Don't Blog

via Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing (quoted in full) and the Orlando Sentinel:

Would-be kidney transplant recipient denied because of website. Alex Crionas needs a kidney, and his friend Patrick Garrity would like to give him one. But the transplant was recently blocked by a coordinating group because Crionas published an account of his need for the procedure on a personal website. The group said Crionas' online outreach gave him an unfair advantage over other candidates who may not have internet resources.

They went through rigorous blood and tissue testing last month at LifeLink HealthCare Institute, which coordinates the transplant program for Tampa General Hospital, and say they were declared physically compatible for the operation. But the hope of a new life for the 28-year-old Crionas didn't last long. Crionas got a letter earlier this month from LifeLink, a Tampa nonprofit that links patients and donors, telling him his request for surgery was rejected because Crionas had a Web site seeking a donor. "I was dumbfounded," Crionas said. "We didn't even meet through the Web site."

See also:

• Claudia's Freedom of Thought
• Book of Joe: 'Transplant Denied"
• The blog of Bioethics.net
  

via the Butt Ugly weblog:

Ilkka Pöyry, the headmaster of the Muhos Korivaara school, who has been using (and approving) questionable methods to give fundamentalist religious schooling to kids in the elementary grades (3-4), has sued Jani of Marginaali for libel. (Well, not really sued, it's more like asking the police to look into the matter by claiming that a crime has occurred. I don't know the English words for that.)

Karshed :

As I'm sure as most of y'all know by now, I no longer have my job because of this website. Management had monitored my computer for over a month, tracked what sites I visited and blog posts I wrote and tried to place me between a rock and a hard place over things said on this personal site about people at work (even when said people and said work was never mentioned explicitly). more...

Karsh, 01/29/05.

Related to dooced, being fired for your weblog.

Talking Points:

1. Quitting a job to protect your blog is a serious step. What's your tipping point?
   
2. Would quitting actually protect your blog if your former employer sends lawyers to attack?
3. What might a request to stop blogging tell you about your boss? About your company?

Reyhan Harmanci, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer, wrote Time to get a life -- pioneer blogger Justin Hall bows out at 31. A great interview with Hall, Rebecca Blood and others. Is there a Samson and Delilah Effect where new love leads to a loss of bloggy powers?

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN. High school principal warns parents about the dangers of his students blogging, instead of acting on deaths from heroin among his student body. via The Blog Herald and the Grand Rapids Press. Hazards include:

• talking about other students and teachers.
• sharing information about tests.
• attracting perverts.

Millions of young people blog despite the risks.

John Dowell reports your blog identity is at risk.

When I did a Technorati trawl on "macromedia" earlier today I found collections of old Macromedia press releases on two Blogspot properties, the old addresses for Vernon Viehe and Bob Tartar. I don't know what the scam is here -- it looks like the perp knocked out the old content ... my guess is that they're trying to get search engine prominence for eventual highlighting of their own viagra links, or something.

Andrew Sullivan says he's taking "a breather" from The Daily Dish, now the 9th most popular blog out of millions. Imagine Oprah putting her daily television show on hold at the height of her success. Burnout must really hurt.

InformationWeek cover story: "The Weblog Question: People are starting Weblogs in growing numbers but the owner of the content isn't always clear" by John Foley. Examples of this conflict from General Motors, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Google, Hewlet-Packard, Microsoft, Amazon, Sun Microsystems. Factors: formal policies, blog predating employment, agreements that carve out rights, use of company time/systems, content related/unrelated to work, disclaimers.