Wednesday, April 23, 2003

I took the weblog survey referenced at Instapundit. It's OK and certainly a useful way to advance the understanding of a newish medium, but it is also a little restrictive and stuck in the world of old media rules and norms. It feels like a project that grew out of the latest "discovery" of weblogs by a wider audience during the Iraq war. For example, there are questions that compare weblogs to other media in ways that don't quite mesh with my experience, eg, they ask you to view weblogs as a somewhat monolithic category and make blanket statements about them in comparison to, say, TV news outlets, about which it is much easier and more accurate to generalize. And there are other unneeded constraints, like a question on what type of politics prevail at the blogs you visit, and you can only pick one of five answers from "very conservative" thru "moderate" to "very liberal," with no way to say "All of the above and categories you haven't even considered." But I'm on deadline, so of course I completed the whole thing. 5:54:30 PM

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Forced deblogging in Hartford. Denis Horgan: "It is with the most profound regret that I am compelled to announce that the editor of The Hartford Courant, a proud and wonderful newspaper of which I am honored to count myself a staff member, has ruled that I am no longer allowed to operate a column on this web page." Via Romenesko. 5:45:41 PM

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Joel on Software: "This week, both InformationWeek and Baseline have feature stories about new technology at Delta Air Lines, so it's a good opportunity to benchmark Baseline, a new IT magazine from Ziff Davis, to its old school press-release republishing counterparts...while the InformationWeek article is just a poor rewrite of bland warmed-over press releases and vague generalizations, the Baseline article is detailed, interesting, and specific." 5:37:59 PM

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IsThatLegal: "Where are Howard Coble's Priorities?" According to this article, John Edwards is either doing quite well as a presidential candidate, or not. I like Slate's car column by Mickey Kaus. Glad I didn't get the new T-bird for my midlife crisis. 11:31:23 AM

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There should be a better word than "atheist" for people who don't believe in God. "Atheism" is a frame of reference in which "theism" is the default position or at least a viable option. But many of the atheists I know don't define themselves against belief in the supernatural, but in more affirmative ways that are not rooted in theism or its rejection. They don't believe they can fly, either, but they don't call themselves "aflightists." To identify them by their nonbelief becomes an incorrect expression of what they do believe. "Post-theist" or "non-theist" have the same problem. 11:21:23 AM

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© Copyright 2003 Ed Cone.