Tom McMahon

Quoted

• Burt Prelutsky: Because Spitzer is extremely wealthy and because he was the editor of the Harvard Law Review, he felt himself impervious to criticism, let alone cataclysm. Think of him as God with a comb-over.
• Pam Meister: But the knife cuts both ways. Want the Fairness Doctrine? Fine, but be prepared to listen to more conservatives on NPR.
• The comedian Sinbad on Hillary Clinton's "dangerous" mission of a few years back: What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can’t go ’cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife…oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.

Pat Cunningham: A Liberal You Should Add To Your Blogroll

Pat Cunningham is one of those guys that blogging was invented for. Here's his post on the subject of Unity:

The one thing about Barack Obama’s political rhetoric that gives me pause is his emphasis on “unity.”

In other quarters as well, there’s altogether too much talk this season about promoting political “unity” in America, about bringing an end to the bitter partisanship that supposedly hamstrings the political process and prevents the government from ably serving the people.

This notion has even given rise to a movement called Unity08 (Web site HERE), the leaders of which might naively try to field an independent presidential ticket comprised of candidates from both political parties.

And then there’s the recent idiotic statement by prospective presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, about how he wants “to get partisanship out of politics.” That’s like wanting to get the punching out of boxing.

Yet another manifestation of this search for nirvana in the middle of the political spectrum was evidenced this week at a CONFERENCE OF SO-CALLED MODERATES from both parties at the University of Oklahoma.

What’s going on here? Is there a virus going around that renders otherwise intelligent people ignorant of the realities of politics in a democratic republic?

Except in the general sense that we Americans all should honor the most fundamental principles of fair play and free speech, unity is neither desirable nor achievable in our society.

Promoters of unity often simply want to quash debate.  It’s in the name of admirable unity, for instance,  that Americans are told they should all support their government’s military misadventure in Iraq.  Such also was the case during the Vietnam War, when the mantra was that antiwar dissent was disloyal and un-American.

If nothing else, the unity push is reminiscent of a glaring misapprehension among our nation’s Founding Fathers, many of whom thought they had created a system that would thrive and prosper without the emergence of anything so ugly as political parties.

The irony, as historian Joseph J. Ellis notes in his latest book, “American Creation,” is that the greatest legacy of the Founding Fathers was the creation (even if unintentional) of the world’s first two-party system.

Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and the others seemed to think that political factionalism would sully and weaken their wonderful republic.  Rather, it has strengthened it.

Unity is a dangerous notion.  The only way I would be tempted to embrace it is if the unity is all in support of the positions I hold on the issues of the day — and even then I eventually would recognize it as inimical to basic American principles.

A Blog Is Like A TV Series

• Some start with a big splash.
• Others start quietly and slowly build an audience.
• Some die in infancy.
• Some are popular but hated by intellectuals.
• Some are loved by critics but are truly dreadful.
• Some will go on for years and years and years.
• Some fans are fanatic, other fans are lukewarm.
• And the fans are more fickle than you might think.
• Some truly great work goes unnoticed and unappreciated.
• Just OK work can be wildly overpraised.
• Keeping up quality work can be a real challenge.
• It can be hard not to "hit the wall" at the 4 to 5 year point.
• Ending the thing can be tough if it's popular.
• When it ends, the star may show up right away in a new one.
• Or the star may go away for a little while.
• Sometimes the star just wants to do something completely different after a long run.
• Often the star just needs a break.
• Just because the old one was successful doesn't mean the new one will be, even with the same star.
• Long term success requires periodic tweaking, freshening, and re-invention.
• The star may be known around the world.
• When an old one dies, a new one will take its place.
• Even after they're gone, the good ones are still remembered.

And Now, A Word From The NCAA . . .

There are 340,000 student bloggers, and most of them will be going pro in something other than blogging.

Thank You.

How To Become A Famous Blogger

How To Become A Famous Blogger

(via the evangelical outpost)

In Cold Blog: With 22 True-Crime Writers, It Would Be a Crime To Miss It

In Cold Blog: With 22 True-Crime Writers, It Would Be a Crime To Miss It

Ron Franscell explains:

It's the brainchild of Los Angeles Times best-selling true crime author Corey Mitchell of San Antonio, author of "Hollywood Death Scenes," "Dead and Buried," "Murdered Innocents," "Evil Eyes," and "Strangler." He's cajoled and corralled 30 of the most interesting names in the field of true crime ... and me ... to spill our guts every day about crime and punishment. The topics will range far and wide, I promise, and it's likely that more blood will be spilled than in an Ann Rule paperback.

Among the bloggers will be best-selling author and O'Reilly Factor correspondent Aphrodite Jones; true-crime media personality Dr. Katherine Ramsland; author Joyce King, who chronicled the James Byrd dragging murder in Jasper, Texas; Edgar-winning author Carlton Stowers; 48 Hours Mystery producer Paul LaRosa; crime victims' advocate Andy Kahan; and crime blogger/lawyer Laura James.

And while In Cold Blog will feature 22 true-crime writers, its featured writers also will include a sheriff, forensic artist, TV producer, book editor, TV personalities, a true-crime radio host, a historical-crime blogger, the mother and brother of a serial killer's victim, and even a rock 'n' roller whose art is inspired by crime stories. Plus, you can expect the unexpected high-profile guest to pop in every so often.

On The Question of Diversity in the Blogosphere, Recently the Subject of a Panel Discussion at the Second Annual Wisconsin Blog Summit Held This Past Weekend at the Marquette University Law School

My summary of the Eugene Kane column:

1. Bloggers are fanatics who love to sit indoors on a beautiful Saturday.
2. Bloggers spend a stupefying amount of time blogging for no money.
3. Bloggers are way too intense.
4. Bloggers have little actual impact on things.
5. Bloggers will be civil to your face and then bash you in their blogs.
6. Bloggers are mostly faceless and nameless white males.
7. Bloggers take themselves way too seriously.
8. Bloggers live in a fantasy world in their basement.
9. More African Americans should be bloggers.

The Tom McMahon Lord Haw Haw Theory Of Blogging

Lord Haw Haw, as you remember, was the popular name of William Joyce, a German radio propaganda broadcaster during World War II. And then, right after the war:

...On May 28, 1945 Joyce was captured in a German forest by two British officers gathering a truckload of firewood. Near Flensburg on the Danish border, Capt. Alexander Adrian Lickorish of the Reconnaissance Regiment, and Lt. Perry came upon an odd, tramplike figure with a walking stick. The tramp pointed to some logs with his walking stick, and addressed the men in French. Then he said in English, "oh, there are three or four more here." The duo immediately recognized the voice of Lord Haw-Haw.

Some people couldn't keep their mouths shut to save their necks. (Literally, in Lord Haw Haw's case.) Those are the bloggers.

A Reptile Dysfunction

Ron Franscell on the search terms that have led readers to his blog, Under The News. Here are just some of them, with his comments in parentheses:

erika hayasaki and vincenzo (he's the mummified man)
fred phelps hobby lobby (homophobes have hobbies too!)
tell a love one i am dying
bestiality charge (I was acquitted!)
terry tafoya (discredited inspirational speaker)
bonneville salt flats lawnmower record
suri pictures (you know, TomKat's kid)
a reptile dysfunction (Great headline, eh?)
anais nin pronounc (It's "ahna-EES NEEN")

world's fastest lawnmower
brokeback mountain-sex photos (I didn't have any)
smartest city usa (Beaumont, Texas?)
pickle muslim montana (I dunno, but sounds freaky)

And that's the internet for you: The truly poignant among the breathtakingly weird.

The Paleo-Future Blog: A Look Into The Future That Never Was

The Paleo-Future Blog: A Look Into The Future That Never Was

Predicting the future has always been a tricky business.

The Boat Lullabies

The Boat Lullabies

The Boat Lullabies is the name of a blog with all sorts of old photos. Sort of like rummaging through the photo albums at an estate sale. Fascinating.

March 19, 2007: It's Joe Sherlock Day on tommcmahon.net

March 19, 2007: It's Joe Sherlock Day on tommcmahon.net

Check out his front page, his blog, his greatest hits, and his Tips For Small Business Owners. A simply amazing site. I stumbled upon Joe's site because I got the tune Hot Rod Lincoln stuck in my head one day.

Rants

• Ursi's Blog, which normally has some great posts, recently had a post of the "9/11 was an inside government conspiracy" ilk. My comment to that was that any American who is not a complete nutjob will find this offensive, just like Jewish people find Holocaust Deniers to be offensive. She's also run similar crap here and here. In spite of all this, her blog has been named one of the top 200 Swiss blogs. Ursi, what on Earth did we Americans ever do to you to deserve this? It's not like we American bloggers are over here every week reminding everybody that the Swiss were the bankers to the Nazis or anything.  I mean, after that unfortunate chapter in your nation's history I would have thought that the Swiss would have wanted to be on the right side of history this time, no?
• And then there's this breathless headline over at Cynical-C: "Bush Cuts Cancer Research Funding". As is always the case with the Bush haters, there's more to the story than what they are telling you. If I ran a blog like that, I wouldn't allow people who disagree with me to post comments either. I wonder if they will be coming after me to hack off my legs with a rusty hatchet? A truly scary group over there . . .

Indexed: A New Blog Of Diagrams

Indexed: A New Blog Of Diagrams

(via J-Walk)

A New Bookplate Blog

A New Bookplate Blog

It's called Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie . All sorts of odd and unusual bookplates. Fascinating.

Cynical-C: Hate-Filled Spew And Thinly-Veiled Threats Of Violence

Some background from Fox News John Gibson:

Since I'm the kind of guy who runs his mouth, I tend to get in a lot of trouble. People get outraged about something I've said, but most often it's confined to the left-wing blogs that hate FOX, and hate me for speaking my mind, and for the war on Christmas and other things.

Normally I ignore it. But this time I can't.

These attacks fit a pattern: Certain people and self-appointed media watchdogs purposely misinterpret what I've said in order to mount vicious, personal attacks. I said people in this country should make more babies, particularly those groups whose birthrates are not as high as others. Why? Because we see what is happening in Europe — Russia is a good example, too — when people stop having babies because they are inconvenient.Populations cease being self-sustaining and end up filling population gaps with immigrants, who then make demands on the culture the homies might not like, such as the demands for Sharia law in some parts of Europe.

My saying this has been widely and incorrectly misinterpreted as me meaning to say white people in the U.S. should be making more babies because they're being eclipsed by brown people. I did say Hispanics have a higher birthrate than others in this country. But what I also said was that the others shouldn't make the Hispanics carry the whole load of population replenishment. It's hard work having kids.

A FOX-hating and Gibson-hating blog reported Gibson said brown people are bad and whites should have babies to keep browns down. While this is not true — not what I said, not what I meant, not what I think — this lie has even appeared in TIME magazine. "The Colbert Report" actually aired a cleverly edited My Word to have me saying something they evidently wanted me saying. Something shockingly racist.

I have expressly stated I have no problem with the evolving racial demographic trends in this country. A browner America doesn't bother me in the slightest. I expect it and I welcome it. Sometimes I garble my own message, as fans of this segment might have noticed, but for major media outlets to accept the version published by the FOX haters, to not bother checking the original piece, to not call for a clarification before launching an attack calling me a racist is really inexcusable and reveals their real intention, which is to slander and libel and slime.

I don't mind getting hammered for what I did say — and that happens plenty — but to get hammered for what I did not say amounts to nothing more than partisan attack for partisan purposes.

As a grandfather of two babies and the uncle of two adult Hispanic-Americans, I repeat my real feelings on the matter: Have more babies. Everybody. I like all babies. That's My Word.

It's no surprise, really, that Cynical-C called John Gibson a "racist". Name-calling is what Cynical-C does best, especially since he's afraid to debate head-to-head. But he's really reached a low with these comments on his blog:

• I want to s**t in this man's cornflakes.
• I know Martin Luther King was all for peaceful, non-violent means of combatting racism....but scum like this guy don't deserve that. Nothing would please me more than to see his legs hacked off with a rusty hatchet.

It's so sad to see Cynical-C descend into such hate-filled spew. He held so much promise there at the beginning.

My Strategy Exactly

An excerpt from David St. Lawrence:

Much of what is blogged verges on the mundane and that is probably good. A steady diet of deep thoughts might be hard to take on a 24x7 basis. What I find, generally, is that bloggers who are deep thinkers produce a few philosophical treasures and leaven them with more easily digestible entertainment.

J-Walk, The Influential Blogger

Reader comments on how the J-Walk Blog has influenced them:

• I check Ursi's blog every day after linking to it here.
• I'm not going to become a Catholic.
• I'm now buying more music from eMusic than iTunes.
• I read your Blog more and look at online porn less.
• I'm connected to WWR 24/7 because of you.
• I started a blog.
• I voted for Nixon because of you.
• You've made me really bitter, cynical and twisted about Microsoft.
• I use a different coffee cup now.
• Because of you, I now link to a Catholic music blog every day.
• You influenced me to use white backgrounds on my webpages.
• you definitely make me think about jesus a lot I can tell you that much =)
  There's christian conservative blogs with fewer posts about the church.
• I am now a regular at http://www.tommcmahon.net and Whole Wheat Radio due to your influence.
• I think I've been influenced by you a bit. I've have Excel Power Programming with VBA and it has made me a better Excel user.
• Influenced? I can now almost listen to banjo music without flinching
• All my music is e-music, my coffee is cold brew. So you've influenced two of the most important parts of my day.
• I am influenced that the banjo is Satan's plaything.

Just Give Us 72 Hours And We'll Save The Country!

An excerpt from Brian M. Carney:

So what does "substantial movement" look like? Unsurprisingly, Mr. Gingrich has a program. "There are two layers. I'll give you things they can't do and things they can do." First, the things they can do, such as cutting down on earmarks and pork-barrel spending. "They should change the House rules so that any conference report that comes back is automatically filed on the Thomas system [the Web site where congressional actions are logged and made publicly available] and is not voted on for 72 hours so that every blogger in the country can go in and read it. That would immediately cut down on the most outrageous stuff because you wouldn't be able to pass it."

Posts That Have Taken On A Life Of Their Own

• Sabine Ehrenfeld, The Lady From Overstock.com: It's been a year and a half, and I still get more hits from this one post than from any of the other 5,000 or so. My Mom and I saw her on a Super Bowl ad and I predicted to her that my traffic would go up for the next week due to guys looking for info on Sabine, which it did.
• 1943 Zinc-Coated Steel Penny: Is it worth $40,000, or just 50 cents? You just gotta go see these comments, ya just gotta.
• Help Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus From Extinction!: Some college assigned this to their kids to determine whether this was real or not. Most blogs debate whether Evolution is real or not, but here on my blog it's all about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. Again, ya just gotta go see those comments.
• Mouse Trap Car Kit , Instructions to Build a Mouse-Trap Car, and Book: How To Build A Mouse Trap Car : No funny comments here, but I do get a couple of traffic surges every semester on these. Evidently some sort of class assignment.

A Great RSS Feed: The History Channel Weekly Listings

More accessible than any listing on their website, really. Just point your RSS reader to:

http://www.historychannel.com/global/feeds/listingsrssweekly.jsp

It s not really meant for your browser, but you knew that, didn't you?

Blog Idea: I Watch The History Channel So You Don't Have To

Or is there such a blog already?

Some Notes On My Philosophy of Blogging

• You Become What You Think About. There are lots of potential subjects and potential stories out there, so why not pick something of value?
• Every post should be of value. Not necessarily serious, though.
• I don't post Darwin Award-type entries. Somebody does something really stupid. Somebody dies. So what's the point -- entertainment? Aren't we all way past that now?
• It's easy to let a blog slip into a reaction against people doing stupid stuff, or promoting stupid policies. But if you do that, then you're letting them set the agenda. So then, who's the stupid one?
• A lot of what floats around the blog-o-sphere can be classified as "eccentric mediocrity", a term I first heard used by Nathaniel Branden. It's like candy: a bite here or there is just fine, but a steady diet will cause the rot to set in.
• People could stop posting new stuff to the internet right now and I'd still have enough to post here for a long, long time.
• I kind of assume most of you read J-Walk, Grow-A-Brain, and The Presurfer, so I try not to duplicate too many links from them. Or if I do, I try to put a new twist or spin on it.
• I post four entries almost every day. Too many more than that would get overwhelming for the reader, while with four I have a decent chance that at least one of them will interest you.
• I don't feel I have to answer every comment that disagrees with me. There's always tomorrow's entries.
• I try to include a short excerpt with every link entry that will have value on its own, even if you don't click on the link. And I try to grab a quote good enough that you'll want to read the article from whence it came.
• Generally, I don't like to use words such as "whence" and especially "whither".
• I just can't wait for Web 2.0   It all sounds so exciting.

Out Of The Frying Pan. And Bloggers As TV Actors.

Brian Kane has a new blog, called Out Of The Frying Pan

Butter. Cream. Cheese. There is practically nothing edible in the world that can't be improved through the liberal application of any or all of the above. If, like me, you are compelled to think about what you put in your mouth every day, then do not deprive yourself of these things; find the inner strength to enjoy them in smaller portions (and believe me, I know how gargantuan that effort can be). I find the need to eat rich and creamy foods is not the constant yearning it once was, but when I get the hankering, it isn't worth resisting.

Much, much different than his previous blog. Just like one TV series ends, and some of the actors go on to new series. Some quit acting, some go on to other areas in TV. Some series run a long time, some just a few episodes. Just like blogging, eh?

September 27, 2005: It's Luke Cole Day on tommcmahon.net !!!

September 27, 2005: It's Luke Cole Day on tommcmahon.net

So much wonderful, great, unique stuff on his web site. I'm truly in awe.

Tom McMahon, Please Kindly Go To Hell, Along With Your Friend Whittaker Chambers

Tom McMahon, Please Kindly Go To Hell, Along With Your Friend Whittaker Chambers

An interesting exchange with Diana Mertz Hsieh that started with this post on her blog. Go read the whole thing, it's one of those jaw-dropping-amazing-blog-o-sphere moments. To oversimplify greatly, the exchange took a decided turn for the worse after I quoted one verse of the hymn Amazing Grace. Here's Diana's response:

Tom, I am quite familiar with the Christian view of redemption. As far as I'm concerned, it's MONSTROUSLY EVIL. So please, go proseletize your faith in supernatural redemption for any and all sins elsewhere. I will not allow you to use my property to offer aid and comfort to the lowest depths of human evil. It's ideas like yours that make mass graveyards like the Third Reich and Soviet Russia possible. The committed racist seems benign in comparison.

After another exchange or two, she posted this comment:

Tom, the only "deeper story" is a passionate committment to reason and life. Although I respect the rights of Christians to be as idiotic as they please in their own lives, I absolutely will not pretend that the tenets of the Christian faith are anything but irrational and deadly absurdities. That shouldn't be news to you.

And then the final one from Diana Mertz Hsieh:

Tom McMahon: You are no longer welcome to post comments on this blog. Please kindly go to hell, along with your friend Whittaker Chambers.

Pretty much sums it up, I guess. Now if you will excuse me, I gotta go get some ice for my buddy Whittaker. It's kinda hot in here, you know. And are atheists really allowed to tell you to go to hell? Seems like that should be points off for bad form.

UPDATE #1: This is how Diana sees it:

I will happily admit that I did get more upset with "the more love and compassion [Tom] showed" to racists and Nazis. I'd also agree that "the message of the Gospel is foolishness" -- although faith in it doesn't make it any less so.

When in fact she is talking about this comment:

Nice going, Tom. The more love and compassion you showed, the more unhinged she became. Weird how that happens. Hey, the message of the Gospel is foolishness to those who don't believe. This is a pretty stark example of that. You handled yourself remarkably.

UPDATE #2: I've been de-linked from Paul Hsieh's Geekpress. Expected but sad nonetheless.

UPDATE #3: Another interesting comment from Diana Mertz Hsieh:

Rob: Did you really not understand what I meant when I said "DO NOT POST ON THIS TOPIC AGAIN"? Do you have any respect for property rights? These are rhetorical questions. Please do not reply to them here. I will delete any future comments from you, as I've had quite enough of your antics. Go post some more stupid comments on Tom's blog, if you like.

So Diana, YOU have property rights with your blog, but you are telling someone to go post stupid comments on MY blog, as if I have no property rights with mine? And what's so hard about deleting comments you don't like anyway?

RIP BKO

RIP BKO

Brian Kane Online has closed its doors. Good Luck to Brian, and thanks for all the great posts!

What You Will Say If You Read The Bible Backward, Just Like A Blog

Well whaddya know, the butler God did it!

Are There Any Happy Liberal Bloggers Out There?

If you know of any, please leave a link in the comments and I'll check them out. With one or two exceptions, they all seem so bitter these days. Or is this a hopeless quest, kinda like looking for a comedy or a musical on Lifetime - Television For Women?

DrikoLand 10th Birthday!!

DrikoLand 10th Birthday!!

10 years??? I'm in awe! Congratulations to one of my favorite blogs.

Blog Etiquette?

Here's what happened:

1. Cynical-C made a post about Jana Skinny Water, adding "And at $43.20 for a case of 24 bottles it is a steal. You guess who is robbing who."
2. Tressa copied that post and posted it to her blog, Mind Over Platter, without a linkback to Cynical-C.
3. Cynical-C finds out about this, and they have an exchange of communication. The original message from Cynical-C is not posted as far as I can tell. Tressa's response is posted here.
4. Cynical-C then makes a post titled Blog Etiquette , taking Tressa to task for not linking back.
5. Tressa apologizes.
6. Tressa adds a link back to Cynical-C .

This whole major event in the life of the Blog-O-Sphere generates 82 comments at last count. Here are some of the comments on Cynical-C directed toward Tressa:

• I like how the page has no header. And is remarkably ugly.
• Boy, Tressa has issues
• Tressa dearie, remember what the doctor said - if you don't take your meddies, then you'll have to go back in.
• Tressa, a piece of well meaning advice - stay far far away from alt.tasteless. We're meek and mild compared to those folks.
• Wow Tressa you are a complete moron.
• Tressa...you are insane...LOL
• Tressa has a George Orwell style of blogging. She uses that "delete comment" button like a black Sharpie
• Come to think of it, you should just stick to plagiarizing your copy instead of trying to write it yourself.

All of this over the line "And at $43.20 for a case of 24 bottles it is a steal. You guess who is robbing who." As one of the comments said "Good god, people leave the poor girl alone. Is your day truly so empty that you can't find anything to do but attack someone's blog? Get over yourselves, you're not publishing any pulitzer prize worth pieces..."

I couldn't agree more.

Conservatism Is Just More Fun

An excerpt from Hugh Hewitt:

First, let us now praise Day by Day's Chris Muir, the funniest and sharpest three panel political cartoonist at work in America today. Muir's timeliness and productivity have created a large audience for him online, which is growing wider and wider as new blog consumers arrive in record numbers. Many bloggers routinely cite or even carry the Muir strip of the day (an innovation I first noticed at Captain's Quarters), and Muir's popularity further strengthens the center-right blogosphere's vast humor advantage over the relentlessly profane, vulgar and snarling left. With James Lileks, Scrappleface, Fraters, and ProteinWisdom also at work on a near daily basis, Muir makes the center-right's funny folks the blogosphere's Globetrotters to the left's Washington Generals. It is a very great thing to have the advantage in the humor corner. Ask Joe Lieberman about his 2000 debate with the Dick Cheney. The left has to pretend to like Ted Rall. The center-right gets the real thing.

An Olive Branch?

I picked up this Maureen Down quote about George W Bush over at Cynical-C:

It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious.

I wonder if this is a signal that I will now be allowed to post comments over there again? You know, I got banned from that site for posting comments that disagreed with some of the posts in that rigidly controlled environment in the past, and perhaps this is a sign that things are thawing a bit now. Maybe I'll give it a try if I get the chance . . .

UPDATE: Nope, I'm still banned from that site. I'll let my readers put 2 and 2 together on this one.

The A-List Bloggers: A Self-Referential Series Of Quid Pro Quos

Via Evangelical Outpost, an excerpt from David Bayly:

Which brings me to...blogging. I've noticed that the availability of statistics in blogging leads almost inexorably to a desire for increased numbers. It's amazing how a ranking instrument such as Truth Laid Bear or Technorati or Site Meter almost automatically turns us into statistics-addicted influence seekers. ...

Not only are numbers important to bloggers, the more you blog the more you want other bloggers to link to your blog. The result is a self-referential series of quid pro quos wherein we mention other bloggers positively and link to them so that they will in turn mention and link to us.

More often than not, this circularity is accompanied by rather obsequious expressions of praise from smaller blogs to more prominent blogs in the apparent hope that the more prominent blog will link back to the lesser-known blog--a form of vassal-lord relationship in which the vassal renders fealty and honor and the lord in turn grants a place in the penbumbra of his blogging glory. In the end, the outcome is a self-reinforcing system of mutual admiration.

And J-Walk poked fun at the A-List in his funny 1000 Days of Blogging spoof:

Not surprisingly, Walkenbach is also highly regarded in the blogosphere. Thousands of wanna-be bloggers have been inspired by the J-Walk Blog, and many of them now have their own blog. One such blog, called Boing-Boing, regularly steals material from J-Walk. When pressed, Boing-Boing's Cory Doctorow admitted, "Boing-Boing would be nothing if it weren't for J-Walk. He's my inspiration and silent mentor." Similar sentiments were expressed by other bloggers including Robert Scoble, Doc Searls, Anil Dash, Glenn Reynolds, and Adam Curry. Even Dave Winer had had to admit, "J-Walk is pretty much the reason I invented RSS. The damn stuff was so good it just had to be syndicated."

When I first started I kept up with the so-called A-List bloggers because I thought I was supposed to. But as I went along, I found that Self-Referential Quid Pro Quo stuff ungodly boring and nauseating. By the way, here's a rant by Cory Doctorow in this very blog. Kinda funny to read now, and gee, I didn't even mention his parents were communists.

Congratulations To J-Walk For 1,000 Days Of Blogging!

Congrats, J-Walk!

My Attempts To Deal With The Ever-Increasing Number Of Worthwhile Blogs

Growth In The Number Of Blogs Since 2003

David St. Lawrence had an excellent post about how difficult it is now to keep up with the number of truly worthwhile blogs available. One part of the solution might be to have RSS feeds available by category. That might help, but I think at best it's a partial solution, and at any rate one I have no way of implementing to-day. Then I got to thinking about how I have organized my other favorite web sites in my iRider browser:

The iRider Browser: Schedule and Automate Your Surfing

Some websites I want to visit every day, others every week, others just once a month. I put them in an iRider favorites book so I don't miss a thing. One click on the book icon opens up all the sites.

For the most part, I use iRider to browse "regular" web sites, and I use the Bloglines online RSS reader to keep up with blogs and news sites. My "breakthrough" -- if you can call it that -- was to organize my Bloglines like I had done with iRider. So now I'll visit some blogs on Monday, some on Tuesday, some on Wednesday, etc. , and some I'll visit everyday. I'll let you know if it helps.

One thing though, is clear: All of us will be faced with the need to cut out those blogs that for whatever reason, just don't resonate to our frequency. Ironically, this has led me to put Ken Leebow's Blogging About Incredible Blogs on its way out to pasture. Just not worth my time. Your mileage may vary, of course, so you might want to check it out for yourself. It might just be your cup of tea.

The Japanese have a saying "If you want a hot cup of tea, you must first empty your cup." If you have your cup filled with cold tea, there's no room to pour the hot tea. Similarly, if you still have a bunch of blogs on your blogroll that just aren't ringing your chimes anymore, you need to empty that cup. New blogs will then reveal themselves to you, as if by magic.

A Blogs-A-Plenty Round-Up

• From BlameBush:
  

  Happy Fourth of July? Not even. Go right ahead and enjoy your jingoistic tribute to violence and genocide. You know where I'll be: under my sink, cotton balls stuffed in my ears, stabbing myself in the thigh with a fork for over 2000 years of white male hegemony.

• Stephen's Untold Stories has a nice entry about FileZilla, a free FTP client for Windows that I use regularly for downloading old-time radio shows and those campy hygiene films from days of yore.

• Hanan Levin had a hard time running 3 miles in his training routine, but after he made a promise to run a marathon BANG!, all of a sudden the 3 miles didn't seem so far, and he ran 5 miles!! Sorta like when I drive the 80 miles from Milwaukee to Rockford it seems to take a long time, but if I'm just driving through Rockford on my way to St. Louis, then the trip from Milwaukee to Rockford doesn't seem to take very long at all. However, I've learned one thing blogging, and that's that inspirational stories about preparing to run a marathon will beat out inspirational stories about driving in your car, every time.

Undiscovered Blogs

I rearranged my bloglist a bit, trying to make it a little more helpful to those of you looking for new blogs you might like. At the top of my list is a new category, Undiscovered Blogs, blogs that I think you might like and that aren't well known (yet). Here are my first undiscovered blogs:

• Adventures of a Foodie: Like a virtual tour of restaurants around Milwaukee and around the country. Lots and lots of mouth-watering photos. Plus reports on new dishes Jason tries out at home, too. A lot of fun, and very well done. It would be great if there were a blog like this for every city in America. UPDATE: I just discovered Chicago Foodies via Corsinet. For the rest of the country I invoke those immortal words of the Wise Old Preacher to Bart in Blazing Saddles: "Son, you're on your own!"
• Reasoned Audacity: Charmaine Yoest provides daily commentary on public policy and culture and how that plays out in the real world. A different mix of topics I seem to find nowhere else, like this one for Susan Torres. Charmaine is a mother of 5 whom you might see on TV from time to time. "As Seen On TV" -- were there any more stirring words ever written in the English language?
• WatchingAmerica.com: Not really a blog, but kind of a Reader's Digest type site filled with English-language articles translated from the foreign press. Discover what the world thinks of the USA. They're not always right, those foreigners, but it's good to know what they're thinking. I don't know of any other site like this one, either.

At the bottom of the my bloglist is a list of blogs I had blogrolled at one time, but that I'm thinking of de-listing. I like John Dvorak for his tech commentary, but lately it's seemed to be mostly leftish rants of uninspiring originality that I hear expressed better many other places. I'll give him a couple more weeks.

Grow-A-Brain Makes Time Magazine!

Grow-A-Brain Makes Time Magazine!

Let us all bow down low to bask in the reflected Aura Of Glory and shout at the top of our lungs "We're Not Worthy!" Congrats, Hanan!

Cool New Presurfer Logo

Cool New Presurfer Logo

Blogging In A Cocoon

There it was, a post right there in his blog, one that I read regularly:

Senators Who Refused To Sign the Anti-Lynching Resolution

Then it listed about 20 US Senators, identified by party and state. To which, the blogger added this comment:

Disgraceful. Hmm, there seems to be a lot of R's on this list.

Fairly typical Republican-bashing, but wrong, as Republican-bashing so often is. So I set him straight with a comment:

According to the Washington Post, the resolution was passed by a voice vote so there's no record of who voted for or against it.

I provided the link and everything. Blew his argument apart, I thought. The blogger didn't respond to that, but instead pressed on with a brand new approach:

And why aren't they sponsoring it? This should be a bill that every single senator should have their name on as sponsoring it.

So I responded in turn, pressing for a response on my first comment as well as dealing with his new 100 percent sponsorship standard:

Are we agreed, then, that the headline "Senators Who Refused To Sign the Anti-Lynching Resolution", taken from xxxxxxxBlog, is not really true?

And what would be the point of sponsoring it along with ex-Klansman and current Democrat Robert Byrd? His name on it makes a mockery of the resolution anyway.

The best thing is what the Republican Senate did: Pass it quickly and move on to current business. Like trying to place well-qualified minorities on the Federal bench in the face of opposition from Democrats.

And I posted it. After a few hours I checked back to see if there was a response, but my post was gone. Thinking I might have hit Preview instead of Post originally, I tried to post again and got this message:

Comment Submission Error
Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:

You are not allowed to post comments.

So I wrote the blogger an e-mail:

Hello xxxxx,

I thought you enjoyed the back-and-forth of political debate. Have I offended you in some way?

Best Regards,

Tom McMahon

No response. So I tried two more times, and still no response. So I have to conclude I'm persona non grata over there from this point on.

If you happened to see this exchange, there's no point to identifying the blog involved. This particular topic will fade from memory soon enough, and there's no reason to embarrass anyone. But here's my point: Why have comments enabled if you're uncomfortable with hearing different points of view, especially when you're expressing strong and/or outrageous opinions? I just don't get it. Now I can well understand having comments turned off, for a number of reasons. But why have comments enabled just to hear other people echoing your point of view, all the time? How boring is that? It would drive me to tears.

Like blogging in a cocoon.

Adding a Liberal Wisconsin Democrat To My Blogroll

The blog is Public Brewery, and you'll find it listed under the Wisconsin Blogs. Why? Read this excerpt from his biography:

I was raised on a fish farm eight miles from Morehead, Kentucky (unlike the fish, I lived in a house rather than a pond). I got a B.A. (in political science) from the University of Kentucky and a Ph.D. (also in political science) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Given that background, my enthusiasm for college basketball is probably understandable. Along the way, I worked for a gubernatorial campaign (my candidate was one of the top ten check bouncers in the House banking scandal, and he lost by a two-to-one margin), interned in the Kentucky state legislature (on my last day at the job, numerous legislators got served FBI warrants; some of them later went to jail for accepting tiny bribes from the horse racing industry), and exit-polled for VNS (in 1996, when they got the answer right, not in 2000—so don’t blame me).

How could you not like a guy like that?

A Troll And A Trott

An excerpt from Jason Kottke:

Consider Six Apart as an example of what I'm talking about. 6A is like a black hole for creative people. Folks who, a year or two ago, were among the leading voices in the discussion of how weblogs were changing our culture, were coding all sorts of useful plug-ins for Movable Type, or were pushing the edges of web design are now focused on making software that generates revenue and aren't saying a whole lot about it. (Sort of ironic that working for 6A kills the weblogs of their employees, isn't it?) That's great for them, for Six Apart, their customers, and their partners, but it kinda sucks for the community as a whole.

So like, what the heck is he talking about? Does he have any real point at all, other to criticize Six Apart, the company that provides the Typepad service that this weblog is built upon? And for this he wants us to pay him $30/year to read his thoughts as "micropatrons"? And just where are those "fine hypertext products" he's always talking about?

Anyway, Mena Trott of Six Apart responded to this broadside:

Perhaps one of the reasons why Six Apart seems so quiet to the core audience of bloggers these days is because Six Apart wants to reach an audience outside our own inner circle of webloggers (the early adopters). For example, I spoke in front of a crowd of 500 people at the nTen conference recently, to an audience of people involved in non-profits. These aren't necessarily bloggers, but they're people that should be blogging. I didn't do a product pitch and barely even mentioned Six Apart. What I chose to talk about was how non-profits can benefit from personal voice in their weblogs and their need to harness the passion of people who are already online and weblogging.

To me, this is about An Early Adopter Who Used To Be A Big Deal getting left behind by folks who went out and took the risk of starting their own company, and who now is taking potshots at them from the sidelines. You see this sort of thing all the time. And who cares, really? I think the Typepad service that Six Apart provides is simply terrific (if for no other reason than it rescued me from Blogspot Hell). Relatively few problems but, if one does arise, they're always very responsive. Well done, and I'm expecting more and more great things from them in the future. And on that micropatronage thing, Jason, well I'll be getting back to you real soon. Or maybe not.

Link-O-Rama

• Marginal Revolution: What I've Been Reading. Good books you may have missed.
• Population Statistic: Fantasy State University. If you let the chiropractors in, can other pseudo-science be far behind? And who knew that the Florida State Seminoles had such high standards anyway?
• Thrilling Days of Yesteryear: Sundries will never be the same. Old-Time Radio influences on the animated series King of the Hill.
• Dean's World: HIV Skepticism. Maybe HIV isn't the primary cause of AIDS. I link, you decide.
• My View of the World: Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager. Our drunk-driving AG is going to personally handle the case of the Deer Hunting Murders from northern Wisconsin, even though she hasn’t tried a case in almost a decade.

Thanks For Making This Blog Number 226!

. . . of blogs that use Sitemeter, according to The Truth Laid Bear. I haven't been this excited since the McRib made its yearly return!

Happy Birthday to The Presurfer!

Happy Birthday to The Presurfer!

(The graphic is from here. It's a joke. An old, old joke.)

Brian Kane Heart Attack

Brian will be undergoing bypass surgery on Wednesday. Meanwhile, why not click on over and wish him and his wife Bridget all the best?

So If You See Someone Lying Face Down In A Puddle, Just Leave Them There

LawMeme on the Dave Winer Weblogs.com fiasco:

There's a distinction you learn in your first semester at law school that sheds some light on the rights and wrongs of the situation. Generally speaking, you have very few affirmative duties towards others. If you see someone lying face down in a puddle, you have no legal obligation to roll them over. However, if you start a course of action to help someone else, you have to see it through to a safe stopping point. If you start to roll the guy in the puddle over and break his arm in the process, you're in trouble. In fact, once you start rolling him over, you may not be allowed just to leave him lying there, especially if there were other people around who assumed that Mr. Puddle-Face was in safe hands once you started intervening.

Winer was doing the roughly 3,000 weblogs.com people a favor by giving them free hosted blogs. He was doing them a double favor by personally hosting their blogs after he left Userland. For this, he deserves (and generally has received) their thanks. But once he created those blogs and especially after he took over their DNS and their files, he had a serious obligation not to leave them in the lurch. An obligation he completely bungled.