Mark Byron

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a dog Russian

There was a popular political cartoon of yore showing two dogs at a computer desk. Caption-"On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." The link credits it to a New Yorker cartoon of 1993, but I remember it with a laptop from the early blog era of the early-mid 00s.

Nobody knows you're a Russian, either. Well, almost nobody...

The website they set up to track the Russian campaign, called Hamilton 68 after the eloquent warning in the Federalist Papers from Alexander Hamilton to beware of foreign efforts to hijack U.S. elections, has documented in recent days how even an American tragedy like the Florida school shooting has become fodder for the network of 600 Russia-linked social media accounts the group’s software is following. The trolls, Fly said, were pushing inflammatory pro- and anti-gun control messages within hours of the killings, with “Russian accounts that were jumping on both sides, basically egging Americans on, making everyone angrier, trying to divide us rather than bring us together in a moment of crisis.”

It's a very pernicious tactic, for just about anyone can be accused of having their chains being yanked by Russian trolls save centrists and establshmentarians. There's always quite a bit of pro-Second-Amendment trolling after a mass shooting, some of it more sober but others designed to maximize the anti-liberal propaganda effect. I assume that the left has its share of trolling going on as well.

We're already distrustful of others, and this just amps the distrust. Is that over-the-top FB post legit, or Russian trolling? One can't quite tell without detective work.

Snopes Hunt

I wasn't aware until that they now have fast food sign generators like the church sign generators that have been around for better part of a decade. A bogus pro-Chick-fil-A McDonalds sign created that way was making the rounds during Chatty-Catheygate.

"What do you believe, me or your eyes" the guy caught red-handed says. In this case, the eyes can be tricked, although some Wendy's in the Carolinas did show solidarity.

The Sound of One Crucifixion Report Clapping

Drudge has had a link to a World Net Daily piece claiming the mobs of Muslim Brotherhood backers have been crucifying foes, including one in front of the presidential palace; this seemed to be the core piece backing up the claims. It was supposed to have been aired on Sky News, but the article on the piece has been wiped off the site according to the article.

There's one problem with the piece; no one outside of a circle of anti-Islamist or conservative web sites seems to be running the story. For a story of that magnitude to be a non-starter elsewhere is a bit odd. Glenn Beck's Blaze site has the story, but I'm not seeing any serious confirmation other than a lot of people regurgitating a single report in English.

If a political lynching happened in front of the White House, one would assume that it would be bigger news than just one piece floating around conservative web sites. Egypt might not have the most vibrant and free press on the planet, but one would expect that someone other than Drudge and WND would have picked this one up. Fox News, the Washington Times, someone with some gravitas beyond Drudge (who has gravitas, but has his share of false alarms).

It smells like the story might be not what it seems to be. Some form of English-language confirmation beyond what has showed up in "Islamophobic" circles (I don't like that term as a conversation-slamming analogue to homophobic, but I don't know of a good term to describe the folks who are overly nervous about things Islamic) would be helpful.

{Update 9/7-The National Post's Johnathan Kay takes up the story three days after I wrote this and chalks it up to an urban legend. That's a conservative-leaning paper (Canada's Washington Times without the Moonie connection) and one that would be one of the first places a conservative-leaning story would get traction in the traditional media.]

Flo Gets Slingshotted

The Army of Davids takes on Flo's handlers, and wins.

Insurance company Progressive felt the wrath of the Internet this week after the brother of a policyholder who died in a car crash posted a startling missive about how the family's claim was handled. Progressive has now reached a financial settlement with the family.

Matt Fisher detailed his family's nightmare in a Tumblr post on Monday with a shocking title: "My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court."

Three days later, Progressive said it reached a settlement with the Fishers.

My old blog buddy Willan Sulik has posted that Tumblr post on Facebook yesteday, prompting me to note-

Interestingly, Progressive's owners live up to its name in donations to liberal causes; it wants to care for people in general with other people's taxes, but not for their own clients with their own money if they can help it.

...

I guess the best answer here is "Don't go with the Flo"

The family here got their money after a fashion, but you shouldn't have to make an on-line stink to get justice. That's Regressive.

Good at Making People Look Bad

I don't like the carpet-bomb-your-enemies style of politics that we're in these days. Thus, the story of Andrew Breitbart's passing leaves me a bit cold, as I don't have the warm spot in my heart that the conservative on-line big-shots have, for a lot of his shtick was to make liberals look bad.

That can be good in a lot of cases, but created collateral damage in others, like in the Shirley Sherrod case (where You-tubing her out of context cost her a job).

Here's an interesting first-reaction obit from Jonah Goldberg; it closes thus.

There will be lots of eulogies and obituaries for Andrew, including my own, talking about his politics and his beautiful wife and kids and his bottomless happy-warrior spirit. And that’s all true and right and appropriate. But people — particularly NRO readers — should know that Andrew’s accomplishments didn’t begin with his relatively recent fame and his gonzo antics. People will talk a lot about Shirley Sherrod and Anthony Weiner and that’s all fine and good. He’d like it, in fact. But he was a great, sweet, smart guy destined for great things long before he became a cultural touchstone. Indeed, his greatest accomplishment, I’m sure he would say, was marrying up and having four wonderful kids. And that too is something that you won’t see in his clips on YouTube.

By all accounts, he seemed to be a happy warrior and a hail fellow well met. Pat Buchanan seems much the same way in person; I still don't like Pat's ethnocentrism and nasty streak towards his enemies.

Breitbart was key in getting Drudge rolling and played a key role in getting the Huffington Post off the ground, although the later listed a bit more left than he hoped, shooting for a bipartisan online salon. That and other things will give him more than a bit part when the history of the blog era gets told.

I just don't like hating my enemies and prefer my pundits with a bit less bile.

Day One, Decade Two

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of my first blog post. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. In 2002, a blog was cutting-edge on the Web, while it is a few years behind the curve today.

I tend to express myself in paragraphs more than sentences, so Twitter isn't my strongest suit, nor is Facebook. I have a Twitter account that mostly serves to cross-post links to this blog, and I have an inactive Facebook account that I am toying with reopening, since that is the vehicle of choice for a lot of people at present.

I have the free-time to write these days, being underemployed. Hopefully, that will bear fruit in some way as I go forward, as I try to put my psychological problems behind me and move forward.

If you have something you'd like me to write on, let me know. I'm here to serve as well as to have a place to express my thoughts to a friendly audience around the world.

Nine Candles

The first post on this blog (or at least the Blogger version of it) went up nine years ago today.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. I've gotten married, lived in three new states, been Dr. Byron at three colleges, and met a truckload of people online.

A lot of the people that were part of things nine years ago have moved on, while others have become part of the Peanut Gallery. Things are slower than they were in their prime back in 2003, but there are more people writing online these days (who isn't?) and things like Facebook and Twitter have snagged some of the blog eyeball market, as has a lot of professional reporters and pundits blogging as part of their job.

Even if the readership is 40 a day rather than 160, I'm still a blogger. I'm a bit verbose to fit a thought into a tweet and don't have a book in me, so the short-essay format that fits blogging to a T is my natural home.

I'm going to strive to write more in the weeks and months to come. I've brought the Edifiers back; the last few years have been a spiritual dry time, and bringing them back has lifted my spirit. Many readers have apprecated them in the past, and I want to keep them up.

Also, with some free time on my hands as a part-time tutor, I hope to use that time to put my ecclective thoughts in print and see what the Blogosphere and the Web thinks of them. I don't know if I can get things to a point where this can be self-supporting, but I can at least put my $0.02 out there in areas of my interest and expertise.

Here's to year ten's start.

Tweet 16

Actually, it will be tweet two. I've decided to get a Twitter account; I'm Dr_Byron over in tweetspace. I'm not all that into it, but I need to get with the tech program.

Information on the Lam

Here's two tech stories from this week, one you have undoubtedly seen unless you've been in a media cave for the last week.

Let's start with the other one... the UAR is looking at banning Blackberrieson security grounds. Since the data is stored out-of-country (Blackberry's parent RIM is based in Canada), it makes it hard for the authorities to censor things that disrupt their worldview. There could easily be a split on that issue within the UAE, as relatively free-wheeling Dubai might not want to have PDAs put under the control of the morals police or other regulatory body.

The UAE isn't the first to be nervous about that; the French banned Crackberries from their defense ministry a few years back, possibly as a way for then-new president Sarkozy to look anti-Anglo-Saxon after running as a pro-American guy.

Would you want your data under government supervision?

For the civil libertarians out there (or righties who trust the Obama team as far as you can throw them) that said "No" to that, may I present the other big tech story of the week, Wikileaks. A free Internet with pockets with light regulation will have renegade sites on any number of issues, whether it be jihadi sites, purdy dirty pick-ture sites, Napster 2.0 sites and the one from our friendly Aussie leftist who wants to tweak the nose of the Not-Quite-New World Order.

The current Afghani data-dump is a mixed bag, with some possible dirty laundry from the US side coupled with confirmation that the Pakistani ISI is playing both sides of the fence with the Taliban; the ISI has been strongly rumored to be a long-standing backer of the Taliban but had to be seen as fighting them when being pro-Taliban became toxic as of 9/12/01. The Obama team is making the right noises about security leaks, but since the material was '08 and back, they can say that that was then (with the bad Bushies in charge) and not now.

When you have a free Internet, with data that can move from server to server and country to country (I started this post at home, draft-saved it, then am finishing it at the library while Eileen browses), information has a way of getting free, especially if there is a political or economic reason for having it become unfettered. When the data can be shepherded out of the country in milliseconds, governments have little power to suppress runaway information.

This Wikileaks story is oft compared to the Pentagon Papers of the Vietnam War era; back then, the Nixon team tried to keep the NYT and WaPo from publishing the unflattering info. That was technically doable (but unconstitutional per the Supreme Court) at the time. However, with Wikileaks setting up server shop in Sweden, the horse is out of the barn and out of the country before the powers that be knew about it.

Security hawks would like to string up the Wikileaks people along with their abettors at the NYT and other newspapers in on the story. There is most likely some espionage charges that can be brought, but the horse is out of the barn; if Mr. Wikileaks is arrested, someone else will pick up the mantle in short order. That's the nature of the Internet and modern politics.

Bloggin' for a Livin'

No, not those ads on the side that I'm going to pull shortly; I'm actually paying the rent writing.

Not here, but doing some freelance writing. My major gig is working for Momemtum Freight doing automotive and trucking related posts for their Transport and Freight message boards. Some of my posts get mildly edited and put up on a pair of company blogs. That one came from a Monster ad, not any of the free-lance sites.

That covers a bit of interesting areas. Anything automotive fits, as does anything regarding fuels, trucking, trains (I was all over the CN strike, Bene), shipping; even the strong yen can generate a post on what it means for the vintage car market.

The good personal news is that my first "paycheck" from my Momentum gig hit the bank today, just in time to pay this month's rent. It's not professor pay, but it's close to my old take-home pay as an accounting temp. Throw in a few stray assignments from a couple of free-lance sites and my continued finance tutoring online (I worked three nights this week and will be up to four come January) and I'm keeping most of the creditors at bay; If we can get Eileen back to work on a regular basis (pickings are small for her now), we'll keep them all at bay.

Things are pretty good for getting canned two weeks ago. Let's hope I still think that way when I write my first COBRA check for health insurance coverage.

Retweeting From New Tech

I'm not a texter.... yet. Thus, I have steered clear of going the route of Twitter, which allows you to essentially microblog via text message. However, I'm the king of the semicolon and sometimes have a hard time getting a message down to text-message length.

For instance, I have a rudimentary Facebook account, but don't update it much; I have a hard time keeping a thought under the max length of a Facebook post. I took a stab at working for an outfit that fielding text-message queries in real time, but found it hard to keep the reply down to text-message length; that and having to field NC-17 rated questions led me out of the loop quickly.

My literary wife, who has yet to get the blog bug, does have the Facebook bug, letting her keep in touch with dozens of friends around town, the country and the world. Being less social, the social-networking features of Facebook don't lend themselves to my more reclusive and discursive style.

Twitter is sending a text-message to the world, if you can get things down to bon-mot level, and a lot of people have gotten the bug. New UK coach John Calipari has the bug, tweeting multiple times a day. The tweeter that got me going on this post was golfer Ian Poulter, who commented "Where's my canoe" in commenting on a water-logged round one of the US Open.

I understand Twitter but don't quite get it. There were blogs before Blogger brought things to the masses, and there were texting-to-your-blog aps before Twitter, but sometime, someone comes up with an ap that changes the picture.

Maybe I need to stop retweeting from this new tech and start doing short tweets.

That's 53 in Human Years

This blog has been going for just short of 7.5 years; early July would be the seven-and-a-half mark. I was reminded of the longevity when I was seeing some promos for the US Open golf, going back to Bethpage Black in NY on a fairly quick rotation, having been there in 2002, recent enough for me to quip "Is Beth Page-Black Alan Page's daughter? Lizzie's sure sacking the pros like her dad." At the time, Tiger Woods was the only person under par.

However, some things do change. On that same post, I was noting the Red Wings 3-1 win over Carolina to win the 2002 Stanley Cup. Last night, they came up short, with Maxime Talbot scoring both goals in Pittsburgh's 2-1 win in game seven. I got to watch the game for a change, a rarity since our cable is Versus-free and we have no local NHL team to root for.

Bing Cherries

I just got my first Bing hit (be careful, I think Michael Phelps nearly got busted for a picture of a Bing hit); interestingly, Bing had this post on anti-evolutionist Grady McMurtry #3 for "Mark Byron" behind two reference for a photographer namesake.

Bing is supposed to be Microsoft's answer to Google. We shall see; they've yet to figure out how to put a significant dent into Google's market share for serches.

Funeral for a Friend's Husband

We just lost one of our Sunday School mates last month, but that's not as painful as what veteran Catholic blogger Amy Welborn is going through; her husband Michael died this morning.

Michael collapsed this morning at the gym and was not able to be revived despite the efforts of EMTs and hospital personnel.

We are devastated and beg your prayers.

Even though we've never met or talked, Amy's family to a lot of us in the Blogosphere. She was one of the first examples for me of the Blogosphere intersecting with real life.

Back in 2002, she had posted on having some spare Betty Crocker coupons and was offering them to a reader who's e-mail asking for them. I didn't collect them but my mother-in-law did, so I bopped her an e-mail. A few days later, we get a package from Fort Wayne with the coupons.

I've met three of my blog freinds in person over the years, have seen my pastor start to blog and had the Internet Monk guest-preach at my church, but Amy's kind gesture was the first blog intersection with real life.

I'm not sure what I'd do if I lost Eileen like that. Basket Case is the phrase that comes to mind.

You don't have to beg that hard, Amy. Prayer support is on the way. All of St. Blogs Parish is is their knees, even those of us who spend our Sundays at "ecclesial communities."

Rosebud

No, this doesn't have anything to do with Citizen Kane. Just a cute dog.

I'm not sure how many Kentucky readers I have. I know Pastor David wanders in from time to time, especially when I link to him, as the referral logs will have a Ponder Anew admin account tag on occasion.

If you're in the area and in the market for a nice doggie, there's a cute-looking dog named Rosebud that's up in Cincy looking for a good home, who's currently in the custody of pnumablogger Dan Edelen.

Rosebud has all her shots and has been spayed, so all the costly upfront issues have been handled by us. She’s about a year old, so she still has a puppy’s demeanor. She loves being around people and is very sociable. We think she has some spitz in her, but she’s not a purebred by any means. Rosebud weighs about 25 pounds and is a manageable size. She has been an outdoor dog, but we think she will adapt to indoors in time. She loves to run and is blazingly fast, so a large yard would probably be good for her.

If you have a place for Rosebud, please drop me an email or leave a comment. Since we live in the Greater Cincinnati area, it would be best if someone from the area contact us (unless you are willing to travel here to pick her up).

Cincy's in striking distance of a lot of places, like Indy and Columbus, and I know I have blog contacts in both places, not to mention a small Lexington contingent that reads this blog.

Surf Like a Man

Here's an interesting application; it measures how likely it is that the person at your computer is male or female based on your surfing history and the male-female ratio of vistors to those sites. When I ran it on my laptop just now, it came out 81% male. Our desktop came in at 80% female when I ran there this morning; I almost exclusively use my laptop while Eileen does most of the surfing on the desktop. I only use the desktop in the mornings briefly or on weeknights when I leave my laptop on campus.

The manliest site on my laptop list is Drudge, who comes in at a 2.08. The girliest site is WalMart, which comes in at a 0.71. News sites had a male lean while banking sites had a slight female lean. Fox News was more manly than CNN but the Washington Post was even less manly. Google came in at 0.98 and I Can Has Cheezburger came in at 1.04; I would have guessed that Lolcats would be more girly than that.

A Baptist Public Intellectual

One of the interesting news items of the week, both via Bene and via the Lexington Herald Leader, is the candidacy of Al Mohler to be head of the Southern Baptists. He's currently president of their flagship seminary in Louisville, so the jump to being head of the denomination wouldn't be that huge of one.

The interesting thing about Mohler is that he's a blogger; many of the contentious items that were featured in the Herald Leader piece, like a thought experiment about genetically modifying a child in utereo that had genetic tendencies that would lean it towards being homosexual, flowed from blog entries where he (as the Herald Leader puts it) comments "on moral, cultural and theological issues."

That kind of fits the description of the old-school public intellectual; no, a Baptist public intellectual isn't an oxymoron. It doesn't fit the description of the megachurch (or near-megachurch; if you have one service on Sunday, you're not going to be in the hunt) pastor that normally gets the gig of running a denomination, nor does it sound like your stereotypical tight-sphinctered seminary chief.

It's rare to see a Southern Baptist leader who people outside of Southern Baptist circles might have heard of prior to his becoming leader (or prior to the week of the national convention where the leading candidates start getting mentioned in the general media); Joe Sixpack might not have heard of Mohler, but Joe Evangelical Blog Reader will have. Even if Mohler wasn't in your bookmarks (and he wasn't in mine until now), he was in the bookmarks of one of your regular reads.

If elected, he'll be an interesting president.

Six Candles

I got busy this week and didn't get around to noticing that this blog's sixth birthday passed on Monday.

I always have to eat crow about that first post, since Ted's Montana Grill has been a modest success; our downstairs neighbor's parents treated us to dinner at their Lexington store last fall, which does a Bennigan's/Ruby Tuesday casual dining niche with a national park lodge ambiance. We haven't been back, but there are a lot of places competing in that niche here in town.

I went from obscurity to B-list blogger back to relative obscurity in those six years, and my readership has gone down from about 120 or so a weekday at its steady peak around 2004 to about 70 a weekday today; I might have gotten some Instalanches in the early days and some nice traffic flows from Steven den Beste in his prime, but the non-post-link driven traffic never got too far over 100 on a weekday. I seemed just a notch away from something special, as peers found their way onto C-SPAN (I recall seeing Mike Krempasky from Red State and could say "I beat his team in the Blogger Bowl fantasy football league last week.") and the Washington Post, but that wasn't to be my lot in life.

The decline these days might be due to the large number of good blogs out there; there are no barriers to entry in this game and people only have a finite amount of time to read. Also, life intervenes; I'm putting more effort into my teaching and have something of a social life, so the number of good think pieces coming out of here seems to have fallen.

However, the few dozen regulars here have been a blessing, a group that helped see me through the three years in the wilderness from 2004-2007, where I was unemployed, helping my wife through a bout of depression and fighting off having a bout of it myself. With your help (and the help of a lot of a lot of people in "meatspace" as well), I'm back in academe, settling into what seems to be a nice niche here at Sullivan U; they're already talking about my schedule for spring term here, which will push me past the one year mark and require a contract renewal.

What will the next six years bring? Maybe a kid or two to look after, a solid college teaching career
and continued interaction with a lot of interesting people from around the world, from Canadian curmudgeons to Welsh pastors to Washington insiders to old friends from both blogspace and meatspace, as well as dozens of others that have been blessings for the last half-dozen years. For some reason, I took down my link list a while back; I was too busy to edit it and too much a purist to leave up stale links; that should come back in the next few days.

I may take a day or two off now and then, which I rarely did when I first got started, but this is part of my life. I don't see it going away anytime soon; I have too much of a community going here to walk away.

In for a Penny, in for a Pound

That's how I started a reply to a Joe Carter e-mail of early today. I can confirm what Andy Jackson has posted earlier today; Joe's taking a leave of absence from his FRC gig to work for the Huckabee campaign.

I’ll be heading up their efforts on research and rapid response communications.

I have a simple standard in deciding what type of candidate to support. I call it my Reagan Test: “Are they as conservative as Ronald Reagan was when he first ran for the Presidency?” Huckabee passes that test. I think he’s a solid fiscal, social, and security conservative. I also think he is the only one that can beat Hillary Clinton. I don’t say all this because I support Huckabee; I support Huckabee because I believe this to be true.

I’m hoping to help convince others, so if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

That takes courage; he went from writing a blog backing Fred Thompson to supporting Huck to working for Huck in about a month. He liked him all along, but he didn't think he stood a chance until recently.

I offered Joe any help that I could offer in his new post. I'm not sure how much that might be, but I haven't actively worked on a political campaign since 1976 when I did some lit-dropping for Don Riegle's initial Senate election. Yes, he was a rather liberal Democrat, but I was 14 and didn't know any better. My dad headed up the county Democratic party at the time, but my Riegle work was an effort independent of him.

It might be time to break that 30-year drought. I'm not planning on turning into a "Huckabee apologist," as Josh Clayborn dubbed Joe earlier today. For instance, I'm still up to calling Joe's most recent post "more 'So's your old man Romney' than a solid defense of Huckabee" in the comments over at In the Agora.

Huckabee seems to be the best choice in the Republican field and one of the most all-around appealing candidates in a while. Worth sticking your neck out a bit for.

New Pastor, New Blog

I took in my first service at Victory Baptist this morning, taking in a nice Sunday School class and a solid service. The music was a solid mix of non-fluffy modern praise, including the first time that I can recall doing Aaron Shust's My Savior, My God in a church setting.

"Lead" pastor David Head gave a good sermon on Genesis 29-31 and all the problems Jacob ran into, including "getting pimped by his own wife" in Genesis 30-14:18. In his prologue to the sermon he, without mentioning him by name, ripped Joel Osteen a new one for his overemphasis on victorious pain-free living; sometimes, even the faithful have rough stretches.

He also criticized our avoidance of pain; we try to insure our health (duck graphic), our cars (caveman and gecko graphic) and buy insurance against heartburn with various purple pills. For someone who just got through three years of unemployment, having a pastor who recognizes that life isn't always rosy is helpful.

He's also a new blogger, having kicked off a Ponder Anew blog this week. It looks like it may well be more than a lame pastoral-blog-as-announcement-board; Head was a contributer to the Board's Head Tavern site and seems to have the blog art-form down, especially with a critique of Evan Almighty and the marketing thereof.

Interesting. A blogging pastor.

Health Blogging

At church last night, one of the ladies of the church was asking for prayer for newborn Autumn and was reading from her dad's blog about her having to go down to Ann Arbor for dialysis. Being a blogger, that caught my interest; I got home, and jammed [Autumn Dialysis "Ann Arbor"] into Google's blog searcher, and got the family blog. Here's part of the Tuesday entry that we heard at church.

I just left the room a few minutes ago - Autumn was producing a tiny bit of urine on her own. The nurses and the doctors are ecstatic (as is her family). Keep praying - the Great Physician is still listening. He is still holding her!! We love you all and are so encouraged by your many comments to us on the blog. You are a blessing!!

Since then, the Hesses have posted some more, they're sucessfully "praying for pee."

Autumn's catheter for dialysis and for urination are inserted through her belly button (most tubes are right now). The catheter is seeping and leaking some dialysis fluids and urine. They have attempted to tighten this catheter with tape and if they can't "fix the leak" the other option is a surgical insertion of a permanent catheter (permanent until another surgery to remove). So...we must pray for pee...(the nurse asked for us to perform a pee dance, ha ha) If she urinates a good amount with this dieuretic they will take the catheter out completely and let her be on her own...The timeframe for this extra urination is this evening until morning.

If possible, we don't want her body to have to undergo the trauma of a surgery, please - pray for her body to urinate above and beyond and produce more than she has yet...In the last three hours she produced 9cc's, 4cc's and 7cc's so it's starting to work...another dosage of diueretic is on the menu yet this evening.

Some prayers from the Peanut Gallery for Autumn are called for.

On another front, we've got my cousin-in-law Matt, who just got done with a long run of chemo for lymphoma; I've mentioned his plight earlier this year. He might, depending on tests results he'll get in a few weeks, need a bone marrow transplant; the good news is that his sister is a match. While things are improving, he could use some extra prayer as well.

Blogization Musings

It's interesting to see how blogs and blog-style interaction are changing the media. One area that I find interesting is the Washington Post adding a Technorati listing of who's blogged on the article; I'll occasionally get surprised by a WaPo incoming link if I've linked to a piece of theirs. Since they tend to archive their articles after a week or so, I tend not to use them for links, but sometimes the reportage of the WaPo makes that a must-link.

For instance, as I go to press, three blogs have chimed in on this piece on Israeli PM Olmert refusing to lift their embargo on Lebanon until they get back the two IDFers that Hezbollah snagged. It doesn't look good there, since the discussion seems to have gone back to where we started; Hezbollah's not going to be disarmed by either the Lebanese army or the UN and they want a quid-pro-quo from Israel on prisoners before the two Israeli soldiers are released.

The other interesting thing on my radar is from Toronto's Globe and Mail; they have allowed people to post comments on articles. They also have a part of each page noting the most commented-upon articles; that might be a shrewed way to get eyeballs to see ads, by getting their active Web readers to come back to see the back-and-forth of debate on a piece

I don't think I've ever seen an 18-screen article on the web before, but this long essay on Liberal party leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff has 183 comments. Wading through the piece was interesting; his career has morphed from academic historian to public intellectual to public policy academic to Canadian politician. He's no saint, but he's a sharp cookie; Canada could do far worse.

When you run for party leader, you're essentially running for prime minister, since the party leader becomes the prime minister if his party's in power. Thus, a party leadership race is a loose analog to a presidential nomination race in the US.

It's cheeky for a freshman MP to run for a leadership position, picture a freshman member of Congress with no prior experience in elected office start running for President and be taken seriously. However, Ignatieff's got enough gravitas to create a black hole. He might just pull it off; they'll be having the vote in December.

Servant-Blogging vs Self-Blogging

One thing that I've been reflecting on this PM is how to properly treat blogging. Most blogging is done on a selfish basis; getting things off your chest, putting in your $0.02 worth, hanging out at the cyber-water cooler/pub/back fence. Not that there's anything particularly sinful about that (God's given us things to enjoy, and the Web's one of them), but that it's blogging to have fun, rather than blogging to serve God.

What I'm wondering is how I (and others) can use our blogs to serve others and serve God. When you look at things that way, it takes pontificating on the NBA free agent market or the latest political twists and turns down multiple pegs.

How can I serve you, the readers of the Peanut Gallery? What kind of writing would improve your lives and walk with the Lord? What topics would you like to see me tackle?

Conversely, for the reader-bloggers in the crowd, how might you change your blogging if you wanted to serve your readers rather than just use your blog as your personal soapbox/op-ed page?

What sayeth thou?

The Web Giveth, the Web Taketh Away

I'm not quite sure I have all my thoughts yet lined up over the ultra-quick crash-and-burn of Ben Domenech's WaPo blog; charges of plagiarism has cause the plug to be pulled in under a week. That's a bitter pill, since Ben's been one of the good guys in the Blogosphere and a friend of this blog. Even after all this, I'll still be glad to call him an on-line friend who's still welcome here.

I've talked to him on the phone, but I've never met Ben in person. I've had more than one initiation to visit him; he heads up a fantasy football league of bloggers I'm in that's been going since 2002, and I've had to pass on being at Ben's place in person for the league draft the last two Augusts.

I've yet to fully digest the extent of the plagiarism charges; the lion share seems to have come from his freshman year in college. However, since he's had a meteoric rise to prominence, that was only seven years ago. The Web has allowed good writing to find an audience quicker than in years past and Ben has benefited from that Web-enabled upward mobility.

What the Web giveth, the Web taketh away; blessed be the name of the Web¹. It allowed his enemies to, as the saying goes, "fact check his ass." The Google-enabled plagiarism checks wouldn't have been there a decade ago to do the fine-tooth-comb treatment on his college paper writings.

I'm reminded of the Janet Cooke scandal that hit the WaPo a few decades ago; they didn't find out that her Pulitzer-winning reportage was fiction (and that her resume was as well) until after she got the award. Here, Ben lasts less than a week.

There's a tendency to shoot the messenger on this one, as many on the right side of the Blogosphere have, discounting the charge since it's Kossacks dissing one of our own; many of their non-plagiarism comments were far from chipmunk-friendly. However, we still have to figure out how to deal with this information even if we don't like the source; it was within the WaPo's rights to ditch Ben for this.

There's a bit of a "chilling effect" here; even though Ben was in the wrong for what he did, the idea that his foes would be spending a lot of man-hours sifting through his college writings to check for plagiarism is bracing, making me think whether I forgot to cite something somewhere in my blog history. Over 6291 posts (the count as of now over four-plus years), I'm not sure someone could find a boo-boo, where I did a cut-and-paste and forgot to cite what I pulled; I can say with a straight face that I haven't intentionally done that, but I could see where I might have grabbed a paragraph and forgotten to indent it and provide a link.

However, I'm merely an unemployed former college professor, not a Washington Post columnist. I'm not worth a Kossack's time to give the white-glove treatment to my writings. They'd come up empty or close-to-empty in my case, anyways.

I'm praying that Ben learns from this lesson and lands on his feet. It might cost him his Regnary job; I'm not sure if they'll have the interest in cutting him some slack on this issue. He might be brought down a peg, but I'm praying that he finds a good job that can use his skills, even if it might not be in political writing.

Godspeed, Ben. Remember to site your sources from now on and draw close to God through it all.

¹ Just to cover my kiester , I'm borrowing that from Job in the Bible.

Worldly Thoughts

Bene asked why I was writing over at World magazine's blog. Here's the easy answer I gave this morning.

The "how" was that I got an invite from World's blogmeister (and Peanut Gallery regular) Joe Carter to be part of a contest that would add the winning blogger(s) to World's blog roster; it was open to anyone, but Joe gave me an e-mail shout-out to try.

I got through to an 8-person semifinal round, where we made entries into a seperate contest blog. I'm one of four people to make it through to a final round that is ongoing. We're now posting to their main blog (but being edited; that's a novel feeling).

I'm not sure if that's the "why" you're looking for. If the question's "Why would you want to write for World?", that's a more interesting question, to be answered later today.

Much later, to be exact. It's almost midnight.

Does my writing there expand God's kingdom? Possibly.

If I'm doing it just to get my writing better exposed, it's not good. However, if I am a good thinker and writer, getting that writing better exposed may well be good.

If I'm doing it to indulge in intellectual name-dropping (getting e-mails from Marvin Olasky, arguably the father of Compassionate Conservatism, is a bit mind-blowing), it's not good.  However, if my writing is good, having friends in high places doesn't hurt.

If I can bring some interesting issues before the blog's readers and give them a better understanding of current events, it is good.

 There are some less-than-godly reasons and some godly ones. I'm trying to weed out the former.

No, It's More Like Diarrhea

Interesting little piece on NBA journeyman Paul Shirley, who did a blog for the Suns last year. This is a cute paragraph-

After the limited success of my blog (short for "web log"; also synonymous, it would seem, with either the wicked end result of massive constipation or the ill-conceived name of an alien race from a bad science-fiction sequel), ESPN contacted me about the prospect of perhaps writing for its Web site.

"Feeling bloggy? Try Ex-lax." No, bloggers are more often accused of verbal diarrhea, not constipation.

However, the last one is plausible; the Blog Collective, forming strange ties unaltered humans don't quite understand. Once altered, you will be assimilated. Resistant is futile, unless you disconnect.

He Ain't Heavy, He's Bene

Send up some prayers for a core member of the Peanut Gallery; Bene Diction's looking to hang 'em up.

The reasons are simple: spam, mad money and burnout.
Nothing profound.
I don't do good-byes well, I'm sorry about that.
What a joy all of you have been. I've seen grace.
I am so much richer than I was three years ago, you helped change a life, you matter very much.
Thank you, merci.
Blog on!

Bene's filled an interesting niche as a politically centrist Canadian evangelical; in a GodBlog universe filled with Yankee theocons, Bene's been a valuable counter-weight from the ancient days of the spring of 2002, where Bene co-blogged with Martin Roth.  Bene's been a friend as well, quick with an encouraging comment when I've needed it.

I'm hoping that we can talk Bene out of retiring. The money part can be arranged; Bene's friends can round up the money to keep the site up. The desire to blog might not be changed; some people write for a few years and hit the wall.

Don't be a stranger, Bene. The comment section's always open to you.

There are No Atheists in Hurricane Shelters

The Weather Channel coverage of Rita had one of their field guys in Seabrook, TX. I remember from three years ago a blog called The People's Republic of Seabrook blogging on Tropical Storm Fay. It's not one of my regular haunts, but I did have it bookmarked.

Well, the lead blogger from that site's out of town on a trip and worried sick.

I left yesterday on my three-day road trip to Williamsburg wondering what might happen. By the time I picked up I-30 at Hope, AR, Susan called me with the bad news. So there I was, several hundred miles away, unable to do anything but worry. When I checked into my hotel in Memphis, the first thing I did was turn on CNN, and I’ve been glued to whatever news I can get ever since.

Susan is still in Seabrook, and that is part of why I’m so scared. With each phone call from her, she has understandably become progressively more distraught, almost to the point of being inconsolable. Right now, I’m 1100+ miles away, and there is nothing I can do to help her. Because of the mandatory evacuation, she will be going to Hobby Airport tonight, and she’ll be spending the night in the airport. Tomorrow morning, she’ll catch a flight to Richmond, where, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be picking her up.
...

I don’t know what we’ll be returning to. One of our neighbors may be staying put, so there is at least a decent possibility we may be able to get a status update once the storm passes. All I know right now is that I am as scared as I have ever been, and I’m too far away to be able to help the woman I love more than anything else in the world. Helpless? Now there’s an understatement….

I’m not a Christian, but I know that many of you are. I’m not normally one to ask for divine intervention, but at this point we need all the help we can get. When y’all hit your knees before you go to sleep tonight, please send a few up for us. We’re going to need it.

Roger that.

Prayer for a Fallen Comrade

Pray for Lee Anne Millinger-she's in the hospital and may need to go on dialysis; her husband's been posting updates.

This Week in Blog History

2004-

Ronzo's funeral was topic A; here's my political eulogy and a compare-and-contrast with FDR.

We're still waiting for the appeal of William Baptist's conviction to reach the Supreme Court.

2003-

A fairly slow news week. The beginnings of the Gray Davis recall are being noticed and David Brinkley and Gregory Peck left this mortal coil.

Here's a good piece on the Moonies and the GOP, and another goodie on the prospect of Alberta becoming the 51st state (how many others miss Den Beste?).

2002-

I was alone in Florida prior to getting married and cranking out way too many long essays, including a three parter on economic theory, a look at a bad (or at least hopelessly liberal) textbook.

Josh Clayborn was just starting up his personal blog and giving me way to many kudos that never materialized. My readership's actually dropped in the last few year, even if the linkage has risen.