Pundit Stupidity Syndrome

Margaret Wente (I know, I know) had a column the other day about how the only blogs that exist are political blogs, and only men have blogs and men blog because they suffer from a gender wide syndrome known as male answer syndrome, concluding, "blogging? ... that's guy stuff. And they are welcome to it."

The article was far too inane to take offense but it seemed a worthy target of mockery, so in that spirit, I offer the following Wente-centric history of blogging:

1997: The word 'blog' is coined
1999: Blogger is launched
2005: Over 10,000,000 blogs in existence
2007: Over 100,000,000 blogs in existence
2010: Margaret Wente discovers that blogs exist
TBD: Margaret Wente discovers that not all blogs are about politics
TBD: Margaret Wente discovers that there are millions of female bloggers out there
TBD: Margaret Wente realizes that she has spent the last decade (or more) of her life as a paid female blogger who suffers from an acute case of male answer syndrome.

Sword of Damocles

Alan, from Gen X at 40, talks a bit about blogging today, but the part that alarmed me was his conclusion:

"And isn't it significant that there has not been a really bad movie - not a movie at all in fact - about blogging like email's 1998 You've Got Mail or that 1983 video game based classic WarGames?"

Now that Alan has brought it up, I suspect that it is almost inevitable that, at some point, a movie will be made about blogging. Now if it was just a film adaptation of Ender's Game, I could live with (even welcome) that, but I'm guessing it's going to be far more painful.

Some potential ideas:

Romantic Comedy

'You've Got Comments' - A winsome urban girl with a funky blog about problems with the local telecommunications company falls in love with a guy who leaves lots of witty comments on her site. It turns out that he is a telecom exec who is in charge of the lobby group which eventually gets all ISP's to block access to her site. She shuts down her blog, goes off to live with the telecom guy and they all live happily ever after.

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Political Thriller

'The Blog Identity' - The President of the United States, a handsome, likeable man, swept to power on a progressive anti-corruption platform. But since taking office he has led the country into a military quagmire based on a pack of lies and deception, severely damaged the reputation of the once great U.S. of A. around the world, created a huge financial mess domestically, run rampant over the poor and the environment, appointed partisan corporate hacks to key positions of responsibility and generally been a huge disappointment. But, thanks to his political party's control of a submissive media, the public remains apathetic or even endorses his dangerous regime.

Then a new blog suddenly appears which seems to have access to insider information at the highest levels. The new blog begins fingering people around the President (the sell-out Vice President, the arrogant Secretary of Defense, the smear-tactic specialist political advisor). The media tries to ignore the new information but, despite their efforts, a feisty, ambitious, young (and beautiful) prosecutor is appointed to head a grand jury and start investigating the corruption. As the people surrounding the president start to get subpoenaed and one even goes to jail, they desperately hunt to find out who is running this new blog and where it is getting all its inside information.

The prosecutor gets closer and closer to her ultimate goal of bringing down the president himself, even as she finds herself falling in love with him (the president's wife died 2 years earlier) and wondering how he can go along with such terrible policies. Finally, we find out the truth, the blog is being run by the President's (incorrigible) 12 year old son. It turns out that, after his wife died, the president was so depressed that he allowed himself to be used as a figurehead to front for a corrupt cabal who only wanted power to serve their own selfish needs.

Once he saw the damage the policies were doing, the president wanted to change course, but he was in too deep and his cronies threatened damage to him and his family if he stopped following orders or said anything to anyone. With no other options, the President began confiding damaging secrets to his son, the only person he could communicate with without being eavesdropped on, and his son ran the anonymous blog.

In the end, the cronies are all thrown in jail, the president resigns in a tearful press conference to make way for the one honest member of his administration and he goes off to the ranch to live happily ever after with the prosecutor.

Because there can never be too many movies about the American president.

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Canadian / Foreign - rural:

'Margeret's Musings' - A bright teenage girl is frustrated by the dead-end resource-based little town she lives in, the stupid mistakes the people make in their lives there and the fact she is not likely to ever escape to the big city and pursue her dream of becoming a writer.

In frustration she starts an anonymous blog which begins revealing some of the town's silly secrets and offering thinly veiled advice to town members. The people are upset about this nosy blog upsetting people's lives but, at the same time, once the secrets come out and people start taking the blog's advice, the town's old quarrels start to get resolved, people being to solve some of their personal problems and the people who are 'meant' to be together start to move towards ending up together.

Buoyed by success, the blog writer tries to use her blog to lure a handsome, sophisticated new stranger in town (from the big city) to fall in love with her, but foolishly resorts to the same silly deception and secret-keeping that she derided in others. All her efforts backfire and she ends up turning the handsome stranger against her, seemingly for good, as he decides to leave town. At the same time, her secret is exposed and she feels the wrath of her fellow townspeople.

The blogger confronts the handsome boy before he can leave town and tells him the truth and he confesses that he was secretly in love with her too. Not only that but his mother works as an editor for one of the big Toronto newspapers and he had told her to read the blog. Based on the quality of the writing in the blog, the editor wants the blogger to come to Toronto for an internship. Nothing big, but possibly the start of a promising career, and of course the handsome boy lives in Toronto too (and the townspeople realize how much she has helped them and forgive her).

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Canadian / Foreign - urban (not rated):

'Sallow' - A number of strange characters who all happen to live in the same neighbourhood each run their own blogs. A seemingly happily married middle aged family man runs a blog about the local gay sex scene. A disaffected teenage boy writes a blog about sailing. A mysterious teenage girl runs a photoblog of pictures taken in and around the neighbourhood. A young couple blogs about their home renovations. A woman runs a blog which covertly passes on key times and dates for people running a human smuggling ring which tries to bring in refugees from failed states abroad.

The various characters have some random encounters which don't lead anywhere. There is gay sex. Many melancholy looks are exchanged. The blogs are only tangentially related to the story. In the end, nothing much really happens, but the disaffected teenager leaves town to head for the sea.

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Your turn - what would the plot be if you were making a movie about blogging? Or, if Hollywood was making a movie about blogging what would you expect / hope for?

Laziness

Laziness doesn't get much respect in our society, but it seems undeniable (to me, anyway) that it has given birth to many more inventions than glory hogging necessity ever did. At any rate, in their efforts to accommodate lazy readers, both Andrew (of Bound by Gravity fame) and Jay Currie (of, uh, Jay Currie notoriety) have developed aggregation tools which allow the lazy reader to read multiple blog posts on the same topic from different Canadian bloggers.

Andrew's is open to all to submit whatever posts of theirs (or others I suppose) that they think are relevant/interesting, while Jay's picks up posts automatically from a predetermined list of blogs. Both are works in progress at this point (but isn't everything, really?). I'd tell you more, but laziness compels me to avoid reposting the wheel, and instead direct you to Mark (of Section 15 prominence - thanks Mr. Thesaurus) who did a great introductory post on CanConv (Andrew's creation) which then generated discussion of Jay's in the comments.

Note: For the time being, I have added links the aggregators in the dropdown box formerly known as 'Blogging Alliance HQs', now renamed 'Blog Aggregators and Alliances' - they may get reclassified in the future (we'll see how it goes).

Same Sex Marriage Round-Up

Just a quick note to point out that in case you are looking for blog commentary (blogentary?) on the passage of the same-sex marriage bill last night, the Green Lantern has a good round-up.

Update: As Andrew notes in the comments, this round-up is pretty much focussed on views from supporters of the bill.

But Everything Changes / And My Friends Seem to Scatter...

Via Bound by Gravity, I see that it is not just an internet snafu that gives me an error when I try to visit The Heart of the Matter - Treehugger has signed off.

Treehugger set himself a lofty goal (especially for a blog):

"I hope that everyone who came here saw that I tried to provide a blog that was not an ideological echo chamber. I tried to set an example that it was possible to have people from all walks of political belief talking to, instead of yelling at, each other. That was my goal from day one."

and he definitely succeeded - I can think of few blogs which stimulated more interesting (and civilized) debate than the Heart of the Matter.

You'll be missed Treehugger.



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If, like me, you didn't catch the sign-off post, you can see ithere through the magic of google caching.

Blog Notes

First off, Timmy, Pogge, Jonathan and Mahigan have combined forces over at pogge's house. They're all great bloggers in their own right, so the combination should make for an entertaining blog.

Also, the dropdown boxes continue their slow but steady march as I gradually try to make my blog function as a web portal for myself. The latest addition links to the 'headquarters' of various blogging alliances so if you're looking for more blogs to read that's a good place to look. I found it interesting that the Progressive Blogger's homesite has adopted a bit of a Daily-KOS, community style approach in which people can register for an account and write diaries on the site even if they don't have their own blog. It will be interesting to see if traffic trends in Canada follow the American example (with big, community oriented 'left-wing' blogs outstripping the traffic of the big 'right-wing' blogs) or find their own path.

Finally, some unrelated movie notes:

1) I saw the movie 'Hitch' (with Will Smith) the other day.

2) As per my commentary here I highly recommend that Simon go rent this movie. It's great. You'll really enjoy it. Honest.

3) Movie ticket sales in the U.S. are down 9% vs. the same point last year.

Book Tag Trackback

After being tagged myself, I tagged (among other people) Andrew Spicer to talk about his books. After sarcastically thanking me (and the others who tagged him) he asked (I think rhetorically), who started this thing?

A few days later, the pesky part of my brain that's always causing trouble pointed out that it shouldn't (theoretically) be that hard to figure it out - Just track backwards from tag to tag until you get to the beginning (or a dead end).

So let's see. I was tagged by Greg at Sinister Thoughts.

He was tagged by Damian at Babbling Brooks.

Damian was tagged by Alan at Occam's Carbuncle

Alan was tagged by Jay at the Freedom to Serfdom

Jay was tagged by Freeman, Libertarian Critter

Freeman was tagged twice, so for now I'm just going to go with the first one listed, which was Wally Conger at Out of Step.

Wally was tagged by Thomas Knapp of 'Knappster: Blog Naked for Jesus'

Thomas was tagged by Thomas Luongo of Being Thomas Luongo

Alas, Thomas only says that he is writing as a favour to his friend the e-e and doesn't provide a link. This cryptic reference is resolved by Thomas Knapp who notes that the tag was in relation to a project of the Eclectic Econoclast.

The Econoclast was tagged by Peter Mork at Economics With a Face

Peter was tagged by Tim Sandefur at Freespace.

Tim was tagged by John at TexasBestGrok

John was tagged by Rob at The Llama Butchers

Rob was tagged by The Irish Elk

The Irish Elk was tagged by Father Ethan at Diary of a Suburban Priest.

Ethan was tagged by Zadok the Roman at 'The Commonplace Book of Zadok the Roman'

Zadok was tagged by Lauren at Cnytr

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Aside: I'm starting to wonder if it's just bloggers all the way down.
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Lauren was tagged by Cole at Deo Gratias

Cole was tagged by Epiphany at Minivan Mom

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Note: A few days later, Epiphany links to Craig Canton (June 6 entry. no permalinks) who had the same idea I did. He tracked this chain back a few more links from Minivan Mom but hits a dead end at Sarcastic Kitty who doesn't provide a link to who tagged her.

Although - she does name the site, and with some digging, it is here - but it's password protected. So there you go, Andrew - someone doesn't want you to know who started this...

Let's try a different branch.

Freeman was tagged twice, so let's track back from his other tag, from Kristen at 'Enjoy Every Sandwich' - no this chain goes quickly back to Wally Conger.

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Hmm, if we really want to find out where this started we need to employ some technology on our behalf, specifically Technorati.

After doing some digging, it seems that sarcastic kitty must have either been the first blog to use this particular meme or else changed the wording of the first question, since that wording 'number of books you've (or I've) owned' has no Technorati references (that I can see) prior to mid-May when the Kitty entry appeared.

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Looking around more, I see that a slightly different version (which asks 'how many books do you have 'in your house') has been slowly winding it's way through the seemingly large and insular world of knitting blogs for quite a while now - although it seems to be finally dying.

I tracked the knitting thread back to a dead end on April 15 at Stitch but, looking at Technorati it appears that this particular version arose out of the murky, poorly linked depths of live journal sometime in last February (with a few comments suggesting it jumped to there from mailing lists). See here for an entry from Feb 25.

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Meanwhile, from March 31, here's a version which asks how many books you've read in the last year.

This version tracks back into French

And it looks like we can actually track this one back to its source at L'Atelier D'Anne on March 4th. This version of the quiz appears to die in early April in English, but is still going strong in French.

Note: Miss Vicky received both this version and the 'how many books do you own' version.

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So to summarize, there was a version which asked for the 'Number of books you have in your house' which seemed to emerge out of livejournal in late February but is now dying.

Meanwhile, there was a separate version which asked 'How Many books do your read a year' which started from a French website. This version crossed over into English but died (in English) in early April.

The original 'How many books in your house' may or may not have mutated at some point into 'How Many Books You've Owned' (which suddenly appeared seemingly in many placs at once in mid-May) which mostly likely evolved into 'How Many Books You Own' and then 'How Many Books I Own' - the version I received and the one most active currently. Alas, I haven't found any of the 'missing links' which would show where these mutations occurred, so it's possible that the newer versions were just 'designed' by some 'God'-like being. Or not. But they seemed to emerge around mid-May with an improved reproductive strategy of a specific request to 'tag' 5 more people as opposed to just passing it on to 3.

Finally, via Bound by Gravity I see that Robot Guy tracked a parallel book meme (which asked about Fahrenheit 451) to a source at the Pink Bee on March 4th. Interestingly, the 451 meme spread and died much quicker than the 'how many books' variants. I originally just thought the 451 meme was totally separate, but given the similarity of the last line (Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?) to the late Feb. livejournal entries, it is likely that the 451 meme was also a mutation of this earlier meme (or maybe that's just a standard final line of a meme and they did have separate origins).

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Do you ever start something, thinking it will be simple only to end up spending way more time on it that you expected? Anyway, I guess that doesn't really answer your question Andrew, but I gave it a shot.

Welcome Back Timmy

Via Andrew, I see that Timmy has returned fromto the wilderness and is back blogging. Which is good, since now I won't feel so silly going to his site so often.

Were #32! - and #58

Via #21, Capitalist pig vs. Socialist Swine, in turn via #1 (and #23 and #24) Warren Kinsella, check out this link for a much more interesting honours project than I ever undertook while I was in school.

As I understand it, the author, Wayne Chu, wrote a webcrawler (a computer program which roams around the web following links from site to site) consisting of essentially 3 parts: a module to validate whether a site was a blog or not, an algorithm for proceeding from one blog to the blogs it is linked to, and an iterative formula for ranking blogs - and then he set the crawler loose in the Canadian blogosphere.

The appendix in the report contains a list of the top #100 Canadian political blogs according to his crawler. Based on the top #100, it seems like the crawler had the good sense not to venture too deeply into the Conservative side of the blogosphere, and as Wayne admits in the paper, the blog validator could use some tweaking as the odd newspaper article snuck through. Plus, some simple de-duping (like google's 'omitted similar search results') might clean up the list.

But don't let my quibbles give you the wrong impression, this paper is really quite an excellent piece of work and well worth a read. And I'm not just saying that because it ranked CAtO ahead of both Coyne and Wells... (I'm guessing the crawler didn't like Wells since, when it comes to following links to Canadian political blogs, he's a bit of a dead end, sort of a blogospheric black hole, many links go in but none come out, you get the picture).

Speaking of Wells, his last post on the relatively small size of the corporate tax cut which the NDP is demanding that the Liberals repeal in exchange for their support of the budget, is a good one. Even though his description of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives as a "strictly and scrupulously non-partisan" organization, while tongue in cheek, still makes me want to reconsider my membership in the Alliance of non-partisan bloggers. Any club that would have Tom D'Aquino as a member is one I'd rather not join.

Did I mention we're #32?



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I know, enough meta-blogging. I'll get back to policy soon, I promise.

Speechfest Roundup

Well, since I'm a night owl who lives on the West Coast, maybe I'm in a good position to offer a roundup of what my favourite bloggers are saying about today's little speeches (my own thoughts are in the post below this one).

Paul Wells figures that Martin accomplished his main goal, delaying the election:

"Martin wins the big play. It is a moment of consummate irony: it's the play Chrétien used against him. "OK, I'll leave, but on my schedule." I will be amazed if the next three days' polls don't show overwhelming support for letting Gomery report."

and he also identifies Layton as a big winner for focussing on some actual issues.

pogge agrees that Layton made a favourable impression, after rounding up some favourable Layton comments he notes:

"They're all talking about Jack Layton on an equal footing with Martin, Harper and Duceppe in the midst of a scandal that involves Liberal corruption, the possible fall of a government and national unity issues. That in itself is a victory. The fact that they all say nice things is gravy."

Timmy at Voice in the Wilderness disagrees with Wells and figures that Martin's effort, while valiant, wasn't enough,

"This is a stink that will live with the Liberal Party for a long time. I truly believe Martin is unfairly tainted by it, but it doesn't make him any less damaged goods. Life is unfair, and politics even more so."

Andrew at Bound by Gravity figures that Layton came off the best of the bunch and is well positioned to be the one to observe that most people on the centre-left figured Layton did a good job while most of the right were unimpressed (what does this say about Andrew himself?):

"Remember - it doesn't matter what a CPC voter thinks of Layton's performance (he'll never get our votes) - only what the left-leaning voter thinks matters to Jack."

Andrew Spicer agrees with Timmy

"Let's get used to it...

* There will be a new election soon
* There will be a Prime Minister Harper"

and figures he could live with that if it's only a minority government.

CalgaryGrit figures Layton was the best of the bunch but is skeptical that the whole TV appearance had any impact,

"Basically, I don't think this will make a huge difference. Everyone rehashed what they've been saying for the past few weeks. Martin looked really good, but he was followed up by half an hour of opposition leaders who also looked good bashing him. Still, he'll get most of the media clips so it was likely worth the risk. I'll be very curious to see if this has any real impact on voters - my gut tells me no, but we'll see."

The Gritty one also echoes my reaction and commenter Neil at Andrew Spicer in decrying the 4 pm start on the West Coast.

Adam Radwanski makes a good point (in my opinion) that even if Martin wins (on getting the election delayed) he loses,

"What he's still trying to do is win the Gomery debate, which is impossible. The only way for the Liberals to win the next election is to make it about something other than the Adscam. But what he's effectively done is ensure that, whenever the election is, it'll be almost exclusively about the scandal. Hell, he more or less promised as much."

Greg at Sinister Thoughts thought Layton made a good impression and warns Harper not to get too overconfident,

"Harper looks like a guy who thinks he has the world by the balls. He already thinks he has a majority. He must, he brought up a "made in Canada" environment plan again. Forget about honoring Kyoto, that's so last week. Remember Mr. Harper, you lost the election in a weekend last time. Don't count your seats before the votes are counted."

Alan at Gen X at 40 figures that Martin did well, but won't win the election. He also calls Harper on some mistakes,

"Harper did not do well. There is nothing stopping Paul Martin from the TV spot and Harper was wrong to imply here was any time of convention relating to the Prime Minister presenting on the TV. Harper wrongly said that Martin asked to be the one to fix the scandal. Martin said the opposite. He said he will call the election for 30 days after the final report."

Damian at Babbling Brooks focusses on what he felt was Harper's best line (when he suggested that non-Quebecers shouldn't let Quebecers get ahead of them in the demanding accountability sweepstakes), noting that,

"In three sentences, the man praises the integrity of Quebec voters (nurturing nascent CPC support), and challenges the Rest of Canada (read: Vote-Rich Ontario) to demonstrate the same degree of principle. From where I sit, the subtle jab at Ontarian pride is brilliant - especially given the implication that Quebec is setting the standard. If they were listening - a big if, I know - Canadians in the Centre of the Universe won't sit still for that."

He also sees no reason to wait on an election.


Justin at Flash Point Canada is proud of Martin.

Cathie from Canada liked Martin's performance and figured that circumstances could be working in Layton's favour,

"So if Layton becomes the government's saviour over the next month, this could be Layton's big chance to shuck his Toronto-alderman-not-ready-for-prime-time image and finally demonstrate to the country that he IS a leader."

Sean Incognito nicely matches tonight's speakers with their film noir alter egos.

JimBobby wasn't too impressed with the decision to hold a national broadcast on such a trivial topic and doesn't figure it will help Martin anyway,

"I reckon it don't matter whether we hold the vote today or next January, the GrittyFellers is all washed up - leastwise fer the next 10 years or so."

Matthew at Living in a Society is still pretty upset about the whole affair:

I give Martin some credit for trying to take responsibility but it is far too little, far too late.

Finally, Darren Barefoot is more of an issues guy, and thus was easily most impressed with Layton:

"I'm not crazy about Layton's party, but he's by far the best speaker, and is far succinct that his fellow speakers. It's also the best-written speech, pointed without being catty. He wins my respect by not focusing on the scandal, but on what government should be doing instead of the scandal."

So what does it all mean? My general impression is that in the short term, the centre-left of the spectrum was impressed by Layton seeing that the country still needs to be governed and felt that Martin made, if not the best, then at least an improvement out of a bad situation. People were generally non-committal / negative about Harper's performance with a lot of negative comments about his speaking ability / posture / mannerisms etc.

Notwithstanding all that, the general feeling is that when an election comes, it's not going to go well for the Liberals. Where there's most disagreement is on the timing of the election. My feeling is that unless the polls consistently, overwhelmingly show the public is against having an election now, the Conservatives and Bloc will be unable to wait. Not waiting likely won't cost the Bloc anything but it may backfire on the Conservatives.

One thing which will be interesting to see is how many voters aren't willing to vote for any of the three main parties under the circumstances. Anyway, it should be an interesting year - it's too bad about policy.

Blog on Blog on Blog

Via Colby Cosh, this is an interesting piece on the Canadian blogging community which, you may be surprised to learn, consists almost entirely of moonlighting mainstream media journalists. That aside, a couple of comments:

1) The author (Samantha Israel), argues that the idea that blogs can be self-correcting is wrong because, as she says, "I've been corrected by a reader only once".

So let's make it twice - her comment (further down) that, "The [mainstream media] certainly bit back when it revealed that Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who averages more than 350,000 visitors a day to his Daily Kos political blog, was paid US$12,000 to promote Howard Dean's campaign for the Democratic nomination." is in fact misleading, bordering on spreading a lie (IMO).

In fact this information was "revealed" by Markos himself as soon as it happened and prominently displayed on his blog, as some 'lazy' Internet research will tell you quite quickly.

2) There is a long discussion of editing and how it differs between the mainstream media and blogs. On a not-so unrelated note, here is the headline from today's Vancouver Sun: Lung cancer in women reaches epidemic level

I appreciate that newspapers have a duty to serve the public interest by taking minor issues and making them seem really scary and important through the use of large fonts in order to make money by selling papers, but some respect for the language would be nice. The steady increase of lung cancer rates isn't good but it isn't an epidemic (it's not even contagious). Perhaps they just meant it in the sense of "Widely prevalent" but, besides also being untrue, that would be a bit misleading given that we're talking about a medical condition here. And just what is the 'epidemic level' anyway?

Anyway, I'm criticizing because - well, that's what I do here - but the article on blogging by Israel was interesting and worth a read all the same.

Random Praise

Since my last post was a bit of a rant, I decided to change gears with this post, and throw out some kudos to a far from comprehensive list of bloggers who've been doing a good job lately (in my opinion, obviously):

First off, I've added Pints of Drivel to the blogroll. Lots of good commentary lately, including this interesting look at productivity, taxes and the upcoming federal budget.

Second, Andrew over at Bound by Gravity continues to deservedly get one of the most diverse readerships (and most interesting comments) among Canadian blogs.

If blogging is like a game of whack-a-mole where you try to take a swing and connect with each issue as it comes up then Timmy at Voice in the Wilderness is piling up a high score, commenting on everything from credit card interest rates to the same sex marriage debate, to U.S. foreign policy to the laws of cartoon thermodynamics. I particularly liked his post on the heritage and symbolism of the Canadian flag.

While I'm on the topic, Flag Day, the 15th of February, really should be added as a holiday. Goodness knows we could use one between New Year's and Good Friday - but I digress.

While digging around for commentary on the upcoming B.C. referendum (on switching to using Single Transferrable Vote for our electoral system), I ran across Double Blind, a long-running blog which is interesting reading for anyone interested in B.C. politics (or gambling), especially if you like looking at things from a mathematical perspective like I do. I thought the coverage of the recent B.C. budget was particularly good.

Finally, Paul Wells is always good, but he's been especially good lately (IMO) - I think I learned more from his coverage of the Danny Williams bru-ha-ha (sp?) and subsequent negotiations than I did from all other sources put together.

Keep up the good work, everyone.

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Update: While I'm being charitable, I should also mention that while I don't think much of his columns (especially the ones on STV), Norman Spector's daily media round-up is most definitely a useful resource, and one that I check most days. Now if only he'd work on setting up decent archiving (with preserved links) for his round-up and stop writing columns about STV...

How Embarrassing

I see that Andrew Coyne's blog is back up and running, but he has been reduced by technical problems to running a lowly blogger blog. The shame!

Like 97.5%* of all right-wing Bloggers, he seems to be caught up in some sort of war-of-words with Warren Kinsella. I'm not really sure what about since when I see anyone mention Kinsella I stop reading since it's bound to be boring. If this is some sort of grand scheme by Warren to get all these folks so focussed on him that they forget about all the other stuff on their agenda it seems to be working to perfection.

At any rate, when he's not battling Kinsella or going on at length about bicycle helmets, Andrew is one of the best bloggers/political writers around, so it's good to see him back.


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*this was an exaggeration.

The Blogging Turtle Finally Reaches the Finish Line

So I meant to post on a certain article I saw this morning, but by the time I got around to it, Timmy, Mahigan, Pogge, Jonathan, Rick, Robert and Bill had already beaten me to it - good work guys.

But hey, am I the only anti-SpongeDob blogger with a day job or what? :)

Since Robert wrote last, his is the best summary of all that came before. For me, all I want to add to the initial article about the American religious groups who have made Canada their next target after bravely taking on Spongebob Squarepants, is to contrast it with this article from around the time of the U.S. election on what Americans think of people who meddle in other country's business.

Personally I kind of like the sounds of a nice Dobson-Harper (U.S. fundamentalist - Canadian Conservative) photo-op. Maybe at the corner of Church and Wellesley in Toronto on a late June weekend (say, the 26th), preferably in the run-up to an election campaign.

A Moment of Blog Silence

After not being updated since before Christmas, it now appears that Against All Flags, the excellent blog of Captain Flynn - who was one of the earliest supporters of this Blog - has disappeared to the bottom of the virtual seas.

You're missed Captain.

A Few Good Posts

Just a quick note to mention a few worthwhile posts I've seen in the past few days:

Jonathan, over at No More Shall I Roam, has a great post on Copyright.

Timmy over at Voice in the Wilderness has an on the money take on Bush's comments on Missile Defence when he visited Canada a little while back.

Andrew over at Bound By Gravity recounts his experience at the Conservative party regional policy conference the other day.

Recommendation

Well the Blog awards may be over and the list of sites nominated still makes a good list of places to look for a good Canadian blog to read, but if you're looking for the best Canadian blog which wasn't nominated, then I would say, look here

Of course it's possible that I'm biased because it seems like every second or third time I write a post, it turns out that Andrew wrote something very similar a long time ago.

For example, consider my post from the other day on collective action problems and compare it to this post, one of the first things Andrew wrote on his blog (way) back in 2002.

I spent a good part of a rainy afternoon today reading through various posts from his long archive (once I realized that sometimes you have to scroll down a bit to see the post) and it's fascinating stuff, especially if you have an interest in Toronto politics, urban planning, collective action problems, Jane Jacobs, or Ontario politics (especially as they relate to Toronto), not to mention climate change, and federal politics

I'm thinking that, since I seem to channel Andrew's archives so often, it's a good bet that if you like this Blog you'll probably like his too.

Just a Reminder

That the 2004 Canadian Blog Award Winners have been announced (revealed) and can be seen here

CAtO Blog Award Endorsements

If you want to vote on the 2004 Canadian Blog Awards, you can do so here. You are allowed to vote once per day (per computer, I suppose) between now and the 15th when voting closes. So without further delay, here are the...

Crawl Across the Ocean Editorial Board Endorsements:

...applause...

Best Blog: Blogs Canada E-Group¹

One of the hardest things for a Blog to do (IMO) is to incorporate a diverse range of views and to maintain this over time without degenerating into a shouting fest or an echo chamber. So far, the e-group has managed to do this quite well - there aren't many issues which have come up in the last few months for which you can't find an interesting, informed discussion on the e-group, with strong cases being made on both sides of the issue.

Best Liberal Blog: Peace Order and Good Government, Eh?

Notwithstanding a recent bout of intensive cat-blogging, this remains the best spot for keeping track of any threats to the rule of law in Canada, as well as a good spot for subtle wit, lots of green text and a nice homey feeling.

Best Conservative Blog: Bound By Gravity

A winner almost by default as the only Blog in this category I read regularly. I don't really agree with Andrew all that often, but he generally makes sense and he doesn't fall into the narrowness of focus or nastiness of tone which turns me off most 'conservative' Blogs.

Best Group Blog: Blogs Canada E-Group

See above.

Most Humourous Blog: Bacon and Eh's

I hadn't really followed too many of the Blogs on this list, so I did some, uh, procrastination, I mean research, and of all the nominees, this one made me smile the most. And for those who know me, no, I didn't just pick it because of the title.

Best Non-Political Blog: Darren Barefoot

Not everything he posts is interesting, but a lot is and he posts so much that there's usually something there that catches my fancy. And I'm still a big fan of 'The Night the Aztecs Stormed Glasgow'

Best New Blog: Against All Flags

And I'm not just saying that because Captain Flynn is the holder of the prestigious first commenter award here at CAtO.

I like the way the pirate theme is integrated throughout the whole site, the design is good, and while he's (like any pirate worth his salt) a little confrontational for my tastes, he makes good points and starts good discussions. A (sea)worthy choice indeed.

Best Blog Design:

I don't really know too many of the nominees here, but luckily, for this category I don't have to. To me, the clear choice is Photojunkie.

Overall, I was kind of disappointed with the choices in this category, I mean, 'Tilting at Windmills??' Don't get me wrong, it's a great site, but best design? I remember showing my girlfriend some Blogs to get her opinion on a good design for Crawl Across the Ocean (my taste leans towards garish orange and purple, left to my own devices I probably would have ended up with Bloggers diseased pumpkin template). As I recall, when she saw Tilting at Windmills her reaction was, 'Ugh'. I didn't have the heart to show her the rotting pumpkins.

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So there you have it, my thoroughly biased opinions. Personally I don't like to see the Political categories divided into Liberal and Conservative Blogs since I sometimes think this division is more a product of groupthink on both sides than any real ideological differences. I also agree with James Bow's point that there should be more categories to reflect the non-political Blogs (although I know nothing about these, I'm sure they're out there).

All in all, a fun idea, and it will be interesting to see who wins come the 16th.
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¹ Disclaimer: As a member of the e-group, it's possible I might be a little biased in its favour.

Blahg Notes

I have been remiss in not mentioning up to this point two projects currently being undertaken by the tireless Robert Mcclelland over at his blahg.

The first is The Canadian Blog Awards which he is accepting nominations for up until the end of the year. The list of Blogs already nominated can be found here. Even if the awards concept doesn't grab you, it's still a handy list of a lot of the best Blogs this country has to offer. My understanding is that you'll be able to vote once a day for 15 days or so once polls open in the new year (or something like that), but Robert's Blog is of course the definitive source for info on how it will work. The Crawl Across the Ocean editorial board (i.e. me) will announce who it is endorsing for each category, shortly after polls close (that's the plan, anyway).

The second project is the Cavalcade of Canucks, a weekly roundup of interesting Blog posts from the left / centre of the political spectrum.

Thanks Robert for all your work in building the blogging community.