I continue to be amused by the political bloggers. If you comment on their post, and the comment doesn't jibe with their bullshit, they automatically assume you're coming from the opposite point of view. In my case, it's often that I see things from even further out than they are, but they are so immersed in talking points and other people's ideas that they don't realize there are more than one or two ways of looking at issues. Makes me feel like a genius.
I've neglected this blog for the better part of a week. Mostly I've been hanging out in Wordpress land. It's a great community, but there's something about blogger that keeps me coming back here, even if it isn't regularly.
Anyway, there are big games to pronosticate, and that's what I'm going to do. The biggest game in the country this week is LSU at Auburn. I've pretty much considered it a toss up, at least until late last night. Then it dawned on me what the difference would be. Auburn's big, veteran offensive line will take advantage of LSU's less experienced front, which will allow Auburn to control the game with their ground attack. It should be a good game, but not as close as most people think. Auburn 31, LSU 21.
The other big game is Florida at Tennessee. Conventional wisdom seems to be that Tennesee's opening game blowout of a talented Fornia team was a fluke. Not so. Last week's close game with Air Force was the fluke. Tennessee was suffering from big-headedness after reading the press concerning their dismantiling of Cal. Additionally, they were looking ahead to Florida, which has become the biggest game on their schedule year in and year out. Tennessee will expose, once and for all, the weakness of Urban Meyer's offensive scheme in a conference of great athletes. I'm not that worried about the injuries on the Vols' side either. They are always deep. Tennessee 38, Florida 24.
Keepers:
It's game day, but there aren't any interesting games on yet, so I'm checking out the blogosphere. So far I've made it through 20 of the top 100 on Technorati. The only one that is even mildly amusing it PostSecret, and it's not nearly as interesting as it was earlier in the year. (It may be that since I'm now free from all the psychotropic substances, I'm more particular. I think, though, that the quality of the offerings has significantly declined.) At least PostSecret is original.
So here's the breakdown of the top 20.
I'd forgotten what a pain in the ass they are. Mostly good only for spam. If I want to link to a blog, and want that blogger to know about it bad enough, I'll just have to leave them comment. If they are such assholes that they don't allow links in their comments, I won't link to them. If I'm still doing this a year from now, or by some cosmic mistake, lots of people start blogging here, I'll think about going with my own domain then.
Hard to believe. I realize they can be a pain in the ass, but trackbacks are a huge part of blogging, at least for me. So, in the immortal words of Kramer, concerning my blogger experiment; "Well that didn't work". I'll have a domain registered and a site up in a few days. Stay tuned for the link.
I've stumbled across a blog, or at least a post on a blog, expressing the ugly truth. Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred posted this gem. I not quite sure what they're getting at on a couple of points, but I feel their pain. (Rage?) This ties in nicely with my posts here and here. Obviously there are sane, intelligent people out there. What we need is a plan to take the country back. Can it be done without refreshing the tree of liberty?
For the life of me I don't understand the appeal of political blogs. A bunch of people who profess to be of more or less one mind about issues posting and commenting from pretty much the same perspective is at best boring. Don't these people know what they think? Are their convictions so weak they need others with little or no imagination to edify them? It's a strange phenomena, but one that is apparently a big part of a lot of folk's human condition. It's pitiful. It's pitiful that these same (type of) people dominate the political debate in the US. The liberals and conservatives are the problem. By their participation they perpetuate a political system that is completely corrupt. The are the corporation's useful idiots. Unfortunately they'll pull all of us down with them as they continue sinking the ship of state.
Blogger is growing on me. The biggest things in its favor, versus WordPress.com, are the template editing and the profile features. I haven't played with it much, but I'd have to give the new templates a solid 10. Now that I can tweak the HTML and CSS, it's pushing an 11. The profile thing is just right, even though it hasn't changed, I don't think, in years. My only gripe is that to add a picture, you have to be running Windows. Of course that's a non-issue for 90 plus percent of the world.
WordPress.com is formidable to be sure. It has powerful tools for tracking your traffic built in. The thing I like best, however, is its comment tracking feature. With it, you can track your comments all across WordPress.com from you dashboard. It's really nice. It's more of a community over there and it's all sort of self contained. I don't like the stock templates, though, and you can't edit them unless you pony up a little cash. (I don't mind that, but I don't have any to pony up). Additionally you can add an avatar to your profile and it appears all over the WordPress.com when you comment, and even in a tag tracking feature that needs some work. Additionally WordPress has a "page" feature that permits permanent, static content to be linked to from the main page.
If I could only use one, today I'd probably have to go with WordPress. I've enjoyed their work for a while now. They're more of a hacker community. I like that.
