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Sunday, June 8, 2003
Blogslingers 
| | In Editor falls to bloggers' rapid poison, Sarah Baxter in Times Online (and, I believe, the Sunday Times of London) recounts the role of Mickey Kaus, Andrew Sullivan and others in the taketown of Howell Raines at the New York Times. Fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go so far as to recognize that there are several hundred thousand bloggers, and that a relative few have been obsessing on Raines. The operative paragraphs: |
| | A proliferating band of independent writers known as ³bloggers² (short for web loggers) is pumping out personal takes on the news, and one of the most persistent themes of their websites has been that Howell Raines, executive editor of The New York Times, would have to resign or be sacked. |
| | The bloggers got their man last week and have been exulting in their power. After a rollercoaster two years in the job, Raines resigned from The New York Times last Thursday along with Gerald Boyd, the managing editor. |
| | If this were all you read about blogs, you'd think all bloggers were the journalistic equivalents of gunslingers. |
| | The problem is that Sarah Baxter doesn't know blogging. While mainstream journalists are, on the whole, getting a better grip on the subject, it's still a bowling ball with no holes. So they roll a lot of gutterballs. This was one of them. |
| | Along these same lines (groups not getting what other groups are really doing), Bill Kosloski talks about Tech Agoraphobia in the medical market. |
On the packets
| | I'm going to be a guest on On Computers Live at 1pm today, EDST. That's in 5 minutes, as I write this. |
Sad
| | They also just sent me my second spam. I know it's spam, because nearly everything not from a human being sent to the "ringleaders" address at cluetrain.com is a spam. It also says You are receiving this email because you opted-in to receive special offers from Exclusive-Deals through one of our online affiliates. (evatyrnqref^pyhrgenva(pbz). |
| | I wonder if they know they're spamming. Probably not. I'm sure they jobbed out promotion to somebody who knew somebody, etc. |
The ratio race
| | From his notes yesterday: |
| | Good points, and I like the AND logic: you gotta do more... |
| | So hey: Are blogs ways of doing or just talking? Sometimes they can be both. As can politics. There's a natural affinity. Mark Twain said a politician is somebody who works for "the universal brotherhood of man"— with his mouth. |
| | I remember something somebody once told me about Bill Clinton's biggest, worst-kept and most important political "secret": He shook more hands than any other human being in human history. Considering the man's legendary shortcomings, that says a lot. |
| | Let's face it: Blogs today are still unnecessary and insufficient for electing a damn soul. At best they'll become necessary but still insufficient. |
| | Winning in elections, like winning in markets, requires something more than conversation, more than buzz. It requires involvement. Relationship. Connecting and reconnecting. Performing, and not just in the box office sense of that word. |
| | Sitting here in a hotel overlooking the city most emblematic of a nascent democracy, I find myself wanting blogs work as levers on action. And, by 2004, levers in polling booths. |
| | As usual, the warbloggers, now morphing into polibloggers, have an edge. They have, as Dave says about the Mets, a philosophy. So does the Left. We just don't see much of it — so little of it, in fact, that there's more said about liberals by conservatives than by liberals. Go refigure. |
| | Maybe we'll start to see a real Liberal Philoslphy emerge from somewhere other than the usual caucuses and consultants. Blogs will help. They'll fertilize the grass roots. But to succeed, we'll need a higher action/word ratio. |
At least he didn't used to suck
| | Any swinging dead cat is odds-on gonna hit a public figure who sucks and always has. |
| | Three more paragraphs of good funny writing, and we arrive here: |
| | But here's what triggered the post: If you've been thinking about Dennis Miller at all lately, this might be what you (in the voice of his own bad 1988 self) were thinking. |
| | Read the link. Very funny shit. |
| | Unrelated: Miller was at the next table in a local restaurant a few months back. We were having a great time at our table. He was suffering his in silence. I think he envied us. Hope so. |
No-Fi
| | The trip from Logan to the hotel here in Boston is mostly underground. Or seems that way. But the last eight blocks or so are on city streets lined with apartments and high-rises. |
| | I wardrove the whole way with a laptop in the back of the taxi, fishing for wi-fi signals. I wanted to compare Boston to New York and Santa Barbara. In midtown and lower Manhattan I couldn't go ten blocks without picking up 50 signals. Or many more. Going from my house in Santa Barbara to downtown and back — about a 4-mile round trip — I picked up ... let's see, I've got the text file here somewhere... okay, 85 separate wi-fi signals. In Manhattan I picked up about 1500 signals (there are many more on the spreadsheet, but I don't have time to check for duplicates, so that's my guess). |
| | Here in Boston? Zero. Nada. |
| | From Britt Blaser's apartment window in Manhattan I got 12 signals. From here on the 15th floor of the hotel, with high buildings nearby all around... Nothing. |
| | Not sure what gives. Must be around here somewhere. It looks like a civilized place. |
| | Of course, I'm writing this from the bed, before crashing. using my own little portable wi-fi access point, which is hanging off the hotel's broadband. |
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