March 1, 2008
Bob delGrosso had a nifty little post about the recent fiasco on Food Network where it was discovered that Robert Irvine, host of Dinner: Impossible, had lied on his resume. Well, more than lied ON his resume. The entire thing was a lie. And as many people expected, “chef” Irvine will not be invited back for the next season of the show.
It’s no big surprise, considering that his entire resume was fabricated. FN, on the other hand, is trying to play it down, saying “We looked into the situation and found that, as Robert has already admitted, there were some embellishments and inaccuracies in his resume. The few and minor incidents of the inclusion of these embellishments into ‘Dinner Impossible’ have been removed.”
Few and minor? Then why are you firing him? Oh, this might explain it: “We rely on the trust that our viewers have in the accuracy of the information we present, and Robert challenged that trust.”
Your viewers – the ones that can walk upright and chew gum at the same time – know you’re full of crap and are tired of the drivel you spew at us, which is why we don’t watch most of your shows. Food Network is desperate to redirect attention from the fact that THEY screwed up. They hired this guy without checking any of his credentials – they took drunken ramblings from a mediocre British caterer/failed restaurateur and ran with it. Did no one think to ask, “What if he’s lying?” Of course not. This is FN, where Rachel Ray is a star, instead of scrubbing toilets in a Super 8 where she belongs.
As Mr. Hat said in the first episode of South Park:
“You go to hell! You go to hell and you die!”
February 16, 2008
Before I get started, I’d like to point out that this post is about personal religious beliefs. I think everyone should be allowed to believe what they want, provided that it doesn’t harm anyone else or promote hatred. If you came here because of some Google search to justify your hatred of another people, you are in the wrong place. Leave disappointed, and take your hate with you.
For a very long time I have wrestled with my faith - or rather, the lack of faith. I have never felt a connection with God. When I was much younger I believed in God, but as I grew older my knowledge increased and my ability to accept the Bible as fact crumbled. By the time I was in my teens, I understood that the universe was infinite and billions of years old, the Bible was a collection of ancient myths, and organized religion was simply a way for a small handful of people to dominate and control the masses.
I was born and raised in Judaism. As I grew up, I knew that Jews were a minority, and that many people didn’t like us, but didn’t know why. Later I learned of the recorded history of my people outside of the Bible, and saw an endless litany of persecution, bloodshed, and near-extinction on numerous occasions.
It’s difficult to understand why someone would want to live under conditions like that. It would be easier to just declare myself an atheist; even atheists are treated with disdain rather than outright hostility by people of other beliefs. Still, out of respect for my family, and later my wife’s family, I continued to participate in religious holiday observances even though I could no longer accept that the rituals were anything more than meaningless repetition.
I tried to justify my lack of faith by determining that God *is* the universe, that God does not exist as man perceives deity. And that if God is the entire universe, why would God care about some insignificant mudball circling one star out of a hundred billion stars in one minor galaxy out of billions of galaxies?
It’s obvious from this outlook that I would have no tolerance for religious fanatics. People that accept the Bible or the Koran as literal fact, rather than moral lessons and allegory. Substituting critical thinking and common sense for blind faith and laws that haven’t been relevant for over two thousand years is ignorant and foolish.
Unfortunately, the rationalization I had developed for my beliefs did not reconcile with my desire to believe in something higher. I cannot *feel* God. I do not sense the presence of God or the supernatural in the world around me. I envy the evangelicals and the fundamentalists their ability to feel the “holy spirit” within them, although I suspect a lot of that is fake or delusional. I have never had a “religious experience”.
Over the past few years, I realized that I felt that a part of me was missing. That there must be something wrong with me because of my lack of faith. And over the past year, I have been researching the credible, archaeological history of the Jews as opposed to the biblical history. What I discovered was that the majority of the Bible is fiction. That most of it was written during the Babylonian exile in the 6th century B.C.E. That the people mentioned in the Bible from the beginning to the time of Kings David and Solomon never existed.
Trying to come to terms with this has been difficult. Here I was, trying to find evidence of the early history of my people, and discovering more often than not, the book that we’re supposed to hold most dear is a total fabrication. But I didn’t give up trying to find some meaning out of all of it.
After discussing this with my wife Rachel recently, I discovered that her beliefs are actually pretty close to mine. She told me that she finds comfort in the rituals and observance because it gives her a connection to her cultural history - OUR cultural history. Realizing this gave me an inkling of what I was looking for in myself.
I went back over all of the historical materials I had read over the years, along with commentaries from both historical evidence as well as Biblical scholars. I’ve watched documentaries describing how an obscure people of shepherds and farmers in the Levant took their polytheistic beliefs and consolidated them under their chief god and abandoned all others. How this tiny people managed to survive continual invasion from Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Mycenaeans (Philistines), Greeks and Romans. How they managed to maintain their cultural identity and religion through tremendous hardship and sacrifice and exile. How they survived repeated attempts to wipe them off of the face of the earth. And how, after 1900 years in exile, they were able to return to their historical homeland.
I finally discovered the piece of the puzzle that is me that was missing.
It’s not a belief in a mythical sky-being that watches over all of us and answers our prayers. It’s not a belief that a messiah will come and end all suffering. It’s not a belief in an afterlife that will be paradise compared to life on earth.
The Jewish cultural identity is that of a nation, regardless of whether or not we have a homeland. It’s a belief that it is our duty, and some would say our curse, to try to make the world a better place for everyone - Jew and non-Jew alike.
All my life I had been looking for evidence of the supernatural, or the divine; something that would give me some sense of peace. I realized that my people have existed for over three thousand years, under incredible stress, turmoil and tragedy, and we have still persevered. That we are a tiny fragment of the world population, and yet many of the world’s greatest thinkers and scientists have been Jews. That we were continually ostracized in nearly every community we lived in, and still continued to try making those places better for everyone, even when we were no longer welcome.
That of all of the peoples of the world where great nations fell into disrepair and civilizations disappeared…
We survived. We are still here.
That itself is the miracle. That I am one of a people whose very existence and survival against all odds is miraculous.
It didn’t come to me in a flash, like a sudden burst of heavenly chorus and light. It came to me through introspection and research. By opening myself to the possibility that there was something greater that I could believe in, something tangible that I could both recognize and have concrete proof and other people witnessed throughout history.
I do not believe in an invisible deity. I believe in my people.
If it helps anyone that reads this, there are a number of resources that I used which are freely available on the Internet:
Old Testament Life and Literature
ReligiousTolerance.org
Internet Sacred Text Archive
Jewish History at aish.com
February 5, 2008
There are three things that should never come up in polite conversation without inciting an argument - politics, religion, and sex. Today I’m going to be impolite about politics.
It’s no big surprise, really. Today is Super Tuesday, the largest primary election day of the year. This year, 24 states are choosing their party’s candidates for the presidency. I’ve already voted, and I’ve decided not to reveal how I voted on the blog for two reasons. One, people who are opposed to my political leanings might use it as an excuse to attack me. Two, people who are opposed to my political leanings might be disinclined to hire me.
That doesn’t mean I can’t comment on the candidates themselves. For instance, the leading Republicans right now are currently arguing about who is a real conservative. The petty bickering going on there would sound pretty much the same if they were arguing about which one was the biggest douchebag. And at this point, I’m not sure if there is any difference.
It’s pretty obvious that this country is fed up with Republicans and is looking for different leadership. But what’s the alternative? The Democrats’ recent history doesn’t put them in a good light. It’s like herding cats; they can hardly agree on anything, and they stab each other in the back. The one positive thing they could take from the Republicans is that for the most part they present a united front. The two leading Democratic candidates are opposites. One is a former First Lady that has no principles and votes with the Republicans in order to be attractive to fence-sitting voters. The other is a principled man, a very strong orator, and hasn’t been beaten down by the political process yet to become a complete hack like the rest of the sycophants in Washington that have been co-opted by lobbyists. But he doesn’t have a lot of experience going up against the long-time players. And because he is a minority, there’s the very real possibility that he will be a target for every racist nutball in this country. There’s a reason that he has Secret Service protection during the primaries. No other candidate except for the former First Lady has that.
With all this in mind, is it any wonder that people don’t care anymore? Between them and the media that exposes every tiny detail of the candidates’ lives, real or invented by their competitors, we end up with the chaff instead of the wheat. Could Teddy Roosevelt, or Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt, or Jack Kennedy get elected in today’s political morass? Hell no.
January 13, 2008
Rachel recently posted an article about the Gizmodo/CES debacle, which you can read about here. To be brief, one of the editors at Gizmodo, Brian Lam, thought it would be funny to have a bunch of his guys go through CES shutting off TVs using a device called TV-B-Gone. Now, normally this would be a harmless prank, except they started doing it during keynote addresses and demos. The internet community seems to be split two ways on this matter: one side thinks it was juvenile, stupid, and interfered with other people’s business. The other side defends the actions of Gizmodo and thinks it was all harmless fun. I don’t think it was harmless.
One blogger in particular, Mathew Ingram, admits that interfering with the keynotes and presentations was over the line, and yet still doesn’t seem to understand why people are angry about this. He thinks it’s no big deal.
Michael Arrington of Techcrunch joined in, and he apparently has been treated rather rudely on the subject for defending Gizmodo:
“Yeah, I get the point too, Joe. I just disagree. What pisses me off is that you fucknuts think I have to be taken out back and shot or something just because I have a different opinion.”
Now, I didn’t see where people said he should be taken out and shot, and while I don’t agree with the defense of Gizmodo for ruining their already useless reputation with a stupid prank, I certainly don’t think that desiring violence against people expressing their opnions makes them any better than the Gizmodo pranksters. In fact, it makes them even worse. It’s the same kind of mentality that’s displayed by PETA and anti-abortion extremists that burn down animal shelters and blow up clinics.
Here’s my reply to Michael Arrington over on Mathew Ingram’s blog:
“Michael:
“I think the folks that are demanding your head are overreacting, and out of line. That being said, I also think that defending what the Gizmodo folks did shows a lack of sympathy for the folks this affected.
“Don’t get me wrong; I think the idea was pretty amusing. I do, however, think that the choice of venue and the victimization of hard-working folks was out of line. Demoing at CES is expensive. If it hadn’t been discovered that this was a Gizmodo prank, it would have cost people their jobs and cost companies a lot of business. I wouldn’t want to do business with a company that didn’t appear to have their act together. Just because there was no lasting damage doesn’t mean there couldn’t have been - and doesn’t mean there won’t be the next time someone wants to pull a prank like this.
“And actually, there HAS been damaging fallout from this. The reputation of bloggers as serious journalists has been set back due to a juvenile prank. It remains to be seen how this will play out. I dare say that serious news bloggers may find themselves shut out in the near future.”
December 8, 2007
The major obstacle to my involvement with blogging was the enormous load of crap on the literally millions of internet blogs. Sites like MySpace and LiveJournal enabled the ubiquity of blogging; however, they also made it easy enough for people with little or no technical skills whatsoever to get online and endlessly drone on and on about the minutiae of their lives. And let’s not forget the MySpace pages that bring the word “eyesore” to a new level of Lovecraftian horror.
When I finally decided to throw my hat into the ring, I set a certain restriction on myself. I would not post drivel. Does anyone really need to know what I had for breakfast? Or that I went and got a grande mocha frappuchino at Starbucks? Oh, and don’t get me started on the people that sit in Starbucks all day with their laptops pretending to be professional writers when all they’re doing is complaining about their neighbors’ dog. I wanted to make sure that I would blog actual, interesting content. About things I cared about. But ONLY if those things had an actual compelling story behind them that I could tell.
Admittedly, I am a bit guilty of presenting some minutiae by using Twitter, and putting that on the blog. Even then I try to maintain my directive of being relevant - not easy to do when you’re limited to 140 characters. So I’m definitely not as prolific as some bloggers. But I don’t feel compelled to just spew out nonsense (you know, kind of like this blog posting right here). This may result in my losing some readers, because many people are saddled with a need for instant gratification. I’m of a slightly older generation, and have lived with deprivation and learned to live without certain luxuries. Patience is a virtue which is sadly lacking in many people these days.
Finally, there’s the issue of privacy, and its inverse. How much of my personal life do I want people to know? I certainly don’t want them in my bedroom. It’s bad enough that the cats get in the way. I wouldn’t want several dozen friends in there when the lights go out. And what about career-wise? Blogging about your current job may be the in thing to do, but it can bite you in the ass. Personally, I think unless your company is paying you to blog about your life in the company, keep your trap shut. What you think may be an innocent offhand comment could very well be damaging to the company’s reputation and your own job.
A form of ignorance or even downright stupidity could be claimed by the people that post intimate details of their lives on their blogs, and then forget that it’s available to the entire internet. And with internet archiving, it’s out there forever. Getting involved with a new boyfriend? He can check your blog and see how many guys you’ve been with and if you’ve cheated on them. Applying for a job? Prospective employers now check personal blogs as standard procedure. If they see you as a complainer or a whistleblower, you’re going to find it very difficult to get a job. And don’t forget cyber-stalking. It’s become a lot easier over the past decade to track people using personal information gleaned from the internet. And services for tracking down people with unlisted phone numbers is cheap and instantaneous.
Then there’s those wonderful people that blog about how they’re going to blow up their schools, or harass people online. Or the pedophiles. Or the criminals. There’s a reason most criminals get caught. Because they’re STUPID. And posting everything they did, including their ugly faces, when they held up a convenience store or burned down a nursing home or had sex with a minor is probably even more stupid than the actual act. If you’re one of those people and you’re reading this, please, take yourself out of the equation. People like you need to stop breeding.
The inverse of this is, do people really WANT to know some things about you? Does everyone want to know about the abscess under your toenail? Do they want to know how you like to dress up like a goat and have sex with barnyard animals? Sure, some people do, but THEY’RE CRAZY. People need to use a little judgment in figuring out where the line is. If you’re doing it for shock value, fine. Just don’t be surprised if your coworkers, friends and family are disgusted by you. If you don’t have any of those things, seek professional help before the FBI profilers are starting to work up personality profiles of you and we read about how you had 37 bodies buried in the crawlspace of your house where the corpse of your mother is sitting in a shrine surrounded by candles and human skulls. (By the way, serial killers are a lot smarter than bloggers. They know when to keep quiet and hide this stuff.)
Gosh, aren’t you glad you decided to stop in and read this?
November 17, 2007
Today Rachel and I had lunch with Tony Bourdain - along with about a hundred other people. Rachel tends to be shy around celebrities, so she might not have had as much time to talk to him as I did. When I introduced myself, I handed him a nifty little package I had put together for him - a 2-DVD set of the “A Cook’s Tour” TV series, along with the Bourdain in Beiruit special. The reason I felt it would be well-received is that no one - not even Tony - will ever have a legitimate DVD copy of the series. Food Network originally wanted him to dance around like a trained monkey, which resulted in an abbreviated second season and no renewals. And they sure as hell aren’t going to release it on DVD. So I took the episodes, compiled a first and second season DVD, printed out some nice DVD case covers that look just like the book cover, and DVD disc labels with a B&W pic of Tony at a table.
It WAS well-received, and made me glad that I had done it. Tony apparently doesn’t like it when people ask him to sign things other than the books he’s selling, since it tends up end up on ebay the next day. However, he had no problem signing his name and trademark chef’s knife on the inside front cover of my personal recipe notebook, opposite the page where Michael Ruhlman signed a week before. Tony is promoting his new book, No Reservations, which Rachel asked him to personalize for us. I didn’t want to hold up the line, so I asked him to see me later if he wanted to find out how Michael Ruhlman gave me food poisoning last Sunday(!).
Tony gave a nice little talk before the meal, and then after the main course he stood up to address the crowd and take questions and answers. Most questions were pretty standard, although his answer to one was interesting. When asked, “Is there anything you wouldn’t eat?”, he described how he has some reticence to eating animals that he considers to be pets. However, if faced with the dilemma of being offered a meal of puppy heads by a very poor, indigenous family that has barely any food, he would like to think that he would graciously choke down the puppy heads.
COME ON FOLKS! THIS IS THE GUY THAT STUFFED A BURNT WARTHOG’S ASSHOLE INTO HIS FACE, CHEWED, AND SWALLOWED. INCLUDING SAND, FUR, AND SHIT. IF TONY BOURDAIN WILL EAT SHIT, THERE IS NOTHING HE WON’T EAT.
When it came to my turn for a question, I was a typical smartass: “Last week when Ruhlman was here, I mentioned your name. He started swinging his travel mug full of Schnapps and cough syrup around, shouting incoherently about someone named Buford, and threw up on me. So my question is, do you plan on eating human brains when you go to Papua, New Guinea?”
Yes, he’s going to New Guinea in a future episode of No Reservations, and has made very sure that there will be no human brains on the menu. I don’t think his squeamishness comes into play. The ritual cannibalistic practices of the Fore tribe in Papua involve eating the brains of recently deceased family members. This ages-old practice has resulted in the prion disease called Laughing Sickness - it’s the human form of mad cow disease and is 100% fatal. Tony, if you’re reading this and they offer you brains there anyway, just tell them you had brains on the plane and you’re full.
After dessert and coffee, I picked up a copy of Tony’s Les Halles cookbook and had him sign it. During this time he was a lot more accessible since the entire restaurant full of people was no longer clamoring for his attention. I told him the story of how I really got food poisoning after meeting Michael Ruhlman, and he enlisted me in making a post to Ruhlman’s blog about the story that many people will find amusing. Sorry Michael, he made me do it. You know how he is.
Update:
Rachel posted her notes on the gathering here.
November 11, 2007
Today Rachel and I went down to the Book Passage store in the Ferry Building in San Francisco. There we picked up our pre-paid copy of Michael Ruhlman’s Elements of Cooking. When we arrived, I said, “I’m from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Warthog Anus. Have you seen this man?”
There was much amusement.
We had a chance to chat with Michael before his reading and Q&A period, then lined up for the book signing. Michael was very kind to not only take pictures with me and Rachel (see below), he also signed my personal notebook that I use as my cooking repertoire book, as well as our copy of his book.
While we were waiting online, a voice shouted from the door of the bookstore: “I’m coming for you, Ruhlman!” At first I thought it was Tony Bourdain, but it was, in fact, Chris Cosentino, the executive chef of Incanto, as well as a recent competitor on Iron Chef America and The Next Iron Chef. Chris was bringing Michael a giant cauliflower, which he expected to be eating that day(!). Rachel took a picture of them together.
Of course, I gave them both a hard time. “Michael, you’re rich now. Buy this poor guy a decent set of clogs!” Cosentino protested of course - he loves those cheap canvas sneakers. I also warned Chris to stay the hell away from the ice cream maker if he ever has a rematch on ICA. That thing is the kiss of death for every chef that has ever used it for a protein, save one: Michael Symon actually succeeded with a bacon-flavored ice cream. Go figure. Chris Cosentino is a great guy, and it was a nice surprise to chat with him for a few minutes while he was there.
I am definitely looking forward to tonight’s The Next Iron Chef finale, where we find out who wins all the marbles: Michael Symon or John Besh. Personally I’m rooting for Symon and his Joker-laugh, but I would be happy to see either one of them win. The only question now is who are they replacing? I’ve heard rumors of both Mario Batali leaving or Masaharu Morimoto retiring. It would have been nice to hang out with Cosentino and his buddies at their Next Iron Chef gathering, where they drink and joke about the contest. I’ll be happy to be watching tonight with my wife, eating Penne alla Vodka and drinking Bass Ale.
By the way, Ruhlman sez: “Sandra Lee is a horror show.” If you’ve ever seen Semi-Homemade on the Food Network, you’ll know exactly what he means.
November 9, 2007
My first seminar of the day was a panel titled “Using Social Media to Drive Traffic to Your Blog”. It was a pretty decent one, where the speakers gave examples of how various forms of social media - MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Digg, Google search words, and others - can drive traffic to your blog/website. Used properly, you can link to content on your blog from these sites for targeted traffic. Now, I’m obviously not selling anything on this blog; I am providing it as entertainment and information to anyone that cares to read it. It is definitely an interesting marketing tactic, and one I will keep in mind should I ever have a need for it. And I did find it quite amusing that this blog is the number one Google link for the search phrase “deconstructed lasagna”.
My second session was titled “What Web 10.0 Might Look Like: The Far Future”. It was more along the lines of a futurist view of global economy, technology, commerce, and education. One of the first things that he mentioned during his opening comments said that the Greeks developed advanced math, but the Romans weren’t capable of higher math because of ROMAN NUMERALS. Then where did all the buildings come from? The Greeks didn’t have Arabic numbers for math, either, yet they developed advanced math. The Egyptians, predating the Greeks, had advanced mathematics, and were able to build vast cities and temples. They did not have numbers, either. So this claim of the Romans being unable to advance because of their numbering system is ludicrous. Advances in science and technology stopped because of the FALL of the Roman empire, and in fact the world lost nearly a thousand years of scientific advancement as a result.
His next major claim was that if AT&T hadn’t been broken up then the Internet wouldn’t exist - except that the internet existed in 1969, 16 years earlier than the AT&T breakup in 1985. For a futurist, he was woefully ignorant of history. When he started describing his views of the future for the Internet in 2057, it just seemed to get worse. This guy reminded me of the futurists of 50 years ago that thought we would have flying cars by now, and eat food in pill form. He didn’t go that far, but his views of education and commerce and technology were either misguided or unbelievable or unworkable. His ideas for education where completely illiterate students could become PhDs were ridiculous, and I called him on it.
I pointed out that for the past four thousand years, advances in science, technology, literature, philosophy, education and health care are all a direct result of the development and use of written language - and that literacy was not an obstacle to future growth the same way he thought the Roman numbering system was an obstacle for Roman advancement. It is, in fact, a regression. The statistics he used to show that there are many illiterate people these days doesn’t prove that they can succeed without literacy; it just proves that there are a lot more stupid people out there, and THEY ALL VOTE.
Mark Cuban gave the closing keynote address. He’s pretty amusing, and gave us some personal anecdotes about his experiences and translating them into blogging. He tried to apply it to both personal and business blogs and seemed to balance it well. One thing he was spot-on about was that in order to make a blog interesting and original it requires a lot of work. You can’t simply coast; this is even more relevant to business blogs.
And now it’s time to party.
November 9, 2007
BlogWorld Expo, day 2.
Last night was the big sponsored conference party - a pajama party at the Hard Rock hotel & Casino sponsored by Pajamas Media. For those of you that don’t know, they’re a right-wing conservative blog. And they have proven to me that the phrase “Republican Party” is an oxymoron. These people don’t know how to party. It was weak. Lame. Boring.
They had flown in a popular DJ from Los Angeles, but gave him a crappy sound system and kept pushing him offstage. Open bar, sure - all weak, domestic “lite” beer. Everyone pretty much stood around staring, as if they expected something to happen. What everyone at the conference had expected to be a big blowout turned into a total failure. And to add insult to injury, you had to pay extra on your conference ticket to gain access to the party. Not only that, they apparently had a secret, invite-only VIP room set up, and apparently no one on the floor knew anyone that was in the VIP room.
I remember years ago going to ISP trade shows where many of the attendees knew each other. It didn’t take much more to put together a great party than a bunch of us getting together at the hotel lobby bar. Here, it was more along the lines of being expected to party according to obscure tax form instructions, except they forgot to give out the instructions. And with a couple of exceptions, the only people that wore pajamas to the party were the people that sponsored it.
More to follow.
November 8, 2007
So Rachel and I are at BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas. And I am about to do something I swore I would never do. Actually, I once swore I would never set up a blog, and yet here I am. And now, I am about to blog about blogging. Not only that, I am at a conference about bloggers blogging, and I’m blogging about it.
Just fucking shoot me.
I’m currently at the opening keynote address, starring Matt Mullenweg, the author of WordPress - which happens to be the software running this blog.
Impressions of Las Vegas: This is actually the first time we’ve been here. It’s a lot bigger than people realize. The hotels are absolutely gigantic. You could enter a hotel/casino and walk for miles and not see it all. I’ve been to casinos in Atlantic City and Lake Tahoe. They’re very small, and easy to find your way around. Las Vegas is entirely another world. I think Lovecraft had a word for the architecture of R’lyeh (home of Cthulhu) that applies to Las Vegas: Cyclopean. Casino and hotel buildings look deceptively close because they’re so big.
The worst thing, however, is the deliberate design of almost every large casino that keeps you lost and confused. They don’t want you leaving. The worst of these is Caesar’s Palace. Not only does the design of it keep turning you around and going in circles, they have deliberately obscured all of the exit signs. You cannot see them from the casino floor because the dropped ceiling physically blocks it until you’re right in front of it. I’m sure it’s illegal, but then, casinos have enough money to make legal issues disappear.
Maybe the casinos are run by Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones. It sure would explain a lot. I bet Steve Wynn is actually a Shoggoth.
Update:
So I’ve been to my first official session here, “How Do Blogs Influence and Affect Popular Culture?” Aside from the redundancy in the topic, this was a pretty decent session. There was a panel of 8 people, from various blogging venues such as print news media, celebrity blogging, television, popular music and more. The style was fairly relaxed, with interaction from the audience welcomed. I think they gave a good representation of how the voices of blogs have had an affect on the popular culture categories they covered, but I think they could have done more, such as provide examples and suggestions on how to become a real influence on popular culture, rather than just be a spectator.
More to come.
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