I knew some about his work. The sad thing was my first reaction was personal. I almost manifested Stevens-Johnson Syndrome in reaction to a drug treatment. It's a terrible thing. My sympathy for his death was all the more for knowing what I do of the manner of it. I can only hope the world gets more people like him.

Mazel Tov.

Nice to know things are going well. I am, of course, making the quasi-obligatory thanks post; having just found that you keep a blog. I could go on about the whys, but I suspect that gets tiresome. The roundedness of Spenser was the selling point (lo, those many years ago), and the sub-threads of constancy (baseball, cookery, poetry, freindship) were what kept me coming back. I'm glad to see the blog is much the same.

I didn't know he wasn't a major player in the right-wing comment factory. I just knew he pissed me off.

I confess, I don't understand this at a visceral level. It may be that 25 years of public "performance" as a writer and photographer burned it out of me, but I don't recall this sort of crisis of motivation. It's strange to me that I get direct feedback, but it's also not. When I was a journalist I'd get letters (or, depending on the subject, the paper would; that's a strange set of distinctions). When I started blogging the level of intimacy was greater, but years in Usenet (and before that in BBS, and Amateur Press Associations) had me used to people making very direct comments. I think, actually, the thing which I most wish I got was more feedback and interaction, because much of the time I feel my photography is too much mine, and the viewing audience is offered images with the understanding that these are mine, and if they like them swell. Which is what I prefer, when I'm working, but the idea that I am my only audience is anathema too. That my photoblog (http://www.terrencekarneyphotograhy.com) inspires no comment (which is partly structural and I am working with my web developer to make easier) is probably my greeatest regret. Good luck with this, it's a rewarding, but tough, thing to have such a place.

Yeah, but that's manageable. If one has 3/4s of a brain, the only trace is going to be to an area. Don't use home, don't use work, create the account from someplace anyone has access, never use it from home, or work. If it really matters, get a second hand-laptop, and use it for the clandestine stuff, and never from home, never from work. Don't use it to log onto anything which traces to you. But that does limit things, and most people don't have the discipline to practice that sort of tradecraft. TK

OT, but something I stumbled across that I thought might interest you. White Orchid and Remember "White Orchid" and "Blood Rose" It's a guy who claims to be building a group/groups to "rescue" girls trapped in the sex trade in SE Asia, and take them to Islands in the tropical Pacific for rehabilitation. There's some links there. It doesn't seem to me they have a hope in hell of getting anywhere near pulling any of this off, but he's a case.

This was a big deal over at Pandagon. Seems the problem (and it is a problem) is there was another allegation; of his taking part in an actual rape, which wasn't winnable. So the DA decided to take advantage of a statutory claim (and one which was meant to punish same-sex interaction, since oral copulation with a minor has a greater penalty than coitus). Which is, even if he did the rape, wrong. Convict him for what he did, don't abuse a bad law to get around a weak case.

I've taken a few times, I always come up Benford. TK

My baseline is about 400. When I make a post of note, I'll get spikes to about 1,000, and occaisionaly (when I get heavy linkage) as much as 1,500. I figure this has to do with how I blog. I figure that people like me (with a steady readership, and topical posts, on a semi-regular basis) have similar patterns. TK

I recall opening the L.A. Times one morning and reading that a source on a contentious story (not just that it was a long running sort of local feud, on land use, but she'd lied to me, by omission, which put things in a strange light as the story flopped, with only a short time to deadline) had been shot in her car. It was a very ugly divorce, and a pitifully inept murder for hire. I'm sorry. TK

The Army ain't fond of the idea either, not that this administration really listens to us. TK

I dislike the word refugees, because it implies they aren't going back.

This pisses me off. There isn't a whole lot more to say, I've said it all elsewhere. I can say I'd probably me more likely to shoot one of them, than I would a run of the mill, "looter."