The Nya Nya Brotherhood
: The alleged feud between geek bloggers and war bloggers — a nonstory that became a story in the NY Times today — is silly to the extreme and perhaps even destructive.
Folks, if weblogs remain the domain of one club or the other — or even both — and do not grow past that, then they will die; I’ll put them on my shelf of dead things next to my eight-track, my Osborne One, and my Modo wireless entertainment guide.
To survive and succeed, weblogs must be embraced by many, many interests and their communities. I’ve seen some good food blogs. We need more entertainment blogs. I can’t believe there aren’t many more sports blogs, from pro all the way down to Little League. I hope to see local blogs and ethnic blogs and, of course, biz blogs.
And nobody should give a rat’s rump who got there first. There is a very big graveyard in California today filled with tombstones for first movers and early adopters. Being there first plus $1.50 gets you a chance to ride the NY subways and get nerve-gassed.
I live on both sides of this alleged divide. I was there early. Nick Denton introduced me to Blogger and, as a result, my company invested in Pyra and I also ended up on the board of Plastic.com
Personally, I did not start blogging until September 11 — because I didn’t have something to say until that day and after that day, I had so much to say and needed a place to say it. Blogger provided the incredibly easy tools to make it easy for me to join.
The war bloggers should be grateful to the tech bloggers for helping invent the simple tools. The tech bloggers should be grateful to the warbloggers for helping to spread this wonderful technology. And both sets of bloggers had damned well better hope that all kinds of new bloggers follow and if they have half a brain, they’ll be generous and welcoming to every one of them.
: Let’s quickly add that the story is a good thing for the world of blogger. It’s publicity. Publicity is good. We’ll all be famous with 15 links.
Rudy! Rudy!
: Mickey Kaus joins the campaign to put Rudy Guliani in charge of Homeland Security one way or another. Ditto Joyce Purnick in the NY Times.
Programmed
: Rossi, one of my favorite writers hereabouts, has an amazing story on Jewsweek about the time she spent among the Chasidics. Most often you read about parents who try to get their kids deprogrammed from some cult or religion. Rossi’s parents did the opposite: They shipped her to Crown Heights, Brooklyn in the futile, as it turned out, hope of extinguishing what they thought was her rebellion but was really just her. It’s a fascinating and compelling piece. I recommend it. (Ditto Rossi’s own story about continually trying to find what’s next after 9.11 on her site.)
Deep
: The American Library Association has links on deep linking. [via Die Zeit]
What nerve
: OK, I’m not paranoid. Last week, we heard warnings of nerve-gas attacks on major metro subways. This morning, I’m on the PATH train when the lights go out and stay out on my car. I’ll admit that I start thinking paranoid thoughts: Did someone cut the lights to set a nerve-gas bomb in place? Silly? Not anymore.
