Archive for blogging

Put up your dukes; let’s blog!

I’m always self-conscience of everything I write.  I often lie awake at night and wonder what I was thinking when I wrote this or that.  So I thought I’d look up some other local blogs, and see if my sometimes off the wall writings are an  anomaly in the blogging world.  Nope!

(My take is in italic)

From Energy Tough Love Blog:

OverPopulation Is The Real Problem With Energy – We are not sustainable and 6 billion people will have to die

Squirrels don’t leave carbon footprints; let them rule the Earth!

From The Eleventh Hour:

Serious Insights: In Your Face(book) Edition:

“A blog is a much better place than Facebook to wear your politics and religion on your sleeve.”

Plus, I might add, you don’t have to have any friends!

From the Capitol Fax Blog:

As if cancer, heart disease and certain early death weren’t enough….

..you voted for most of the ChangeDecatur candidates.

From First Reading

Davlin: Springfield’s better off than most of Illinois

And this is good news???

From The Capitol Fax Blog

Monk is cooperating, and is investigation moving closer to Jackson?

Monks?  Rod Blagojevich? Oh, never mind!


There’s been some discussion in the community about anonymous bloggers and the potential harm that they can do to public individuals.  Just a scan through the Herald & Review’s Letters to the Editor Blog is enough to make one turn in their homo sapien chromosomes and trade them in for a higher life form: snakes, worms, slugs.   But anonymous “blogging” is nothing new in America, in fact, Abraham Lincoln was an anonymous blogger!

Lincoln would often use pen names and write letters to the editor to the Sangamo Journal, one of Springfield’s early newspapers.  The most famous of these letters were  satirical pieces Lincoln wrote about his political adversary James Shields.  Yes, before Four score and seven years…, Lincoln wrote his fair share of  less than noteworthy literary pieces.  He wasn’t alone either; his future wife, Mary Todd, was in on the action as well.

Lincoln, through his assumed identities, lampooned Shields poor policies and mismanagement of his duties. Throughout this series of letters, Lincoln’s friends Mary Todd and Julia Jayne also began sending letters of their own.  (The Duel that Could Have Changed the Nation)

I recommend reading the entire article above.  It really is quite funny how people really haven’t changed.   It’s also fun to note, that Shields and Lincoln became good friends after this embarrasing incident.

About Blogs

Gary Sawyer, the editor for the Herald & Review, had an interesting article in today’s newspaper. It was about the sometimes rocky relationship between traditional media and these new fangled, sometimes controversial outlets, called blogs. Being a blogger, I’ve given some thought to what positive effect blogs have, if any, on current events. Sawyer was right when he said some blogs are just “downright disgusting”. This political season has brought out some of the nastiest qualities in humanity online for the whole world to see! I sure hope the Martians can’t receive Earthling broadband because we’re not painting the prettiest picture of ourselves over here! The most ridiculous discussion I’ve encountered lately, was some guy who called Hillary Clinton a slut, from a picture he saw of her during her college days – I’d link to the discussion but the language is just too disgusting. This guy was all upset because Hillary had “long, flat hair” and had the nerve to wear glasses and sandals of all things! Yes, that’s the picture that forms in my mind when I think of a dime-store floozy. Huh? I guess he prefers women with big hair! (Here’s the offending photo) Personally, I think she just looks like a nerd – actually, she looks like me! (I dig those groovy pants!)

I’ve pretty much given up on many blogs out there because it always ends up the same – people talking in circles defending their point of view while tearing down someone else’s. I’ve had second thoughts about having a blog of my own for several reasons; one, because I didn’t think anyone would really read it, secondly, because I worried that someone would read it ;-) and lastly, I didn’t want to make myself look like just another know-it-all jerkette. What does my opinion mean? No more than anyone else’s I suppose. But when you think about it, blogs are the purest form of democracy – just not the purest form of good humanity! “But you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have – the facts of blogs!”