Month: January 2011

A Brief History Of Blogs

Here's the breakdown via Joanne McNeil:

Not Blogs: pre-2002: Geek notes, diaries, frequently updated zines. Things that looked like blogs but went by other names

Linkblogs: 1999 – (2011?): Perhaps even earlier than 1999. Linkblogs were either quick links or a blockquote and a link. Nothing labor intensive about sharing cool stuff but some people have better taste than others. Are they dying? Maybe? Twitter seems to have taken over for directions on how to get lost online

Warblogs: 2001 – 2004: You know how everyone has something to say about Wikileaks? Imagine that times twenty and that was the post-9/11 blogosphere. Here’s all you need to know about this frenzied media landscape.

Post-Diaries: 2003-2005: Pre-Facebook, although concurrent with Friendster and Myspace. Years before we had any kind of meaningful public vs private discussion as the sense was, with so much out there on the web, who is going to pay any attention to me? The post-diarists used their blogspot pages as nascent social networks, a way to reach multiple close friends. You probably knew all your best friends’ IP addresses because Sitemeter never clocked more than ten visits a day.

Movable C.V.s: 2004 – 2008: Blogs went niche. If you called your blog “Vegan Buddhist Goddess Blog” then CNN and NPR would call for comment if they were doing a story on vegan cooking. You’d be invited to speak on panels, maybe get a book deal. In any case, a blog was a way to establish yourself as a leader in your field.

Mainstream Media Blogs: 2007 – current: Apart from the New York Times and The Atlantic, many of these blogs are unremarkable. And readership reflects this. Whenever I go to a newspaper website I’m always surprised at how many in-house blogs exist, but few seem to attract more than a hundred or so RSS subscribers.

First Draft Essays: 2008 – current: Now blogging is the habit of those who love the sound of their own fingers banging away on a keyboard.

There are interesting extended thoughts in the rest of her post. I loved this:

This reminds me of what Hannah Arendt wrote of Walter Benjamin, that he was a “critic and essayist who regarded even the essay form as too vulgarly extensive and would have preferred the aphorism if he had not been paid by the line.”

The Default Weapon

Yep, they're serious about grandstanding on something like this – and, in my view, it could be a defining moment for nihilist Republicanism. Bruce Bartlett was onto this before most of us:

As far as I am aware, no other country on Earth has the idiotic policy that the United States has of having a legal limit on the amount of bonds the central government can issue. They correctly recognize that the deficit and the debt are simply residuals resulting from the government’s tax and spending policies. It makes no sense to treat the debt as if it is an independent variable.

Some argue that the debt limit has the virtue of focusing the attention of policymakers on the debt. But Congress already has a budget process designed to do that on an annual basis. Having a separate debate on the debt limit is at best superfluous. But it’s also dangerous because it allows members of Congress to try and compensate for being fiscally irresponsible – voting for new entitlement programs such as Medicare Part D or massive tax cuts that are not offset with spending cuts – by casting a vote against the debt limit.

Frum tries to find a way out for the GOP.

Can Palin Win? Ctd

The dog whistle reaches George Will:

And Bernstein is also leaning no:

Mostly, she's giving every indication that if she formally enters the race, she intends to run as a factional candidate by mobilizing her personal loyalists.  That was a viable strategy in the 1970s, perhaps, at least on the Democratic side, but it's highly unlikely that a factional candidate can win now in a coalition-style nominating process. 

It's not too late for her, but it's getting closer, I think.

This has definitely been a shark-jumping period for Palin. Oddly, the reality show may have been the most damaging because it exposed her as a fraudulent outdoors-person, hunter and shooter. Real hunters weren't fooled, and the realization of phoniness (Levi's long and most devastating accusation) can spread. 

Still, I regard much of this current punditry as a desperate attempt by the GOP establishment to kill her off metaphorically now she has done what they wanted her to do – prevent a landslide in 2008 and raise enough base ruckus to neutralize the Obama juggernaut in 2010. But here's a question I'd like to ask: why did Charles Krauthammer and George Will endorse her in 2008 if she is still so patently unqualified now? How does someone become less electable as they gain experience? Or did they get some kind of four-year guarantee from John McCain's doctor?

Angry Birds

A reader writes:

Thank you for absolving my shame this morning w/your Angry Birds posting. My nephew told me to download it on Christmas Eve and I must’ve spent half of Christmas Day trying to master the three-star rating for each level, much to the chagrin of those around me … but it was the best Christmas as an adult I’ve had in years.

It was like a mental colonic for me.

Excrescence Of The Day

Maybe it is the memory of June 2009 that remains with me, but this simple sentence in the Washington Times (regardless of the broader argument) turned my stomach:

The Iranians have not shown the will to unseat the regime.

How many neocons have lost their lives on the streets of their own capital and been tortured in the cells of their own government?