Posted on Apr 21, 2008 under Cuppabits |

Thoughts and links, because you deserve it.

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ATTACK OF THE HEATHERS

The following is sliced out of context so please go read the whole thing, addressed to a major author:

[...] a blog is not a personal journal. It is a statement for any one out in the public to read, consume and comment on. If you did not want public feedback, why not have a diary that is kept at home for no one else to read? Or why not lock your posts so that only a select few are privy to your thoughts? To blame someone else for the consequences of your own actions seems very irresponsible.

You’ve stated very offensive and demeaning things towards readers in the past, in essence implying that they are smart enough to spend money on your books but not smart enough to provide any reasoned critique.

Tess Gerritsen is pulling her blog down after Dear Author and a comments thread there got critical and then got out of hand. “Pulling her blog down” isn’t correct. Putting on hiatus without removing the posts is more accurate.

I haven’t followed the controversy to date, so I’m in catch-up mode. But the deeper I look into this, the more I don’t want to know. I’ll occasionally read Tess’ blog, but only because I enjoy her sense of humor. Apparently, it’s a humorous remark that made Tess seem like she was defending someone … well, apparently it’s a deep subject and I won’t say more.

If you remove the actual details of this situation, I’ll attempt a meta point here. The masses of readers on the internet will tend to bunch up in clumps, and sometimes those clumps become cliques. Yes, cliques, just like back in high school. Authors, when they choose to become public figures by chatting with their friends and readers online can unknowingly be a part of their own clique — but also they can become targets of other cliques.

Cliques around blogs and bloggers form, just like they can around authors. Mark Cuban, rich guy and blogger with a certain level of idiocy, attempted to ban other bloggers from the locker room of his NBA basketball team. However, the bloggers who Cuban sought to ban were also credentialed with legitimate news agencies, the NBA overruled him. So Mark Cuban has people he hates in his locker room throwing questions at him, all up close and personal. [NewYorkTimes]

The thing about cliques, however, is that there’s less loyalty there than you think, and the criticism they might throw out has the lifespan of an ant bite.

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NO FOOD FOR OIL!!

Europe was going to be an area completely free of “genetically modified foods”… well, until the price of food started rising fast with no end in sight. Japan and Korea had the same idea, but apparently they’ve buckled under the pressure of high prices and started buying genetically engineered corn for use in food products like soft drinks and snacks. [NYTimes]

Question: When you fill up your car with gasoline containing 10% ethanol, are you stealing corn tortillas from the people of Mexico?
Related: SaveOurTacoTrucks!

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A Part Time Dog?

British people wonder about it, but in Tokyo Japan, it’s been available for a while.

In other pet news closer to home, I noticed the distinct lack of our neighbor’s cat in the last few weeks. That changed when I heard our neighbor’s loud voice chastising the cat for not being a good mommy cat and leaving her newborns all over her back yard. Yes, this is the second litter of cats for our neighbor cat. Obviously they never watched Bob Barker.
Here’s a 30 sec. You Tube that expresses Bob’s and my thoughts on our neighbor cat:
[Let's Get Neutered Song]

– — –

The Amazon Kindle is back in stock, so you can quit following those Ebay Kindle profiteering auctions

The Kindle is still overpriced, even without the Ebay auctions.

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Got a hankerin’ to call someone in India beside tech-support?

It’s $9.95 a month for all the international calls you want [Chron.com]

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I’ve upgraded a few WP blogs under my control to the latest version, 2.5. Unfortunately, some things got moved around, including some stuff that’s supposed to be to the right of the posting window in the admin section. Here’s a fix for that.

Not critical for you the reader, but it’s a pesky thing for WP bloggers.

– — –

And finally, a story about a dog named Snickers

– not our dog also named Snickers–

A Cocker Spaniel that was adrift with her masters for three months before washing up on a South Pacific island, but being prevented from going home with her owners and facing the possibility of a death sentence [LATimes]

photo credit: AP

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Snickers the Sea Dog is barely more than a pup, but he’s already an old salt.

The 8-month-old pooch spent three months adrift in the Pacific with his owners and a parrot until their 48-foot sailboat ran aground in December on tiny Fanning Island, 1,000 miles south of Hawaii. Snickers and Gulliver had to be left behind as their owners hitched a ride on a cargo vessel.

Then in March, the SOS was sent out in a boating journal that the orphaned critters were to be destroyed on Fanning, one of 33 scattered coral atolls that make up the remote island nation of Kiribati.

As word spread, a bevy of people worked to rescue the cocker spaniel and the macaw, including a man who desperately wants to adopt them: retired Las Vegas resident Jack Joslin.

“I love animals,” Joslin told The Associated Press on Friday. “I had two dogs up until the middle of March. Then I had to have my border collie euthanized. The day they called saying the ashes were back was when I read the story (about Snickers). It occurred to me I could do something.”

On April 9, Norwegian Cruise Line workers rescued Snickers from Fanning and dropped him off on Oahu island, Hawaii, where he will remain in quarantine until he is flown to Los Angeles.
[2news.tv]

It’s not over yet, because of the issues of the McCaw parrot are stickier (American importation laws) so the parrot is at risk of being … uh, a dead parrot…

But as far as Snickers goes, all I can say is

AWWWWWW…