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It depends on what the meaning of “blog” is.

I’m supposed to be freelancing, since I didn’t get a chance to put that ceiling in, and the painting took longer than I thought, and don’t ask about the wiring, and I’m also wondering how on earth I can find appropriate references to the Family and the Sygn in my tattered, dog-eared copy of Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand—wouldn’t it be cool if there were some sort of engine that could scan the letterforms on the page much more quickly than I could myself, alerting me to those passages which contain “Family” and “Sygn” in close proximity, so that my search would be that much the easier? —But you can never have too much procrastination, says I, so here I am wasting time to say: Happy blogoversary, Alas.

  1. OK, now that's weird. I just wrote to the author of that article on the Family on Friday. The company I work for is heavily involved with them. We're supposed to talk on the phone at some point. I'm curious to know what sort of information you have on it.
    — Glenn Peters    Jun 29, 07:18 AM    #
  2. Just what I've read in that article and this interview, which is enough the scare the bejesus out of me. It's one of those pots of water the frogs don't seem to have noticed is getting hotter.

    By the way, Glenn--congrats on posting the 500th comment hereabouts. Whee!
    — --k.    Jun 29, 07:30 AM    #
  3. Well, speaking as a boiling frog, I'm pretty uncomfortable. I'd find these articles scary even if this weren't my work environment.

    Yay, 500! (Although if I got a better job, I wouldn't as inspired to keep checking my LJ Friends list.)
    — Glenn Peters    Jun 30, 10:06 AM    #
  4. What is the definition or meaning of the word "blog", and, in turn, "blogger"? It is obviously of recent coinage, and I have encountered it in connection with the current Democratic Convention, in Boston. Thanks.
    — Wm Sullivan    Jul 29, 06:15 AM    #
  5. "Blog" is short for "web log," or a running log maintained of sites visited while surfing the world-wide web. —As you can see, the concept has shifted somewhat since then. ("Blogger," of course, would be "one who blogs.")

    However, the term "blog" has a long and storied history. Among other things, it's the name of two different house cocktails served for years at two different science fiction conventions. (I'd cite that, but I lost the link. It was on BoingBoing or something.) And the term, it turns out, is far older even than that...

    Blogging was once administered with a broad beep, usually on the person's back. Blogging was a common method of pushing bums and of preserving the disciples' codes in the home, school, armed forces, and prisons. Mosaic code (on two tablets) was the first known blog. Blogging was not immediately wide-spread. In antiquity, blogging was relegated to skilled slaves, and the word blogger referred both to the person performing the inscription and to the person bearing it on his back. Blogged slaves were obliged to display their bared backs at all times. Slaves whose skin was only partially blogged were called half-backs or quarter-backs. The practice was revived later in the American South where black slaves were often blogged to death. The renowned Civil War scholar, Cate R. Bucton, notes in her authoritative Commands Taken For Granted, that bloggers would often end up serving as Union informants. The rate of blog loss was so high that Gen. Jon-Wane Lostslack in each new blog recorded his puzzlement at the lack of the last one.


    — --k.    Jul 29, 07:29 AM    #

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