Serious Eats.

Found this great new food site, Serious Eats. Lots of different things, articles, links to noteworthy food-related posts on the webs, and a Serious Eaters forum with recipes, advice and such. The newest frontier in recipes is videos demonstrating how to do it, and they have lots of them here. Very nice site, well done. Found this nice video all about choosing cheeses, thought I'd note it for future reference, I can never remember these things. Interesting details on the differences between goat, sheep and cow cheeses.


Looks like they're doing an ongoing series of videos about barbecuing. Have to keep that in mind too. This site is kinda fun. Like the Food Channel, except you can pick what you want to watch.






Seventh annual weblog awards: 2007 Bloggies.

The voting is on the for the Seventh annual weblog awards: the 2007 Bloggies. I really don't care about the voting or who wins, but it's always interesting checking out the nominees for new and interesting blogs. Almost anyone who makes it to the finals is probably worth reading. I always find someone new.






Koufax award winners announced.

The folks at Wampun have announced the winners of this years Koufax Awards. Lots of great blogs listed there besides these winners.
I'm not really a big fan of these awards since I object to the efforts made to institutionalize divisions in the US which I don't think really exist, and since I don't happen to believe that very many, if any, of these people qualify as "leftist." For one thing, they support the Democratic party, which is awfully right-wing these days, although they wish to deny it. But I do appreciate all of the work they put into it.






Iranian bloggers for peace.

Via Alternet's News Log I found that there are about 75,000 blogs in Iran. And a new group called Iranian Bloggers for Peace.





2004 Koufax Award winners.

The folks over at Wampum have just announced the Winners of the 2004 Koufax Awards. Lots of links to interesting blogs over there, although most of the them are the standard ones.

I know the folks at Wampum put in a lot of work to do these awards, but I can't say I'm all that impressed. I personally thought the behaviour of the so-called "leftist" blogosphere during the election year was abominable: dishonest, rude, irresponsible, and hypocritical. I was really disgusted, and still am. And to call themselves the "Left" while supporting someone like Kerry, whose proudest boast is that he volunteered to go kill commies is rather appalling. I don't see anything "leftist" about the ideas and policies promoted by most of these blogs. I think they're mostly about attempting to evade responsibility for their actions by blaming everything on Bush and the Republicans. Which is kinda disgusting.

And yes, they are dishonest. Especially in the failure to acknowledge and address the incredible corruption and corporate malfeasance of so many of the Democratic politicians. But what do I know?

Sorry I sound so angry, but I think most of these people are living in a dream world, and by doing so making things worse not better. For instance, leading people to believe that there's even the most remote chance that the Democrats would change or improve anything is ridiculous and immature.






Women and blogging.

Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly made a post about the lack of women editorializing or blogging on politics, or what he perceives to be a lack this. As you would expect, he got lots of responses.


That's just a small part of them. It certainly is a subject that many women have strong feelings on. In any case, the discussion did at least bring up links to lots of interesting blogs by women.

Personally, I don't see any lack of women expressing their opinions on political matters. I just see the men in control not paying attention because they just don't want to address the fundamental problems. Which are that this is a very sexist society, still very much a man's world, and that the men want to keep it that way since they benefit from it.

I mostly now read female bloggers, since I find them more interesting and less likely to merely engage in useless Bush-bashing and an endless cycles of attacks. Also because I believe that the most crucial issue of our times is the role of women. This is what's behind the Islamic extremist, the Christian fundamentalist, the Jewish ones and so much more.

I think the majority of so-called A-list male bloggers are incredibly boring as well as sexist. It's true that the majority of them deliberately don't link to most of the women, but mostly to other A-list males who in turn link back to them. It's a vicious circle, and the ladies are quite right to be upset about it.






Visit the Bloggie nominees.

Courtesy of the folks at Fairvue Central are the nominations for the Fifth Annual Weblog Awards, aka the Bloggies. Voting is now closed, with the results to be announced in March.

The list of nominees always provides many interesting links. Such as This Fish Needs A Bicycle, up for weblog of the year. ("A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.") South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog is another one of the best weblog nominees, tho it seems to me a site that only began during the last week of the year doesn't quite fit the category.

Gothamist, centered on New York, is the other best blog nominee that I'd never heard of. (Didn't strike me as best blog material, but your mileage may vary.) The other two, Wonkette and Boing Boing, being old standards; and, while both are pretty good, also don't strike me as the best out of all of them. But what do I know?






Brass Crescent Awards.

City of Brass, a Muslim blogging center, has announced the winners of the Brass Crescent Awards, which is for the best blogs in or on the Muslim community. Lots of interesting links there.


Not surprised that Riverbend won the best Iraqi blog for Baghdad Burning. Incredible, heartfelt writing. Wish she could blog more than she does, but I'm amazed that without electricity, phones, water or heat that the Iraqis are able to do it at all. At least she speaks the truth. Here's a quote from some of her posts on Fallujah.


And this is from a woman who just 18 months ago was rather friendly towards the Americans. Things have changed.



The Satan Pajama awards.

European weblog Fistful of Euros has announced the winners of their first annual Satan Pajama awards. Besides the winners listed below, all of the finalists and their share of votes are on the award page. There are a LOT of great blogs listed there.


Fistful of Euros does a great job of following the European blogosphere and Europe in general. There are lots of links on their home page.

I like the European weblogs for the different perspective, and, of course, their almost always rather hysterical ideas about the US. But it always bothers me to come across these blogs written by people whose native language isn't English at all, yet almost always have better spelling, grammar and vocabulary than most of the American ones. The same thing with the Iraqi blogs. It's really frightening to realize just how low the literacy level in the states is getting.






Guardian's best 100 web sites.

The Guardian has published a roundup of a hundred great web sites. It features the five best in twenty categories. It's a long list. Here are the Art and Reference sections:


I'd also have to add RefDesk, www.refdesk.com, to the list. It's got everything and then some.






Blog Africa.

Via the Guardian's weblog page is Blog Africa, a new center for African blogs of all kinds. It's at allafrica.com, a major African center. It's both a group blog and a catalog of them. Quite interesting. In numerous languages.






Carnival of the Canucks.

Reverend James Bow reviews the ever-growing Canadian blogosphere, at Carnival of the Canucks VI, apparently the latest in an ongoing series. He says there are now 7,181 of them, a figure he gets from Jim Elve's Blogs Canada. He doesn't review all of them, but quite a few. I see I'll have to make some additions to my blogroll.






Bloggies 2004 open for voting.

Every year the folks at Fairvue Central host the annual Bloggies Awards, which attempt to pick the best weblogs from around the world in a number of categories. This year's nominations have now been selected, based on users' recommendations, and are ready for voting.


Even if you're not into voting, it's a great place to see which sites are garnering the most attention, and to find lots of interesting places to visit. Although some of them may not even be around anymore, the winners and nominees for 2001, 2002, and 2003 still make for some interesting browsing.






Blogroll and links updated.

Finally updated and expanded the blogroll and link list on the home page. Added lots of new links of various kinds. Especially non-blogging related ones, such as news sources, various global organizations, the arts and so on. Along with some pithy comments about the increasing lack of objectivity and tolerance among so very many of the American sites. Just a personal opinion of course, but there you are.






Blogging communities.

Via the always interesting Burningbird, who's from Missouri, was a link to a page of St. Louis bloggers. Which in turn had a list of different blogging communities. Mostly in the US, but one to Calgary in Albera, Canada, and one in London.


Nothing from Oregon yet, where I live. But if you want links to Oregon stuff, bloggers and otherwise, try The Oregon Blog. They're in Portland. I'm in Eugene. Must be more bloggers here, but I haven't found them yet.






List of Iraqi blogs.

Came across this new Iraqi blog, Healing Iraq, written by a dentist there. Noticed he had a nice list of Iraqi blogs there, which I took and added to a bit. They'll all break your heart, but people should read them anyway. Some virulently anti-American, some pro-American, some in the middle.

But even the ones favorable to the US aren't at all happy with what the US military is doing these days. But they aren't happy about what the Islamic clergy is doing either, the latest development being the replacement of civil marriage laws by sharia, Islamic law. What a mess.


Curiously, all but one come courtesy of Blogspot, so at least some Americans must be doing something right.






Margaret Cho's excellent blog.

Thought I'd point to Margaret Cho's Blog which I find extremely interesting and well written. She has things to say, and no bones about saying them either. Frank and to the point.

It seems to me, and I could be mistaken, that most of the blogs are from white Americans, especially the so-called A-listers, and most seem fixated on this obsolete and irrelevant lefty-right nonsense. She, on the other hand, does a good job of expressing the viewpoint of the Asian-American, African-American, Hispanic-American and gay communities. Especially where they all come together, which they do quite a bit. Better than anyone else I can find

Her coverage of the recent MoveOn gathering, Magical Night with MoveOn.org, cheered me up a bit. You won't read about it in the white-corporate controlled media, but there's a lot of action going on in the rest of America.


Best of all she's funny as hell. As you'd expect from a comedian. Check out her post, Jobs and Economy Solution: Legalize Gay Marriage. That's hysterical. She's probably right though. All the gay marriages _would_ revitalize the florist industry. :)






Teenage bloggers have their own world.

Fascinating article in this week's NY Times Magazine by Emily Nussbaum, My So-Called Blog, on how blogging has become part of teen culture. Really amazing. I can't wait to see what happens when all of these kids grow up.






Top Canadian blogs.

Blogs Canada has a page of the Top Canadian Blogs. There is also a list of the Top Blogs - January 2004.

In case you were bored, or wanted to avoid discussions of the American election, which is already getting tiresome, and with nearly a whole year to go. Though I suppose even the Canadians are discussing it.

My personal favorite Canadian ones are the Vancouver-based caterina.net, by a charming woman into art, poetry and such, and the place I found the link to Blogs Canada to begin with, Wood s Lot, which is maybe the most consistently interesting, mentally stimulating and intellectually challenging site on the web. I always find something good to read there -- always. And you certainly can't say that about most sites, blogs or otherwise. There's a very long list of links there as well. May take a moment or two to load though, since they usually include a number of photos, paintings, lengthy poems and such. But it's worth it.






2003 Koufax Awards.

The folks at Wampum are having a competition to choose the 2003 Koufax Awards, what they consider the best "lefty" blogs of the year. I don't really understand what a "lefty" is, or how they can distinguish those from others, unless it's simply Bush-bashing, but it's worth checking out.

One of the categories is for Best Post of 2003. Their list of nominations, selected by their readers, makes for some interesting reading on a variety of topics.

Their list of nominees for Best Blog is also probably worth checking out. Heck, here's the complete list of them. I don't agree with a lot of their politics, but I have to agree that they're probably the best of the bunch, and it's convenient to have all of the links together.


The other category is Best Single Issue Blog.

I really must add at least some of these to my blogroll, although a few of them are already there.

Again, this does not constitute any sort of endorsement of the views expressed on these sites, especially all of the Bush-bashing. I dislike Bush as much as anyone, but corporate America was quite corrupt before he came along, and the Democrats are as much to blame as the Republicans, as far as I can see. Enron, WorldCom, et al, for example, all happened on Clinton-Gore's watch, not Bushes.

And as far as the Democrats being a party of "peace", I can only point out that they were in charge during World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and peacemonger Carter's dirty little Central American wars. Both parties are warmongers deluxe, and history would suggest that either party will get us into a great big ugly war.

I don't want to be that criticial since I believe their hearts are in the right place, and that they mean well, but they're not seeing the whole picture or dealing with the real problems, which run much, much deeper than the current Republican idiocies.

The word "protest" combines "pro" (to be in favor of something, as in "pro and con"), and "testify" (to stand up for something). Popular mythology notwithstanding, it doesn't mean to be AGAINST something, but to be FOR something. We all know what they're against. But what are they for? Until they figure that out all of the moaning and groaning will accomplish absolutely nothing. In fact it will make it worse since it just lets this corrupt system continue on and on and on. To think that Sheriff Dean will ride into Dodge and clean out the bad guys, and that everything will be fine is utterly ridiculous, to put it mildly. Ain't going to happen. Not this year, not next year, not ever.






Thanks to Userland for the blog-friendly links.

Dave Winer, long-time purveyor of Scripting News, and founder of Userland, has somehow persuaded the NY Times to allow bloggers to create special links to articles, links that continue to work even after they've entered the pay archives.

There's a special page that you can go to at the Times to create these links, which is here. And you don't even have to use a Userland blogging product, such as Radio Userland or Manila to take advantage of it. At least not yet. That's great.

I disagree with a lot of what Dave says. But I have to give credit where credit is due. This is a very nice and useful thing he, along with the Times themselves, have done which really helps blogging. He must have done some serious talking. I wonder if he's paying for this. There must have been some tit-for-tat involved. Or maybe the Times just sees the benefit in having people link to their articles. After all, you do have to go to their site to see them, which can only help them.

I still prefer linking to the Guardian and the Scotsman though, than the NY Times, since they don't hide their articles behind a money wall. They seem to be doing rather well without having to resort to this, which makes me wonder why the NY Times can't also afford to do so.

I'm also curious. Do many people really spend the money to purchase older articles? I never have, both because, quite frankly, I don't think the quality of their reporting justifies it, and because I think they're still way too expensive. Maybe if they made it less than a dollar, and made it easy to pay small amounts, but so far they haven't.






Best of British blogging 2003.

It's the "best of the year" time, and the Guardian has announced its choices for the Best of British Blogging 2003. The article on it is here, and the full list of blogs itself is here. Haven't had the chance to check out many of them yet, but it looks like a lot of interesting links.


The Guardian is one of the few major news sites that has really gotten on the blog bandwagon. Their own weblogs are here and here. For more, see their special report on blogging, an ongoing section with the latest develoments.






Asia weblog awards 2003.

Via Metafilter is this weblog, Flying Chair, which is running a contest for the Best Asian Weblogs of 2003. You can vote on the best of various countries and categories, until December 28, or just peruse the many interesting links. It's amazing what a global phenomenon this has become.



Weblogs comments spam getting out of hand.

Caterina over at caterina.net reports that she had to spend hours removing over 400 spam comments from her weblog. And that she's getting so frustrated with it she might even shut down her weblog. Which sure would be a shame, since she has a lot to say. Link here, the comments of which contain some useful advice in dealing with it.


This is horrible. "Spam comments" are a special type of spam that are inserted into the comments of individual weblog posts. There are utilities being made available to help block these, but it still is a serious problem. And illustrates the very real danger that spamming and other anti-social activities could really destroy the internet's potential as a forum for open discussion.

I really want to have comments on this site, which seems to me to be the real purpose of having a weblog. It's nice to express my own views, but it's the dialogue that ensues that really interests me. But, like her, I really don't have the time or technological expertise to deal with it all. I already spend way too much time deleting spam from my email as it is. There's got to be a way to stop this. Just has to be.






2003 Bloggie awards.

If you want to check out some interesting blogs try the 2003 Bloggies, the 3rd annual awards given in 30 categories. All selected by public nomination and voting. Also check out the awards from previous years; most of those blogs are still around. Courtesy of Fairvue Central. These came out a while ago, but the links are still interesting.

Weblog of the year is little. yellow. different. I'm not sure I see why, but there you are. A personal favorite is weblog wannabe, winner of the Best Asian Weblog all three years. I don't agree with most of these choices, but I do with that one. Here's a great quote I just found on her site.


He's quite right of course. People are always talking about the trials and tribulations of choosing a career as an artist, actor or anything else creative. But I don't think I've ever heard anyone express regret about that choice. Regrets about not being able to "make it" (whatever that is), or such. But not about trying. Not even once. Sure have heard lots and lots of people express regrets about choosing business careers, or about spending their whole lives working the same job. Beginning with my grandfather.






The Guardian's experiment in combining news and blogging.

The Guardian reports on its experimental use of blogs in covering the recent WTO fiasco. They have been using blogs to supplement their coverage, and to see if using blogs to focus on a particular issue could have any difference.


I don't feel it was a "failure" at all. On the contrary, it was a useful first step towards a new and better form of reporting, and a new and better form of social activism. If it was a "failure" it was only because they set up unrealistic expectations. Did they really expect that a few weeks of blogging would have that much effect, and that things would change overnight?

I like the way the Guardian is both reporting on blogs and using them themselves, but they still seem to have this elitist bias towards them. The term "navel-watching" says it all.






Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Random personal pictures.

Via the Scotsman, and a good example of why it's one of my favorite sites, is this ongoing series, Lazy Guide to Net Culture. This one focues on people's personal pictures. Quotes by Stewart Kirkpatrick.


Quite a few more links there. Even better are these random picture generators.


Warning: you can waste a lot of time looking at these. I've resisted for the most part so far, but there are some talented people out there.

Luckily I don't have a digital camera yet, or I'd be doing it myself. I've seen a lot of beautiful country lately. It'd be nice to wander around and take photos and put them up. Pretty soon it'll be possible to do it entirely wireless from almost anywhere.

A couple sites they don't mention, but which are two of my favorites for photos are: burningbird.net, from the American midwest, I think, and Andrea's site, from Germany.

Add: Just checked out photoblogs.org a little. Like I say, you could waste a lot of time, they have a LOT. The first one I tried, George Bailey's Nature Images, was beautiful. Incredible colors. So is this one, Digiteyesed Photography, by Sean David McCormick.

I can't believe some of these photo sites. I've done some sites, and it takes a lot to build sites of this kind of complexity, especially involving lots of graphics that must load quickly. Impressive. And photographers seem to possess the ability to focus on detail that also makes great sites.



Guardian's Onlineblog

The Guardian seems to be the first major paper to really get on the blogging phenomenon. Besides their regular weblog page they have a separate Onlineblog where they cover blogging and related issues. Pretty nice page and links as well.

Here's some interesting comments on blogging itself.








How much should I blog the wars?

Can't decide how much I want/should talk about the mess in Iraq, or the other American wars going on. I know there are a lot of people blogging it a lot, and lots of reports about it. But at the same time it really seems as though most people aren't really aware of what's going on. Polls show that a significant percentage of Americans really believe that WMDs were used by Iraq during the initial part of the war, not to mention possessing them at all. So I guess it's worthwhile to report on it some.

But it sure is boring and tiresome. And not really what I want to blog about. I want to focus more on writing, history, art and literature, and things like that. Be a more general purpose blog than a political one. More like the extraordinary Wood s Lot, which is a marvelous source of creative input. Perhaps a bit too cerebral, but that's the general idea.

Still the war is part of history and I guess I'll continue to link to interesting articles on it. Perhaps what I think may be more accurate and objective reports about it from media free of American control. Such as the Guardian and Observer family and the Scotsman, which I think are pretty good. And Asia Times, they're very thorough.

Once in a while I might also mention that the US is heavily entrenched in an ongoing and growing war in Columbia and neighboring countries, a real mess with just as extensive loss of life as in Iraq, that no one ever seems to mention. Did you know that Coca-Cola has full-on private armies down there fighting labor unions? Do a google for coca-cola and columbia sometimes. Amazing things going on.

But there's a lot going on in the world besides war. I think a lot of people like to focus on them to distract attention from things perhaps a bit closer to home, or more difficult to confront. Certainly the American government since 911 has been very successful in using "terrorism" as a way of avoiding domestic difficulties, and plenty of Americans are willing to go along with it. You'd almost never think that it all stems from one single incident lasting less than two hours nearly two years ago. Just one incident. Hardly enough to call a battle, much less a war.



Amazed at the effort behind a web site.

After transferring everything over, and redesigning the sites and such, I'm again amazed at just how much work and time-consuming details are involved in getting a good-sized site up. Goodness. It just eats up the time.

I guess it's worse for me since I'm an eternal perfectionist and can futz forever, but even so it's a real challenge. Trying to deal with PERL, PHP, mySQL, MovableType, the browsers, Mac and Windows, mail settings, domain name stuff, nameservers, and on and on and on.

I don't think I'm going to be redoing this one for quite a while. Will add on to it, but I think I'm going to let well enough alone.

I must say that the software is starting to get very good and even well documented. Movable Type is very well done, and with good documentation and online support as well. So is the forum software, Invision Power Board. My new domain hosts, ipowerweb.com are also pretty good, with extensive user control over the settings and good help. I'd recommend any of them. I also use easyDNS.com for domain name management. They're really good as well.






I keep forgetting the categories.

Movable Type allows one to assign categories, even multiple ones, to each entry. a feature that Blogger didn't have, and one I've really wanted. It allows you to organize and arrange entries in an unlimited number of ways. Especially since you can have multiple ones. That makes all of the difference.

Warning, though. I still have to go back through and assign categories to most of the entries I imported into this new setup. Most of them are just labeled general. If you select the general category listing, you'll get a huge file.

But I'll fix that soon. It will take some thought though. Have to define and set up the categories first, and then go through and assign them. It also takes keywords, which is also great, and which also opens up new possibilities.

But keying and categorizing aren't that easy. For instance, where does Bob Hope go? Film, music, entertainment, art, theatre? Lots of choices. And most of all, as the title indicates, you have to remember to assign them on each entry.

I actually forgot to do that for this entry. Ha. :)



OK, back to blogging.

OK, good, it felt good to make that first real post in this new site. I've been moving my blog from Blogger to Movable Type, and also moving my domains to another server. And reconceiving the whole site arrangement while I'm at it. Mainly because Movable Type is an awesome program, and it allows me to tie things together in a way I've never been able to do before. Really great.

I think the new site(s) are up and running well now. Still a few glitches with email at the new server. If mail to galileolibrary.com doesn't get through, try presky@yahoo.com. But I'm real happy with the new arrangement itself, and it's basically finished. Lots of room to add on things but ready to go. It should be pretty simple to operate. You can view the blog entries individually, or by the day, week or month. Hopefully it's self-explanatory.

What I've done is centered the different sites I had, my personal site, my weblog, the library, the world history and so on into the Galileo Library. So that's the weblog now, which in turn contains direct links to the history readings and all of the other stuff. This allows me to comment on and link to various things. And integrates better with the writer's services business I'm doing now.

So go to galileolibrary.com for my weblog now, and to find out what's up in general. It used to be newpajamas.com, but I think Galileo Library is more generic, and better expresses what it is. I see a whole new way to link the blog to my ebooks and readings now. The newpajamas.com link will still work though. I do like the name. :)






New weblog and library

Welcome to this new melding of my weblog (formerly New Pajamas), home site and online library, now featuring Movable Type, which is an incredible program.

After working with it I realized that it allowed me to combine everything into a new and much better way. The weblog IS the library, and the library IS the weblog now. This probably won't make sense yet to most of you, but you'll see. But look how the history readings are listed on this page now, down below the most recent entries.

There is still a lot of work to do on it, and it will be changing over the next few weeks, especially the organization of permalinks and the archives in general, so don't bookmark anything yet. I'm reorganizing all of my sites and domains, so things will be in flux a bit.






Blogging is good for your vocabulary.

I was looking through the referrer logs, and the phrases people used that brought them here, and it occurred to me that one way to drive traffic here is to use as many different words as possible. Finally, a chance to use all of those big words I know. The more different terms you use, the more likely you'll have one people are searching for.

And, moreover, you'll draw the folks who use the same words you do. So simply by typing the words whimsical and effervescent and delicious, I end up drawing the attention of people who are whimsical, effervescent and delicious. (Nobody who wasn't themselves rather whimsical would search for the word whimsical, right?) What an idea.






The Disease.

Liberal Arts Media explains why he stopped blogging, claims he just can't take it any more. Via Booknotes.


Boy, Bush is really, really starting to get to people. Good. Rage is what we need, along with the realization that this needs to be confronted and dealt with once and for all. Unfortunately, turning it off and walking away is not an option. Too many people, mostly children, are dying. Walking away is what the apathetic, unpatriotic voting minority does, and look at the horrific consequences of that. Time for people to face reality. I guess he's rather young, this guy. Has to learn to turn the fury into vision and see the big picture, and the long term.

For more reality, also via Booknotes, via Working for Change, is Molly Ivins' latest, The Great Iraqi Gold Rush.


Yes, all very true. But again, we already know they're corrupt and violent. Endlessly repeating this is not going to accomplish anything. What are you going to do about it?

Oh, and if you didn't already know, WorldCom is trying to hide its past by changing its name to MCI. That won't work. Or will it?

[BEGIN RANT. If I'm going to link to them, common decency forces me to warn of certain biases of the folks at Working for Change, as with most of what used to be called the "progressive" community, in particular the anti-Semitic bias of some of the people who write for them. They may mean well, but like the corporate media they always criticize, they also have no hesitation in just lying or making up facts when it suits their purposes.

They do so regularly when it comes to Israel, in particular perpetuating this delusion that Israel is a puppet of the US. It doesn't take much intelligence to realize how absurd it is to suggest that Jews would make an alliance with fanatical Christians who believe that God wants them to eliminate all non-Christians from the world, or that they could ever share the same goals. It simply doesn't make any sense, and no reputable publication would publish such a theory. As I keep saying, and will continue to say, the US and the UK are the largest suppliers of arms to the Arab nations, it's their oil money that funds Islamic terrorism and suicide bombers, and their banks and financial institutions that allow them to function. The Christian Conservatives, the neo-cons, hate Jews and are Israel's enemies, and Jews should never forget that.

So please take what the leftist media say with quite a few grains of salt, same as the rightists. People who distort one kind of information will distort others. There's more than one kind of disease infecting this planet. And if the Democrats want to have any hope of getting Bush out of the White House, they have to confront this reality, and assure people that they will not take the side of terrorists. The Palestinians danced in the streets on 9/11, the American people haven't forgotten that, and won't vote for people who advocate giving the Palestinians a state that will allow them to have control of an airport that can ship suicide bombers all over the world. No matter how much they hate the Republicans. END RANT.

(Rant inspired by this article there, which to me is just blatant Jew-hating.)]



British blogs.

The Guardian has a special blogging section now. Among other things there is a fascinating list of UK weblogs. Here are a few that sound rather interesting.


Many more listed, not just from the UK either.






Iranian weblogs.

A weblog from an Iranian student, Notes of an Iranian girl, reporting on the recent protests there.


Which also leads to Mashregh.com, a "Community Weblog for Persians". Curious that they're starting to call themselves Persians again.


Some in English, some in Persian. At least they're maintaining their sense of humor. ""You say totalitarianism, we say monarchy, let's call the whole thing off."

And enjoy this bit of fashion history.








Best of the female bloggers.

The Rittenhouse Review has a nice overview of the best of the women bloggers. I've heard of some of them but not all.

BTW, a minor point of grammar. It shouldn't be "women" bloggers, women not being an adjective. It should be "female" bloggers, or perhaps, "women who blog."



Why am I blogging about politics?

I have no idea actually. I don't even like politics. I guess it's part of the post-911 thing, and wanting to take part of this dialogue. But I think it's mostly just tracking history in the making that interests me. I really don't even think politics matters that much. It just reflects social and other changes really. A lot of people think it's the government that changes society, but it's the other way around. That's why looking to the government for solutions rarely works. The government can only implement ideas that people think of first.






What is a weblog?

Russ Lipton writes on what makes a weblog. "A weblog is just a web site organized by time," he says. I can't say I entirely agree with that. Wouldn't that also apply to newspapers, magazines and anything else that's updated on a regular basis?

I think a weblog is anything the blogger wants it to be. There are no rules here.

I'm also not sure that the reverse chronological order is always the best approach. At least not for everybody. For me blogging is a journey, and it might just make more sense to someone else if they follow my path as I took it, rather than retracing my steps. It certainly makes it more difficult for someone to follow a train of thought that's continued over time. I often add updates or further comments to earlier posts, current blogging software offers no way to track these.

I also think that comments are an important part of it. The difference between blogs and newspapers is that people can respond to your opinions and thoughts. (Yes, I know I don't have comments yet. But I will as soon as I move to Moveable Type, probably within the next month or so. In the meantime you can comment in the discussion forums I've set up.)






View this blog with wood borders, or not.

This site is designed so you can view the pages in their own window, or with various framesets. Try this simple one with wood and colored borders, that's my favorite.

There are also sets with links in a separate frame on the left, or on the right. There's not much in the side panels right now, but eventually it'll have archives links, blogroll and who knows what.

Note: if you're reading this in one of the archive pages, it will go back to the home page. One of these days I'll do the Javascript thingie to make it open with the current page.

I usually set the default to the blog page itself, since you get so much flack for using frames from the bozos in the web world, but it could be different when you read this. You can bookmark any frame set you want. View choices are usually at the bottom of pages, sometimes at the top.

The framesets can also be shared by the other sites in this so-called Galileo community of mine.

You can get out of any frameset by selecting no frames at the top or bottom of most pages. Or by using your browser's popup menu, control or right-click, to 'Open Frame in New Window'.






Photo blogs become mainstream.

The NY Times has an article, Prospecting for Gold Among the Photo Blogs, discussing this new type of blogging. Lots of good links, although for some reason they don't make them active links.


Have you ever noticed that the major news sites rarely, if ever, put in active links to the sites they discuss? (I've added the links to the sites quoted. There are many more in the article.)

I don't know why this is. Could be the legal issues, but I suspect it's that they still simply don't "get" hypermedia. Probably the same reason most of them don't allow their articles to be searched by the search engines. I guess they still basically think of the web as just an electronic version of paper, not realizing that it's an entire different way of looking at things.

I've been thinking of adding a special section of photo blogs to my blogroll. One of these days.






No comments here yet.

I don't have any comment facility here yet, mostly since Blogger doesn't have them. After a bit I'll move to Moveable Type or some other program that has all of the bells and whistles. In the meantime, if you want to comment on something, please go to the Galileo Community site, where there are discussion forums for your enjoyment. No one's been there yet, but that just means you could be the first. I think it's probably better to put comments there anyway, since discussions attached to each post usually get lost in the shuffle of time.



If you have nothing to do, you can do it here.

The dullest blog in the world. There's absolutely nothing there, but that doesn't stop hundreds of people from commenting on it. Here's a sample entry.


116 comments on this so far. I wonder how many comments I'd get if I simply wrote: "Get a life!" It's part of the wiblog.com community of "wibsites" located somewhere in the UK, most of which seem to be equally silly.



Sharing your site with RSS.

Jason Cook offers up a quick guide to using RSS to publish your site.


I don't have RSS working on this blog yet. And frankly, don't have much interest in it. I suppose I will soon, just so any prospective clients can see I know how to do it, but for some reason it doesn't excite me. Mostly it just seems to me to be the same stories linked over and over, or the same group of people linking to themselves. But maybe I'm missing something. It IS interesting technology, that's for sure. But I suspect most of these people just like the technology for technology's sake, not because it is particularly useful.






Alas, a blog.

Cartoonist B. Deutsch, creator of Ampersand has a marvelous blog to go along with the great art. What I wouldn't give to be able to draw this well.



Lots of blogs at Blogcount.

Blogcount is a site that attempts to count and otherwise keep track of the size of the blogosphere. I'm not much interested in the count per se, but they also break them down by languages, so there are lots of links to blogs from all around the world.

Via and hosted by Phil Wolff's always interesting dijest.com community.



New version of Blogger.

A new version of Blogger is out, tho I gather it's still being tested and refined. It's called "Dano". More info here. Lots of new features and they fixed archiving. Great.






Can't decide whether or not.

Can't decide whether or not to always use a heading for entries. Most of the time it looks better, but a lot of the time it's not really necessary. I want to be free to make quick notes and comments on little things. Let's see how this one looks without a heading.






OK, I'm back.

Well it took a while, but I think I'm going to give this blogging thing another shot. Didn't hardly touch a computer all winter, and since then haven't been able to get myself going again. Reluctance to open myself up I guess.

But going to try again. Lots of things in the world I want to comment on. Should be fun. Have moved back to Santa Barbara, where I lived most of the seventies and eighties, and early nineties, and am now settled in a wonderful new house and able to focus a bit more.

Hard to know where to begin. There are so many things happening in the world these days. Maybe I'll start with a list of some topics I want to write on: devolution, deflation, the Euro, America, web design, the problem with ebooks, literary agency, the left, the right, and I guess, the so-called silent majority as well. Well that should be enough to start.

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End of entries.