PSoTD

Like I said, I'm in my own little summer world right now, and I didn't even realize that Senator John Warner has reintroduced the idea (not a bill) of reducing the national speed limit. But where's the bill, Senator?

I had not even heard of Taca Airlines.

MoxieGrrl is winding down her blogging. There's a lot of that going on, I feel it too.

It would probably improve the ratings for the Summer Olympics, too.

Pantone doesn't own me!

Like everywhere else, you can go to jail for crack in Flint, Michigan. Not like everywhere else, the crack involved is from having your pants hang too low.

One of the first bloggers to blogroll PSoTD was Melanie at A Bump in the Beltway. She followed my transition to blogging from the original Political Site of the Day, and just added this blog without request.

The past few months I have not been reading other blogs as much as I used to - I think the anguish between the Obama and Clinton camps bothered me so much that I really reduced my blog reading to avoid the finger pointing - and somehow I missed this news earlier this month:

My friend Melanie Mattson died a few weeks ago. One week from today is her birthday and she would have been 54. (I’ll have a piece of cake for you, Mel.)

An original Daily Kos regular, she was the publisher of Just A Bump in the Beltway, one of the first wave of political blogs. She was also one of the founders of the FluWiki, a comprehensive resource for those studying pandemic flu, and a contributor at Effect Measure.

Melanie will definitely be missed by many bloggers, myself included. She made a difference, and it was recognizable online, and there will be others that will continue the efforts she started. But it's a sorrow that Melanie won't be there to pursue it as well. If there's an afterlife with Bloglines, I hope she realizes how many bloggers were touched by her.

One of the sad realities of blogging is that bloggers die. EVERY time it happens a shock occurs to readers, and it ripples through the blogosphere. I wonder, as a blogger, if many bloggers have prepped a "last post" blog entry for use in case they end up, you know, expired.

Sky is Falling. Always Falling! Death is near! Barack Obama caused it!

Yep, PETA's running one.

I'm glad that Mr. Phyrillas is excited that his blog has been number one "position on the BlogNetNews.com ranking of Pennsylvania's Most Influential Political Blogs for four consecutive weeks", but I really don't know the real value of that. This blog is also tracked by BNN, and I guess we're being measured by a "variety of data sets to determine which blogs are most powerfully influencing the direction of the Pennsylvania political blogosphere", but I really don't feel any more influential when PSoTD doesn't make the top 20 as when PSoTD cracks the top ten. Links alone don't indicate influence, as search engines and RSS feeds and visitors that don't read are all part of the story, and besides, just because PSoTD is linked doesn't mean it's about anything of influence. Many of the posts here that actually get links are weird items that are found that others find curious, but that's about as far as it goes.

100,000 unique visitors in 18 months, that's something that can be compared as a metric, and congratulations to Mr. Phyrillas for that.

Anyone know what this is about?

Sometimes when a prominent person dies, they leave a "blog subject" tombstone as a marker.

Some interesting, or funny, posts to share:

If you like Joe Cocker but sometimes can't understand the words, this translation is for you. (h/t to Avedon for pointing it out)

Wow, Bush blamed Clinton for the increase of gas prices in 2000 to $30 a barrel. You know, the good ole days.

Are you having a problem with Firefox 3.0? I'm not, but archy is.

This is a good idea, so I'll snag it too: If you want to be on the PSoTD blogroll, let me know through email or comment.

Yeah, I'm not getting Larry Johnson anymore, either.

Hey Republicans - you are blaspheming the Office with the President with your various organizational seals. Change them immediately.

When candy design goes really, really wrong.

It's pretty widespread - the end of the race for the Democratic nomination for President has shown a dropoff in political blog visits in a lot of places. This is from TalkLeft.

Some posts to read:

Crummy Congressional DINOs should be nervous - bloggers are focusing on you. Time to say goodnight.

The Hummer brand might be discontinued. Has there been an economic result more due - more justified - than that?

What to read on a 28-hour plane trip?

What kind of a 1930's spouse are you? Apparently I am

70 As a 1930s husband, I am Superior Take the test!

Pollywogs! has a great post about camping out with a canoe on the Susquehanna.

Tax rebate blips, about to be overwhelmed.

Believe me, Disney has more inane programming than Hannah Montana. Does anyone proudly proclaim they write for "The Suite Life of Zach & Cody"?

I see she's returned to more active blogging. Good for her.

You can keep track of news about China's investment in various African countries at China Investing News.

I'm all for psuedonyms amongst bloggers and commenters - particularly if one stands behind that name for all of their blogging. I'm not a fan of the hit-and-run commenter that doesn't have the fortitude to provide SOME sort of reference as to who they are or what they have said in the past.

Having said that, I don't quite understand why people pick common movie characters as their pseudonym - or more specifically, why they use a photo of that character as their icon. I saw a comment, complete with photo, by some commenter named Severus the other day, after Severus Snape of Harry Potter fame.

Just one question: why use a character photo? I just don't get it. What does it really add?

That you may have missed:

Could this be the end of the banana? Is the fruit actually going to act like itself, and like split?

"Everyone should make an effort to listen to / speak with their congressional representative at least once a year. Townhall meetings are the method I would recommend. For those who prefer a digital method, or perhaps want to connect with lawmakers in a more distant district, there are two new ways of doing so."

Airplane seat cameras - this idea boggles the mind. When will we have the mind reading sensors ready?

The earthquake damage in China is overwhelming to look at.

Blog posts titled like this are just meant to be linked: Spores Gone Wild.

More restaurant closings in the Harrisburg/West Shore area. I'm sure that in today's economy, there will be more news like this, but this was a foreseeable event for Dorado's - driving by the place, you could actually see the parked car traffic dropping over time.

I'm curious about this life in Polaroids.

There are pros and cons about population density, and high density is not for everyone. I know, because I'm not one that high density is for. But check out the Comparative Population Density of 49 Cities.

Telecom is spending the bucks in Washington. And here's why.

It is time to call it a career for Lanny Davis and his television punditry or political expertise or whatever he pretends he's espousing when the cameras are live.

I don't think Hugh Laurie's "American" accent is bad, but then I don't watch House.

A Brief History of the Kama Sutra.

In my previous information industry employment incarnation, we had a mantra - no credit for political or campaign entities. PERIOD. Why? Because they are notorious slow, or no, payers. Cash in advance. Those were different times, but this is exactly why those were our rules.

The Middle Earth Journal has now gone inactive. I guess we'll be seeing a lot more of that from bloggers over the remainder of the year.

Restaurants are trying to kill you with portion size.

Not a bad idea - what would YOU like to ask the Pennsylvania Democratic Party?

I do think that the "Bob Barr Effect" hasn't been considered much yet for the November election. Here's a start.

We need more rock songs about how riding the bus is cool. Can you name two?

Wikis in government.

Sunday morning is the perfect time for a maple bacon donut.

Anything written about the actions and sentiments of the dreaded "creative class".

Just more proof that being "blogtrendy" can also mean being intensely partial to the newest shallow cliches.

I've been tagged, with this:

1. When you're tagged, answer the question on your blog, with a trackback to the original post.

2. Ask an additional million dollar question — and tag 3 bloggers with answering.

The question is:

The million dollar question is - Would you give up one of your values / morals for $1 million?

Tough question to answer. Morals? Probably not. I only have a few, but they are pretty definitive of who I am. Values? Like everybody else, I have a wide range of values, they fluctuate in time in how I prioritize them, and sometimes values change to the point where they fall off the map. Some of the values have been with me, and strong, forever, but some have been changing since the beginning of my adulthood to the point where they rate pretty low as a priority to me.

On the other hand, one of the values that has been constantly dropping has been money. I value time a LOT more than money, but I value "good times" a lot more than "hard times", and I suspect that an easy to drop value would be worth a million dollars, as long as it didn't change the core of who I am.

But I guess that really wouldn't make it a value. Values are part of how you define yourself as well as morals, and this question eventually equates to

"Is there a part I like about myself that I'm willing to lose for a million dollars?"

And I guess the answer to that is no. What I like about myself, I want to keep.

Now, I'm going to tag the following bloggers

Cannablog
PoliTits
and MCCS1977

with this question:

If you found out there was a reward for turning in a family member to the police, would you do so for $1 million?

Are meant to be broken. Good read.

I claim to believe that Obama is a better candidate but spend the vast majority of my blog posts blasting Obama and promoting Hillary Clinton. Can you guess who I am?

I took Memeorandum off the blogroll today.

Why? It seems to me that it is servicing more of the news media than the blogger community at this point, and it serving as a focus point for the swarming of bloggers over the same stories. And the news stories just seem to keep getting dumber. I find it a very depressing place to go, and I figure I'll reduce my own visits to the site if I take it off the blogroll. I don't figure it will impact anyone else - in all my log analysis review, I don't think I've ever seen anyone go from this site to memeorandum. But I've got to quit reading the stories that bloggers are swarming to - much of it is a sad commentary, on both the news media and the lack of independence that bloggers seem to be showing in their choice of blog subjects.

I hope nobody took this advice seriously. It's ridiculous to include blogging as one of the "10 hottest emerging careers that you might not know about" - people need to be serious about how they make their living.

Bloggers: Just 10 years ago, blogging would have sounded to most like a verb relegated to video games. But now, freelance writers, marketers, Web designers, finance professionals--even tea-drinkers--can draw people from around the world to read what they're thinking. Businesses are catching on, which is why they'll often hire people to blog about their products, and some bloggers can actually sell ads on their personal blogs. Are your personal thoughts worth paying for? They are, especially if you have education and a unique voice. Top bloggers can make six figures, and a handful are said to make millions.

Or maybe I'm just saying this so there's less competition for my millions...

and worth a read...

The early kin to elephants were amphibious.

The Harrisburg Brewers Fest is June 21st. I've never been, and this sure sounds like a softball tournament weekend date for our daughter to me, but it sounds like fun.

What if the Presidential Statues of Washington came alive!

Starvation is going to get worse. It's not like we all don't know this - there's pressure on the cost of food for a variety of reasons, and change has to occur on the individual level in order to stop the trend. Somehow, we have to go to the grocery and keep this in mind, and consume accordingly. I'm as bad as anyone on this, and articles like this are important for me to recognize how wasteful I am in consumption. Must change.

I am not anonymous. I am pseudonymous. There's a difference.

DCup is spreading the word of Utz.

This kind of looks like one of our contributing bloggers.

Man, it's getting hard to find interesting non-campaign blog posts these days. So much primary reactionary blather. Blah blah blah.

I haven't eaten at an Olive Garden in at least a decade. Why? I won't wait around like they require by their table policy.

Wherever Larry Ellison goes, he should ask, was this the right thing to do? Not that it was legal - was it right?

Seriously, that Rock of Love show is one of the worst programs - and programming ideas - ever.

The Pennsylvania Progressive is hanging it up.

Is bulk text messaging right around the corner?

Hope and pray for good news for Andante.

I wonder how much of a hit the blogosphere will take after November? The intensity of blogging - the emotional investment of bloggers into people and events - seems to be running high and likely to continue doing so up until the general election. What's the burnout factor here? Will we see a reduction in force of bloggers after the general election?

Great question of the day: What popular person, song, movie, fashion, or whatever else has failed utterly to capture your fancy, but you're pretty sure it was just you?

(by the way, a good answer for me is sushi)

Yes - once a government goes into generating revenue from a certain type of business, they are often stuck in the position of trying to maximize the revenue from that business. That is why Rendell's casinos plan didn't make sense to me in the first place.

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture - if you haven't seen it online yet, give yourself 12 minutes. The last 30 seconds packs the big wallop.

Oliver, Oliver, Oliver... you need some NCAA hoops immersion.

Pennsylvania has the silliest six-pack beer laws in the land.

I haven't done this in a while, link to the blogs that are blogrolled at a site I regularly check out. As has been discussed here before, this is a good way to help other blogs out, as it helps their PageRank in search output at Google. So, here's the blogroll at TommyWonk for review and googling:

The Colossus of Rhodey -- The Delaware Curmudgeon -- Delaware Dem at Daily Kos -- Delaware Grapevine -- DelawareLiberal -- Delaware Libertarian -- DelawarePolitics.net -- Delaware Watch -- Delaware Way -- Down with Absolutes! -- Gazizza.net -- karmically speaking -- kavips -- Kilroy's Delaware -- Liberal Delight -- Meet Bob Archer -- Merit Bound Alley -- Mike's Musings -- Sneaking Suspicions -- WDEL Blog: Allan Loudell -- WGMD Blog -- Blue State Rising -- Ted Blunt -- John Carney -- Matt Denn -- Jack Markell -- The All Spin Zone -- Attytood -- Changing Skyline -- Corrente -- Eschaton -- MyDD -- Philly Future -- PSoTD -- Slacktivist -- A Smoke Filled Room -- Suburban Guerrilla -- Young Philly Politics -- Blog For America -- Blogging On Water -- Brad DeLong -- Coeruleus -- The Cunning Realist -- The Daily Howler -- Daily Kos -- Digby -- Echidne of the Snakes -- Economist's View -- Environmental Economics -- firedoglake -- Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory -- Gristmill -- How to Change the World -- Jesus Was Not a Republican -- New Democrat Network -- Talking Points Memo -- Think Progress -- The Washington Note

You would think that bars would make a bigger deal of celebrating the end of Prohibition. Any excuse, you know.

There was a time that I would visit DailyKos every day for news and opinion about political events and activities, but I doubt I visit there even once a month at this point. It's been over a year since I've posted a diary there.

Am I the exception to the trend? I look at DK's sitemeter traffic, and they've increased traffic considerably this year:

What about you? Do you visit DailyKos more or less this year than in 2007 at this point? What am I missing?

A few interesting posts for your consideration:

Wegmans? No Bus For You!

All Wegmans' stores have a corporate policy against allowing public transportation onto their property and none of the three Wegmans stores in the Lehigh Valley enjoy public transportation into their store parking lots.

So THIS is what you have to do if you get a lot of comments on your blog.

It makes sense that lower tariffs could increase the costs from invasive species.

Waxed Paper Negatives.

News of the unexpected: Mike Huckabee defends Jeremiah Wright. I bet there aren't many Republicans that will agree with Huckabee.

The six word memoir meme keeps bouncing around, and I'm never asked, so I'm just going to snag it and shoot it out to others anyways. How about this for my life description: Almost always landing on my feet. Then I'm supposed to tag five others, so here it is: Daddy Democrat, Excuse the Mess, Halushki, Frank, and The Spinning Goth.

Is our economic system, currently or possibly, a collectively self-managing system?

The Big D word is being used more and more. And more and more and more.

Is there a relationship between March Madness and when men schedule their vasectomies? Or will there be?

Oh man, I've been busted:

On the question of defining agnosticism, one of the comments here nailed it IMHO:

The common forms are some variant of “I don’t know if there’s a God or not,” either a weak version that claims there’s simply not enough evidence to make a determination or a stronger version that says the question isn’t answerable. In both cases there’s no belief, there’s abstention. I’ve honestly never encountered someone claiming to be agnostic who wasn’t either one of those...

And for the Irish in you, here are 17 Irish recipes in 17 Days to celebrate St Patrick's.

One sufferer shares ...

To be a Clinton blogger in the progressive blogosphere is to be hated, shunned, passed without notice in the street. We sit home on Friday nights, cursing at Chris Matthews and being censored by Al Giordano for commenting too often in a field of swaying Obama supplication. We're not welcome at all the best dKos parties - if we show up, we're cursed with the universal epithet of those who challenge the Obama hegemony: "troll," they call us. Sometimes "f'ing troll." We're Rovian in our embrace of the monster, closet Bush backers and much worse - Lieberman types!

I feel your pain, brother!

(Except for the part about sitting home on Friday nights)

Hey, Philadelphians: Maybe, just maybe, that parking ticket you received isn't really valid.

Is anonymous posting really that bad? Well, the often-affiliated spamming is, but just anonymity?

There's now a Slow Food Harrisburg blog.

I dunno, I don't think this ATM for books concept will take off, but I've been wrong here before...

Is being infected with malaria worth $2000?

Such an opinion about basketball is the creation of spectators and not participants. Get off your butts and play!

Meet the New Media, same as the Old Media.

I must admit I was a little surprised. I have not been fired in a long time (decades, really), and I think I'm having a pretty good run in the crowded precincts of political commentary. True, my last few postings at TPM Café were not in keeping with the overwhelming majority of their articles, making and making the case for Senator Barack Obama. I questioned the value of an Idaho caucus victory. I criticized Maureen Dowd's column suggesting that when a perfect female candidate came along, the media would be delighted to support her. I suggested that "Josh" might have waited to get more survey results before he posted his video embracing the ultimately erroneous Zogby predictions for the California primary the afternoon before the primary. But I thought that the new media of the blogosphere was actually established in part to offset what they considered the tendency of the MSM to cut its coverage to suit its preexisting, largely establishment, predilections. So I was blithely oblivious to the possibility that my dissenting views on the inevitability and divinity of the Obama candidacy might cause a problem.

I always thought Josh Marshall was aiming a bit higher on the journalistic ladder with his site. Too bad.