DISQUS

Well sure, don't donate to the Red Cross if you don't want to, but that doesn't meant here aren't worthwhile ways to give. Have you seen this blog:
http://gracedavis.typepad.com/katrinablog/

A woman with feet on the street n the South is going form shelter to shelter finding out what they need and who's there and whether they're receiving direct deliveries. She calls a woman in Santa Cruz on her cell and updates her. The Santa Cruz woman keeps the blog updated. You can, in this way, send supplies directly to shelters and families in need.

I think Craig's List also has more community-based resources.

I wouldn't abandon the idea of helping. I would seek alternate ways to help that you feel comfortable with.

Hey Elliott: Interesting effort.

When first putting together BlogHer we looked at two different studies to try to get a similar data point: Perseus Development Corporation says women bloggers comprise 56 percent of the blogging population. A recent Pew Internet survey says women comprise 43 percent.

Either way, much closer to half than your analysis.

I couldn't begin to compare methodologies. But I tend to think Tyme points out some valid reasons for the skew.

You're going to have to go through me, mister!

So you inspired me to new heights of ego-surfing! I receive ego-feeds and google alerts on my full name, my company name, my blog names and my clients' names...simply to catch if anyone mentions me, my blogs, my clients etc.

But I've never just searched on Elisa.

I wasn't very hopeful, given that the test for HIV antibodies is called an Elisa test.

I was pleasantly surprised that my company blog is #8 in a search on "Elisa." And somewhat surprised it would do so much better than my personal blog, which came in at #24. Given that my name is a part of the personal blog url and not part of the company url it surprised me a bit.

Anyway, Elisa is likely a much more uncommon name than Elliott (which can be both a first name and a surname) so don't feel bad that I'm at #8 while you languish at #16 ;)

Elliott: I really appreciated the point of this post, even if it ruffled some feathers. The truth is that if you cited the issue of bloggers automatically linking to A-Listers WITHOUT giving an example, you would have been reamed for lack of citation and being a pussy. Suw was just the unlucky example I guess. And I thought it was clear that you admired the original content in the post.

As Lisa Stone and I plan our BlogHer conference for this summer we are continually reiterating the same point: it's not a problem of heinous conscious bias...it's more a problem that it's hard to search around a topic without being inundated with the same 10 posts from the same 10 A-listers on the subject. These are the links you will find at the top of Google or on Page 1 of Technorati and so on. Yes you, or I, or many of your readers might dig a little deeper and strike that content gold that we all know is out there..,but it is surprisingly difficult. Just do a Technorati search on your own URL and see if it's not missing at least a dozen links you know are out there...from blogs written using iBlog and for a myriad of other inexplicable reasons that Technorati cannot seem to explain or address.

As long as blog search tools are subpar and biased toward limited link love rather than even traffic, let alone content quality, then I do think it's a worthy goal to cite your favorite lesser-known sources.

What's wrong with suggesting that?

We certainly wouldn't eat someone who was in a vegetative state or in end-stage Alzheimers or severely intellectually impaired...so the majority of people actually draw their distinction not related to actual "sentience, rationality, tool use, abstraction, etc" but rather the potential of that or historical demonstration of that. So it's a convenient distinction, more than logical.

But, I'm sincerely glad you support humane treatment...that is an important goal.

Thanks for the links Elliott. That helps me understand what all the fuss is about. I think people are reacting because they feel guilty, frankly. Nobody wants to hear about what they could be doing better, me included.

As a Jew who lost numerous relatives in the Holocaust, PETA's demonstration doesn't bother me one bit. Then again, I'm a vegetarian, so obviously they're just singing my tune. The demonstration probably would bother my mom. I'll have to ask her.

I just wrote a column about how human kind's propensity to draw lines of distinction between "us" and "them" starts with eating some animals and extends to all sorts of other societal and global ills.
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/03.16.05...

Once we get desensitized to the pain and suffering of some living creatures, it's bound to make it easier to observe other instances of pain and suffering. It's like how the military trains soldiers to think of the enemy as something less than human. Otherwise, how could they kill them?

Sorry to move this out of the humor category, but it's not like I found the original post that funny ;)

Elliott: If you were going to post this, the least you could do is provide a link to the "offensive pro-animal ads", so we could judge for ourselves.

You totally were! Nice strategically placed bubble action...your parents could have embarrassed you so much more than this!

I think this is a cool idea, and I'm interested to see if your family gets into it. If they do, I might try it with mine. We've often got random email threads out there on a variety of topics, from politics to proper grammar. It would be fun to have a centralized place for those discussions.

PS-Thanks for the link to my blog. You're in my blog roll now too.