Third Blog Birthday

Three years ago today, I entered the Blogosphere! Here's the entirety of my first post:

Well, I'm taking advantage of a little extra time over the Memorial Day weekend to do some things I've been meaning to get around to: cut down some nuisance trees in the backyard, finish two books that I started over a year ago (reading, that is, not writing), clean more junk out of the garage, and start a blog. Instapundit, Wonkette, Sullivan, Volokh -- move it on over.

I'm not planning on anything earth-shattering, just kind of commenting on stuff big and small as it strikes me. I have opinions but most of them start out with "Well on the one hand, X but on the other hand Y" so don't be surprised by inconsitency and seeming wishy-washiness.

So, I guess we'll see how long this lasts; There's only one way to find out how obsessive or neglectful I will be about blog maintenance, and that starts with clicking the big red "publish post" button.

Not Dead Yet!

Geez Louise - Two months since posting. Not the blogospheric death knell, I don't think, just that work has been absorbing 95% of my brainpower for the last long while. About a year ago we got a ton of new responsibilities at work, and (not to belittle 9/11) it kind of reminds me of the phrase that came into some usage after 9/11: "The New Normal."

Here's the thing: I don't feel guilty about not getting around to blogposting. I would have felt guilty had I not devoted my attention to personal and work matters that needed attention, and so my little observations and links and jokes and opinions and things just had to hold on for a little while. I'll be posting a bunch of stuff that has come my way over the last few months that I thought were interesting but didn't get around to posting.

Meantime, here's a Star Wars/Simpsons mashup to enjoy:

How to Become a Famous Blogger

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Mid-October Already...

OK, only five blogposts in the last month and a half. I know, pathetic. Meh. Things are still mega-busy, so I'll be back among the bloggeratti one of these weeks, just not right now.

Items:

• Japanese legislator busted for too much Wikipedia editing: A Japanese bureaucrat has been reprimanded for shirking his duties to make hundreds of Wikipedia contributions about toy robots, officials said Friday. The agriculture ministry said the bureaucrat, whose name was not released, contributed 260 times to the Japanese-language Wikipedia entry on Gundam, a popular, long-running animated series about giant robots that has spun off intricate toys popular among children and adults who belong to the so-called "otaku culture" of fascination with comic books, animation and robots. "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam," ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura said.
• Via 43 Folders, 41 Reasons Why Your Blog Probably Sucks. Number 13 (I know, I know): Not posting regularly. There are two primary reasons that not posting regularly is "bad". One is that readers lose patience when they don't your schedule. (Not everyone uses an RSS reader.) The other reason is that search engine spiders often index your pages on a frequency proportional to your posting. The more you post, the more frequently you might get indexed, thus increasing the chances of search engine traffic. (Note that in some niches such as politics, you need to post 10-20 times per day to get noticed.) At the least, if you can't post regularly, have a consistent schedule that's obvious to your most loyal readers.
• I've watched several films over the past few weeks. Two great thrillers from the 1970s: The Day of the Jackal and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three; A couple of Robert Altman's lesser known films, O.C. & Stiggs and Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or, Sitting Bull's History Lesson; and two very "different" films (I like 'em when they're different) -- Shortbus and Cube. More on these later
• I also read a book by a guy named Ian Ayres that I have to recommend for all you numbery people -- Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart. Lots of good stuff in here on statistics, data gathering, and practical applications of the analyses presented so as to be understood by the interested amateur.

Lots of Blogging On The Way

So I had a trip to the doctor Monday; end result of which is that everything is OK, but I am laid up for a while with plenty of time to watch movies, read, and blog.

Items of interest:

• H.G. Wells wrote an article in the 1930s about the idea of a World Brain. Excerpt: Both the assembling and the distribution of knowledge in the world at present are extremely ineffective, and thinkers of the forward-looking type whose ideas we are now considering, are beginning to realize that the most hopeful line for the development of our racial intelligence lies rather in the direction of creating a new world organ for the collection, indexing, summarizing and release of knowledge, than in any further tinkering with the highly conservative and resistant university system, local, national and traditional in texture, which already exists. These innovators, who may be dreamers today, but who hope to become very active organizers tomorrow, project a unified, if not a centralized, world organ to "pull the mind of the world together", which will be not so much a rival to the universities, as a supplementary and co-ordinating addition to their educational activities - on a planetary scale. The phrase "Permanent World Encyclopaedia" conveys the gist of these ideas. As the core of such an institution would be a world synthesis of bibliography and documentation with the indexed archives of the world. A great number of workers would be engaged perpetually in perfecting this index of human knowledge and keeping it up to date. Concurrently, the resources of micro-photography, as yet only in their infancy, will be creating a concentrated visual record. Few people as yet, outside the world of expert librarians and museum curators and so forth, know how manageable well-ordered facts can be made, however multitudinous, and how swiftly and completely even the rarest visions and the most recondite matters can be recalled, once they have been put in place in a well-ordered scheme of reference and reproduction. Sound familiar?


• Publishing 2.0 asks: Should Newspapers Become Local Blog Networks? Excerpt: Most newspapers are actually using blogs as platforms for daily online publishing — platforms that allow one person to publish a “mini-publication.” This got me thinking — maybe what newspapers should become in the digital media era is a network of local bloggers — some of whom are staff writers and some of whom are freelancers. Maybe most of them are freelancers. Maybe the full-time reporters are dedicated to beats like covering local governments, which require more time-intensive reporting to fulfill the Fourth Estate mission, but which can be supplemented by freelance reporting.


• Here's the Periodic Table of the Internet.


• Via Bookworm, playing cards to teach U.S. troops about Iraqi archaeology.

The Big Mashup

This is a good (though corporately slick) presentation on the opportunities inherent in Web 2.o, despite the misgivings of Andrew Keen and company.

The Big Mashup: how network is changing
Uploaded by NetworkedConcepts

NOTM: Year Three

Hey! I just realized that today was my second blogiversary!

Weekend Items

Several things:

• The ♥G♥ and I also watched the film The Prestige this morning, and I was fascinated by it. (I kept pausing the DVD every few minutes to share my theories on the story with her.) Mild spoiler warning: If you've ever read Spock Must Die, there are some similar concepts. I want to see about reading the novel by Christopher Priest. They gist of the story was about magicians being psychotically obsessive about hiding their secrets. I was reminded of the contrasting approach that Penn & Teller have used to much success, in which they tell the audience they are flim-flamming them, and then explain how they did it.
• Does the Internet need an overhaul? Some people at Stanford University (and elsewhere) think so. Excerpt: We believe that the current Internet has significant deficiencies that need to be solved before it can become a unified global communication infrastructure. Further, we believe the Internet's shortcomings will not be resolved by the conventional incremental and 'backward-compatible' style of academic and industrial networking research. The proposed program will focus on unconventional, bold, and long-term research that tries to break the network's ossification. To this end, the research program can be characterized by two research questions: "With what we know today, if we were to start again with a clean slate, how would we design a global communications infrastructure?", and "How should the Internet look in 15 years?" We will measure our success in the long-term: We intend to look back in 15 years time and see significant impact from our program.
• Happy belated birthday to the institution of the blog.
• Lots of stuff on the late great Kurt Vonnegut. Where do you begin on his writings? I haven't read all of it, but I've read a lot of it. Maybe start with Slaughterhouse Five, if you have not yet initiated yourself into the Cult of Vonnegut. Or is that my bias because that was my first book of his? Maybe God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater for a more optimistic characterization?
• I came across some copies of Juxtapoz Magazine this weekend. (I swear, it was before I saw this Boing Boing link -- Some friends of ours have some copies in a basket next to the bidet in their bathroom.) Check 'em out. I like the magazine's overall vibe, and I will be looking at more of their articles in the next few weeks.

Web 2.0 Video

This video from Prof. Michael Wesch of Kansas State University is fantastic! Digital Ethnography blog here, Wesch guest blogging here.

Forbes Magazine Picks the Top 25 Web Celebs (You're Probably Not One of Them)

Forbes has just named the top 25 web celebrities:

• Jessica Lee Rose (Whaaaaaaaaat??? Most of those below have more staying power in one blogpost than she does in all of YouTube.)
• Perez Hilton
• Markos Moulitsas Zúniga
• Matt Drudge
• Seth Godin
• Jeff Jarvis
• Glenn Reynolds
• Amanda Congdon
• Robert Scoble
• Michael Arrington
• Hosea Frank
• Jimmy Wales
• Harry Knowles
• Frank Warren
• Cory Doctorow
• Xeni Jardin
• Leo Laporte
• Merlin Mann
• John H. Hinderaker
• Charles Johnson
• Kevin Sites
• Mark Lisanti
• Jason Calacanis
• Om Malik
• Violet Blue

And, the runners-up:

• Clay Shirky
• Judd Legum
• Tom Anderson
• Heather Armstrong
• Steve Rubel

Things From Around the Web

Items:

• Here are the freshly posted 2007 Weblog Awards.
• School Library Journal article on MLK and Google.
• Wired Magazine: How Yahoo Blew It. Excerpt: [Terry] Semel has been Yahoo's CEO for nearly six years, yet he has never acquired an intuitive sense of the company's plumbing. He understands how to do deals and partnerships, he gets how to market Yahoo's brand, and he knows how to tap Yahoo's giant user base to sell brand advertising to corporations. But the challenges of integrating two giant computer systems or redesigning a database or redoing a user interface? Many who have met with him at Yahoo say he still doesn't know the right questions to ask about technology. "Terry could never pound the table and say, 'This is where we need to go, guys,'" one former Yahoo executive says. "On those subjects, he always had to have someone next to him explaining why it was important." One could have made a convincing argument two years ago that such deep technical knowledge didn't matter much. But now we have empirical evidence: At Yahoo, the marketers rule, and at Google the engineers rule. And for that, Yahoo is finally paying the price.
• Currently watching the commentary on the DVD This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Awesome documentary! Further comments to follow. (One comment to TFINYR producer Eddie Schmidt right now though: At 1:11:30 or so, you have "Millennium" spelled wrong. Remember -- Two "m"s, two "l"s, two "n"s.)
• Via Google Video, a BBC documentary on the history and development of Tetris.

Misc. Items

Items:

• Washington Post again, on the role of the Francoblogosphere in the upcoming French elections. Excerpt -- France is "the most blog-savvy country in Europe" according to pollster Ipsos Mori: the widespread availability of high-speed Internet connections allows the French to indulge online their passion for love, music and a jolly good argument.
• Cool blog I'm adding to the blogroll shortly: 10 Zen Monkeys.
• Welcome Back Kotter merchandise at Plaid Stallions.
• Here's a complete list of all the books Art Garfunkel has read since June, 1968.
• Last but not least, Playmates in Space -- Check out "Cuff Checklists" here for further detail. Update: Welcome, fellow Boing Boing readers!

Weblog Awards 2006 Voting Open

Voting is open for the 2006 Weblog Awards. I cast a number of votes tonight and will again tomorrow (you can vote in a category once every 24 hours). I hope to have a list of recommendations up this weekend.

L.A. Times Article on Blogging Economists

Via 2 Blowhards, here's a good piece on the phenomenon of economists finding wild celebrity on the Blogosphere. Excerpt: "Most people are afraid of economics. It seems so technical," Becker said. "But what is surprising is that if you put economics in a simple enough phrase, people are very much interested in it." Most of the economists say their readers aren't students. Cowen describes his fans as "high IQ, possibly nerdy, looking for kicks or for something different." The something different comes into play when the professors and bloggers loosen up. A recent Mankiw posting, for instance, discussed the winner of the Nobel Prize in economics and then cited a joke about members of the elite circle throwing feces at one another. It doesn't hurt that the bloggers often choose controversial topics. Becker recently wondered online whether polygamy should be legalized and debated the idea of a "fat tax," which would levy higher fees on foods that lead to obesity.

I've been meaning to reorganize the blogroll; maybe I'll give economists their own section. In the meantime, here are a bunch of economist jokes. Excerpt: Three econometricians went out hunting, and came across a large deer. The first econometrician fired, but missed, by a meter to the left. The second econometrician fired, but also missed, by a meter to the right. The third econometrician didn't fire, but shouted in triumph, "We got it! We got it!"

Response From Guardian Writer

OK, so it looks like Bobbie Johnson, the guy who wrote the article on Tim Berners-Lee about which I blogged the other day, has taken note of my comments and those of others (here, here, and here) and has responded to our responses to Berners-Lee's response. Excerpts: But unfortunately, mistakes do happen - and that's why we have a procedure to fix them. After a long conversation with Tim on Friday, before he published his post, he did as I suggested and put his complaint in an email to our independent ombudsman, readers' editor Ian Mayes. It's not necessarily as quick as we'd all like it to be, but it is thorough and effective... ...I think implications of sensationalism are ill-founded, as hopefully anybody who reads the Guardian's wide spread of technology coverage will realise. The same goes for the hint that it was deliberate obfuscation that comes as the result of an anti-blogging mentality; that's especially galling for me, a fairly passionate advocate of blogging who has been writing his own for six years.

No hard feelings, certainly... Sounds like a series of human miscommunications. In fact, why don't I just add the Guardian Unlimited Technology Blog to the sidebar?

Odds and Ends

A few things of interest lately (cleaning out some favorites links):

• I freakin' LOVE this Black Sabbath/Kurosawa mash-up in which War Pigs is synched up with a trailer for Seven Samurai.
• I also have to enthusiastically point you towards this renditon of Sunday Bloody Sunday by George "Double-U2" Bush. You didn't know he could sing? Check him out on Imagine too.
• Attention, scholars: Here's a collection of Greek, Roman, Germanic, and 19th-Century American documents from the University of Chicago.
• Attention, fans of Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot! This site is for you!
• Nominations will start being accepted this Friday (Nov. 10) for the 2006 Weblog Awards. Put it on your to-do list! Oh yeah, regular voting is tomorrow, btw.
• Did I list this before? The Wikipedia Blog? Well, if not, there it is. If so, there it is again.
• Here are some Action Philosophers! free previews. (Did I list that before? If so/not so, etc. etc.)