Ack!

In shifting to a new Google Blogger template, it kindly erased my directory! I will add as many as I can, but if I have dropped you accidentally and you mind, remind me in comments.

Accidentally on purpose

Decided to play with my blog layout.

Anybody want to complain?

Blog sprinkles

Electric cars


Painter Bob Ross


Lol Bush from the Guardian:




The unraveling of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins.


Coal emissions and profits are up.


Fill in the blank, you trollop! (More) (and even more with pictures)


McCain's mother sued his first wife.


DistributorCap NY has an excellent ongoing discussion about our broken Constitution.


Proof that eggplant kills.


Newt's bloated head needs a tire gauge.

Um.....

Google mistakes own blog for spam, deletes it
Company says normal policy procedure -- not external hack -- resulted in Custom Search Blog temporarily hosting nonsensical message

Alrighty then...

Google Blogger on a rampage

Your favorite blogs strangely silent? Several bloggers found last night they were shut out of their blogs with this at the blogger dashboard:

WARNING

This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. You will not be able to publish your posts, but you will be able to save them as drafts.

Save your post as a draft or click here for more about what's going on and how to get your blog unlocked.

and an email:

Hello,

Your blog at: (your blog here)blogspot.com/ has been identified as a potential spam blog. To correct this, please request a review by filling out the form at http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog. (etc.)

Your blog will be deleted within 20 days if it isn't reviewed, and you'll be unable to publish posts during this time. After we receive your request, we'll review your blog and unlock it within two business days. If this blog doesn't belong to you, you don't have to do anything, and any other blogs you may have won't be affected.

We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog like yours is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this error. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to bloggers like you instead of to spammers. For more information, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577

Thank you for your understanding and for your help with our spam-fighting efforts.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

P.S. Just one more reminder: Unless you request a review, you won't be able to use your blog. Click this link to request the review: http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID etc....

I realize it is a free service, but anything like this that suddenly silences voices makes my hair stand on end and I reach for my tinfoil hat.

SteveAudio has been blocked as has Sinfonian of Blast Off who cleverly could fix his template to post this on the sidebar:

Thursday, July 31, 2008
10:00 pm EDT

Blogger has seen fit to lock this blog, thanks to spam-prevention robots, until a human can review it. I'll be back posting soon. Thanks for your patience.

Updating as I collect shutdown blogs:

Libby of The Impolitic

Fourlegs at Plush Life

Dr. Dawg at Dawg's Blawg

skippy of skippy the bush kangaroo

Guys from Area 51

Elayne of Pen-Elayne

Hoots at Hootsbuddy's Place

Blue Gal has more.

Update: Blogger apologizes:

Spam Fridays

August 1, 2008 — permalink

While we wish that every post on this blog could be about cool features or other Blogger news, sometimes we have to step in and admit a mistake.

We've noticed that a few users have had their blogs mistakenly marked as spam, and wanted to sound off real quick to let you know that, despite it being Friday afternoon, we are working hard to sort this out. So to those folks who have received an email saying that your blog has been classified as spam and can't post right now, we offer our sincere apologies for the trouble.

We hope to have this resolved shortly, and appreciate your patience as we work through the kinks.

Well... Thanks. And hurry up, would you? We have a lot of people going through withdrawal.

I must polish it a bit more

And hang it on my blog:




Michael of Cannablog gave this to me ... why ask questions? Now I get to choose out ten other bloggers... which makes me cringe each time I do these things because I read so many. But by chainlinking back, I'll try to prevent repeating bloggitteers who have been chosen already:

Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof

Carrie, Uncensored

distributorcap NY

Morse of Media Needle

Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors

Eli of Multi Medium

Pygalgia

Sorghum Crow at his General Store

Mapaghimagsik of Taking Stock

Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat

Excellent bloggers all!

Vote for one of the good guys...

Glenn Greenwald or Jeralyn Merritt.

I'm so honored! I'd like to thank my parents....

Morse at Republic of Sestakastan tagged me, so I must respond.

Congratulations, you won a

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. I thought it would be appropriate to include them with the meme.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote.

Well, I must admit I was tagged by Bryan of Why Now? in February... but I'm still new enough to blogging that I find these things entertaining. (My first bloggity anniversary will be August 9th.)

So the first blog I'll pick on this time will be Mustang Bobby of Bark Bark Woof Woof who teased me so mercilessly for not picking on him for the last tagging... and for being a cutie.

Second: Mapaghimagsik of Taking Stock for her wonderful cartoons.

Third: Sorghum Crow at Sorghum Crow's General Store for hitting the blogging ground running at full speed..

Fourth: jj at Unrepentant Old Hippie for her unquenchable spirit and the turkeys on her driveway.

Fifth: Chet at Vanity Press for his excellent viewpoint, humor, and Friday art.

Now I will go and feel guilty for neglecting all the other blogs I try to visit daily....

Oops...

It was that article about the underpants, right?

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

bomb (6x)

sex (5x)

gay (4x)

gun (3x)

crap (2x)

rape (1x)

Pax Americana

In honor of Gretchen Pritsky, NTodd's mom. The blog will reflect her "concern for the well-being of others, belief in inherent goodness of humanity, desire to find peace within and without."

What a tribute.

Fucking civility on demand

I don't need to quote the silliness, the vulgar yet succinct responses. All I need to do is quote Bryan of Why Now?:

In summary, we don’t need little icons to warn people of content; there is no right to comment; people who threaten others should be prosecuted under the existing laws.

Control your blog, leave if the comment thread becomes too rude, use existing laws for anyone who truly steps out of line.

The big bang of the blogosphere

Technorati tracks the data:

In summary:

• 70 million weblogs
• About 120,000 new weblogs each day, or...
• 1.4 new blogs every second
• 3000-7000 new splogs (fake, or spam blogs) created every day
• Peak of 11,000 splogs per day last December
• 1.5 million posts per day, or...
• 17 posts per second
• Growing from 35 to 75 million blogs took 320 days
• 22 blogs among the top 100 blogs among the top 100 sources linked to in Q4 2006 - up from 12 in the prior quarter
• Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37%
• English second at 33%
• Chinese third at 8%
• Italian fourth at 3%
• Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%
• English the most even in postings around-the-clock
• Tracking 230 million posts with tags or categories
• 35% of all February 2007 posts used tags
• 2.5 million blogs posted at least one tagged post in February

Humanizing the other

If you wish to resist our government's demonization of Iran, listen to the Iranian voices.

Iranian Truth

View from Iran

Doxdo

Mideast Youth:

“All of the foreigners who ride in my taxi – French, German, Spanish – they all love Iran. I am curious, so I ask them.”

“They love Iran because they expect something much worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“They expect to be frightened and see people living in fear.” (Forgive me if I am not nuanced in my conversations… I am not a fluent Persian speaker. I do the best I can with my limited abilities.) “We are afraid of you.”

The driver laughs. He thinks I’m joking. I must be joking. Us afraid of them?

“Why is it that foreigners have such a bad impression of Iran?” the taxi driver asked me.

“The only images of Iran that we see in the west are of thousands of people shouting, Down with America, Down with Israel, and then burning flags. This scares us.”

“Yeah, but that does not mean that we dislike Americans. We like Americans. It’s the government we don’t like.”

“Americans do not understand that difference.”

Understand the difference, understand the nuance, understand the humanity. Save the world.

Fun site

Seeds of Doubt: Progressive protest art, cartoons and commentary

Thinking Blog Award

Bryan of Why Now? tagged me for this:

Congratulations, you won a

!

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. I thought it would be appropriate to include them with the meme.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote.

Ok....This will be hard. I have hundreds of sites I scan ... ones that make me think? I am going to leave out the really big names because they orbit in their own universe. Hmmmm... (not Steve nor Bryan for they have already been tagged...)

NTodd of Dohiyi Mir
Spocko of Spocko's Brain
Tengrain of Mock Paper Scissors
Whig of Cannablog
Phila of Bouphonia

Not sure NTodd belongs here... he's kinda a big name...

But all those others! Check my blogroll for them, I feel embarrassed for leaving any one of them out...

Netiquette

Are trolls more vociferous, spawning rapidly, or are blogs just the newest way for wouldbe obscene phone callers to harass?

Bloggers know everything.

Even some guy with a blog knows more than you.