Jeff Goldstein is Back & Cyber Safety

Update: Thank you, again, Dr. Helen for linking here twice. What an exciting Sunday! Your readers may enjoy my recent posts on Shelter Magazine Bloggers or Peggy Noonan's essay on Second Chances and Ken Lay's demise. Look around, new friends. I always appreciate feedback.

Update II: AListApart has an article about web anonymity that you might find intersting, too.

Update III: Thank you again, for visiting. I added some thoughts about the Power of Words.

Update IV: July 24, 2006...Hi stragglers! Thanks for visiting again. I added this post about Deb Frisch and Jeff Goldstein. I think there is more to her hatred than mental illness.
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One of my first steps in blogland after Drudge and Instapundit is Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom. He is one of the funniest, smartest people in the blogosphere. Evidently, this combo makes him reviled by those humor-challenged and dull-witted, aka "progressives" and "peace loving professors".

Last week, I happened to be on his site reading the comments to this thread and I watched the horror unfold. A peace-loving leftist Psychology Professor threatened Jeff's two year old, Satchel. Here is just part of what she said:

[...] as I said elsewhere, if I woke up tomorrow and learned that someone else had shot you and your “tyke” it wouldn’t slow me down one iota. You aren’t “human” to me.

At first, my impression was that she was just bating him and being extreme in her provocation. Then, she repeated herself, and worse, repeated herself again. Then, I thought,"This lady is insane." And I went and read her bio, and some of her blog posts, and looked for a picture--there is another lady with the unfortunate moniker Deb Frisch, too, poor thing.

In the aftermath of Prof Frisch's very public meltdown, Jeff's website went down--a denial of service problem. He's changing servers. These events qualify as cyber-terror, in my book.

Most readers like my (rare) kid posts. In fact, Betsy Newmark talked up her talented daughter and I thought, "Betsy is smart. Maybe I shouldn't worry so much about my kids and post away." And I do sometimes, and while I don't have even a tiny fraction of Jeff's readers or Betsy's for that matter, all it takes is one nutjob. We already have an unlisted phone number for this very reason.

I guess I have viewed those who traverse the blogosphere as a little bit more civilized. I guessed wrong.