I was thinking about the whole concept of blogging the other day and how it is such a far-reaching technology. Before you comment on how much free time I must have, I’ll preface my brain dump with an article that I was reading about last November’s election. One analyst mentioned that the blog enabled candidates and their teams to do “front-line” reporting and provide up-to-the-minute news and analysis to anyone who was willing to read it. Rather impressive when you realize that the concept of blogging has been around for more than eight years, but only widely used within the past two.

Not only is blogging the new pasttime for anyone and everyone with something to say, it is also a growing technology for building user communities and establishing connections worldwide. Take, for example, the concept of Technorati. This is a web application whose purpose is to connect readers to others based on similar interests or categories. Pretty impressive, and definitely sitting in the front car of the idea train. There are other sites devoted to tracking blogs, like Blogwise and Blogdex. Heck, there is even a site for figuring out which blogs are geographically near to you based on your global position. And, more interestingly, there is a fake stock market for trading shares of blogs and helping to increase their virtual value. People seem to use and reference these sites - a lot.

Writing in blogs can be so all-consuming. I find myself getting caught up reading other people’s blogs (David, Halley, RSN, FA) and then think, “wow, there are another six to ten million of these out there.” That truly blows my mind.

The subject of this post is the title of an Associated Press article that hit the newswires today which examines why politicians are not always criticized when their original assumptions turn out to be wrong. It isn’t a new concept, but it is an interesting read nonetheless.

Politicians, by definition, are accountable. But they are not always held to account when their certitude is proved wrong.

The fuel for the discussion is - go figure - the fruitless search for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. The White House issued a statement last Wednesday detailing that they were done looking for WMDs and that the search had turned up very little. President Bush commented that he “felt like we’d find weapons of mass destruction.” This is from the same man who said on March 17, 2003, that “intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that Iraq continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” The very next day, President Bush, under false pretenses (expectations?), launched the military campaign in Iraq.

There has been a complete lack of credible criticism (I say “credible” because people like me blogging about it is more like whining than facilitating discussion) and an even greater lack of voters paying any attention to what happens in their own government. Why aren’t more people holding their elected representatives to account?

Photo credit: AFP/Paul J. Richards

Well, have you?

OK, perhaps I should be more specific.

Did you see the new, über-cheap Mac mini announced by Apple yesterday afternoon? It has quickly become the most heavily blogged new Apple product in less than a day and has been winning praise from review houses like c|net. I think it’s the coolest thing, considering how it is only 6.5 inches square and stands only 2 inches tall. You can literally stack seven of them next to your desktop computer, provided you’re feeling crazy and can drop $3500 to get them. But, then again, it’s only $3500 and you would have the most impressive desktop cluster in the neighborhood.

Among other Mac news shared at Macworld San Francisco, Apple announced that they sold 4.5 million iPods in the previous quarter, up from 733,000 in the year-ago period. The primary reason Apple didn’t sell more iPods was that it couldn’t keep up with the incredible holiday demand. Apple posted their earnings report just a few moments ago and stated that they quadroupled their profit from a year ago to 70 cents/share and beat analysts expectations of 49 cents/share.

MacNuts have long been speculating the company’s next great move. Paul Nixon has concocted a pretty decent approach to figuring out Apple’s market strategy.

Just had to share:

While I’m on the subject of people posing as recognized authorities, Regret the Error ran a piece about someone who went on the BBC posing as a representative from Dow Chemical. Not good.

Happy 2005! To the right is a photo that was taken seconds after 2005 started in Times Square, New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II) It was actually the 100th anniversary of the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebrations and nearly 750,000 people came to enjoy the fun, which was a bit shy of the two million in 2000. The celebration was originally started to commemorate the renaming of the square from ‘Longacre’ to ‘Times’ in 1904, in case you wanted a little tidbit to share at cocktail parties.

Random: I think Zach Braff (of Garden State/Scrubs fame) has the best New Year’s resolution list I’ve seen yet.

I’m working with a new piece of software, WordPress, to power my blog since I was tired of having to recode my home-grown blog software every time I wanted to do something new. The nerd in me is shedding a small tear as the hand coded blog I have used for almost five years will be laid to rest. *sniffle* You can still find all of the site links on the right hand side of this page, and every other page not related to this one will have the old look and feel until I figure out what to do about that. I finally have the WordPress stuff working within my old template.

I’m working with the new features, such as categories, open comments, and permanent blog links. Give ‘em a try!