North Coast Online

He Returns

One of my favorite blogs, the Econopundit, is back after a long hiatus -- turns out he broke both wrists last Fall.  Yikes.

Hold Your Fire

Jane Galt warns her fellow bloggers to resist getting too worked up over the presidential candidates just yet.

It's too early in the season for this. People are going to write fatuous columns pointing out potential weaknesses in potential candidates, even silly, column-stretching ones. If we all get upset about this sort of thing now, how will we have any energy left to rip each other's throats out with our bare keyboards in November 2008?

Edwards's Hiring Judgement Questioned Early

John Edwards is catching some heat for hiring two potty-mouthed bloggers to manage his campaign's website.

The Catholic League, a conservative religious group, is demanding that Mr. Edwards dismiss the two, Amanda Marcotte of the Pandagon blog site and Melissa McEwan, who writes on her blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, for expressing anti-Catholic opinions.

Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, is among the leading Democratic presidential candidates.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said in a statement on Tuesday, “John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots.”

If you're unfamiliar with the oeuvre of these two women, here's an example from Marcotte's website.

That's a Google screen-shot (courtesy of Michelle Malkin) of a post that's now been, um, sanitized.

Now, I have stooped to using gutter language once in a while but it's fair to say that Ms. Marcotte lives there.  To paraphrase Johnny Carson, it would take an earthquake to throw her up onto the curb.  I actually wish that the Catholic League wouldn't have called for her dismissal.  It'd have been much more fun and ultimately more politically effective to have just let examples of her, um, writing drip out into the media over a few weeks or months.

Now, the fun will be over all too quickly.

Slow Down

I just never got into RSS -- neither did Tyler Cowen.

First, I like the look of individual blog pages.  More importantly, reading blogs for me is a matter of mood.  Right now I feel like reading, say Jacqueline Passey rather than EconBrowser, or vice versa, and I don't want all the new posts thrust in front of my nose at the same time.  I also fear that ongoing use of RSS would lead to reading inflation; I would add new blogs to my feed because it is easy to do so, but encounter the intransitivity of indifference.  I would end up overloaded.

My current reading method "by hand" takes more time, but hey reading blogs is fun and it should stay fun at the margin.  Who wants to be satiated in liquidity?

I like to read everything a blogger has to say and, though I'll admit to putting too much thought into them myself, don't want to depend on titles and lead sentences to guide my reading.

Across The Pond

There's been quite the scandal in the UK over comments made by a British celebrity about an Indian actress.  Racist some say. Chase Me Ladies with his take.

Shilpa Shetty, after being shouted at by some British heifer on TV. She seems to be saying that the sub-human cockney women in the Big Brother house are in some way typical of the United Kingdom. As a member of Britain’s white community, I find that quite offensive. Though I’ll probably get over it.

In the day’s other news, the Magna Carta got fucked and buggered again, and a bunch of tribesmen were massacred in Somalia, for some reason.

Much more good stuff at Chase me ladies, I'm in the cavalry.

A Search Engine For Blogs That Works

I finally found a search engine that seems to actually find all of the juicy posts I've written over the years.  It's at left, BlogBar.  I know how frustrated you've all been at not having been able to retrieve the brilliant bits you've learned from me -- well now they're the proverbial mouse-click away.

And you might want it for your blog.

Finally!

I've finally found a search engine that appears to work for looking up old posts on this blog.  I've put it at left, Blogbar.  I'm often reminded of an old post while perusing the web and wish I could retrieve it, but the previous search boxes I've used never seem to return anything.  I haven't tested this one extensively, but it does work at least in some cases.

I'm sure there are many pearls of wisdom you've read here that you dearly wish you could find again to email to friends and family and, I suppose, there have been some whoppers and really glaring misjudgements you want to gently and kindly remind me of -- I can think of -- well I can't think of any actually but maybe you can.

If it works, give it a try on yours.

Hat tip to Cafe Hayek. 

Off Hiatus

2007 will be a good year.  It's evidenced by the fact that the Daily Ablution is back!

A Blogger's Travail

Damn.  There's little harder for a blogger than spending a half hour on a post and realizing that you're going in circles.   You know you have a point, but you just can't get it out.  If this were a newspaper column, I'd just leave it till morning and revise.  But when you're striving for "timeliness,"  sometimes the only solution is to hit the 'Delete' button -- that's painful. 

I know, I know.  Most of you are asking, when did he finally realize there was a "Delete" button?  OK, fine.

[UPDATE:] Write the story in question yourself.  Hottest tickets in town? Sabres expect season sellout.  So why is Golisano worrying about a casino?  I think his competitive position is quite strong as long as he maintains his product.

[UPDATE, UPDATE:]  I posted quite a while ago on a comment from one of my favorite Brit-bloggers, Natalie Solent.  She wrote once that she'd gone back one day and added a comma to an old post -- "it felt good." 

I Feel So Used (And Yet So Good)

There's something very satisfying about coming home from work and finding out that 500 unexpected people hit the blog today because MSNBC picked up my oh-so-clever put-down of Basic Intinct 2's bitter producer.  But, in the end, the satisfaction's short-lived isn't it?  I mean, I know they won't likely come back tomorrow. 

It's sort of like the memory of that beautiful thing you picked up at the bar that night.  It was all totally unexpected and it was certainly fun while it lasted.  You congratulated yourself on your good looks, your style and your fascinating personality but, alas, never heard from said hottie again. 

But while it's true that no lasting relationship developed -- don't kid me now -- you still smirk when you think about it, don't you?