Last Friday was the last Friday of the month, and that meant a meeting at my place. Libertarian Samizdata supremo Perry de Havilland talked about blogging, and many of those present were either blog bosses (Perry, Patrick Crozier of UK Transport, Andrew Dodge of Dodgeblog) or blog contributors (such as Samizdatans Tom Burroughes, David Carr and me).
The dark horse in the herd was Chris Cooper. He has written a number of things for the Libertarian Alliance over the years. One of my favorites of his was the first Personal Perspectives piece we ever published called Mere Anarchy, and he was writing about why Free Market Broadcasting would be a good idea long before most people realised that such a thing was possible, let along desirable. But he has been too busy working, raising a family, etc., to do as much libertarian writing since then as we’d all have liked. An ideal blogger, in other words. So I was especially glad when he showed up on Friday. And, it turns out that for the last month Chris Cooper has been doing Chris Cooper’s Blog (CCB from now on). Having glanced through CCB in amazement on Friday night, I gave it a proper read on Saturday.
Perry made a distinction in his talk between “mezines” and “pundit” blogs. CCB, rather like Natalie Solent‘s Blog, looks to be both. Like Natalie, Chris is an uncompromising libertarian but he doesn’t hit you over the head with it all the time. And when he does it can take a few seconds to register, such a tabby cat does he usually seem, what with writing about other things besides libertarianism.
You’ll probably need a longer attention span for CCB than for your average blog. It’s more like a nineteenth century gentleman’s diary, kept as much for its author’s pleasure, now and in later decades, as for anyone else’s benefit. If you want to read CCB over Chris’ shoulder you’re very welcome, but he’s not begging. But just like those nineteenth century gentleman he can write, I promise you.
CCB has not so far been strong on links, but this may merely be because Chris has yet to master the technicalities of that. I know the feeling. If that’s so, the fact that Patrick Crozier was deep into technical confabulation with Chris over my computer on Friday night could prove significant. In particular, CCB‘s left hand bit, now decidedly blank, should soon come alive.
I shan’t organise my life around Chris Cooper’s Blog, not yet. But I will be giving it a look every few days.
