Bloggasm

It’s a tiny percentage of subsribers, but 170 of them banded together to cancel their subscriptions. Take that, Murdoch.

As a full-time newspaper journalist, I don’t know whether to be offended or just saddened. A recent poll finds that journalism is one of the most least-respected careers in the country. No doubt tainted by Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’reilly types.

Everything from detergent to computer discs is packaged with the Sunday newspaper. So why not Bibles?

“First, let me tell you about the gift basket they give you. It came with a bottle of vodka from Ireland, and a gift card for a free tattoo,” said Al Jazeera correspondant Josh Rushing in a CBS interview. “And the gift card is presented in a very nice little jewelry box, a nice little velvet jewelry box. I thought at first it would be something great I could give my wife. Then I popped it open and it was a VIP gift card from some tattoo parlor in New Jersey.

I gave Jon Stewart a hard time about it, too, when he came back to the green room. I told him if he wanted to give me liquor from Ireland, I’d rather it have been whiskey. If you’re gonna give me vodka, make it from Russia. As for the tattoo, I asked him ‘Do I need to drink the vodka to deal with the tattoo? Do these gifts appeal to your other guests?’

Then he stopped being funny and said ‘It’s really embarrassing. We don’t put out those gift bags. Some promotional company does it. But it’s really embarrassing.’”

via

Nothing I’ve read about Second Life has enticed me to try it out. But over at Wired, I read that Christian missionaries are entering it to try and create converts. But the journalist brings up a good point: If you manage to convert, are you converting the avatar to Christianity or the person behind it?

I love the closing paragraph:

And if you meet someone who appears to be a half-naked woman, have a long talk about God’s plan, and come back in a month to find them dressed as a nun, well, it’s possible that you had such an effect on them that they immediately joined a convent that gives novices internet access, but it seems more likely that you just convinced them to switch fetishes.