Welcome back to the Blog Roundup. You may note if you check the extended entry that two non-local blogs have been included in the scan - Read My Lips and Dusting My Brain. I did this to increase the number of potential links for consideration. Unfortunately for the timing, Dusting My Brain has run out of bandwidth so we can't actually scan it. If you would like your blog links included in future runs, just leave me a comment. The downside of being included is that it is likely to increase the chance that your blog gets reviewed :-)
Now about a week ago, Ramblings of Silver Blue frightened the entire rational blogsphere with this post which suggested that he was giving up on the blogging habit. Then again maybe there was a secret memo (as suggested by Tig) where everyone just stopped posting/commenting. Fortunately, it turned out that SilverBlue was still around with a recent Thanksgiving post and another one called "Black" Friday. I am not sure why it is "Black" because it is not the 13th...
Speaking of Read My Lips, he has promised to keep his blog all serious now. In other news, apparently you can only use the ;) smile now. In other news, Tig has been raiding the cheap DVD bin at Walmart - which caused much angst when I realised that the top10 program decided that all the links to imdb were actually blogs :-)
The next cab off the rank (Blogthings - Cool Stuff To Put In Your Blog) is not really a blog. What it does have is lots of quizzes like What Part of Thanksgiving are you, What Number Are You? and most strangely What Jones Holiday Soda Are You?. Who the heck is Jones and what on earth is Holiday Soda?
Some of you may recognise the name Peskie. Not only does he have his own blog, he is also a very frequent poster of LOL material. Unfortunately for the rest of the blog world, he has not been updating his main blog recently :-( Still, it is worth popping over there and checking out some of the historical material.
Last, but certainly not least, is Mostly Fluff which appears to be having a brief Thanksgiving break. Mind you, that might be the result of selfless testing of complicated Martini recipes. It's a dangerous job but someone needs to do it. Mind you if the tension is going result in jamming a turkey up someone's [DELETED] then drink testing might be a safer alternative. In another interesting post, there seems to be some confusion where Kat mixes up Aussies and Texans:
WeTexansAussies are known for our hospitality. We’re known for our food. We’re known to drink more than we probably ought to. Hell, that’s all the fun you need right there, isn’t it?
Mind you the post then explains about Snipe Hunting and that is definitely not an Aussie thing. We have hoop snakes and drop bears instead.
That's it for this week. Comments (that are not spam), suggestions and requests to be added to the scan are most welcome...
Blogroll Checklist
==============
Dusting My Brain NOK (-1)
G'Day Mate - Reviews! AOK (187)
Read My Lips AOK (381)
G'day Mate! AOK (330)
The Gray Monk AOK (115)
Note: There were 1012 possible links to consider (0 unresolved).
TOP 15 Sites
============
1: The Gray Monk (19)
2: Read My Lips (16)
3: 2004 Weblog Awards (12)
4: All AgitProp, all the Time... (10)
5: Selective Amnesia (10)
6: Dusting My Brain (10)
7: On The Third Hand (10)
8: the cheese stands alone (8)
9: Peskie (7)
10: Da Goddess - Friends are like bras, a good one never lets you down (7)
11: Beyond the Black Hole (6)
12: hebig.org/blog (6)
13: skipjack DOT info (6)
14: Grrrrr Be Afraid (6)
15: Mind of Mog (5)
Random 5 Sites
==============
Ramblings of Silver Blue (4)
Read My Lips (17)
Blogthings - Cool Stuff To Put In Your Blog (7)
Peskie (8)
Mostly Fluff (7)
First clean run of the code since MacOS X 10.4 (8A294) - major problems happened with the bloxsom setup (I have given up on bloxsom until I can get 10.4 server running again). With a little bit of luck, I may even managed to get a whole run (with commentary) sometime tomorrow - fingers crossed...
Blogroll Checklist
==============
G'Day Mate - Reviews! AOK (224)
G'day Mate! AOK (322)
The Gray Monk AOK (114)
Note: There were 660 possible links to consider (0 unresolved).
TOP 15 Sites
============
1: Read My Lips (16)
2: The Gray Monk (15)
3: On The Third Hand (11)
4: All AgitProp, all the Time... (9)
5: Selective Amnesia (9)
6: Dusting My Brain (9)
7: the cheese stands alone (7)
8: Peskie (7)
9: Mostly Fluff (6)
10: hebig.org/blog (6)
11: Accidental Verbosity (6)
12: Beyond the Black Hole (5)
13: Grrrrr Be Afraid (5)
14: Da Goddess - Friends are like bras, a good one never lets you down (5)
15: 75th Weblog (5)
Random 5 Sites
==============
The Gray Monk (15)
Search Results (1)
75th Weblog (5)
Feed Validator for Atom and RSS (2)
Ramblings of Silver Blue (3)
I found Pixy Misa's explanation much more convincing than mine. He succinctly explains the role of the media:
Now, the flip side to this in recent years has been the actions of the mainstream media. For some reason - I have no idea why this is so, because I can see no benefit in it for them - they have decided to throw in their lot on the side of the liberal/left. Entirely, to the point of utterly destroying their own credibility, which is their stock in trade.
What they have been trying to do, and they have been willing to not just misreport and distort the news but to fabricate and flat-out lie to do it, is to shift puplic opinion to the left. That would mean that either the right-of-centre party would have to shift to the left (pragmatism) or stay where they are and lose power (ideology).
The problem with this plan is that the mainstream media do not have a monopoly on the distribution of information. We can thank Rush Limbaugh and other talk-radio hosts, Rupert Murdoch, small-town newspapers, and the internet for acting as a spoiler. Because what happened instead was that the opinion of roughly half the public shifted to the left.
Then he moves on to why the race was just so dirty:
Which, I think, is why both races were so acrimonious. If you can't bridge the gap, if you can't count on picking up some of the moderates on the other side, all you can hope for is to energise your own side. And if you're not a remarkable man, a gifted orator (and let's face it, none of the candidates in these two elections were that), then the best way to do that is to demonise your opponent - widening the gap still further. There's always some of that in any such contest, but this time it was the primary tool of the left because they simply didn't have much else to use.
Then the unmistakable conclusion:
And so, what we have is this: Michael Moore won the election. As did Dan Rather, and Martin Sheen, and Philip Adams, and Maureen Dowd, and Margo Kingston, and the editors of The Guardian, and a host of other lefty celebrities and intellectuals. Of course, they won the elections for John Howard and George Bush, which is hardly what they intended.
Go over and read the whole article with an open mind. Not only does it explain the whys and wherefores but it also explains what needs to be done to fix the problem.
Actually Happy Late Birthday to MacOSXHints:
Four years ago today, macosxhints.com was born with a simple site news announcement on the evening of its first day of existence, followed by the first six hints the next evening. A look at some assorted statistics will show where we've gone in that time... ... 6,276 hints! That's an average of 4.3 hints per day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Pay them a visit if you use MacOSX - a brilliant on-line resource...