new Things I Ate in Cambodia: THE INTERNET DOES NOT LEAD TO KIDNAPPING LIKE PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT, NEW BUTCHERY IN NOLA= YES

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

THE INTERNET DOES NOT LEAD TO KIDNAPPING LIKE PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT, NEW BUTCHERY IN NOLA= YES

NEWS AND OTHER MISCELLANY

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/technology/internet/14cyberweb.html?_r=1&hp

"But the report concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

“This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad neighborhoods on the Internet,” said John Cardillo, chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, which maintains a sex offender database and was part of the task force. “Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.”

As I've been saying all along. The internet is no more chock full of sex criminals and creepazoids who like to dress up in women's clothing then the rest of the world. The sooner we get that through our heads, the sooner we'll achieve some margin of sanity about the internet. I'm absolutely sick of hearing various ancient pundits mutter and piss about the Tainted Evil of new technology. They and their opinions will be rendered obsolete: we simply have to wait them out. We've got to go into the future with our eyes open and our fear receptors tuned to a very dull roar -we won't make it, otherwise.

To slightly digress, I really tire of the hipness of "luddite" attitudes among the literary and academic sets, as if it is a mark of writerly or artistic pride to be distrustful of computers and flickering screens and mp3 players. You will often encounter in any given writing or art class a few Serious Art Business types who will smugly proclaim that they just "can't work email" and feel that computers "deaden the soul" and other arguments along that line. If I attempt to defend technology, they will look at me with big pitying eyes. I too am among the soul deadened and there is obviously no hope in me. They know it all.

The kind soul in me would like to steer them down the path of computer literacy. It is my opinion that the internet, in the format of blogs and magazines and what have you, is the only thing that is going to save us as working writers. Writers should be the most passionate and commited defenders of new media, of shifting reading to a screen-based mode instead of a paper-based one.

The jerkoff in me thinks: Well, let them live in boxes. But I would never think that.

Herbsaint's Chef Donald Link to open bistro-butchery in Warehouse District

I ate at Cochon recently and was extremely impressed, and I'm very much looking forward to another NOLA based shrine to the holy pig. I am very much anticipating trying Link's take on the Cuban sandwich - one of my earliest food memories, one of my Favorite Things. (Which I rarely eat because it so often disappoints.) He may pull it off. I can also see some truly awesome picnics emerging from this joint.

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