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.

Don't Mess with Partridge

Who would have imagined years ago that it would have been possible for a washed up show biz has-been who resurrected his career appearing on a television show about other has-been celebrities to suplex a dude who was famous strictly for appearing on similar low budget garbage productions at a show giving awards to nincompoops who appear on these types of programs? Watch Danny Bonaduce body slam "Survivor" villain Jonny Fairplay above, and remember never to chest hump Danny Partridge.

In the real world, reports are surfacing about Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General, authoring a series of secret documents that authorized extreme torture methods by the CIA after public documents decried these tactics. Amongst the techniques allowed in the secret files was forcing reputed members of Al Qaeda to watch all of the VH1 Really Awards and leaving out the Bonaduce/Fairplay tussle. Our government really is a bunch of brutal bastards.

Word in Iraq is that the country is fed up waiting for weapons for their police force to come from the U.S., so the Iraqi government is going to pay China $100 million for more guns and ammo. And who said democracy would never work in Iraq? Much like Wal-Mart, Iraq has discovered it can get what it wants and what it needs cheaper from China than from America.

Netizens looking to get their bullshit straight from the source need look no further than the new, handy-dandy U.S. Department of State blog Dipnote. I can't wait to see their next entry on how well they have created, "a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community," through their efforts in Iraq. I can't wait to read Condi's next post...it will be great to engage her directly in the blogosphere.

Finally, Mr. Sulu will get to orbit through outer space forever now that they named an asteroid after actor George Takei. The "Star Trek" veteran who currently appears on the show "Heroes" was recognized by the International Astronomical Union's Committee on Small Body Nomenclature, an organization dedicated to naming celestial bodies and to saving small bodies like Nicole Ritchie and the skinny Olsen twin here on Earth.

The CBS Evening News...with Jared Rutecki

Here it is--I'm interviewed about blogging by WBNS news. Enjoy, and don't make fun of my inability to type.