Today I posted an article to Everything about the recent line-of-duty passing of the Maryland-National Capital Park Ranger Kristin M. Pataki. About an hour later I came back to the site to find the entire node was "softlinked" with anti-police references.

I was aghast, and furious. All these anti-poice nodes in under an hour? Someone did that on purpose.

So I tacked a scathing reply on the end of the node. Then, silly me, posted an angry note to the public chat section of the site saying that whoever posted all those links to that node was a horrible person and I hated them.

Then it was revealed to me that I had been trolled. And good.

Instead of quietly asking a site admin to delete the link, I had gone off on a rampage about how horrible people were. This, I realized in retrospect, was exactly what was intended by the person who did this. It was a combination of the stress of the day and thinking about how I'm not that far off in age from Ranger Pataki that really made it hit home for me.

A site admin deleted all the anti-police links and a bunch of other admins and experienced users took the opportunity to chastise me via private message for having been so obviously trolled.

Shortly after, the troller messaged me to apologize, and also mention that he had actually thought it was a nice writeup. Go figure.

Anyway, storm's over, but I'm leaving the rant here instead of on the Everything site, because it doesn't belong next to a memorial of a dedicated police officer, but does serve to illustrate how worlds (and words) can collide spectacularly sometimes.

Inspiration

The most inspiring articles today related to some of life most basic impulses: sex, drugs and palentology.

The fashion statement of the year, the 2002 Spring collection of Vulva Puppets have finally been unveiled. Isn't it just typical that art should cost so much more than the real thing? On drugs (yes please), it's a shame that Smokedot isn't back online yet. There's a wonderful article in the Washington Post about Harvard Professor Charles Nesson. Nesson recently admitted in an interview to the Harvard Law Journal that he is teaching a Harvard law class stoned, or at least buzzed, he demurs.

There are a group of scientists as part of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant who are busy thinking outside the box to create a cautionary marker for underground nuclear waste that can last 10000 years and still be effective. Also in science, a group of palentologists have finally discovered a largely uncontestable dinosaur with fully formed feathers. T. Mike Keesey, author of the Dinosauricon says that while such discoveries have been made in the past, often the fossil in question was so bird-like that a clear case could not be made. This particular example is a welcome discovery for feathered dinosaur theorists.

Humanity Sucks

Meanwhile, humanity continues to suck. George W. Bush has just decided that corporations damanging the environment are no longer responsible for their actions. Who is? The taxpayer. That might be a misnomer, except I don't think corporations actually pay any anymore. A woman in Fort Worth, Texas decides that instead of actually helping the homeless hit-and-run victim trapped in the windshield of her vehicle, she would drive the car into her garage (victim still attached), close the door, and wait for him to die before dumping his body in the park and systematically burning her car to destroy the evidence. Classy. (ABCNews link expired and was removed.)

Our friend Ray Brent Marsh (remember the fields littered with bodies (link expired)?) continues to be skewered on the InterWeb. The Georgia Crematorium blames Jesus for littering the grounds with the dead, this article states, referencing Matthew 8:22. Maybe he should have talked to Chante Mallard first.

Weblogs

What sort of blogger would I be without a masturbatory self-reference to weblogs and search engines? It seems that William Shatner, always trying to keep pace with his buddy Wil Wheaton, finally got himself a weblog. It's got a lot more gratutious Star Trek references, but seems just as lame as all the other half-assed attempts out there these days. And forget Google Bombs. The journal Nature is reporting on a new algorithm that may dethrone google by using communities of links to define the relevance of sites. Plus, it looks like it might actually be an open standard, for better or worse.

May 6, 2002 - May 8, 2002

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