We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Beyond clueless about blogging It is better to be thought a fool than to
open one’s mouth and remove all doubt
– attributed to various folks
The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper more famous for what happens on page three than its news reporting, has an article on their website called Blogging for your votes written by Corinne Abrams. There are three pictures of young people representing the main parties and under each there is a link to view their ‘blogs’.
Click on one of the links and you get taken to a pop-up window rather like a non-interactive comment pop-up with a single scraggly bit of undated and unlinkable polemical text about their party and views… perhaps I am missing something (if so please set me right!) but that actually appears to be their “blog”!  
Is that really what The Sun thinks a blog is? Given the amount written about blogs in the media these days and the number of journalists who have their own blogs, to drop such a clanger seems extraordinary.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Any relationship between the Sun (and its ilk) and a newspaper must surely be accidental.
Even more staggering is the idea that these three clueless saps would inspire anyone to do anything.
Weirdly, the Tory does appear to be a blog (albeit with the strangest CMS ever), with separate dated entries; the other two do not.
John b: that is a new addition since I first looked at this article. Even so, that is still not a blog.
I just looked, and they have ALL turned into identikit “blogs” of precisely two entries. No comments, links or trackbacks though. Someone at the Sun must know enough about blogs to have read the comments and acted on them, but it’s still a poor show. And I used to think t hat Trevor Kavanagh was fairly clued up!
Tragic. Quite tragic. Persuade youngsters to vote using these hip young candidates (a Tory funky house DJ – too cool!) and a hip new medium; the blog. Pity the aforementioned “blogs” are so patently contrived. This whole exercise reeks of old gits trying oh-so-hard to get down with the yoof culture.* We young’uns can smell this kind of pathetic posturing a mile off and tend to run in the opposite direction. If young people think voting is uncool, after they’ve read these “blogs” they will only think it’s even more naff.
*not to say that blogs are a young person’s domain, however that is the perception in some media and advertising circles. Even Rupert Murdoch thinks so!
Just as we get that from The Sun the Evening Standard follows up with somewhat odd article by John Sullivan (Page 57 of tonight’s paper, only available online to those who pay for it) lamenting how there are no UK election blogs comparable to those during the US elections. He then goes on to mention one Melanie Phillips’ blog and a not-so-unfamiliar one called Samizdata … unfortunately his link was printed as http://www.samizdata.net.blog
Andrew KInsman writes:
“And I used to think t hat Trevor Kavanagh was fairly clued up!”
Why on earth did you think that? It seems to me that the only qualification Trevor Kavanagh ever had was working out, to the most precise measurement, exactly how high Rupert Murdoch commanded him to jump.
It seems to be a law that whenever a British newspaper (with the exception of The Guardian) mentions blogging in a British context, it’s always to do with politicians blogging, even though the excitement surrounding the blogosphere has little to do with politicians doing it.
Blogs have comments. Everything else is advertising.
Whilst I prefer blogs with comments (obviously), I do not think they are essential or a defining characteristic of blogs by any means (Instapundit being an obvious example of a blog without comments). What they *do* absolutely need is being in reverse chronological order and (above all) being permalinkable!
I wonder if the Sun would care to give the lovely Arianna Stassinopoulos-Huffington a hand with her blog?
Proverbs 17:28 Even a fool is considered wise if he keeps silent; he is considered intelligent if he keeps his mouth closed.
I read somewhere that half of our language comes from the Bible and the other from Shakespeare. Few realize this since it’s a rare individual who reads either.