What IS this blog thing?

At seven months in, I'm still discovering the point of the blog, not so much MY blog, but the greater blogiverse. I have this friend Daniel who REALLY needs to do his own blog, I keep telling him, and he will, he says.
He sends me political stuff, plus weird stuff such as this, about cornstarch and this about, well, "sin" and this, which is just bizarre.
One of the things he believes is that the mainstream media (MSM) has dropped the ball in terms of the administration's deception on Iraq. Daniel is someone I could safely categorize as "left of center". Interesting, then, that the website for Chickenhawk Express expresses the same disdain for the MSM, only he says they underreport the great progress taking place in Iraq. I found the Chickenhawk via the "Next Blog" method. I've "corrected" him a couple times; I'm sure he appreciates it.

I know I feel compelled to chastize the MSM myself occasionally. This article about the new American Community Survey is so unnbalanced it would be laughable, except that it's likely to be taken seriously. Where's the stuff about the confifdentiality that Census folks are under? Or the fact that Census doesn't really care about the individual response but rather the collective answers? Or that private industry IS interested in your individual private information that is far more invasive? To take one question, the time to work question is used for traffic maintenance, among other things, not to use to case someone's house for a robeery.

I believe Polite Scott provides a great public service when he disects (as it were) the medicine in comic books and television shows. Really. My friend the Hoffinator thought he did a fine analysis of the medical show House, a program that she watches (and I don't); there are people out there who take the medicine on fictional programs seriously. Also check out his post of 11/23, learn the meaning of the prefix yocto- and see Advent comic book covers.

You've probably read about the public service that Paul English has provided to get you to a human as quickly as possible on those automated phone systems most of us hate so much.

Marshall Brain has stats on consumer use of certain technologies.

Sometimes, the point of the blog is to be called out, in a most complimentary manner. Or in a mock confrontational manner as Sleestak and Mr. Hembeck seem to be doing over...Hayley Mills?

I find a lot of bloggers from Singapore, such as this one. Sure one finds the bizarre, or the blatantly commercial, on blogs, but perhaps also a greater understanding of the so-called global village.

For a variety of reasons, I've added a couple blogs to my list:
Big Fat Blog (BFB) was founded in 2000. "My original purpose with the blog was to point out just how insanely poorly fat people are portrayed in the media," the author writes, but it's expanded beyond that.
GayProf is a guy who just had a major breakup and REALLY wants to get out of Texas. I had this friend, Jennifer, who spent two or three miserable years in the Lone Star State. All of the straight men she met had gun racks, and she wasn't a gun rack kind of woman. She's now working for a great library in a great metropolitan area.
Finally, Church of Klugman- ya gotta love a guy with so much passion for the life of actor Jack Klugman.
Also added the TV.com website, with lists of shows old and new, audio interviews and local TV listings, that my late friend Tom Hoffman e-mailed me about...in 2001. Yet another Loganesque find.

(Geez, how did I miss the 70th birthday of Woody Allen yesterday?