Dave Appell at Quark Soup has a jeremiad against blogging up. It's fine, but I have to add that I was reading Dave's original blog in early 2002 (the first science blog I ever read), and he would post his frustrations about how crappy it was being a writer and how blogging was unsatisfying. As it happens, it's 2008, and he's come back to blogging, and last I checked he's still a writer. Dave also sent Rod Dreher an angry note for having supported the Iraq War (though Rod now opposes it).
So I'm just sayin', keep the messenger in mind :-)
Comments
Weird. His was also one of the first science blogs I knew, though I never became a regular.
Posted by: Coturnix | July 11, 2008 5:45 PM
Blogging is an impressive discipline, an art even. I like the aesthetics of gnxp. Everything is easy on the eye. I got bored of it almost instantly. Laziness, mental lethargy... oh, and severe longsightedness, computers give me collosal headaches after a few hours, so it's tough logging on after working on a screen all day.
Blogging is essentially communative and conversational. Steve Sailer does this best. Bloggers should learn his system. I've experimented with movie-reviewing based on the Sailer methodology, limited success. I ate a great Indian tonight. Razib should talk more about the various spices he consumes.
Posted by: Sebastian Flyte | July 11, 2008 6:42 PM
Most of them suck, but most of everything sucks. Blogs give everyone a megaphone. This increases the absolute number of worth-listening-to people with megaphones, but also the number of worth-strangling people with megaphones. The proportions aren't very different.
I disagree that it takes a long time to understand something interesting, implying that blogging is not suited to understanding. Hell, with the internet, it's easier than ever to look up whatever data you want, oftentimes discovering that someone's already collected it.
For an upcoming post at GNXP.com on how climate affects the degree of civilization, I collected and analyzed all the data in maybe 1 or 2 afternoons. Obviously I'd get a much richer picture if I spent months on it, but I got a fairly clear picture with just 2 days.
As with everything that's resistant to alchemy, the primary determinant of the writing's quality is the quality of the raw materials -- i.e., of the writer.
A moron blogger with no intuition or facts to guide him would ponder it for 2 days and come up with jack. Your many posts on religiosity and fill-in-the-blank are the same thing. How long does it take? And you get a fairly clear picture.
Posted by: agnostic | July 11, 2008 8:34 PM
Your blogging is giving me deterministic dreams, Razib.
In the dream I swapped consciousnesses (or souls) with a '70s rock drummer. When I got on stage, I didn't think I'd be able to play, but I COULD!
I had read your blog the prior afternoon.
Posted by: ragamuffinman | July 13, 2008 11:55 AM
razib.
blogging sucks.
take it from me.
Posted by: ali irrelevant | July 14, 2008 2:50 AM
He places too much store in the knowledge and abilities of journalists. I have spoken to a number of business writers at daily newspapers in the course of my duties working for a financial institution regulator. I can't begin to tell you how many of them don't know the first thing about business and finance--their managing editors just assigned them to cover the banking beat because that's where they happened to have a vacancy.
Anyone with a college education who reads the front page of the WSJ could cover business as well if not better than they do.
So, I would say that bloggers are as good as and in many cases better than journalists on many issues.
Posted by: Patrick | July 14, 2008 9:15 PM