Watershed

SSDD

This whole flapdoodle with Deborah Howell and Jim Brady of the Post being scared of BBS posters  and shutting down the posts is only vaguely interesting to me.  I think I have personally seen a  blowup like that, where obscenities and accusations fly,  around 50 different times in various online communities.  And that's a pretty low amount.

But three thoughts come to mind:

1) Whenever Jim Brady has indicated there are "posts that no one has seen", it reminds me of the classic online community gambit:  "I am refraining from posting all the obscene emails I am getting outside the public eye."  The reverse of that is:  "I am getting lots of supportive emails from people, but I won't post them here."  I can't think of a single situation where that kind of comment wasn't stankranky bullshit.

2) Almost all writers are thin-skinned, almost always.  I'm no different.  I'll bet you aren't either, if you write.  The only thing new here is that writers for places like the Post, or the NY Times, aren't used to hearing directly from the people they have pissed off in these kind of amounts.  Gentile letters ot the editor, or exchanges on the back pages of the NY Review of Books doesn't count.

It really (and sincerely) makes me proud to have contributed, in small ways, to the growth of the Web.

3) Personal to the Washington Post:  Butch up, missy. 

South African Scuba Blog

Found a cool blog, though it's mainly cool because of who runs it:  Dive South Africa.

The blog itself tends to focus on news stopries about the ocean environment (Data reveal sea levels have risen more than 1 inch (2.54 centimeters) in last decade), marine animals -- especially sharks (Tagged great white shark swims 7000 km into uncharted waters and back) -- and diving, obviously (Frenchman stretches deep diving record yet further).

But the website for Dive South Africa is just as neat.  They show off diving safari of 10-14 days, shark cage diving, and other excursions all over South Africa and Mozambique.

Nice Robot

If anyone happening to read this has come over from Collision Detection, then welcome.  You may or may not know that many of Clive's pals refer to him as "The Robot".  It got to such a point on Echo that Clive started using this:

1!  0!  1!

as a signal of excitement.  He uses it in IM, too.

The Robot and I have known each other for a long while.  Long enough that I can say to him:  Robot!  Put down the banjo long enough to get the damn hard drives fixed!  Then we can finalize the Greencard Cowboys songs!