George Dafermos' Weblog

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Bloody disgrace: after humiliating human life, man has now turned to humiliating cats

I just received an email alert from a friend who's collecting signatures to stop the sadistic business venture that Bonsai Kitten is. I have pasted the full text of the email below. if you'd like me to forward the email, either leave a comment or email me. Or take action yourself against this macabre spectacle in any way you see fit. Those people deserve to be shot. the bonsai kitten site has many photos demonstrating the step-by-step process through which alive cats are put into jars and then turned into bonsais. obnoxious. and deeply unsettling how people choose to decorate their homes. makes me wanna puke.

here's the email alert:

FOR EVERYONE WHO LOVES ANIMALS

This is so terrible. A site that we were able to shut last year
has returned. We have to try to shut it down again! A Japanese man in New York breeds
and sells kittens that are called BONSAI CATS.

That would sound cute, if it weren't kittens that were put in to little bottles after
being given a muscle relaxant and then locked up for the rest of their lives. The cats are
fed through a straw and have a small tube for their feces. The skeleton of the cat will take on
the form of the bottle as the kitten grows. The cats never get the opportunity to move. They are
used as original and exclusive souvenirs.

These are the latest trends in New York, China, Indonesia and New Zealand.

If you think you can handle it, view www.bonsaikitten.com and have a look at the methods being used to put these little kittens into bottles. This petition needs 500 names, so please put your o! ! ne name on it!!!
Copy the text into a new email and put your name on the bottom, then send it to everyone you know.

If you notice that there are 500 names on the list (when i received the email, it had 290 signatures), please send it to: anacheca@hotmail.com

8:23:12 PM

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Can corporations and blogging co-exist?

asks Eric Richardson. In a nutshell, the essay's author claims that blogging and corporates are not a good fit simply because their natures are conflicting: blogging lives through individual voices and a close to obsession tendency to use hyperlinks as its raison d'etre, whereas on the other hand, corporate - owned media outlets emphasise editorial control and fake a pseudo-ethical attitude in order to please the ones pulling the money strings.

That part of the argument is well- known and correct. However, we see a plethora of cases, from fleshbot and gizmodo to macromedia and groove networks, where corporate blogging is indeed a viable solution to marketing, sales and knowledge management, provided of course that the weblog platform encourages interaction between the author and his readers, and the author is not afraid to speak with a human voice and invite his readers to join the discussion.

Let me say it once again: blogging and corporations can well be a good fit if the blogger sounds like a human being with all the downs and ups we usually associate with humans rather than a corporate android praising his master.

(thanks to Ross Mayfield for the link via orkut)
7:44:41 PM

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