Slushpile Links: Wonkette, Chinese Bloggers, Grate News & Bike to Work

I still need to talk about a bunch of stuff from the R11b release, but I wanted to cover a few bloggy stories sitting in my slushpile, the list of stuff I might later blog about:

* Lawsuit Against Wonkette Founder Dismissed: Ana Marie Cox, founding editor of potty-mouthed political gossip blog Wonkette and now a blogger over at Time magazine, had been named in a suit related to the whole Jessica Cutler/Washingtonienne blog sex scandal.

Cutler [Some sexual themes and language. Obviously.] had blogged about some encounters with Congressional staffers and others -- even though she didn't name names, enough people figured out who she was, and who she was talking about that it caused quite a little dust-up.

Wonkette had featured her blog (by linking to it), and for that, one of the, um, esteemed gentleparties involved, Robert Steinbuch sued Cutler, and then Cox, thus guaranteeing his name would forever be associated with a sex -- nay, sexy -- scandal.

Cox was dropped from the suit, though pretty much on a technicality, since the judge ruled that Steinbuch added her to the suit too late. The suit will continue with Cutler as the sole defendant.

* Why China Relaxed Blogger Crackdown: This article from today's Wall Street Journal talks about how the Chinese government is backing down from a plan to require that all of China's nearly 20 million bloggers register under their real names.

Basically, the Chinese internet and blogging service providers said it wasn't workable. Remember, money talks.

However, they still plan on encouraging Chinese blog providers to find industry-based solutions to get people to register with their real names.

For a flip-side kind of perspective on the issue of real names vs. pseudonyms online, check out this opinion piece from this week's Washington Post, 'Sunshine for the Virtual Town Hall', which advocates requiring posters to use their real namesto increase transparency and accountability, and improve the level of discourse (with some exceptions for whistleblowers). Doesn't seem workable to me as-is, but it's an option.

* This Is Why I Don't Walk on Sidewalk Grates: Video from WCBS in New York -- a woman in midtown was walking on a sidewalk grate over an electrical transformer vault, when it gave way. She fell 12 feet. It was caught on a security camera. Fortunately, she's okay. (Link via Fark.)

* Friday, May 18, Is National Bike to Work Day: If you want to do something concrete about high gas prices, nothing speaks louder than actually cutting your gasoline consumption by not using any gas (unlike those silly one-day "Gas Outs").

Alas, I won't be able to participate this year (even though biking to work is within the realm of possibility for me), though here's a link for DC area commuters.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: slushpile, blogging, bloggy items

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#2 Comment from ceilisundancer
5/18/07 11:24 AM | Permalink

But, Joe, biking to work today in the thunderstorms would be a story to blog about! ;) I saw that two places were lending bikes for this purpose, one in DC? and one in Northern Virginia. The bikes simply had to be returned by 10:00 a.m. Um, okay, so how do the people then get home from work if they can't also bike home? I remember when the Jessica Culter story was in the weekend magazine insert thing in The Washington Post. I'm curious how that one all turns out. -- Robin
#1 Comment from dpoem
5/17/07 5:34 PM | Permalink

China may have relaxed its blogger restrictions, but according to a blurb on BoingBoing today, Fiji is going batty on bloggers.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/17/fiji_declares_war_on.html

I didn't know if you caught that, but I thought I'd pass it along. It does tend to make you appreciate how things are here when it comes to this odd form of digital media, huh?

-Dan
http://journals.aol.com/dpoem/TheWisdomofaDistractedMind/

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Slushpile Links: Wonkette, Chinese Bloggers, Grate News & Bike to Work