Training Wheels

Greg, who created this central coast blog, just sent me (the original Luddite) information as to how to even log onto my own "Calhoun's Can(n)ons" blog (Duh) and add comments and other such technical stuff, so now I'm going to try to actually "blog" in my blog and see what happens.

Interesting things, blogs. While newspaper opinion columns are limited in size and either edited and/or prudently internally vetted with an eye to traditional lible laws, blogs are the outlaw version -- at least until the law catches up with the internet scribblers.

Meantime, they have already been a perfect illustration of the observation that a lie can be half-way around the world before the truth even gets out of bed and gets his boots on -- vis the "Swift Boat" guys and their amazing lies and half-truths, the half-told blogging "expose" of the CBS Bush National Guard "letter," and now the "Downing Street Memos," first buried by the mainstream US press, now resurrected like some Night of the Living Dead by bloggers who do the old, "Oh, do, let's forward this nifty document all over the place until the mainstream press is dragged, kicking and screaming into paying attention." Double-edged swords, to say the least.

And, since blogs are also public diaries, it's also an interesting exercize in blurring the public/private line, with some blogs embarrasingly personal (Oooo, waaaaay too much information) but all of them remain akin to hollering down an empty well in hopes that there are some frogs down at the bottom who will hear you. Or, worse yet, there is something down there listening, but it's something dark and evil that you don't want coming to the light of day -- something like a genetic cross between Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and a Balrog. Lord, can you imagine??

On a happier note, there also may be wonderful serindipitous things down that well that will fliy up into the well to sparkle and shine in the light. So, you never know. As Kurt Vonnegut said, more or less, It's all birdshot through a bugle."

Blatttt!