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Friday, May 17, 2002
I'd love to be a fly on this wall 
At Consensus at Lawyerpoint: National Journal Hosts June 4 Debate on BPDG in Washington, D.C.
The view from Mediastan
Lotta people pointing me to Steven Levy's piece on blogs in Newsweek. It's less about blogs than about how they play within the mainstream media punditry game:
| | What makes blogs attractive—their immediacy, their personality and, these days, their hipness—just about ensures that Old Media, instead of being toppled by them, will successfully co-opt them. You might argue that it¹s happened already. Some of the most popular blogs are those created not by disaffected outlaws, but by slumming professionals who apparently think that writing for big-time journals and bloviating on 24-hour cable is insufficient exposure for their views. So you have the likes of New York Times Magazine contributor Andrew Sullivan blogging on the church, sexuality and his recent adoption of a beagle...
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| | Already we're seeing some of the more popular practitioners sell out entirely to the Big Guys. Last week pioneer journo-blogger Mickey Kaus rocked the Blogosphere by announcing that Microsoft-owned Slate had snapped up his one-man shop Kausfiles lock, stock and software. My old NEWSWEEK colleague Kaus had hinted as much to me a few days before the announcement but wouldn¹t give the details. "Sorry," he told me, "but I promised the exclusive to InstaPundit." And why not? InstaPundit's Reynolds is an insider now.
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This is fine as far as it goes, but it only extends to the blogs that play the game. I've got a fairly popular blog here, and I'm a working journalist too. But I have no sense of connection to the punditry game, even though I know lots of the people involved.
One reason, I think, is that I'm much more fond of what's happening in parts of the Venn diagram where the mainstream news system and blogs don't tend to overlap. For example, Blogistan and Shitistan.
Blogistan:
| | We need a way to distinguish true, good moons like our very own Moon and Titan and Ganymede and Io from all the tiny little Manhattan-sized rocks people are trying to pass off as moons, like the shitty little moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. Call them captured objects or captured asteroids or space rocks or something, otherwise every little Charon and Phoebe is going to be clamoring for moon-status and this will lead to chaos, I'll tell ya what.
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Shitistan:
| | Andrew Sullivan liked the crucificition, but I find the seduction of Lot to be just as good in Lego form as it was in Genesis.
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Sorry, but I love this shit. And I had a lot more fun reading it a few minutes ago than I did hearing Andrew Sullivan fill in for Daniel Shorr on NPR this morning.
Stereo
I hadn't checked Miguel's blog in a while. I was expecting it to be about technology, because I know Miguel through Gnome, Mono, Ximian and the Linux community But his blog is about other things too. Like the Middle East.
Strong stuff. Check it out.
Time to get a digital camera?
I've been putting it off. I'm an analog photographer of long standing who likes the flexibility of a good SLR with a wide set of lenses and flashes. I especially like bouncing the flash for dispersed indirect lighing. I haven't seen many digital cameras with hot shoes. Or with flashes that bounce.
Anyway, I'm looking for recommendations. Small is good. So is easy to use.
They've got you surrounded. Other than that you're fine.
Burningbird has an Argentinian ant invasion. I wrote about ant wrangling a few months back. Gave detailed instructions based on far too much experience. Might be worth re-reading.
Fuckin' R
Rageboy on Marketplace radio, on blogs:
| | The press is all over weblogs, but the press doesn't get why they're so hot. We're talking about our lives here. Not what we buy or watch on TV or how we'd vote if the fucking politicians weren't all ruthless egomanicas. And fucking stupid.
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It goes on like that. EXcellent stuff.
I guess she makes it hard for these guys.
Cynthia Plaster Caster has been making plaster casts of men's privates for longer than most men have been on the planet (in other words, it looks like she's about as old as I am). If you don't hate Flash, the intro is well worth it.
Thanks to RageBoy for the link.
Ride on
Griff is taking the weekend off. Getting on his motorcycle and heading out. On Friday he shared a quote from Charles Hummel that I'm trying to follow right now myself:
| | The urgent things in life are very seldom important, and the important things in life are rarely urgent.
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A Cluetrain Corollary
John Robb:
| | Will companies continue to compete and invest in new technology? Yes. They can't stop. Barriers to entry are dropping daily enabled by a plethora of new technologies. Any weakness is immediately seen, globally via the Internet, by entrepreneurial individuals who will take action to provide competition. If corporations stay static or look to the government for salvation they will die.
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You can say that again
Eric Norlin takes a pro-clone position.
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