Archive for Blogging
IHate JDate
Posted by: | CommentsI normally wouldn’t post a personal gripe on a conservative blog, but since my friend and site proprietor, PD Berger (as Paul now prefers to be addressed), has written his share of intimate confessions here, I figured he wouldn’t mind if I do the same.
After nearly five years in a steady, meaningful relationship, I recently found myself thrust back into the singles scene. As a Jew in New York City, it was my religious duty to blow the dust off my suspended JDate account and start meeting women again.
As a cartoonist, I figure I should use humor as my weapon of choice in capturing the attention of prospective dates. For some reason, this approach is not working. Below is an excerpt from my latest blog entry, “Into the Void“:
My sorrowfully ineffective method has been to start with a humorous reference to their profile, to show I was actually paying attention. For your enjoyment, I’ve compiled a select list of actual clips from letters I’ve sent to other JDate members. Invariably, I get no response.
Tell me, would you write back?
To the psychologist:
Can I book an hour of couch time?To the entrepreneur who quit law school and her job on Wall St. to start a cookie company:
Subject: I did it all for the cookie
Message: Wall Street, law school, now cookies. You’re in it for the DOUGH!To the “Vice President with Looks”
I typically only date Presidents but I would be willing to lower the bar and make an exception here.To the girl who, well … I can understand why she didn’t write back:
If we went on a date I think I could overcome the fact that you bear an uncanny resemblance to my sister.
You can read the rest here.
Blog On
Posted by: | CommentsI leave for Europe in three days. Deadlines loom. Many things need canceling. Numerous things need packing. Blogging may suffer.
My copy of 2005: Blogged arrived yesterday. If you aren’t already aware it’s a kind of Best of British for the past year, compiled by Tim Worstall. (There’s even a post by a certain EiNY.) I’ve had a quick flick through and it contains some writing that goes a long way towards supporting Tim’s idea that someone should really be syndicating blogs to the print media. For a review by Rafael Behr in the Observer, see here.
And if you think 2005: Blogged may make a nice stocking filler then don’t forget about Blog, the book I worked on over the past year. Obviously, I’m biased (I contributed about one-third of the interviews in the book) but I have to say that many of the ideas and insights from bloggers and blogging experts are still being discussed today and will be discussed for years to come. Plus, if you buy a copy my editors will make money which will finance them to pay me for future book projects 
For a review by Hugh Hewitt in the New York Post see here.
Links for today:
How blogging can help the regional UK press (via journalism.co.uk)
They Shoot Helicopters, Don’t They?
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the biggest criticisms of weblogs is that they are not “fact-checked like the media.” Next time you read or hear that just remember this about mainstream media reports of death, destruction and mayhem in New Orleans:
But the basic premise of the article that introduced the New Orleans helicopter sniper to a global audience was dead wrong, just like so many other widely disseminated Katrina nightmares. No 7-year-old rape victim with a slit throat was ever found, even though the atrocity was reported in scores of newspapers. The Convention Center freezer was not stacked with 30 or 40 dead bodies, nor was the Superdome a live-in morgue. (An estimated 10 people died inside the two buildings combined, and only one was slain, according to the best data from National Guard officials at press time.)
Reason: They Shoot Helicopters, Don’t They?: How journalists spread rumors during Katrina by Matt Welch
Links for today:
My OJR story being discussed in Germany (via Martin Stabe)
Ricky Gervais to podcast
The left-wing Neocons (via Clive Davis)
Sunset in the City
Posted by: | Comments
The city viewed from the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, Central Park, yesterday at about 4.30pm. (Connie and Yoav, I take it back! It’s not such a bad name…)
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Good blogs
Posted by: | CommentsThere’s so much good blogging going on out there.
Despite Clive Davis’ assertion that the French riots have not been “the blogosphere’s finest hour,” he is doing a great job of pulling together mainstream media and blog reports while sounding a cautious note to the hysterical voices in the blogosphere (especially on this side of the Atlantic) who are putting too much emphasis on Islam and having far too good a time laughing at France’s misery.
Meanwhile, Opinionistas, who I wrote about in the New York Times at the weekend, has published one of her best posts in a long time, a remarkable achievement considering the quality of her blog. I see also that she has had quite a response to the piece.
And Scott Burgess, at the Daily Ablution, invigorated after raising almost £3,000 in his first fund-raising drive, lays into the Indy for its reporting of claims that US forces ‘used chemical weapons’ during assault on city of Fallujah with a post highlighting the unacknowledged biases of the story’s sources yesterday and a second post throwing further doubt on the story’s vailidity today. (PS I notice the Indy put the phrase ‘used chemical weapons’ in quote marks. A bit of a giveaway?)
