The latest from the Web

There is an article in the Los Angeles Times that delves into the ethical dilemmas of food blogging, using a popular social networking food Web site in L.A. as the case study. In this particular instance, a site harshly critiqued a restaurant based upon an anonymous tip that the restaurant was passing off low quality food items as more expensive fare and ignoring health regulations. The allegations turned out to be false, but the damage was already done in the blogosphere.

The right of free speech comes with a burden of responsibility that was ignored in this case. Libel attorneys must be licking their chops waiting to squeeze every last bit of juice out of Eater L.A., and if they can estimate damages that include a closed restaurant caused by misinformation, it's an open and shut case that would result in a substantial windfall. I applaud the efforts of the food bloggers who created a Food Bloggers' Code of Ethics, but I'm curious as to how this toothless code with limited adherents would improve the quality or the nature of restaurant coverage. I'm curious if anybody else has any opinions on this, or if people see food blog ethics as a non-issue.

From the department of research that validates my world view comes the American Dietetic Association's findings that vegetarian diets are healthful and useful in preventing and treating certain types of disease. So your poor pleas that not eating meat would kill you will now fall on deaf, scientifically sound, healthy ears.

90 Day Lame

I don't want to come off as an asshole or anything, but I'm glad it isn't going to take 90 days for Jane to kill herself, because if it did, I might expedite the process and kill the bitch myself.

In case you missed it, some young lady, in a morbid effort to draw attention to her otherwise inconsequential existence, began a blog that's purpose was to document her last 90 days on Earth. "Why were they her last 90 days?" you ask. According to her blog, it's because on day 90, she is going to kill herself.

"Why would somebody undertake such an endeavor?" you might also ask. The first explanation for me would be that she wanted to bring suicide to the Web 2.0 platform. I mean, why kill yourself by blowing your head off in the middle of a shopping mall, or by jumping headlong into oncoming traffic on the highway hoping for the news media to pick up on your death when you can ponder the decision in the blogosphere, and film your demise while sailing off into that good night. If Lindsay Lohan dies on the same day Jane offs herself, 90 Day Jane might not even make the evening news broadcast.

Plus Jane will get to react with her readers, and she can solicit suggestions for how to kill herself. My personal recommendation would be for her to fly over to fly to Pakistan, dress in a Jyllands-Posten Muhammed cartoon bathing suit, and run down the street waving an American flag screaming at the top of her lungs, "My god could kick your god's ass, infidels!" If it were 89 days and 23 hours through her little ploy, she'd be dead with 57 minutes to spare, and nobody would argue that her efforts weren't suicide.

She also might want to try the McDonald's diet. If you saw "Super Size Me," it was obvious that McDonald's was killing Morgan Spurlock. The other positive element of this approach is that Jane would be a cadavorous stiff by day 45, effectively eliminating the need to drag this ruse out any longer. I guess it might be difficult for her to die of McDonald's poisoning exactly on day 90, so maybe this isn't the best plan.

My third suggestion would be to spend her remaining hours trying to find a research lab that stores Ebola. It might take some research, but I'm sure if she Googled enough labs, one of them would be bound to store the deadly disease. She could mix it into an Orange Julius and drink it down. I would definitely tune in if she set the Web cam up and started dying a la "The Stand" right on her Web site.

In all seriousness, however, none of these things are going to happen, because 90 Day Jane is in fact a complete hoax. She speaks about it as a piece of art in the following post from yesterday:

I feel a massive sense of responsibility to my art, but more importantly the readers of this blog. My closeness to this project must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few days.

This is really too bad, because after the pain Jane put me through reading her middling prose, not only did I want to kill Jane, but I wanted to kill myself. People in the United States speak out strongly about the horrors of waterboarding torture, but those who think waterboarding is a horrible way to treat prisoners should catch an eyeful of 90 Day Jane's writing. If they fed this prose to the prisoners in Guantanamo, they'd beg for the torture rack.

With lines like, "My generation has had no great depression, no great war and our biggest obstacle is beating Halo 3. So, if I feel like saying "game over", why can't I?" and "I got an email this morning from a guy at work asking me out for Valentines Day. I'm not sure what disturbs me more, the fact that he emailed me when we work in the same office or that he's asking me out for Valentines Day specifically," it makes me want to kill myself, 90 days be damned!

The other issues with this poorly planned hoax start with the scheduled suicide. I mean really, who schedules their own death? With the exception of euthanasia, it's relatively difficult to plan to die. She probably should have just called herself "Shirley Gonnakillmyself" or "Dead End Dolly" and not set a final date, because then everybody would have had to check out her blog on a regular basis waiting to find out if this was finally the day. Oh well...maybe next time.

Also, did anybody really believe that Blogspot was going to let some poor misguided youth kill herself on their blogosphere? If Blogspot would shut down sites for posting copyrighted material about television shows like "Lost" or for posting dirty pictures of boobies, nobody would buy that they were going to let some doofus off herself and post the video (and YouTube probably wouldn't allow suicide videos either).

Oh well. 90 Day Jane might have been an entertaining idea considering the media attention it drew, no matter Jane's protests to the contrary . Unfortunately, it was poorly written, executed and planned. At least Jane didn't kill herself, and at least I didn't have to torture myself by reading another sentence she wrote.

It's Beautiful, but Is It Art?

Gaze in awe at the grace and beauty that was the Chicago area's most controversial piece of public art. The Spindle is no more. Berwyn residents had difficulty finding a permanent home for the display that some call an eyesore while others describe it as an ironic piece of pop culture that makes a statement about the region. However they call it, it's definitely American.

Congress finally passed legislation that will tighten up the leash on lobbyists. Now, crooked politicians will have to buy their own dinner, gifts and travel arrangements for their next trek into bed with special interests. Way to keep it on the up and up, Congress.

An unnamed federal judge declared in a classified ruling that the White House policy on warrantless wiretappings is, in fact, illegal. This explains why Bush was pressing to backdoor the policy through Congress, and also explains the reason why Congress balked at extending the plan. This may be the most crushing blow to Bush's spirit, able to be eclipsed only by the moment when Cheney has to explain to W that there is no Easter Bunny or Santa Claus.

If you thought that the CNN/YouTube Democratic Presidential debate was the latest evidence of a new media future political landscape, think again. Slate, The Huffington Post and Yahoo are putting together an online campaign forum they are calling a Presidential mashup. Eight candidates will debate online, and I'm guessing Barack Obama will win the online debate based upon his massive MySpace credibility and his staff's ability to type in "lol" after everything posted by Gravel and Kucinich.

Media ethics are the story of the day in Los Angeles, where newscaster Mirthala Salinas was suspended without pay for two months after it was revealed that she was having a relationship with Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of L.A. who was one of the politicians she covered. The move was damaging to the credibility of KVEA-TV's news department and very good for Villaraigos'a quest to be named this year's Scott Baio award winner in American politics.

The editor of an Oakland weekly newspaper was shot as he walked to work in a move that police are calling a contract killing. If I had one guess as to whodunnit, I'd put my money on Raiders coach Lane Kiffin snuffing the newspaper man out for saying with or without JaMarcus Russell, the Raiders would be lucky to go 6-10 in the Mountain West Conference.

The organization responsible for regulating IP addresses is warning that the finite resource that allows people to connect to the internet is running out, and a new system will need to be developed in order to increase the growth of the Web. This may be a crushing blow to the constantly connected culture and great news to everybody who gets cut off driving on the highway by some maniac browsing their email on a Blackberry.

The University of Texas is doing their best to become the Ohio University of the 2007 NCAA Football season after freshman defensive tackle Andre Jones became the second player arrested in connection with an aggravated robbery and the fifth player arrested in the last two months. Obviously there is something other than steers and queers in Texas, and that something is felonious football thugs.

If you didn't get your tickets to see the mega-music event Lollapalooza in Chicago, you can always enjoy it being streamed to you live on your computer for free. You can also feel free to completely ignore Slightly Stoopid like you would if you were actually at the concert.

Finally, the most bizarre story of the day had to be the story about a man in Germany who was killed and eaten by his collection of pet spiders and lizards. If that story doesn't give you arachnophobia, probably nothing will.

King Arthur Might Need Those Knights

The United Kingdom is under siege. The terror alert is at its highest level. The knights such as Lancelot and Elton John may be dispatched if anybody else so much as moves. Since the car bomb/flaming SUV attack, another car has been blown up in a controlled explosion as a security measure in Glasgow. The United States offered support by saying to the British: We told you so. This confirms the hypothesis that hindsight is always 20/20, but doesn't help to explain why our all-knowing intelligence didn't make a bigger deal out of the plot.

One of the top stories in the Washington Post explains the tension in the relationship between George Bush and Vladimir Putin. One of the major problems between the two men stems from the fact that Putin believes that his dog trumps Bush's lapdog Barney. The relations might warm if Bush adopted a few of Mike Vick's pit bulls and went to Moscow to kick Vlad Putin and his labrador's ass.

Mother Russia unleashed a torrent of unemployed scientists after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The U.S. is harnessing that potential by using a former Soviet germ warfare expert to shape bioterrorism policy. I get a warm feeling inside when I realize that my tax money is paying a guy who used to have the job of figuring out how to modify smallpox genetically in order to achieve the maximum killing potential.

America is trying to control another kind of questionable import--Chinese goods. Tainted goods from China illustrate how interconnected China is with the rest of the world, from the pet food deaths of a few months ago to more than 100 deaths due to counterfeit Chinese glycerine in Panama. I control this another way--I make sure all of the soy sauce and Chinese style mustard I buy is made in Cincinnati.

Glenn Greenwald blogs about the disturbing media trend of taking military reports at face value. The example he gives was picked up worldwide. The military killed 17 civilians and buried the story by identifying the slain as Al-Qaeda operatives when they were in fact 17 citizens caught in the crossfire. Apparently the only battle that the military is coming out on top of is the public relations war with the (alleged watchdog) media.

The L.A. Times previews the new sports black market must-have item: Cuban baseball players. A sports agent was busted for this activity recently, but if he can send a Cuban starting pitcher and outfielder to the Cubs, I think he should be released on time served.

Wimbledon is half over, and Sports Illustrated is issuing grades. Anybody who isn't betting Roger Federer gets an F in my book.

The Associated Press covers the disturbing trend of professional wrestlers dying young. It seems unbelievable that people would die young in an activity where they take steroids, break people's necks, slam people through tables, cut each other with barbed wire and thumb tacks, and hit each other over the head with steel chairs. But if the Associated Press says it's so, it must be so.