Okay, it's a cheap pun. But I'm not afraid to own it.
David Sifry, Mr. Technoratus, has posted an analysis of the state of the Blogosphere. And there's more to come, apparently.
It looks like people who start blogs are more likely to keep them going than they were a few years ago, possibly a function of the lower barrier to entry. With automatic tools to do most of our formatting, we really don't need to know HTML THANK THE GOOD LORD! Because until that little snag was overcome we had to be content with very limited templates, or we had to go over to the dark side. And if you knew HTML, what in god's name were you doing with a dinky little blog anyway? You could have a website, man. It's like having a bicycle when you could have a jet-enabled Transformer. Blogs are for the civilians.
There are no shortage of techie bloggers, though. Does this mean I'm wrong? Oh, perish the thought, bitches. It means that even techies get tired of having their whole posts go POOF cuz they forgot one single "/" or something. They are able to recognize something damn useful just as quick as anybody else, and they jumped on it. As previously posted on this blog (I'll find the link when I'm less lazy) technical blogging, while still dominant, is in decline. Again, this is a barrier to entry thing; before, only techies and those willing to put up with a great deal of crap and/or learn a completely new and artificial language could blog with any degree of proficiency. Now, anybody who can type (and many people who can merely type, rather than spell or think) can blog. So the techies are being diluted. As well, at a certain point you don't neccessarily want to pontificate, you want to communicate; the livejournalers go to chat, the techies go to IM. And, increasingly, to meatspace.
Imagine that: Facetime! It's the new hotness.
In summary:
- Technorati now tracks over 35.3 Million blogs
- The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months
- It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
- On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
- 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
- Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour
A few of our longtime readers will recall the case of the New Zealand woman who impersonated Viggo Mortensen online for a couple of years. Actually, for all I know she's still doing it. But at the time I tried to make a few points about the illegality of posting information to the Internet which is designed to make people think you are someone else. Thanks to BoingBoing I've come across a nice article about all that and more here.
The data is sketchy; victims volunteered to fill out a questionnaire, and harasser data is, in most cases, provided by the harassed. But there are some insights. For example, increasing numbers of men appear to be applying for help, and overt threats of offline harm occurred in about a quarter of the cases last year.
In about half the cases, victim and perpetrator appear to be strangers. For the rest, it can be deeply, disturbingly personal.
"With any new technology that comes along, you have the shadow of criminality that follows," Mr. Meloy said, although he added that the Internet, with all its distance and anonymity, provided a unique vehicle for the unleashing of hidden furies.
"It's a much more veiled, shielded, disinhibited way of communicating," Mr. Meloy said, "and much more raw in the expression of aggression."
Particularly if you can't make head or tail of them. If you get this, please comment for the benefit of those of us who only got A's on our algebra exams. I mean, I get the arc, I get the punchline, it's the syntax that sort of throws me. Like when you're travelling and your only words in the language are "restaurant" "washroom" and "police" and yet you still end up safe and sound and fed and where you meant to go in the first place. Yeah, like that.
Giving it an Allegory tag anyway, what the hell and for the sake of Operation Global Media Domination (I believe this is the only blog on WordPress with an Allegory tag; they're sure to jump on the bandwagon once Narnia goes to DVD though).
a = b
a^2 = ab
a^2-b^2 = ab-b^2
(a+b)(a-b) = b(a-b)
a+b = b
2b = b
2 = 1x = (Pi+3)/2
2x = Pi+3
2x(Pi-3) = (Pi+3)(Pi-3)
2Pix-6x = Pi^2-9
9-6x = Pi^2-2Pix
9-6x+x^2 = Pi^2-2Pix+x^2
(3-x)^2 = (Pi-x)^2
3-x = Pi-x
Pi = 3-1 = -1
-1/1 = -1/1
-1/1 = 1/-1
sqrt(-1/1) = sqrt(1/-1)
i/1 = 1/i
i = 1/i
i * i = 1
-1 = 1
Because Easter's almost over and we're suffering from Giant Squid Withdrawl. If we hadn't had hashbrowns and fried eggs for lunch, we'd have ordered calamari for dinner. Anyhoo, stole this in a very baroque manner off Gawker, where it is not posted. I told you it was baroque; actually, it's all very Da Vinci. Click here for the latest from the original source website.
