As we come to the close of 2005, and reflect on what has been, at least in terms of world events, a pretty horrific year, Arianna Huffington has done us the great service of coming up with a long list of things she'd like to forget.

I'd agree completely.

Personally, it's been an amazing year for me, and sometimes it's hard to hold both the personal and the larger picture at the same time.

I'm not sure how I managed to make my way into this stellar group, but I'm part of the crew launching the new blog, called Talk to Action. This site is focused on the theocratic Christian Right, and how to counter it. Fred Clarkson, one of the founders, has a great post on Kos, which explains the why and wherefore of the site.

Every once in a while I come across a new blog that is worth telling others about. This one is called "Once Upon a Time..." and it's a fascinating blog about the power of narrative, and how the way we tell the stories we tell have an important effect. There is a great post on New Orleans. It's long, but worth the read.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Last week, there was a silly article in Forbes magazine, which I didn't blog about because it was so silly. The title of the article "Attack of the Blogs" and the first line, "Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo" pretty much tells you everything you need to know about it. Basically, it's why business should worry about bloggers.

There is a little API at Technorati, which uses Some guy's research, to calculate the financial worth of your blog. So here's the results of mine...

I have gotten into the habit of looking at what searches people have used to get my blog. Here's a good one:

"Wealthy buisness men have no time for families"

Amazing. My blog came up second in the MSN search!!

Someone had asked me why I have said in my blog, on many occasions, "a friend of mine," without identifying them. This made me realize that some people reading this blog might not realize that this is completely deliberate.

I'm catching up on my backlogged blog reading and came across an interesting page - 31 days to Building a Better Blog. It's focused toward people who are trying to actually make money at blogging, something I can't quite get my mind around, but in any event, it's got some nice tips for bloggers, worth a read.

Thanks Art!

I like reading blogs. I like commenting on blogs. I like writing blogs. I like the back-and-forth that comes from people reacting off of what others say. One of the things I've realized in the past couple of months of doing fairly intensive blogging is that I notice when:

- I can't post a comment without signing up to something
- I can't trackback

I don't mind so much when I can do one or the other (comment or trackback). I really mind when I can't do either.