Answering a Question With a Question

Instapundit asks:

ARE BLOGGERS a sickly lot?

I counter:

ARE BLOGGERS a fertile lot?

Evidence:

  • The Patriette:
      It will be the first time we’ve seen each other since I found out that I was pregnant back in September!
  • VodkaPundit:
      One last thing. Assuming I can get online from the hospital, I’ll be liveblogging the birth sometime in the next four-to-14 days. That is, assuming Melissa doesn’t break all my fingers in the process.
  • My beautiful wife:
      I’m still alive and well. Though not always feeling 100% of late, but that’s ok. There’s a little Noggle due to arrive on June 30, 2006.
  • Sarah K.
      ok, so we’re on the Disney Magic, having a magical time. we’ve just arrived back in our room after dinner at Palo, the super-fancy restaurant on the ship….

    (give them time, they’re just married….)

Sickly, but fertile? Or is the blogosphere just a large Tarot card dataset from which you can derive data to support any conclusion?

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N00bs

Check out this guy. Trying to bask in my reflected fame, brah, is no way to read a book, as you’ll strain your eyes.

That’s right, it’s my semi-literate brother starting a blog. He’s got one insightful post with post-therapy recovered “memories”, but never fear, ladies….he’s got a full profile so you can see what a chunk of man he is.

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What Kind Of Blogger Are You?

Dustbury asks, sorta, and I answer in comments:

I tend to be more of an eighth type of blogger, the search-phrase blogger, who derives most of his traffic for weird fetishes explainable only by combinations of seemingly random terms.

Sad, but true: Although I’ve been doing this rather steadily for 2.5 years, my beautiful wife draws more traffic because of her legs than I do for my wit.

You see? You clicked the link above because I sorta said “beautiful legs.”

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Some Libertarians Up There Love Me

A shout out to Kevin Craig for Congress, the official blog of the Libertarian candidate for Missouri’s 7th District.

I was formerly listed as a Republican Blogger in the sidebar, but I see now I’m a Missouri blogger. Thanks, Jake (the Missouri Libertarian), for not pigeonholing me. Remember, although I’ve never had a Republican candidate for Senate at one of my parties, I did keep up drinking with the Libertarian candidate for Senate at my thirtieth birthday party.

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LILEKS PLEADS GUILTY TO OBSTRUCTION OF GEEKISM CHARGES!

James Lileks on Monday:

As a wise giant said in “The Princess Bride” – “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

James Lileks recants yesterday:

And yes, I attributed the “Princess Bride” quote to the wrong hero. At least the number of people pointing that out exceeded the number of people who thought Vonnegut made some brave points. There’s hope. See you tomorrow.

I demand a special prosecutor convene a grand jury to determine why Lileks’ story changed. He was holding out, trying to mislead Congress and the American people, and should serve time in a Federal prison like every other public conservative who makes a mistake!

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Geek Checking Lileks

Lileks in today’s Screedblog:

As a wise giant said in “The Princess Bride” – “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Lileks is a geek pop culture poser!!1!! It was the Spaniard who said that as the Dread Pirate Roberts’ ship caught up with Vizzini near the Cliffs of Insanity, not the giant!

(Pardon me as I cling futilely to the cultural touchstones of my generation of geeks; as The Princess Bride nears its 20th anniversary, I realize a whole generation of geeks grew up after it.)

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Query on the Blogoschism, Wherein Brian Joins the Navel Gazing That Only Appeals to Other Bloggers and Not Casual Readers

Does the whole Open Source Media imbroglio (briefly touched on at The American Mind), with its partisans shrieking that it’s great and it’s made a couple of mistakes but it’s going to revolutionize the blogosphere and its antagonists mocking it as a means of funnelling venture capital and advertising revenue from the rich to the leaders of Open Pajamas Media at the expense of the lesser serf blogs in OPM….

Does this strike anyone else as a sincere, authentic recreation of The Alliance of Free Blogs versus the Axis of Naughty?

This new medium has indeed re-written things. History has repeated itself first as comedy, then as tragedy.

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False Dichotomy of Thinkers vs. Linkers

Jay Tea at Wizbang! reminds us about Stephen Den Beste’s categorization of bloggers as:

  • Thinkers, who write essays and whatnot.
  • Linkers, who post links and say, “Heh.” or “Indeed.”

However, this simple dichotomy overlooks the third type of blogger: the lister.

The lister type of blogger:

  • Embraces the numbered or bulleted list as a means of communication.
  • Often dashes off lists of related items important to the blogger.
  • Relates favorites in movie or music, often specializing in:
    • One
    • The other
    • Both
  • Participates in and spread “memes” which contain lists of questions or simple lists for other bloggers to fill out.

The beauties of the list blog include:

  • Not needing to assemble complete paragraphs; all you need is a topic sentence or a topic fragment.
  • Lists easily translatable into PowerPoint presentations, with neat transition effects.
  • Take up lots of vertical space on the blog, ensuring that the content column is longer than the blogroll.
  • Could make blogger as famous, wealthy, and respected as Chris White.

These blogs show signs of listery from time to time:

So the thinkers and linkers polar axis needs to accommodate a new dimension: those of us who don’t necessarily think nor necessarily link but do, in fact, blog incessantly.

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