Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

Johns Hopkins University’s Kimmel Cancer Center has issued a press release stating this is a hoax.

At the bottom of the official release is a link with more information about dioxin and plastics use in the home. I suggest you read it if you want to know more. The researcher is one Dr. Rolf Halden. Click through to it. He’s kind of good looking.

I’m guilty of putting up something without checking, but at least that one was funny, and not a public health scare like this one is.

And I’m surprised that Mr. Speaker didn’t think that his tuberculosis diagnosis wasn’t serious to limit his travel. DUDE! If you want to do anything near children in the US you have to get certified. What were you thinking?!?! Your new wife has an 8-year old kid! During all your hugs and kisses for your nuptials, you could have killed your stepchild. Smart move there bud.

Ok. Ending all my ranting.

For the last few months, I’ve been holding back an off-topic post about privacy and the Internet. I’ve been trying to keep this blog afloat and on topic as much as I can and still hold down my day job and have a life.

But on Tuesday, I was reading an Oracle blog by Tom Kyte and was tipped off to a post by Kathy Sierra. She’s being victimized by a commenter and then further victimized in a vile fashion in images at another website. For those of you who don’t read a lot about the blogging medium, Kathy is a proponent of the Internet as a community building place. Her blog is called ‘Creating Passionate Users’. This is a woman who really cares about the community of people on the Internet and making it a welcome place.

I’m a b*tch. Plain and simple. I’m not a nice person and I have email exchanges from commenters that prove it. I didn’t mean to start off on the wrong foot, but I guess I should stop trying to be funny because I sound like a haughty wench all the time. I suppose I thought that’s why people were reading this blog in the first place. Guess not. I never should have engaged my commenters and readers at all, but I was showing my own naivete in trying to be interactive and helpful in the near utopian way that I remember the Internet being back in college 15+ years ago. But how quickly I have forgotten USENET flamewars and their idiocy.

This thing that has happened to her is disgusting. It is beyond the pale. It is verbal abuse and terrorism. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It may possibly be NSFW depending on your workplace policy. I know I was greatly disturbed by the graphic image she reposted, and remember, IT WAS DIRECTED AT HER.

News posts covering the topic directly at BBC News and Slashdot. The Washington Post has their own article about anonymous commenting.

I hope and pray that the person who did this to her grabs a clue and stops. I hope he gets help before he actually hurts someone. He is sick and deranged. I hope and pray that Ms. Sierra can overcome this, but I’m not sure how. I know that after reading it, I seriously thought about stopping blogging altogether and permanently. Before finding out about Ms. Sierra’s situation, it’s a thought I’ve been having for a few weeks now for various and sundry reasons related to being out there to be attacked, ridiculed, criticized, labeled, blamed, threatened, stalked and terrorized.

If you think I’m overreacting, please read Mindhunter by John Douglass and Mark Olshaker and The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker. (I’ve only read the first one, but the second has been highly recommended by a friend of mine who teaches self-defense.)

I was recently walking with a friend who is a former Marine. He’s 6′2″ and upwards of 200 lbs. We were talking about doing some solitary activity and I had to remind him that women don’t do that sort of thing by themselves lest they inadvertently make themselves a target. He paused and told me that he hadn’t thought of it the way that I do since physical threats are not part of his every day assessment of the world. Despite what I write in my blog about emergency preparedness, I’m not actually a nervous nellie. But I am street-smart about not looking like a victim. My natural mean b*tch look comes in handy that way.

Much thinking will commence. I am deeply ambivalent about blogging now.

If you do anything after reading this blog, buy yourself some pepper spray and a flashlight and keep them accessible at all times when you are out of the house. Yes, I even carry it when I take trash out to the dumpsters in the parking lot. Nothing’s ever happened to me and hopefully, nothing ever will. I wish the same for all of you.

If you are a blogger, publicize this. Repost about it. Express your disgust and return some civility to our world. Get angry dammit!

James Kim has been missing for days and was found dead today.

I don’t know James personally, but my friend at CNet and I were talking about it today. He is a colleague of the deceased. I am frequently weirdly connected to stuff on the news.

I found out about this story last night and it kind of scares me. I drove to Yellowstone in late April 2001. Some of the roads were closed and I distinctly remember telling my friend I felt uncomfortable driving down some of these empty roads in WY because they were so desolate. We did turn back because as posted, the road was snowed in. Luckily for us it was a beautifully sunny, warm spring day. But what if it hadn’t been? What if a storm had been looming?
Please heed the warnings about closed roads, carry emergency supplies in your car and flares, etc. Just as I urge you all to have emergency kits for home, please consider what you would keep in your car should you be in a freak snowstorm. I’ll probably have more to say on this later.
Consider this article at CNet regarding cellphone signal tracking. It is really hard though in a remote area like that to get a tower to ping your phone. It’s kind of amazing at all that they were able to find Kati Kim based on the last ping to a tower. Usually I leave my phone in my car if I’m going on a hike, but now I might take it with me if I get enough coverage. Sometimes we carry Talkabout radios too.
Please be safe everyone. Consider getting a personal beacon if you do any backcountry skiing or hiking. I know someone who was hiking alone and possibly killed by a falling rock at Yosemite. He died during the airlift out. NEVER GO ALONE on the trail. (Ack. It’s 6 years later and it still makes me cry thinking about it.)