Day: September 3, 2002

Geez, everybody go over to right quick and beef up Andrew’s traffic stats.
He’s apparently very grumpy today and clearly needs a pick-me-up.

Hmmm. Gotta take the InstaGuy to task briefly, I think.
He the growing big media coverage of the failures of the Secret Service as an organization, which he’s been long ahead of the curve on. But his closer troubles me:
“Question: If the Secret Service can’t protect the White House adequately, why should we think a Department of Homeland Security can protect the whole nation? And if, as earlier incidents suggest, the Secret Service can’t do its job with a proper attitude regarding individual rights, how can we trust less-elite entities?”
The note of caution is appropriate — to a point. I’m no huge fan of DHS as its currently proposed, and I don’t particularly trust it. But Glenn’s criticism is so broad that it seems to suggest that we can’t possibly trust any government organization to protect the nation.
I suppose that might be true, but it certainly raises the question of what the alternative is.
Update: To clarify my point, I think my objection is best demonstrated by Glenn’s statement that the Secret Service “can’t” protect the White House properly. It’s not that it can’t — it’s that it isn’t. Identifying specifically why, and fixing it (and not making the same mistakes in IHS) is the name of the game. If we really are concluding that our government institutions are just inherently incapable of protecting us, then we’re in far worse shape than even my pessimistic views would suggest…

So is anyone else in the Blogosphere addicted to Brother 3?
I know, it’s crap. But it’s fun crap.
I used to watch the first season of the show, which was a complete train wreck. The pacing was awful, bad editing, and the cast nearly walked off the show. It was glorious in its awfulness, though, and was weirdly, disturbingly compelling viewing.
The second season, I missed entirely.
But this season, I’ve been following closely, and it’s the best yet. They’ve finally got the pacing right; limiting broadcasts to three nights a week and ensuring that there’s always something interesting happening. And the cast this year is fabulous — not too annoying; not too nice. Just right.
Which of course leads me to wonder: Why doesn’t CBS have the ‘houseguests’ blogging?
They’ve already got a paid service where you can watch all the video feeds; why not also give each houseguest the opportunity to write a blog? The fans (and there are a lot of them, I think) would love it.
The other idea to think about, naturally, is not to make the houseguests bloggers — but to make bloggers houseguests!
Imagine it:

• Lock twelve bloggers in a house with only one Internet terminal.
• Each day hold a competition to see who gets access to it for the day — and nobody else gets to touch it!
• Every week, bloggers across the Blogosphere vote to evict one of the houseguests, online.
• Last blogger standing gets the Grand Prize: A free subscription to the Blogging Network !

If there are any CBS programming execs reading, feel free to call my office and we can discuss terms.

Well, I’m a bit behind the curve on this one, but it seems an issue worth weighing in on. The Network has launched an innovative service to allow bloggers to charge for access to their content, and the Blogosphere is much atwitter over this bald threat to civilization and Our Way Of Life.
First, a reminder of a few of my basic principles:
Diversity in blogging is good. Conformity in blogging is bad. The last thing we need is 500,000 blogs all written in the same style with the same business model.
Thou Shalt Not Tell Thy Neighbor Blogger What The Hell To Do With His Blog. Anybody who criticizes another blogger for the way they go about their business (other than, say, flat out libel or other crimes) should get stuffed. It’s your page; do what you want with it.
So, with that said, how do I feel about the Blogging Network?
Ambivalent, honestly. I enjoy DailyPundit, and so I am bummed that part of Bill’s content will no longer be part of the completely free-and-open part of the Blogosphere. And similarly, I’m sure that many other fine bloggers are on the network’s list that I’m just not aware of. Their decision to go “behind the wall”, so to speak, has to be classed as some kind of loss to the non-paid Blogosphere.
On the other hand, I hesitate to condemn any effort that might actually result in blogging being a viable economic activity. Like every other blogger, I sure wouldn’t mind being able to earn income for my time spent blogging — or at least cover hosting costs.
But on the third hand (sorry Larry, Jerry) — I’m rather skeptical that the network will provide anything more than very minimal income to the vast majority of its bloggers. And for the high-end bloggers — well, they could probably do OK on their own without the help of the network.
But: Bottom line is, it’s a worthwhile experiment, and I wish them luck. Let’s see how it goes…
PS – By the way, to the fellow hiding in the back of the room who’s about to get snarky and point out the irony of a guy running a standards initiative saying that “conformity in blogging is bad” — conformity in content and approach, you nitwit. Technical standards are all fine and good.
Late Update: Owen Strawn pointed out that I had implied “David Niven” above instead of “Larry Niven”. I’ve corrected the error; I await the knock at my door from the Geek Police to take away my membership card… the shame of it!