Blogs

AKM is an acronym for AkMuckraker which is a name choice for the author of the great blog from Alaska called Mudflats with the subtitle Tiptoeing Through the Muck of Alaskan Politics. AKM has a very interesting new post, Troopergate’s Strange Bedfellows. Well, worth checking out, including perusing the over 200 responses so far. Will be interesting to see what happens up there on October 10.

I find I’m hooked. Hooked on the Web. It’s just so easy to keep clicking and clacking, going here and there, looking at this, reading that. Lots of good stuff online. And blogging takes up much of this time, if one wants to do it right, and, yes, have fun in doing it. But in this surfing and blogging I’ve found books to read and gone ahead and ordered them. But when can I read them? Not while I’m online, not while I’m blogging and surfing and clicking and clacking.

So, I’ve got to take a break. Try to rejoin the real world for a while, read my books, do non-online things.

So, thanks fellow bloggers for looking at this blog and for your many great comments. I’ll be back later, after I’ve detoxed a bit.

It has no definite focus, but has spent a lot of time on politics, to be sure. Still, I’m interested in other things: music, philosophy, religion, science, and last but not least humor. Personal things, like diaries, photos, and accounts of vacations, are also here.

So, why do I do it?

I have maybe a few loyal readers and even fewer who comment. I do want comments very badly. Why? Because it tells me people have read something I wrote. Maybe if I got nasty comments I’d be unhappy, but at least there’d be comments. I hope I could handle with grace, humor and/or politeness the comments that disagree with me or are nasty. But I just haven’t had many of those, if any.

C’mon guys, insult me!

It’s true, I’m an old guy. Maybe a lot of would be commenters write off this blog because of my age. What’s that old coot talking about? Oh well, not much I can do about that.

Incidentally, a subject I’ve always been fascinated with is consciousness.
What is consciousness? Where is it? I feel a new post about this coming on……

OH, how boring! some of you may be thinking, but what can I do, I’m fascinated by the subject.

OK, over and out.

The Talking Points Memo (TPM) by Josh Marshall has now become a blog portal with a full news section. (I’ve got TPM listed under ALTERNATIVE MEDIA in my right sidebar.) TPM has always been my favorite political blog, outside of the unbeatable Juan Cole, and now it’s got this great new format. Links to reports on TPMmuckraker, Election Central and TPMCafe with descriptions now appear on TPM making it a blog portal. The news section is great. In fact there are a bunch of red hot stories there right now, e.g., another GOP hypocrite — Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) exposed by Larry Flynt. It seems his phone number is on the D.C. Madam’s list.

Juan Cole who started Informed Comment, his blog on the Middle East, has started a new group blog called Informed Comment Global Affairs. Here’s an excerpt from his announcement:

The problem with keeping up a successful blog is that one has to do an entry every day or readers forget to come back to you. I found this out through early experiments at IC, where traffic fell off dramatically if I missed days, even weekends. Most journalists, analysts and academics don’t have time to blog daily, and therefore don’t blog.

This reminds me of my own problem with this blog, not that I’m a journalist, analyst or academic. I’ve started again to make a post every day, after a lapse for a few weeks there, in the hopes I might improve traffic here a little, not necessarily to catch a virus though, LOL.

Getting back to Juan and his new group blog, he’s got a lot of Middle East experts on the new blog with info on Iran and Afghanistan in addition to Iraq and the Isreali-Palestinian crises. Even though “Global Affairs” is in the title, it appears to have its focus on the Middle East. Here’s a good way to get educated but of course it all takes time, time, and more time.

Riverbend has been blogging from Baghdad since 2003 and is finally leaving. Baghdad Burning is her blog title and she describes her blog thusly: Girl Blog from Iraq… let’s talk war, politics and occupation. Her subtitle is … I’ll meet you ’round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend… I particularly like that little poem. Here’s hoping she and her family can get out safely and find a place to stay.