In the Interest of Paying Back

The Truth Laid Bear's New Blog Showcase is up for its second week of competition. In a stunning come-from-behind fashion (and no one was more stunned than I) my blog won the inaugural competition last week. As a result, I got a LOT of traffic, and quite a few links.

It seems only fair that I pay back that largess by voting on a couple of contenders out of this week's entries.

I believe that blogging is about to take off like CB radio did back in the late 70's. Steven Den Beste stated that 90% of the blogs out there right now are crap, and I'm afraid that he's largely correct, but the difference between CB and blogging is that feedback is immediate, and it's a positive loop correction mechanism. If you're crap, nobody links to you or reads you. There is no equivalent to slapping a 100W booster on your station and using a Moonraker to wipe out everybody within 50 miles. And good bloggers have come to act as really excellent corrective feedback loops on the mainstream media, as the recent New York Times debacle, and the even more recent Guardian fauxs pax have proven.

So I found this entry by The Blog Herald really interesting: Europe goes to the Blogs. Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing. Lets hope that it reaches Iraq very, very soon.

I also liked Rkayn Knowledge's post of Tuesday, June 3 (scroll down, the link may be bloggered) concerning the state of judicial nominees. Fact checking Elanor Clift of (and) Newsweak. See what I'm talking about? Corrective feedback. Pass this one around. The Truth Shall Make You Free.

I WANT to read Graham Lester's column, "A Nonbeliever's Defense of Religion," just on the strength of the blurb he put up on TruthLaidBear's site, but apparently Blogger isn't the only service to have problems. I get a "Cannot find server" error at this time. I'll give him a vote anyway.

My final vote this go-round goes to DANEgeurs's quite well-done fisking of Gary Hart. More feedback!

It will be interesting to see who wins this week.