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The lightest, holidayish, news of all has just reached me about a team from the Cowboy (canetoad) Country in search for a question which has baffled science for centuries: Is bovine lesbianism in domesticated cattle a stress reaction caused by environmental pressures? ]
Stretching a little irony and satire into a libel charge Bloggers are Internet version of sad guys with police radios Nick Coleman writes: Do bloggers have the credentials of real journalists? No. Bloggers are hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to police radios in their bachelor apartments and think they were involved in the world. ...Most bloggers are not fit to carry a reporter's notebook Is the blogosphere a beehive of activity or a hornet's nest?

The Blog, The Pajamahadeens, The Press, The Media: Erasing the Dragon tail: Different Noise
The NY Times Magazine article on blogs makes the same old error. Viewing blogs through the media lens, only the left-hand of the side of the power curve is visible. As Matthew Klam, the article's author says:
In a recent national survey, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that more than two million Americans have their own blog. Most of them, nobody reads!
Thus, the tail of the power curve — which is probably at least 5 million blogs long — gets erased. In fact, the tail is where blog are having their most important effects. That's where self and community, public and private, owned and shared are re-drawing their boundaries.
• Remembering the religion in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. A karass according to the cheerful prophet is the secret team to which one's destiny is tied, which one might not even know exists; [ courtesy of Bill Ives ]
• · The company's most popular blogger is a marketer known as MaryMaryQuiteContrary. Fortune Magazine Advises: It's Hard to Manage if You Don't Blog; [Sir Tim Berners-Lee Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, but he had something bigger than Media Dragon in mind all along ]
• · · Markos Moulitsas of dailykos tells how US liberals have fought back against rightwing domination of the media; [ Blogs are shaping up to become commonwealth assets of historic proportions End the journalism world's monopoly on seats at the debates, and bring in real experts to grill the candidates]
• · · · The wisdom of Apple, as defined by Garry Barker and chief executive Steve Jobs, is that software is the company's core business; the right stuff that makes the real difference for plain folks as well as digital-age jet jockeys: Shake, rattle and roll Cold River; [Supersize the screen, please ]
• · · · · Steven Levy Memo to Bloggers: Heal Thyselves ; [What happened to most of the Antipodean bloggers? Except for Road to Surfdom, most have been lost and never to be found!
• · · · · · Matthew Klam The New York Times Magazine, a cover story on blogging and the electoral campaign ; [How a political speechwriter dumped the pols, fled the office and found honest work ]