The ubiquitously annoying program, Twitter, finally has bragging rights to being useful: UC Berkeley graduate student, James Karl Buck, alerted his Twitter network to his arrest in Egypt, sparking an international campaign for his release. Buck was in Egypt doing a project on Egyptian bloggers who tend to be, according to The Mercury News "mostly leftist, anti-government bloggers." When photographing a demonstration, Buck and his translator, Mohammed Salah Ahmed Maree were both arrested. Buck sent......

In a sensationalist piece that has been e-mailed to every blogger's inbox this morning, the New York Times has added another bit of fuel to the "journalists vs. bloggers" fire: Bloggers will die... soon. Using a scant two examples of prolific bloggers dying in the past few months, New York Times decides that these deaths are due to constant stress, long hours and the need to always "break" stories. My, that doesn't sound like being......

-- Van Halen jumps. [SFGate] -- Tommi Avicolli-Mecca to be visited by three ghosts Xmas Eve. [Beyond Chron] -- Gavin Newsom wants to be President of the U.S.A. you to get healthier. [Matier and Ross] -- SWL 337 Planning Challenge winners announced. (Go Jackson!) [Curbed] -- Susan Leal hit by a car. Chin up, girl. [CBS5] -- San Francisco's 100th homicide. [The Snitch] -- Bloggers, copyrights, photos, and lots of hair pulling. [Laughing Squid]......

Intimated by Martha Stewart? Of course you are. But Apartment Therapy has a nice round up of Thanksgiving Table settings they found on Flickr. These are worth browsing for some last minute inspiration. ...

According to the Scarborough Research -- an institute that measures the lifestyles, shopping patterns, media behaviors, and demographics of unholy, evil American consumers -- San Francisco was ranked as one of the top markets for people who read or contribute to blogs. Yay. And, duh....

More bad puns on Philip Glass’ name! Appomattox, which we rose our Glass to, was not the end of our wall-to-wall Glass coverage. The Glass is not full, we haven’t hit the Glass ceiling yet, ha. Take tonight. There’s a cool concert at Herbst Theater, presented by Other Minds, an organization devoted to new music: Dennis Russell Davies and his partner, Maki Namekawa, playing music for two pianos from Philip Glass, but also J.S Bach......

Yummy photo courtesy of Dinner Party -One new blog we're eyeing is Dinner Party, who recently put the jam in jammy by making strawberry balsamic jam. We like and find heartwarming the idea of family members sharing a love of food and cooking, what can we say? -Yee-haw! A slew of Bay Area food bloggers get down and dirty at Alemany farm. There are other volunteer opps at the farm, and you won't get......

Last week's winner, the Bay Guardian. More problems with the construction at Hunters' Point (this time: asbestos). Chris Daly is on it. A construction worker falls off the Golden Gate Bridge and his employer avoids liability because they used the wrong legal name on the OSHA citations it received. Send all legal paperwork to FSist, everyone! More taxi permit shadiness. Man vs. Wild -- who cares if he stayed in a hotel, he drank water......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

Beloved Jennine from The Coveted writes here about how this year’s San Francisco Fashion Week denied her and other bloggers precious invitations to cover the event or (worse) any of its VIP, open-bar parties. Enough to drop your coke bullet into the toilet, right?! Anyway, this isn’t all that astounding seeing as how SF Fashion Week is notorious for being a tad behind the times (New York City all but begs such bloggers as......

--Pride was fun! (Have you noticed we always have great weather for Pride?) [Chron, ABC 7, CBS 5.] --Who were the bloggers floating the Newsom coke rumors? We don't think it was us. [Chron.] --They're trying to apply the lessons from the Kim family search in looking for the Alameda County woman and her priest friend. [KTVU.] --Cal students getting hyphy. [Clog Blog.] --Don't try and fix the worst house in San Francisco yourself......

--Here's today's mini-blotter: a family murder-suicide in Tilden Park; Man hit by a BART train at Balboa Park in the late morning today; a guy drove off the side of Mount Tam [Inside Bay Area, the EBX 92510, the Chron; CBS 5; Marin IJ]. --They're laying people off at the Merc News too? [SFBG Politics Blog]. --A blogger gets sued for defamation in small claims court by a journalist who didn't like, among other things,......

So bloggers might not have been able to turn Snakes on a Plane into the hit they thought it would be but that doesn't mean they don't have any power. Due to fan protests fueled by the blogs, the NFL will let Mike Nolan wear suits on the sidelines for all eight home games next year. ...

At some point in 2003, we were at a meeting of the local puppetry guild (because that's the kind of rough crowd with which we roll) and someone mentioned that they'd done some concept art for Pixar involving rodentia. That's four years ago that those poor saps were playing with rats, tweaking every twitch and crumb day after day. And now, finally, Pixar's finally ready to say "okay, done" to Ratatouille. Upcoming Pixar reports......

Gavin Newsom, why won't you just do a Question Time before the Board of Supervisors? Was it not enough to force all those citizens into renting chicken suits and drag all those innocent bloggers out at obscenely early hours on the weekends (read: 10 a.m.), just because you've unilaterally decided you don't like to take unscripted questions? Was it really worth it? Now just look what you've made Question Time originator Chris Daly do! That's......

It's Bay Area National Dance Week! Dance studios across the city are dramatically flinging open their doors for free events all week. The one that jumped out at us for tonight is a free introduction to fire hoop dancing at the Temple of Poi. There's a 6:15 class and a 8:00 class, and the Temple is located at 953 Mission, Suite 11. Check out that YouTube clip of the Temple of Poi founder hula-hooping......

So hey, we've got some sad news. SFist is sorry to report that our beloved sports guru and fun-loving grammar anarchist Jon Shurkin is stepping down as editor. We're going to miss him and his dyspeptic-with-a-twinkle style. (No hate in the comments, please -- we're very sad!) BUT: our loss can be your gain! Do you want to edit SFist? Gothamist HQ is looking for an editor with a point of view about the......

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay......

So a bunch of bloggers had a few drinks last night, or as someone on the Wall and SF Junto put it "some lame meeting of whiney bloggers at a hipster bar” when Alex and Maggie of the strangely peculiar blog, The Mayor and the Hair, came by and asked if one of them was Dean of Gavin Sucks. It was. And so, they dumped their alcohol on poor Dean, who had to spend the rest of the night wearing a wine and beer soaked shirt....

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week. Torontoist Special Report: Rosie to Trump: "Fire 300 Bicyclists for Fraud!" On DCist: Students Go Wild for Slogans, Secrets and Sexual Harassment The action was thick......

Seeing beyond Sight What happens when you give visually impaired children cameras and ask them to capture their everyday life? Come find out at this exhibit for a new book by Tony Deifell, Seeing Beyond Sight: Photography by Blind Teenagers. Accompanying the revelatory photographs is commentary and reflections by the artists. If you can't make it tonight, the show runs until May 12 but stop by around 6 until 8pm to catch a glimpse of......

The Chron ran an article on Sunday that we really, really wanted to write some commentary on after reading it. "Food bloggers dish up plates of spicy criticism"; subhead "Formerly formal discipline of reviewing becomes a free-for-all for online amateurs." We really wanted to say something because, well, we think it's a huge load of crap, and somebody, aside from one of the injured parties, has to call bullsh**. For crying out loud, they upset our beloved Tablehopper. They took her quote out of context. How dare you, sirs. How dare you?...

Here's today's wrap up sports news...

As the political season starts to heat up, there's so many bloggers monitoring politicians' activities that we're thinking we need to start a new column, the _____Watch. There's so many people needing to be assessed these days! So we start off with local progressive Internet guerrillas GavinWatch. Welcome back! After their mysterious disappearance, they've changed all their old passwords, reuploaded all their old clips -- and they're ready to start watching Gavin Newsom again! (GavinWatch......

What to make of this year's Giants? We have no clue. No Giants team has been this much of an enigma since maybe 2003. After last year's soul crushing of a season, Giants management vowed to get younger and to change things up. They didn't. In fact, you could describe this season as the same but different. There is a new manager, a new corner infield, a new catcher and centerfielder but the team still......

Jennifer Siebel curiously covering her left hand with a non-engagement ring. Hmmm.......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... ...

Okay, we're a local news junkie Asian-American, and we're just going to say it -- we're a little embarrassed for our people from yesterday. Or, rather, we're going to strongly support investing more resources into Asian-American mental health advocacy and support groups. Okay, first up -- what's the latest with Gavin Newsom's stalker, Mr. Purple Gloves? Well, persistent reporters at the Chronicle managed to get Han Shin on the phone last night, where they had......

-Sharks finally come home after a long road trip to play the first team in their division and their arch-nemesis, the Ducks, and lose. Ann Killion says the Sharks aren't making it any easier on themselves. -Scott Ostler has a new "Knucklehead of the Day" bit on the Sports Columnist blog on SFGate. His latest two knuckleheads are Peter Magowan for positioning Brian Sabaen in just the right way to be thrown off the......

Valentine's Day is only a few days away, and we here across the Gothamist network wanted to express would like to tell you, in the spirit of the holiday, just how much we love you, our readers. Don't let it get to your heads, though. There are plenty of things we love, you included. Just be glad you're not amongst the things we hate. In New York, Gothamist isn't sure whether to love or hate......