Friedrich --

* Here are results of a study of blogdom done by Perseus Development. Some highlights: about a quarter of all blogs created are abandoned after only one day. Men tend to abandon their blogs slightly faster than women do, while women are slightly more likely to create a blog in the first place. More than 90% of all blogs were created by people under 30 years old. The average active blog is updated only once every 14 days. [UPDATE: Alan Sullivan points out that Perseus studied only the world of hosted blogdom -- Blogspot, Live Journal, etc -- which surely affected their results.]

* Terry Teachout has written a lovely elegy for middlebrow culture here. Great quote: "The information age offers something for anybody: Survivor for simpletons, The Sopranos for sophisticates. The problem is that it offers nothing for everybody."

* An interesting discussion at the Adam Smith Institue has been kicked off by Madsen Pirie's suggestion that the world set itself a couple of new goals, here.

* Look a little closer at some of those items on sale at Ebay, here. (Link thanks to Daze Reader, here.)

* When it comes to the impact of digital technology on movies, we run ourselves into a rut when we consider only theatrical feature-type movies. Here's an example of what I suspect digi-movie-tech is going to be bringing us a lot more of -- "movies" that are small, cheap, short, and delivered over the web. A development that makes me feel much more cheerful, by the way, than the ones in the feature-film world ... (Link thanks to S.Y. Affolee, here.)

* As you know, my preferred semi-solution to the health-insurance crisis is to break the link between emploment and health insurance. Stop giving employers a tax break to pay for it, and start giving individuals the tax break instead. The jeers came loud and thick, but I'm taking comfort in some classy company -- Arnold Kling (here) and Ronald Bailey (here), who make similar (if much better informed) arguments.

* David Sucher (here) and Chris Bertram (here) have a vigorous conversation going about compassion and government. I'm not sure I follow all the points being made, but I couldn't resist jumping into the comments thread anyway.

* Are stressed-out couples more likely to give birth to girls than to boys? Tyler Cowen considers the evidence and offers a generous helping of links, here.

* Ian Hamet watches some blaxploitation movies (here), as well as Akira Kurosawa's first movie, here.

* Genitalia worship, religion, and art -- give me one good reason why they shouldn't be buddies (here). This is just a small corner of the very idiosyncratic but rich website Kamat's Potpourri, which is devoted to all things Indian.

* Jon Walz muses about the beauty of a great old movie palace, Phoenix's 1929 Orpheum Theater, here.

Best,

Michael

I took a look at the Perseus blog-survey. There's an important caveat: this is a survey of hosted blogs only. While they comprise a majority of blogs, independent sites like 2 Blowhards (or Fresh Bilge) would probably have a very different set of characteristics, if one could collect accurate information on them.

Posted by: Alan Sullivan on October 11, 2003 07:07 PM

Thanks Alan, that's a good point. I've updated the posting.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on October 11, 2003 11:54 PM






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