Traces of Cocaine Found in Beer, Cigarettes
There was an awesome demonstration of this in Iraq./ Military operations were designed so that no battles took place...When U.S. troops entered Kuwait they were led by a battalion of engineers using bulldozers. These were used to bury possibly thousands of Iraqi soldiers alive in their trenches. They simply drove the bulldozers over the trenches and buried the soldiers alive. This is a horrible war crime, but nobody cares. Nonetheless, it does reveal something about U.S. military planning. If you attack someone who can defend themselves, you don't send bulldozers into battle. This makes it clear that the United States had prepared everything in such a way that there was never going to be a war. And effectively, there never was a war, only slaughter and atrocities.
-Noam Chomsky
Compromise is not necessarily a good thing.
The way to activate the seeds of your creation is by making choices about the results you want to create. When you make a choice, you activate vast human energies and resources, which otherwise go untapped. All too often people fail to focus their choices upon results and therefore their choices are ineffective. If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.
-Robert Fritz
Federal energy regulators met or exchanged phone calls with Enron Corp. executives and lobbyists 25 times during 11 months when Californians endured soaring energy prices and rolling blackouts, according to records released yesterday by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).
Reuters
Susan Cornwell
February 22, 2002
Shortly after taking office, President Bush waged a battle against the imposition of federal price controls in California that allowed Enron to price-gouge consumers by extending the energy crisis in California, costing the state billions of dollars. Enron reported increased revenues of almost $70 billion from the previous year.
Los Angeles Times
January 2, 2002
Blogerati
noun. The blogosphere (qv) intelligentsia.
Blogger ecosystem
phrase. A chart or lists showing the links between blogs. Also: Blog ecosystem.
Bloggerel
variant of "doggerel." Opinion put forward on a blog that has previously been repeated over and over and over again until it makes people sick.
(Coined by The Pontificator)
Bloggerverse
noun. See Blogosphere.
Blogistan
noun. The totality of blogs; blogs as a community.
However, the term is sometimes used to mean the totality of just warblogs (qv), or pundit blogs (qv) rather than the entire blogosphere (qv). Also see: blogosphere, blogiverse
Blogiverse
noun. See blogosphere.
Blognoscenti
noun. A blog connoisseur.
Blogorrhea
noun. An unusually high volume output of articles on a blog.
Usage: "Well, 48 hours and 4,195 words later, we're reaching for our dictionary to check the definition of "significantly." After that, we're going to look up blogorrhea."
- William Quick
Blogosphere
noun. The totality of blogs; blogs as a community
(coined by William Quick)
Blogroll
1. noun. A list of links in the sidebar of a blog, often linking to other blogs. Also: blog roll.
2. . A blog link management system such as www.blogrolling.com
Also see: Sidebar links
Blogspot
noun. The blog hosting servers operated by blogger.com. More blogs are hosted on blogspot than anywhere else.
Blogstipation
1. noun. To be unable to think of anything to blog about, i.e. writer's block for bloggers.
2. noun. To be unable to post an article on your blog because blogger.com is down yet again.
(meaning 2. coined by Jim Treacher)
Blogule
noun. A concept or point within an article on a blog that is not quite grandiose enough to be a 'meme'.
(coined by Brian Micklethwait)
Blurker
1. noun. One who reads many blogs but leaves no evidence of themselves such as comments behind; a silent observer of blogs.
2. noun. One who reads many blogs but has no blog of their own; a blog-watcher or blog voyeur.
Dead-tree media
phrase. Paper newspapers and magazines, also known as Old Media. Also: 'on dead trees'.
Hitnosis
noun. Being unable to stop yourself constantly refreshing your browser to see if your hit counter or comments section has increased since the last time you did it (i.e. about 1 minute ago). This often occurs when a 'memorable number' is coming up (such as a blog's hit counter crossing 10,000 or 100,000 or 250,000 visitors etc.) or an unusually large surge of posted comments are attracted by an article.
(coined by Perry de Havilland)
Instapundited
tr.verb. To have your blog mentioned on Instapundit.com. Also: Instalanche.
Usage: "Holy shit, look at the hit counter! We must have been Instapundited!"
Also see: Slashdotted
Link rot
noun. Over time any large list of links will contain an increasing number of dead links.
Link whore
noun. A blogger (qv) who will go to any lengths to get other bloggers to link to them (the term is usually intended to be humourous). Also: Link slut. Both terms are in fact non-gender specific.
Meme
noun. A meme is considered to be a discrete idea that replicates itself, with the connotation that memes replicate themselves and are propagated by people through social and technological networks, much like both real and computer viruses.
(Coined by Richard Dawkins)
Usage: "The sarcastic meme of 'Our friends, the Saudis' continues to spread across the Intenet"
Note: Although not strictly speaking a 'blog specific' term, meme is very widely used in the Blogosphere (qv).
Also see: Meme hack, Meme war
Ping
1. noun. A ping is a system administrator tool that is an automated packet of information (64 bytes) sent through a network to another to establish the status of a target system.
2. verb. To ping another site is to send a small automated packet of data to actuate some expected function, such as a Trackback (qv).
PING is an acronym for 'Packet INternet Grouper'
Progblog
noun. A 'Progressive Weblog'. A blog expressing various left wing political views.
(coined by Madeleine Begun)
Pundit blog
noun. A blog (qv) focused on news punditry. The bulk of a pundit blogs' content will be dissection of, or pointers to, stories currently running in the established media. Pundit blogs are largely the same thing as News blogs. Also: Punditblog.
Pundit blogs form one of the three primary distinct (and largely separate) cultural groups within the blogging world, the other two being Journal blogs and Tech blogs.
The archetypal pundit blog is Instapundit.com
But when we were putting the board together, somebody came to me and said, look there is a guy who would like to be on the board. He's kind of down on his luck a bit. Needs a job. Needs a board position. Needs some board positions. Could you put him on the board? Pay him a salary and he'll be a good board member and be a loyal vote for the management and so forth.
I said well we're not usually in that business. But okay, let me meet the guy. I met the guy. I said I don't think he adds that much value. We'll put him on the board because - you know - we'll do a favor for this guy; he's done a favor for us. We put him on the board and spent three years. Came to all the meetings. Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years - you know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're adding that much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company.
He said, well I think I'm getting out of this business anyway. And I don't really like it that much. So I'm probably going to resign from the board.
And I said, thanks - didn't think I'd ever see him again. His name is George W. Bush. He became President of the United States. So you know if you said to me, name 25 million people who would maybe be President of the United States, he wouldn't have been in that category. So you never know. Anyway, I haven't been invited to the White House for any things.
