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| Tuesday, December 11, 2001 |
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Aw shut up 
| | I used to like Goeffrey Nunberg, the linguist who often provides the closing commentary on Terry Gross' Fresh Air on NPR. I heard some of yesterday's show, but missed the Nunberg commentary. After being told to by several correspondents that it was about blogs and that I should check it out, I did. Now I wish I hadn't. |
| | I was hoping for something thoughtful and understanding, but alas: it was just another big media put-down, all the worse for its withering intellectual tone. Nunberg dwells almost entirely on trivial lowest-common-denominator stuff, going on about meaningless "accretion of diurnal detail" and soforth. |
| | All his positive remarks are set-ups for negative judgements. Acknowledging the growing diversity of blogs, Nunberg adds, "the one thing bloggers have in common is too much time on their hands and an exhibitionist streak." Then he damns the whole subject with a closing reference to The Diary of a Nobody. Ouch. |
| | I wish I had time to transcribe the thing, or to say more about it, but I've got work to do and I've called too much attention to it already. |
Danger behind every pupil
| | At 16, the boy is worshipping at the Mill Valley Islamic Center. But he wants less of the chaos and flux of America intruding on his new faith. He yearns to be a Muslim in a Muslim country. |
| | The Catholic father and Buddhist mother grant their son permission to travel to unlikely Yemen to study Islam. Later, he briefly returns to Marin (on Christmas vacation? for the Fourth of July?), and announces to his parents that he wants to become a doctor and to minister to the poor of Pakistan. |
| | He gets lost in Pakistan. For months, his parents have no idea where he is or how. They apparently have no idea how their gentle son becomes a militant warrior, a puritan at war with America. |
| | I keep thinking of T.E. Lawrence, an English public schoolboy of an earlier generation who suffered from pirate envy. He found adventure and a heroic identity as an Arab warrior -- became "Lawrence of Arabia" -- and he ended up in Cinemascope, played by Peter O'Toole. |
Oddyseus goes for the food
| | She told me that she lived ind Chalmette, and politely asked me if I knew what they called people who lived there, having no clue, I then learned that they are called "Chalmations"! But she followed on with the observation that she had just bought a house in Violet, and now would become a Violation! |
| | Buzz knows from violations because he happens to be an attorney — the only one I know who also blogs (though not the only one I know who went to Duke and remains a diehard fan). |
| | He's on a self-described Oddyssey, pitching Activewords "to anyone who would hold still for a moment." I wish him sales. |
Waah
| | Amy and Dave are rolling on the Segway subject. I said my piece a few days ago. Now I just wish that John Doerr was my buddy so he'd give me a ride too. |
Shall we rate?
| | Not so swift raises some questions about rating the credibility of different blogs and the news they carry. I posted my comments there (I can't link directly, so just click on the "comment" link below the item). |
Blanding issue
| | I'm going to be updating my blogrolling list one of these days. So I'm looking for some advice from those on it (or on their way to it). If your blog has a name, like Mike Sander's Keep Trying, or David Weinberger's JOHO the Blog, do you prefer me to list your blog's "brand," or your proper name? My preference is the latter, and I think that's what I'm gonna do. But lemme know if you'd rather I didn't. |
Welcome ablog!
| | A few days ago I dared (her word) Jennifer Balderama to join the fray and start a blog. Her new blog is Nonsense verse, and it adds a terrific new voice to the small but growing coterie of major media journalists who also blog. She explains it all here. |
| | I love reading her voice, too. It's like a revelation. We talked a lot about "voice" in The Cluetrain Manifesto, and it's an amazing thing to hear come out in a blog. People ask me how I write so much. Before I blogged I used to ask Dave the same thing. The answer he gave me is the one I now give too: I really don't write that much. I just write that easily. When you type as fast as I do, it's almost like talking. |
| | By the way, I thought I posted this last Friday, but apparently didn't. My apologies to both Jen and Mike, who wondered what happened. |
| | And an additional apology to Jen for spelling her last name wrong, repeatedly. I discovered the error when I did a Google search for "Jennifer Balderma" this morning and found all references were to blogs of mine, listed beneath a nagging question from the nearly sentient Google search program: "Did you mean: Jennifer Balderama?" |
| | Duh. Now I have to go back and correct the others. |
Stasis report
| | Just got back from working out. By the end of last week I was down to 183 pounds. That's from 184. Then this weekend I broke the diet, ate a bunch of fried crap, plus some excellent dried fish, among other delicacies, on the boat. Then we picked up some fine fat-saturated Chinese food from Sam Woo's Barbecue in Van Nuys on the way home, chowed it down and went to bed. Then we ate the leftovers yesterday. This morning I was back up to 183.5. Arg. |
Gaga
| | That number to the right of the copyright on Google just got bigger. This morning it says Google is searching 2,073,418,204 Web pages. More importantly, their Usenet archive now goes back to 1981. You can sort by relevance or by date. Check out the list of firsts here. |
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