geez, it's _so_ boring to talk about me, but i figure you deserve to know how the teleread censorship thing has played out. the last 3-4 comments i sent to teleread were "flagged" for "review by an administrator" as "spam" and have never appeared. they weren't controversial comments, just me finishing a few threads in case i was banned. so it appears to me my hall pass has been revoked... but meanwhile, rothman is posting comments saying i am "welcome" there (albeit with huge reservations), and that no one is being censored or even moderated. so don't believe everything you read on the internets! i don't know how to resolve the discrepancy here... perhaps he's willing to tell a great big lie in order to save a little bit of face. or maybe it's "a coincidence" that all of a sudden my comments stopped appearing. whatever the case may be, it's clear that rothman wants only "yes-men" on his blog, and i am not one of those, so i see no need for me to be there, thank you very much. as i told you, my new year's resolution for 2006 was to stop wasting time and energy commenting on his blog. and i actually succeeded for two months, then relapsed when he was in the midst of a campaign to give readers the impression that openreader was _the_ way to get a publicly-shared annotation capability. (it might be _one_ way, but it's certainly not the only way, not by a long shot.) so any uncertainty about whether i've been banned or not doesn't really matter, because i'd just as soon not be there. i am certainly not going to "submit" comments that might never appear, and might have been "edited" when they do. so the banning is helping me to keep my resolution! :+) oh, that doesn't mean i'm going to stop puncturing the hype put out by the rothman/noring spin machine. it just means that i will not be doing it where they control my microphone. it's so silly to think that they can silence me by banning me! cyberspace has no shortage of soapboxes, and branko won't be able to edit me or delete me when i use my own soapbox. but i'll be sure to let the world know he _would_, if he _could_, as demonstrated by the fact that he already _did_... oh, for the record, branko's "editing" consisted of three things. first, he removed my linebreaks; might or might not seem significant to you, but that's irrelevant, it's significant to me; you don't mess with a poet's linebreaks. second, he removed my z.m.l.-style _styling_ markers and replaced them with actual styling. (bold in the one instance.) finally, he uppercased some of my letters. that's a huge no-no. i write my posts the way i do as an expression of my individuality. if anyone thinks i will tolerate their "editing" out that individuality, they're wrong. but even more to the point, _no_one_ should have their comments on a blog be "edited" by the blog's owners. ever. anyway, it will be nice to go back to keeping my 2006 resolution! moreover, it will be fun to pull back my "reality check" and watch, as the rothman/noring machine might spin itself out of control... rothman's delusions are grandly entertaining, i must say. for instance, today he's got an entry saying that there is an "apparent plot to subvert openreader" by adobe and a whole cast of other parties who are "doing all they can to preempt openreader". i bet few of you even knew that this app -- which won't even be released until summer -- is so threatening that it's stirred up secret plans at adobe, and maybe sony, microsoft, and who knows? check it out:
i don't know about you, but paranoia _this_ grandiose is tremendously amusing to me! heck, it makes me wish i would have been _egging_him_on_ all along, instead of providing a calm and rational counterbalance to his hype. i bet it'd be easy to find "evidence" that supports his fears, because he seems willing to believe some crazy things... it's too late for _me_ to do that now, but if _someone_else_ were to feed his hysteria, it might create some fun reading! ah, the world of e-books. what an interesting "community". :+) anyway, i am sorry to disturb all you fine people digitizing books. you can return to your important work now. thanks for your time. -bowerbird